S, E, or B?

Judith Warner noted in her NY Times blog about "an old article in The Guardian by Simon Baron-Cohen on male/female brain differences...." She outlines his “empathizing-systemizing theory” of brain sex differences. The idea is that there are three common “types” of brains:

Type	Meaning
Type S brain	Strongest at understanding and building systems, aka “systemizing”
Type E brain	Stronger in empathy than systemizing.
Type B brain	People with "balanced brains" - those who are strong at both empathizing and systemizing.

Warner also quotes Baron-Cohen:

A key feature of this theory is that your sex cannot tell you which type of brain you have. [...] The central claim of this new theory is only that on average, more males than females have a brain of Type S, and more females than males have a brain of Type E.

Oh, and the Guardian article even has quizzes on "Systemizing Quotient" and "The Empathy Quotient". Warner (and Baron-Cohen) theorize that autism and Asperger's are extreme forms of a "Type S" brain, and is at least partially genetic.

Myself, I enjoyed the quizzes...tho I did have to take them in IE (?). ( actual scores & descriptions )

Based on their scale, this means my brain is slightly on the Type S side.

from freewill astrology

Happy Valentine Daze, Taurus! After extensive meditation about what advice would be most useful for your love life in 2006, I rejected this observation by The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." Do not, under any circumstances, make those your words to live by. Instead, consider the following counsel from Norman Mailer: "Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Yeah. Right Rob. You get the Groening image in my head why?