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From: jeff@rtech.UUCP (Jeff Lichtman)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: PMS and incompetence
Message-ID: <580@rtech.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 30-Jul-85 02:53:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: rtech.580
Posted: Tue Jul 30 02:53:44 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Aug-85 05:35:34 EDT
References: <993@ubc-vision.CDN> <202@ihlpl.UUCP>
Organization: Relational Technology, Alameda CA
Lines: 55

> 
> ... if we assume that men and women both have the same emotional
> baggage and weirdness, then are we saying that this is without
> considering potential PMS problems (in which case women would have
> *more* emotional strangness), or are we saying that things are
> equal *with* PMS.
> 
> If things are equal with PMS, then just consider what great leaders
> women would make *after* menopause.  If things are equal without
> taking PMS into consideration, think what lousy leaders women would make
> *before* menopause.
> 
> Which is it?
> 
> Or should PMS not be an issue and, if this is the case, why?
>
> Ross M. Greenberg  @ Time Inc, New York 

Here we go again...

We don't know how many women have PMS.  We don't know how much it affects each
of them.  We don't know whether some men also have biological cycles.  We don't
know whether, on the average, women are more emotionally stable than men or
vice versa; I doubt that emotional stability can even be defined well enough
to be measured.  We don't know how much of behavior is biologically determined
and how much of it is learned.

In addition, common sense tells us that there is tremendous variation among
individuals within their gender, race, national origin, etc.  That is, even
if we knew all the statistics on behavior as absolute fact, it would still
not tell us much about individuals; the standard deviation is too great.

Also, it is possible to judge people as individuals without any reliance on
statistics.  If you want to learn about a person, you can talk to that person,
or watch how he or she behaves in various situations.  Even is you have a
limited amount of time to observe the person, or are limited in what you can
ask (as in a job interview), you can still learn a lot about a person in a
short amount of time.  Some people are better at this than others.  Still, I
maintain that this ability is a fundamental part of being a human being.

What this adds up to is that statistics are a lousy way of judging individuals
because:

	- We don't know what the statistics are.

	- Even if we did know, individual variance is so great that the
	  statistics wouldn't be worth much for single persons.

	- Other, better methods exist for judging individuals.
-- 
Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
aka Swazoo Koolak

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