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Eugine_Nier comments on Polling Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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The reason women are thought to vary less than men is because that's what nearly all the statistics say. There is a fairly straightforward ev-psych explanation for this. As for the mechanism, there is no consensus on it and it's not at all clear that the mechanism you describe is the only (or even main) one.
The only statistics I've actually seen addressing sex differences in standard deviations from the mean are IQ, height, weight, and life expectancy. Do you have links to studies from this perspective on other traits?
Without disputing the fact that evolutionary psychology may correctly explain some things, the problem with ev-psych exlanations is that they can explain anything. Just as you can finance pundit diametrically opposed stock market data and they'll find some way to fit both sets to their theory, and armchair evolutionary psychologist can explain any behavior in ev-pysch terms, correct or not. Being able to offer a mechanism is, in my view, rather important for corroboration.
Um, no. Yes it's possible to rationalize anything if one is creative enough, this isn't limited to ev-psych, but just as some arguments are better then others, some ev-psych explanations are better then others, and this one is pretty straightforward: namely since the number of children an individual female can have is much more limited then an individual male, it makes sense for females to use less risky, i.e., lower variance, strategies. Hence, we should expect males to have a higher variance in most traits unless there is some reason for that particular trait to be selected otherwise.
Um, in fact in this case a single mechanism would be evidence against the ev-psych explanation, which predicts evolution to arrange this for each trait in whatever way it happens to stumble upon.
That may or may not be so, but ev-psych explanations are no more than post factum just-so stories, nothing but handwaving. They are useful to humans because humans have a need to have things explained, but they are not science.
Honestly, your comment appears to consist of a bunch of non-sequiturs. In case I'm missing something could you explain whether you think this is equally true of any evolutionary explanation. If not what's so special about ev-psych?
Basically, yes, "evolutionary explanations" are narratives and not science.
Ok, what about evolution itself, or the theory of the big bang? Basically, I'm trying to figure out what you mean by "no more than post factum just-so stories, nothing but handwaving".
Evolution is a mechanism that can trivially be shown to work. Evolution can be demonstrated in species with short reproduction cycles. The Big Bang theory makes predictions about what you should see and what you should not see in reality. So far its predictions were correct.
So does ev-psych. If you mean that ev-psych rarely makes predictions as opposed to explaining existing data, the same appears to be true of the big bang.