[sjducb]

I feel like the paper lacks a discussion about why males are more likely to take risks.

Typically extremely reproductively successful men like Chengis Khan take enormous risks to get the power and status that leads to high reproductive success. Unfortunately we are all descended from those men.

[globular-toast]

Presumably the presence of risk-taking males is advantageous to the species as a whole. If our species was asexual each individual would have to be fairly risk averse as any individual lost is lost breeding capacity. But in a sexual species a lost male is fine and happens all the time. Just losing males is, of course, pointless but presumably the advantages brought by the successful ones outweighs any disadvantages brought by the unsuccessful ones. This seems to be true when you look at unsuccessful males who just tend to sit out on the sidelines or whither away in silence rather than actively leech on society while successful males can be great leaders, innovators, visionaries etc.

It's perhaps easier to see why risk-taking behaviour is less common in females, though. In a sexual species each female is required to carry at least two children, on average, to merely replace the current population (it's also beneficial if she survives the final birth). The loss of a single female is therefore quite significant. A population with more risk-taking females would be less successful than one with less.

[sjducb]

Natural selection operates at the gene level, not the population level.

There has to be a positive expected return for the genes of the individual that takes the risks.

If it’s beneficial to not take risks then populations will be full of individuals who play it safe.

[globular-toast]

The existence of gay people is a good example of something that can evolve in a population despite drastically lower chances of being passed on genetically.

[photon_lines]

I don't feel like there needs to be a discussion on 'why' they take more risks. Females expand way more energy in having and raising kids than males do (within the human species). In other species (like sea-horses) - the females actually compete for males since males are the ones that expand way more energy in raising / producing children... (i.e. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/seahorse.html).

[pfannkuchen]

> like sea-horses

I don’t think it’s fair to represent an edge case, “noteworthy for being different” type species as being just one example out of many. As far as I’m aware the behavior exhibited by sea horses is extremely rare, and I recall it being highlighted as such in, at least, The Selfish Gene. Can you think of other examples?

[Shorel]

I would not paint it that way. For fish, it is often the case the male takes care of the eggs, and the females are free of any responsibility.

There are other behaviours in the sea, and they are in general so different to mammals that we can consider them as alien.

I would even say mammals are the edge case, just by virtue of having a fewer number of species than fish, arthropods, insects, and almost any other clad.

You are simply more used to mammals, to the point it seems the only natural behaviour.

[pfannkuchen]

Yes, I suppose you’re right that I am only considering “species who raise their young after birth”.

I don’t see egg laying species behavior as being very representative of the game theoretic patterns in childcare species behavior, though.

Ditching after birth vs raising the young is clearly such a massively important game theoretic dimension that it likely substantially determines the workable ranges for most other dimensions. How can we make conclusions across such separate subspaces of organism game space?

[sjducb]

Can you cite some sources?

[Shorel]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2973910/

[sjducb]

If you don’t think there needs to be a discussion then don’t engage.

In my first year at college we were all set an essay about why human females invest lots of resources preening and enhancing their appearance, while across nature females normally put almost no effort into their appearance, and males are the ones with the bright colours.

This is an enormous area of study with thousands of papers published. Sexual selection is incredibly important. Especially as modern human evolution is driven almost entirely by sexual selection.

It’s worth understanding how sexual selection works.

[photon_lines]

The same to you. If you feel like you're best contribution to tell someone to 'not engage' - then you should look at not engaging at all yourself :)

My comment tries to give the PCA to what contributes to males taking more risks than females within the human species. This isn't a hypothesis - there have been a lot of studies which have shown human males to engage in risk-related behaviors when other females are present. It's also supported by other male-dominated species as well - the males have one single 'alpha' male which females choose to mate with -- but that 'alpha' male will need to take more 'risks' and be more aggressive in order for him to be in such a position in the first place. I'm not sure what you're expecting me to also list out in a hacker news discussion, but this is the best I can do. If you feel like you have counter-arguments -- feel free to post them and I'll be happy to take a look at them and reconsider my position OR post studies which show that you're wrong. Cheers.

[lelanthran]

> I don't feel like there needs to be a discussion on 'why' they take more risks.

Why not? Do you think that this:

> Females expand way more energy in having and raising kids than males do (within the human species)

Is the only answer applicable to "Why to males take more risk than females?"

[photon_lines]

Yes, because they have more to gain from taking the risk. Think about it for a moment.

