Freethought & Rationalism Archive

tronvillain · 04-12-2002, 09:59 AM

Well, I'll have to go with on that one. A conscious desire to have a lot of children seems likely to have a cultural explanation, though biological evolution could potentially come into the explanation at a lower level.

tronvillain · 04-12-2002, 10:02 AM

Mageth:

Quote:

IIRC, in birds it is the female that is "XY" (actually ZW), while the males are ZZ. (edited to add: and possibly all reptiles as well)

Definitely not "all reptiles as well."

cricket · 04-12-2002, 10:05 AM

I shouldn't speak for Rufus, but I don't think he meant that the way it sounded; Ive seen him use a better choice of words. (Rufus, if you really did mean that men desire a lot of kids, I apologize.)

Here's a post of his from the bb; the BB can sue me if they mind me pirating it.

Quote:

(from helen .s.) -- In the meantime, the entire concept of 'selfish genes' is ludicrous.
The genes do not have wills of their own. They cannot forsee the future to
know what might be needed evolutionarily. It is the survival of the organism
AS A WHOLE which determines which genes get through and which don't.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(reply, from Rufus) -- Umm, "selfish" is a metaphorical term and doesn't imply that genes have any sort of cognition. Do you also complain about the phrase "the engine is
running" because engines don't have legs? "Selfish" applies to, among other
things, the fact that a body, which is the product of genetic instructions,
is just a mechanism for DNA to maintain itself for another generation. Your
germ cells are the only part of your body with a chance at immortality.
Not to mention the fact that so much DNA does nothing other then be
replicated and passed on to the next generation. I suggest that you look
into meiotic drive if you think that individual genes can't be "selfish."

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: cricket ]

cricket · 04-12-2002, 10:14 AM

Perhaps it's more appropriate to post that exchange if I also include the <a href="http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=36&t=000142&p=" target="_blank">link.</a>

Kachana · 04-12-2002, 10:19 AM

Where evolutionary psychology is strongest in my opinion is where it makes novel predictions about human psychology based on an analysis of conditions and adaptive problems we would have faced in the pleistocene era. In these particular cases the post hoc story telling that often occurs in the field is not an issue.

Some predictions of this type have been supported in the literature if my memory serves me, for instance on certain sex differences in visuo-spatial abilities and on mechanisms for retaining colour constancy in varying light conditions.

Dr Rick · 04-12-2002, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Amen-Moses:
I think the main point to remember is that "wants" and "behaviour" are not the same thing...

I agree with you completely, Amen (which, quite frankly, scares me to no end

), but the distinction seems blurred by others with comments such as these:

Quote:

Originally posted by Rufus: The human male sex drive is safely considered to be a genetic behavior because it correlates with our biology and similar behaviors in other the organisms, which don’t experience cultural evolution.

Besides, Oolon will just automatically call everything even remotely related to human activity "instinct."

Rick

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]

Dr Rick · 04-12-2002, 11:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by tronvillain:
A conscious desire to have a lot of children seems likely to have a cultural explanation, though biological evolution could potentially come into the explanation at a lower level.

Yes, but so could extra-terrestrials. Of course, I do not believe this to be the case and don't know of any evidence to support this conjecture; do you have any to support yours?

Rick

Dr Rick · 04-12-2002, 12:53 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by tronvillain:
I don't think much of that Gould quote...

Probably Wright didn't, either; and <a href="http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/CEP_Gould.html" target="_blank">Tooby and Cosmides</a> certainly didn't.

Here's a link to the full text of the <a href="http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/Gould.html" target="_blank">Gould</a> article.

Rick

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]

lpetrich · 04-12-2002, 02:58 PM

One thing that one ought to be careful of is that social forms can be subject to natural selection, just as genes can. Here's an example. Imagine a society of warniks and a society of peaceniks. The warniks are much better at war than the peaceniks, and they defeat the peaceniks in battle. So all that is left is warniks. Without there being any genetic tendency to be a warnik.

Another application of this principle could be that societies that treat women as baby machines could outbreed and outpopulate societies that don't.

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]

Dr Rick · 04-13-2002, 09:24 AM

Here's what happens when an evolutionary psychologist fails to heed Ipetrich's caution.

