The way women maximize their reproduction is by having male kids who are alpha males
If a woman maximizes reproduction (and so fitness) by having more sons than daughters, then why doesn’t the population tilt towards a male:female ratio > 1?
Because Bugle is wrong and seems to be falling into a species of the group selection error.
If indeed women try to have only alpha males (in the sense of some genetic mutation causing her to have more high-quality males and is being put to the test), then other women make a “genetic killing” (genetic birthing?) by having daughters instead. The equilibrium of this game is that of 50⁄50 chance of male/female babies.
(And alphaness is a positional good anyway and so can’t increase in the gene pool.)
OTOH, cultural mechanisms can permit group selection to occur, so a culture could put a bottleneck on its growth rate by endorsing abortion/infanticide specifically of female babies. (China and Middle East, I’m looking in your general direction here.)
And if a culture endorsed killing most male babies (or with modern medical technology, conceived only girls most of the time), and implemented polygamy, they’d be using their child-raising resources efficiently and would increase their growth rate linearly with the number of women.
Thinking about this some more: the reason this isn’t a historical winner is rather obvious—a mostly female population can’t field a big army and is invaded by young males from other groups. Also, the women have incentives to move to a different group where they could have a man all to themselves (or to invite foreign men), so a few men would have to effectively rule and police a mostly female society.
If a woman maximizes reproduction (and so fitness) by having more sons than daughters, then why doesn’t the population tilt towards a male:female ratio > 1?
Because Bugle is wrong and seems to be falling into a species of the group selection error.
If indeed women try to have only alpha males (in the sense of some genetic mutation causing her to have more high-quality males and is being put to the test), then other women make a “genetic killing” (genetic birthing?) by having daughters instead. The equilibrium of this game is that of 50⁄50 chance of male/female babies.
(And alphaness is a positional good anyway and so can’t increase in the gene pool.)
OTOH, cultural mechanisms can permit group selection to occur, so a culture could put a bottleneck on its growth rate by endorsing abortion/infanticide specifically of female babies. (China and Middle East, I’m looking in your general direction here.)
And if a culture endorsed killing most male babies (or with modern medical technology, conceived only girls most of the time), and implemented polygamy, they’d be using their child-raising resources efficiently and would increase their growth rate linearly with the number of women.
Thinking about this some more: the reason this isn’t a historical winner is rather obvious—a mostly female population can’t field a big army and is invaded by young males from other groups. Also, the women have incentives to move to a different group where they could have a man all to themselves (or to invite foreign men), so a few men would have to effectively rule and police a mostly female society.