[ExI] (no subject)

[Keith Henson]

spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Keith, regarding women's marksmanship, in 2016 the first Olympic gold was awarded to Ginny Thrasher, a West Virginian and distant cousin to me.  When you commented about marksmanship being largely a talent rather than a skill honed over years of practice, I was reminded that Ginny had only taken up the sport about a year before.

Not surprised.

> Your comment about marksmanship being as much an innate talent as an acquired skill has the ring of truth.  Supporting detail available.

You gave an example.  It would be very simple to test.  Measure how
much people shake, then see how they do with marksmanship.  The
military might be interested in doing this.  They might impose a
cutoff where people with more than a certain amount of shaking are
diverted from wasting ammunition.

> Think about this: every sport has men's and women's divisions, even stuff you would not think would need them, such as chess.  But top level chess is dominated by men.  Currently there are no women in the among the highest ranking players.  I don't know why: perhaps evolutionary psychology could offer insight.

I doubt EP is the right tool to explain chess players.  People at the
top of chess, math, and intelligence are way out on the tail of the
distribution.  The center of the distribution is known to be rather
similar for both sexes, but the distribution is known to be wider for
males.  When you get out 4-6 SD from the center, the wider
distribution makes a huge difference.  Males suffer from this as well,
there are more really low IQ males compared to females.

One reason proposed is just what determines sex.  Males have only one
X, females two of them, even though one of them is randomly surprised
(see Barr bodies).  So the genes that build body and brain come from
one copy in males and two in females.  This gives females a more
average genome and not an exceptionably good or bad one.  While this
seems reasonable, I don't know that anyone has proved it.

> If one speculates that every sport is dominated by men, there is one puzzling exception: marksmanship.  I know the debate drones on to this day, but I also know that marksmanship competitions have been mixed gender in the past, including at the Olympics.  If there is a single sport that men have the lowest inherent advantage, it would be that one.

If there is anything to the one X vs two X theory, then perhaps the
genes for low shake don't reside on the X.

> I have some fun details on that last comment if you want them.

Sure.

> I speculate that in the foreseeable, women will dominate the sport in the USA, because of Title IX.  Reasoning: the insurance costs of collegiate sports is going up.  Title IX requires colleges to offer scholarships to men and women, regardless of the fact that more spectators pay more money to see men's sports.

Not now of course.

> If insurance becomes the dominant cost, it emphasizes the economic viability of the lower risk sports.  Marksmanship is the second-safest collegiate sport, behind chess.

I suppose this is the case, but calling chess a sport pours sand in my
mental gears.

> Those are two sports where you can't hurt yourself.  So... the insurance is cheap.  It doesn't cost much to do either sport, so both are attractive as ways to spend Title IX dollars.  This would bring more women into competitive shooting, allowing us to discover inherent talent in the sport, eventually resulting in women dominating even the mixed-gender competitions.

Possible, but this is convoluted reasoning and I doubt it.

Keith