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From: cam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm)
Subject: Re: How to remove underpants (Was FIRST order?)
References: <3vd6t4$7it@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk> <3vg7s9$hnl@netnews.upenn.edu> <3vpaqq$j7j@news.cais.com>
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Organization: University of Edinburgh
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 1995 11:27:38 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.philosophy:31424 sci.logic:13741

weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) wrote:

>In article <3vd6t4$7it@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk>, A.Sloman@cs (Aaron Sloman) writes:

>>Is it possible to remove the underpants without removing the
>>trousers

>>Many people can answer this question by thinking about it and
>>visualising the processes required, even if they have not seen Rowan
>>Atkinson's performance.

>Curiously, men do better than women at this kind of task.

In my student days a group of women I knew did a lot of research on
the related bra problem -- can a man work out how to remove a woman's
bra without removing the jersey? They came to the opposite conclusion:
that the male brain was constitutionally ill-fitted to this kind of
reasoning. This was, I believe, one of the considerations that led the
feminists to burn their bras. I therefore suggest that rather than men
being superior at topological reasoning accounting for their
superiority in the underpants problem, this is more likely a simple
case of prior experience.  Men are more likely than women to wear
underpants and trousers, whereas women are more likely than men to
wear bras and jerseys. Therefore each sex is more likely than the
other to have encountered an awkward social situation which called for
a surreptitious change of the appropriately gendered underwear.

Repeating these studies with transvestite control groups should answer
the question.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@aifh.ed.ac.uk         +44 (0)131 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,    Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK                DoD #205
"The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
