[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.