Men Have Grown Twice As Much As Women Over Past Century, Study Shows 149
According to a new study published in the journal Biology Letters, men around the world have gained height and weight twice as fast as women over the past century. The Guardian reports: "We're seeing insights into how sexual selection has shaped the male and female body and how improved environments, in terms of food and a lower burden of disease, have freed us from our shackles," said Prof Lewis Halsey at the University of Roehampton. Halsey and his colleagues used data from the World Health Organization, overseas authorities and UK records to see how height and weight have changed with living conditions. The latter was measured by the human development index (HDI), a score based on life expectancy, time in education and per capita income, which ranges from zero to one.
Analysis of records from dozens of countries found that for every 0.2 point increase in HDI, women were on average 1.7cm taller and 2.7kg heavier, while men were 4cm taller and 6.5kg heavier. This suggests that as living conditions improve, both height and weight increase, but more than twice as fast in men than women. To see whether similar trends played out within countries, the researchers delved into historical height records in the UK where HDI rose from 0.8 in 1900 to 0.94 in 2022. During the first half of the century, average female height increased 1.9% from 159cm to 162cm, while average male height rose 4% from 170cm to 177cm. "To put this in perspective, about one in four women born in 1905 was taller than the average man born in 1905, but this dropped to about one in eight women for those born in 1958," Halsey said.
Writing in Biology Letters in a study titled "The sexy and formidable male body: men's height and weight are condition-dependent, sexually selected traits," the scientists speculate that women's sexual preferences may have fueled a trend for taller, more muscular men -- although in an age of obesity, heavy does not necessarily mean muscular. Stature and physique are prime indicators of health and vitality, Halsey said, while sexual selection also favors men who are better able to protect and defend their partners and offspring against others. "Women can find men's height attractive because, potentially, it makes them more formidable, but also because being taller suggests they are well-made," said Halsey. "As they've grown up, they haven't been affected by the slings and arrows of a bad environment, so they've reached more of their height potential. It's an indicator that they're well-made."
Analysis of records from dozens of countries found that for every 0.2 point increase in HDI, women were on average 1.7cm taller and 2.7kg heavier, while men were 4cm taller and 6.5kg heavier. This suggests that as living conditions improve, both height and weight increase, but more than twice as fast in men than women. To see whether similar trends played out within countries, the researchers delved into historical height records in the UK where HDI rose from 0.8 in 1900 to 0.94 in 2022. During the first half of the century, average female height increased 1.9% from 159cm to 162cm, while average male height rose 4% from 170cm to 177cm. "To put this in perspective, about one in four women born in 1905 was taller than the average man born in 1905, but this dropped to about one in eight women for those born in 1958," Halsey said.
Writing in Biology Letters in a study titled "The sexy and formidable male body: men's height and weight are condition-dependent, sexually selected traits," the scientists speculate that women's sexual preferences may have fueled a trend for taller, more muscular men -- although in an age of obesity, heavy does not necessarily mean muscular. Stature and physique are prime indicators of health and vitality, Halsey said, while sexual selection also favors men who are better able to protect and defend their partners and offspring against others. "Women can find men's height attractive because, potentially, it makes them more formidable, but also because being taller suggests they are well-made," said Halsey. "As they've grown up, they haven't been affected by the slings and arrows of a bad environment, so they've reached more of their height potential. It's an indicator that they're well-made."
Nutrition and "Natural" Selection. (Score:5, Interesting)
At first glance there seem to be (at least) two drivers for this IMHO:
Less men die so women have a larger pool of men to select from. Since evolution has them tend towards bigger stronger men, they get the boost.
Likewise women die less too, enlargening the pool of women to select from. Since men tend to choose women smaller / more petite than themselves, this is another evolutionary driver that solidifies the height gap.
A third point would be nutrition. Early plentiful nutrition is proven to enhance body mass and height. Nutrition has improved over most of the last century also causing this.
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At first glance there seem to be (at least) two drivers for this IMHO:
Less men die so women have a larger pool of men to select from. Since evolution has them tend towards bigger stronger men, they get the boost.
