Feminism Versus Scrabble
Heather Mac Donald on the obvious-but-seemingly-unthinkable:
Since the World Scrabble Championship began in 1991, all winners have been male. The North American Scrabble Championship has had one female winner (in 1987) since its founding in 1978. All eight finalists in this year’s French World Scrabble Championships were men. Competitive Scrabble constitutes a natural experiment for testing the feminist worldview. According to feminist dogma, males and females are identical in their aptitudes and interests. If men dominate certain data-based, abstract fields like engineering, physics and math, that imbalance must, by definition, be the result of sexism—whether a patriarchal culture that discourages girls from math or implicit bias in the hiring process.
But there are no cultural expectations that discourage females from memorising dictionaries—a typical strategy of competitive Scrabble players, often in a foreign language that the player doesn’t speak. Girls are as free as boys to lap up vocabulary. Nor are there misogynist gatekeepers to keep females out of Scrabble play; the game, usually first learned at home, is open to all. According to Hasbro, 83% of recreational Scrabble players 25 to 54 are female.
Championship Scrabble, however, rewards typically male obsessions: strategy, math, a passion for competition, and a drive to memorise facts. [World Scrabble Champion, Nigel] Richards’s mother told the Guardian in 2015 that he “related everything to numbers” when he was growing up. Feminists will need to employ circular logic to conjure forth a discriminatory barrier in Scrabble: Males’ excellence at a certain activity itself keeps females out. But that leaves unanswered the question of how males came to excel at Scrabble—or any other abstract, competitive activity—in the first place.
Also this:
Like competitive Scrabble, Wikipedia has no gatekeepers. Anyone can compose or edit an entry; participation is largely anonymous. There are no centuries-old Wiki traditions shoring up male Wiki dominance. Yet only 13% of Wikipedia editors are female, according to the Wikimedia Foundation, even though no one would know the sex of a female editor to be able to discriminate against her. Entries for typically “female” subjects are skimpy compared with typically “male” ones. The implication is unavoidable: Females aren’t as obsessively driven as males to nail down facts, correct errors, and dominate a field.
We’ve been here before, of course. And doubtless we’ll be here again, due to Yale sociology professors and New York Times columnists being ideologically confounded by the fact that men and women tend to differ in their levels of enthusiasm for pop-cultural trivia.
< feminism > Women should be given extra letters to make Scrabble fair. < /feminism >
< feminism > Women should be given extra letters to make Scrabble fair. < /feminism >
Heh. Plus the tiles are terribly heavy.
Scrabble is a game invented by men for men. Men excel at it because the rules were designed to allow men to excel at it. Why are there no World Barbie championships?
As noted before, when we last touched on this subject:
And yet the woke contingent still struggle with the unremarkable notion, evident on a daily basis, that, taken statistically, men and women differ.
My lunatic family and I represent a pretty good cross section of Scrabble skills. My husband is very bright and tends to win most games we play. Except Scrabble, where the ratio is probably 3:2 my way. I think this is a function of my mildly broader vocab (and perhaps as women tend to perform better on tests of verbal ability…). However, my brother always wins Scrabble when we play with the rest of the family. He would win 80-90% of the time. This is devastating to the rest of us as this brother was always the ‘jock’ of the family and the running joke was that we are not sure if he can even read. His vocab is pretty average but he would see opportunities that none of us would, and he consistently would play super basic words for massive points.
I administered an IQ test to him once and he did well on all domains but scored above the 99th percentile on working memory (the ability to temporarily store new info in mind and to manipulate it as required -similar to many with high level math skills, indeed one working memory subtest is ‘mental’ arithmetic). Interestingly, my other brother, whose vocab is definitely the best cannot even score near the first brother. I usually beat him too… Although it is hardly a representative sample, my family may show that good vocab (brother 2), high level of general intelligence (husband) or the general verbal advantage of being female (me) pale in comparison to to good working memory ability when playing Scrabble
And yet the woke contingent still struggle with the unremarkable notion, evident on a daily basis, that, taken statistically, men and women differ.
Not only are there no “gatekeepers” to these various professions (STEM) or activities, society actively encourages female participation, but to no avail. I’ve noted before on these pages, my son’s STEM university has a myriad of programs and boatloads of cash to throw around, all for the purposes of increasing female enrollment. It’s been that way for years, yet still males outnumber females better than 2:1. No one really believes that females are incapable of the work. (My son’s two favorite professors in math and computer engineering are female. They’re very demanding and universally respected & beloved on campus.)
