The evolutionary explanation I thought was standard for sex differences in variability is that males (of most species) face way more potential upside—i.e. they can potentially mate with a whole lot of different females and have far more kids than any single female can. Females typically have a much lower ceiling on kid-count, so they face less potential fitness upside from high-variance strategies.
I liked the part of this post about X-inactivation a lot, even though it turned out wrong. It would be really interesting if most of the variability difference across sex turned out to share one simple mechanistic basis, though that doesn’t seem very likely on my current models of the underlying selection pressures.
The evolutionary explanation I thought was standard for sex differences in variability is that males (of most species) face way more potential upside—i.e. they can potentially mate with a whole lot of different females and have far more kids than any single female can. Females typically have a much lower ceiling on kid-count, so they face less potential fitness upside from high-variance strategies.
I liked the part of this post about X-inactivation a lot, even though it turned out wrong. It would be really interesting if most of the variability difference across sex turned out to share one simple mechanistic basis, though that doesn’t seem very likely on my current models of the underlying selection pressures.