Likewise women die less too, enlargening the pool of women to select from. Since men tend to choose women smaller / more petite than themselves, this is another evolutionary driver that solidifies the height gap.
A third point would be nutrition. Early plentiful nutrition is proven to enhance body mass and height. Nutrition has improved over most of the last century also causing this.
I suspect this kind of thing is likely being skewed by the developing world, as the male children are the ones that go out and work, thus supporting the parents in old age, they get the benefits, likewise when there isn't enough to go around the female children tend to have theirs pulled. I.E. when parents don't have enough money to send both kids to school, the girl gets pulled out because she can do menial work. Not hard to see the same thing being done with food, when portions have to be cut back the gir
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I think that there's a distinction that needs to be made here, between natural selection that occurred in the past, and natural selection that's ongoing. Natural selection that's currently ongoing will result in evolutionary changes in the future. The data here needs to be explained in terms of natural selection that occurred in the past.
Basically, this data says that once nutrition (and environmental) constraints on height are removed, males increase in height and weight more than females, increasing the
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Less people dying just means population growth. Which we have obviously had a lot of.
But it depends a lot though on when they are not dying. If they are not dying after they have already had children, it doesn't make a difference to any sort of genetic selection.
Men are less likely to die due to being killed in war or other violent attack
Women are less likely to due due to being pregnant
Both are less likely to die due to poor healthcare
How do the ratios look between all these things.
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I think most of the growth in weight happens after the childbearing years.
(at least in developed countries)
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And what's precisely why you two aren't going to be breeding :-)
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You're bang on about nutrition. Testosterone has always been linked to increased height, so a uniform improvement in diet will produce sexually differentiated results. No genetic drift is required to produce these results, although epigenetic markers may cause them to take a generation or two to reach their maximum potential. (Humans retain a handful of nearly-useless epigenetic traits due to variations in chromatin structure. They mainly concern nutritive stress; basically, if your ancestors were constantl
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Yeah, that falls generally under "free love." I was originally going to put 'polyandry,' which would be closer, but I went with whatever sounded more glib.
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No worries, we'll have another world war soon and then lots of men will go die in ditches, and the taller ones will be more likely to be headshot in a trench. Problem solved!
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Re:Nutrition and "Natural" Selection. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's nutrition.
We can safely rule out the first two because natural selection doesn't really change the fact that the least attractive women and least attractive men are getting jiggy with it regardless. It may take them longer to find someone, but almost everyone (around 90%) eventually becomes a parent. People quite simply are not "selecting for" in the modern world, humanity hasn't really done that since civilization became a thing.
It also, FWIW, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. From what I can find out height "genes" are not passed through the X and Y chromosomes. My wife is short, I'm tall, my daughter looks set to be much taller than my wife. So she's obviously got my genes as far as genetic factors that go into height go.
While nutrition... yes, that's definitely a factor. Look at countries where people primarily ate fish, or even vegan diets, and switched recently to more varied sources of protein, and you see height jumps because fish lacks certain proteins that help with height. As a species we've generally started to heavily move from varied sources of protein with far more red meat in ordinary diets than was typical 100 years ago.
But it'd also be reasonable to expect both that the different sexes respond unequally to those diets, and to expect men to grow, on average, higher given weight loss programs and other "beauty" diets primarily used by women rarely feature red meat, and are less often used by men.
It's 100% diet. No need for pseudo-darwinism here, beyond maybe the "Men like thin women, therefore women are more likely to diet" thing which isn't genetic but could be described as cultural evolution.
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In Japan this was evident. There used to be a joke even in Japan that older Japanese were so very short. But most of that was due to very poor diet after the war. In the decades since as diet improved the average Japanese was noticably taller than their grandparents. What matters a lot is what your diet is like while you are growing up.
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So the other way of looking at this is that as human technology has gone from the picked-up stick, through rough hand axes to finely crafted spears and knives, there has been less need for
Conscription and declining standards as men died (Score:2)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki... [wikisource.org]
Shows the progressive decline of men's height and physical health as forced male conscription resulted in the more healthy men being forced to fight and die in war.
