This is the page of your comments. I got to it by clicking on your username, then clicking comments at the top. Unfortunately, the comments can only be sorted chronologically with the most recent first unless you use something like WeiDai’s tool, which can be sorted (but apparently only in descending order, and it doesn’t seem to have the −20 comment).
Since you have so few comments, it’s relatively easy to look at them all and find it here.
The info in the −20 comment is, I believe, accepted as common knowledge by people who study “sexual politics.” The different goals have to do with the nine months of discomfort females may have to endure while men have no such risk.
Also see
http://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politics-Power-among-Apes/dp/0801886562
I’d hope persons who feel that strongly would post their reasons for objecting but in this case I take what I read as fact.
I’d hope persons who feel that strongly would post their reasons for objecting but in this case I take what I read as fact.
Your statement isn’t interpreted as a dry statement of fact, but a signal about your beliefs about human sexual politics. Don’t bring up, or hint at, those politics (or any politics, really) here, if you don’t want to get downvoted.
Nominally Less Wrong is anti-politics. In practice, there are political views that -can- get you upvotes, because people have a tendency to treat political beliefs they agree with as truths, rather than politics. I strongly recommend you stay away from anything even vaguely political until you see the patterns, however.
… accepted as common knowledge … I take what I read as fact.
I don’t understand in which sense a statement along the lines of “it is the job of adult males to impregnate as many females as possible” can be seen as a fact.
technically, it should be maximizing the number of offsprings, not the number of partners; also, maximizing the number of offsprings that reach reproduction age, not just the number that is born, or even conceived;
if an adult male would literally try to “impregnate as many females as possible” (as opposed to merely professing trying to), he would have to become a serial rapist, a cult leader, a sperm donor—probably all of that together—but most adult males don’t do that;
To raise the likelihood that your genes will survive. Same reason for women finding a man with resources. It’s probably somewhere in Game Theory. The oil sheik with harem arrangement may be an example of this.
For me this is settled but if you can find counterexamples I’d like to read them.
To raise the likelihood that your genes will survive.
That’s not my “job” and isn’t really an imperative either—lots of people remain childless by choice. I think it is an empirically observable fact that males do NOT attempt to impregnate as many females as possible and the women do NOT stick to the richest male they can attach themselves to. It’s just not happening.
Maybe you think this is the way it should be or was meant to be, but your opinion is normative, not descriptive.
You would do better to engage and consider seriously the possibility that you might be missing something.
It looks to me as if either (1) you are taking pop evo-psych as literal unquestionable fact, in which case you’re making a mistake, or (2) you are deliberately being inexact and handwavy while others take you literally, in which case they’re making a mistake but you can correct it and move on.
If #1, then I think Lumifer’s objections really should be sufficient to make you reconsider. It demonstrably isn’t the case that men devote their lives to maximizing offspring, still less to maximizing the number of different women they impregnate; similarly for women and maximizing the quality of their offspring. So any set of ideas that leads you to say they do must be wrong.
If #2 -- e.g., if what you really mean is something like “there are evolutionary pressures pushing us toward maximizing offspring number for men and offspring quality for women, and maximizing these things is very different from thinking rationally and may sometimes be impaired by it, so we shouldn’t expect our brains to be well optimized for rational thinking” then I think you will find that (as well as getting a better reception here) you will think about this stuff more clearly if you’re more explicit and careful about what you’re claiming. E.g., it seems like rational thinking could be a useful tool for maximizing offspring number/quality so it’s not at all clear that being optimized for offspring has to be an obstacle to thinking rationally; there’s some pressure for men to optimize quality and women to optimize number too, which maybe makes some difference; there are such things as kin selection and (in special circumstances, whose rareness is disputed) group selection, and these can help genes to prosper even if their direct effect on offspring is negative; etc., etc., etc.; it’s easier to assess the impact of considerations like these on your argument if your argument is more precise and less handwavy.
