I don't overlook the origin. Your thrust seems to be that culture only magnifies innate difference. Perhaps this is true in simple cases, but I think that there are particular examples where culture takes on a mind of its own.

I point out that existing cultural bias might be due to biological bias interacting with environmental factors long extinct. This bias is encoded and preserved, unlike almost everything else in the animal kingdom, in human culture, which can be perpetuated and passed on. Existing cultural bias might just be a carry over from prehistoric times, entirely irrelevant to whether or not there are now meaningful differences in aptitude, in this, the present.

it actually seems more unnatural to claim equality on things like attitudes towards risk and attribute difference to culture.

I never claimed equality, I simply pointed out that the differences you'd expect due to biological selection are smaller in magnitude than those due to cultural selection, and so therefore born-attitudes towards things like risk should be largely outweighed by cultural ones.

My mind wouldn't scream inconsistency if I heard that women, on average, were intrinsically, say, 30% less likely to take big risks. That kind of difference seems reasonable. But the data on entrepreneurship implies a difference many dozens of times that.

I don't think this magnitude is consistent with other risky behaviors -- many women do risky things as well, like dating strange men in remote places, running away from home, abusing hard drugs, or keeping a pregnancy in ill-health. This difference in magnitude may be explained by cultural factors, because men have greater cultural support when projecting high-status creating cultural memes (especially those encouraging risky behavior).

this argument is usually the convenient one

Perhaps I was unclear. This is a very different argument than the one typically given, because it uses the very same mathematics that the evolutionary biologists use, only applied to culture. And what you find is that the factors in culture -- the influence of the same kind of mathematics, is much stronger.

the sperm of a high-status males, whom are shown to produce more offspring, still hold good chance to yield daughters.

Can you explain the relevance of this?

The paradigm of man as provider and woman as nurturer, and the mating ramifications of that (i.e. women preferring men who are able to provide, which most closely translates in our society to wealth, and men preferring women more fit to raise children, which in our society most closely translates to healthy appearance) are virtually universal.

That would strongly suggest that it is genetic rather than cultural.

I agree that this is easy, but I am not sure that it is in fact accurate. To do so you must show that the particular cultural values you're exploring do not share anthropological linage. This is a very difficult problem. How do you propose to handle that case?

The paradigm of man as provider and woman as nurturer, and the mating ramifications of that (i.e. women preferring men who are able to provide, which most closely translates in our society to wealth, and men preferring women more fit to raise children, which in our society most closely translates to healthy appearance) are virtually universal.

So would you draw the line from this evolutionary argument like so: men have a greater instinct to produce wealth or high status, which causes them to produce more startups.

The problem I have with this is that's its so vague. If we don't actually try to nail down or postulate an actual theory, people can be lazy and undisciplined in their thought. They might say, for example "here are some good reasons that the sexes might be intrinsically different; any existing difference is just the way things are, due intrinsically, and due to genetics". My point is that the disciplined way to approach this question is that you actually need to make specific predictions, or you risk degenerating into religious war.

So, in which ways is this instinct for men to provide manifested?

Compared to startups, law or medicine or finance seems a surer method to acquire status and prestige, and you probably come out ahead on average. More women are in these fields than in startups.

And physical science and engineering aren't particularly high prestige careers, nor do they make much wealth, nor do they seem to improve procreative chances. And these fields are particularly male centric.

So then usually someone points out that men like to take risks. They aim for the massive payoffs. If that's so, one should examine the structure of risks that men take versus women.

So, we have a set of hypotheses, backed up in varying amounts by data. Men are much more likely to do one off things to impress people. I guess this is called machismo. They're much more likely to take physical risks, or health risks. They may be more likely to take risks in their social stature, so long as they have little to lose. They're more likely to risk the state of a relationship for some impulse, someone or something that they want.

By contrast, I postulate, women are more likely to risk themselves emotionally. They are more likely to invest themselves in one particular friendship or relationship, even if it risks not panning out. Men, by contrast, fear commitment. They're more likely to keep their eggs out of one basket (see especially, for example, studies on the messaging patterns and viewing patterns and requests and satisfaction on dating sites). Women are more likely to invest themselves emotionally in some community, cause, person, or idea.

Doesn't this sound like a startup?

It's striking how many female entrepreneurs describe starting a startup like having a baby. Mena Trott (in founders at work) describes it like having a chemical in your brain that blocks out the painful moments, leaving only the other ones in memory (This effect is described also of pregnancy, and recently they've actually discovered that such a chemical exists). Are women more ready to devote themselves like this? Are women more emotionally prepared for a startup? Perhaps.

So, we have conflicting attitudes towards risk. On one hand, we postulate, men are more likely to be driven by promises of extreme status and wealth. On the other, women are perhaps more emotionally prepared, in some areas, when they get there. It seems like this should be a fairly balanced game.

But it's not. Female founders make up 3% of the YC pool. The risk and wealth hypothesis can't handle this alone.

Something has to take up the slack. And I think that it has much to do with the fact that different memes that define success in this society propagate to men and to women.

You should really read up on evolutionary psychology, I think you might enjoy it.

This is easy to show: superstitions and religions. Then, reverence of those closer to gods. Religion is almost completely cognitive, and so only humans are able to develop, propagate, and perpetuate it. It is also cognitive in the sense that children are not developed enough to invent it themselves. This fits the "entirely irrelevant" category.

But for other things that can be explained loosely by behavioral drift, the chicken and egg problem remains. Perhaps a small, innate difference was exacerbated by culture, creating a sustained, artificial specialization; this is also the byproduct of the human tendency to generalize. Not saying it's the most efficient, but in most cases I would say there is nontrivial relevance.

I never claimed equality ... a difference many dozens of times that.

This I agree with. The examples of risky behavior like dating strange men and running away though, I'm not so sure if they make good comparison; it is possible to look at these behaviors from another angle (behavioral/biological), but that's not to devalue the point you made.

About sperm of high status males. High status males produce more offspring, several of which can be females, who inherit the status. Upon rereading I realize I'm confused about this point. How are males's status not also spread through memes (disregarding relative degree)? I suppose you'd say they are, then what's the crux of saying that high status females produce less?

Another clarification, what kind of mathematics is that used by the evolutionary biologists?

Above questions are for my own interest and I won't follow up on them. I mostly agree with you, but I'm fairly sure "completely dominates" is an overstatement, and I went about throwing pebbles because you asked.

what's the crux of saying that high status females produce less?

My point is that, the same behaviors that men can use to achieve high status, if women use they're frowned upon. Even if they succeed in using said behaviors to achieve a higher status, cultural resistance applied a force restricting the spread of those memes to other women. (For example, talking behind someone's back about 'whipping' employees or coworkers, or ad-homeniem/targeted/unfairly focussed attacks, such as on Martha Stewart or Hillary Clinton or Kathy Sierra http://headrush.typepad.com/)

what kind of mathematics is that used by the evolutionary biologists?

Some do a lot of analysis, or combinatorics. I'm actually more interested in a complexity approach, in the manner of stephen wolfram, because there's a lot of complexity which I think can't be easily engineered out -- it's better simulated.

To achieve high status, males have to endure much more than being frowned upon; the price of failure, historically, has often been death. You bring up Hillary, but compare the total weight of attacks on her with the total weight of attacks on McCain or Obama. Even if we take just the ad hominem ones.