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Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Sexual Selection, Stasis, Runaway Selection, Dimorphism, & Human Evolution | |||||||||||||||||||||||
RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Well, there is some of that, but a good portion of what constitutes beauty is not hereditary. Some of it is likely diet, exercise, surgery, makeup, and maybe even extensions and some Photoshop. The video seems to illustrate that quite well. I suspect that applies to Miss World as well. Curiously, what you cite is precisely why I invoke runaway sexual selection -- in this case the "beauty" sought by the participants and judges does not exist within the genetic pool but needs to be artificially enhanced. The video shows this in spades: legs longer, skin lighter (and apparently "barer" ...) than normal (even for a blond with pale hard to see arm hair), face more childlike (bigger eyes, smaller chin, etc), long curly hair (healthy hair signals healthy person for mating, but this is longer than necessary for that) ... etc etc. The question is not that such things are done, but why they are done: if standard traits of "beauty" could be found within the population, then such measures would not be necessary. Other human traits that show runaway sexual selection, btw, include the size of the male member (larger that any other ape species) and the size of the human brain (so large that endangers the life of the mother during birth, again unlike any other ape or even any other mammal species) ... Sex has made us what we are. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Could you expand on "runaway". The meaning escapes me!!!! See Catholic Scientist's link and Message 91 enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
: if standard traits of "beauty" could be found within the population, then such measures would not be necessary. Not necessarily. The combination of traits in one person may simply be rare, or perhaps the supposed video ideal is simply exaggerated in some way from something we would actually find extremely pleasing and more common. When I read comic books, the women all had impossibly thin waists, breast bigger than their heads, and cartoony long-slender legs. The pictures suggested beauty without actually looking human at all. And the woman in the video doesn't look anything like what I would consider ideal. I'm not saying that some of the enhancements aren't an improvement over the original. But the models eyes, legs and body shape were okay the way they were. And who the heck thinks lightened skin is ideal in any way? Someone from the 50s? Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.Richard P. Feynman If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
... The combination of traits in one person may simply be rare ... Too rare for a world wide beauty contest?
... comic books ... suggested beauty without actually looking human at all ... Curiously, this too makes my point: in runaway sexual selection the "ideal" is beyond what can normally be attained in the gene pool -- this has been demonstrated in birds (scissortails iirc) by cutting tail feathers and then gluing on different length tails. The whole beauty industry is based on trying to fake that ideal to attract mates. High-heeled shoes are the human equivalent of glued on long tail feathers ... Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Too rare for a world wide beauty contest? Aren't most of the contestants "augmented", on funky diets, and made up? Do most women look like that naturally? Surely not. So yes, probably too rare for a world wide beauty contest. And, in real life I don't think a woman with an abdomen so small she could not possibly have internal organs, yet with breasts bigger than her head would be attractive. At least not now that I'm not 14. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.Richard P. Feynman If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
btw, include the size of the male member (larger that any other ape species) and the size of the human brain (so large that endangers the life of the mother during birth, We've discussed member size before. I'm not convinced, but I find the brain size argument even less convincing. What makes you think the brain is any larger than required to give man a functional, non sexual selection advantage. If women actually found big heads attractive, would the heads need to be filled with big brains?Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.Richard P. Feynman If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Aren't most of the contestants "augmented", on funky diets, and made up? Do most women look like that naturally? Surely not. So yes, probably too rare for a world wide beauty contest. And, in real life I don't think a woman with an abdomen so small she could not possibly have internal organs, yet with breasts bigger than her head would be attractive. At least not now that I'm not 14. And yet that still seems to be the "idealized" standard of beauty, what shows up in adverts as well as fantasy: Mannequins Give Shape to a Venezuelan Fantasy - The New York Times
quote: When plastic surgery is used then it is not natural, but an extreme unnatural standard that still pushes evolution. The "desired" form is at one extreme end of the spectrum of the gene pool, if not "off the chart" at that end ... and that is a marker of runaway sexual selection. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
... but I find the brain size argument even less convincing. What makes you think the brain is any larger than required to give man a functional, non sexual selection advantage. If women actually found big heads attractive, would the heads need to be filled with big brains? You're making the mistake of thinking that brain size is what is being sexually selected, rather than the product of a larger brain ... creativity (the ability to attract mates through creative actions, singing, dancing, art, etc). Brain size comes along for the ride. What is clear is that more women and children die in childbirth than in all other ape species and that this is mostly due to large head size. There is a limit to how large a head can be to pass through the birth canal, and once again we see that this limit is pushed in the distribution within the population, it is at a skewed end of the distribution. That is what tells me that we are dealing with runaway selection rather than simple sexual selection: a skewed distribution. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
When plastic surgery is used then it is not natural, but an extreme unnatural standard that still pushes evolution. In order to drive evolution, a trait must be inheritable. Plastic surgery created traits, hair weaves, and food starved bodies are not inheritable, so any attraction for those things does not push evolution.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.Richard P. Feynman If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
