Looking for a theory...

nicethingyoucanthave · 2013-11-30T13:56:20+00:00

Roy Baumeister explains what's going on in this lecture. Risk-taking is advantageous for males as a group, but not for women, as a group. As a result, our species (and other species) has evolved so that males are the risk takers.

Another aspect of this is that there are more male outliers than women outliers. And the people you're noticing, when you talk about pushing boundaries, are the outliers (specifically, the "winner" outliers - there are also more males failing but we don't usually notice them).

For any trait you can think of, that trait will probably form a normal distribution, forming a bell curve. But the distribution for males will be flatter, with more males at both ends. This principle can be seen for traits that are easy to measure and not at all controversial. For example, the standard deviation of height is about an inch greater for males than for women. But it's also true for other traits that are controversial. What this means is, even though the average for a trait may be the same, you will often see more males way out at the extremes.

Be careful actually talking about this truth. Larry Summers was forced to resign from Harvard for pointing out that even though average ability in certain subjects was about the same for males and for women, there were more males at the extreme end

[deleted] · 2013-11-30T11:32:43+00:00

I would argue that the traits required for exceptional success are predominantly male ones. Obsessiveness, attention to detail etc.

However, in the end it comes down to intelligence. Men are much more likely to be geniuses by between 2 and 13:1 depending on whose study you trust.

Worthy of celebration? Maybe, but don't clink glasses yet. Men are also more likely to be idiots. Women occupy the middle of the bell curve. Far fewer in the top 10%, but also fewer dunces.

Clauderoughly · 2013-11-30T15:45:04+00:00

I work in project management and Business Analysis and it's a well known that women (as a group), do not take risks.

It's not in their neural make up. They will always take the "safer" option.

They have an extremely low tolerance for risk and even if the reward is huge, they don't generally take the risk.

This transfers into all aspects of the work environment.

Women tend to shun high risk / high reward jobs
Women don't tend to negotiate for better pay and conditions, and when they do, they are always very conservative about it.
Women will avoid working on high risk projects, opting for mundane one.

Women have evolved to let the men take all the risks, and then gain the rewards by making themselves sexually available to the most successful male.

This is why women always go for men they perceive to be "high status". Not just physically attractive, but successful. Hell you rarely see a successful ugly man, with an ugly wife, they almost always have a hotter younger wife because they have an extremely high SMV due to their success.

Women are acting on the behaviors that have made them evolutionary successful for the last 100,000 years.

Let the men take all the risks, and then reap the rewards by rewarding the most successful males.

As a result of this, males have evolved to be the risk takers.

It's not that hard to understand when you accept that humans are just highly evolved animals.

W-Z-R · 2013-11-30T18:14:09+00:00

Men are massive risk-takers compared with women

If you look at it evolutionarily it makes a hell of a lot of sense too; men take risks, some get massive rewards, others end up dead or in the gutter but any surplus of women is fine because the most successful men could always impregnate and take care of more than one woman at a time. A poor, non-successful woman is still useful to the species. This does tie in with female hypergamy.

vox_veritas · 2013-11-30T13:44:40+00:00

Probably because men are more willing to take high-stakes risks and are naturally more innovative.

PaulRivers10 · 2013-12-02T06:01:19+00:00

Women are socialized to be the Follow. In dating they wait for the man to ask them out. In business they wait for a field to gain popularity and stability before wanting to enter it - something that doesn't happen until someone else creates the field first.

In the follow role, they prioritize group consensus over seeing something for themselves.

Game talks a lot about how the woman wants the man to move things forward and for things to "just happen" (things that he has to get to happen himself), but while it's accurate it's a bit misleading - women want someone want that to happen with everything - not just with dating. Women often won't do things until their group, or someone they perceive as an authority figure in that area, does it first or convinces/pressures everyone to do it.

But in order to follow, someone else has to have done it first.

As to the "why", there's a lot of evolutionary biology arguments, but frankly I personally don't buy into evolutionary biology so I'll skip this. I think it's just as simple as that there's both power and merit in both the follow role and the lead role, and societally woman are conditioned to be more the follows. Maybe it really is that with an arbitrary decision one way or the other, raising children is a better suited to the follow role, so they ended up with it.

648262 · 2013-12-05T01:14:36+00:00

Men are more wired for taking on bigger risk. We probably also fail more.

I think that would tell us something about why we tend to kill ourselves more also.

Title	Looking for a theory...
Author	LouisWinthorpIII
Upvotes	14
Comments	10
Date	November 30, 2013 8:54 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/1rrkjp/looking_for_a_theory/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/looking-for-a-theory.8374 https://theredarchive.com/post/8374

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