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The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

#31

Post by setgree »

If only more academic papers were written so clearly and engagingly:

> According to “male idiot theory” (MIT) many of the differences in risk seeking behaviour, emergency department admissions, and mortality may be explained by the observation that men are idiots and idiots do stupid things.

> there can be little doubt that Darwin Award winners seem to make little or no real assessment of the risk or attempt at risk management. They just do it anyway. In some cases, the intelligence of the award winner may be questioned. For example, the office workers watching a construction worker demolishing a car park in the adjacent lot must have wondered about the man’s intelligence. After two days of office speculation—how does he plan to remove the final support to crash the car park down safely?—they discovered, on the third day, that he didn’t have a plan. The concrete platform collapsed, crushing him to death and flattening his mini-excavator.

Re: The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

#32

Post by oh_sigh »

photon_lines wrote: post #13
lelanthran wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't feel like there needs to be a discussion on 'why' they take more risks. Why not? Do you think that this: > Females expand way more energy in having and raising kids than males do (within the human species) Is the only answer applicable to "Why to males take more risk than females?"

Yes, because they have more to gain from taking the risk. Think about it for a moment.

Except that a lot of risky male behavior doesn't impress most women. Maybe it impresses other risky-behaving men though, and the respect those risky-behaving men show the risk taker translates into more desirability from women.

Re: The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

#33

Post by globular-toast »

sjducb wrote: post #5

I feel like the paper lacks a discussion about why males are more likely to take risks. Typically extremely reproductively successful men like Chengis Khan take enormous risks to get the power and status that leads to high reproductive success. Unfortunately we are all descended from those men.

Presumably the presence of risk-taking males is advantageous to the species as a whole. If our species was asexual each individual would have to be fairly risk averse as any individual lost is lost breeding capacity. But in a sexual species a lost male is fine and happens all the time. Just losing males is, of course, pointless but presumably the advantages brought by the successful ones outweighs any disadvantages brought by the unsuccessful ones. This seems to be true when you look at unsuccessful males who just tend to sit out on the sidelines or whither away in silence rather than actively leech on society while successful males can be great leaders, innovators, visionaries etc.

It's perhaps easier to see why risk-taking behaviour is less common in females, though. In a sexual species each female is required to carry at least two children, on average, to merely replace the current population (it's also beneficial if she survives the final birth). The loss of a single female is therefore quite significant. A population with more risk-taking females would be less successful than one with less.

Re: The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

#34

Post by yedava »

oh_sigh wrote: post #30
yedava wrote: post #26

Do Darwin Awards look at all of humanity or only a subset of it? Maybe there is a cultural component to behavior. Maybe there are cultures which don't treat men as idiots. How can anyone assert that men are genetically stupid without controlling for culture?

What culture treats men as idiots? Yes, there are memes about clueless men, but there are also memes about clueless women - in fact, we have an entire genre of "blonde jokes" about them - which, note, are 99% about blonde women, not blonde men. The fact that these memes exist doesn't mean that society treats men(or women) as clueless generally.

You can see it here on this discussion, or even in general on HN. It is taken as a given that men are hard wired to optimize for getting laid and all their behaviors follow from that. It's like culture is irrelevant and humans are resigned to act out their genetics.

Re: The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

#35

Post by golemotron »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #28
sjducb wrote: post #5

I feel like the paper lacks a discussion about why males are more likely to take risks. Typically extremely reproductively successful men like Chengis Khan take enormous risks to get the power and status that leads to high reproductive success. Unfortunately we are all descended from those men.

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.

We're lucky that we can look at other primates and mammals and see the same patterns.

Re: The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

#36

Post by photon_lines »

dekhn wrote: post #29
photon_lines wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a single hypothesis. If you want me to write an essay on hacker news on all the behavioral differences between males and females - it's tough luck :) If you have counter-arguments - post them so I can refute them. Cheers.

Surely you must realize that your comments here and above are ... simply not convincing? You say "we don't need to think about it", then give your own simplified explanation (which is mostly likely not a sufficient one) and then refuse to explain further, just doubling down on "my idea is right".

I edited my comment thanks to you. If you have refutations or other arguments - feel free to write about them in LONG detail and I'll do my best to get back to you. Otherwise the explanation I provided above is the best I could do given the circumstances.

Re: The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

#37

Post by bluGill »

dehrmann wrote: post #11
sjducb wrote: post #5

I feel like the paper lacks a discussion about why males are more likely to take risks. Typically extremely reproductively successful men like Chengis Khan take enormous risks to get the power and status that leads to high reproductive success. Unfortunately we are all descended from those men.

My theory is that because of the sperm/egg relationship, survival of men is less critical to the survival of the species, so men are programmed to do more risky things, and the ones that survive are more fit.

There are a few factors here.

Men can father more babies than women. Which means that a male who sacrifices himself for the community indirect ensures his siblings survive, via brothers and sisters (cousins...) while a female who sacrifices herself ensures less children for the community - not a big deal now, when when infant mortality was high all women needed to be pregnant or nursing a baby from the teens until menopause or the population would shrink enough to kill the village off.

Men can father babies with many women, which means women can select the best male. A man who does something stupid and survives often gets the attention of the women and thus is allowed to pass his genes on. (woman can have more than one partner for their babies, but only one at a time will get her pregnant). Some stupid things are useful for the village as well - if you destroy a different village that is land you can then take for your own village, if you succeed in killing the lion you ensure that lion won't attack the village. Thus for a women encouraging men to try stupid things is a good reproductive strategy by rewarding them with babies is a smart move (as a bonus the man who succeeds may have better genetics that caused the success)

There are probably more. And this deserve real study as opposed to people like me on a forum making logical things up. I'm not sure how to do such a study though.

Re: The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

#38

Post by photon_lines »

oh_sigh wrote: post #32
photon_lines wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because they have more to gain from taking the risk. Think about it for a moment.

Except that a lot of risky male behavior doesn't impress most women. Maybe it impresses other risky-behaving men though, and the respect those risky-behaving men show the risk taker translates into more desirability from women.

It may not impress women, but there are lots of studies which show that men expand a lot more energy in engaging risk-related behavior when other females are around. Whether this is biologically adaptable or not may be a question which needs to be probed further, but risk-related behavior and competition have been closely linked in humans...

Re: The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

#39

Post by bluGill »

ozim wrote: post #15
dehrmann wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that because of the sperm/egg relationship, survival of men is less critical to the survival of the species, so men are programmed to do more risky things, and the ones that survive are more fit.

Little nitpick: ones that reproduce and their offspring survive are more fit. Man is useful to protect the offspring but is not required.

If you die but protect your brothers offspring that makes your bother more fit. You share a lot of DNA with your brother so even though you (presumably) don't have kids, your death ensured your DNA survived.

Re: The Darwin Awards: sex differences in idiotic behaviour

#40

Post by bell-cot »

bumby wrote: post #19
bell-cot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither propensity to high-risk behaviors, nor high intelligence, are reliably inherited. (Vs., say, blood types.) Hence there are plenty of males who got the former, but not the latter.

Are you sure? A trivial search on Google scholar suggests scientists have identified specific genes that may be responsible for risky behavior. (A very cursory look seems to implicate genes that alter dopamine pathways, which, to a layperson, would make sense since dopamine is heavily involved with motivation.)

> Are you sure?

No. But from a quick search, it sounds like there are ~~100 different genes believed to be involved in risk tolerance. Vs. the extremely simple A/B/O inheritance of blood types.

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