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I think males are more likely than females to become obsessed with narrow domains. (I used to be obsessed with chess, especially chess openings.) This may be a

I think males are more likely than females to become obsessed with narrow domains. (I used to be obsessed with chess, especially chess openings.) This may be a partial explanation of why there have been more male geniuses. Graham must be careful about what he writes, but he does say this: "One interesting thing about the bus ticket theory is that it may help explain why different types of people excel at different kinds of work. Interest is much more unevenly distributed than ability. If natural ability is all you need to do great work, and natural ability is evenly distributed, you have to invent elaborate theories to explain the skewed distributions we see among those who actually do great work in various fields. But it may be that much of the skew has a simpler explanation: different people are interested in different things. The bus ticket theory also explains why people are less likely to do great work after they have children. Here interest has to compete not just with external obstacles, but with another interest, and one that for most people is extremely powerful. It's harder to find time for work after you have kids, but that's the easy part. The real change is that you don't want to." Both fathers and mothers care about their children, but on average mothers care more and think more obsessively about them.

zozbot234 7y ago
> I think males are more likely than females to become obsessed with narrow domains. I don't think this is the case. Males just have low visibility into typical female 'obsessions' (or just don't care all that much about them), but the reverse is also generally true. Females tend to obsess about things that have a 'social' side, like their shoes collection - whereas males are more into physical, material things that can be played with.
- rhlsthrm 7y ago
  This is exactly right. I've come across this theory of obsession on my own and I've been helping my wife find what she's obsessed with. She watches things on YouTube like makeup tutorials that are things I would have never thought she was obsessed with.
  - satyrnein 7y ago
    Let's not be too hasty in concluding women's attention to their appearance and their children is completely genetic when all throughout history these were duties pushed onto them. Darwin got to say "I'll be in my study" and "you take care of the kids and dinner and everything else" was just automatically implied.
    - belorn 7y ago
      You are arguing against an imaginary argument. Parent and grand parent comment did not say anything about genetics. Darwin could go inside the study because his gender role was fulfilled by being rich. Had he been poor he might have said "I will be in the coal mine", and getting slowly and horrible killed. Very few know people in history had the privilege to freely obsess over things which is outside their gender role, especially if the result leads to them not fulling that role through other means.
      - satyrnein 7y ago
        This whole subthread is speculation about the role of gender in the choice of obsessive hobbies, or am I imagining that? I agree with you that most men over the course of history did not have the luxury that Darwin did.
        belorn 7y ago
        The comment from Bostonian did that. That person speculated that gender influence how obsessive a person is. zozbot234 comment below that said "I don't think this is the case.", arguing instead that low visibility over gender lines makes people think that gender has an impact how obsessive a person is. rhlsthrm comment below that one said "This is exactly right". This is why I said parent and grandparent, ie zozbot234 and rhlsthrm comments, did not include genetics in their arguments, and I interpreted your comment as arguing against them as if they had argued in favor of genetics. If I am wrong and you directed your argument against the grandgrandparent then I am sorry for that interpretation.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  Difficult terrain. Perhaps all these obsessions are fundamentally antisocial (hence some people call them autistic etc.) and women are raised to be more concerned about not being antisocial.

zozbot234 7y ago

> I think males are more likely than females to become obsessed with narrow domains. I don't think this is the case. Males just have low visibility into typical female 'obsessions' (or just don't care all that much about them), but the reverse is also generally true. Females tend to obsess about things that have a 'social' side, like their shoes collection - whereas males are more into physical, material things that can be played with.

rhlsthrm 7y ago
This is exactly right. I've come across this theory of obsession on my own and I've been helping my wife find what she's obsessed with. She watches things on YouTube like makeup tutorials that are things I would have never thought she was obsessed with.
- satyrnein 7y ago
  Let's not be too hasty in concluding women's attention to their appearance and their children is completely genetic when all throughout history these were duties pushed onto them. Darwin got to say "I'll be in my study" and "you take care of the kids and dinner and everything else" was just automatically implied.
  - belorn 7y ago
    You are arguing against an imaginary argument. Parent and grand parent comment did not say anything about genetics. Darwin could go inside the study because his gender role was fulfilled by being rich. Had he been poor he might have said "I will be in the coal mine", and getting slowly and horrible killed. Very few know people in history had the privilege to freely obsess over things which is outside their gender role, especially if the result leads to them not fulling that role through other means.
    - satyrnein 7y ago
      This whole subthread is speculation about the role of gender in the choice of obsessive hobbies, or am I imagining that? I agree with you that most men over the course of history did not have the luxury that Darwin did.
      - belorn 7y ago
        The comment from Bostonian did that. That person speculated that gender influence how obsessive a person is. zozbot234 comment below that said "I don't think this is the case.", arguing instead that low visibility over gender lines makes people think that gender has an impact how obsessive a person is. rhlsthrm comment below that one said "This is exactly right". This is why I said parent and grandparent, ie zozbot234 and rhlsthrm comments, did not include genetics in their arguments, and I interpreted your comment as arguing against them as if they had argued in favor of genetics. If I am wrong and you directed your argument against the grandgrandparent then I am sorry for that interpretation.
lazyjones 7y ago
Difficult terrain. Perhaps all these obsessions are fundamentally antisocial (hence some people call them autistic etc.) and women are raised to be more concerned about not being antisocial.