[Shish2k]

If you’re only thinking about it for long enough to come up with a single hypothesis, and then confidently declaring that you have the correct answer, I’d suggest maybe thinking about it for longer than a moment :)

[photon_lines]

It's not a single hypothesis. If you want me to write an essay on hacker news on all the behavioral differences between males and females - it's tough luck :) If you have counter-arguments - post them so I can refute them. Cheers.

[dekhn]

Surely you must realize that your comments here and above are ... simply not convincing? You say "we don't need to think about it", then give your own simplified explanation (which is mostly likely not a sufficient one) and then refuse to explain further, just doubling down on "my idea is right".

[bumby]

The article's main thrust is a focus on risks that have negligible gain. So in that context your argument reads, "they have more to gain from a risk that has negligible gain."

[naasking]

Negligible gain can still be enough to distinguish oneself. What gain do colourful feathers on birds really have except to draw attention.

Also, evolution is likely not precise enough to have evolved accurate intuitions about the fitness value of all possible risks. We should expect some reasonably broad degree of randomness around the value of risk taking.

[bumby]

I disagree. It's a self-contradictory point. I was being charitable to call it "negligible" considering the article also refers to the gain as "non-existent."

>"What gain do colourful feathers on birds really have except to draw attention"

When drawing attention gives you a disproportionate advantage to attracting a mate vs. attracting a predator, it's a very important (and non-neglible) gain.

>We should expect some reasonably broad degree of randomness around the value of risk taking.

I don't think this negates the point. Just because the there is a distribution in the value doesn't mean there isn't a statistically significant directionality of that distribution. I can say there's a distribution of individual player height in the NBA, but that doesn't mean we can't draw conclusions about height having generalized value at the population level regarding the chances of making it to professional basketball.

[oh_sigh]

Except that a lot of risky male behavior doesn't impress most women. Maybe it impresses other risky-behaving men though, and the respect those risky-behaving men show the risk taker translates into more desirability from women.

[photon_lines]

It may not impress women, but there are lots of studies which show that men expand a lot more energy in engaging risk-related behavior when other females are around. Whether this is biologically adaptable or not may be a question which needs to be probed further, but risk-related behavior and competition have been closely linked in humans...

[Shorel]

Seems to me a bit like the adversarial networks used to train AI.

Of course, you want an adversarial network that's difficult to trick, otherwise the training will produce suboptimal results.

[lupusreal]

It only has to impress a few women to pay off.

[BobaFloutist]

I think it's far more likely that thousands of years of human society have encouraged and rewarded risk-taking behavior in men, and discouraged and punished it in women.

Remember, in any perspective on the differences of sexes, there's no control; no human being has ever been raised outside of human society and very few have ever been raised outside of male-dominated societies.

[golemotron]

We're lucky that we can look at other primates and mammals and see the same patterns.

[sjducb]

Our closest relatives Chimpanzees are patriarchal. Humans are patriarchal. It’s probably genetic.

One female can have about 10 babies. Regardless of how powerful she is. One male can father hundreds. The genetic rewards are there for males only. That’s why it’s only males that take crazy risks to get access to hundreds of women.

[BobaFloutist]

Our closest relatives Chimpanzees are not particularly close relatives. Most human societies tend to be patriarchal, but some have not been.

And who tends to hold positions of power isn't necessarily 1:1 with who tends to take the most risks, in fact, most of our leaders are usually prone to putting themselves in less danger than those they govern.

[sjducb]

I’m curious why you bring up the rare cases of matriarchal societies as a way to disprove the general thrust of the argument. The existence of a few matriarchal societies doesn’t disprove my argument that biology makes us patriarchal.

If I said Dutch people are taller than Spanish people you wouldn’t start talking about your one tall Spanish friend as a way of disproving my argument.

Something is making you clutch at straws to try to disprove the argument that biology causes patriarchy.

On the second point. Leaders take risks to get into the leadership position. That’s why the lower ranks are taking huge risks.

[golemotron]

Historically they have always been at risk of losing their position. Often that means death or other severe personal cost. Leadership among primates is very risky.

[BobaFloutist]

Many mammals are matriarchal. Far more don't exhibit much in terms of gendered differences in leadership whatsoever.

[sjducb]

In hominids leadership is linked with male mating success.

