Oh poo! Sorry about the novel! Just sort of grew without my noticing!
@Boogs, I find your thoughts on "brain gender" interesting. I have heard these talking points discussed before. However, as some have pointed out, when discussing gender differences, as we know, there appears to be a continuum from say, a very feminine, petite, soft-spoken, agreeable, low aggression, physically weak female with low testosterone at one extreme, and the very masculine, thickly muscled, thickly boned, physically strong, disagreeable, dominant behavior, high testosterone male. Certainly, simply observing many people in our environment, there is a lot of cross-over, and supports this idea that for the majority of the population, this idea of "a female brain and a male brain" becomes a bit muddled and supports your argument. No doubt, there are masculine females and feminine males. Furthermore, within the mean of the curves, there may be some truth to nurture being an important influencer of behaviors. However, the differences are at the extremes of the bell curve that 10% or so at either end, not the middle. So, to both arguments, nurture vs nature and male vs female brain, it's a bit of partial truths going on and it's about context and perspective. Both arguments can be correct or wrong depending upon the context and perspective.
Disclaimer, anything I put forward as 'my idea' is really just my best guess on what I've carefully taken in on the subject. cross ref'ed against prior learning (I've always dabbled and worked in areas of science, and very much a 'jack of all trades', so I pattern match across a fair spread of subjects fairly well, but am not a big expert on many topics, but a v. good appreciation of how things are working). I do come up with 'revelations' I don't believe I've previously read or heard, but worked out myself (but then, in the end who knows for sure?). But all that said, I'm rarely badly mislead in the areas I feel confident to discuss, but I try to stick to questions in the areas I'm not (i.e. I don't BS deliberately if I can at all help it).
So, what you've said above, seems to me like your talking spectrums, yes? Maybe that's because it's how I see much of this sort of thing. Spectrums seem inherent in so many areas of human behaviour and activity, in many ways, not just neural cognition. It's the (normal?) human condition to categorise things, because this helps to make for faster more consistent reactions to life and death situations. And when that sabre tooth is sniffing the air, and you're hiding behind that tree, trying not to sneeze, you are going to have to make a damn important decision very soon, and very fast, if you're going to survive.
So you don't want to be thinking about whether this particular tiger has a certain colouring, or if it's sabre teeth are 4 inches or 5 inches long (etc, blah blah). You want to have as few things to consider as possible, dynamics that is, the things that are constantly changing within that particular situation, the rest can be pre-processed. So (and there are other reasons, but this one's easy to handle as an example) by categorising as much as possible, abstractions of the important data will help to make a fast and hopefully correct decision, and often, speed and decisiveness can be the the key to surviving, even before considering the best actual tactic (a brilliant tactic, committed too late, is no help).
Anyway, long description, but hopefully explains where I'm coming from? In essence categorisation is crucial to our operating efficiently, but is also a disadvantage in some areas of thought. We are almost unable to avoid categorisation. So much of our brain/mind uses this, even down to how our memories of the world and it's components are stored. We don't have a separate memory for every car we know of, we have a memory of a car object, that has certain attributes, but is generally pretty abstract. It acts as the base class of a car, but also requires extra classes to be included. So we have things like make and model and type of engine and type of vehicle and and and...
But we use the same underlying definition of a generic car, for all the more specific car memories, the particular actual objects themselves. This saves huge amounts of memory and processing compared to trying to store and access every car we know in it's entirety. This is a bit of a crude example, but I hope it gives an idea of what I mean.
But, what happens when our generic model is wrong? More specifically, what if it turns out there are maybe a dozen generic cars (at that level) because in our single generic memory/definition some component(s) of it, is actually different in up to a dozen different ways. So any decision based on that original model, that could be effected by those 'hidden' differences, could very well produce an irrational answer, that to the thinker, is as rational as they could hope for.
Consequently, categories are great for survival at a base level, but useless, in fact worse, negative when it comes to conscious cognition. And the brain is evolved not to care too much, if it ain't broke, don't fix it - what a shame we can't tell when it
is broke!
So I finally get to my point (sheesh!), which is that we are very poorly equipped to make rational decisions without an artificial methodology to overcome our biases such as categorisation. To be presented with such a humongous collection of multiple spectrums, most overlapping and interfering with each other, using numerous rule sets, most of which we can't hold in our minds (unless especially skilled at something like that, which is rare) in any practical and productive fashion.
In other words (finally! he's gets to it!) how the holy heck can we possibly hope to come to solid conclusions about such a massively complex topic, in all our human frailties of thinking, life is a full spectrum issue, so many, to much to count, it's easy and tempting to make conclusions that on the face of it seem reasonable, but then that's also been how much misinformation has been so difficult to get past, even in our so-called advanced society (ha!).
Doubt everything. And when someone says they know something, doubt them even more! If they are correct, they should have the evidence (not their opinion) to back that up, along with the logical progression from evidence to conclusion. If they can't, it doesn't mean their wrong, but to not examine and investigate is tantamount to believing fairy stories at random.
Specifically, regarding autism, Dr. Baron-Cohen's initial theory of autism being an example of the "extreme male brain" has been disproven with larger sample sizes. In fact, as you probably know, with larger sample sizes, it was shown that ASD males tend to be LESS masculine and ASD females tend to be MORE masculine in terms of behavior and hormone levels than neurotypical controls, and does support the observation that gender dysphoria, LGTBQ+ individuals are disproportionately represented within the ASD community. Having said that, personally, I would fit into that "extreme male brain" category. I am at the far end of the bell curve. My wife is not a "girly-girl", but there is a huge difference between my personality, my build and physical strength, how I carry myself, the way I think, and hers.
Context and perspective. I agree that the literature regarding this has not been sufficiently studied with large enough sample sizes, or even sample sizes comparing the extremes of the bell curves. I am sure, as time goes on, and more information becomes available, we will be able to discuss these topics with more accuracy.
Take care
But it's still interesting stuff to talk about, I just just dislike positivity of an unquestioning nature, it actually intrudes in an unpleasant way, not exactly painful, but it's one of those cracks in reality that I can't ignore. And due to my personality and life, I can only consider a scientific approach as valid, as it's the only one that's ever worked for me.
