
Is There Anything Good About Men? - bootload
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
======
chegra
Summary: Men are both better and worst than women. They are most at the top
and also the most at the bottom. More men in CEO position and also more men in
prison.

He tied in the fact that a society needs as many womb as possible and a few
penis would do the job. Basically, saying the more people in a society the
stronger it is. With this fact men basically are expendable, thus encouraged
by society to participate in high risk endeavors. With high risk comes high
reward. Hence a few successful men at the top.

Also, he points to the fact men have lots of shallow relationship while women
value intimate relationship. But having a many shallow relationship allows men
be more innovative since concepts are passed between then quicker compared to
women.

Women would form small groups of intimate relationship while men will form
large group. With large group emerges synergy and the whole is greater than
the sum of it's parts. Hence, men form cultural things like religion,
universities, sport teams, etc. What comes with forming and creating them is
men dominate them. Also, the system men set up are design that only a few can
be rewarded and recognized.

There wasn't no real conspiracy by men to dominate.

~~~
joe_the_user
_There wasn't no real conspiracy by men to dominate._

"There was no conspiracy" theory seems to have become as problematic today as
all-embracing-conspiracy-theories.

In any social species, subgroups with common interests has colluded to
different degrees. The collusion has been more effective when the group had
dominant social power. Many societies have strictures which aim to keep women
in-line and faithful to their husbands. It rather clear this is organized in
the interests of the husbands (and not in the interests of the handsome
vagabonds passing through...).

One can be certain there have been _many_ overt and implicit conspiracies
among groups of men as well as among groups of women, now and through-out
history. Just not a single one since men and women are each members of other
groups as well.

~~~
Confusion
Emergent collusion due to groups of people sharing a goal is not equivalent to
a conspiracy. There is no such thing as an _implicit_ conspiracy: that's a
contradiction in terminis.

Similarly, _a_ group of men conspiring to do something is not equivalent to a
conspiracy for male domination. It's usually a conspiracy for _their_
domination; their maleness is incidental.

------
johnthedebs
A long, but interesting read. This line stood out as pretty interesting - I'd
never given this sort of thing much thought:

"If a group loses half its men, the next generation can still be full-sized.
But if it loses half its women, the size of the next generation will be
severely curtailed. Hence most cultures keep their women out of harm’s way
while using men for risky jobs."

