That’s my point. Jack’s theory, which rests entirely on the fact other animals look similar to human babies, does not explain why many animals are cute while not a single animal is (widely) sexually attractive.
Well, “catgirls” seem to have large appeal, but that’s easily explained away—they’re 99% human with 1% added kitten for massive cuteness signal in a way that doesn’t interfere with any human sexual signals. It’s a lot like 99% with 1% added flower in form of perfume being more sexually attractive than 100% natural human.
The cost of a mistake may be lower in the case of cuteness than sexiness.
Indeed, sexual arousal is comparatively difficult to trigger, even by members of the actual target group: most humans don’t find most humans of the opposite sex very attractive, while they may find most babies somewhat cute.
The cost of a mistake may be lower in the case of cuteness than sexiness.
“May” be. I don’t see this as being demonstrated. I prefer explanations like Eliezer’s that show greater selection pressure—there’s a whole range of explicit sexual selection, but no real selection on other species for cuteness.
Here’s another explanation: other species don’t benefit from being cute-to-humans, so they don’t spend their time trying to cheat humans into perceiving them as cute. But humans are deliberately trying to be sexually attractive and are very good at taking advantage of any weak points in our sexual heuristics. Therefore our heuristics evolved to eliminate false positives.
That’s my point. Jack’s theory, which rests entirely on the fact other animals look similar to human babies, does not explain why many animals are cute while not a single animal is (widely) sexually attractive.
Well, “catgirls” seem to have large appeal, but that’s easily explained away—they’re 99% human with 1% added kitten for massive cuteness signal in a way that doesn’t interfere with any human sexual signals. It’s a lot like 99% with 1% added flower in form of perfume being more sexually attractive than 100% natural human.
The cost of a mistake may be lower in the case of cuteness than sexiness.
Indeed, sexual arousal is comparatively difficult to trigger, even by members of the actual target group: most humans don’t find most humans of the opposite sex very attractive, while they may find most babies somewhat cute.
“May” be. I don’t see this as being demonstrated. I prefer explanations like Eliezer’s that show greater selection pressure—there’s a whole range of explicit sexual selection, but no real selection on other species for cuteness.
Here’s another explanation: other species don’t benefit from being cute-to-humans, so they don’t spend their time trying to cheat humans into perceiving them as cute. But humans are deliberately trying to be sexually attractive and are very good at taking advantage of any weak points in our sexual heuristics. Therefore our heuristics evolved to eliminate false positives.