Popular Science Monthly - Volume 87 - August 1915 - War Selection in Western Europe
By Chancellor DAVID STARR JORDAN
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
From the recruiting statistics, as officially recorded, it may be stated with confidence that the average height of the men of France began notably to decrease with the coming of ag
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Not evolution or selection, as they are finding these differences through environment. Ie, in more developed countries both women and men are larger, not genetically superior but likely through better pre-natal and childhood care, better diets, etc. As it says even in the summary "as living conditions approve". Three or four generations is not enough to greatly affect human populations in that way, especially as there's no directed breeding happening like there would be for show dogs. We have supermodel
Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
It always amuses me when I hear women biatch about the fact that "all men are a-holes!", completely ignoring the fact that this is sexual selection by prior generations of women being expressed in modern males.
If you don't want a-holes, stop doinking them?
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
It always amuses me when I hear women biatch about the fact that "all men are a-holes!", completely ignoring the fact that this is sexual selection by prior generations of women being expressed in modern males.
If you don't want a-holes, stop doinking them?
Dark Matter and Female Logic.
Any man who has lived on this planet long enough knows damn well there’s only one of those mysteries worth solving.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
It always amuses me when I hear women biatch about the fact that "all men are a-holes!", completely ignoring the fact that this is sexual selection by prior generations of women being expressed in modern males.
If you don't want a-holes, stop doinking them?
A couple things. You are correct that women search for a subset of males. And height is a big one. I'm 6 foot and still was barely tall enough for SO.
Also, there are the "tingles". A combination of excitement mixed with a bit of anxiety. Back in my late teens, early 20's, I was in a rock band, raced motorcycles and cars. My tude was aloof. I had no trouble receiving feminine attention. I was the nosy mommy list. They'd call and network with each other to point out the "bad boys" in town so mommy could tell their daughter who to avoid.
Thanks mommies! The BB list helped me more than inconvenienced me.
So yes, while not a cruel asshole, I checked off most of the boxes.
But now, an accidental positive feedback loop has been created.
We have reached the point where decent men have stopped approaching women altogether. So the only men who will are the assholes. A very small subset of men are getting most of the feminine attention. Dating apps and some research show that 80 percent of women on them want to pair with 20 percent of men on them. There is a reason there is a Facebook group where ladies go to compare notes to see if other women are dating their situationship.
Turns out yeah, a lot of them are banging the same few guys.
While the narrative is that they are somehow victims, they chose those men to have sex with. The majority of men were invisible to them.
So in choosing men who are not good for them, and with normal men just stepping off, and no longer approaching, they are becoming damaged, and while choosing from a narrow subset of men, they conclude that all men are like those they choose.
We even see this sometimes when they "settle" for the boring guy, but enjoy their night out with the girls. A surprising number of men are raising other men's children conceived during their marriage. This is why an increasing number of men are demanding that mandatory DNA testing at birth before putting their names on the birth certificate be made law. And a surprising number of women oppose it.
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Interesting. I rarely hear such complaints. Must be a you problem.
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I'm 100% an a-hole. Life is awesome. Thanks for the concern, though.
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It always amuses me when I hear women biatch about the fact that "all men are a-holes!", completely ignoring the fact that this is sexual selection by prior generations of women being expressed in modern males.
If you don't want a-holes, stop doinking them?
Women don't tend to get that it's not all men that are a-holes. It's just the men they choose to interact with that are a-holes. Self-fulfilling prophecies are paramount in the dating scene, which thank dorg I haven't been part of in over twenty-five years. But even then, that was the way of it. Most women want the flashy, arrogant pricks, because they're "confident and strong." We really haven't evolved out of that whole mating display nonsense from so much of the animal kingdom. Gotta dance around with th
It's sexual strategy. (Score:2)
It always amuses me when I hear women biatch about the fact that "all men are a-holes!", completely ignoring the fact that this is sexual selection by prior generations of women being expressed in modern males.
