How Women select Men (Natural Selection) - Jordan Peterson — Transcript

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1. 0:00and so the way what the females seem to
2. 0:02be doing is using some marker or some
3. 0:04set of markers as a proxy indicator for
4. 0:07for for health and I think I think you
5. 0:11could say with with reasonable you could
6. 0:14say reasonable that reasonably that
7. 0:16female human beings do the same thing to
8. 0:19male human beings and there's some of
9. 0:20that vice-versa too like we evaluate
10. 0:22other for example for symmetry which is
11. 0:24one of the elements of beauty because
12. 0:26healthier people tend to be more
13. 0:27symmetrical and lots of animals use
14. 0:29symmetry butterflies if butterflies
15. 0:32won't mate with another butterfly if it
16. 0:34deviates from symmetry by the tiniest
17. 0:36amounts you can imagine so symmetry is a
18. 0:38marker and there's other markers like
19. 0:40shoulder width to waist width is one and
20. 0:43waist width to hip width is another
21. 0:45that's usually what males use that to
22. 0:47evaluate females in part so there's lots
23. 0:49of markers of health but it also looks
24. 0:53to me like that the data worldwide seems
25. 0:55to indicate that women so imagine that
26. 0:58women made across dominance hierarchies
27. 1:00and up socioeconomically speaking and on
28. 1:03average across cultures women go for men
29. 1:05who are about four to five years older
30. 1:07you know it varies in the Scandinavian
31. 1:08countries that's shrunk a little bit but
32. 1:10not that much and in other cultures it's
33. 1:12bigger I would say that depends to some
34. 1:14degree on difficulty of establishing
35. 1:16economic independence right because in
36. 1:19richer countries it's easier to have
37. 1:20enough economic independence if you're a
38. 1:21male to be to be a useful participant in
39. 1:25the process of having children but it
40. 1:29doesn't matter cross culturally it's
41. 1:30still across and up where a man made to
42. 1:32cross and down they don't care much
43. 1:33about socioeconomic status it doesn't
44. 1:36seem to be part of their selection
45. 1:37method generally speaking so so I think
46. 1:45that part of that is also that the
47. 1:46ability of women to select for for male
48. 1:48health it's something like that because
49. 1:50it isn't that only that because if
50. 1:52you're healthy and energetic you're much
51. 1:54more likely to be successful because
52. 1:55it's very hard to be successful if
53. 1:57you're ill obviously I mean so because
54. 2:00the competition is just too high and
55. 2:01both both genders both sexes select each
56. 2:04other for attractiveness both select for
57. 2:06intelligence both to select for
58. 2:07personality although the difference
59. 2:10there are differences there in terms of
60. 2:11what's what's stressed
61. 2:13but so so so I think you can derive a
62. 2:17couple of things out of out of this and
63. 2:19this is where I think people are
64. 2:20different than than other animals
65. 2:22importantly different is that so you
66. 2:24imagine that there's tremendous
67. 2:25selection pressure to towards the
68. 2:30production let's say of men who are good
69. 2:32at climbing male dominance hierarchies
70. 2:33or climbing the male dominance hierarchy
71. 2:36but the thing that's so interesting
72. 2:37about people is that we've multiplied
73. 2:40our dominance hierarchies you know if
74. 2:42you take an animal that's got a rather
75. 2:44static behavioral pattern then there's
76. 2:47there's a single hierarchy elephant
77. 2:49seals are a good example of that so
78. 2:50elephant seals the males are absolutely
79. 2:52massive they're way way bigger than the
80. 2:54females and they basically have harems
81. 2:56roughly speaking and they use physical
82. 3:00prowess as their marker of status
83. 3:02essentially and obviously size is a huge
84. 3:04part of that because otherwise the male
85. 3:06elephant seals wouldn't be as they're
86. 3:08massive these things are absolutely
87. 3:09enormous and so it's just power slash
88. 3:14health
89. 3:14you know maybe aggression something like
90. 3:16that it's whatever makes them more
91. 3:20suitable for the kind of physical combat
92. 3:23that elephant seals engage in so and the
93. 3:27degree to which power is associated with
94. 3:29dominance status in those sorts of
95. 3:32situations seems to be associated with
96. 3:34the size differential between males and
97. 3:36females so the more power is an issue
98. 3:40with regards to male competence the
99. 3:42larger the males are compared to the
100. 3:43females and the more likely the males
101. 3:45are going to have a harem relationship
102. 3:46with the females and you see that a
103. 3:48little bit in human beings because men
104. 3:50are bigger than women they're not
105. 3:51overwhelmingly bigger that's sexual
106. 3:53dimorphism and you know there's some men
107. 3:55that are smaller than some women but on
108. 3:57average men are taller and they're they
109. 3:59have more upper body strength and so
110. 4:00forth so there is a power element to
111. 4:02male competition but it's not as
112. 4:05extended as it would be among animals
113. 4:07say like like elephant seals so in the
114. 4:10elephant seal you see maybe there's one
115. 4:12stable set of traits that's being
116. 4:15selected for that makes the males more
117. 4:17likely to reproduce but human beings
118. 4:18were very weird creatures because we're
119. 4:20so conceptually flexible and so what
120. 4:23seems to have happened maybe we started
121. 4:27mail started selecting each other for
122. 4:29dominance competitions for something
123. 4:31like cognitive flexibility and and
124. 4:33conscientiousness it's something like
125. 4:35that so that would be the ability to
126. 4:38abstractly represent the world and then
127. 4:40the ability operate effectively within
128. 4:42it to represent yourself socially in a
129. 4:44way and then to carry through with that
130. 4:46because that enables people to trust you
131. 4:48so it's something like that
132. 4:49and so that produced cortical expansion
133. 4:54and then women were selecting men who
134. 4:56were good at that and that produced
135. 4:57cortical expansion and then there's an
136. 5:00arms race between women and men with
137. 5:01regards to intelligence so the women
138. 5:03kept up or they certainly kept up with
139. 5:06with with intelligence as the
140. 5:08evolutionary cycle continued
141. 5:18you