Thursday 1 August 2002

Pic of the day: Brains! Girls! Girls with brains! (The zombie is not meant to portray me, at least after 9 AM.) Screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot.

Brains! We want brains!

More specifically we want brainy girls. And it isn't just me and my immediate family. I have met people online where they can relax and take off their mask. And I have been surprised by the number of men who are attracted to intelligent women.

Sociobiology will tell us that the women have created the modern human race, by selectively breeding with the brainy men. The process is similar to how the peacock got its grand tail and the moose its antlers. The fact that women too inherited the larger brain is considered a side effect. After all, it doesn't matter what the male prefers. Males are not a scarce resource; females are. One male can keep a whole herd of females pregnant with only moderate exertion, as shown by many other mammals. So there is a strong tendency in sociobiology to consider sexual selection a one-way street. I don't think so.

This may well work among chimps, but the very process that made us different also meant that men did indeed become scarce resources. Less so than women, for sure. Globally, a man with two wives is far more likely than a woman with two husbands (though that does happen in at least one culture, and not some nekkid jungle tribe of 300 people either, but an advanced culture over in the Himalaya region if I remember correctly). Anyway, across human time and space, large harems are rare while one-on-one marriages are the norm, with the upper class mopping up the surplus women.

Even today, having a resident father seems to confer some benefits. Of course, this could be explained by social intelligence having a genetic component. If the parents did not even have the social skills to stay together, then their offspring is probably clueless too. Indeed, children of fathers who ran away seems to do worse than children whose father died. But a living father is still preferable. And in the past, having two parents could mean the difference between life and death, or at least between a normal upbringing and begging in the streets.

I conclude this part by saying that men do matter. Women don't just choose men; men also choose women. But what women do they choose?

***

It is largely assumed that men prefer to be superior to their women in every way except beauty. Stronger, smarter, richer, more confident. After all, the man was the head of the family. Even up to my young adulthood, Norwegian tax documents referred to the husband & father as "hovedperson", the Norwegian literary term meaning "main character". And Norway is one of the most sexually equal nations on this pretty blue planet. We still get immigrants from places where men are supposed to spank disobedient wives. And who can forget St Paul's words about the man being the head of the woman, like Christ is the head of the Church?

In light of this, it is understandable if women dumb down, so as to increase the man's confidence. But it is not quite that simple. Since we (unlike herd animals) tend to live in long-lasting monogamous relationships, there should be an evolutionary pressure on the man to seek out smart women, thus increasing the likelihood of smart children. If nothing else, this would lead to smarter boys who would then be selected by the next generation of girls to father their children again.

And indeed, now that society has developed to a level where we can admit our true feelings, the geekgirl-loving boys come out of the woodwork in droves. I seem to see more of them with each passing year. Brains! We want brains!

***

Why then do so many intelligent women feel that men are less interested in them than in their simpler sisters? There story is typically like this: "I have lots of male friends; sometimes I think I get along better with men than with women. But there it stops. I am one of the guys, but they never ask me out on a date or seriously flirt with me. Instead they go out with girls who are less bright. Sometimes I think the only way to get a date is to giggle at the boys instead of discussing with them. But I cannot make myself do that. I want them to appreciate me the way I am. Is that really so much to ask?"

If it can be any comfort, this works the other way around too. It simply seems that to many people friendship and romance are mutually exclusive. Or at least are supposed to be mutually exclusive. So they are afraid to lose a secure friendship for an uncertain hope of romance.

And sadly there is also the laziness factor: Dumb girls are easier to get. The path from "hi" to fondling is shorter, as the less intelligent girls are less aware of their own feelings as well as others' and generally more impulsive. The highly intelligent girls are more guarded and cautious. So the boys may be fondling the dumb girl while dreaming of the bright girl they can never get.

Think of the fairy tale of the sleeping beauty and the prince who had to hack and slash his way through a thorny hedge to find his way into where she was sleeping and wake her with a kiss. Well, a lot of us have our own hedge to cut through. Don't expect us to go through several square acres of thorny maze of your own too. Wake up, sleeping beauty, and meet your Prince halfway.

(Disclaimer: It is too late for me anyway; not that I ever needed anyone. I am speaking on behalf of the next generation.)