 Welcome to this 11th episode of what sex got to do with it, and I'm here with my favorite 84-year-old great-grandmother, my most favorite in all the Northern Hemisphere. So... Oh, you are excessive, if nothing else. Oh, yes, and we're just going to get even more so. So, this chapter 10 is called Designing Women, and if you watched the last chapter, the last episode of Chapter 90, you know that we got out of it, and we kind of rushed out of it, but we're continuing on, and we're talking about women, and I think this Designing Women kind of fits right into it, and the sources title. The sources title, you know, I'm not much into popular culture, but wasn't there once a TV show called Designing Women? I think that's probably how that phrase came into my mind. But the reason I titled the chapter that way is that I really think that once sexual reproduction evolved, and it is driven by female choice, and the choices that women make in terms of the men that they have children with actually design the future generation. So they're selecting genes that are going to make it into the next generation. I know Alfred Russell Wallace, one of his problems with toward the end of his life, he sort of decided that, oh, evolution is not quite as accurate as it ought to be, you know, how can it possibly explain this wonderful species that is human? But in fact, if he, and he rejected Darwin's theory of sexual selection, and he should have because Darwin's theory of sexual selection just was based on selecting for beauty, which is insufficient to select for all the other traits that make us so wonderfully human. But in fact, what Alfred Russell Wallace proposed, if he had understood sexual selection in the way that we're trying to explain it here, female choice actually can explain so many of the traits that Alfred Russell Wallace felt Darwin insufficiently explained, the evolution of those traits, and it is because of our ability, the language, we can think about what we want for the future. We can look at potential partners that have traits that we would like to see in our children. And so in a sense, we are designing the species of the future. And I think I say in that chapter, if we get it wrong, natural selection will eliminate the product, you know, that the child won't thrive. But in a sense, when women are picking their partners, they are shaping the traits of the next generation of humans is what they are doing. Well, I mean, to a certain extent, you say that, but then to a certain extent, it kind of maybe indicates that maybe they have gotten it wrong, and because of the language, and the ability to acquire assets, I mean, you can propagate the wrong selection. And so, but pick it up on where you were, I mean, I'm going to quote something from earlier on in that chapter. Say our initial human reproduction innovations made it possible for females to engage in a trial and error exercise in intelligent design. They suddenly had real power to choose their sexual partners, and unlike chimps, weren't most often impregnated by a male whose predominant skill was simply bullying his way through the crowd of other males in their competing sperm. So my question is, isn't displaying wealth and power a way of bullying one's self to the top? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm speaking through the mask, and I'm speaking very clearly. Is it displaying wealth and power a way of bullying one's self to the top? Yes, it is. And as I think I make clear as the book goes on, that a trait that was once adaptive, and that's women selecting for things like wealth and power and language skills, things that were initially adaptive as we've evolved over all these hundreds of thousands of years have become maladaptive because by selecting all species, and there's a wonderful book called A Taste for the Beautiful by Michael J. Ryan. And from that book, I got the idea of all species seem drawn to this concept of more, like a bigger voice, a bigger tail, a more flamboyant this. But in other species, because they don't define more symbolically, it doesn't get them into trouble. But our obsession with more has meant more consumption, more destruction of the environment. So a trait that initially we needed, in other words, I think we were born or our initial mutation resulted in a species that was not very well adapted to its environment. It hadn't evolved through millions of years of careful, you know, via natural selection, adaption to the environment. So we were born not particularly well adapted to our environment. By females selecting for males who were good at building shelter or providing clothing or inventing devices that would protect us from the elements, that was very necessary in the beginning. But carried to extremes, look at what we have done to the planet in just in 150, 151 now years since Darwin wrote The Descent of Man in Selection in Relation to Sex. We have our behaviors out of control. It's like we have infinite desires, but we're operating with a finite planet. And so a trait that was very adaptive in the beginning, we needed to select for technological skills. We needed to select for someone who could do all these things, and language made it so possible. So much, you know, just shared skills. All language facilitates all of that. But we're now at a point where that kind of excessive consumption has really gotten us into trouble. So I may have asked a related