Live data from Hacker News

Study proves bad guys really do get the most girls

newscientist.com

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: Study proves bad guys really do get the most girls

#21
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just need to get rejected a bunch of times because you're a nice guy, resulting in plummeting self-esteem, which naturally leads to multiple substance abuse problems and a penchant for bar fights. Then you'll have to resort to petty crime to support your habits, which leads to you getting caught, eventually enough times to go to prison - and, bingo, when you get out you can get the women who rejected you before :…

lol. Taking your joke literally, I think one would simply fuck his life up in the process, without the upside of getting women at the end. From what I've seen, guys with high time preference (short-term oriented) win out at the beginning, and guys with low time preference (long-term oriented) win out in the end. Pretty tautological stuff. Guys who spend high school working out, worrying about clothes and social stand…

[deleted]

Re: Study proves bad guys really do get the most girls

#22
Bad science... The article seems to suggest that this is 'genetic'. That there must be coded traits that somehow have to be favored or at least persist.

I have been the nice guy and the bad guy many times. A lot of it has to do with ones mood and phase of life. Pretty weak to suggest that this is genetic. I don't buy it.

Re: Study proves bad guys really do get the most girls

#23

gasp women like alpha males? WTF?!?!?!?! on a less sarcastic note, notice that the traits mentioned are all leadership traits. Leaders generally have to be somewhat narcissistic, otherwise they wouldn't believe they are worthy to be leader. They have to be risk takers to upset the status quo. And they have to be Machiavellian to govern efficiently.

OH on train very recently. Yes, the girls were attractive and interesting.

Girl 1: "I think Eric likes me. I like him too" Girl 2: "Why doesn't he ask you out?" Girl 1: "I don't know. I like him. He hasn't taken the lead. It's so awkward." Girl 2: "Yeah. Totally"

Re: Study proves bad guys really do get the most girls

#24

Bad science... The article seems to suggest that this is 'genetic'. That there must be coded traits that somehow have to be favored or at least persist. I have been the nice guy and the bad guy many times. A lot of it has to do with ones mood and phase of life. Pretty weak to suggest that this is genetic. I don't buy it.

I know what you mean about how genetics is often thrown up as the answer without much discussion on the complexities of human development.

The discussion on intelligence often suffers from this. There's a level where we are talking purely about the myelin sheath and conductance latencies among other speed factors in the brain (for example my brother-in-law is obsessed with learning about history, but he is "slow" despite his knowledge), but intelligence is driven by a desire to work through and explore the kinds of things (reading, writing, problem solving) that as a side effect give individuals the qualities that are judged as intelligent. And the presence of smart adults causing children to see these activities as exciting, and also pulling them up via active feedback and passive schaffolding, makes all the difference. Some people have introduced the notion of "multiple intelligence" to describe the fact that a difference focus of one's attention in developing as a person will lead to difference categories of competency.

And my reason for bringing this up is that some will try to explain intelligence in entirely genetic terms but this doesn't square with what is observed. Evolutionary psychology helps explain a lot of things, but it is all too easy to oversimplify.

If I were give my guess right now about how genetics influences traits, I would say that it obviously determines thousands of reflexive behaviors we perform, and of course it establishes potential competencies, but I think it additionally can set up guideposts that determine personality. It is known (if I remember correctly) that in some primitive organisms a single gene switches on avoidance versus more social behavior. There are plenty of ways in which even the complex behavior of behavior of humans could be guided by genetics into certain personality tendencies or strategies. For example if the cingulate cortex turns out to be a behavior-judging module in the brain among other things, then genetics could program the cingulate to fire a note of concern to the system, or fail to do the same, with regard to whatever complex decision is being made, whenever it involves a choice to be with people or not be with people.

Similarly if there are multiple genetically guided development strategies for handling social information, and some of them just don't scale that well to larger groups of people, then perhaps this would produce anxiety and a sense of not being able to handle the situation, among people who have the more brittle genetic strategy. But the same argument could be made for voluntary control that would influence the underlying cognitive strategy, because not enough is known yet.

Re: Study proves bad guys really do get the most girls

#27
post #25
post #2

Any tips on becoming a bad guy? :)

You know that part of your brain that acts as your "tact" filter? Yeah, just stop using that.

I disagree (but not enough to vote you down). I think you're on the right track, but it's not the tact filter that you should ignore. It's the "I can't possibly talk to that girl because she'll reject me," filter that you need to ignore.

Re: Study proves bad guys really do get the most girls

#28
The study doesn't really prove anything. It creates a (poor) definition of "bad guys", creates a (very slanted) definition of "get the most girls", and then correlates the two.

Being confident in yourself could easily be confused with slight narcissistic, being impulsive could certainly be a good thing, and not all aspects of Machiavellianism are bad. It's not clear to me that their chosen traits actually define a "bad guy".

In order to determine who got the most girls, all they did was ask the people in the study (all college students) "how many partners they had and whether they were seeking brief affairs."

They point out that the "dark triads" had more partners and more desire for short-term relationships, but they don't even touch on the quality of the partners or the relationships. Their definition of getting a girl apparently includes one-night stands. Contrary to popular belief, there are girls who just want one-night stands as well, so the guys didn't "get" anything special; they engaged in an even trade. Getting a girl, in my opinion, is getting a girl to care about you. The study doesn't even touch on that.

Also, as daniel-cussen said (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=224005), because the study only focuses on college students, it gives far too much weight to trivial, shallow college relationships while not enough touching on the much-more-important relationships that come later in life.

Re: Study proves bad guys really do get the most girls

#30

gasp women like alpha males? WTF?!?!?!?! on a less sarcastic note, notice that the traits mentioned are all leadership traits. Leaders generally have to be somewhat narcissistic, otherwise they wouldn't believe they are worthy to be leader. They have to be risk takers to upset the status quo. And they have to be Machiavellian to govern efficiently.

OTOH: this is my personal take on it. fuck you evolution and your maximized expected reproductive utility. I'd rather be happy. Happiness is probably selected against since satisfied, content people don't run around trying desperately to mate as much as possible.

Happiness is not selected for or against any more than satiety is. You're using first-order reasoning on a second-order trait.
Post reply on HN