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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

Not really sure on the whole boys being more vulnerable to diseases thing, but most if not all of these factors come down to men having a higher tolerance for risk. Considering that the average life expectancy for men is 5 fewer years, and that said average is still in the elderly category, that cost seems extraordinarily beneficial.

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I doubt it's all. Taller people generally don't live as long and men are taller on average, for one. Also quite sad US male life expectancy is 74.3. But that's primarily because of red southern states having even worse around ~70.

When 900 years old you are, look as tall, you will not.

So is being male a proxy for height, or is height a proxy for being male?

yes to both

It's sad on an individual level, but not necessarily at the species level. If men are taking more risks than women but only to the degree that they still die on average in their elderly years, that means they are overall still remaining relevant in their sexually valuable years and sticking around long enough that they're likely to pass down some generational knowledge to grandchildren. Doesn't seem that bad to me considering how low life expectancy used to be.

The genetic explaination I heard was having both full X chromosomes allowed for balance and backup when part of it is corrupted/non functional.

I was curious to see how this works in birds, which have the ZW system, where Z is the larger chromosome and which males have two of. And, as it turns out, male birds live longer than female ones.

Death from accidents is relatively rare in wealthy countries, yet the difference is still there. If this were true, men and women would have about the same median and mode life expectancy, with only the average showing a difference, and that is not the case.

I'm curious if there is a single occupational or accidental death metric that is lead by women. Men are even in lead for drug overdoses, which would seemingly be gender neutral[1].

[1]https://nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/images/2023-Drug-od...

This comment [1] did a much better job at summarizing the article (that already has a very short Conlusion section).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38654818

You’ve listed risk and cost, but what are up considering benefits of those risks?

Do you mean to ask what cost is up in relation to the benefits of male risk taking?

> that cost seems extraordinarily beneficial

Except for the dead men I presume.

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