Quite a few years ago I read a series of articles in a magazine. Don’t ask me which, perhaps Discovery, maybe it was Playboy. (Ha!) Anyway the series was discussing the differences between men and women. One article dealt with the bodily changes experienced by men and women during sexual arousal. Chemically different and all that. It went into the differences of size, muscle mass, brain fuction, etc. In a simplified version of course. One of things I found most interesting about the series was that it explained how nature has designed men and women to ensure that the species not only survive but thrive. This is why there are more female babies born than male. Women are better equipped to survive during times of famine, and have longer life spans. Now to the real point…what I found very facinating was the idea that nature “plays around” more with men than it does women. Women, I guess this might be the right way of putting it, are more genetically stable. Their point being that there are more male babies born with genuis IQ than female, but there are also more male babies born with below normal IQ. Genetic disorders like Downs Syndrome are more common in males than females. And certain other types of genetic diseases are more common in males. With a few genetic problems like scoliosis being more common to females. It even went so far as to suggest that sexual deviation, such as homosexuality, was more common in males than females for the same reason. Nature simply does not play around with the female of the species as often. She is more stable.
So I know there are a lot of you out there that are clinicians or students and might know about some of this, what do you think? Is this valid? It certainly is interesting.
IQ is not something you are born with. It is as much a product of environmental issues as genetic, and there is no accurate way to quantify “intelligence” as an inborn trait. Indeed, intelligence, like any aspect of human behavior, is in large part a learned trait. It would be more accurate to say that men do better than women on IQ tests because they are socialized in ways that encourages the development of the sorts of things that IQ tests are looking for.
There is no verifiable evidence that females have fewer geniuses and fewer mentally retarded. Some genetic disorders are much more likely to strike men due to their being sex-linked chromosomal traits, but Downs is not one of them. The only one to pose a serious health threat that I can name is Haemophilia, but its not nearly common enough to be taken as a major threat to male survival as a whole. And there are no known sex linked intelligence characteristics.
To imply that there is, or indeed that there could ever be a way to seperate “purely genetic” traits from environemntal ones is simply wrong. There is a lot of speculation, but it is largely a moot exercise. Philosophically, it is an example of flawed thinking to say that genetics or envirnonment causes these sorts of changes; it’s a falacy introduced by dualist thinking. I highly recomend reading some John Dewey, who does an excellent job of showing a way to think that isn’t constrained by standard Cartesian dualism.
I’m not a clinician nor do I play one on tv but I will say that this sounds reasonable.
Nature can afford to screw around with men more. If only one out of a thousand males were healthy and strong the species could still be populated. One human male could sire hundreds or even thousands of children. You’d just have one very tired male on your hands.
Conversely, if only one out of a thousand females were in decent enough shape to reproduce the species would be in serious trouble.
I know there might be genetic inbreeding issues with my male example above but I think you get the idea. It seems reasonable for nature to prefer tinkering with the males than the females (if indeed the OT is correct about the evidence for this).
It seems as if that’d be the case but women do slightly outnumber men. If you count the number of men and women in the world you’d get something like 51.2% women to 48.8% men. I’m not sure on those numbers but I believe they’re close.
I would say that intelligence is a genetic inheritance. But how a person uses their intelligence and how well a person scores on an (imperfect) IQ test, is influenced by learning, experience, upbringing, etc. Intelligence is an ability. Wisdom is learned. You can’t learn to be more intelligent, but you can become more learned.
If my memory serves, there are actually slightly more male babies born than female. However, males have a higher mortality rate before breeding age (and in old age as well–ever checked out the population of a retirement community?), so there are more female adults than male adults.
If you’re saying that no real-life person experiences purely genetic or purely environmental influences on their development, then you’re right. But if you’re saying that there is no way to measure the separate contributions of nature and nurture, then you’re, well, less right. There are several well-accepted methods, such as comparing monozygotic twins with dizygotic twins and other siblings. Researchers can also compare adopted children with their adoptive and biological siblings and parents.
WRT intelligence (as measured by standard IQ tests), heritability for verbal IQ generally falls out at around 60% (meaning a correlation of .77), and performance IQ at around 50%.
Apropos of the OP, while the Y cromosome–or, more correctly, the absence of a second X chromosome–would explain the increased susceptibility of boys to genetic disorders, I don’t think this translates to “nature ‘playing around’ more with males.”
Correct. And as an interesting little factoid there appear to be some racial differences. In countries with a primarily caucasoid and mongoloid populations there are around 5% more male infants born. In countries with a negroid population that number is only 3%.
China has a whopping how 15% more males born due to artifical population control.
Could it be that those figures may vary from generation to generation? !5% due to artificial population control…then we can’t count that now can we…since it has been manipulated.
Could it be that those figures may vary from generation to generation?
I don’t think so. IIRC I’ve seen figures like these both in papers from the 60’s or 70’s and from the late 90’s.
15% due to artificial population control…then we can’t count that now can we…since it has been manipulated.
No, we can’t and I didn’t. I just added that as a form of “Poor chinese guys, wasn’t it hard enough to find a date already?” type commentary.
The 5% vs 3% numbers are for EACH country, not an average of many countries, so they wouldn’t be affected by one specific national anomaly like the one in China.
Sorry, but the idea posted in the OP doesn’t wash with me. In order for Nature to fiddle more with men than with women, there would have to be separate male and female genetic information. With the exception of the Y c’some, that just doesn’t happen. Half of my genes came from my mom, and half from my dad. If Nature said about me, “hey, here’s a male - let’s fiddle!”, there’s a good chance that that fiddling will pass into my daughters (exact chance depending on number and gender of my kids) so the fiddling would now be spread into females. It’s just not possible to keep male and female fiddling separate.
Now, some exceptions. First, the Y c’some. OK, it would be possible to fiddle here in an exclusively male-limited way. That’s how you get some color-blindesses, etc. But IIRC, the latest estimate is that there are fewer than 10 genes on the Y - not much to fiddle with.
Secondly, through methylation, some genes do in fact keep track of which copy came from which parent and use one or the other preferentially. This could be a mechanism for doing what is proposed. However, this is rare and more importantly, males and females methylate identically. If the maternal copy is favored, it’s favored in both men and women. There goes the separation you need.
What if male hormones cause more extreme or chaotic results? That would allow for equal genetic tampering (thus not messing up the females) but allow for more variation among males. I have no clue if this is the case, but the basic code seems to have a lot of if X then Y else Z kind of things.