I'm a snowboarder, and, wanting to better understand the risks I assume when I go off-piste -- and how to avoid them -- I took an avalanche safety course a few years ago. At one point during the lecture portion, the instructor said something to the effect that the single most positively correlated statistic with avalanche fatalities is whether there's a girl in the party. I don't know how the data behind that claim was obtained, or even if it's simply an assertion offered to make us think twice before hitting a questionable slope, but it's worked so far: I'm still here, and I've remembered it every time I've strapped on my beacon since.
The text in your quotation marks reads to me like a religious pro-celibacy statement, while incidentally sounding like a pro-homosexuality statement. You may have just added another link to the long held belief of mine that the religious right are simply self-denying homosexuals.
For your first question, I can only extrapolate from my own experience. Having, thankfully, never been in an avalanche or with a group that triggered one, take that for what it's worth. That said, the groups I've been out of bounds with have guys outnumbering girls at a ratio well over 10:1, so simple odds are against the guys. The few times there have been women with us, they've tended to be a bit more level-headed and safety-conscious. (As always, the plural of anecdote is not data.)
Your second question doesn't really make sense. First, there's no "protecting" someone from an avalanche. In a slide, you're looking at kilotons of frozen water moving towards you at a speed limited only by gravity and the slope of the mountain face it's falling down. If you're lucky, you're "only" buried in something whose density upon settling approaches that of concrete, and not carried into the trees at speeds that will pulp you on impact.
Moreover, when you're riding out of bounds, you take your runs one at a time, precisely because of the avalanche risk. If there is a slide, the rest of the group will come looking for you once it has subsided. The odds of finding one person buried in an avalanche are bad enough; looking for more than one at a time pretty well guarantees someone's not coming home that day -- or ever again.
I know the odds are against the guys. What I mean is, assuming there are 9 guys and 1 girl, does the girl die 10% of the time? More? Less? The simple statement that 'there are more deaths when a girl is present' could be because the girls are the ones getting killed by the avalanche. Not saying that's the case, just pointing out your statement seemed to assume it's NOT the case.
A bit of digging found an article saying that, even as the number of women who go into the backcountry has grown considerably, the ratio of their fatalities has dropped -- from around 8% in the decade up to 2004, to 5:128 since (as of late 2008). It attributes the change to their taking avy courses in increasing numbers.
Just because it seems obvious to all of us, doesn't necessarily mean doing research on it is a waste of time. It's interesting and useful even to see things like "dudes just want to impress chicks" put into the context of psychology, physiology and evolution.
Not in the slightest. Just because we're married does not mean we're together forever. Every day I wake up and see her is another day I want to show her how much she means to me. I don't believe in soul mates, but I do believe in true love.
Correct. He'd start to get so horny that he couldn't focus, so he'd have to masturbate (which was a small relief) or have sex, which was a great relief, and gave him weeks of productive work.
They take more risks because it works. That won't change unless society makes massive changes, which is unlikely to happen (much less any time soon).
Though the article wasn't too specific, it seems to me that it works because the risky stuff makes people stand out. Success in higher risk endeavors is much more eye-catching than success in the mundane. You see identical behavior in many other areas: startups that take a risk and succeed are more likely to get funding, anyone that does something unique (a risk itself) is rewarded heavily if they succeed.
I doubt it has anything to do with testosterone, and much more to do with perceived reward. Sure, that can cause an increase in testosterone, but it's definitely not required to do so to exhibit this behavior.
(Not read the article, apologies if I miss something.)
>They take more risks because it works.
Agreed.
>I doubt it has anything to do with testosterone, and much more to do with perceived reward
This makes it seem like a conscious decision, which I don't buy. "Pretty woman will like me" is just one more factor in the risk/reward calculation, which is made subconsciously.
I would say it's more likely that testosterone is one variable in the risk/reward calculation, and is released in the presence of pretty women (among other things) because that turns out to be what works.
Who says it's conscious? Perceived reward can be fully subconscious, just look at any minor addiction (and some major), or any habit. Typically, people don't know why they do things in those areas (among others), they just do them.
I'm sorry, but that seems rather obvious to me. Males have been trying to impress females since the dawn of time.
Was this research really required? They had a nice experiment setup, but didn't seem to bother with different age ranges, sexual orientation or any other parameters that might yield actually interesting results.
1) Just because something is obvious doesn't mean it shouldn't be researched. For instance, for a long time it was obvious that light things fall slower than heavy things.
2) I'm not sure what you mean by "really required". In the literal sense, no research is "really required". In the non-literal sense, it's better to have data about something than to not have data about it.
3) I'm not entirely certain why whether you find the results interesting or not is something the researchers should take into account. What's more, adding more independent variables to the experiment would complicate things unnecessarily.
It was beyond a doubt to my mum and almost all women everywhere that cracking your knuckles led to arthritis, it was beyond a doubt. Except it doesn't, there's not even a hint of a link between the two.
Just because something seems obvious, doesn't mean its right or that the science behind it won't lead to something more interesting.
"He challenged himself to describe in equations the wobbling movement of a spinning plate being tossed in the air by a student in a Cornell cafeteria. After much effort, he was able to show that, consistent with his observations, for a small degree of wobble, a one-to-two ratio between the wobble and spin was indeed valid. When Feynman excitedly described his results to Bethe, the other scientist listened with interest but wanted to know their practical value. [...] Ironically, he found that the spinning-plate movement he had studied just for fun also had application to the electron-spin problem."
It's about creating an accurate model of the world and universe. I never saw the point of being caustic against any kind of research.
It does not seem that obvious to me. Yes men will try to impress women but why do they seem to do it with risky behavior? One may suggest that it may be better evolution wise to try to impress women with steady and dependable behavior. (It turns out you can only impress their mothers this way.)
From what I've read on the subject, no. It's interesting that boys perform vastly better in single sex schools, while there is little difference in female performance between joint and single sex schools.
I've wondered if this trait in males is the historical cause of the Knight-in-Shining-Armour legends. If a man sees a woman in trouble, is he really more likely to save her?
There's already a strong correlation between near-death experiences and mistaken love (apparently extreme fear and lust have the same biological pathway, which is too Freudian for me to touch at 9pm), so Sir Knight saving the lady would almost undoubtedly get some action in the bed, which fulfils the reproduction criteria (pre-condom era) for gene spreading.
