From: Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 05 1997 - 21:44:21 MST
CurtAdams@aol.com writes:
>While I'm pretty neutral on who does what, I worry about a
>society short of homemakers and conciliators.
Yes. Presumably the "price" of such activities will rise, inducing
more "supply". But which sex will supply first? My guess is that men
are more likely to realize how much they value these traits in women,
inducing more women to supply these traits, than women are likely to
value these traits in men, inducing men to supply them more. I wish I
were wrong though.
>Like it or not, questions of what we want and expect in this category are
>very complex, and with the 30-40 year lag time it takes a lot of time to
>resolve. This is one of those cases where if the information isn't in yet,
>you can't make a good decision. If sex roles are to change significantly,
>for whatever reason, it's going to take a century or so of "settling out" to
>adjust to the new situation.
Yes its complex, but the time to bring expectations and actions into
equilibrium depends on the mechanisms of information transmission. If
each person just makes a private guess, and then waits a generation to
see the results, it could take a while. It should help to have more
of a conversation about what we want and expect. So I am dissapointed
that there seems to be little conversation on these topics.
Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:20 MST