[chadcmulligan]

I read a study many years ago that men and women have the same average for many things but the standard deviation is higher for men. The theory was men have to prove themselves more to successfully breed so genetics throws the dice a bit more with men, whereas women had to raise the children, and in groups, and so a bit of deviation is probably less helpful. I've tried to find it a few times but haven't been able to, maybe its debunked by now, maybe someone here knows it.

[watwut]

Men worked in groups too. Group cooperation was crucial in low tech hunting and aggriculture and house building and anything. Or simply, to keep it usa, try to hunt for bison alone without horse. So if your theory puts emphasis on female cooperation and ignores male cooperation it is already suspect.

Low tech and behind-time rural villages are big on gender roles. But child rasing is only one of things women do and did. They used to spend awful lot of time by producing things - making threads out of flax (flower) or wool, then material then sewing. They tended animals too, made candles and so on and so forth. Kids contributed from early age.

Theory that limits female contribution to childcare is likely projecting 1950 middle class roles onto past. Just mere ability to sustain adult and teenage humans who are not contributing to actual essentials production assumes basically wealth. It was not even affordable for most population.

[inglor_cz]

Spinning yarn was a stereotypical female activity from the Stone Age until the 18th century. It took a long time and a lot of patience to produce reasonable amount of yarn, and there was literally no other way to do it. The total hour count spent on spinning was probably higher than the total hour count spent on childrearing, at least for women who lived to their middle age.

But the 18th century is far enough for us that we already forgot this.

[chadcmulligan]

yeah, like I said I read it somewhere and haven't been able to find it again - as you say probably nonsense and a reflection of social mores at the time - it was probably in the 80's I read it.

Edit: found it - its called the variability hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis

[throw999666]

Cool. Seeing how my comment went from three upwards to four downwards I admit I was a little scared to look at the comments cuz I expected them to be a dumpster fire but the comments were actually really good here... Except for the person asking if i think I'm insane, haha. Just kidding, that was also a really good comment, but others didn't like it, haha :) ;p xx c.

I think this indicates this idea is polarizing and that the people who found the statement outrageous downfloated while those who were able to engage with it in a critical manner posted some interesting content. I think that's a very interesting signal about this kind of idea that it's so polarizing. At least in this small sample size of hacker news readers. who knows how that compares to the general or larger or different population tho?

[watwut]

The actual findings dont support what you said. The difference in variance is not that large, it was found only in some small areas. Both person who brought it up severely overstate it basically.

Had the difference been caused by variance, you would find slightly more men at some places. You would not find "only men" nor "almost all men" as your comment claims.

And also, the world was build by plenty of completely sane people of both genders. Majority of it, actually.

[tylerhou]

IIRC this was a theoretical model of two populations with different characteristics re. offspring production. Real life is more complicated than theoretical models, so it's unclear whether the results of such a model are applicable or useful.