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Comment by wyager | Hacker News Reader

As with many sexually dimorphic behaviors in humans (and mammals in general), this flows from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis

You can have a stable/growing population with only 1 male per n>1 females. So, the evolutionarily optimal strategy is to crank up trait variance in males and have females select only the top 1/n males (hand-wavily speaking). Most modern human cultures suppressed this dynamic via socially enforced pair bonding. When you lose that social adaptation, you revert back to more atavistic matching dynamics.

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Very interesting, from a systems perspective it makes a lot of sense that this would be the limit cycle behavior. The conclusion is a kind of corrolary to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateman's_principle, as regards the presence of energy bottlenecks (namely, gestation) in the process that propagates a species.

Yep this is it. We are seeing our evolutionary state manifest as we work to undo a few millennia of "repressive" cultural norms.

The sad truth is most men are disposable (from an evolutionary point of view), much like the vast quantities of sperm they produce.

Came here to say something similar. Humans are much closer to “other” animals than what they think, and social instituions like marriage were created to prevent social mayhem.

> Humans are much closer to “other” animals than what they think

Plain false. Humans are very unique compared to other animals as I wrote in another response. See prof. Sapolsky's lectures on the topic. He's an outstanding anthropologist.

I think I agree with this. Society's laws and contracts mirror our instincts and feelings. We create laws because they encode a deep-seated feeling that most of us have about things. Not everyone agrees on every law; most of us don't want to murder, and would be sad if we did, but there are still serial killers.

We don't change our instincts just because there are laws. Look at how many people are in prison for drug possession. The law is much weaker than brain chemicals being expressed. (Also, not every law is based on wide agreement of human emotion. Sometimes lawmakers simply do whatever. I'm mostly talking about the ones that have been around since the dawn of humanity.)

> evolutionarily optimal strategy

Gender roles (and sexism) are primarily cultural. If you look through history there has been matriarchal and patriarchal societies. Monogamous and polygamous and so on in many combinations.

Humans sexuality is very unique compared to other animals and, respectfully, we should try not to play armchair Darwin.

There are very good lectures from prof. Sapolsky on youtube on the topic. Humans are complex and very weird.

Roles are very cultural, but who has the eggs isn't. One person can create 10-20 offspring over their life, another can create thousands (hypothetically).

...and that means close to nothing, as shown by history.

I second Sapolsky, fun to watch, dry humour.

> Gender roles (and sexism) are primarily cultural.

I think, slut shaming might have a biological component: you can't be shure the kid is yours.

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