I haven’t seen much evidence supporting the idea that it doesn’t pay out.
The evidence for the adaptiveness of female orgasms may be relatively weak—but it seems much better than the evidence for the hypothesis that they are near-neutral—or exist by force of homology.
It’s evidence that female orgasm is doing something adaptive (and distinct from what it does in men), even if we don’t know what. While it’s good to be skeptical of particular ev-psych stories and to acknowledge the cases where we don’t yet know the mechanism of causality (e.g. humans’ musical sense), the presumption ought to be that complex adaptations rarely arise for no reason.
Still, it doesn’t look like it separates correlation from causation. All sorts of things might cause the partners of rich men to be more likely to have orgasms.
It does look like some modest hints in the direction of heritability, but nothing as solid as stats on actual reproductive effect.
How about this one:
“Wealthy men give women more orgasms”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article5537017.ece
It seems as though the female orgasm still has something to do with selecting an appropriate mate.
If it doesn’t pay out in increased chances of reproduction (and that hasn’t been proven), then it’s not enough for a sound argument.
I haven’t seen much evidence supporting the idea that it doesn’t pay out.
The evidence for the adaptiveness of female orgasms may be relatively weak—but it seems much better than the evidence for the hypothesis that they are near-neutral—or exist by force of homology.
It’s evidence that female orgasm is doing something adaptive (and distinct from what it does in men), even if we don’t know what. While it’s good to be skeptical of particular ev-psych stories and to acknowledge the cases where we don’t yet know the mechanism of causality (e.g. humans’ musical sense), the presumption ought to be that complex adaptations rarely arise for no reason.
Part of the hypothesis is that variations which give a significant advantage should be close to universal.
Wow, that’s interesting.
Still, it doesn’t look like it separates correlation from causation. All sorts of things might cause the partners of rich men to be more likely to have orgasms.