<a href="http://www.healthscout.com/template.asp?page=newsdetail&ap=1&id=500279" target="_blank">Women are predisposed to gossip</a>:

Quote:

...A new study shows women are more afraid of malicious gossip than men are; while many men will back down when faced with the threat of physical violence, women are more worried about being stabbed in the back by cruel rumors.

"I call it informational warfare," says lead author Nicole Hess, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "Men are more inclined to compete for resources through physical violence, while women compete by waging gossip."

Hess believes humans are primed by evolutionary history to fight for what they want. But how they do battle depends on their gender.

Our male ancestors fought physical battles against other tribes to gain access to rich hunting grounds or fertile females, Hess says.

But because women lacked the physical strength of men, they had to find other ways to win, she says. Battling for the survival of their children, females formed their own coalitions to secure scarce resources like food and inheritances for their offspring. These coalitions were based not on the threat of physical prowess but on the spread of rumors, she says.

"Women are more likely to get the resources they need if they have good reputations," Hess explains. "And women will use gossip to destroy their competitors to get those scarce resources."

While Hess' idea springs from the survival-of-the-fittest theory of evolution, it has modern parallels. For example, if two women are competing for the same man, they may spread malicious rumors about each other.

"One woman may say things about the other like, 'She sleeps around,' as a way of discrediting the competition," Hess says.

To test her theory that men and women perceive gossip differently, Hess asked male and female college students to imagine they had discovered someone cheating in a competition. The students were then told the cheater had friends who would either beat them up or bad-mouth them. Men backed down when faced with the threat of physical violence, but were indifferent to verbal backlash. Women didn't care about bodily harm; they were more worried someone might dish the dirt on them...

Doctoral candidate Hess, studying at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology in Santa Barbara, doesn't even consider that cultural differences in how boys and girls are raised might play a role. Her test couldn't possibly distinguish cultural from genetic influences, but that doesn't stop her from speculating on the latter and ignoring the former.

It doesn't matter that male role models generally don't gossip, and female role models, until very recently, generally don't fight. We didn't ever see Clint Eastwood defeat his Hollywood foes by saying bad things about them, no team ever claimed the Super Bowl by spreading rumors, and Doris Day never won Rock Hudson by shooting another woman.

It doesn't matter that in the same press article there's a link to a study that suggests that boys may engage in gossip as much as girls.

It doesn't matter that recently we have seen a surge in human female perpetrated violence coincident with changes in the roles and oppurtunities that women have in the modern world.

No, these are issues that an evolutionary psychologist/anthropologist would rather just ignore as she opines on how the genes of our ancestors, whose environment and culture we do not know, continue to guide our behaviors from their ancient pasts.

Rick

[ April 13, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]

04-12-2002, 02:58 PM	#49
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	One thing that one ought to be careful of is that social forms can be subject to natural selection, just as genes can. Here's an example. Imagine a society of warniks and a society of peaceniks. The warniks are much better at war than the peaceniks, and they defeat the peaceniks in battle. So all that is left is warniks. Without there being any genetic tendency to be a warnik. Another application of this principle could be that societies that treat women as baby machines could outbreed and outpopulate societies that don't. [ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

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04-12-2002, 09:59 AM	#41
tronvillain Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Alberta, Canada Posts: 5,658	Well, I'll have to go with on that one. A conscious desire to have a lot of children seems likely to have a cultural explanation, though biological evolution could potentially come into the explanation at a lower level.

04-12-2002, 10:14 AM	#44
cricket Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: St Louis MO USA Posts: 1,188	Perhaps it's more appropriate to post that exchange if I also include the <a href="http://www.baptistboard.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=36&t=000142&p=" target="_blank">link.</a>

04-12-2002, 10:19 AM	#45
Kachana Regular Member Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Bristol, UK Posts: 279	Where evolutionary psychology is strongest in my opinion is where it makes novel predictions about human psychology based on an analysis of conditions and adaptive problems we would have faced in the pleistocene era. In these particular cases the post hoc story telling that often occurs in the field is not an issue. Some predictions of this type have been supported in the literature if my memory serves me, for instance on certain sex differences in visuo-spatial abilities and on mechanisms for retaining colour constancy in varying light conditions.

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