Joe Rogan & William Von Hippel - Is There an Evolutionary Benefit to Testicle Size?

There are studies that compare testicle size of different civilizations and different cultures. Yeah, so there's a lot of argument about this. And the problem is that the principle- That it's racist. It's racist, right? That's what underlies a lot of it. People get scared. So the thing is that the genetics that explain why one animal or one species would have large testicles and another would have small testicles are not the genetics that would explain why two different individuals in the same species would be that way. Because the only way to make that latter one work is you have to inherit a constellation of traits. So if I'm going to inherit the genes for big balls and for impulsiveness and for having lots of kids and not caring much about them and all the things that are supposedly go with that, that do when you look between species, there's no way for that constellation of traits to be inherited together. Because remember I was talking about how polygenic everything is. And so they'd all literally need to sit next to each other on the chromosome if they've got any chance of being passed on as a package. And they don't. And you also get all this shifting around during meiosis, I can't remember the term for off the top of my head, but where the pieces of genetic material move around and it virtually guarantees that you're not going to inherit this huge constellation of traits within a species. Between species is dead easy. Your species inherits big testicles and inherits impulsiveness. It inherits whatever, in our strategy, just reproduce a ton and ignore them. All that kind of stuff is dead easy. And so chimp fathers don't pay any attention to chimp babies to speak of because, well, that's their mating system, right? Whereas you've got pair bonded gibbons and things and now parents start to play a much bigger, even male parents start to play a bigger role. But there's no studies that show that human beings with archer testicles tend to ignore their children. Well, so this is just it. People have tried to show that, but here's the problem. They've tried to show that in studies? Yeah. So lots of people make that argument and it's called life history strategies where you say, well, you're going to develop one life history strategy in these circumstances and another in these other circumstances. The problem is that you end up with ethnic differences in testicle size, which we know exist. And you also have ethnic differences in the kinds of lives that people currently lead. The difficult thing is it's super easy to look at the world we are in right now. And this is what tripped me up earlier as well. You look at the world that we are right now and assume, well, that's the way things have always been. And they haven't. Right now, you know, the mathematics used to for a while there, the best math in the world was taking place in the Arabic world. Now it's not anymore. And so if you if you don't know that past, you'd say, well, look, people in the Arabic world aren't as good at mathematics and they have these qualities and that you'd make an inference right now. The ethnic differences in testicles, I believe, but I can't promise you that it's some different West African groups happen to have the largest testicle size on average. Those West African groups tend to be poorer right now. There's lots of things about life that go with being poor that look like an R strategy, having lots of kids and paying less attention to them. But what you're probably looking at is a coincidental association between some biology and some some way that your people happen to live that didn't exist a while ago and that won't exist a while from now. And so it's really easy to try to use this research, which people have to say, well, you've got some primitive people who have big testicles and low parental effort, and you've got some more sophisticated people with smaller testicles and high parental effort, but that's genetically super naive. One of the things that I learned when I was in Rome, we took a tour of the Vatican by this guy who was a professor. It was really interesting. It was cool because we, to have a really enthusiastic guide and who could explain a lot of things to you. And he was really excited that, you know, me and my family were very curious about these things too. But one of the things that he said was really interesting. I said, okay, I go, why do all the dudes have little dicks? Like, what's going on with that? And he said that they believed that if you had a large penis, that large penises were a symbol of barbaric behavior and that these were cruder people and that to be thought to be a sophisticated person, you wanted a smaller penis. So they actually accentuated smaller penises in their gods and smaller penises in their statues. And that's funny. I mean, you can see these kinds of things all the time. So early pre-Western contact, if you look at Japanese women, they're painted with their eyes as narrow of a slit as possible. Post-Western contact, now the women want more almond-shaped eyes and so they start painting them with the beautiful women have bigger eyes. These things can change all over the map. I personally suspect that large penis size is also a product of sexual selection. So it's more fun for her if he's got a larger penis. They're having sex for longer and more regularly because ovulation is hidden. So he has to be available all the time. So she has to be available all the time or the system doesn't work and that's what creates pair bonding. So humans copulate for a very long period of time if you compare us to the other primates with the single exception of bonobos. And we have way bigger penises than any of the other great apes. And I suspect that that's something that is female. I mean, women always say, why are men so obsessed with the penis size? But I suspect that they're the creator of it and that's why we're so obsessed with it. Women who say that are playing games, they know. That's ridiculous. I don't know. They're definitely playing games. That's like men who are saying, why are women so obsessed with big breasts? We don't even care. I've never met a guy who said that. Some asshole out there that's playing games. Okay, possibly you're right.