buylotrogold

So, I was reading an article by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa, both given the _title_ Ph.D., on politically incorrect conclusions of evolutionary psychology. I call them conclusions rather than truths (as given in the article) not just because it's less pretentious, but because our fine doctors exemplify the rationales against evolutionary psychology: that seems that their entire program is biased to justify their prejudices naturalistically. Here are the ten items they think we should know: 1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them) 2. Humans are naturally polygamous 3. Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy 4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim 5. Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce 6. Beautiful people have more daughters 7. What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals 8. The midlife crisis is a myth-sort of 9. It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male) 10. Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist I don't have any problems with any of the conclusions, as such* except perhaps the idea that scientists are in it for the chicks (what are these idiots on?), but oftentimes their pseudo-economic evolutionary explanations walk right past simpler analyses. For example, scientists become less intellectually fecund after they have children because they have more demands on their time at home, and after they become professors because they have more demands on their time at work, and after they get tenure because they have more demands on their time from fishing. So there are three categories of explanation that I see here: A. Good and likely explanations (5, 9, 10); B. Novel but unlikely explanations (3, 7, 8); C. Poorly thought out explanations (1, 2, 4, 6). You'll probably move them around a bit. I'll give only one example of each, and I've already done B with 7. For A, let's look at 9; although they probably over-estimate the risk, their example of Clinton's oral and manual peccadilloes with the fat bitch is germane: why not. I mean, she was available and she was willing; however, the chance of getting caught was slim and the chance that the press would pick up on it, given Kennedy's example, was even slimmer. Men strive to attain political power, consciously or unconsciously, in order to have reproductive access to a larger number of women may be a little off, but not completely (especially in Clinton's or Kennedy's cases). The death of Lady Bird Johnson reminds us that some powerful men just have ambitious wives. For C, let's look at 1, because the attractiveness of blonde haired women is something that evolutionary psychologists find irresistible, even if none of them ever has a possible thought on the subject. Somehow, these people think there's an evolutionary explanation for a universal attraction to blonde hair and blue eyes. By evolutionary explanation, I mean such statements as Typically, young girls with light blond hair become women with brown hair. Thus, men who prefer to mate with blond women are unconsciously attempting to mate with younger (and hence, on average, healthier and more fecund) women. This just doesn't work. They tell me blonde hair evolved in Northern Europe or Northwest Asia somewhere around ten thousand years ago. Blonde hair is unknown in most human populations; blue eyes are unknown in most human populations. The propagation of the preference would have had to occur in the absence of those traits that would produce it by sexual selection. It could only have been selected for in Europe, and could not propagate into other populations by any selected means. That is, the universal preference for blondes cannot be _base_d on an evolved preference for blondes, although it could be an epiphenomenon, an accidental preference. Theories of how blonde hair evolved, although usually bad, seem to require the preference to exist before blonde hair did; perhaps the universal preference supports this postulate (which doesn't really strengthen their case). Perhaps it's not universal, but rather anecdotal. In Tabloid Tokyo (my bedtime book this month), I just read about Japanese girls whoring themselves out in the US for cash because it's good cash and their families won't find out. The source isn't so great, a compilation of abstracts of tabloid articles, but the rationale given by one of the girls purported to be doing it is important, I paraphrase, you can make good money because the men all like dark haired, light skinned women. So, if the preference for blonde haired women is genetic, so should the preference for black haired women be genetic. So should the preference for red haired women. If every hair color is genetically the _object_ of hard-wired lust, why single any particular one out? I don't have a problem with the idea that men like blondes, but the reasons given here (and elsewhere) aren't just difficult to accept, they are physically impossible. I should mention that my own, admittedly male, blonde coif has been a bonus with some women and a detriment with others. -F * Perhaps because I haven't looked into them. That 56% of hot chicks' first babies (why only the first? does the effect go away if all their children are accounted for?) are chicks seems like the kind of thing that might be prone to sample bias of some sort: small samples, measuring attractiveness well after the kid has been born, even by the measure of attractiveness.