https://youtu.be/O06JQiVDvwc
I like Kenshin, and I think this video is worth watching -- in fact, better for you to watch it before reading my thoughts. I have a quibble, though. I thought I'd post about it here, since he frequents this forum and might join in.
I was a bit put off when he started explaining why Somchai was winning exchanges, especially in the clinch. Judging by his name, Somchai trained muay thai, and therefore clinch work. I don't know much about Rijker beyond that sports science episode, but most kickboxers literally don't know how to clinch at all -- or know the inactive clinch of a boxer. Maybe one factor was that only one of them knew what they were doing in the clinch, and not only a difference in strength?
I do think there are some physical differences between women and men, but I think we're often too eager to attribute gaps in athletic performance to biology. And I don't mean only in this specific case. When people are explaining how much stronger/faster men are than women, much of their evidence has very little explanatory power.
To take an example. Let's say we compare the top marathon times for men and for women. The men's times are substantially faster: the fifteenth fastest man finished about 6 minutes faster than the first fastest woman, and about 22 minutes faster than the fifteenth fastest woman. That's a pretty big gap.
But nothing here helps us understand which factors had the greatest influence on the result. For instance:
Inherent biological differences between women and men of the same height/weight (maybe hip shape, for instance) Biological difference across populations (men are taller on average, although a given man is not necessarily taller than a given woman) Differences in talent pool (there are almost certainly many more men than women who run marathons. The top 15 out of a pool of 5 million are going to be faster than the top 15 out of a pool of 500 thousand. You get the same effect when you look at the number of olympic medals held by large nations vs small nations.) Differences in training (for various social reasons, it might be that one group trains with greater frequency or higher quality on average)
There's absolutely no reason to think that factors 1 and 2 are having a greater effect than 3 and 4. And yet all I hear about, over and over, all day, is how women can't expect to beat men in fights because of biology. Maybe there are some other things going on, too.