The contemporary half-assed pseudo-feminism and it's misandry that 'ignores' evo-psych and uses socio-political agitation is a sexual strategy. Mostly subconscious. It's to expand female options and to limit male options. The fundamental problem is that within a species at a societal level hetero-mati
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"Why are women drawn to men behind bars?"
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
"...Three years ago a German waitress called Dagmar Polzin fell in love with a murderer while waiting at a Hamburg bus stop. She saw his photo on a Benetton anti-death-penalty poster. Bobby Lee Harris, a North Carolina man with an IQ of 75, was on death row for stabbing his boss to death during a robbery on a shrimp boat. Polzin was overwhelmed by the picture,
"It was something in his eyes," she later said. "There was this remorse, sad
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Jesus fucking christ, women.
See, this here is the real problem. As much as there might,, be an issue with some women always going for the "bad boy" type and then tarring all men with the same brush because of how the bad boy treated them, you just gave an anecdote about one singular woman, but then couldn't help yourself and wrote "women" rather than "woman". Now, of course, there's more than one woman who has fallen in love with a prisoner from afar, but all together, they represent a tiny, tiny percentage of statistically outliers.
W
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You need only look at how rape works in various species to see that it can affect evolution. Most lady animals are on hormonal-based birth control at all times except when they want to get pregnant, and rape is very uncommon in those species. The more likely rape is to result in pregnancy, the more common rape is in that species.
On an unrelated note, did you know that Trump has recently passed a bill requiring the government to consider you genderless? (Ie you are not male and not female, unless your very f
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Is rape all that common that we'd see any statistically significant impact on gene pool?
Maybe in some hell hole nations where crime and tribal warfare are common, leaving women vulnerable we could see rape drive some shifts to genetics. In such places they are in a kind of death spiral that people can't build wealth because of the destruction, and its difficult to fend off the destroyers without the wealth for fences, sturdy buildings, and weapons. How does the saying go? Something like, "God made men an
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"Is rape all that common that we'd see any statistically significant impact on gene pool?"
Yes.
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Is rape all that common that we'd see any statistically significant impact on gene pool?
Maybe in some hell hole nations where crime and tribal warfare are common,
... otherwise known as the whole globe over most of human history, yes. If you want to look into how rape can affect a species' evolution, look at ducks.
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" "Nobody is wanting to take your hunting rifle." Probably because they want to take our hunting rifles now."
A hunting rifle does not have a 30 round mag.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Says who?
I take it you've never been feral hog hunting, and needing to unleash as many rounds as you can when you spot a pack of them....?
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Err...what state, exactly, do you live in?
Pretty much every state in the US, has some form of wildlife critter that has to be managed and can be destructive or dangerous....
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They had to concede that firearms are useful for self defense, especially for women defending themselves against taller and heavier men, because of a number of court cases making it clear that the US Constitution (as amended) protects the right to own weapons for self defense with no regard to military service.
Kind of like how, when the Black Panthers became a thing, all of a sudden the Republicans were on board for certain kinds of gun control.
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America alone has over 1 million abortions a year.[snip]
This is a garbage claim and you should feel bad. NATURAL terminations far-outstrip this figure by a comfortable margin. Your sky-beard REALLY hates babies. I mean, *really* hates them. On a personal level
'
Or there is no sky-beard and there is nothing special about babies.
Secondly, we have been bypassing natural selection for some time now. We intentionally propagate damaged genomes via surgical or mechanical correction. Not sure what your magical point is, though.
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, to an extent yeah, of course? But past a certain point you get to where the guy starts looking intimidating and threatening to you, like he could crush you on a whim. Fear of domestic violence is surely a selective factor as well, and IMHO not well enough appreciated.
Also, IMHO, most straight men really overestimate how much of attraction is appearance-focused, and if they have trouble getting a date, obsess over things like working out rather than becoming a more appealing human being. I know straight men tend to be heavily appearance focused when it comes to women, but things like confidence are hugely important factors in how attractive men come across. It's a mix of factors. Also, whether the guy has enough of a brain to not do things that are a total turnoff. Like, if she doesn't smoke, and you do, maybe try not to smell like an ashtray? If she doesn't drink and you do, maybe don't insist on meeting in a bar? If she's speaking in one language, and you speak multiple, maybe don't speak in a different language than the one she's speaking? If she loves animals, maybe don't talk about hunting? Like, take a clue from her instead of just thinking about yourself, if your goal is to attract her.
