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Secondly, the author doesn't make a convincing argument that the fact that the reason why men get all the risk and all the reward is because of something innate

Secondly, the author doesn't make a convincing argument that the fact that the reason why men get all the risk and all the reward is because of something innate, instead of a self-perpetuating social system that actively encourages one gender to risk it all and reap the rewards, while holding back the other gender to mediocrity and risk-free existences. The author may not have gone into it, but the argument exists, based on what we know about genetics and reproduction. Female reproduction is inherently limited, first of all by the time it takes to have a single child, second by the probability of death due to childbirth (relatively small, but not insignificant for most of human history), and third by the reduced fertility that comes with age. Male reproduction is essentially unlimited; the potential maximum "genetic fitness" (measured by simple count of the branches you spawn on the tree of life) of becoming a king and impregnating an entire harem of women over your life is easily 10x the maximum "fitness" for a woman (though the probability is very low for such extreme situations), so it's to be expected that any preferentially male-expressed genes that would increase the probability of ending up in that situation would be more prevalent in the gene pool than the corresponding traits for women (which would be mostly neutral evolutionarily, since a woman with a male harem is not going to spread, on average, more copies of her genes than she would in normal life). We don't need to assume that the dominant factor is the king + harem situation, either; it's enough merely that men, on average, see wider variability in reproduction than women do (cheating, cuckolding, etc. tend to make that happen). The "leaps of faith" required to let this explain increased male risk-seeking are: a) That the traits we associate with risk seeking correlate well with the traits that cause men to be highly genetically successful b) That the way things actually transpired in history, the variance in male genetic success was, in fact, significantly higher than the variance in female genetic success. Note that we are not talking about averages (they're equal, quite trivially), but variances If you accept a) (which is not much of a stretch - sleeping with other men's wives is definitely a risk-seeking behavior that increases genetic success for men), then it's absolutely 100% certain that the amount of genetically linked risk-seeking will be higher (or equal) in men than in women. It's very easy to make a similar argument that implies that any genetically linked risk-avoidance genes that are preferentially expressed in females will be more common than those that are expressed in males, at least to the extent that they would reduce male reproductive variance without a corresponding survival benefit. Bear in mind that your comment about a "self-perpetuating social system" and the things that it encourages may not be entirely off-base, but that doesn't change the genetic imperatives: given what we've seen above, such a social system would align very well with the genetic best interests of its constituents, so it's hardly a stretch to imagine that the two factors have coexisted and reinforced each other quite strongly.

geebee 15y ago
Female reproduction isn't as limited as it might seem at first glance, because you need to consider the reproductive success of her offspring as well. If we're going to see life as DNAs way of making more DNA, Genghis Khan's mother did just as much reproducing as his father. I've read that female bonobos, for instance, take a great interest in the mating success of their male offspring: "http://www.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=1742 http://www.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=1742 So having a high social status in the pecking order can absolutely translate in to "unlimited" reproductive potential for a female in this case. An interesting quote: "Scientists believe a bonobo mother's rank in the group has an impact on her son's reproductive rank because if she dies the son falls in rank and becomes unimportant."
- bermanoid 15y ago
  If we're going to see life as DNAs way of making more DNA, Genghis Khan's mother did just as much reproducing as his father. I absolutely agree with you about that, and in fact, the genes that made Genghis Khan reproduce so wildly may have even come from his mother. They may not have been linked to sex at all, and might be expressed equally in his male and female descendants. None of which changes the conclusion, though, which is that if there are any sex-linkages (either by presence on the Y chromosome or by preferential expression) amongst the genes controlling risk (reproductive risk, especially), then they will tend to accumulate in such a way that the high risk male genes are much more strongly selected for than female ones (which will be mostly neutral if they're not deleterious). Put another way, the "risk-seeking" phenotype is not the same as the "encourage male offspring to be risk-seeking" phenotype, and while the former is only beneficial to male genes, the latter is beneficial to everyone's. And the end result is that male risk seeking is encouraged in the gene pool in many ways - in fact, what you've suggested is that the social reasons that male risk-seeking is encouraged are actually quite strongly selected for individually, which puts the conclusion on even stronger genetic grounds (as opposed to what comes up often as the more PC theory, that it's just an accident of history that society decided to bring up males that way, not an evolutionary imperative). The stuff about bonobos is quite interesting, I hadn't seen that before. They have a quite different power structure that makes things very unusual (almost inverted, in many ways), and it's very interesting to see that increased reproductive variance there is not linked to dominance, but to keeping a good position within the female hierarchy. It makes very clear the point that while a lot of (human) male traits may be evolved in order to increase reproductive variance, those traits do not necessarily achieve that goal (or any positive goal) in general, but only within the context of our other evolutionary peculiarities. As usual, it's difficult to evaluate anything in a vacuum.

geebee 15y ago

Female reproduction isn't as limited as it might seem at first glance, because you need to consider the reproductive success of her offspring as well. If we're going to see life as DNAs way of making more DNA, Genghis Khan's mother did just as much reproducing as his father. I've read that female bonobos, for instance, take a great interest in the mating success of their male offspring: "http://www.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=1742 http://www.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=1742 So having a high social status in the pecking order can absolutely translate in to "unlimited" reproductive potential for a female in this case. An interesting quote: "Scientists believe a bonobo mother's rank in the group has an impact on her son's reproductive rank because if she dies the son falls in rank and becomes unimportant."

bermanoid 15y ago
If we're going to see life as DNAs way of making more DNA, Genghis Khan's mother did just as much reproducing as his father. I absolutely agree with you about that, and in fact, the genes that made Genghis Khan reproduce so wildly may have even come from his mother. They may not have been linked to sex at all, and might be expressed equally in his male and female descendants. None of which changes the conclusion, though, which is that if there are any sex-linkages (either by presence on the Y chromosome or by preferential expression) amongst the genes controlling risk (reproductive risk, especially), then they will tend to accumulate in such a way that the high risk male genes are much more strongly selected for than female ones (which will be mostly neutral if they're not deleterious). Put another way, the "risk-seeking" phenotype is not the same as the "encourage male offspring to be risk-seeking" phenotype, and while the former is only beneficial to male genes, the latter is beneficial to everyone's. And the end result is that male risk seeking is encouraged in the gene pool in many ways - in fact, what you've suggested is that the social reasons that male risk-seeking is encouraged are actually quite strongly selected for individually, which puts the conclusion on even stronger genetic grounds (as opposed to what comes up often as the more PC theory, that it's just an accident of history that society decided to bring up males that way, not an evolutionary imperative). The stuff about bonobos is quite interesting, I hadn't seen that before. They have a quite different power structure that makes things very unusual (almost inverted, in many ways), and it's very interesting to see that increased reproductive variance there is not linked to dominance, but to keeping a good position within the female hierarchy. It makes very clear the point that while a lot of (human) male traits may be evolved in order to increase reproductive variance, those traits do not necessarily achieve that goal (or any positive goal) in general, but only within the context of our other evolutionary peculiarities. As usual, it's difficult to evaluate anything in a vacuum.