Eh, I have ridiculed your ideas before, so I'm not going to give you a hard time about it. You cited some figures instead of slinging mud, which elevates your contribution above much of this dialog. The fact that the best citation for the theory is on Urban Dictionary doesn't mean that it's wrong, but it does make me think that it is either nonsense or there is a very unusual set of circumstances in which an important truth is hidden behind widespread delusion. There are controversial theories on Wikipedia; the bar for inclusion is pretty low. There is a deleted article with some arguments about suitability for inclusion on the Talk page. The fallacy is described as "judging groups primarily by the success or failure at those at the top rungs." Now that I read it, that doesn't seem like nonsense. Someone might argue that some petroleum-rich country is doing well because the GDP per capita is high, ignoring that most people are poor and the wealth is concentrated in the royal family. Applying this to men in the United States, we could rightly argue that it's a mistake to conclude that all men are doing well simply because men in leadership positions are doing well. The fallacy is to suppose that this tells us anything about how women are doing compared to men. Grendel makes some other interesting points about biological differences, and has elsewhere given me interesting material to think about. But the handpicked quotes from pre-1902, vague allusions to antique laws, and unsubstantiated assertions like "If 9 out of 10 nurses are women, it's not because of anti-male biases" do not deserve better than ridicule. No, nor to the related Caloric reflex test: "squirting ice cold water into the left ear," which can "provide temporary pain relief from phantom limb pains in amputees." Facts are so much more interesting than arguments!I used ridicule ... That's not the right response
Have you heard of anogsognosia?
You should further investigate the source material. The quote in question is from a piece written by Alison Beard of the Harvard Business review (even though there are two citations, the other just points to the original), where she is describing how a person from the MRA group described the "apex fallacy" to her. It's a circular way to try to legitimize that which isn't legitimate. It is true that women have done remarkably well in progressing toward parity in mid-level management positions in recent years. So there's a legit and interesting question about why they don't have many positions of real power. I'm sure there are a variety of factors that contribute, but bias is definitely one of them. Using rhetorical obfuscations to inhibit what should be a very important debate about why corporate America and government are structured the way they are does us all a giant disservice. It's very difficult to fix problems we don't understand.There is a deleted article with some arguments about suitability for inclusion on the Talk page. The fallacy is described as "judging groups primarily by the success or failure at those at the top rungs." Now that I read it, that doesn't seem like nonsense.
The background is interesting, but to me it is irrelevant to answering the question "Is the Apex Fallacy a meaningful concept that could be useful in some cases?" I think it is a fair answer to someone who says "Men are doing great, because men hold most positions of power." I don't see how it says anything about men compared to women. If you learned that the article was in error, and the concept was actually introduced by some respectable source, would that change your opinion of it? I do believe that we can make some heuristic judgments about how worthwhile it will probably be to look into what appears to be a crackpot theory by seeing where it came from and who is interested in propagating it. We just have to be careful, because heuristic judgements can be unreliable. It is an interesting subject. Why do we have women's sports? Why is there a Women's World Chess Championship? Wouldn't it be strange to have race-segregated sports, on the basis of cultural bias and discrimination preventing different races from competing on equal footing?You should further investigate the source material.
That's a completely irrelevant hypothetical, because the "apex fallacy" (which I shall continue to put in quotes due to the fact that it's not an actual fallacy) is a rhetorical argument set against data driven conclusions. It is literal nonsense. I'm racking my brain, and the only good analogy I can come up with is if I said, "Man Texas is hot." And you replied, "NO, that's the 'apex fallacy'. Only its really hot days are hot, and sometimes it's hotter in Minnesota." If you can find a better one, I'd like to hear it. Or, if there were some actual scholarship on the matter, then yes, I would take it a lot more seriously, even if I disagreed I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Fortunately, we don't have to resort to that here. I'm not sure I get the sports analogy, unless we're relating one's business and administrative acumen to their physicality. On the subject of chess, it might just be a numbers game. That's what Yasser Seirawan suggests in this book, although it is speculation. He estimates the numbers of males and females who play chess and based on the huge number of men compared to women who play, estimates that the odds are against women for having a world class player (if we assume random chance). I'm not going to defend or rebuke that claim, because I have no idea; just putting it out there, because it's the only thing I've ever read about it. The same can't be said of women in the business world, because they occupy a proportionate number of low and middle jobs, but lack representation at the top.If you learned that the article was in error, and the concept was actually introduced by some respectable source, would that change your opinion of it?
I gave an example similar to this: "Man, it must be nice to live in Dubai! People are so rich they abandon luxury cars all over the place!" "You dunce, that's the apex fallacy. Lots of people in Dubai are poor immigrant laborers working in awful conditions." It's a kind of fallacy of composition, and it's debatable if it happens often enough that we need a special name for it. With the sports question, I am wondering about male/female differences generally. It seems obvious that men have natural advantages in power lifting, but it is much harder to tell if they have natural advantages at power lunches. Clearly women face social obstacles unrelated to their natural ability in the workplace. It's very hard to tease these factors apart. It's possible that fewer women are recognized for chess skill, and are less encouraged to perform, and discouraged by tradition. I don't know if that is enough to explain male dominance in chess. It is cool that the strongest female player never competed for the Women's World Championship: "I always say that women should have the self-confidence that they are as good as male players, but only if they are willing to work and take it seriously as much as male players." Perhaps we will see greater participation by women. I like the awkward dialog in Cryptonomicon, starting where the word "geek" appears. The highlight: "Whereas women can’t?" "I suppose women can. They rarely seem to want to. What I’m characterizing here, as the female approach, is essentially saner and healthier." And here is an abandoned Ferrari Enzo."If there is any generalization at all that you can draw about how men think versus how women think, I believe it is that men can narrow themselves down to this incredibly narrow laser-beam focus on one tiny little subject and think about nothing else."
I'll just leave this here. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/02/men-women-brains-wired-differentlyScientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains.