The Tolling of the Bell Curve

There are some marvellously intelligent sinners and some plodding, immensly dullard saints. They have stepped off the dimensions shown.

Hormones are the one thing that the women “leaders” and “feminists” tend to ignore, right down to their PMS’s.

A woman, can inherited say, the genetic genuis of her “genius” father, but, even at a young age…her hormones make her much more prone to be the nurturer, therefore less likely to develop her potential.

And to be a success at anything, whether saint or sinner, requires the attributes of a risk-taker….not something most women are inclined to be, or encouraged.

Behind every successful woman, you will usually find a father who encouraged the heck out of her.

What a woman lacks in testosterone (you guys are lucky in that department) sometimes can be made up for in education. But not many success extremes in the Bell Curve.

Which was an excellent book.

I often wondered why Marilyn vos Savant, the woman who scored higher than any MAN or woman on the IQ test…why she became a writer…instead of an inventor, or scientist. Was it because of her estrogen?

Was it because it has been shown that woman’s brains are wired more for language and men’s for 3-D?

Is it simply mother nature?

I wonder if she would agree that it was because of her hormones?
Most likely, yes. (of course, I’m just guessing)

Anyway, very informative.

Camille Paglia says there is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper. But there was Jane Toppan, a nurse in New England during the last two decades of the 19th century, who poisoned to death at least 30 of her patients and possibly many more. (Who’s the bigger monster — the Ripper or Jane Toppan? We just don’t hear as much about Jane as we do Jack.)

And there have been a number of female serial killers in the US (before Aileen Wuornos) who committed terrible crimes, like Belle Guinness, in the early 20th century, who killed 40 men and 4 children. Or MaryBeth Tinning who murdered eight of her nine children (infant to five years old) over a period of 14 years. Or Dorothea Puente who murdered elderly people, then buried their bodies in her yard and stole their Social Security checks. And Velma Barfield who poisoned five innocent people before she was executed in North Carolina.

One of the more grim female serial killers was a woman in Hungary during the 15th century — Countess Elisabeth Bathory who bled to death 610 peasant girls whom she abducted and kept in her castle so that she could drink and bathe in their blood for the purpose of youth rejuvenation.

The point is that women are very capable of committing (or deliberately participating) in horrible crimes. We as a society work much harder to find excuses for murderous women than for murderous men.

Joyanna:

I fully agree with your assessment. I believe that it is Mother Nature, aka evolutionary natural selection, that results in woman’s brains are wired more for language and men’s for 3-D.

Also, the question of hormonal influences is unquestionable. I had the opportunity to observe a NIH study of precocious puberty in the late seventies in which my eldest daughter was involved. She had the medical diagnosis of McCune-Albright syndrome that is associated with elevated FSH levels resulting in very high estrogen at a very early age.

One observation of boys and girls with excessive androgens and estrogens would convince anyone of the powerful hormonal effects. Little question that the males were abnormally aggressive and girls abnormally concerned with appearance.

The several Albright syndromes are most interesting as they are characterized as neuro-endocrine disorders associated with unilateral bone lesions. They are generally a developmental disorder and prove relatively benign in adult life.

I too thought Paglia’s ‘equivalence’ a bit cock-eyed. The opposite of a Mozart is not a serial killer but an imbecile, for lack of a better term. Most serial killers have to be bright enough to get away with their crimes for a long enough period of time to ‘ascend’ to the “serial” status. Stupid criminals tend to get caught and put in prison before they have time to do such damage.

> I often wonder why it is that big media, and particularly female writers and
> women’s magazines, consider mostly the right end of the men’s line, but
> concentrate almost exclusively on the left end of the women’s line.

Simple: because women tend to focus their attention on the upper 10% of males, the rest being largely invisible. (Also, I should note that by convention right and left should be reversed in the graph shown, with IQ increasing to the right, not the left.)

> A woman, can inherited say, the genetic genuis of her “genius” father… (Joyanna)

It’s widely supposed that IQ or some other marker of intelligence is a heritable trait, but this is only partly true. IQ tends to revert to the group mean, but has a high variance. So, to make the math simple, a 140/140 IQ couple are likely to have 120 IQ kids (to the usual disappointment of the parents), but some can be just average or even lower and some can be higher. Conversely, geniuses can arise from perfectly average parents, though the odds are long.

And, of course, “perspective is worth 50 IQ points.” (Alan Kay, Apple Computers)

Actually I read that book. And she seemed to be stating more along the lines that great works of art come from very tortured souls.

And that because of their “protected” status throughout much of history women just didn’t have the kind of drive of making great works of art as an “escape” from their misery. Largely women have been spared anquish in most of their lives (as much as is possible in a free world) at least when compared to men.

Women historically have been LESS AFFECTED by poverty, famine, war, and possibly even disease–when compared to men at least.

Obviously there are female serial killers, but they do their killing in secret (as opposed to the male serial killers (like the zodiac) who play cat-and-mouse games with law enforcement). Also, in Jeffrey Dahlmer fashion male serial killers seem to have more of a ghoulish aspect of devouring, deflouring, invading, riping apart or generally reducing their victims to body-parts in some way.

I read about a female serial killer who worked in a veterans hospital who used epinephrine to kill various veterans. I think she went to trial for a handful, but they suspect she killed as much as 40+ which would make her the most successful serial killer of the modern era.

Even though Dead is Dead, I think there’s a difference between an injection and what Jeffrey Dahlmer did. I think it was more this kind of anquish that a large segment of men must go through in life to which Paglia was speaking.

In addition to the ghoul aspect, male serial killers are much more common.

I see what you mean. Thanks for adding that dimension to what Paglia said, jackal1994. I’d totally forgotten about that theory of what’s behind creative genius. It may help explain some examples from art and literature, but almost certainly not in the sciences for the most part.

The Bell Curve revisited.

I am eccentric; you are stupid; she is a lunatic. ( not you Joy. )

I am imaginative; you are wierd; she is deranged.

I am intelligent; you are a waste; she is dangerous.

“In addition to the ghoul aspect, male serial killers are much more common.” True, as are male Nobel laureates. Although, Elisabeth Bathory was pretty ghoulish, drinking and bathing in her victims’ blood. Don’t put it past women to do nasty things — like murdering a late term pregnant woman and then cutting the fetus out of her womb, and taking it home to present to hubby as their own.

Interestingly, Patricia Pearson (author of “When She Was bad – Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence”) states, I believe, that white women are 100 times more likely to be serial killers than Hispanic men, Asian men or black men. If that’s true, I’m wondering what mix of culture and genetics comes into play.