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Comment by jimmywanger | Hacker News Reader

I'm not trying to incite a flamewar here, and this will probably be downvoted to death.

Well, the argument here should be:

Men don't find education and accomplishment as attractive as women do - they find youth and beauty important also.

Therefore, in order to attract a mate, logically women should try to attract a mate when they're younger, and try to improve the way they look. They should not be trying to get more educated or accomplish more in their careers.

They can of course do whatever they want, but I have very little sympathy for people who recognize how reality is and don't try to act in ways that will optimize the probability of the outcome they want.

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Philip Greenspun makes a related point: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science "What about personal experience? The women that I know who have the IQ, education, and drive to make it as professors at top schools are, by and large, working as professionals and making 2.5-5X what a university professor makes and they do not subject themselves to the risk of being fired. With their extra income, they invest in child care resources and help around the house so that they are able to have kids while continuing to ascend in their careers. The women I know who are university professors, by and large, are unmarried and childless. By the time they get tenure, they are on the verge of infertility. Speaking of fertility... A $400/hour divorce litigator said "Knowing what I know now, I could have made a lot more money going to a bar and working for one night than I have made by going to college, law school, and working for 20 years. It turns out that I was sitting on something worth a lot more than a law degree." What's the cash value of fertility compared to working in science? ... As explained in the Massachusetts chapter of Real World Divorce, child support can be collected until a child turns 23, and, as in all other states, is tax-free. How profitable is child support? By formula (2013-2017 guidelines), $40,000 per year can be obtained from a defendant earning $250,000 per year. However, the actual costs of a child can be collected on top of that $40,000, such as health insurance, day care or nanny, and a child's cash expenses. Subtracting the USDA-estimated $8000 per year incidental costs of a child, such as housing and food, each child yields only a $32,000 per year profit. Thus a woman would need to have two children in Massachusetts with $250,000-per-year defendants in order to exceed the after-tax personal spending power of a mid-career PhD biochemist. However, the present value of the child support plaintiff's earnings are larger because the income stream can start at age 18 or younger and does not require any investment in college or graduate school."

> Knowing what I know now, I could have made a lot more money going to a bar and working for one night than I have made by going to college, law school, and working for 20 years

Can you explain this to me? You can earn 20 years a lawyers salary by finding a high-earning man in a bar? Sure, I can do the same with lottery tickets..

It is about child support. For example from: https://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/money/outrage... "Actor, Eddie Murphy entered into a bitter legal battle with his ex-girlfriend, ex-Spice Girl, Melanie Brown. Brown gave birth to their child in 2008 after Murphy had broken up with her while she was five months pregnant. Murphy even had a DNA test completed in order to prove he was the father. In 2009, Murphy was ordered to pay $59,950 per month for child support and he agreed to cover any of Brown’s pregnancy expenses that she may have incurred."

So, US$60K per month for more than 20 years is about US$15 million. Not a bad return on one night in a bar (considering you can pay nannies to raise the kid and the spouse gets stuck for that cost too). Of course, it has to be the right (read rich enough) guy...

Of course, most child support may not be in that range, but it can still be substantial, and so more than a successful lawyer earns in 20 years of hard work and study after repaying expensive student loans.

Another quote from there may help clarify (obviously I am not endorsing this heartless gold digger strategy even if what this lawyer says may be true economically): "A divorce litigator put it a little more simply: "There is no reason for a woman to go to medical school. If she wants to have the spending power of a doctor she can just have sex with three doctors." (see the Wisconsin chapter for how the arithmetic works out) In some states, though not Wisconsin, a plaintiff's own earnings or earning potential can reduce the potential profits from child support. "A degree in poetry is a lot better than a degree in medicine when you're a child support plaintiff," observed one litigator, and added "for a woman with a functioning reproductive system, the decision to attend college and work is seldom an economically rational one in the United States.""

Is it that hard to to imagine three high-earning young male Googlers ending up in such a situation of supporting one woman with a combined Google-level salary in child support?

Perhaps another reason for a basic income (one which includes payment for children) is to change the divisive nature of child support litigation?

By the way, some related comedy from the 1960s (not quite the same idea but in that direction): "Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062767/reviews "[Gina Lollobrigida] plays the mother of the lovely Janet Margolin, whose American soldier father was supposedly killed during World War II [or so she was told]. The thing is, Gina isn't sure who the father was, since she was friendly with three soldiers at the time, (played by Peter Lawford, Phil Silvers and Telly Savalas), and all are very much alive. Each of the three thinks he is the father and has been financially supporting the girl in secret for over 20 years. Trouble and hilarity ensue when the three men and their wives return to the Italian village for an Army reunion, and Gina has to juggle all six of them while keeping her daughter from finding out the truth."

Ah I see, but then I return to my "lottery tickets" example; You can make millions with a single ticket, but there is no reproducible strategy for finding a winning ticket that doesn't exceed the payout in cost.

I'm sure plenty of women have tried it with Murphy, yet it was Mel B that ended up in a relationship with him, a well-know pop artist already. "one night in a bar" is misleading if there are requirements in getting into that bar, and being successful.

How can a woman guarantee bearing the children of 3 doctors? How many men would they need to have unprotected sex with until success? If this became a popular strategy, it would be easy to exploit for sex with male contraceptives.

> change the divisive nature of child support litigation

perhaps, but not to punish the child. Of course, regulation of female reproductive rights is a can of worms too.. Maybe a male-infertility pill/device might be a better idea?..

>They can of course do whatever they want, but I have very little sympathy for people who recognize how reality is and don't try to act in ways that will optimize the probability of the outcome they want.

Yep. I recognized that I was ugly, and I thought that this was the primary obstacle when it came to dating. I fixed that with surgery, and I was right.

It's only a matter of time before we can pay CBT psychotherapists to give us good senses of humor and easy-to-be-around personalities. We're fast converging on a future where IQ and inherited wealth will be the only two fundamental positive qualities.

>We're fast converging on a future where IQ and inherited wealth will be the only two fundamental positive qualities.

Genome editing might take care of IQ.

Why would we need to fix basic biology?

Fortunately, different people like different traits, so we'll definitely not be converging.

Good luck trying to explain this simple reality of life. Youth is very important to males because of the diminishing ability of women to reproduce as they get closer to 40, with males it is much later. It is biology 101 but today mentioning biology as a reason to anything related to the relations between sexes is a heresy.

It's not a heresy if it isn't being reductionist.

The problem is the reductionism towards a "simple and easy explanation", biology is one factor as so are other sociological ones, if you keep your argument just based on (what you've called) biology 101 you aren't wrong, you are just misguided, ill-informed or being malicious.

>Therefore, in order to attract a mate, logically women should try to attract a mate when they're younger, and try to improve the way they look. They should not be trying to get more educated or accomplish more in their careers.

Now that's ridiculous, why should women care about getting a mate, it's not like we have a sub-replacement birthrate or anything, or that having children later increases the chance of birth defects.

This

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