question earlier. Do women prefer men that have wealth or men that have power? I think the two are so closely related that it's hard to pick one. Oh, there again. That would probably vary with the individual woman. But I find it very difficult to tease wealth and power apart, Lynn. Yeah, I know. But if you think if they had to pick one. Ah, boy, power expresses itself in different ways. You know, if you're asking this particular woman, I'm more drawn to power. Wealth, wealth. And how did you find power? Unability, well, for me, I mean, there's negative power and positive power. Positive power. But positive power would be an ability to sort of control, protect you from harms, to help make the world a better place, to have the ability to influence other people in a positive way. That's positive power. They're kind of, but negative power, you know. So power is. So do you find that generally people who have positive power tend to have more modest personalities? Or do they tend to be ostentatious? Boy, I think that varies so much. I know it's true, but it's a variation. So we're talking generalities here, you know. So do you find that the positive power people tend to be a little more modest, not a little more, tend to be noticeably modest, you know. I don't think so, Lynn. I mean, oh, many sessions back, you asked me something about whether women were kind of sort of attracted to the bad boys at the top of the pile, and I've been thinking about that. And some of that testosterone fueled chest beating on the top of the heap. That is very appealing to women. But that's not necessarily a terrific trait, but it is, you know, it's very appealing to women. And so just women can then learn, wait a minute, that's not somebody I really want in my life permanently. But initially, that can be very appealing. So I do think, you know, when you ask me that question, I sort of, no, no, I don't think. But yeah, there's that ladies love outlaws thing. So not all power is, you know, power can be attractive even when it's not necessarily used for good. Right, because I was just really trying to get at whether or not the women could start looking more for the, actively looking for the good traits by not allowing themselves to be enraptured by the bad traits. I mean, so where I was leading you, and you didn't go there, and that's good. You know, was that maybe, you know, those who have good power tend to be more modest. And so I was wondering, is it likely that women be attracted to the more modest guys, you know? And with those being, you find some of the traits that don't lead to the accumulation of wealth. Because it's not wealth inherently, it's just the accumulation of too much of it, right? That ends up denying people what they need to live. And so that's what you want to avoid. I want to avoid the great inequalities that exist in human populations. You know, as I've mentioned, I think other places in the book, other species have a much more equitable distribution of resources because it's based on their physical side. It's size, it's not based on the symbolic ability to control more than you could ever possibly use in your life. So, you know, I really would like to see a more equitable distribution of resources, and I'd like to see less excessive consumption of the environment. I just, and yet, you know, I think it's in there. We're, you know, we're trying to rise above some of the genetically programmed traits that get humans in trouble in a way that they don't get. Those traits, I think, are in all species, but it gets humans in trouble in a way that it doesn't get other species in trouble, in terms of destruction of the environment and in terms of the inequality. We seem to do everything to excess men as humans. And I sound like I hate my own species, I don't, but I do want it to change for the better. I, you know, I'm very, very troubled by gross inequality of wealth. That is appalling to me. And women do select for many wonderful traits in men. Maybe it's in this chapter, maybe in another, that if we're going to solve our problems, we have to, you know, I've focused on the selection for money and power, but in fact, that's but a small portion of the things that women select for. They select for intelligence. They select for kindness. They saw very high ranking was what I called control of social resources. You know, one of the things I coded for was control of material resources. Control of social resources makes men very, very attractive. And those are men who are cooperative with other men who are friends, friendship networks. Generosity was a trait that's very appealing to women. If a woman has children, the trait that makes a man most attractive to her is his kindness to her existing children. So, you know, we have to use those cooperative traits that are also very, very attractive to women. And we have to learn to use those traits to counter our tendencies toward tribalism and greed. I mean, that, so those traits are in there. They've been selected for their valuable, very valuable. I think to both men and women. And we have to stop being quite so dazzled by the large amounts of wealth that some people control, that we assume that they're the smartest people, they're not. They're not Darwin made that mistake. I think it's in this chapter. And maybe that's a question you wanted to ask me later. But he was very concerned that our species was going to retrograde in his