This is the coolest thing I've found in a long time. I wish I knew who made it.

From this week’s Economist, an brief article looking back on what we learned from the Larry Summers debacle.

In most intellectual areas, such as vocabulary and verbal reasoning, the differences between men and women are statistically insignificant. But the long tail of mathematical genius does tend to be male, along with higher rates of idiocy and masturbation.

The article is not so much about Larry Summers and his downfall, nor does it criticize political correctness or its opposite, whatever we choose to call that. Instead, it points out that (1) in some cognitive areas, men and women do actually tend to differ in statistically significant ways, and (2) none of these cognitive areas are particularly important anymore in the developed world, except the one in which men tend to lag behind their brighter peers.

Men, studies show, are exceedingly good at rotating three-dimensional shapes in their head. Perhaps women once stared open-mouthed in wonder as their mates juggled pyramids of imaginary polyhedra. Such tricks are also quite handy for engineers who specialise in building large bits of machinery, digging tunnels or slinging bridges across rivers. But, now that the rich world has about as many tunnels and bridges as it needs, and the large bits of machinery which aren’t made by computers and robots are made by the Chinese, their usefulness is limited.

Modern professional life is dominated by management, which these days sets high store by emotional intelligence, empathy and communication. Wise chaps seeking professional advancement should therefore spend their free time with groups of women, boning up on how to undermine somebody’s confidence while pretending to boost it, and how to turn an entire lunch table against an absent colleague without saying a mean word. Such skills are likely to have a greater influence on their lifetime earnings than the ability to spin an icosahedron.