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PhilGoetz comments on Of Gender and Rationality - Less Wrong
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Comments (342)
You're brave to even touch this topic.
I don't know if that's a factor, but it's a very good idea.
One thing puzzles me about evolutionary arguments for genders being interested in different subjects: It would be an evolutionary win to be interested in things that the other gender is interested in. Many women value a man who knows fashion; many men long for a woman who likes sports and video games. I would have expected an equilibrium with nearly-equal interest in subjects across genders.
(Yes, video games haven't been with us for an evolutionary timespan; but if there's an evo-psych explanation for men liking video games, then the things that make them like video games have been with us for an evolutionary timespan.)
You're right, this is puzzling. Has it only been true for an evolutionarily short amount of time? Is seeking members of the opposite sex who share these kinds of interests a recent cultural invention? Is the claimed preference not as strong in reality as people think?
I would say both.
For much of our evolutionary history the idea of a consumption partner rather than a production partner would have been an unaffordable luxury. Desirable properties in a mate were primarily those that would support survival and reproduction.
I think the claimed preference is also weaker in reality than people think. This is a common theme in the seduction community. What people are actually attracted to is not necessarily what they say they are looking for - sexual attraction is not based on a conscious rational weighting of positive and negative attributes.
Really interesting link, and I'd never thought of it that way before either.
Also - extra points for being the very first comment referencing the seduction community that actually provided a net plus to the conversation (regardless of gender) ;)
Thank you for the link -- I'd never seen that distinction made before and I suspect now I'm going to see it everywhere.
Yeah, I think its only been a win for a short time. Maybe, for most of history hierarchy within the genders has mattered a lot more for sexual selection. And your position in the hierarchy is usually determined by your success at gender specific roles. So if you want to be the the alpha male you need to be really good at hunting and so the best hunters win. Similarly, power in the female hierarchy was dictated by things like child rearing and social knowledge. So those that focused on that won.
It seems like that would simply set up a sort of elastic restoring force opposed to whatever force is causing (for example) men to like video games, and you wind up at a sort of equilibrium. Presumably that's what we see around us.
Why? I think that perhaps your reasoning is that you date someone based upon whether they have the same interests as you. But I suspect that this may be false - i.e. we confabulate shared interests as an explanation, where the real explanation is status or looks.