In most of the other mammals leadership is orthogonal to mating success. For example a pride of lions is a matriarchy. The lionesses are in charge. However there is only one mature male in the pride he mates with all of the lionesses.

Other males will take extraordinary risks to kill that male and take his pride.

[marcellus23]

Why do you think it's more likely to be societal and not inherited?

[BobaFloutist]

Because we have easily observed societal norms that have to account for some percentage of the difference, without measuring differences absent those norms we have no conceivable way to know that hereditary traits contribute to any percentage of the differences.

[marcellus23]

> we have no conceivable way to know that hereditary traits contribute to any percentage of the differences.

Right, that explains why we can't know what % heredity contributes. It doesn't explain why we should assume that % to be small.

[BobaFloutist]

Because many historical cases of what were thought to be fundamental differences between the genders turned out to be strictly socially informed. I think it's more likely that the current suite of stereotypes is also incorrect than that we just happened to finally get it right.

[marcellus23]

I disagree that stereotypes really vary over time or space as it seems like you're implying. Many of the gender stereotypes today are more or less the same as they were 2000 years ago, either here or on the other side of the world.

[naasking]

> we have no conceivable way to know that hereditary traits contribute to any percentage of the differences.

That's exactly what cross-cultural studies do. The evidence is pretty suggestive.

[bell-cot]

Neither propensity to high-risk behaviors, nor high intelligence, are reliably inherited. (Vs., say, blood types.)

Hence there are plenty of males who got the former, but not the latter.

[bumby]

Are you sure? A trivial search on Google scholar suggests scientists have identified specific genes that may be responsible for risky behavior. (A very cursory look seems to implicate genes that alter dopamine pathways, which, to a layperson, would make sense since dopamine is heavily involved with motivation.)

[bell-cot]

> Are you sure?

No. But from a quick search, it sounds like there are ~~100 different genes believed to be involved in risk tolerance. Vs. the extremely simple A/B/O inheritance of blood types.

[bumby]

I think you're moving the goalposts here. The original claim was that high-risk behavior isn't reliably inherited. You gave blood type as an example of an inheritable factor, but there are many other inheritable factors beyond blood type. The fact that we can identify not just inheritable factors but specific genes related to risky behavior clearly undermines your point.

Whether or not the risky behavior is due to single alleles or complex interactions between multiple genes is a different argument than whether risky behavior is inheritable.

[dehrmann]

My theory is that because of the sperm/egg relationship, survival of men is less critical to the survival of the species, so men are programmed to do more risky things, and the ones that survive are more fit.

[bluGill]

There are a few factors here.

Men can father more babies than women. Which means that a male who sacrifices himself for the community indirect ensures his siblings survive, via brothers and sisters (cousins...) while a female who sacrifices herself ensures less children for the community - not a big deal now, when when infant mortality was high all women needed to be pregnant or nursing a baby from the teens until menopause or the population would shrink enough to kill the village off.

Men can father babies with many women, which means women can select the best male. A man who does something stupid and survives often gets the attention of the women and thus is allowed to pass his genes on. (woman can have more than one partner for their babies, but only one at a time will get her pregnant). Some stupid things are useful for the village as well - if you destroy a different village that is land you can then take for your own village, if you succeed in killing the lion you ensure that lion won't attack the village. Thus for a women encouraging men to try stupid things is a good reproductive strategy by rewarding them with babies is a smart move (as a bonus the man who succeeds may have better genetics that caused the success)

There are probably more. And this deserve real study as opposed to people like me on a forum making logical things up. I'm not sure how to do such a study though.

[ozim]

Little nitpick: ones that reproduce and their offspring survive are more fit.

Man is useful to protect the offspring but is not required.

[bluGill]

If you die but protect your brothers offspring that makes your bother more fit. You share a lot of DNA with your brother so even though you (presumably) don't have kids, your death ensured your DNA survived.

[maxerickson]

It'd be interesting to try to identify highly represented individuals that were otherwise not historically notable.

[RGamma]

Your genetic influence will probably dilute over the generations and in response to environmental and cultural factors. Also, with randomness at play it may not make much of a difference after all. Properly assessing this empirically seems like a statistical nightmare.

[huytersd]

Unfortunately?

[sjducb]

We evolved in the only phylogenetic family to use organised group conflict (war) as a mating strategy.

I think we’d have a much more peaceful world if we’d evolved from crocodiles or something peaceful like that.