[Strangelove424]

 

 

For male vs female: Look at the teens. Who are more likely to buy clothes and shoes vs guitars/drums or cars? I mean, before the sneaker phase, boys didn't really collect shoes - they wear them out for whatever they're for then get new ones; and before Apple's revival in 2001, girls in general didn't really care much for tech products. As for hearing loss...who is more likely playing in a garage with his buddies, the boys or the girls? Who are more likely in the crowd, and who are more likely backstage just begging to blow the band? Even when men are backstage they're fessing around with the audio equipment. Also, who are more likely to have a 50cal machine gun near their face with AK-47s all around them (or vice versa), or heavy machinery at a factory or job site? All those and more can explain why men tend to lose their hearing sooner.

 

From an evolutionary standpoint however men's hearing should be more resilient, given the initial phase was that men were the hunters, and only in more egalitarian societies did women take up a role more akin to that of a male lion (that is, you don't just watch the cubs, you protect them too, instead of having some men stay behind for that) while the men did what lionesses did (hunt, or fight wars). Sparta, the Scythians, and to a lesser extent the Onna Bushi of Japan come to mind. So under that assumption, men losing their hearing sooner is more likely due more to what happens to their ears along the way than a genetic flaw.

 

My female friends who never were in a band are self-confessed to be tone-deaf btw, and the only headphones that they could discern that were different from their Apple earbuds were my SR225 (not the HD600, not the K701, etc). It's not genetic, it's socialization - the ones who play instruments do a lot better. By contrast more of the males could at least play the guitar or piano, especially when some of them had the motivation to be the cool guy with a guitar singing around the beer table (I can't understand why bards are still popular like this, but nobody pays attention when I try to sing The Illiad as opposed to anything inspired by Romeo and Juliet).  If anything, the genetic predisposition for men hunting and fighting means a bit of bias for how well they can pick out intricacies for sound now as much as when they can pick out footsteps over the ambient noise, but of course that's more from socialization given female musicians and soldiers don't have any disadvantages there.

 

 

[ProtegeManiac]

   

What's possibly sarcastic or satirical about it? And I always thought people on 9Gag making those memes "screw*** love science" enough to make a meme that say, "YEAH! Science, b*tch!" (Or not...considering I see posts from time to time where people suggest that those in the Sound Science Forum are a bunch of crazies)

 

1. Socialization of boys and girls do vary, whether you agree or not it's a reality, and boys are traditionally more attuned to investing on anything with circuit boards. Just look at the pre-iDevice era toys - Barbie has interchangeable clothes, Megatron is technically chock-full of gizmos and turns into a freaking handgun. Of course, this is again partly a product of socialization. Of course, computers have changed all that, and it's not just girl-themed vieo games played by girls who can't build a PC or something, but they're also playing Call of Duty for example (they might not however claim to have slept with your mom, but they might still call you a "no0B f@g"). Still, just among my friends, the most popular games among the females are The Sims, Grim Fandango (and similar), while for the boys it's Civ/Total War and GTA. None of my female friends spent on a steering wheel controller either.

 

2. From any prehistorical society males are always the hunters and warriors, which you can still observe in isolated tribes. The thing is that 1) in lions the roles are reversed (and yet people keep using them for coats of arms without due recognition of this, unlike the Ancient Egyptians, whose War God was Sekhmet, a lionness, unlike medieval heraldry that predominantly uses the maned male lion) and 2) this comes from a natural predisposition for the male body construct. Again, this is related because male hearing might actually be better naturally, but what they are exposed to are what likely hastens their deterioration. For one, better hearing means the city guards might hear spies sneaking around looking for where your walls are weakest, or hearing cavalry coming from behind despite pushing forward in a line wearing a helmet. The problem there is that in both cases you have a higher tendency to get whacked on the head and that can affect your hearing. Plus the previously cited examples.

