Coffy wrote this in the Boys Are Better Than Girls: Adolescent Gender Socialization in North America node, as a response to my writeup.

And she is totally correct. You cannot predict the behavior, characteristics, or pretty much anything of an individual with any sort of reliability by using statistics. To those of you who have read the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, it can be compared to psychohistory.

It doesn't mean the statistics are worthless, it just says that there are are certain things they are useful for, and others they aren't. And you have to restrict usage to what they are useful for.

No matter what the statistics say, an individual can always disobey them.

Never apply a generalization to a specific case.

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