words, that we were somehow doing it wrong. Because in his words, the most successful members of the species were having the fewest children. But as you and I had discussed earlier, that's adaptive for humans. Because once you have good reliable control of resources, you don't need a lot of children in order to get your genes into the gene pool of the next generation. And of course, where Darwin made his mistake, he was concerned that wealthy women, that wealthy English women were not having enough children and he wanted to change that. He was very concerned that the squall, in his words, the squall at Irish were having way too many children. And as one of the lines in my book that I like is that, see if I can remember it, I'm not good at quoting myself. Confusing wealth with genetic superiority is a mistake made most often by those with great fortunes. And Darwin was in that category as part of the landed gentry. But he was very concerned that wealthy English women were not having enough children, or the solid Scots were not having enough children and the Irish were out competing them all. So that, again, that's the Malthusian flaw in his own theory that caused him to distort that. Once everybody has reliable control of resources, population rates will drop. I understand, you know, and that's even the case in developed countries, right? Oh, yes, especially in developed countries, yeah. I mean, there are exceptions to that. I mean, you know, there are religious exceptions, you know, someone with a harem has lots, with lots of money and lots of wives. That person has lots of children. So they're, with all things, you know, there are no absolutes, but they're general tendencies. Right, right, and I guess what I was thinking is like modern developed countries, I mean, where I'm thinking that normally, because I've been doing some stats analysis, I mean, on using birth rate, and it's usually, actually the data set is, the number of children surviving age five and the number of children, I mean, that a woman has. And so it used to be that there are fewer children that survived age five, the more children they would have, I mean, and so now I think in most developed countries, even women who aren't, who are poor, their children still live to age five for the most part. Yeah, and their birth rates go down once that's possible, that's absolutely true. They don't, and in fact, there reaches a point when there's lower childhood mortality. We're even very, we're poor people, have fewer children because children are suddenly very expensive. And so, yes, we do make those kind of adaptations exactly. Right, so what do you think Darwin would say then, if he was pulled into being about that, being what he's concerned about? So let's say now, the Irish instead of having being lots of kids being now, because let's say unfortunately they're still relatively destitute, you know, or not having fewer kids, what would be his take then? Well, I think he's so hung up on his own mouth-thusian flaw that he'd have a hard time processing all that. I think he would have a hard time giving up on his own theory that the most successful people are always going to have the most children. That was his theory and that's why he was troubled. He felt that, you know, we're gonna retrograde unless we change the way we're doing it. He was very concerned by the drop in population rates. I think he wouldn't be concerned if poor people had fewer children because he had a bias against the point in the Irish, he just did. Right, right. So his own theory was influenced by a bias that Thomas Malthus, the English cleric who was against feeding the poor because it meant that they would have more children. You know, that just, and Thomas Malthus was not even an amateur naturalist. And yet he influenced the theory of natural selection in a major, major way. That just daggers me, Len, and why people haven't recognized that is all I can do go back to my new idea, anchor bias. You know, we have Darwinian understanding that most success is most children and we just can't get rid of that. Right, you know, so I found it really curious in a positive way, you know, when you mentioned Henry George, his book, Progress and Poverty, and his idea was to eliminate all taxes, accept those imposed on land values and how he defined, and how ultimately what he feels that it's not simply land as in real estate, you know, but land as in a resource, you know, and so I know you're gonna talk about that more later, but it was just interesting even back then to see, I mean, one, being very concerned about the growing income inequality which, by our standards today, was nothing. Nothing, nothing, and it's interesting too that Alfred Russel Wallace read Progress and Poverty and recommended it to Charles Darwin. He recommended that he read the book and Darwin's response was, I read a book by an economist once and I couldn't make any sense of it. So I don't think he ever actually read Progress and Poverty but those men were contemporaries and Alfred Russel Wallace did, was very concerned with land reform. And of course, when Henry George wrote about land, he was careful in his book to point out he didn't just mean the ground under our feet, he meant what we now call the commons in nature, all naturally occurring resources, but back then land was agricultural land, you know, was the most obvious economic feature and so people have tended to focus on his single tax which was a tax on land but today would be a tax on all naturally occurring resources or not even a tax, what I would rather call a resource rent or collecting the economic rental value of the monopoly control of naturally occurring resources. And maybe I should save this question for the last bit or later on, but I have it in front of my face now. So I know you've expressed a lot of concern about the direction of the species with respect to what's happening at the planet. Do you think the human species is just gonna get snuffed out or do you think we're just gonna go through a severe bottleneck? Oh, Len, I don't know, but I think there's gonna, I think unless we really figure a way to turn the climate damage that we're causing around, there's going to be a tremendous amount of human suffering, there already is. I mean, fires, floods, it's talk of the thawing tundra, releasing all kinds of viruses and bacteria that we haven't really evolved to respond to. I hate to be such a Debbie Downer, but I don't think to call it a climate apocalypse is an exaggeration. And I really worry about the amount of human suffering. Not only that, I really worry about the elimination of other species on this planet. And that's happening now and happening really fast. And we have so long considered ourselves separate from nature. And I think we need to begin to see ourselves as a part of everything that we're, you talked about how we are shaped by nature, we are part of the natural world. I think we really have to understand that at the deepest level that this life on this planet is one interconnected, finally evolved and finally tuned interdependence between all the species. And we've treated ourselves as if we're somehow above that. And that hubris, unless we can turn it around and care as much about members of our own species, other members of our own species and other species, we're writing a script that's going to be very, have a very sad ending. Whether humans will survive some bottleneck in which many of us perish. I don't know, but unless we change our behavior, I think those who are left, unless we recognize that some of our species specific behavior is treating the planet like a disposable resource and it's not. And unless we learn how to live sustainably with the rest of the world, I don't see a happy ending for that plan. Then I hate to be so plump. But I believe in the power of changing minds. I wouldn't have written the book if I weren't hoping to have an impact and change. And now I'm realizing I should have asked that question now because there's another question I want to ask that's really more relevant to this one. So I'm going to ask you, because you have about three and a half minutes left. I may want to have another question. So you talk about how one of the issues with trying to control reproduction was women be not wanting to be visible. We say sexually speaking, we don't necessarily want a man to notice us. At least not at first, not before determining whether or not we're in the market for the kind of attention he might be selling. However, that may well work for us reproductively. It works against us when it's talent for ignoring, when it's carried over into the classroom, et cetera. So are you saying that the sexism that resulted is unintended consequence of women wanting to be ignored at some point? Well, women don't want to be ignored, but biologically, we're designed. And it's been very effective for us. Reproductively, it's been effective for us. In terms of living out our dreams economically and culturally, it hasn't worked so well for us. But reproductively, by flying beneath the radar for not having this flamboyant estrus that every other single mammal has. I mean, isn't that astonishing? How exceptional we are in that regard? By flying beneath the radar, we get to evaluate men carefully in a way that a female chimp does not. And that works very well for us. But it means that we're content to not be noticed. When I say content, this is not a logical, rational thing. It's just how the behavior is worked out. But that means that women do get ignored. And by other women as well, it's easier to hear a male voice, to believe what a male voice is saying than it is to hear a very high female voice. We're learning to be different. I just love the fact that the talking, like the newscasters and stuff on TV, we now have more female voices. So we're all learning, look how smart women are. You know, they can't just be dismissed. But this ability of women to fly beneath the radar has not served us well in terms of having our ideas heard. Look at all the female scientists that have been ignored over the years. I keep a file of them. The ones who made great discoveries that nobody heard about until after they died. That's horrifying. So it's just kind of interesting how in a sense it's connected to reproduction and you somehow, we can't really control the consequences of it, but we're learning and we need to. If we want the humans of the future to enjoy the happy, comfortable lives that you and I, I mean, we are so privileged, Len, let's face it. In terms of comparing ourselves to the rest of the world, we have such easy, privileged lives. I would like all humans to have those lives. And it's almost as if it's so easy that we're painting by numbers, which is the title of chapter 11, which we will do next time. Excellent. Well done.