Overall, it's a pretty objective (and in-depth) view of the gender debate.

~~~
woodall
That reasoning only works if all members are still willing to mate. What if
the remaining species are heart broken/distraught/ect and unwilling to mate?
Do we force them to mate? How do our values and ideals change when this
occurs? Do they change at all?

When we imagine this apocalyptic doom of population, and mankind, we imagine a
perfect world in some much that we think everyone will breed with everyone.
Some men my have a problem(ED), some women may not be able to bare
children(thus the creation of fertility gods), and some-be it male or female-
may not want to "do it" period(homosexuality). We may also still hold old
world values/moral beliefs, such as monogamy, dear.

The quote posted by Obiterdictum[1] from Orwell, one of my favorite writers,
is very intriguing to me. The part that stands out the most is:

 _''But this is a fallacy based on the notion that human beings can be bred
like animals.''_ -One the topic of utilitarianistic gender values

Animals in captivity are usually force breed to maintain a linage or specific
trait. Animals can build emotional bonds, however, in the wild we see very few
mammal species that follow the same guidelines we find social acceptable[2].
For us to believe that every male will mate with every female we must also
believe that every female will mate with every male, and vica versa.

Part of monogamy is breed into our subconscious, part is based on proximity,
part is due to social context, and part is, well, emotional[3]. There are
countless stories of widows never marring after their husbands are gone[see
Penelope in The Odyssey]. We, many of us, enjoy monogamous relationships.
Something about them brings us a joy that is very hard to put a value on. We
can be tricked into them, stockholm syndrome, we can even be forced into them,
rape, but we can rarely artificially create them, Truman show.

We must also asses the value of monogamous relation ships versus open relation
ships(I am sorry I do not know the proper word for it); thinking that everyone
will value them the same. I do not have enough data to pass judgment,
although, the animal kingdom does seem to be doing well for itself ;).

Then we have to break down the proper breeding matrices. No one has said
anything about age distribution in population. So are we assuming all the
males/females too young/old to breed died OR are we not including them in the
first count? To inspire discussion I will say we never included them in the
first count...but then the situation doesn't really work as we have a new
generation coming of age at some point; a boost if you will. Hypothetically,
using the example given with a population size 150(aftermath) we are left with
100 women and 50 men. Breeding can be done in at least 1 day; a week at the
utmost. Now those women are taken pretty much out of commission at the ~7,8,9
month. That leaves 100 women more vulnerable to starvation, illness,
miscarriage, death giving birth. We also do not have the number of still
births. What is the status of food? How did this population destruction occur?
Too many variables.

For every perfect scenario there exists an imperfect one just as likely to
occur as the latter. No person, be it male or female, is more valuable because
they were born with a functioning set of genitalia. Value is always in the eye
of the beholder[see currency, trade, marketing].

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1635248>

[2][http://www.trinity.edu/rnadeau/fys/barash%20on%20monogamy.ht...](http://www.trinity.edu/rnadeau/fys/barash%20on%20monogamy.htm)

[3] <http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/346monogamyAnimals.html>

[4]<http://www.mythweb.com/odyssey/book01.html#notes5back>

I had to edit and remove some of my comment as it became more of a rant than
an acceptable comment. The tl;dr version is, we are all different and thus
behave differently. Some may be more willing to breed for the sake of it while
others not so much, however, we can all be conditioned so that we are prepared
for such a situation. I am not condoning this. I feel that place male and
female on a scale is boarding the lines of eugenics- to which I am more
opposed than I am for. Some men are strong, while others are weak. Some women
are stronger than a weak man. Some men are cowards, others are not. Some women
are brave, others are not. Measuring strength is easy, measuring other- not so
physical traits- is harder.

~~~
lionhearted
> We may also still hold old world values/moral beliefs, such as monogamy,
> dear.

I think monogamy spread because St. Augustine made it part of the Roman
Catholic dogma that became the foundation for all Christian dogma,
Christianity took over Europe, and then Europe colonized pretty much the rest
of the world. I tend to think if things had gone differently, we'd be looking
at a polygamous world.

(Edit: Did I just argue sexuality is a social construct? Oy vey...)

~~~
wazoox

      >I think monogamy spread because St. Augustine made it 
      > part of the Roman Catholic dogma that became the 
      > foundation for all Christian dogma
    

Hum, monogamy was the norm in the Roman and greek world anyway. And wasn't
monogamy the common jewish habit, too? It predates christianity by centuries,
anyway.

~~~
lionhearted
> Hum, monogamy was the norm in the Roman and greek world anyway. And wasn't
> monogamy the common jewish habit, too? It predates christianity by
> centuries, anyway.

Sort of - I'm under the impression that Greek and Roman monogamy was more
"soft monogamy" so to speak. You had your wife, but then you were free to do
whatever your like beyond that as long as you didn't break your duty to the
family, yes?

Interesting, most of the patriarchs in the Bible were polygamous, it was a
famous rabbi's teachings (forget which one) that mandated monogamy as the way.
For instance, here's Wikipedia on Abraham:

"Jews, Christians, and Muslims consider him father of the people of Israel.
For Jews and Christians this is through his son Isaac,[2] by his wife Sarah;
for Muslims, he is a prophet of Islam and the ancestor of Muhammad through his
other son Ishmael, born to him by Sarah's handmaiden, Hagar."

