Iterative game of life

Came across an article on Psychology Today called Do Married Women Want Their Husbands to Cheat?.

Further to what the author says about women's choices in men, I would add that women have to choose a balance between these two extremes:

1. choose men who are not promiscuous because if he cheats on her, it will potentially divert his resources to other women's children
2. choose men who are promiscuous because it will benefit:
1. her sons because promiscuity will give her sons a reproductive advantage
2. her daughters because they will inherit his mother's "attraction to promiscuous men" genes and thus confer a reproductive advantage on her daughters

I chose to call this post "the iterative game of life" because it is reminiscent of the "prisoner's dilemma problem". The prisoners behave differently depending on whether every game is discrete and doesn't affect following games or whether the game is iterative. While the prisoners will act purely selfishly in the former case, they may tend to cooperate in the latter to avoid each punishing the other in successive games.

Similarly, evolution does not operate within a generation insulated from succeeding generations. If it did, then women would only choose non-promiscuous men. We all know that this is false in reality. A superior evolutionary strategy is to consider the effects in succeeding generations.

Which came first, beauty or intelligence?

I came across an article on Psychology Today, a blog post by the Scientific Fundamentalist called "Beautiful People Really ARE More Intelligent".

We all know that women care a great deal about their beauty, because they know what attracts men. And men care a great deal about status (which may be gotten by intelligence) because they know what attracts women.

Now this got me thinking: why was the title of the blog post worded "Beautiful People Really ARE More Intelligent"? It would be equally valid to say "Intelligent People Really ARE More Beautiful". After all, evolution is not directed, so intelligence is just a strategy, just like beauty. Neither one is better than the other. One (intelligence) is a strategy used by males to reproduce, and the other (beauty) is a strategy used by females to reproduce.

I mentioned in a previous blog post (Men are more intelligent than women) that intelligence is largely a male trait. It is more useful to men, but of little use to women when it comes to mating. The title might upset women, but there is really no reason to be upset. After all it is well known that women are more beautiful than men. It's just obvious enough that there isn't any need for a post to be written about it. And as I've mentioned, intelligence and beauty are just two different strategies.

While intelligence is of little use to women when it comes to mating, both beauty and intelligence are important for men. I shall explain why.

From the female's point of view, on the one hand she would like a provider and protector. A male with status fits the bill. But all else being equal, she will prefer the more beautiful male, because her daughters will have a beauty advantage if she mates with a beautiful man with status than a plain man with status. If the man's status is unknown, she will be attracted to beautiful males, because beauty is often an indicator of intelligence (and intelligence begets status). After all, his mother was beautiful, and so it was likely that she attracted an intelligent man with status.

So physical beauty in a man is preferred by women for two reasons:

1. As an indicator of intelligence (and thus status)
2. A beauty advantage for her daughters, so they will be able to attract (intelligent) men with status
3. Smarter men are more virile

Men on the other hand care little about a woman's intelligence because:

1. It is not necessary for a man to determine a woman's beauty and thus fertility indirectly through her intelligence - it's plain to see!
2. While mating with a intelligent woman would ensure that their sons had a reproductive advantage, it is likely that intelligence in a woman reduces her fertility.
3. Until fairly recently in human evolution, a man didn't need to pick and choose which woman he mated with. Because his investment in procreation was all of about 10 minutes, there was no need to pick and choose. Of course, with the advent of marriage and women as property, the environment changed but his brain didn't much.

This is all very hypothetical, so do post a comment if you have any thoughts.

Men are more intelligent than women (and women are more beautiful than men)

In all societies, intelligence can be an advantage for men because a more intelligent man has a greater ability to acquire status which enables him to attract more women and thus have more children. This status can be acquired by various means, such as strength, influence, wealth, etc. So for a man, more status means more fertility.

Since in the mating game it is women who choose men and not the other way around, the question of whether a man would prefer beauty or intelligence in a woman is somewhat beside the point. Also, since the game of life is about reproduction and not about intelligence nor beauty, a man would prefer beauty which correlates with fertility in women. Just as how women would prefer intelligence which correlates with fertility in men (but also beauty which is an indicator of intelligence in men). Which is not to say that intelligence is completely useless in a woman (because his sons would gain a reproductive advantage from his wife's intelligence genes), but intelligence is not an indicator of fertility in women (in fact it is the opposite).

Since the supply of women have always been less than demand, there has always been less evolutionary pressure on women to excel than on men. A woman has to literally do nothing to attract a man (she didn't have to be devious or clever in attracting a man), she has no real use for intelligence. Beauty on the other hand would give her an advantage in attracting men with status.

But then why did intelligence in women evolve at all? Since the more intelligent men were more likely to be successful in mating with women and having more offspring, children (both boys and girls) in the second generation inherited those intelligence genes from their fathers. These girls in the second generation, while being more intelligent (and numerous) than other girls who were the offspring of less intelligent men, nevertheless had no mating advantage over their less intelligent cousins. But a more intelligent man would have more luck with these second generation women than a less intelligent man would have with these women. So in the third generation as well, boys and girls possessing more intelligence would be more numerous.

So it seems that women's intelligence has always been dragged up by the men they mated with. And of course male beauty has always been dragged up by the females they mated with.