From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Apr 22 1999 - 11:42:51 MDT
"Scott Badger" <wbadger@psyberlink.net> writes:
> I suspect that, if given the choice today, more would choose to be males,
> primarily (I regret to say) because there are still more social rewards and
> opportunities for males than females in general.
I'm not sure; at least on average here in the West people seem to like
a balanced family. But there are likely subgroups that will bias
things locally.
Even more interesting is non-traditional forms of reproduction, such
as in vitro gestation and male pregnancies. They could help erode even
more of the old assumptions (if they ever get popular).
> If economics were not an issue, I don't know. Not to be chauvinistic, but I
> once heard and suspect it's true that the male physiology is considerably
> less vulnerable to systemic perturbations...i.e our systems are more
> homeostatic and less susceptible to hormonal (an other?) fluctuations than
> females on average.
The downside is that we are the weaker sex; I'm not sure about the
perturbation thing (never seen any data on it), but we have a higher
mortality due to what appears to be a slightly less robust
construction. That is why you find plenty of old widows but few old
widowers.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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