7 ms·
A long, but interesting read. This line stood out as pretty interesting - I'd never given this sort of thing much thought: "If a group loses half its men, the
by johnthedebs 16y ago
A long, but interesting read. This line stood out as pretty interesting - I'd never given this sort of thing much thought:
"If a group loses half its men, the next generation can still be full-sized. But if it loses half its women, the size of the next generation will be severely curtailed. Hence most cultures keep their women out of harm’s way while using men for risky jobs."
Overall, it's a pretty objective (and in-depth) view of the gender debate.
- wvenable 16y agoI question it's relevance to this site. There are other sites (reddit, for example) for this sort of content.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- pkghost 16y agoI'm relatively new here and don't read reddit. What about the article doesn't fit here?
- andreyf 16y agoLike a political or religious discussion, it's a bit polarizing - it seems to raise the kind of questions where reasonable people would agree to disagree, and we're afraid of not being so reasonable ;)
- philwelch 16y agoThere's pulp political pieces and then there's intellectual insight about politics. This piece strikes me as having intellectual insight.
- nandemo 16y agoFor that matter, I think "A Letter to my students" is definitely a pulp political piece. And yet it is on the front page with 150+ points. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631682 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1631682
- davidw 16y agoArticles like that are why I would be happier to simply see politics banned from this site.
- johnthedebs 16y agoThe article talks a lot about risk-taking, and the cultural/societal reasons that men take more risks than women. That's definitely true of this community - entrepreneurship has more risk-taking than nearly any other field (excepting things like the military). That, plus it definitely "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." Seems relevant to me.
- groaner 16y agoJudging by how much discussion it got the last time it was posted, I think the community has decided on how relevant it is already: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=589346 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=589346
- bootload 16y ago"... Judging by how much discussion it got the last time it was posted ..." Thanks for the link, I didn't bother checking to see if it was already posted. I notice the sig/noise is a lot lower and only posted 481 days prior but the tone of the good responses are still measured and thoughtful.
- Locke1689 16y agoI agree. This is too much of a "political" issue. In addition, there are a lot of suppositions thrown about but not a lot of data.
- lsc 16y agoWhat gender debate? Are you telling me that you take people seriously who continue the "girls are better than boys/ boys are better than girls" debate after, say, the age of 13?
- philwelch 16y agoI don't take people seriously who continue the "Macs are better than PC's/PC's are better than Macs" debate after the age of 13, but I do take people seriously when they put together a case about why Macs are better suited for Ruby on Rails development, or why Windows is better for gaming, or why Linux is better for running webservers. Likewise, you're trivializing the serious cultural debates about, for instance, whether it's wise to send women into armed combat, or whether or not it's a problem for 90% of software developers to be men. It doesn't mean anyone is better than another, just that as a society maybe we should be comfortable with having more men than women in prison, in the Forbes 500, or in combat. Or maybe we shouldn't. Point is, that's a debate worth having.
- arethuza 16y agoMy usual approach for detecting technology fanboys is to ask them to name scenarios where their "enemy" technology would be appropriate to use - can be very very funny.
- johnthedebs 16y agoWell, no, but some people continue (begin?) to question whether women are treated fairly after that age. It's useful and interesting to know how and why things turned out the way they did.
- thibaut_barrere 16y agoI would say yes, based on wages differences (around 20% here).
- gwern 16y agoA tremendous amount of money rides on gender issues. Think just of all the academic programs instituted to address gender imbalances in STEM fields. Think of the expense of them continuing, forever, because they are trying to combat not transient mutable societal norms but Mother Nature. When public policy goes wrong, it's very expensive.
- sabat 16y agoIf a group loses half its men, the next generation can still be full-sized. But if it loses half its women, the size of the next generation will be severely curtailed. Given that we have something like 7 billion people, the odds of losing half of either gender are fairly low. If it's because of something nuclear -- you will probably want to be on the casualty list, not the survivor's. I wish I could downvote this post. It's flamebait, and it's irrelevant. Agree with the commenter who wondered why "debates" like this go on amongst people > age 13.
- philk 16y agoGiven that we have something like 7 billion people, the odds of losing half of either gender are fairly low. If it's because of something nuclear -- you will probably want to be on the casualty list, not the survivor's. You're taking that quote out of context. The point is not what could happen today, but what could happen prehistoric groups. If you have two prehistoric tribes in conflict with each other it's entirely reasonable that you'll lose half of your combatants over a period of years. If you're losing men then you can replenish your numbers just as effectively, if you're losing women your capacity will be compromised.
- btilly 16y agoIn ancient history there were periods when the standard was to kill all the men, and take the women and children as slaves. In that situation adult male fatalities of close to 100% were quite possible. In more recent history, during WW II the Soviet Union had an army with 34,401,807 men. The official tally was 8,668,400 dead from various causes. Assuming that this military included all men of draftable age (which is basically correct), about a quarter of men in that generation died. Yet since those losses were born mostly among men (the Soviet Union lost many civilians as well, it was a bloody war), the reproductive capacity of the society was not impacted nearly as badly as their population was.
- eru 16y agoThey also had some female soldiers. But probably not enough to be relevant for the argument.
- obiterdictum 16y agoIt's interesting to note that Orwell takes a contrary viewpoint: http://www.orwelltoday.com/orwellwaryoungwhy.shtml http://www.orwelltoday.com/orwellwaryoungwhy.shtml "Why is it worse to kill a woman than a man? The argument usually advanced is that in killing women you are killing the breeders, whereas men can be more easily spared. But this is a fallacy based on the notion that human beings can be bred like animals. The idea behind it is that since one man is capable of fertilizing a very large number of women, just as a prize ram fertilizes thousands of ewes, the loss of male lives is comparatively unimportant. Human beings, however, are not cattle. When the slaughter caused by a war leaves a surplus of women, the enormous majority of those women bear no children. Male lives are very nearly as important, biologically, as female ones."