 

And then for females tendency is that their sense of smell is better. With my mother that comes out as someone who demands that everyone coming from gym class shower first before they get picked up; from an evolutionary standpoint, it has more to do with how mothers can more easily detect spoiled food to protect the children.

 

Again, though, these are not necessarily due to the physical attributes of their ear drums or nose hairs (or whatever), BUT how their brain processes inputs from their senses. That means that, properly trained as a chef or perfume maker a male will be able to smell as well (if not better) than untrained females, and when trained for combat a female can process all senses better than an untrained male.
 
3. Despite the increase of females in military service including front line combat (or at least patrol) roles as well as heavy industries, they are still predominantly male professions. This means that all you do is take a general survey of how well people of each age group can hear, chances are you will ignore these factors. If you control for military service, heavy industries jobs, and maybe musical inclination (ie if they at minimum jammed in the garage) chances are males and females isolated into yes and no groups to these categories will return more similar data.

 

[bigshot]

OK. You get an A on your paper.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I did not realize that having an actual discussion of the possible flaws in how the original thesis of the discussion was formulated as well as the going farther back in the roots of the subject matter and going through its wider application warranted sarcasm.

 

[Claritas]

Bigshot, that's just disrespectful.

 

[Redcarmoose]

Yep, hearing is the second thing to go.......

 

[Strangelove424]

 

What's possibly sarcastic or satirical about it? 

 
The "begging to blow people backstage" and "50 cals and AK-47s in their face" statements particularly stood out. Couldn't tell if you were doing a Monty Python-covers-gender-differences skit or not.  
 

 

considering I see posts from time to time where people suggest that those in the Sound Science Forum are a bunch of crazies

I cannot begin to express how happy that makes me feel. A warm sense of contentment just enveloped my soul like the serene fog of the Pacific blankets San Francisco harbor in its coddling warmth. 
 
 

Yep, hearing is the second thing to go.......

lol

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  The "begging to blow people backstage" and "50 cals and AK-47s in their face" statements particularly stood out. Couldn't tell if you were doing a Monty Python-covers-gender-differences skit or not. 

 

Well there are editing options above the text box, you could have highlighted them so I could have responded more precisely (but then you'd have denied bigshot a shot at being sarcastic). In any case:

 

1. Your first quote is too selective. I said "more likely...begging to blow people backstage." MORE LIKELY, because I haven't heard of female performers with men just hanging out backstage for her entertainment. Supposedly, every tale of Madonna having men backstage is just propaganda and exaggeration (hey papa, don't preach!), but hey, Nikki Six and Tommy Lee and many others never denied having GROUPIES - the entire definition and descriptions are right there. Given that we're comparing this to men, of which as far as I know the percentage of the population of all males who are groupies being ZERO, even a 0.00001% of the female population being groupies counts as "more likely," since 0<0.00001.

 

2. As for "more likely to have a 50cal machine gun near their face with AK-47s all around them (or vice versa)" (and that's the more accurate quote, btw), well...I have a few graphic examples. And again, while this may seem like an isolated case, the fact that few men actually do this doesn't necessarily debunk the more likely since there are even fewer females who do the same. As for the rest who make up the data, like I said, heavy machinery, concerts, etc.

 

Whaddaya know...a "machine gun near their face(s) with AK-47s all around them(offscreen)!"

 

Two more salvos!

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand he's deaf.

 
More accurately, here's a couple of 50cals near male faces.

 
Low frame rate but you can still see that even Eric Bana had a "50cal machine gun near his face with AK-47s all around him." Unlike a certain Marine who couldn't tell a tranny from a woman, I can tell all of these people are male (well, OK, so they're not in drag, and I'm not drunk).