King Solomon was known for his many wives. I think hard monogamy - no
prostitution, no bisexuality, no mistresses, concubines, or sexual relations
with slaves - was largely established as the norm by Christianity. I know the
Romans and Greeks definitely had other lovers and orgies and things like that,
whereas once the Roman Catholic Church was established by Constantine this
sort of thing was outlawed pretty quickly.

~~~
joshuacc
Just a minor point: Constantine didn't "establish" the Catholic Church in the
sense of making it the official religion. Rather, he issued a decree which
made it legal to practice Christianity.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Milan>

~~~
lionhearted
This is correct, my mistake. Constantine de-criminalized Christianity,
Theodosius made it the official religion of Rome at the Council of Nicea:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius_I#Nicene_Christianit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius_I#Nicene_Christianity_becomes_the_state_religion)

------
kqr2
Roy F. Baumeister recently expanded his original essay into a book:

 _Is There Anything Good About Men? How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men_

[http://www.amazon.com/There-Anything-Good-About-
Men/dp/01953...](http://www.amazon.com/There-Anything-Good-About-
Men/dp/019537410X/)

------
bambax
As a (happy) father of three I feel the right to share a dirty little secret:
taking care of young kids is boring as hell.

But somebody has to do it; in mammals it's only natural that it's the female,
since she has to be around anyway in order to breast feed (which is not the
case with birds for example: both parents can find and bring back food to the
young).

So maybe the adventurous sailors explore the world simply _because they can_ ;
not "in order to come back rich, and mate" but because, having mated, they can
leave their family behind and go do something else.

~~~
GFischer
"taking care of young kids is boring as hell."

There were articles about how couples with children are unhappier over here
recently:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1494011>

Yet I believe I'd be unhappy in my old age if I don't have children (not to
mention several good points in that discussion).

I keep going back to the "experiencing self vs remembering self" talk many
people here directed me to:

[http://sheshtawy.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/experience-self-
vs...](http://sheshtawy.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/experience-self-vs-
remembering-self-experience-vs-memory/)

The experiencing self is unhappier, but the remembering self is definitely
happier :)

~~~
bambax
Like I said, I'm a very happy father (my kids are 5, 2 and 1). I love them
(they helped me understand what "love" actually means). They are the joy of my
life.

But spending too much time with them is not as fulfilling as actually doing
something -- or even reading a good book.

There is no fulfillment in wiping a child's ass, or even feeding them. You do
it because you have to, and I actually don't mind doing it. But as useful as
it is for them, it's pointless for me.

That is not a problem as long as I have other things to do / to care about; it
would be if they were the beginning and end of my day.

------
zeteo
Evolutionary psychology without lots of backing data means very little. The
hypotheses are very fun to think of, but there's no guarantee that you've
thought of everything that could have happened a thousand millennia ago(and
you probably haven't). Baumeister brought up some very interesting points
(that I'm sure riled up a lot of feminist feathers), but there are also holes
in his argument, such as the two below.

First, there is no mechanism of action that backs up his claim that society
uses men as expendable. It's easy to see that it would be adaptive (for the
society itself) to use men this way, but there's no guarantee this will happen
without a mechanism of action. In fact, society seems to have developed
mechanisms (such as monogamous marriage) that act against allowing men to be
disposable sources of semen.

Second, even accepting everything else, his essential claim that a woman can't
increase the number of her descendants by acquiring wealth and prestige is
clearly false. All she has to do is find a way to transfer the wealth/prestige
to her son(s), who in turn can use it in the ways Baumeister indicated.

------
mjterave
"Men go to extremes more than women, and this fits in well with culture using
them to try out lots of different things, rewarding the winners and crushing
the losers."

Is there anything more fitting to the audience of this site? Does this fit in
with the sex distribution here? (surely)

------
Joeboy
> Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men

Anyone know where that conclusion originates? It's kind of hard to google - I
keep finding myself back at Roy Baumeister.

