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Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

I'd guess this has something to do with if a bunch of men die in the tribe it doesn't matter too much, but if a bunch of the women die in the tribe that's the end of the tribe.

Men are pretty expendable when it comes to what's required to reproduce - that mixed with fighting for status/high risk behavior being attractive probably complicates things.

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The idea that its a privilege to be viewed as "pretty expendable" is to me a rather odd. In any war where a minority group is used as an expendable meat shield, I have never seen anyone argue that its proof that that minority group holds power and carries "-actual advantages-" in society. In contrast, when some individuals of a category holds power while others are viewed as expendable it indicate that that categorization (ie, this one based on being male) is a poor predictor for privilege.

That isn’t my view?

I just suspect it’s a component of why cultures tend to protect women in disasters.

This is a group selection based argument.

Excuse the obvious plug. Here is my article on why I disagree with Pinker's attack on group selection. http://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/01/on-group-selection.ht...

It seems that altruism can be explained without resorting to group selection. Statistically speaking over history, your group is overwhelmingly likely to be your kin. So gene selection / kin selection seems sufficient explanation for the evolution of group-altruistic behavior.

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