I think this is a function of my mildly broader vocab (and perhaps as women tend to perform better on tests of verbal ability…).
40 years ago I observed that comparing SAT scores among the “smart set” in my high school, the girls’ scores were fairly consistent 600’s to 700’s verbal yet 500’s to 600’s math and the boys’ scores were flipped the other way. What I recall most about this observation was two things. First and foremost, that any discussion about this difference was, mostly by teachers but also some girl students, highly discouraged and even scorned. The second observation was that my advanced trig and calculus classes were dominated by girls. Like by a 4/1 or 5/1 ratio. And that the primary advanced math teacher was a woman. And yet again OTOH, the science (thinking chemistry and physics) teachers and classmates were a little more balanced. Why even 40 years ago was it so important to pretend to be impervious to empirical data?
“Feminists will need to employ circular logic to conjure forth a discriminatory barrier in Scrabble…
Nonsense. The barrier is self-evident – just ask Laurie Penny – and if you can’t see it, or in any way question its existence or self-evidentness, you are by definition SEXIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ne?
Ever seen a Scrabble Barbie?
Hmmph. I thought not.
the obvious-but-seemingly-unthinkable
That category’s getting bigger every day.
However, my brother always wins Scrabble when we play with the rest of the family. He would win 80-90% of the time. This is devastating to the rest of us
Jordan Peterson on the importance to play of letting others win:
From this lecture: Biblical Series III: God and the Hierarchy of Authority
https://youtu.be/R_GPAl_q2QQ?t=3988
Also:
Oh there are. They’re called sororities or Junior League. And those bitches are vicious.
“Why are there no World Barbie championships?”
Oh there are. They’re called sororities or Junior League. And those bitches are vicious.
Speaking of problematic letters, Leeds Trinity University abolishes capitalism.
I see a market for Scrabble tiles in lower case – but not cursive.
University bosses have banned lecturers from using capital letters when assigning work to their students out of fear it might upset them
We’ve stripped our kids of their shock absorbers
“Feminists will need to employ circular logic to conjure forth a discriminatory barrier in Scrabble”
No, I’m afraid that they won’t. All they need to conjure forth is an axiom. Given the correct axiom the syllogism will be sound. And they will point to the soundness of the syllogism, rather than the falsity of the axiom.
The axiom: Men and women ARE equal. Ergo, a discrepancy means there IS sexism. That its source has not been identified does not imply that a source does not exist.
Not that it really matters. If they are required to employ circular logic they are perfectly happy doing that as well, and if you object that is taken as evidence of not only sexism, but colonialism as well.
So the problem with observations like this is that the people who most need them are immune to them. When Miller failed, Millerites simply reformed as Adventists.
Hmmm… looks like one of my comments went MIA.
I’ll try a repeat
University bosses have banned lecturers from using capital letters when assigning work to their students out of fear it might upset them
We have stripped our kids of their shock absorbers.
Ok, that’s two comments that disappeared. :::sigh:::
The spam filter is capricious. Freed.
pst314,
Jordan Peterson on the importance to play of letting others win:
Which is why I haven’t been invited to play Trivial Pursuit in more than 20 years. Never has a board game fit the weird processes of my brain better. Even my Dad, when I’ve irritated him, calls me “an encyclopedia of useless trivia”. I have a photographic memory, but for some reason, only about shit that doesn’t matter.
Darleen,
We’ve stripped our kids of their shock absorbers
Ah, someone else was listening to Dennis Prager. 😉
Has anyone ever played Paperback? It’s based on Scrabble but I find it a little easier—for one thing, some of the cards (used instead of tiles) have two letters on them, e.g. CH, and for another, most cards have a little extra bonus on them, e. .g “If this is the last letter in [your] word, earn 1cent [point] extra” or “Draw two extra cards next hand.” This might be the solution for feminists; it’d be easier to spell SEXISM and win.
I don’t think tournament participants, in any activity, will ever be equally divided between the sexes, however many we end up with. The obsessive drive needed to reach the top of the heap is mostly found in the male. Even if feminists could intimidate enough men into avoiding the tournament, so that it was officially half-and-half, most of the time a guy would still end up winning.
I finally figured out why male leaders tolerate, and even encourage, feminism. It holds down the challengers who would otherwise naturally arise from below. This will work as long as the push-button society endures. Under more primitive conditions, such as in the Stan countries, not so much.
Which is why I haven’t been invited to play Trivial Pursuit in more than 20 years.
