Men, women, and the need for change

It seems that the instinct to change the world our way affects men more than women. Men may need changes more, and maybe they love ideas more as well.

Change means risk: you cannot know all its consequences in advance. A stronger need for change therefore pushes you to accept more risk.

This could explain why men are more willing to take risks and why they can be more passionate about chess, for example. It could also explain why there are more men among both “successful” and “failed” people. To win a lottery, you need to buy a ticket. To increase your chance of winning, you need to buy more tickets - but that also means spending more. Similarly, more attempts create more opportunities for success, but also more opportunities for costly failure.

In this picture, men buy more tickets. My hypothesis is that their biology pushes them to do so.

Why would nature make it this way? Well, maybe because children’s survival depended more heavily on their mothers. If taking risks reduced a mother’s chances of surviving and raising children, a preference for safety could have been favored across generations.

This could also explain why men may appear “less responsible”: they act on what feels right to them, even when that feeling leads them to a mistaken decision.

In this sense, men could be compared to scout ants: exploring uncertain possibilities can bring discoveries, but also costs.