Selective factors are always changing. In much of the world, for example, first children per couple dropped, then marriage rates dropped, and now dating rates have dropped as well. Rates of accidental pregnancy are also down. The decision on whether to have a child is now increasingly a personal decision, which would suggest more thought put specifically into genetics, rather than just "OMG this guy is SO hot, let's sleep together! ... Oops!"
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
But past a certain point you get to where the guy starts looking intimidating and threatening to you
Since women are infamously attracted to serial killers and horses that threshold is probably going to be something like a great white shark.
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Just like men vary in their attraction, so do women. Believe it or not, the vast majority of women absolutely do not want a serial killer.
In general, for a criminal to seem attractive to any meaningful number of people, there needs to be some sort of arguable heroism to them, or at least a sympathetic element. For example, for people mad at the US healthcare system (or US oligarchy in general), a lot of people have a crush on Luigi Mangione. Or to put it another way: Robin Hood would have had a lot of wome
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"Believe it or not, the vast majority of women absolutely do not want a serial killer."
You know you're on /. when someone feels the need to post a comment like that. I'd like to believe it's true, but not sure it is.
Sexual attraction is instinctual, there is no need to elaborate beyond that. Whether there was a survival benefit 100,000 years ago is irrelevant today, even though the instincts may still be there. It is also limitlessly complex and has influences that we may never know or understand. Doesn
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But past a certain point you get to where the guy starts looking intimidating and threatening to you
Since women are infamously attracted to serial killers and horses that threshold is probably going to be something like a great white shark.
We must remember, Charles Manson was married while in prison.
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past a certain point you get to where the guy starts looking intimidating and threatening to you
Women apparently love that, or at least enough of them to where it's not a detriment. I'm two meters tall and have had some very short girlfriends who got a lot of dirty looks from a lot of taller women when they were out in public with me. They all said they loved how big I am, because it made them feel little, as if they weren't already.
most straight men really overestimate how much of attraction is appearance-focused, and if they have trouble getting a date, obsess over things like working out rather than becoming a more appealing human being
I think it's worse than that. I think they think that being more roughy toughy intolerant assholey is what makes them a better man.
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Overall agree, but just a few things there:
.. things like confidence are hugely important factors in how attractive men come across.
The thing about confidence in the dating game is that it comes from a few places. One of them is being physically attractive and knowing it. This is true to such a degree that "confidence" is often seen as just coded language for attractive, just like "takes care of themselves" is also usually just coded language for "attractive". Another place that confidence comes from is experience, as in lots of previous success in sleeping with women. Yet another, and related
I am only 5 foot 10 (Score:4, Funny)
Re: I am only 5 foot 10 (Score:2)
Oh goody, more bad science reporting (Score:2)
The obvious question that comes up for me in this survey is, did they correct for the possibility that men actually have it better than women, and that's why men grew more? E.g., did they check heights of women in countries where women's rights are better? I'm not saying the result is wrong, but I didn't see any reporting that answers this question, and it was the obvious question that occurred to me. E.g. in some countries included in the survey, women take a huge caregiving burden on average compared to m
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They discovered the average penis length was longer, by 1/4 inch. Although, this was a cross-country comparison, not before-and-after, so the difference might have existed when women's rights were equally poor.
Another change to the human body: It's well-known that female average breast size has increased by one (Western) cup size in countries eating mostly red meat.
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Men don't grow when they are men, they grow when they are children, just like women. Women's rights may have an impact, but what matters is how children of different sexes are treated.
I agree, though, that it's just bad science. It appears more to be pandering to the right wing than trying to improve understanding. To be actual science, first they should verify whether observed results differ from what would be expected. Instead, they merely offer that observed results tell us about natural selection.
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"You see, every difference is a result of an evil social construct run by (white) men. I am not trolling; this is the official position about everything in our society. At every level."