- joe_the_user 16y agoHmm, It's Orwell so it's well written. But even Orwell needs references to back up this argument.
- pmjordan 16y agoI assume he means although the stigma is much less than it once used to be, it's not especially culturally acceptable for a woman to conceive a child from a man who isn't her life partner. Most women who do, do so by accident. Also, while the man is out at war, the woman usually won't be procreating with anyone else until the man dies. The news of his death will probably affect her badly, and procreation is probably the last thing on her mind at least for a while (after which she may be too old). But yes, hard data would be even better.
- joe_the_user 16y agoMost women who do, do so by accident. Or don't get caught....
- dhs 16y agoAlso, while the man is out at war, the woman usually won't be procreating with anyone else until the man dies. There is some counter-evidence to this claim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_john_letter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_john_letter "Dear John," the letter began. "I have found someone else whom I think the world of. I think the only way out is for us to get a divorce," it said. They usually began like that, those letters that told of infidelity on the part of the wives of servicemen... The men called them "Dear Johns".
- kevinh 16y agoFull-sized, yes, but you'll probably lose a significant amount of diversity. Half of the Y-chromosomes in the population will be eliminated. I would imagine this would cut down the genetic variation significantly.
- pmjordan 16y agoThe Y chromosome doesn't carry much genetic information. For the most part it just defers to the X chromosome's version of the data, which is why recessive genetic disorders hosted on the X chromosome are more common in men. (e.g. red/green colour blindness, haemophilia, etc.)
- kevinh 16y agoI understand your point, but despite the fact that the Y chromosome does not carry that much genetic information, it is highly susceptible to genetic drift. A smaller male population passing on its genes would cause a higher amount of genetic drift (a smaller population means that outliers have a larger effect on the genetic makeup the population), which would cause the Y chromosome to change at a faster rate (and it is already much more susceptible to change than the X chromosome).
- woodall 16y agoThat reasoning only works if all members are still willing to mate. What if the remaining species are heart broken/distraught/ect and unwilling to mate? Do we force them to mate? How do our values and ideals change when this occurs? Do they change at all? When we imagine this apocalyptic doom of population, and mankind, we imagine a perfect world in some much that we think everyone will breed with everyone. Some men my have a problem(ED), some women may not be able to bare children(thus the creation of fertility gods), and some-be it male or female- may not want to "do it" period(homosexuality). We may also still hold old world values/moral beliefs, such as monogamy, dear. The quote posted by Obiterdictum[1] from Orwell, one of my favorite writers, is very intriguing to me. The part that stands out the most is: ''But this is a fallacy based on the notion that human beings can be bred like animals.'' -One the topic of utilitarianistic gender values Animals in captivity are usually force breed to maintain a linage or specific trait. Animals can build emotional bonds, however, in the wild we see very few mammal species that follow the same guidelines we find social acceptable[2]. For us to believe that every male will mate with every female we must also believe that every female will mate with every male, and vica versa. Part of monogamy is breed into our subconscious, part is based on proximity, part is due to social context, and part is, well, emotional[3]. There are countless stories of widows never marring after their husbands are gone[see Penelope in The Odyssey]. We, many of us, enjoy monogamous relationships. Something about them brings us a joy that is very hard to put a value on. We can be tricked into them, stockholm syndrome, we can even be forced into them, rape, but we can rarely artificially create them, Truman show. We must also asses the value of monogamous relation ships versus open relation ships(I am sorry I do not know the proper word for it); thinking that everyone will value them the same. I do not have enough data to pass judgment, although, the animal kingdom does seem to be doing well for itself ;). Then we have to break down the proper breeding matrices. No one has said anything about age distribution in population. So are we assuming all the males/females too young/old to breed died OR are we not including them in the first count? To inspire discussion I will say we never included them in the first count...but then the situation doesn't really work as we have a new generation coming of age at some point; a boost if you will. Hypothetically, using the example given with a population size 150(aftermath) we are left with 100 women and 50 men. Breeding can be done in at least 1 day; a week at the utmost. Now those women are taken pretty much out of commission at the ~7,8,9 month. That leaves 100 women more vulnerable to starvation, illness, miscarriage, death giving birth. We also do not have the number of still births. What is the status of food? How did this population destruction occur? Too many variables. For every perfect scenario there exists an imperfect one just as likely to occur as the latter. No person, be it male or female, is more valuable because they were born with a functioning set of genitalia. Value is always in the eye of the beholder[see currency, trade, marketing]. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635248 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635248 [2]http://www.trinity.edu/rnadeau/fys/barash%20on%20monogamy.htm http://www.trinity.edu/rnadeau/fys/barash%20on%20monogamy.ht... [3] http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/346monogamyAnimals.html http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/346monogamyAnimals.html [4]http://www.mythweb.com/odyssey/book01.html#notes5back http://www.mythweb.com/odyssey/book01.html#notes5back I had to edit and remove some of my comment as it became more of a rant than an acceptable comment. The tl;dr version is, we are all different and thus behave differently. Some may be more willing to breed for the sake of it while others not so much, however, we can all be conditioned so that we are prepared for such a situation. I am not condoning this. I feel that place male and female on a scale is boarding the lines of eugenics- to which I am more opposed than I am for. Some men are strong, while others are weak. Some women are stronger than a weak man. Some men are cowards, others are not. Some women are brave, others are not. Measuring strength is easy, measuring other- not so physical traits- is harder.