Two completely separate gaming groups have instituted the “Daniel has to go around twice” rule. :/
From the same article.
Ah, someone else was listening to Dennis Prager. 😉
His show runs 9a-12p on my local radio – which I listen to in my office at work. Small amount of sanity is always welcome. 🙂
Meanwhile, in Portland.
When you think about it, it’s funny how male Scrabble players never identify and compete as females, the way they do in other sports.
Now why would that be?
That pink-haired thing seems pleased to have been arrested. Do prospective employers there LIKE Antifa?
Meanwhile, in Portlandia.
The “anti-fascists” aren’t even trying to hide their fascist impulses.
University bosses have banned lecturers from using capital letters
They’d be better off banning lower case, as there is a lot better difference between capitals and this would help those with dyslexic or similar tendencies.
Seems other people are finally catching on to the obvious.
Why are there no World Barbie championships?
Because they cancelled the swimsuit competition.
My older sister had an IQ above 140. Her vocabulary was exceptional for her age. Artistic talents abounded. Encouraged by our liberal parents in everything she undertook, she opted to skip college and have children. Somewhere above age 30 she returned to school and studied nursing. She eventually married a successful car dealer and retired from her profession. Not under duress. By free choice.
As I said to an acquaintance in a recent conversation about daylight savings time: “They can tell us to set our clocks to whatever time they decide, but they can’t change the fact that the daylight is shorter in winter than in summer.”
The application to Scrabble is obvious.
“…National Geographic Society has already been sued for discriminating against girls based on that winner ratio….”
This is Adverse Impact analysis. When the ratio of successful to unsuccessful candidates in a protected class is less than 80% of the ratio for the non-protected class, this result establishes that unlawful discrimination has occurred. A Remedy must be ordered.
The Consent Decree in settlement will no doubt create separate categories and awards for future competitions based on gender. Then we might predict the entrance of trans-females to compete, and eventually dominate, on the distaff side thenceforth.
Thus Justice reigns.
“…University bosses have banned lecturers from using capital letters when assigning work to their students out of fear it might upset them….”
At a University of my acquaintance, faculty are told not to correct students by writing in red – ink, pencil or electronic type. We are “encouraged” – but of course not required – to use blue or another soothing color when delivering feedback and corrections. Also, we are told to use positive language at all times so as not to convey a “judgmental” attitude. So, rather than writing “You left out half of the required topics”, we write “You would have improved this paper by writing on each of the topics listed in the instructions.” See how uplifting and “engaging” the latter is compared to the former?
In grad school, the entire feedback on one of my comprehensive papers was “This is crap. Redo it.” Somehow, despite the judgmentalism and negativity emanating from the faculty readers, I managed to figure out on my own what went wrong and rewrote the paper with a satisfactory result.
And reason we’re citing Scabble rather than say, chess, is because Scabble belongs to someone who can be sued.
Alfred Mosher Butts (April 13, 1899 – April 4, 1993) was an American architect, famous for inventing the board game Scrabble in 1938. (Wikipedia)
Aha! A Dead White Male!
I KNEW it!
Why even 40 years ago was it so important to pretend to be impervious to empirical data?
God knows. In my field I regularly conduct cognitive testing. Patients will undergo testing for a range of reasons, e.g. diagnosis of intellectual disability or cognitive impairment, to track cognitive decline in degenerative disease, to track rehabilitation after injury (e.g. traumatic brain injury or stroke) etc. To draw meaningful conclusions about cognitive status we need to compare those data to age-related norms. Consistently, normative data are separated according to sex (and educational level) as it has been consistently found the performance of men and women differ on various tasks. Off the top of my head, women are generally superior on measures of verbal comprehension/fluency, verbal memory and some measures of processing speed. men tend to perform better on some tests of visual perception and visual processing. Apparently this is a huge problem and there has been a push to not publish normative data separated by sex. Thankfully this is being resisted by many in the field who recognise that accurate normative data is essential for correct diagnoses and recommendations PC considerations be damned…
Jordan Peterson on the importance to play of letting others win:
“Unless the big rat lets the little rat win 30 percent of the time, the little rat will not invite him to play.”
Ha, well we are only devastated as much as being consistently beaten by someone who will try to convince you that his retarded non-words are words. The contest is now avoiding last place as the loser has to wear a helmet for an hour after the game, regardless of any prior commitments.
Same in chess and of course all competitive sports. I’d be willing to bet it’s the same in other competitive activities as well, too – card games and the like.
