in praise of gold

[Jim Choate]

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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