You're making the mistake of thinking that brain size is what is being sexually selected, rather than the product of a larger brain ... creativity (the ability to attract mates through creative actions, singing, dancing, art, etc). Brain size comes along for the ride. No. I'm not making that mistake. I'm asking you why it could not be the case that the guys with little heads had the disadvantage of being more easily caught by saber tooth tigers, or being the one more often caught under the mastodon's foot during a hunting expedition, or of eating the wrong plants, etc. I'm suggesting that part of the issue is that the dumb humans may have been the ones who too often went hunting with the short spear. You are making the mistake of attributing, without evidence, everything to sexual selection and nothing to other selection forces. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.Richard P. Feynman If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
In order to drive evolution, a trait must be inheritable. Plastic surgery created traits, hair weaves, and food starved bodies are not inheritable, so any attraction for those things does not push evolution. What it demonstrates is that Fisherian Runaway Sexual Selection is in operation, driving sexual selection of women at this extreme edge of the breeding population. Any choice between two women will tend to be towards that perceived "ideal" ... The fact that humans are capable of making alterations to the phenotype does not mean that this altered phenotype is not being selected or that women that have some if not all of the "ideal" traits will not be preferred over those that don't. With breast implants and facial plastic surgery we are seeing "memes" replacing "genes" in the selection process, but we are still seeing selection of the phenotype, and that is part of evolution. Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
No. I'm not making that mistake. I'm asking you why it could not be the case that the guys with little heads had the disadvantage of being more easily caught by saber tooth tigers, or being the one more often caught under the mastodon's foot during a hunting expedition, or of eating the wrong plants, etc. I'm suggesting that part of the issue is that the dumb humans may have been the ones who too often went hunting with the short spear. You are making the mistake of attributing, without evidence, everything to sexual selection and nothing to other selection forces. First off, the evidence is clear (to me) that head size has "maxed out" in the human population, that further head size increase will be accompanied by increased mortality or injury to mother and/or child. The only way to accommodate further increase is through Cesarean Section births -- as artificial as beauty enhancements, yes? Second, in normal selection the traits under selection are observed to be in a normal distribution about an average value: with no outside survival pressure one way or the other, this average value will generally be selected, and the result will be stasis in the population. Only when you have selection pressure one way or the other will you have pressure to move away from that average towards a new population average centered on the new selection average ... until that stasis is restored around the new average in a normal distribution. If survival selection drives a population towards - or off - the end of the available distribution, then the population would tend to extinction. Personally I don't see "more easily caught by saber tooth tigers, or being the one more often caught under the mastodon's foot" creating that extreme level of selection -- that's as likely to be stochastic as it is to be selection, and certainly not as persistent and dominant as sexual selection. Certainly once the selection pressure was eased the population would tend towards a normal distribution once again. I do not see any continued survival selection pressure on the human population, while I DO see continued selection for increased head size. Thirdly, I DO see sexual selection for creativity being a persistent, dominant -- and ongoing -- selection process, operating on every generation, and still in effect today (while mastodons and saber-tooth tigers have become extinct). Back in the '70's there was a scientific study of stickle-back minnows that found that the longer a male stickle-back went without mating the more likely he was to attempt mating with something looking less and less like a female stickle-back, to the point of trying to mate with a stick. In other words he had an "ideal" mate, but was willing to accept less than ideal when it came to actual mating activity. In Runaway Sexual Selection you have an "ideal" to search for, but still will find acceptable mates that are the closest available to that ideal. If the "ideal" is not an average value in the population then it will tend to push the population to one end of the available distribution. The evidence is there in the population distribution and in the selection process that are still underway. Enjoy.by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Just a note that facial hair patterns in monkeys and apes have a wide range of displays that would have very low survival advantage but high sexual selection advantage:
Emperor tamarin - Wikipedia
quote: Cute fella eh? Looks like a bit of a beard as well as the moustache. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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Jon Inactive Member |
Just in general, though, not many women get plastic surgery, etc. A preference for a plastic-surgery-esque body will favor women in the general population who inherently possess traits more toward that end of the continuum.
With breast implants and facial plastic surgery we are seeing "memes" replacing "genes" in the selection process, but we are still seeing selection of the phenotype, and that is part of evolution. Since people can't see genes, I don't see how they could have ever been part of the sexual selection process. The process is naturally restricted to observable characteristics. Naturally those are defined by genes; plastic surgery allows the patient to 'trick' the process, but not to change it. Observable characteristics are still the criteria of sexual selection, as they have always been.Love your enemies!
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1427 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Just in general, though, not many women get plastic surgery, etc. A preference for a plastic-surgery-esque body will favor women in the general population who inherently possess traits more toward that end of the continuum. And continued selection toward that end of the continuum demonstrates that this runaway sexual selection is alive and well and is operating robustly in modern society. Are you aware how many breast implants are done a year? It is an industry, not an occasional operation. How many women shave? How big an industry for shaving is involved? How many women dye their hair? How big an industry for hair dying is involved? The purpose is not to pass on genes for those traits but to pass on the genes you have ... which incidentally include the genes for wanting to alter your appearance to better fit the desired icon appearance and the genes for selecting that appearance ... maintaining and reinforcing the runaway sexual selection process. Enjoyby our ability to understand Rebel☮American☆Zen☯Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)
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