Robin Hanson reports on the results of a study supposedly showing that “It seems men are eager to visibly help heroically and financially, and to spend on visible status symbols, mainly to seek promiscuous short-term sex!” When I first saw that a few days ago, I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting, I’ll write something about that.” But now that I sit down to write something about it, I think “The heroism thing is interesting, but the status symbol thing is really fucking obvious.” I believe this is an important point, especially given these speculations:

So what would happen if we all became conscious of the above behaviors being strong clues that men are in fact actively trying for promiscuous short term sex? Would such behaviors reduce, would long term relations become less exclusive, or what?

Case in point #1: I was watching Dexter with my girlfriend last night, and in one episode Dexter goes to car dealership, primarily to investigate a salesman who he suspects of murdering two young women, but he ends up buying a car anyway. The salesman comments on the fact that while most single guys go straight for the sports cars, Dexter went straight for the minivans, from this the salesman infers Dexter must have a family (he has a girlfriend who has two kids; their father was killed in prison).

The salesman’s comment was only moderately insightful: we all know sportscars are popular among young, single men, and that minivans are what you buy if you have kids. But why do single men like sportscars? The obvious answer is to attract women.

Case in point #2: One of my girlfriend’s coworkers last summer was a young, single guy who was the proud owner of a bright yellow mustang. She called it his “penis car,” a sign he was “compensating for something.”

Robin’s question of “What if people knew that men buy status symbols to get sex? What if they were punished for doing so?” is misguided because people do know it, and men *are* punished for it, in the form of comments like “he’s compensating for something” and “I’m I supposed to be impressed just because you drive that car!?”, and, in extreme cases, being seen as all-around douchebags. And, in the fact that if a guy walks into a bar and starts throwing money around, few women will respond by thinking, “Ah! A nice guy I can settle down with…”

Like most animal behaviors, “men throwing money around” has an equlibrium point. If people were even more conscious than they in fact are of what’s going on with this behavior, the equilibrium point for it might be different, but it’s a mistake to think this could radically change society.