Re: Gender Importance

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Apr 22 1999 - 12:56:21 MDT


"Jocelyn Brown" <jocelynb@mindspring.com> writes:

> >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).
>
> My only qualm about this is that many people seem to make the assumption
> that just because a desire is biological in nature, i.e. a woman's desire to
> have childen, that this desire is somehow wrong or needs to be changed. I
> certainly support any woman's desire to not have children, or even to remove
> any hormonal influences dealing with this desire; however, I don't think
> that makes the desire inherently wrong. Sexual desire is also an
> evolutionary tool, but I don't see anyone waiting in line to get rid of it.

Exactly. What I want to see is more options, not that everybody switch
to the "new and improved" ways.

I like to sleep, it is very pleasant. Some day I might be able to
consolidate memories and anabolize in a more efficient way, but I
would still like to keep sleeping as an option. A decadent pleasure
when you have time...

> >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.
>
> I saw a very interesting show on TLC the other night about gender
> differences, and they came with an interesting reason why woman tend to live
> longer than men, even assuming identical lifestyles: historically,
> grandmothers are more important to families than grandfathers. Makes sense
> when you think about it.

Far too much. I better rewrite my phenotype :-)

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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