No, you're trolling.
In fact, your post demonstrates my hypothesis, that the "research" is targeted at right wing politics by appealing to bigots.
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I see the contrary; the article is more honest reporting than everything in the last decade or so. You see, every difference is a result of an evil social construct run by (white) men. I am not trolling; this is the official position about everything in our society. At every level.
You do seem to kind of be trolling there. Or at least projecting something that the poster did not say onto their post. What they were actually saying is that women's rights vary by country as do available resources. In places with low resources and relatively low women's rights, there will be a clear tendency for most of the resources to go to the men. After all, bigger men may need one and half times as much food, but the reality tends to be that they get twice as much. No evil white men required.
Yeah? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's pretty common knowledge that the current criteria amongst women for minimum acceptability of a male is "six-six-six", which is short for 6 feet tall, with a 6 figure income, and a... well, let's just say "six-pack abs".
When coupled with age factors, it is many women going after a vanishingly small number of men.
Indeed, the guys they do after on the dating apps usually miss the six figure income, but hey, a girl has her needs, so if the guy is hot and will make a foodie call, he's good for some fun, amirite?
As we've made the pool of eligible bachelors bigger, women's minimum requirements just rose and rose.
And in irony, the older a woman gets without a partner, her "bare minimum" requirements just increase.
There is a lot of Koyaanisqatsi (life out of balance) going on. This is not some sort of "men want women barefo
Self-selection bias (Score:2)
1) Dating apps put a premium on physical attractiveness, with attractive men getting a much larger share of interest from women and less attractive men getting little or no interest from women. 80/20 rule
2) Men getting lots of attention from women have lots of options, do not settle down, have a good time with their dates and leaves their dates with negative emotions of 'all men are X'
3) Flirting, attention and tame yet suggestive behavior from attractive men are welcomed, accepted and desired by women.
Certain social-political idealogies depend on it (Score:2)
They depend on encouraging flirting, attention and playful behavior from the 20% most attractive men.
They depend on the less attractive 80% of men not being good enough, needing to fall for the 'just work on your personality', 'work out more', eat right, etc. shaming suggestions to drive the economy, provide sacrifices, pay taxes and help to women.
They seek to demonize, limit, and even pass laws (London) to prohibit any sort of behavior which could lead to dates, marriage, or children from the 80% of men ju
Example, 10 months in jail with no evidence (Score:2)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/... [nzherald.co.nz]
No compensation for man who spent 10 months in jail after false rape accusation
By Rob Kidd and NZ Herald Focus 29 Mar, 2017 07:52 PM
A man who spent 10 months in prison awaiting trial on a rape charge, only for the complainant to admit she had lied will not get compensation.
On the first day of Christopher Ferguson's trial in the Dunedin District Court, the 13-year-old complainant admitted she made up the allegations.
Criminal defence lawyer Graeme Newell said compensation onl
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1) Dating apps put a premium on physical attractiveness, with attractive men getting a much larger share of interest from women and less attractive men getting little or no interest from women. 80/20 rule
Had to snip somewhere. Yes, what you wrote is pretty spot on. You wrote some interesting stuff below.
It ends with a percentage game negatively affecting both men and women.
- A woman won't go to the store alone at night, even with a well lit parking lot, security, and more protections because of a remote risk of getting attacked
This is exactly true. Women tend to be smaller and not as strong. They also tend to be fearful by nature. One of the big losses the strong independent woman and single faces is that without a man to protect her, The fearful nature takes over. SO notes that the fact that I'm still formidable even though I'm not young any more is quite the comfort. And something she always liked over the years.
Coupled with
Survey says.... (Score:2)
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That's not really logical though. Why can't they wear heels? Because it would make them taller than their partner? Why is there shame in a woman being taller than her partner? Is it because it suggests that their partner is not formidable and well made?
Timeframe? (Score:2)
Is this a clumsy or out-of-context way of saying that sexual selection in the past is suspected of predisposing men to turn available calories into height; or are they actually positing a meaningful amount of selection-driven phenotypic change in the past 100 years; despite human generations being comparatively long?
