h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

night

>>It is gandalfstwins opinion, that the currunt 'youth' culture of today is regressing mor and more backwards.

You're probably right, wizard. This phenomenon has been noticed for years. For example - you should read Pliny on it. All I can say...is if the youth have been declining for two thousand years, they must've been brilliant in Roman times.

Queeg:
>>Anyhoo I'm off to bed now. Though has anybody else got examples of incidences that could quite easily be explained through 'evolutionary psychology'?


Well...pretty much everything, as Dogster alluded to. But the difficulty is testing it out.

Everything about us is, by definition, the product of evolution. Every single one of our behaviours is an evolved behaviour. That is not necessarily to say that it is a *useful* behaviour - ie one that promotes long-term gene survival - but only time will tell on that.

And that in itself is significant:

We should avoid the error of postulating some sort of primal human that was perfectly adapted for survival. Thbe most we can say is that - if we take the example of our common ancestors on the African savannah - that they were *sufficiently* adapted for enough of them to survive on the diet of roots and the odd hunk of gazelle. But there weren't many of them. The human population exploded when we started gathering grass seeds - and the result of this was the result of human settlement and the assisted evolution of wheat and rice...and onwards and upwards to cattle farming...and cheeseburgers.

So nowadays there are lots and lots of us, all eating cheeseburgers. Is this the natural human state? Obviously! Try the thought experiment of imagining aliens/time travellers/whatever making regular deliveries of cheeseburgers to the African savannah. What effect would we expect this to have on population size? Surely we can conclude that cheeseburgers confer a survival benefit?

But...cheeseburgers are bad for us, aren't they? If you live on a diet of Big Macs, you'll likely drop dead before your sixtieth birthday. So what? Most of us who are going to breed will have done so by then. From the evolutionary perspective - from the Dawkinsite gene-centred point of view - the death of the non-breeding lardarse makes no difference.

Also...let's wind the clock forward from the African savannah a little. One of the things about humans is that we are an adaptable species. For a start, we are omnivorous - note how diets differ hugely throughout the world. Some of us, for example, have the gene that lets us digest lactose (this gene is more common amongst those of European, Indian and Middle Eastern origin than Chinese or African): human gene selection paralleled the development of agrarian civilisation. We've also changed in all sorts of other ways from our notional primal human - some of us have paler skins to allow us to generate more vitamin D in sunless lattitudes; some are short and squat to allow us to hunt in forests; some have resistance to malaria...etc. etc.

So if we talk about our evolutionary heritage...what exactly do we mean?

Let's try one more:

What about a gay gene? Surely *that* doesn't have survival benefit? Welll...take the Sioux culture in which it was perfectly normal for people to decide - permanently or temporarily - to adopt an opposite sex role. (We've seen 'Little Big Man', right?) Men acting in the female role were regarded as valuable members of hunting parties when men were away from their womenfolk for long periods - for obvious reasons. So maybe the gay gene confers survival benefit by ensuring that hunting parties are nice and relaxed and better able to bring home the buffalo.

OK - so I'm talking bollocks. Probably. But my point is *how can we be sure what genetic traits do and do not aid survival* The most we can say is that we have certain genes and certain physical and behavioural traits...and we've survived so far on these.

As mentioned earlier. we could come up with all sorts of fancy ideas about what part of evolution caused certain behaviour, but how would we know if any of it is true? I´m not sure what it is you want out of this thread.

<< I´m not sure what it is you want out of this thread.>>

a good honest argum.....debate, with out anyones answer being,

cos it is
god did it
it said so in the bible
look at all this irrelevent scripture quotes
and
LA,LA,LA,LA,LA I'm not listening

Certainly I don't think it follows from evolutionary biology that the best thing for us would be to eat a stone age diet and generally live as though we were stone age hunter-gatherers.

As Hume put it 'is does not beget ought'.

>>a good honest argum.....debate

I'm up for that.

>Every single one of our behaviours is an evolved behaviour.<

WEhat even watching a boring nin nil draw, or reading Remebrance of Things Past?

What do we usually out of a thread we start on h2g2? Other people's opinions and debate .


Human beings are an adaptable species, yeah, but we're trying to change faster than our bodies (and basic brains) are able.

Sure cheeseburgers are made out of wheat and beef (well, most of them are), but if you dropped a mass cheeeseburger delivery into the middle of a remote tribe, they'd probably feel quite ill.


Maybe the reason a lot of guys are scared of their gay brethren, is because they think that if women see them with gay people, the women will think the straight man is gay, not bother with him, and he's missed out on a chance to seed.

Should be >What do we usually *want* out of a thread we start on h2g2


(Been on forums with editable posts for too long!)

I just think it will be more mindless speculation than debate, with a subject like this.