If the patriachy isn’t to blame then explain to me why “Mansplaining” isn’t an acceptable word in championship scrabble?!
Still catching up with ‘championship Scrabble’ being a thing…
Two completely separate gaming groups have instituted the “Daniel has to go around twice” rule. :/
While women outnumber men in terms of casual Scrabble games, it occurs to me that the kinds of skills required for championship Scrabble – say, memorising dictionaries in languages one doesn’t speak – suggest a position on the autism spectrum, where men vastly outnumber women.
University bosses have banned lecturers from using capital letters
They should have to use Comic Sans, as befits the seriousness of modern-day academia.
Ah, a contender for the Wolfgang Pauli Memorial Award for Letting Someone Down Gently. Pauli’s inaugural winner was, “This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.”
the Wolfgang Pauli Memorial Award for Letting Someone Down Gently
Was Pauli the one who hit Isaac Asimov at a dinner? Or was it another famous scientist?
Same in chess and of course all competitive sports. I’d be willing to bet it’s the same in other competitive activities as well, too – card games and the like.
An even better experiment. Check Poker. If the Patriarchy ™ teaches us to underestimate the capabilities of women, then women would have an inherent advantage in Poker, due to a greater ability to bluff.
I first came across “Not Even Wrong” when I was working on my bachelor’s degree in Physics, and it delighted me immediately. It remains one of my favorite ripostes to this day.
I’ll admit that there are times when I’m working with some clueless business associate, and part of me hopes that they’ll be so completely ignorant that I’ll be able to break the glass on the little case in which I keep the phrase.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t girls do very well in competitive spelling bees, which, like “championship Scrabble,” are all about memorizing wordlists?
The difference seems to be the structure of the competition: in spelling bees (sort of like golf) you’re playing against “the course,” and against yourself, that is, your nerve. In Scrabble, like other games and sports where girls don’t make much of a showing against boys (or even show up, usually), you’re facing off against an opponent, defending against and beating someone.
< feminism > Women should be given extra letters to make Scrabble fair. < /feminism >
Heh. Plus the tiles are terribly heavy.
In the future, Championship Scrabble should be played with 12″ x 12″ porcelain tiles on a correspondingly-sized board. Just to rub their noses in it.
I’ve been shopping in comic book stores since forever/my dad gave me my first Conan the Barbarian comic, and never got the gatekeeper experience. Not when I played D and D. And my boobs have been “public property” since I grew them. Ah, Hell, I am just babbling.
And the World Barbie Championship would be decided by whoever makes Barbie into the best French spy for GIJoe’s attack squad against the Nazis, as tradition has always dictated.
like “championship Scrabble,” are all about memorizing wordlists?
That’s only half of Scrabble. The other half is being able to look at the whole board and rapidly solve a fairly thorny C&O problem – out of these seven letters, which subset of them intersected with the current played tiles will give me the highest score?
That kind of intuitive number juggling is where the ladies don’t even show up to compete.
I play Scrabble with the software developers here at work.
I have my degrees in the humanities and I can spell better than they; I also know more fancy words.
And they totally cream me. They’re hella good at figuring how to maximize the score for what they have, while I sit there trying to figure out what the coolest word is.
Actually, I usually come in third of four, because there’s always that one guy who draws lousy tiles nearly every turn.
while I sit there trying to figure out what the coolest word is.
You want to be playing Balderdash.
The inevitable chess one has surfaced.
oh yeah, link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/20/world-chess-championship-women-magnus-carlsen#comment-122783670
I’m breaking a five-year lurk (following David’s blog with huge delight) to respond to this, as for once I have something relevant to contribute.
My husband and I run a UK-wide general knowledge quiz for schools called, with huge originality, ‘Schools Challenge’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schools%27_Challenge, though whoever set up the page – not us – put an inauthentic apostrophe in the title). We’ve been organising it for 33 years now, and I’ve seen countless teams play, both at regional and national level. The game was modelled on University Challenge: a round of questions begins with a starter, where individuals press a buzzer to answer, and is followed by three bonus questions, where the team confer before giving the answer. This means that speed and aggression on the buzzer is vital, as is the willingness to take risks: there are no negative scores (unlike University Challenge), so it’s frequently worth interrupting a question and guessing.
Without exception, we’ve found that, although at the regional level, there are plenty of girls playing on the teams (the schools themselves can be single-sex or mixed), by the time the National Finals are held, the eight teams that make it through are overwhelmingly male.
