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Here's a related take on why there are no more women in startups from an evolutionary perspective. In reproduction, which is what evolution is made of, men and
by mixmax 17y ago
Here's a related take on why there are no more women in startups from an evolutionary perspective.
In reproduction, which is what evolution is made of, men and women are very different. A woman can only have one baby every nine months, and realistically maybe every other year. This limits her choices for reproduction so she has to find the right man for the job meaning someone that has the resources to take care of the kid and make sure he grows up and has offspring. Men on the other hand can reproduce as much as they like given they can find a willing woman. This has some interesting consequences on evolutionary selection.
- Women are risk averse and look for security, knowing that they only have a few shots at successful propagation.
- Since men can have many women, but women can have only one man (a women with many men will not produce more offspring, but a man with many women will) the offspring of the men will be unequally divided. The bottom of the pack won't have any offspring at all while the top of the pack will have a lot. Ghengis Khan had lots of children with many wives, and so do people with harems. This means there are men that have no offspring at all.
- Women look for men that can take care of their offspring. They care more about them since they have fewer chances than men do. This is why women go for rich men, and why only rich men have harems.
What this means is that a woman is somewhat guaranteed to find a man that she can produce offspring with if she is conservative in her choices, and that she will tend to mate with the most successful man she can find. Men, on the other hand, don't have this guarantee and have to play a risky game of trying to make it to the top. The more success a man has the more women will want to mate with him. On the other hand if he is conservative there's a risk he won't find anyone to mate with at all thus ending his gene pool.
I think this combined with Patrick's post explains pretty clearly why there are no more women in Silicon Valley. It's simply too risky.
- tptacek 17y agoOr maybe it's possible that virtually none of what you wrote is meaningfully correct, which would account for the dearth of women in CS despite the huge market for practically risk-free CS/IT jobs in the US.
- mixmax 17y agoThe article and my reply was in relation to startups, not women in CS. Of course it might be pure gibberish, but I believe it does happen to coincide with currently accepted wisdom in evolutionary science.
- jcnnghm 17y agoWhich is more difficult, working out and marrying a rich man, or software engineering?
- tptacek 17y agoExplain how that question is relevant.
- whyenot 17y agoThis is an example of what anthropologists and evolutionary biologists call "adaptive storytelling." Just because human beings or any other organism have a particular feature or behavior does not necessarily mean that it is an adaptation and does not necessarily mean that natural selection has acted upon it. You've come up with an interesting story but that is all it is -- there is absolutely no reason to believe it is correct. For a more detailed (and entertaining!) explanation, see the classic paper by Gould and Lewontin (1979) http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/classictexts/gould.pdf http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/classictexts/gould...
- barry-cotter 17y agoYour point is worthwhile, and spandrels certainly do exist, but you weaken your point by linking to a paper in which Gould was involved, even if Lewontin (who actually knows what he's talking about in evolutionary biology) was the co-athor. Also, spandrels would be expected to be ephemeral over evolutionary time, while the much greater skewness of male reproductive success over female is practically a biological universal. The optimal reproductive strategies will thus differ, and higher male risk tolerance seems one of the more plausible evo-bio "just so" stories. Lewontin's Fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin%27s_Fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin%27s_Fallacy http://lesswrong.com/lw/kv/beware_of_stephen_j_gould/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/kv/beware_of_stephen_j_gould/ If you've read anything Stephen J. Gould has ever said about evolutionary biology, I have some bad news for you. In the field of evolutionary biology at large, Gould's reputation is mud. Not because he was wrong. Many honest scientists have made honest mistakes. What Gould did was much worse, involving deliberate misrepresentation of science.
- whyenot 17y agoThat paper I linked to is a classic that every graduate student in evolutionary biology and has read and discussed. I honestly don't know how to respond further without being offensive. If you want to educate yourself on evolutionary theory, here are some papers to get you started (note that Gould and Lewontin is one of them). http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/classictexts/ http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/classictexts/ Also, spandrels would be expected to be ephemeral over evolutionary time, while the much greater skewness of male reproductive success over female is practically a biological universal. I don't agree with either of these. Please explain your reasoning, maybe I'm just misunderstanding the points you are trying to make.
- apsec112 17y agoThis implies that women won't start startups, but it doesn't say anything about why there are few women in IT generally.