------
tmcw
Hey, I've devised a simple rule for determining whether articles are
completely vacuous! Just divide the number of times the author uses weasel
words like "most" by the number of references cited:

(38 most) / (0 references) = ∞ vacuousness!

~~~
ajscherer
He does refer to other "research", but since it is a transcript of a talk they
aren't really explicit citations.

That aside, I observed a ton of hand waving in this talk, and I'm willing to
bet it isn't backed up by the appropraite amount of rigor in his "research".
In particular, I am concerned about how hard he tried to poke holes in his own
theory, given the risks that might pose to his forthcoming (at the time of the
talk) book.

Since we just had Cargo Cult Science posted the other day, this is a great
time to think about this. I sometimes think that we (hacker news readers)
might actually be more suseptible to accepting theories that haven't
rigorously examined because our need to understand things is unusally great.
So when we come across a theory that is internally consistent, not obviously
wrong, and just sort of seems to make sense, we tend to reject any attempts to
discredit the theory, lest we risk going from understanding to not
understanding.

In other words, I think we sometimes value the feeling of understanding
something over any utility that would come from actually understanding it.

------
jarin
I think a key takeaway from this is that while there may be fewer
motivated/ambitious women in business or skilled work, the women who ARE
motivated/ambitious are equally as capable as motivated/ambitious men and
should be given the same mentoring and opportunities (probably their biggest
disadvantage right now).

------
alxp
This speech was posted to MetaFilter a few years ago and generated a much
deeper discussoin than it seems to here. <http://www.metafilter.com/64034/The-
Waw-effect> Definitely worth reading some less glowing discussion about the
talk.

~~~
henrikschroder
I mostly saw moaning about how evolutionary psychology is bullshit, and not
much serious discussion about the merits of his claims.

I do agree though that it starts out good, and becomes less and less
substantiated, but on the whole it is interesting.

~~~
jlouis
Precisely my thought. People take a specific literal quote and use it as an
attempt to refute his main argument - but you have to refute the statistics
instead.

One argument was that the adventurous sailor would be subsumed by the cobbler
or tavernkeeper in the mating game. True, but he wouldn't be subsumed by the
beggar, now would he?

Another argument is to find a counterexample. "There were female scientists.
Good female scientists. Your claim is now disproven!". Except for the fact
that the claim is statistical and you just picked an outlier. There are a
couple of main claims, which are quite objective:

Are males more extremely distributed than females? Is the minimum wage
pertubing the mean wage (yes, it is - but significantly?) Is the absolute
grade scale pertubing the results (yes, but by how much?) If all three are
confirmed, you could say the societys obsession with the mean is what causes
all the trouble.

I think your point about less and less substantiality is warranted. It is the
first couple of paragraphs which has the most meat and is the most objective.
It would be bad to dismiss them, if the latter parts are weaker. Yet, the
weaker parts are the ones people will attack in an argument - they are the
low-hanging-fruit. Especially if they have an agenda to be fulfilled in the
gender wars. Though the more objective parts are the parts you should seek to
refute.

I think the future will be even more interesting than now. In the most
developed parts of the world, women surpasses men in higher education. Note
that this fits the presumption: males have a more extreme ability
distribution. This _will_ have a great impact. There will be less well-
educated men for the well-educated women. And this is a first in the history
(of Europe). It will be interesting to see how that one plays out.

~~~
bambax
> One argument was that the adventurous sailor would be subsumed by the
> cobbler or tavernkeeper in the mating game. True, but he wouldn't be
> subsumed by the beggar, now would he?

Well, if the beggar is Diogenes...

The main counter argument is that most world conquerors are not especially
fertile; Napoleon had maybe six kids (max.); Alexander had two and was maybe
gay; Hitler had zero. How would the "conqueror" trait have so much influence
on humanity if conquerors did not father many children (and there were not
enough successful conquerors to start with).

I try to develop a more substantiated analysis of this article here:
<http://blog.medusis.eu/of-parrots-and-men>

~~~
Super_Jambo
Because 3 men from modern history are utterly insignificant to human
evolution.

The argument is Evolutionary Psychology, which is a rather soft science. So is
economics, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful.

However, in order to make it useful you have to think statistically about the
behavior of humans in LONG LONG period of pre-history.

~~~
bambax
From the article: " _perhaps nature [designed men] to strive, mostly
unsuccessfully, for greatness_ ".

Leaving aside the fact that nature does not design anything, if evolution is
to select a trait that is "mostly unsuccessful", then this trait is to be
incredibly successful when it actually succeeds.

And in fact, Genghis Khan is the exception; other well-known world conquerors
are not exceptionally prolific, casting doubt on the possibility that "unknown
world conquerors" (if such people ever existed?) would have been prolific
enough and numerous enough to have an impact on the human species.

