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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely. Monogamy advantages non-alpha males, to the disadvantage of most women. Women want to mate with the leader of the pack; if all females mate and carry the children of the one leader, all other males don't mate _at all, ever_.

Many (not all, but many) animal mammal societies work like this, and there are strong indications humans were wired to work like this too. Some human cultures still use that form of reproductive organization.

And then MALES (non-alpha ones) invented monogamy to get a piece of the action.

It's extemely ironic that women would complain about the disappearance of something that was designed to their direct detriment.

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> It's extemely ironic that women would complain about the disappearance of something that was designed to their direct detriment.

So-called 'alpha males' tend to define and shape the culture they're a part of, a lot more than the 'non-alpha' males you just spent ten sentences shitting on. It's interesting you think low-status males just 'invented' monogamy, and in doing so turned the reproductive tables on 20% of men and 100% of women.

I think it's more like, historically speaking, cultures that allowed for more males to have reproductive success, and that therefore gave more males a stake in the society and culture they're a part of, saw more success and out-competed the ones that did not. Which is to say, a society where near-100% of the population have a direct reproductive stake in the future, will be more productive than societies where about 60% of the population does.

Whether this remains true now is an interesting question.

Bingo.

The beta males did not invent monogamy; it evolved as a system whereby more productive abled bodies were invested in the success of a society. These societies proliferated.

> Whether this remains true now is an interesting question.

I believe that when the benefits do not outweigh the cons, a lot of males start checking out of society altogether. See Japan [1] as an example. E.g. I'm going to have to work my ass off throughout life jumping through hoops and then work 80 hour weeks at BigCompanyJapan and then maybe find a woman who I won't have time to spend with? Fuck it, video games, porn, and basement sound better.

For a more US-centric view, check out [2].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

[2] - http://www.amazon.ca/The-War-Against-Boys-Misguided/dp/06848...

These statistics provide some evidence: http://www.japancrush.com/2013/stories/30-of-single-japanese...

There is an antithetic trend in Japan though, since Japanese women are emancipated and the high economic demands prevent them from investing time into dating. So, the numbers could possibly differ even more. (I’m not sure how emancipation affects the statistics for the males, though.)

> Some human cultures still use that form of reproductive organization.

Citation needed. In what culture "all females mate and carry the children of the one leader, all other males don't mate _at all, ever", or anything even close to this?

By contrast, there are a lot of cultures (eg. India, the Arab/Muslim world) where marriage is societally more or less obligatory.

> Citation needed.

This is still very new research, but not implausible. See for example section 3.6 in this paper [1].

> By contrast, there are a lot of cultures (eg. India, the Arab/Muslim world) where marriage is societally more or less obligatory.

An interpretation of that could be that it’s a result of memetics [2], i.e. several successful cultures have invented marriage because it makes them successful. Marriage might significantly increase social stability at all scales. For an interesting discussion about these kind of arguments from cultural evolution, see this blog article [3].

[1] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.6231.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics

[3] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/07/the-argument-from-cultu...

The theory you brought makes no sense for two reasons:

1. If all women mated with the same small group of genetically-gifted men, there would be much less gene-mixing and variation in their offspring. Not good for evolution.

2. Monogamy was invented because it takes a lot of time/effort to bring up human offspring (typically 18-21 years :-)). Mothers need a guarantee that fathers will be around to provide for the children.

1. Do you have a source for that claim? You probably only run into a significant lack of variation if the gene pool is extremely small, i.e. in incestuous relationships.

2. As far as I know this is not fully known yet. It is conceivable that the offspring did just fine in polygamous relationships or just inside the secure environment that the pack provides. There is, for example, some evidence that intensive mothering is ineffective [1]. Among Great Apes the upbringing of the young is commonly shared between the members of the pack and the identity of the father is unknown. Moreover, consider that the importance of education only became really significant within the past 100-50 years, or so, but the concept of marriage in Western culture is much older than that [2].

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.12170/abstra...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage#Europe

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/neolithic-culture-may...

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