[lelanthran]

> There was at least one hypothesis floating around a while ago that males take more risks because they’re expendable to society, but females are not.

That's not the hypothesis the way I heard it - men are more expendable to society, but it's really a stretch to conclude that because men are more expendable, they make decisions with this knowledge in mind.

I mean, really - there's no logic linking the two.

[SkyMarshal]

The logic may work via negation or inversion. Eg there is individual disincentive for both women and men to engage in high-risk behavior. But societies still needed a class of people to go out and hunt game, defend society from lions or opposing armies, or other higher-risk ventures, despite the individual disincentive to do so.

Women are not expendable and thus society did not incentivize them to do these high-risk things. But men are, so societies created various social incentives to facilitate high-risk endeavors - honor, social esteem, medals, hierarchical rank, wealth, fame, etc. Many died doing so, but the ones that succeeded and survived reaped these various rewards and got to mate, producing heirs with similar risk-taking characteristics and capabilities from both nature and nurture.

[k__]

Evolution doesn't look into the future.

In the past, groups with women that were more risk averse would do better on average when the group was decimated and needed to repopulate.

Groups with women that took too many risks didn't survive.

So, now we have more risk aware women.

Risk taking for men didn't have that of an impact and might even have proven beneficial (e.g., Genghis Kahn, etc.)

Just my assumption...

[bluGill]

Don't forget a risk taking man may die but ensure the rest of the village (who he is closely related to) survives.

[bumby]

>they make decisions with this knowledge in mind

I read it as an artifact of natural selection and natural selection does not work "with this knowledge in mind".