In the Senior competition, where most team members are between 14 and 18, there are many years when we see no girls at all among the 32 participants; and where there are girls on the team, those teams almost never win. In those 33 years, there have only been a couple of exceptions to that trend, both teams from mixed schools with one exceptionally good girl on the team. In the Junior competition, where the upper age limit is 13, girls do better: a girls’ team won the National Finals back in 1987, and roughly a quarter of the competitors at the Finals are female, sometimes considerably more.
I’m no scientist, but my hypothesis is that older boys will generally have the advantage in this sort of game because of all that testosterone sloshing around. It’s also because boys on the whole don’t appear to care if they’re wrong. I’ve taught for over 40 years, and it’s noticeable that when one asks a question in class, a boy will characteristically answer with a statement and a girl with a question (‘Is it…?’).
It’s true, then, in my experience, that boys are on average more competitive than girls, and I don’t think this is simply cultural, though obviously culture may play a part. As for the people wittering on about sexism and prejudice, they’re generally immune to any actual research.
five-year lurk
[ Slides fancy cocktail over to Sue. ]
It’s best not to ask what’s in them.
Girls & boys do about equally well in spelling bees because boys take longer to develop those verbal skills required for spelling bees than girls do – girls actually have a advantage due to puberty. However, if the bees required participants to be older than 14-15 boys would probably dominate since boys verbal skills finally stop developing at around 16-17 or even later.
Also, scrabble is just different structurally to a spelling bee of course…
RE Baceseras:
Girls & boys do about equally well in spelling bees because boys take longer to develop the verbal skills required for spelling bees than girls do – girls actually have a advantage due to puberty. However, if the bees required participants to be older than 14-15 boys would probably dominate since boys verbal skills finally stop developing at around 16-17 or even later.
Also, scrabble is just different structurally to a spelling bee of course…
“…though whoever set up the page – not us – put an inauthentic apostrophe in the title).
Inauthentic? Hmm – it depends on whether you are using ‘challenge’ as a noun or a verb. If a noun, then schools takes a possessive apostrophe (the challenge of/for schools). If a verb, schools doesn’t take an apostrophe, but challenge needs an object, as ‘to challenge’ is transitive – you are left pondering ‘Schools challenge whom/what?”
Interestingly, guys may do better at Competitive Scrabble, but when it comes to nitpicking subediting pedancy like this comment, the sexes are pretty equal, in my longish experience.
Interesting comment above by Sue Sims.
Behavioral differences between males and females exist across the mammal world and certainly in primates, This is not cultural (rather, cultures mirrors biology), it reflects the differences in effective evolutionary (including reproductive) strategies.
Male ‘aggression’ has a bad rap, but really it’s based on the need to top the other guys (sometimes fighting, but more often resource accrual) because these are the ones that get to contribute to the next generation. The one with the most often has the most offspring. Female reproduction is limited by lifespan and health, excessive confrontation and combat is counter productive. Cooperation is far more useful for females. (Males cooperate too, but generally male cooperation is to dominate another group of males, think combat, think business. Throughout history most exploration was done by males.. Same drive at work). The difference between stating an answer even if wrong VS, posing a question fits right into this model.
Why are there no World Barbie Championships?
If there were, they would be dominated by gay men.
You see the same thing with Esports as well (competitive video gaming, if you don’t know the term). This is an arena where physical ability is almost totally irrelevant, the only relevant thing being twitch reflexes in some games. In many games like Hearthstone, physical ability is TOTALLY irrelevant because reflexes don’t help. A quadriplegic could be competitive. And this is an environment where it is generally NOT POSSIBLE to know the gender of a player unless they explicitly tell you.
Yet every single professional video gaming scene is utterly DOMINATED by men. 99%+, and most of the ‘women’ are transgenders (i.e still men).
Funny how that works.
Look, it doesn’t matter how plainly obvious, how logically sane, how biologically grounded, etc. etc. etc. the differences twixt men and women are. The only thing that matters, the only thing that ultimately carries the day, is that those who insist that there is absolutely no difference will scream, holler, demand, march, and generally make nusainces of themselves until they get their way. That is until the Gods of the Copybook Headings wake up.
Jay is obviously right, this is not just a human thing. Males in social species compete for dominance across the animal kingdom, to win reproductive access for their sperm to the scarcer resource – eggs. Humans are a little weird because of the extraordinary range of fields they have invented to compete in.