This is the page of your comments. I got to it by clicking on your username, then clicking comments at the top. Unfortunately, the comments can only be sorted chronologically with the most recent first unless you use something like WeiDai’s tool, which can be sorted (but apparently only in descending order, and it doesn’t seem to have the −20 comment).
Since you have so few comments, it’s relatively easy to look at them all and find it here.
Found it.
The info in the −20 comment is, I believe, accepted as common knowledge by people who study “sexual politics.” The different goals have to do with the nine months of discomfort females may have to endure while men have no such risk. Also see http://www.amazon.com/Chimpanzee-Politics-Power-among-Apes/dp/0801886562
I’d hope persons who feel that strongly would post their reasons for objecting but in this case I take what I read as fact.
Your statement isn’t interpreted as a dry statement of fact, but a signal about your beliefs about human sexual politics. Don’t bring up, or hint at, those politics (or any politics, really) here, if you don’t want to get downvoted.
Nominally Less Wrong is anti-politics. In practice, there are political views that -can- get you upvotes, because people have a tendency to treat political beliefs they agree with as truths, rather than politics. I strongly recommend you stay away from anything even vaguely political until you see the patterns, however.
I don’t understand in which sense a statement along the lines of “it is the job of adult males to impregnate as many females as possible” can be seen as a fact.
Some obvious objections:
most adult males don’t do this as a job;
technically, it should be maximizing the number of offsprings, not the number of partners; also, maximizing the number of offsprings that reach reproduction age, not just the number that is born, or even conceived;
if an adult male would literally try to “impregnate as many females as possible” (as opposed to merely professing trying to), he would have to become a serial rapist, a cult leader, a sperm donor—probably all of that together—but most adult males don’t do that;
is–ought distinction, evolutionary-cognitive boundary, et cetera.
To raise the likelihood that your genes will survive. Same reason for women finding a man with resources. It’s probably somewhere in Game Theory. The oil sheik with harem arrangement may be an example of this.
For me this is settled but if you can find counterexamples I’d like to read them.
You could also try http://www.amazon.com/unSpun-Finding-Facts-World-Disinformation/dp/1400065666
That’s not my “job” and isn’t really an imperative either—lots of people remain childless by choice. I think it is an empirically observable fact that males do NOT attempt to impregnate as many females as possible and the women do NOT stick to the richest male they can attach themselves to. It’s just not happening.
Maybe you think this is the way it should be or was meant to be, but your opinion is normative, not descriptive.
I give up.
You would do better to engage and consider seriously the possibility that you might be missing something.
It looks to me as if either (1) you are taking pop evo-psych as literal unquestionable fact, in which case you’re making a mistake, or (2) you are deliberately being inexact and handwavy while others take you literally, in which case they’re making a mistake but you can correct it and move on.
If #1, then I think Lumifer’s objections really should be sufficient to make you reconsider. It demonstrably isn’t the case that men devote their lives to maximizing offspring, still less to maximizing the number of different women they impregnate; similarly for women and maximizing the quality of their offspring. So any set of ideas that leads you to say they do must be wrong.
If #2 -- e.g., if what you really mean is something like “there are evolutionary pressures pushing us toward maximizing offspring number for men and offspring quality for women, and maximizing these things is very different from thinking rationally and may sometimes be impaired by it, so we shouldn’t expect our brains to be well optimized for rational thinking” then I think you will find that (as well as getting a better reception here) you will think about this stuff more clearly if you’re more explicit and careful about what you’re claiming. E.g., it seems like rational thinking could be a useful tool for maximizing offspring number/quality so it’s not at all clear that being optimized for offspring has to be an obstacle to thinking rationally; there’s some pressure for men to optimize quality and women to optimize number too, which maybe makes some difference; there are such things as kin selection and (in special circumstances, whose rareness is disputed) group selection, and these can help genes to prosper even if their direct effect on offspring is negative; etc., etc., etc.; it’s easier to assess the impact of considerations like these on your argument if your argument is more precise and less handwavy.
See above.