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> a significant part (majority?) of our culture is defined by our biology That's a very strong claim. Obviously everything's influenced by biology to some exte

by bccdee 5y ago

> a significant part (majority?) of our culture is defined by our biology That's a very strong claim. Obviously everything's influenced by biology to some extent (imagine what society would look like if we had no thumbs), but "to some extent" is doing a lot of legwork there, and it's quite a reach to say that the majority of our culture is defined by biology based on that. Engineering and construction are pretty modern fields — how many societies have had engineers? Ours plus Rome plus not many others. But look at something like cooking, which is old: There's tons of weird gender stuff there that varies between societies. Why is grilling masculine if baking is feminine? Other societies have similarly odd gender-food rules too.

caeril 5y ago
> Engineering and construction are pretty modern fields The mental tasks required of engineering are far, far, far, older. Things like abstract reasoning, distance estimation and measurement, rotation and scaling of objects, maps, and abstract shapes in one's head, ability to standardize and compute measures and weights, etc, were all adaptations that improved our effectiveness at hunting, building shelter, and both defense against, and offense toward, opposing tribes. Modern engineering is an enormous pile of abstractions on top of "Grog think rock weigh seven stick".
quocanh 5y ago
I'd settle for any society where women built the huts. Nearly every society has needed to construct some form of shelter or build some sort of tool. Basketweaving comes to mind. Grilling and baking are great examples of what I'm talking about. Actually, in the past baking was seen as a masculine activity. Ovens used to be much more dangerous than now. You had a dedicated town Baker just like you had a Blacksmith. Over time with the invention of gas and electric appliances and the proliferation of cheap baked goods, baking became a luxury. Now it's a feminine activity. If danger determines masculinity/femininity, then that would also explain why grilling is considered masculine. I'm sure there's a biological explanation out there for why men are attracted to danger (or at least don't mind it) while women are repelled by it. To find some sort of culture that isn't influenced by biology, we would have to find some aspect of culture that we invented in our heads. For example, religion or philosophy or law. There are a ton of examples out there. But when we examine the culture that organically forms, I think there's a biological explanation for most of it. Maybe even all.
- kelnos 5y ago
  > I'm sure there's a biological explanation out there for why men are attracted to danger (or at least don't mind it) while women are repelled by it. I think you have the motivations a little incorrect. My guess would be that men traditionally took care of the dangerous jobs because they wanted to protect the child-bearing members of society from them. As a fertile man, you're more likely to pass on your genes if you keep women out of harm's way. So yes, this does count as a "biological reason" for men and women going different ways, but you seemed to be implying that these biological reasons had more to do with brain structure and development, which I don't think is supported by what we know.
  - quocanh 5y ago
    But you have to ask why men step up to take the dangerous jobs? We didn't sit down and have a Socratic discussion about who takes which job. I posit that it's more than merely logic, that the motivations are rooted in our intuition. It's also simply not true that this is not supported by what we know. "Common sense" says that men die younger than women. And indeed we can find statistical proof of this wherever we go. Take car accidents. No one wants to get into a car accident. Yet men are 3x more likely to die in car accidents than women. https://www.statista.com/statistics/192074/drivers-in-fatal-crashes-in-us-road-traffic-by-gender-since-1992/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/192074/drivers-in-fatal-... Getting into car accidents yourself doesn't prevent child-rearing members of society from getting into car accidents of their own. What else explains this gender difference? Maybe men have worse vision? Worse reaction time? Are women stronger at turning the wheel than men? Maybe men are more distractable than women? I think not. People who have been driven by both mom and dad know: men drive more dangerously than women do. Every statistic related to safety shows that men are more willing to get into danger than women. Even in suicide rates, men are more likely to succeed, even with women trying more often. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190313-why-more-men-kill-themselves-than-women https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190313-why-more-men-kil... There are so many examples like this. It's almost certainly true that men have a higher predilection for danger compared to women that is driven by some biological factor. If you think it's not the mind, then you would have to come up with a different explanation for every disparate piece of evidence out there. Not that it's impossible, but there's a simpler conclusion to draw.

by bccdee 5y ago

caeril 5y ago

> Engineering and construction are pretty modern fields The mental tasks required of engineering are far, far, far, older. Things like abstract reasoning, distance estimation and measurement, rotation and scaling of objects, maps, and abstract shapes in one's head, ability to standardize and compute measures and weights, etc, were all adaptations that improved our effectiveness at hunting, building shelter, and both defense against, and offense toward, opposing tribes. Modern engineering is an enormous pile of abstractions on top of "Grog think rock weigh seven stick".

quocanh 5y ago

I'd settle for any society where women built the huts. Nearly every society has needed to construct some form of shelter or build some sort of tool. Basketweaving comes to mind. Grilling and baking are great examples of what I'm talking about. Actually, in the past baking was seen as a masculine activity. Ovens used to be much more dangerous than now. You had a dedicated town Baker just like you had a Blacksmith. Over time with the invention of gas and electric appliances and the proliferation of cheap baked goods, baking became a luxury. Now it's a feminine activity. If danger determines masculinity/femininity, then that would also explain why grilling is considered masculine. I'm sure there's a biological explanation out there for why men are attracted to danger (or at least don't mind it) while women are repelled by it. To find some sort of culture that isn't influenced by biology, we would have to find some aspect of culture that we invented in our heads. For example, religion or philosophy or law. There are a ton of examples out there. But when we examine the culture that organically forms, I think there's a biological explanation for most of it. Maybe even all.

kelnos 5y ago
> I'm sure there's a biological explanation out there for why men are attracted to danger (or at least don't mind it) while women are repelled by it. I think you have the motivations a little incorrect. My guess would be that men traditionally took care of the dangerous jobs because they wanted to protect the child-bearing members of society from them. As a fertile man, you're more likely to pass on your genes if you keep women out of harm's way. So yes, this does count as a "biological reason" for men and women going different ways, but you seemed to be implying that these biological reasons had more to do with brain structure and development, which I don't think is supported by what we know.
- quocanh 5y ago
  But you have to ask why men step up to take the dangerous jobs? We didn't sit down and have a Socratic discussion about who takes which job. I posit that it's more than merely logic, that the motivations are rooted in our intuition. It's also simply not true that this is not supported by what we know. "Common sense" says that men die younger than women. And indeed we can find statistical proof of this wherever we go. Take car accidents. No one wants to get into a car accident. Yet men are 3x more likely to die in car accidents than women. https://www.statista.com/statistics/192074/drivers-in-fatal-crashes-in-us-road-traffic-by-gender-since-1992/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/192074/drivers-in-fatal-... Getting into car accidents yourself doesn't prevent child-rearing members of society from getting into car accidents of their own. What else explains this gender difference? Maybe men have worse vision? Worse reaction time? Are women stronger at turning the wheel than men? Maybe men are more distractable than women? I think not. People who have been driven by both mom and dad know: men drive more dangerously than women do. Every statistic related to safety shows that men are more willing to get into danger than women. Even in suicide rates, men are more likely to succeed, even with women trying more often. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190313-why-more-men-kill-themselves-than-women https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190313-why-more-men-kil... There are so many examples like this. It's almost certainly true that men have a higher predilection for danger compared to women that is driven by some biological factor. If you think it's not the mind, then you would have to come up with a different explanation for every disparate piece of evidence out there. Not that it's impossible, but there's a simpler conclusion to draw.