But if women have a biological imperative to mate with assertive, dominant men, then why isn’t the population of men already made up of 100% assertive, dominant men? You’d expect the submissive “betas” to have been selected out of the population by now.
Not exactly. While someone with “bad genes” usually produces children with “bad genes” someone who has “good genes” doesn’t always produce children with “good genes”. Mutations happen and most of them are bad.
Being able to walk upright on two feet is key to reproductive success, and thus the fraction of babies that are born crippled (due to mutations) is quite low. If being dominant and assertive has been key to reproductive success among men for a long time, one would expect the fraction of male babies that are born nondominant/nonassertive (due to mutations) to be quite low.
If being dominant and assertive has been key to reproductive success among men for a long time
Not necessarily. Historically, once you get too many “dominant and assertive” men in close proximity, they start to kill each other. Their reproductive success is conditional on not being dead and in evolutionary terms that condition ceased to be very important only a moment ago.
Their reproductive success is conditional on not being dead and in evolutionary terms that condition ceased to be very important only a moment ago.
It’s still pretty important, it’s not like modern homicide rates and ancestral homicide rates are totally incomparable. Even if you don’t get killed, gangsters are at risk of going to prison, and I hear prison is not a good place to meet girls.
But there’s a lot of room between “weak, emotionally-manipulated, directionless sheep” and “violent enough to be at risk of getting killed or jailed”. And it’s a puzzle, to me at least, that this middle zone gets filled so rarely nowadays. Most traits are distributed on a bell curve, and one would expect to see the same for this trait, with most men having some mid level of “firefighter masculinity” that would be enough to impress women but not so much to be at serious risk of homicide or imprisonment. This doesn’t seem to be the case, and I offered some possible explanations above. (Insofar as there’s a two-humped distribution, my guess is that the humps are based (a) easy access to streaming pornography during childhood or (b) need to overcompensate for deep insecurities through hypermasculine show behaviors. BTW, it’s incorrect to think that gangsters are secure in themselves.)
Being able to walk upright is a binary criteria. The fact that having a high IQ correlates with being tall suggests that there are a lot of basic genes involved in high IQ or being tall. There are many different genes that can mutate and that slightly reduce effectiveness of the organism.
Being unable to walk is mostly due to single mutations that can be removed easier by evolution.
Few people are dominant and assertive when they are weaker than their peers. People are usually dominant and assertive as a result of being stronger.
Not exactly. While someone with “bad genes” usually produces children with “bad genes” someone who has “good genes” doesn’t always produce children with “good genes”. Mutations happen and most of them are bad.
Being able to walk upright on two feet is key to reproductive success, and thus the fraction of babies that are born crippled (due to mutations) is quite low. If being dominant and assertive has been key to reproductive success among men for a long time, one would expect the fraction of male babies that are born nondominant/nonassertive (due to mutations) to be quite low.
Not necessarily. Historically, once you get too many “dominant and assertive” men in close proximity, they start to kill each other. Their reproductive success is conditional on not being dead and in evolutionary terms that condition ceased to be very important only a moment ago.
It’s still pretty important, it’s not like modern homicide rates and ancestral homicide rates are totally incomparable. Even if you don’t get killed, gangsters are at risk of going to prison, and I hear prison is not a good place to meet girls.
But there’s a lot of room between “weak, emotionally-manipulated, directionless sheep” and “violent enough to be at risk of getting killed or jailed”. And it’s a puzzle, to me at least, that this middle zone gets filled so rarely nowadays. Most traits are distributed on a bell curve, and one would expect to see the same for this trait, with most men having some mid level of “firefighter masculinity” that would be enough to impress women but not so much to be at serious risk of homicide or imprisonment. This doesn’t seem to be the case, and I offered some possible explanations above. (Insofar as there’s a two-humped distribution, my guess is that the humps are based (a) easy access to streaming pornography during childhood or (b) need to overcompensate for deep insecurities through hypermasculine show behaviors. BTW, it’s incorrect to think that gangsters are secure in themselves.)
Where do you get your sample from? Do you think that your conclusion applies to, say, rural Idaho? or to blue-collar working men?
Being able to walk upright is a binary criteria. The fact that having a high IQ correlates with being tall suggests that there are a lot of basic genes involved in high IQ or being tall. There are many different genes that can mutate and that slightly reduce effectiveness of the organism.
Being unable to walk is mostly due to single mutations that can be removed easier by evolution.
Few people are dominant and assertive when they are weaker than their peers. People are usually dominant and assertive as a result of being stronger.