The former seems at least plausible; I'd assume that both responses to 'best
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Sexual dimorphism in nature tends to correlate with a species' mating behavior. The larger the difference, the less likely monogamous pairings are.
But humans' dimorphism is typically not all that great. Men have more muscle, usually assumed to be due to male competition, women have more fat, usually assumed to be selected for its role in supporting pregnancy.
In terms of height, a lot of that seems to be diet. I haven't read anything specific on the subject, but there are plenty of male-female sibling pai
Anyone looking at food? (Score:2)
Re:Anyone looking at food? (Score:2)
Look into epigenetics. While there has not been significant natural selection in such a short time, our DNA has epigenetic factors that can basically regulate the expression of certain genes we possess. Basically you could have clones with the same exact DNA, but change the epigenetic factors and the clones could come out quite different. So, some of these epigenetic factors control food requirements and growth and they get activated due to stress factors caused by poor nutrition. That means that the offspr
Really? No jokes about compensation? (Score:2)
So I'll ask the obvious question:
Have the gains in height and weight been offset anywhere?
For example in intelligence and related voting behaviors? Where oh where could I find an interesting example?
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Women select larger men because they are hoping they are proportionately larger everywhere.
NBA (Score:2)
This trend is purely the result of infanticide of babies who are unlikely to become NBA stars.
Get real (Score:2)
Women are just hoping they are proportional.
Two more generations (Score:2)
Two more generations and we will be four times the size of women! Hahaa! Inevidable male supremacy!
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*NF-kB
Re:Sex (and so gender) is a spectrum of features (Score:5, Insightful)
Spamming LLM garbage should be an automatic death sentence.
Re: Sex (and so gender) is a spectrum of features (Score:2)
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Yes. Pretty obvious to me anyway.
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There's no LLM that can come up with my level of logic and reasoning. People see long articles and their paranoia assumes it was LLM. A lot of times, their paranoia is correct, but it's often wrong for the following reasons:
1. Just because something follows an LLM like pattern it doesn't mean it's totally LLM. For example, a person may have a preference for typing in a similar style to the LLM or they may have pasted some parts from the LLM.
2. Just because a pattern based prejudice is able to correctly pred
Re: Sex (and so gender) is a spectrum of features (Score:2)
What makes you think this is "LLM garbage"? (Score:2)
I've been on Slashdot for 25 years now and post just about every day on various topics. Why would I post "LLM garbage"? What's the point? Especially if I want a meaningful discussion or contribute something meaningful?
Ok, my turn: ... But you _are_ on slashdot, so that does give you bonus points. Kudos to that. Keep it up. But don't jump to conclusions. And don't call for death-sentences. Grown-ups here don't do that. You're welcome.
You're making a lot of troll noises for a seven-digit slash-toddler *.
* I a
Slashdotter claims bragging rights! News at 11. (Score:2)
if you've "'been on Slashdot for 25 years now" you'd recognize the OP and already know he is incapable of writing a post like that.
No, I don't recognize, despite being a old regular. Perhaps it's because I haven't browsed on -1 for 10 years or so now.
You should probably not brag so hard about your old-timer status when you demonstrate so little insight beyond loving your own insults.
I officially have earned slashdot bragging rights and I will use them at my discretion! And you could admit that that insult _
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If you don't like it, cause you're of human retard spectral variant, don't read it.
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Sorry - should have put "TRIGGER WARNING FOR SENSITIVE CLODS" somewhere before that comment.
Or maybe quit with the LLM spam? Just maybe?
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And we don't say sex is a spectrum because some people have serious mental illnesses that lead to them insisting that their lives are one giant LARP in which ev
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If a human can exist without an arms, then we should not make it mandatory that a person provide their fingerprints to get a passport. Would you agree with that? So now imagine that the law stated "all humans must specify whether they are right or left handed"? Also, the statement "all humans have arms" is false.
I'm not sure what mental illness has to do with anything I'm saying. My point is that a person's sex-identification features exist such that they cannot easily be categorized as being a mere variant
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While sex may have a "spectrum of features", there are still only two sexes. Gender, however, has come to mean something different from sex; gender not only has a "spectrum of features", it exists on a continuum.
