Why It's Irrational to Believe the "Greater Male Variability" Theory for Genius

A simple experiment definitively disproved this theory decades ago. Why do people keep defending it?

Laszlo Polgar and his daughters

Every few years, articles emerge arguing that the relative lack of high level female chess players, International Math Olympiad winners, or Putnam Exam winners is a result of “greater male variability” when it comes to intelligence.

These articles claim that high-level ability in those domains is a result of an innate quality of “genius” which, they argue, men are far more likely to have than women. Implicit in these articles are a number of assumptions about the nature of intelligence - that it is largely fixed and “biological” in nature, and that differing social expectations for men and women do not meaningfully impact the distribution of men and women at the “top levels” of intelligence.

I’m going to argue here that the “Greater Male Variability”, or GMV, theory has been firmly refuted. To understand this, and to prime the reader’s intuitions, I’m first going to ask them to consider the following thought experiment.

Imagine an engineer comes to you in great excitement. He tells you that he has a technique for hacking the results of the Powerball lottery. He clearly explains his methodology, which is plausible and violates no physical laws. He buys a couple tickets and - BAM! - he wins the Powerball.

What is more reasonable - to think that the engineer’s methodology worked for hacking the Powerball, or to think that his techniques didn’t work (because nobody had ever hacked the Powerball before), and the engineer simply got very lucky, winning the 1/195,0000,0000 lottery in a fortunate coincidence?

I think it’s irrational to think that the engineer simply got very, very lucky and won the Powerball by chance. After all, the engineer’s design didn’t violate the laws of physics. There’s no reason to think it wouldn’t work except the fact nobody had ever successfully hacked the Powerball before. And that’s not a sufficiently good reason for thinking the design couldn’t work.

Yet this irrational position is the exact position defenders of the “Greater Male Variability” hypothesis for genius are forced to take. That’s because an equivalent experiment, intended to show that genius was socially produced rather than innate, has already been done.

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In 1965, a psychology student named Laszlo Polgar began investigating the nature of “genius”. After studying the biographies of hundreds of geniuses in fields like physics, mathematics, and music, Polgar came to the conclusion that “genius” was not a product of innate, biological features, but a product of education and training, in particular systematic and careful education from an early age. An important corollary of his theories was that genius was not sex-dependent; girls could be brought up to be geniuses as well as boys.

Having developed his theory, Polgar decided to test his “genius-creation” process out on his children. He chose chess as his area of specialization for his daughters. His results were as follows:

Susan Polgar, the eldest, became the first woman in history to achieve the “Grandmaster” ranking through the traditional “masculine” way, through tournament norms.

Zofia Polgar, the middle child, achieved one of the greatest chess performances in history and took second at the “Boys” World U18 Chess Championships.

Judit Polgar, the youngest daughter, had the most spectacular success. She became the youngest GM ever, male or female, at the time, and is the only woman in history to break into the top 10 chessplayer rankings. (Judit is famous for refusing to play in women’s only tournaments.)

The question then is how supporters of the “greater male variability” hypothesis can explain Laszlo Polgar’s success. Since they believe chess genius is innate, fixed, and biological, and since they agree the results of the Polgar sisters are unambiguous (nobody thinks it’s unclear whether Judit was a top 10 player) the only explanation they can offer is that Laszlo Polgar just so happened to have daughters with the requisite genes and/or prenatal hormones to be able to compete with the best men.

Think of how absolutely improbable this is, under their theory. Supporters of the GMV hypothesis believe that the natural ability to be a top 10 chessplayer is extremely rare even among men. Among women, it’s supposedly much more rare. Out of 4 billion women in the world, only a handful - say 20, and that’s being generous - would be presumed to have this sort of aptitude.

If this theory is right, Laszlo Polgar is like the engineer in the previous thought experiment, and supporters of GMV are like the skeptics who think the engineer just won by chance. If 20 out of 4 billion women are presumed to have the “natural” aptitude to be top 10 chessplayers, and these women are assumed to be randomly distributed, Laszlo Polgar had about a 1/200,000,000 chance of having a daughter who could make the top 10 - a similar probability to winning the Powerball after buying a couple tickets. Yet he had one. What is the most rational thing to believe here - that Polgar just got unbelievably lucky, or that Polgar’s theories for the creation of genius are actually correct? I argue that it’s irrational to believe the former, just as it’s irrational to disbelieve the engineer in the original case. The Polgar experiment is dispositive.

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When I’ve pointed out this to supporters of the GMV, they’ve made a few counterarguments. None of them work.

Some supporters of the GMV argue that Judit Polgar’s success can be dismissed as a “fluke”. If there were some question about whether Judit Polgar really was a top 10 player, this might have weight. But there is no ambiguity about that fact. It can’t be dismissed as a measurement error. Supporters of GMV still need to explain what happened in this situation.

Some supporters of the GMV argue that Polgar’s experiment needs to be replicated before they will believe his theories are right. It’s unclear why this would be necessary. Under GMV, Laszlo Polgar had a ~1/200,000,000 of having the success he did. A replication would have had a ~1/40,000,000,000,000,000 chance of happening “by chance” under GMV theory. Are supporters of GMV saying that it’s reasonable to think a 1/200,000,000 event occurred, but not a 1/40,000,000,000,000,000 series of events? Why would it be unreasonable to believe in the latter happening by chance but not the former when both probabilities are so small? The line here appears completely arbitrary.

Finally, some GMV proponents have argued that since Laszlo Polgar was likely highly intelligent, his daughters were likely born with “high intelligence genes” as well, and the combination of natural intelligence with specialized socialization is responsible for their '“male typical” success. But this is an admission they have lost. There are no doubt millions of people of similar intelligence to Laszlo Polgar, and there is no reason to think their daughters couldn’t also succeed in the way Judit Polgar did, if only those daughters received similar support and training. In other words, it’s not XY chromosomes, testosterone levels, “evolved brain modules”, or any of the other popularly cited male biological features that create a preponderance of male “geniuses”; it’s simply social factors and a lack of a suitable environment to foster female genius.

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I will conclude this by noting that in 2016, forecaster Sam Wang claimed he had a model that gave Donald Trump a 1% chance to win the election. When Trump won the election, Sam Wang did not claim that his forecasting theory was actually perfect and that we are simply living in the 1% case. Rather, Sam Wang investigated his model and admitted to numerous erroneous assumptions.

Supporters of the GMV theory for male genius need to do the same. Their model failed in a far more spectacular way than Sam Wang’s did, for they believe Laszlo Polgar had much less than a 1% chance of success - they think he had something like a 0.0000005% chance of producing a “Top 10” chessplayer daughter. It is, at this point, simply irrational to continue to hold that the lack of female high-level chess players is a consequence of girls’ natural inferiority at the highest levels of play.

In order to understand the relative dearth of women at the top levels of intellectual fields, we need to understand the unique social expectations and stereotypes affecting girls, rather than rely on outdated theories of their natural inferiority which no longer obtain. We should also consider the reasons the GMV theory has such a hold in our culture, and how this false belief itself might impact girls’ outcomes. These can be explored at a future date.