>I just think it will be more mindless speculation than debate, with a subject like this.<

I think speculation is interesting and rewarding...to question and ponder things like this enrich our lives I think..I don't see why such playing with ideas is mindless. I call it debate, and I think this thread is fascinating. Good on yer Quee for starting it.

>>but if you dropped a mass cheeeseburger delivery into the middle of a remote tribe, they'd probably feel quite ill.

I question that. Would they feel any iller than you or I?

OK - arguably cheeseburgers are not the optimum, balanced diet, and I'm exagerating a little to make a point. But did early humans always have access to optimum nutrition? Or does the modern 'unhealthy' diet give us a better chance than they ever had of living to reproductive age?

I'm *not* saying that it doesn't matter, biologically speaking, what we eat. Certainly over-consumption of fats, sugar and salt causes health problems. But does it make us less healthy than a half-starved savannah dweller? Plus - maybe we can lead even healthier lives on diets which are *not* part of our evolutionary heritage. It would be difficult to argue that we evolved specifically to live on tofu and goji berries...

me:
>Every single one of our behaviours is an evolved behaviour.<
frs:
>>What even watching a boring nin nil draw, or reading Remebrance of Things Past?


Well...yes. What else are they?

I'm not saying, though, that evolution is the most productive viewpoint from which to analyse them.

What's wrong with mindless speculation? Is that not the first seeds floating on the wind before they land and grow into an idea?

What's with dissing the thread? This is Ask H2G2, you've been around long enough to know that topics are here to be ruminated over and discussed, not judged as to whether or not they're worthy.
If this one ain't for you, there's plenty of others

>Well...yes. What else are they?<

Well for a start plenty of humans in other cultures didn't 'evolve' a written language...hence they didn't read and write until western culture turned up. I think written language and taking pleasure in watching footie are cultural features, not biologically evolved ones.

Yes on the one hand "What else are they?", isn't everything we do a result of evolution, but that's more along the lines of "everything I've ever done has led me to this point".


What specific actions/reactions do we do now, that are based on an evolutionary trait which is not necessary in modern times?

Was he dissing? It's a perfectly valid point. We are, inevitably, in the area of speculation when we talk about what our evolutionary biology teaches us.

Remember we, or are individual traits, didn't evolve *for* anything. The most we can say is that we have various traits which allow human beings to do a range of things, ranging from hunting gazelle on the savannah to lounging around eating cheeseburgers. We're adapted for all of these. We're also adapted to living a longer, healthier life on a diet of tofu and goji berries. *But*...evolution doesn't tell us anything about whether it's *better* to eat roots-n-gazelles, cheeseburgers or tofu-n-goji.

So to my mind, it's perfectly valid for Xanatic to ask:

'What's the question here?'


icanhastofu?

>>Well for a start plenty of humans in other cultures didn't 'evolve' a written language...hence they didn't read and write until western culture turned up. I think written language and taking pleasure in watching footie are cultural features, not biologically evolved ones.

No. But we all evolved near-identical biologies which *allow* us to develop a written language - hence written cultures emerged independently in at least three, maybe four places that we know of.

You're right, though, in saying that our cultural artefacts, whether they're sport or literature or bows and arrows or the particular shape of our houses can't be thought of evolving in quite the same way as, say, our ability to excrete lactase. But what did happen was that our brains evolved in certain patterns which not only allowed us to do various things like hunt effectively in groups but also write books, play footie or decorate ourselves in brightly coloured feathers and stick CDs in our lower lips. All that behaviour is, ultimately, biological. What else?

queegles: "Maybe the reason a lot of guys are scared of their gay brethren, is because they think that if women see them with gay people, the women will think the straight man is gay, not bother with him, and he's missed out on a chance to seed."

This sort of illustrates the point that evopsych explanations are just idle speculations. You could equally well say, and the explanation makes much more sense to me, that straight man ought to think that gay men were great, and encourage more men to be gay, because then there'd be less competition (increased supply and decreased demand, bonanza!). This point of view should be familiar to Blackadder fans.

It's like the research that showed that strippers earn better tips when they're at their most fertile compared to when they're not. The evopsychs loved this, because it suggests just the sort of theories they're always coming up with, so they all went around saying how women were programmed to send out sexiness signals more when they were most fertile, etc. etc. Later, another group did some research where they asked men to evaluate how sexy they thought various women's way of walking was, and plotted that against where the woman was on her menstrual cycle. Of course they were expecting that women's walks would be most sexy when they were most fertile. Unfortunately, the data showed the exact opposite of that. Some would take this as a disproof of the theory, but not the evopsychs. Their ingenious explanation was that sexy walking was a signal used by women to disguise their fertility!

The great thing about evolutionary psychology is that you can never be proved wrong, and with a modicum of creativity you can come up with a plausible sounding story to explain anything you like (or the opposite if you prefer). It's the modern world's version of creation myths and origin stories.

Personally, I believe that "the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure".