You should spend some time reading recent work on Chimp and Bonobo packs and the inter-pack shenanigans the females go through (as well as the mapping to human behaviour). On Fri, 23 Nov 2001, Harmon Seaver wrote:
On a long road trip one night, I heard an extremely interesting long discussion amongst a group of psychiatrists, sociologists, and other scientists, regarding a study which showed, firstly, that large numbers of attractive young women married unattractive, frequently older, boring, but financially well-off men. No surprise, that, eh? But then, the study showed, that a large percentage of these same women also tended to have adulterous relationships with what was termed "dangerous" men -- losers, outlaws, reckless adventurers, etc. Another surprise was that this was a cross-cultural phenomenon, and the gist of the discussion was that this wasn't merely thrill seeking or whatever on the part of the women, but was actually subconscious darwinism in action, i.e., the woman formed the permanent alliance with the man who could best support her offspring, then got herself impregnated by the males with the strongest, sexiest, genetic makeup -- thereby insuring that not only would her children survive, but they, like their true father (and also like the mother) would be very attractive and likely to mate. An extremely interesting idea. Some might find the articles in the most recent Wired about the high percentages of autism among Silicon Valley children to be interesting --
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