Still if you ever hang out with simpler people (e.g. what in the UK is called a flat roof pub ) it is typically the 80 IQ guy who insists on fighting some other guy for no good reason whatsoever and it is the 100 IQ friend who is telling him don’t be an idiot he is twice your size and did time for stabbing someone. Or you see how dumber criminals get busted on really trivial mistakes—if all you have is tribal customs instead of laws it probably still works the same way. Or, maybe, the difference between a 80 IQ and 100 IQ tribal warrior is largely that the later does not think “we are the awesomest” is a good enough reason to attack a tribe that has three times as many warriors. In short, while really high IQ does not help with reproduction much, really low IQ provides excellent opportunities to shoot oneself in the foot in a competitive social environment. What we today consider average IQ simply translates to a hominid who is a bit cautious and can assess when to be brave and when to be a coward.
Note that none of your examples are cases of sexual selection.
While the dumbass having 4 kids with 4 different single moms is a popular trope, in really the really dumb guys tend to go in and out of prison
Sure, a peacock having a REALLY huge tail may be detrimental to its reproductive success because it cannot even go through a mating dance routine maybe,
A REALLY huge tail is detrimental because it makes the peacock more likely to be eaten by a tiger, i.e., non-sexual selection. If peacocks were placed in an environment without tigers females would chose even larger tails. Heck they’ve done experiments where they glued on extra tail feathers to give a lucky peacock an even larger tail, the result being that females preferred those males to any males with a natural tail.
Heck consider an actual example of sexual selection in humans: Men like women with large breasts. Notice how common ridiculously large breasted women are in everything from advertizing to anime to video games. Heck in ancient times people would worship multi-breasted fertility goddesses. Contrast that with the portrayal of smart men, who must be given an actual “sexy” trait (like being rich or a badass) for women to accept them as “sexy”. For example, Q’s gadgets contribute to James Bond’s (not Q’s) sex appeal even though he’s not the one developing them.
Sexual selection doesn’t end at being attractive. It could be everything from killing competing suitors to making sure kids have a good career. Just as every organ is a reproductive organ, drawing the borders of sexual selection is hard. Everything cashes out in reproduction, where I try to draw the line is that the survival of individual animals against the forces outside the population is not, so getting food and getting away from predators is not. But pretty much everything inside the population is. But even getting a lot of food can be an aspect of it… crap. The point is that the traditional/popular views of evolution tend to be “survivalist” and basically this intra-population competition / sexual selection stuff is largely everything else that it is not directly survivalist but is about competition for things beyond the survival of the individual. Be that sexual partners or childrearing.
And yes, in this sense Mr. Dumb taking a knife to the heart in a pub and his girlfriend hooking up with someone else is an example of this intra-species competition...
Yes, you could define “sexual selection” that generarly. However, I don’t think a terms that refers to everything is particularly useful.
And yes, in this sense Mr. Dumb taking a knife to the heart in a pub and his girlfriend hooking up with someone else is an example of this intra-species competition...
Yes, but I wouldn’t call that sexual selection unless the fight was specifically over the girlfriend.
Note that none of your examples are cases of sexual selection.
Those don’t necessarily interfere with each other.
A REALLY huge tail is detrimental because it makes the peacock more likely to be eaten by a tiger, i.e., non-sexual selection. If peacocks were placed in an environment without tigers females would chose even larger tails. Heck they’ve done experiments where they glued on extra tail feathers to give a lucky peacock an even larger tail, the result being that females preferred those males to any males with a natural tail.
Heck consider an actual example of sexual selection in humans: Men like women with large breasts. Notice how common ridiculously large breasted women are in everything from advertizing to anime to video games. Heck in ancient times people would worship multi-breasted fertility goddesses. Contrast that with the portrayal of smart men, who must be given an actual “sexy” trait (like being rich or a badass) for women to accept them as “sexy”. For example, Q’s gadgets contribute to James Bond’s (not Q’s) sex appeal even though he’s not the one developing them.
Sexual selection doesn’t end at being attractive. It could be everything from killing competing suitors to making sure kids have a good career. Just as every organ is a reproductive organ, drawing the borders of sexual selection is hard. Everything cashes out in reproduction, where I try to draw the line is that the survival of individual animals against the forces outside the population is not, so getting food and getting away from predators is not. But pretty much everything inside the population is. But even getting a lot of food can be an aspect of it… crap. The point is that the traditional/popular views of evolution tend to be “survivalist” and basically this intra-population competition / sexual selection stuff is largely everything else that it is not directly survivalist but is about competition for things beyond the survival of the individual. Be that sexual partners or childrearing.
And yes, in this sense Mr. Dumb taking a knife to the heart in a pub and his girlfriend hooking up with someone else is an example of this intra-species competition...
Yes, you could define “sexual selection” that generarly. However, I don’t think a terms that refers to everything is particularly useful.
Yes, but I wouldn’t call that sexual selection unless the fight was specifically over the girlfriend.