Hot or Smart? You Get to Choose

A friend and I started talking about whether we wanted our kids to be smart or good looking. I turned the question inward. What would I want for myself?

Thought Experiment

You're going to be reincarnated tomorrow. You will be reborn a human, and you get to choose your intelligence and attractiveness. Your sex and parents will be randomly assigned.

Your intelligence and attractiveness must be inversely proportional. So in order to be the smartest human on Earth, you'll have to also be the ugliest. Or you can be average attractiveness and average intelligence.

Using percentiles, you get to pick your future rankings. Choose a percentile between 1-99 for both attractiveness and intelligence. The sum of your two numbers must not exceed 100.

Click here for more on IQ testing.

 

Click here for more details and images of attractiveness ratings and statistics.

 

Normal Distributions

It looks like intelligence and attractiveness should both follow normal distributions. So when making a choice, it is safe to assume the 68, 95, 99.7 rule, click here for more details.

Things to Consider 

Men and women are treated differently based on their looks and intelligence. You should be prepared for living your choice as a male and female.

Regardless of your attractiveness, some people will find you more attractive.

Where are you now? What percentile are you in intelligence and looks.? What is that total number. I'm guessing most people are going to think they're above 100, but statistically speaking most people wouldn't be. I'm realizing, for the first time in my life, I'm probably below average attractiveness. I always thought I was average to above average, but probably not. People grow up with their families who look like them and share the same features. People all probably over estimate their family features and traits. In that case, people might find themselves more attractive than they actually are. Because they have a bias for their parents, siblings, and families physical traits.

I looked up the distributions of my ASVAB score from the military, and I my score was over two standard deviations from the 50th percentile when I took it. That's not directly related to an IQ score, but it's probably safe to say I'm close to a standard deviation about the average IQ score of 100. According to assortative mating, I might be above average looking like I thought! Although my dating history doesn't confirm that conclusion.

Either way, my reincarnated self will most likely have to take a hit on intelligence to keep my looks, or sacrifice my looks to keep my brains. Or I'm just way too overconfident in my looks and smarts. What about you?

Final Answer

I'm going to think about this more. But for now, I have to stick with a 50/50 split.

Chess, Biology, Culture, and the Gender Rank Gap

A friend made a comment about how chess was a sport that didn't need a women's and men's category because it's intellectual and not physical. We argued about this for a while and I ended up looking into it.

As of today, it’s factual to state that males are better chess players than females on average and at the elite levels. The question is why? Chess has a history of sexism. Research suggests that stereotypes in gender negatively impact female players. How much of the gender gap in chess is cultural vs biological? T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us by Carole Hooven gives a lot of evidence for physical and personality differences between biological sexes. If all cultural factors were erased, differences between men and women would exist. It is unclear whether those differences would affect chess performance between men and women (see thought experiment below).

Physically, females experience fatigue earlier than males due to glycogen stores in the body. “During physical stress and during chess playing, mental fatigue occurs earlier in women.” With that said, “There exists no gender specific intellectual performance in humans for chess playing.” At the highest level where chess matches take several hours, elite women may fatigue earlier than elite men. This biological difference in sex could account for gaps between male and female grandmasters.

How does biological sex affect people’s motivation and preferences to play chess? Humans, and their common ancestors, were naturally selected. Environments determined which physical and psychological traits were most successful in creating successful offspring. Regardless of culture, biology affects motivation and personality. (If any readers know evidence for or against males having more ambitions, I’d love to read it)

For good and bad reasons, society assumes males are more ambitions than females. Susan Mattern book on the science and history of menopause called The Slow Moon Climbs gives a great general explanation of how sexual selection can determine competitiveness: (She references Robert L. Trivers' 1972 classic discussion of sexual selection; and The Myth of Monogamy by Barash and Lipton 2001.)

"In species that compete for mating opportunities, males’ potential reproductive rate is much higher than that of females. Because they are constrained by the rate of female reproduction—a population can only produce as many children as the females can bear— some males may have many more offspring than others. Among these species, males gain more fitness by competing for mates than by providing for offspring. There is also more sexual dimorphism, because males evolve traits, such as large body size, that help them in this competition, a process that tends to escalate like an arms race."

Judit Polgár is the best counter to biological factors. Her parents raised and educated her and her sisters through specializing in chess. Polgár’s father believed geniuses were made, not born. He is wrong. Geniuses are born and then made; they need both genes and environment. With that said, most people are born with the potential to acquire expertise in any field, including the ability to be good chess players.

Facts:

• Hou Yifan was the only female chess player rated in the top 100 world ranking in Feb 2022. She is the 2nd highest ranking woman of all time (#55).
• Judit Polgár is the highest ranked woman all time, #8 in June 2004
• Female Chess Players Show Typical Stereotype-Threat Effects: Commentary on Stafford:
• Average tournament ratings were: men 1,855 (SD 289), women 1,689 (SD 308)
• Mean ages were: men 36.8 (SD 18.8), women 21.6 (SD 13.5)
• There is no scientific evidence for sex specific intellectual performance differences.
• Women experience mentally fatigue earlier than men in physical activity, including chess.

Thought Experiment

What would happen if 500 random healthy female babies and 500 random healthy male babies were raised in a nurturing compound focused on creating chess grandmasters?

Imagine the compound being run like a dream boarding school. Chess would be the means to learn reading, math, and all the basic skills. All teachers would be chess players of equal ability and balanced gender. The school would have zero sexism. Students would go to school followed by chess practice. In the evening, students would have free time to relax/recover. Teachers would not influence students’ motivation for free time. For the most determined and obsessive students, free time would offer a competitive advantage over students not practicing chess in their free time.

Would the gender gap disappear?

Depending on the duration of the experiment, there would be different results. Assuming there were three experiment durations: 12 year, 18 year, and 30 year. And assuming all players start with a 1500 rating using the ELO, an objective rating system based on players ratings at the start of a game and the game’s outcome. Tournaments would be run similar to chess tournaments outside the compound. What would be the medians, means, and top performers for both sexes? What are the readers' predictions?

12 Year Experiment
	Female	Male
Mean
Median
Top Performer
18 Year Experiment
	Female	Male
Mean
Median
Top Performer
30 Year Experiment
	Female	Male
Mean
Median
Top Performer

I'd love to see any readers predictions in the comments section.

Conclusion

Chess is physical. Biology probably matters. When I make up my mind, I will add my predictions below.