Oscar_Cunningham comments on Too busy to think about life - Less Wrong
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for natural selection reproduction is a terminal value and mating is an instrumental value. for me mating is the terminal value. to me it seems like males have mating as a terminal value and females have reproduction with a high status male as a terminal value. their signals seem to reflect this pretty accurately.
Why have you split your claim between genders? Are these values are naturally different between genders or that the differences are learned? In a society with large gender differences such as ours (or at least mine) it's hard to separate the differences in values due to gender (if there even are any) from the learned behaviour of members of the different sexes.
Their are straightforward evolutionary reasons for different mating strategies between males and females. It would be very surprising if there were not natural differences given the different selection pressures at work.
Fair enough. But those particular differences?
Yes, those particular differences are what you would expect to see given the different selection pressures that operate on male and female humans. As my previous link explains:
and later:
...
The differing parental investment between males and females together with the differing ease of confirming parentage both tend to encourage a mating preference in males for quantity and a mating preference in females for quality.
The precise degree to which this holds in humans is obviously an empirical question. The evidence I have seen leads me to place a high probability on it being more true for humans than is commonly acknowledged. If you want references I can provide some. So to answer your questions: yes, there are strong reasons to expect a difference between genders in this regard and yes, there are strong reasons to expect the particular differences nazgulnarsil suggested.
There are several reasons why females might find a preference for quantity beneficial. By mating with multiple males, a female can create confusion about the paternity of her offspring, encouraging several males to help feed her and her children. By having children with many males, instead of just one, a female gives her children greater genetic diversity and increases the likelihood of beneficial genetic traits. Also, there is some evidence that sperm may actually compete for egg fertilization, so by mating with multiple males, a female can create a situation where the "best" male is the parent of her child.
Thanks for clearing that up for me. Upvoted.
Allow me to head off a possible confusion: are you asking for unambiguous evidence to go with the theoretical prediction? That would be what I would be seeking had I made your comment.