I'm well aware of Evolutionary Psychology, its premises and its shortcomings;
it isn't "soft science" but rather "non-science" since it can't be refuted.
Most of its claims may be right, or wrong, but that doesn't matter because _we
have no way to tell_.

------
geebee
These are always interesting articles, but this one definitely slips into what
I feel is a dramatic overstatement about the differences between men and
women.

In particular, I've never agreed that men shoot for the moon while women are
happy to live more modestly in a low-risk way. Have the people who say this
ever been to Hollywood? The place is full of young women who risk everything
to achieve that incredibly high status position of movie star.

Or, like the Dixie Chicks wrote in "Long Time Gone"

Me, I went to Nashville Tryin' to be the big deal Playin' down on Broadway
Gettin' there the hard way Living' form a tip jar Sleepin' in my car Hockin'
my guitar Yeah I'm gonna be a star....

Now, one place where I agree with the author of this article is that there
there are most likely meaningful innate differences between women that may
have resulted from evolutionary pressures, and that we should not be
suppressed by a culture of political correctness from honestly discussing
them, even when some of these differences favor men.

But the conclusions still seem very spotty to me, not at all consistent with
my observations. The big about diapers? The men I know are deeply involved
with their children, extremely paternal, and change a hell of a lot of
diapers. Women may not start tech companies as often as men, but they are
definitely willing to take great risks to seek status.

I don't mind the question, and I'm not at all offended by the answer, but I am
not at all convinced. There's a lot more to this story.

------
brc
Does someone want to donate that guy a CSS file? Talk about making good
content unreadable. Just a simple margin:20px would help!

~~~
LiveTheDream
Readability bookmarklet is your friend

<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

------
known
And men and women will always have different and distinct _priorities_ in
life.

------
c00p3r
Some general introduction for those, who really interested in such topics.
[http://oyc.yale.edu/ecology-and-evolutionary-
biology/princip...](http://oyc.yale.edu/ecology-and-evolutionary-
biology/principles-of-evolution-ecology-and-behavior/)

btw, you may skip hardcore genetics in lectures from 2 till 8. ^_^

~~~
jseliger
Two books I often recommend:

Geoffrey Miller, _The Mating Mind_

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, _The Woman That Never Evolved_

They're probably the best, most thoroughly researched, and least political of
the evolutionary bio books I've found that aren't primarily about hardcore
genetics and heavily math-based game theory.

------
lotusleaf1987
Absolutely fascinating. I guess mostly it comes down to XY and XX chromosomes.
XY leaves more room for random chance. XX would be more moderate because it
would presumably have more genetics to balance out its extremes.

~~~
ars
No, it has nothing whatsoever to do with that.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
Why don't you elaborate then instead of just giving some smug answer? Hacker
News would be a lot better without pointless contrarians like you.

~~~
billswift
Go read a little about genetics. Your comment is too silly to even critique
rationally.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
Yeah, thanks troll. Translation: don't start conversations unless you're an
expert...

------
WestCoastJustin
disclaimer; I have not read the link.

I'm bothered by this title. Had a water cooler chat yesterday and was talking
about question structure. This came up, yes/no; "do you still kick your dog?".
Say, no, and it implies that you used too.

The title seems to imply that we need to explain what's good/bad about men
when the entire question is dumb.

------
xenophanes
The start of the article totally lost me. Everyone thinks women are better?
Really? I thought it was the general consensus that men are better at stuff
that matters like math, programming, logic, leading countries and resolving
disputes with reason, and women are better at soft stuff like art, sex,
fashion and emotions.

~~~
DrJokepu
Where I live, at least amongst the people I know, this is not the "general
consensus". In fact, one of the most brilliant prime ministers of this country
(United Kingdom) was a woman.

My point is though that you have to be careful when discussing such delicate
matters. While an argument could be made that men tend to perform better at
abstract reasoning and women tend to perform better at other mental tasks,
small differences in wording can make a difference between offensive and
objective.

