
An Evolutionary Theory for the Variability Hypothesis - exolymph
https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184
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dooglius
Related discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318)

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whatshisface
> _how one gender of a sexually dimorphic species might tend to evolve with
> greater variability than the other gender._

I have heard this theory before, in arguments where it was being supported by
the higher male fraction in both C-level positions and prison. However, there
are plenty of confounding factors in those cases. Has this dimorphism ever
been found in something relatively simple and easily testable? Ideally, you'd
be able to show that it happened in height, or for more social relevance some
metric like IQ. In any case you would want something that society can do
almost nothing to influence beyond extreme nutritional deficiencies.

~~~
crazygringo
From what I've read, SAT scores show larger deviations for males than females,
which is probably as close to IQ as you're looking for. The effect is
consistently there, although it's not huge.

Of course you could argue there could be confounding factors here too, like
how boys and girls might be treated differently by teachers.

You can browse some of the raw data here:

[http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/2...](http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/2013/TotalGroup-2013.pdf)

[https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-
percentile...](https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile-
ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf)

~~~
burnte
Society plays a role in that metric just like it does the CxO/prison metric.
Fewer girls were encouraged to take the SAT compared to boys (only the top
girls would really push for it), just like women were held back in the working
world, and controlled more domestically (as well as treated with more lenience
in the courts). It's really hard to factor out societal bias in gender
studies.

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Mizza
For context (I assume) - this article is making the rounds:

[https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-
a-p...](https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-
paper-down-the-memory-hole/)

