Interesting stuff. However it would be better if he had not talked about groups or cultures competing, which is ultimately incidental, and talked instead of genes and memes competing. Evolution could give a damn about the group. It cares only about genes. Similarly, cultural (memetic) evolution could give a damn about the culture (or society or whatever). It only is concerned with the meme.
Basically his thesis is that women are good at close-knit relationships, and me are good at broader networked relationships. So roughly, though women are protected and valued in society because of reproduction, men are valued in society for the culture they create with their penchant for wide social networking. Fair enough perhaps but this misses the point.
I think rather than say woman have a usefulness to the group for the creation of offspring, both in terms of having in offspring and having a higher chance of reproducing, and men have a usefulness to the group because of their cultural contributions, I think we need to look at usefulness with respect to what. The "what" is the gene and the meme.
Woman are good for the gene. If I am a selfish gene, I want to hitch a ride with a chick. Why? Because as much as 8 / 10 of women who ever lived reproduced. Only about 4 / 10 men who ever lived reproduced (according to the article). So if I want to become part of evolution's junk DNA (and 95% of our DNA is junk, true "selfish genes"), then I have a better chance hanging out in the junk DNA of a female than a male. Women are good for me as a selfish gene. Women are useful to the selfish gene. Men? Well, hell, we can always invent pathogenesis in a pinch as a certain kind of shark in a zoo has done. Men are a nice to have to broaden the genome which enhances fitness, but we can ultimately do without them if we need to ("we" referring to the genes).
On the other hand, if I am a selfish meme, if the author is right about men preferring wider social networks (like politics or religion) than I have a better shot infecting the brain of a man than a woman. Why? Because the dude I infect will know more dudes, and can pass me along to them before he gets eaten by a saber tooth cat.
So do the author's conclusions make sense? I think so. But he needs to understand what "usefulness" means. Usefulness with respect to WHOM.
If I am a selfish gene, women are more useful to me.
If I am a selfish meme, men are more useful to me.
However I would say though it is hard to put numbers on this, that the higher advantage chicks give the selfish gene versus dudes is greater than the higher advantage endowed by dudes to the memes versus the chicks. This is a guess, but it is my gut feeling. I think that tho genes find chicks more important and memes find dudes more important, a gene can live without the dudes more facily than a meme can live without the chicks. Since whereas women might not network quite with the same alacrity as men, still they network. Anyway. So I like this article. But better clarity could be had in my opinion by looking at the men vs. women thing from the perspective of genes and memes, which again, is all biological and cultural evolution respectively care about.
So yes, if you are a meme, you like men. But you kind of can go both ways. If you are a gene, you really prefer women, and are less inclined to go both ways. :-)
If I am a selfish gene, I want to hitch a ride with a chick. Why? Because as much as 8 / 10 of women who ever lived reproduced. Only about 4 / 10 men who ever lived reproduced (according to the article).
This argument is wrong.
The discrepancy you point out is offset by the fact that the men who did reproduce had more offspring each than the women who did reproduce. On average, males and females produce the exact same expected number of children, because each child has a father and a mother. This explains the near 50/50 ratio of males to females in many species: if females substantially outnumber males, a selfish gene would find it beneficial to twist the mother's physiology to make a male child more probable. So it balances out.
Needless to say, memes have absolutely nothing to do with the whole discussion.
Be wary of reductionism for reductionism's sake, young Padawan. Just because you can frame something in particular terms doesn't necessarily mean you should, especially when context (something all too unappreciated in casual discussion of genetics/memetics) is discarded in the process.
Interesting theory, but wrong. In fact, the right answer is well known, and does not involve memes at all.
The reason why it's equally good for the genes to produce a male or a female, and why there's an equal number of males and females in almost all animal species, is that the expected number of offspring for a male and a female is equal. It has to be that way, because everybody has exactly one father and one mother.
While it might be true that 8/10 of females and 4/10 of males of a given species reproduce, the males reproduce more when they do. A smaller probability of a higher number will give you the same expected value.
I think this argument (among many others) is nicely explained in the Selfish Gene by Dawkins.
When groups fail individuals within that group tend to fail. You might have 20 kids but if they are killed off by the invading army then you fail.
Over the last 100,000+ years I think women tend to maintain genetic information within a group, but it's the highly successful men in highly successful groups tend to spread it.
There's something in your observation that echoes old mythologies and models of the world: men represent Spirit, women represent Matter. I always thought there was some kernel of truth to that metaphor, but couldn't quite put my finger on it. I think you did.
Actually, I think if one looks across most old mythologies and religions, particularly many pre-dating Jeudeo-Christian, one would find quite the opposite.
It's not just the religions of the Book which use that metaphor. The whole Buddhism, the whole Hinduism (to the extent that such a thing does exist) - they all say: man = spirit, woman = matter.
Yeah, well I guess it's a hard thing to really pin down, but I have always interpreted the less male dominated religions as seeing the female as the spiritual or guiding or creative force and the male as being the force which works to bring that creative energy into solid form.
Basically his thesis is that women are good at close-knit relationships, and me are good at broader networked relationships. So roughly, though women are protected and valued in society because of reproduction, men are valued in society for the culture they create with their penchant for wide social networking. Fair enough perhaps but this misses the point.
I think rather than say woman have a usefulness to the group for the creation of offspring, both in terms of having in offspring and having a higher chance of reproducing, and men have a usefulness to the group because of their cultural contributions, I think we need to look at usefulness with respect to what. The "what" is the gene and the meme.
Woman are good for the gene. If I am a selfish gene, I want to hitch a ride with a chick. Why? Because as much as 8 / 10 of women who ever lived reproduced. Only about 4 / 10 men who ever lived reproduced (according to the article). So if I want to become part of evolution's junk DNA (and 95% of our DNA is junk, true "selfish genes"), then I have a better chance hanging out in the junk DNA of a female than a male. Women are good for me as a selfish gene. Women are useful to the selfish gene. Men? Well, hell, we can always invent pathogenesis in a pinch as a certain kind of shark in a zoo has done. Men are a nice to have to broaden the genome which enhances fitness, but we can ultimately do without them if we need to ("we" referring to the genes).
On the other hand, if I am a selfish meme, if the author is right about men preferring wider social networks (like politics or religion) than I have a better shot infecting the brain of a man than a woman. Why? Because the dude I infect will know more dudes, and can pass me along to them before he gets eaten by a saber tooth cat.
So do the author's conclusions make sense? I think so. But he needs to understand what "usefulness" means. Usefulness with respect to WHOM.
If I am a selfish gene, women are more useful to me.
If I am a selfish meme, men are more useful to me.
However I would say though it is hard to put numbers on this, that the higher advantage chicks give the selfish gene versus dudes is greater than the higher advantage endowed by dudes to the memes versus the chicks. This is a guess, but it is my gut feeling. I think that tho genes find chicks more important and memes find dudes more important, a gene can live without the dudes more facily than a meme can live without the chicks. Since whereas women might not network quite with the same alacrity as men, still they network. Anyway. So I like this article. But better clarity could be had in my opinion by looking at the men vs. women thing from the perspective of genes and memes, which again, is all biological and cultural evolution respectively care about.
So yes, if you are a meme, you like men. But you kind of can go both ways. If you are a gene, you really prefer women, and are less inclined to go both ways. :-)