Oddbean new post about login | logout "Humanity has an inherent addiction to what they want and not what they need." Yes, but that is sexual selection. Women won't reproduce with men who don't make the cut. They'd rather stay childless. Which leads to the next generation of men being more-likely to make the cut. We're just taking notice of this dynamic now because the environment has changed so dramatically, that about a quarter to a third of men won't make the next cut. That's brutal. Evolutionary pressure on par with the Bubonic Plague.
I was referring to resources as a whole. Not just sexual selection. Sorry, I didn't read the whole thread before I wrote all that. Whoops. Yes, I agree with you. 🤷♂️ But, oh well. This isn't the first time this has happened throughout history. The Silent and Boomer generations were able to afford taking care of larger families due to lower living costs, then as time went on and as living costs increased at a significantly faster rate than wages and salaries, fewer and fewer people were able to afford having a family. No one said evolution was a merciful process.
We're all suffering from normalcy bias, I suppose. We look back 50 years and assume that's how things have always been.
Could be the case. That's what complacency gets you. 🤷♂️ Here's a funny story. The short version, that is. I had a discussion with this 19 year-old kid not too long about what he wants to do when he gets older and his response was "I just want to help people." No doubt a nice sentiment, but then I said towards the end of our convo "That's nice. But, if you don't have the capacity to care for your own well-being, how do you expect to care for the well-being of others?", and that kinda lost him a bit. What I mean by this is that the priorities of the newer generations seem a bit different in comparison to those of previous generations. Of course, I don't mean for this to sound like a generalization in any way. A big portion of them seem a bit lost, is all.
They're taught to be helpful, but not ambitious. Ambition is seen as "toxic masculinity" because basic resources seem to just fall from heaven, due to the welfare state and cheap credit. They don't realize that male ambition had a purpose.
Just another part of the states indoctrination program. 😮💨
It's not the state's program. The state is just the means to do the thing, not the originator of the thing.
I know.
So be more precise in your speech.
Or perhaps don't overthink everything.
No. I think that under-thinking is much worse in nearly all cases. So, I'll stick to my over-thinking.
Lol. Yes, because overthinking has been working so well for you recently. 😉
Most women actually also dont make the cut. They have absolute zero evolutionary prowess because they were mostly too busy trying to show men that they can be men too. They are further down the line, closer to the checkered flag of being evolutionarily obsolete than most men because of it. And let's face it, whoever (male or female) owered themselves to being a labrat not 2 years ago, and now has developed the attention span of a fruitfly while they seemingly live like a potato bug (can't hear or see shit) have already failed natural selection. They are now dependents. Leeches on a cyst and angry at people like me for rupturing that cyst because the FIAT poison within it is not their lifeblood. The truth hurts.
Most men and most women are not childless. That's "the cut". Men are significantly more likely to be childless than women, in most countries.
Is this more the case in first, second, or third world countries?
Which nations are leading has changed over time, tho.
"Men are significantly more likely to be childless than women, in most countries." I was just referring to this part.
Hmm... I don't know. I assume that a welfare state geared towards women perhaps increases male childlessness, as it functions as an ersatz-husband, but I've got no source.
Reduces the fitness costs of both hypergamy and promiscuity. Hmmm. Could go either way, prima facie. Does anyone have trend data handy?
"Does anyone have trend data handy?" Lol. I gotta go. I have a busy day. I'll check back in later. 😎👍 @Laeserin You're up! 🤣😅
(Yawn) I gotta sleep here. GN plebs, let's do these convos more often!
GN. 💤
1.4 reproducing women for every reproducing man, averaging over hundreds of generations in Europe and West Africa. But only 1.1 in East Asia, and middling numbers in West Asia and East Africa. I'll chase up the paper if anyone wants it. No, I have no idea why the regional differences. Culture, and marriage customs, but in what ways...?
I suspect more variance in the partners in more difficult environments, perhaps? Europe and West Africa have been particularly difficult places.
Very possible. But the effect is in an unexpected direction - more monopolising of mating opportunities by high-status males, at least in the form of high remarriage rates.
Yes, that's what I meant. In the West, at least, men are more likely to remarry after divorce, which would increase the number of men with children from more than one woman. Western women are also probably more likely to have children from more than one man.
100%, but, before sulfanilimide and penicillin, as many as half of men didn't make the cut, every generation. Childbearing-age women just died in childbirth all the time, to the point that men outnumbered women 2:1 in many age brackets (if there hadn't been a major war for a while). Hard to comprehend these days, but that's the environment our cultures evolved in...
Yes, evolutionary pressure used to be immense. That's why we're all so closely-related. The idea that "society owes men a wife" is the modern thing that doesn't hold up to examination. If women no longer have men to choose from, they can't select for positive traits. Society has no vested interested in overriding womens' ability to choose a partner.