But it’s not like human females don’t get to play in this game. They get to play “Judge.” Not so much judge of who has won, but judge of whether the particular game is a worthwhile indication of mate-worthiness.
One of my favorite statistics from a Jordan Peterson lecture is this one. In studies where they show women pictures of men, and men pictures of women, and ask them to rate whether the person is “above average” or “below average” in sexual attractiveness, men rate 50% of women as “below average.” Good math, guys.
And women rate 85% of men as “below average.” The reason for men to compete is left naked to view. Six out of seven are you are going to be rated “NOT GOOD ENOUGH !”
It’s amazing we men can concentrate so hard on strategy, math, memorization, etc, since we spend most of our time thinking about boobs.
I will press a buzzer before I know the answer, based on whether I think I will be able to answer it by the time I have to. I get lots wrong, of course, but I get more right so I tend to accumulate points. I actually won a decent amount of money on a TV program with this strategy back in my late twenties. Yet in a paper test on the same material, I’m not particularly good.
When I try to explain to women that my strategy is the best one for winning, based on the knowledge I have, they simply cannot get their heads around pressing the buzzer with a realistic likelihood that you will get it hopelessly wrong.
Being good at something is a survival strategy as well as a sexual strategy for men. Appealing for sympathy, a survival and sexual strategy that works for women does not work for men. Hence, men succeed or fail, and women complain that it’s not fair that they don’t get the same benefits and status as the men who succeed.
It’s why men’s rights activism will never the traction feminism has. People just don’t feel sorry for men, even if they’re dying in their millions in the trenches. Meanwhile, the likes of Anita Sarkeesian get showered with pity money because people say mean things to them on the internet, and get to address the UN about the “cyber-violence” of being told they suck.
“Six out of seven are you are going to be rated “NOT GOOD ENOUGH !””
They showed pictures. If you want to make it more accurate, show women a list of professions. Then you’ll get 9 out of 10 not being good enough.
We don’t care about looks as much as you blokes do. We want STATUS.
@Lee Moore, @dicentra
“And women rate 85% of men as “below average.”
There’s a study to be done here (if not already done). There’s an Onion article, something like ‘Woman removes yet another line from her list of must-haves in men’, where the lady in question started out with a long list of things a partner must have, only to whittle it down year by year, gradually moving towards the more reasonable. Someone else – Nora Ephron maybe? – said that in the end you pretty much settle for sanity and a job. (Or ‘Attractive, Solvent, Single: pick any two’).
Anyway, I would like to see the breakdown of that 85% figure by age. If the above is true I would expect that figure to drop slowly over time as the reality cluebat keeps hitting. I don’t think it would get to 50% (just look at all the 40something cat lady articles pretending they don’t care about being single or blaming ‘intimidated’ men etc).
dicentra : They showed pictures. If you want to make it more accurate, show women a list of professions. Then you’ll get 9 out of 10 not being good enough.We don’t care about looks as much as you blokes do. We want STATUS.
I don’t think JP gave effusive details of how they did this particular trial. But you can do status with pics. (Or profession descriptions as you say.)
They do the same bunch of guys, dressed differently as markers of status. eg you have guys A to Z, and take 5 pictures of each – wearing suit to wearing hobo. Then create sample packs of say 10 pics (with no guy appearing twice in any sample, obviously.)
Then they give a sample to a gal to rate. Repeat lotsa times with different samples and different gals. Then do the math. And, unsurprisingly, you’re right. Status wins hands down.
Though gals may not yet have evolved the skills to distinguish, on sight, between a hobo and a tech billionaire. You may need to show the cardboard shelter or private island in the background 🙂
prm : in the end you pretty much settle for sanity and a job
There’s a nice exchange in an episode of Two and a Half Men, in which Alan (the pathetic, desperate, brother) tries online dating and gets a date with a woman about six inches taller than him. Along the way he admits that all the stuff he put in his profile was a lie, and he was just projecting himself as his more successful brother, Charlie. So he is surprised when the woman suggets another date – he thinks his uselessness and lying would have turned her off. She reassures him that she’s serious about a second date (roughly) as follows :
“Have you done much online dating ? You’ve got a job and a penis. You’re a winner.”
Being a psychologist, I have been testing kids for more than 10 years now (https://www.testkidsiq.com). Generally speaking, girls have higher verbal intelligence than boys. So I really don’t know why girls don’t be at the top of scrabble tournaments… Probably, they don’t consider competition to be important. Relation is more important to them.