July 15, 2005
The Left -- Geniuses and Criminals
I'm no leftist. But I am a lefty, as are many of my friends. Lefties are just like everyone else, except that they're usually insufferably smug about their leftieness. OK, so lefties are shorter than righties, don't live as long, and are more likely to die in horrible accidents while misusing big scary industrial machines designed for righties. You probably don't want to mention that to a lefty, though, because the one area where lefties really excel is in smacking righties around. That's why they're way overrepresented in sports, particuarly contact sports. (Interestingly, African tribes with a lot of internal fighting have more lefties than relatively peaceful ones). And of course, like any self-conscious minority, lefties love to meet other lefties, and get really excited when, for example, they discover that their newphew who's the cutest baby on earth is a lefty.
The most common reason lefties will give you when you ask them why they're so insufferably smug about their leftieness is that a hugely disproportionate number of big-time geniuses throughout the ages have been lefties. Then again, so have a disproportionate number of criminals. And that's where the interesting speculation begins. It turns out that there are 10% more male lefties than female lefties, which isn't too surprising, given that geniuses and criminals are also disproportionately men. Now, why would that be?
The various feminist views of why most criminals are men boil down to the feeling that men are just less socially aware, and criminal activity is at root anti-social. But even if that were true, it wouldn't account for the large amount of crime that's ultimately economic. Hence the explanation that most criminals are men for the same reason most CEOs are men: because most economic activity, legal and illegal, is conducted by men. If it is men who feel the most pressure to accumulate wealth, then it is they who will be most of the burglers, drug dealers, extortionists and muggers as well as most of the world's stockbrokers and truckers. Another explanation comes down to pure physics: part of why most rapists are men and most prostitutes are women is that men are better at raping and women are better at prostituting. Or, breeding: maybe something in the way women are raised makes them less susceptible to criminal behavior. Or, biology. There's the idea that criminal activity is caused by weird glandular disorders which are more commonly found in men, like hyperthyroidism, or by testosterone, which causes aggressive behavior. Economists probably argue that incentives play a large role as well. Men take greater risks because historically, they had more to gain. Women, no matter how successful, can only have a handful of children. Men, on the other hand, can have thousands. So from an evolutionary standpoint, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for women to engage in risky behavior; for them, it's much less likely to translate into more children.
Now, what about those pesky geniuses? Much more controversial terrain (Under the rules of political correctness, you can say "women are better behaved" because women are a "good" group; you can't say "men are better drivers", because men are a "bad" group). The feminist view, again, is that all terrorists are men because men are sort of mean -- but all mathematicians are men because women are brought up differently, or discriminated against, or just have better things to do. Then there's the more common-sense idea, offensive beyond scope of scientific inquiry, that women can't compete in chess because they're just not as good at it. But, feminists argue, most chess players are men. OK, take a look at scrabble. Most players are women. Most tournament players are women. Most of the top rated tournament players are women. Most of the very top rated tournament players are women. Glance at the current rankings of the top 500 British scrabble players by rank. Scroll halfway down the page -- mostly women. Now look at the top 30. 29 men. Take away the politics and you just end up with a lot of male geniuses, in the same way that you end up with a lot of male criminals. It's not just almost all non-political nobel prize winners, it's everywhere.
And the explanations are similar. The feminist view -- women are just discriminated against. The biological view -- bigger heads, bigger brains, more smarts. The evolutionary view -- variance generally is simply a better strategy for men than women, and genius is simply one exmaple of variance. And so forth.
But hang on. Is it just possible that these things are related? Perhaps criminality is simply an under-rated strategy. In a society that's fairly lenient towards white-collar criminals, at least, if you're enough of a genius to get away with it, then maybe being a criminal is a smart way to go. Maybe following the letter of the law is for suckers! Or, maybe part of being a genius is that your mind is wired up differently from other people, and so you simply don't behave in the same way. In fact, much of what's criminial is simply following a different path from what most people do. Like taking drugs, or having sixteen wives. Which brings us back to question of lefties: criminals or geniuses? How about Bill Clinton, our most recent lefty president? Or Ronald Reagan, who was forced to become a righty as a child? Or George H.W. Bush, another lefty president, defeated by a lefty challenger? Or Gerald Ford, another lefty republican? You decide!
I'll leave you with a fun miscellaneous fact. Why do we drive on the right? Traditionally, you always passed people on the left so if there was trouble, you could get your weapon or fist out faster, and position it between you and your your adversary. This didn't change until the French revolution, and there are a number of conflicting explanations for this. One is that Napoleon, a famous lefty, ordered his armies to march on the right as he went around conquering Europe and forcing the evil metric system down everyone's throat. Another is that French aristocrats drove around in a panic forcing the peasantry over to the right. Americans, on the other hand, have been right-hand drivers since colonical times, according to Wikipedia.
Posted by Dan at 05:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
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