Exploring the Universe for Diversity

In March 1972, the space probe Pioneer 10 was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida with the objective of exploring the solar system past the orbit of Mars and into the asteroid belt. Later, a further objective of making a pass-by of Jupiter was added.


The mission was wildly successful. Pioneer 10 not only scouted out the interplanetary region beyond Mars, it successfully sent about 500 photos of Jupiter back for our collective scrapbook and flew as close as 130,000km to Jupiter. To the best of our knowledge, the damn thing is still tootling along at about 12km per second in the general direction of the star Aldebaran. I say "to the best of our knowledge" because, sadly we lost contact with the critter back in 2003.

There was always the plan that Pioneer 10 would continue on its way out of the solar system once it had completed its mission and a science journalist - Eric Burgess - suggested that it should carry some sort of message in case it was ever intercepted by extraterrestrial intelligence. Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, astronomers with a great deal of interest in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, put together the plans for a plaque that should appear on the probe. The final design was put together by Sagan's wife and inscribed onto a sheet of gold anodised aluminium that was attached to the probe above its antenna in order to protect it from interstellar dust.

The design of the plaque required a great deal more thought and ingenuity that might first be apparent. There was no possibility of using any language of some sort and there was even the probability that a complete lack of any cultural similarity would most likely render any symbols meaningless. With that in mind, Sagan and Drake set about coming up with visual representations that would have meaning. The prominent star shaped design, for example, shows the relative distance from the sun to 14 different 'pulsars', a type of neutron star that emits radiation. A sufficiently advanced civilisation would be able to identify the origin of the plaque based on this information.

The line of circles at the bottom of the plaque is a schematic diagram of the solar system, showing the relative path of the Pioneer 10 as it heads off into space and the two circles at top left apparently represent something to do with Hydrogen. I briefly tried to understand but my head overheated and I had to lay down.

There are lots more interesting tidbits for the alien discoverers of the plaque. Sagan managed to indicate using binary representation, based on the symbols in the hydrogen thingy, the frequency of the pulsars and also indicated the relative distance from the sun for each planet. There's more, but you get the picture.

Sagan and Drake also noted that while the intelligence that finds the plaque may not have any common cultural ground with humans, they could be fairly certain that they would have the Pioneer probe itself. With this in mind, they etched an outline of a male and female figure against the silhouette of the probe, giving the finders information about the creatures that created it.

There was some criticism after the plaque was designed. For example there was some criticism that the arrow shape used to indicate the direction of the probe is most likely a relic of our hunter-gatherer heritage and may not have meaning for an alien intelligence.

There was also criticism, from Sagan himself, than the human figures appeared to be Caucasian when it had actually been his intention that they should look panracial. Sagan had intended, for example, that the male figure should have short curly hair, indicative of a possible African heritage, but that feature was lost in the engraving. It was also originally planned that the hair colour should be a mid-to-dark brown, another detail that was lost with the etching being an outline only.

A curious thing that became apparent over time was that most races, whether Caucasian, African or Asian, tended to see the figures as being from their own race. Sagan thereby had the curious experience of being criticised by several different races for depicting one race to the exclusion of all others.

Many commentators also noted that the male figure was active and the female figure passive, an especially sore point with the burgeoning feminist movement.

As far as I can tell, there was no criticism that two figures had been included - a male and a female figure - or that the figures were different, that the male figure is obviously taller and more muscled for example. There was no criticism that only two genders were depicted or that only the female figure had long hair. I wonder if such criticisms would be made today.

Of course one of the points that the artists were trying to depict was the sexual dimorphism of humans. Males tend, on average, to be larger than females, both in height and weight. They tend to have a greater muscle mass, giving them a significant advantage in upper body strength (about 70% greater on average) and slightly less impressive advantage in lower body strength (about 40% on average). Males tend to be hairier, especially around the face and women tend to have two prominences located on the upper ventral region of the torso (a wonderful feature).

Such attributes are uncontroversial. We can objectively measure height, weight, density and so on. We can take averages across large populations and then can make generalisations about those populations. We have to be careful about applying these generalisations on an individual level, but we could, for example, expect that if we selected 100 people at random that were less than 150cm tall, the majority of those people would be female. That's not discriminatory of course, it's just that females tend to be shorter than males.

There are good reasons for some of these differences. Gender in humans is determined by five factors that are all present at birth. The five factors are the Y chromosome, the type of gonads (testis or ovaries), the sex hormones (androgen and estrogen), reproductive anatomy (eg uterus) and the external genitalia.

These five factors nearly always clearly and unanimously indicate a specific gender, but there are very rare cases where one or more of these factors are ambiguous or contradictory and the person is considered 'intersex'[1]. Along with the assignment of gender, these five factors are also causally related to some of the physical differences I mentioned above

An enquiring mind might ponder the possibility that other differences between male and female result from gender. If there are demonstrable physical differences, might it be possible that there are emotional or mental differences? Might it be possible that these differences might have some impact on life outcomes for each gender. It’s a difficult question because there is a cultural factor that will play a role. Females tend to be raised as girls and males as boys and this socialisation might affect outcomes. We do know though that boys, from a very young age tend to be interested in mechanical things and girls tend to be interested in people and people-oriented activities.

Irrespective of any evidence, it has to be conceded that the possibility of biological gender contributing to life choices and outcomes is a real one. There are, indisputably, physical differences between male and female humans and it’s entirely likely that these differences extend to the brain, which after all is just another organ. It is, I would have thought, a fair question and one that deserves scrutiny.

It seems however that even contemplating such a possibility is unacceptable in polite company. Last week a Google employee published a memo that has since become known as the ‘Google Manifesto’. The memo discussed Google’s gender initiatives and their drive for gender balance. It suggested the possibility that perhaps men are more attracted to coding than women for biological reasons and went on to claim that even this possibility was difficult to raise because Google as a corporation was not open to such a discussion.

To me, this seemed a fairly harsh criticism. Google was founded with one company rule: ‘don’t be evil’ and has prided itself on how inclusive and open it is. Furthermore, Google is a company based on ideas and intellect, the idea that they would shut down a discussion based on fashion rather than rational argument seemed improbable.

Two days after the memo became public, Google fired the employee responsible.

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For an interesting take on the memo from an academic viewpoint, and with much thanks to the other Andrew, have a read of this article: https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manifesto-isnt-sexist-or-anti-diversity-its-science/article35903359/




Pioneer Plaque designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake. Artwork prepared by Linda Salzman Sagan. Photograph by NASA Ames Resarch Center (NASA-ARC) (Ames Pioneer 10) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons



[1] Not to be confused with transexual or transgender, which is generally a result of Gender Identity Disorder, a disorder first described in DSM-III in 1980 and later classified as "Gender Disphoria" in DSM-5.