 
LOL

 

[castleofargh]

I guess the conclusion is that there is no good sound system in the kitchen.
 
what you're talking about is a lot like the usual debates we have around here in fact. you talk about strange exceptions from anecdotes as if they were the usual behavior, and then construct your point on the fact that we can't totally disprove your example. browse the science section, that's it everywhere.
 
the rational and scientific approach should be to see how many times something happens compared to how many times it doesn't and see if there is a statistical significance that allows us to derive some kind of rule from it. stuff like "no a vaccine doesn't kill your child". or "no having more guns doesn't decrease your chances of getting killed". or "no flying in a plane isn't dangerous". it's fairly easy to find one or 2 situations where a kid got sick after a vaccine shot, just as it's easy to find situations where a guy saved himself thanks to his gun. and we all know about a plane crashing somewhere.
but looking at it at a statistical level, not getting vaccinated and having a gun are 2 very good ways to die sooner. and driving a car gets you killed a lot faster than getting on a plane.
examples like that are everywhere, sharks killing people when more people are killed by even cows than shark. all your explanations to me are at that level. I can understand where it comes from, but it's just plain false.
 
vision is our dominating sense, not smell for girls and hearing for males as derived from your weird darwinian hypothesis.
simply by taking how many people hunt or go to war and how many don't, we can prove that you example about loud guns is anecdotal at best in regard to human population.
with artists having sex, well you could have a point. they do have sex! a little problem about that, non artists people, I think, also happen to have sex. and I believe I can safely venture that the number of men and women involved are about the same ^_^.
 
still all those strange ideas I'm usually expecting to talk about at a pub after my third beer, made me wonder how much **** can affect the the signature of sound (torso response from speakers etc)?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

The thing is that that was exactly what the thread started off as. Just look at the title of the thread - did any of those come with a citation for specific figures? No, they were "anecdotes as if they were the usual behavior." Nobody took exact figures at CanJam as to how many were males and how many were females, and yet it is commonly accepted that audiophiles tend to be male, hence my use of more likely, which means the same thing. 

 

As for the Darwinian evolutionary theories, again if what people find to be negative about it is that they think it is misogynist, note that I did put disclaimers that it is more likely due to socialization and training more than actual physical differences (at least as far as ears and noses go), and of course you can take as an anecdote that a female soldier shoots better on a real gun than a male who shoots better with a mouse (which is essentially my final example for that in the first post that people are either taking too seriously or dismissing too casually).

 

[bigshot]

Sorry. Not to be rude, but if you talk about science and hearing and how that relates to music, I'm in and interested. If you go off on anthropological and sociological tangents, I'm going to have a hard time keeping from rolling my eyes. Quite frankly, if I sit down on the couch with a beer to listen to Bohemian Rhapsody, I can pretty much guarantee you that cave men hunting saber toothed tigers have absolutely nothing to do with it.

 

[castleofargh]

politically correct and truth are 2 different things. if you offended someone, he would have reported you to all mighty administrators. I really don't care for that at all.
I like women touching me, I don't like men touching me, that's pretty much the extent of my opinion on women vs men in today's society. ^_^
 
about the title, well youngsters do tend to have better hearing. and women, I think I've read that somewhere, seemed to have something good for them too about sound. but I don't remember what(I think that what women have going for them is that the die later, not a bad deal). so the topic's title looks like a good question, even if it's certainly not going to change the world.
I'm also not opposed to hypothesis, but you can't make generalities based on how you regard peculiar behaviors that aren't representative of men or women of the world. not all men are at war, not all women are good mothers with good smell and a care for body hygiene or waiting for some famous artist to grab them.
your opinion of those specific demographics may very well be accurate in some ways. any soldier/hunter does have hearing problems you're right about that. but not all countries force people to be soldiers, not all men go hunting. so I don't think it's an ok way to explain generalities.

 

[wiinippongamer]

About men losing their hearing first, it's all circumstancial BS evidence.
 
On the other thing, women have no hobbies.

 

[RRod]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3564588/table/T1/
http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/Pages/charts.aspx

 

[headdict]

  I guess the conclusion is that there is no good sound system in the kitchen.

Either that or no female.