What should a woman do with her intelligence?

I received a book in the mail a while back called "Monkeys On Our Backs". The author at one point questioned the common idea that women should use their intelligence and potential to benefit society.

All men and women are born with intelligence. But they are so different from each other that intelligence benefits them differently.

What the science shows is that a man needs to use his intelligence in order to reproduce (have children). A man who does not have intelligence to gain status, wealth, and power will have trouble finding a wife. In evolutionary terms, a man who is intelligent and who uses it will enjoy higher fertility. A man who is not intelligence will have more trouble finding a wife and having children.

On the other hand, it is exactly the opposite for women. Women who "use" their intelligence to its "full potential" must necessarily have lower fertility. This is not idle opinion - it is a scientific fact, backed by empirical observations. A woman has a limited time, part of which she can allocate to career, and the other part to family. She cannot give 100% to each. A woman who divides her time between family and career will have less fertility than a woman who gives 100% to family. It is only possible for a career woman to match the fertility of a housewife if:

1. there are perverse incentives that artificially boost the fertility of career women (tax breaks, socialized day care, socialized fertility treatments)
2. there are perverse disincentives that artificially lower the fertility of housewives (tax codes that penalize families, higher taxes to support career women's choices, etc)

Note that I'm not saying that women should not be intelligent. Rather, I'm saying that women are better off not "using it to its full potential" in the modern sense ie. pursue a career. From an evolutionary standpoint, women can effectively use their intelligence to further their reproductive success in only one way: by passing it on (via genes) to their children.

1. Their sons will benefit, because they will be able to attract a quality wife and have children. The more intelligent he is, the higher status, wealth, and power he will likely enjoy, and the more likely that his wife will be able to be a housewife and enjoy higher fertility. It goes without saying that he will have intelligent sons (see #1) and daughters (see #2).
2. Their daughters will also benefit, because they will themselves be more intelligent, but more importantly, they will be able to have more intelligent sons of their own (see #1)

Society may "lose" out by not utilizing all this female intelligence to its "full potential", but:

1. If we don't know what we are losing out on, then why should it bother us? People living 2000 years ago couldn't concieve of space travel, but it didn't seem to bother them.
2. Perhaps our modern society could have been achieved 2000 years ago. But so what? Are we really better off now than we used to be? And who would be around who could appreciate the fact that modern society had been achieved 2000 years earlier than scheduled? Instead there would only be people complaining that modern society hadn't been achieved 4000 years ago instead of 2000 years ago.
3. Perhaps global warming might have happened 2000 years ago. And it could have been fixed 1900 years ago. But how is it different from global warming happening now and being fixed in 2100 AD?
4. Is it better for a woman to use her intelligence to benefit society, or is it better for her to have 2 sons who will inherit her high intelligence and benefit society?

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.

The IQ Uncertainty Principle

I realized something interesting about intelligence a while ago. It could have been a year ago - can't remember exactly.

The IQ Uncertainty Principle states that, you can't tell the difference between someone who's more intelligent than you and someone else who's less intelligent than you, simply by observing their behaviour (without knowing what effects their behaviour is causing). That is, they will both be behaving equally bizarrely. The difference is that one of them is aware of why they're doing it, and the other is not.

More formally, a person A with IQ "X" can't tell the difference between two other people, B whose IQ is "X+N" and C whose IQ is "X-N". Some examples:

1. A's IQ is 100, B's IQ is 120, C's IQ is 80. A can't tell who's more intelligent, B or C.
2. A's IQ is 120, B's IQ is 140, C's IQ is 100. Again, A can't tell who's more intelligent, B or C.
3. A's IQ is 90, B's IQ is 75, C's IQ is 105. Ditto.

However if B's IQ is "X+M" and C's IQ is "X-N" then A still doesn't know who's more intelligent - he only notices that one is behaving more bizarrely than the other. Examples:

1. A's IQ is 100, B's IQ is 90, C's IQ is 120. A notices that C is behaving more bizarrely than B, but doesn't know who's more intelligent.
2. A's IQ is 110, B's IQ is 120, C's IQ is 90. Ditto.

The difference, however, becomes apparent after the fact - if you can see the effects resulting from their behaviour. One of them will be seen to have "method in his madness", while the other will obviously be just plain mad, judging from the chaos left in his wake.

In many cases though, the behaviour and the effects of that behaviour cannot be separated from each other. If Mozart and a folk musician were to play the piano, it's easy to see who's more musically intelligent because the behaviour and the effect are inseparable (playing the piano and listening to the music). In other cases, there is often a significant time lag between the behaviour and the effect. Playing the stock market is one example.