To have a genuine, good faith discussion on the topic, it is really best to avoid terms that are deliberately perverted to support narratives. "Gender" is one such word, in some contexts it is a synonym for "sex", while in others it means many different things, like sexual "characteristics", "featu
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You don't.
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What classifies something as a defect? If an M&M factory produces a striped M&M, is it correct to say striped M&M's don't exist, or that striped M&Ms are a variant of red M&Ms? And how do you know it wasn't intentional? The problem is that you've categorized humans into either male or female because 99% of people you've seen look either "male" or "female" .. and now, in many cases, you're trying to force a square peg into those round holes. None of you people who keep doubling down on "t
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Gender, however, has come to mean something different from sex; gender not only has a "spectrum of features", it exists on a continuum.
"Gender" is one such word, in some contexts it is a synonym for "sex", while in others it means many different things, like sexual "characteristics", "features", "attrtibutes", "roles", "identity" and so on. Even worse, people on both sides of the argument will confuse the meaning of the word routinely, even in the same sentence.
I think it's important to note here that you're actually stating this a bit backwards. Gender has not come to mean something different from sex, it started out meaning something different than sex and later on gained a connotation very similar to "sex". Gender actually means "type" and was used that way for centuries. For example, someone might have asked "What gender of thing is it: animal, vegetable or mineral". Any subject with multiple classes of things had different genders having nothing to do with se
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Needs more than age and weight. One of the things pointed out about men vs women in sports like boxing or mma is that there are differences in things like bone density and muscle tone as well as secondary sexual characteristics that tend to make men of equal weight to women still have an average physical advantage in such sports. That's why I'm arguing for objective standards and just weight and age are clearly not objective enough. Some of this can apply to trans women as well, although if you wait enough
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I am not aware
This is the most accurate thing you've ever written. You should have stopped there.
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I should note that you're basically reducing all human behavior down to mate selection (I know that you're pointing out that it's a simple model, but still). While concerns about that do occupy a lot of people's time and energy, especially during their younger years, there are, in fact, a very large number of other factors in human behavior. Both men and women should realize that there's a whole lot more to people of their own or other sexes than just hookup concerns. Seriously, I have way too many stupid v
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Well, I think that narrowing down all of human interaction to just those factors is actively harmful to meaningful social interaction. So, I don't agree for example that concerning yourself only with mating behavior is "..looking for a shortcut to understand people's behavior" because that's a general statement (both generalized behavior and "people" instead of "the sex that they are sexually interested in"). So I agree that mating behavior is a big concern for a lot of young people, but not that it is, or
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Re:I was Just Looking Into This (Score:4, Informative)
The CDC publishes survey data for the size of Americans. I was looking through the data a few days back purely out of idle curiosity.
From CDC 1960-1962 [cdc.gov], for ages 18-64 the 50-th percentile man was 68.6 inches (174 cm) and 157 pounds (71 kg). While the 50-th percentile woman was 63.9 inches (162 cm) and 126 pounds (57 kg).
From CDC 2015-2018 [cdc.gov], for ages 20+ the 50-th percentile man was 69.1 inches (175 cm) and 193 pounds (87.4 kg). While the 50-th percentile woman was 63.5 inches (161 cm) and 161 pounds (73.1 kg).
So, over that time median American men grew half an inch and 36 pounds and American women shrank by a bit under half an inch and gained 35 pounds. Clearly something is going on. I haven't seen more recent data than 2018, but I expect the trend to continue.
Dammit! I read from the wrong column for 1960-1962 data. The correct values are:
For 1960-1962 ages 18-79 (tables 1 and 2): 50th percentile male height is 68.3 inches (173.5 cm) and 166 pounds (75.5 kg). The 50th percentile female height is 62.9 inches (160cm) and 137 pounds (62.3 kg)
So the change in 50th percentile from 1960-1962 to 2015-2018 is +0.8 inches and +27 pounds for men and +0.6 inches and +24 pounds for women.
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