Comments on: Her creepy imaginary friend is called Captain Howdy

By: Alistair

Alistair — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 20:17:38 +0000

McChuck;

I’d heard…slightly less extreme numbers, but along the same lines; do you have a link?

By: McChuck

McChuck — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 12:52:53 +0000

Allstair,

Research has shown that over the long course of history, 90% of women reproduce, but less than 20% of men.

By: Alistair

Alistair — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 08:55:51 +0000

….I mean it looks like wine, and the bottle is a familiar shape….but….you know…Canada…

By: Alistair

Alistair — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 08:54:56 +0000

I think monogamy is vastly under-rated.

Polygamous societies have some very nasty features. Firsly, all those surplus males. Secondly is the need for unmarried men to take crazy risks to get into the minority of married men. Thirdly, the huge rise in the value of females turns them into a commodity.

It’s not a co-incidence that the Arabic world is a Patriachy, with women as cattle. It follows directly from 4-wives.

I ran some simple social models for polygamous pair-matching, just to see how that would differ from a monogamous rule. I assumed a composite measure of “attractiveness” (looks, fitness, wealth etc) that was lognormally distributed for both genders, that woman shared the value of their male partner whilst men summed the value of all their female partners. The results were a hugely unequal distribution of mating opportunities; Gini coefficients of 0.7 or higher. Between 30% and 70% of men didn’t typically get a look in, depending on the sd of the attractiveness distribution.

Monogamy: good for Alpha females and Beta males. Polygamy: the reverse.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 17:42:39 +0000

Anything requiring hard work and self-sacrifice is always a hard sale. Self-indulgence and gratification is always easier, and that’s the gist of what no-fault divorce actually implies on both sides of the line between men and women.

By: Bomag

Bomag — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 15:48:39 +0000

Data I’ve come across suggests that monogamy is one of the better strategies: more reports of life satisfaction; countries get more economic and social success.

The thing is a harder sell than it should be.