‘other trait’? Unless you have a specific other factor in mind, it’s just a fully general counterargument. (I nullify your other traits with other-other traits!)
Huh? The traits in us that make babies less cute than bunnies. Hairlessness appears to be a popular example (most people think furry things are cute), there may be more. Maybe baby eyes are smaller relative to their head than bunnies because of selection for larger brains. It is true that you can’t disprove the hypothesis by finding trait that makes bunnies cuter than babies that I haven’t thought of. The argument is general in that sense. But we can evaluate the hypothesis in the case of each trait. Name a trait and then we can see if our explanation of that trait is the kind of thing that would be selected for over cuteness.
Well, an obvious explanation would be that it didn’t have time to. Since Jack’s theory claims it’s an old trait, it might be embedded deep in an old structure of the brain (IIRC at least some emotions are seated very deep), and it might be hard to change, in the sense that most mutations that would make babies seem cuter would have other deleterious effects. As long as people find babies cute enough, the selection effect from the bad effects would delay the change until the rare mutations that don’t have bad effects happen.
Also, note that our cuteness criteria don’t matter that much unless one has a baby. I’ve heard enough reports of (and had some first hand experience with) people that didn’t care much about babies before they had them, but then had a “revelatory” experience once they met them. This suggests there’s a separate effect (pheromones, hormones, whatever) that makes up for whatever inefficiency in human cuteness criteria, but that mostly activates just when it matters. This would also reduce the evolutionary pressure for any “general” cuteness criteria adjustment.
Note also that our “badly adjusted” criteria were not a big deal (in the sense of decreasing reproductive fitness) during most of human evolution. Animals tend to hide their young and protect them, so encountering a cute puppy or kitty would have been a rare occasion for almost all people.
Well, an obvious explanation would be that it didn’t have time to.
A bad one; it’s something like 2 million years back to our LCA with our nearest primate relatives, and I wouldn’t want to guess how many tens of millions back to our last common ancestor with the rabbits. What deep structure would be blocking decamillions of years of pressure? Again, you can hypothesize all sorts of outside reasons but without any specific reason...
Also, note that our cuteness criteria don’t matter that much unless one has a baby.
Everyone deals with babies at some point, from evolution’s perspective. You are a baby, you interact with babies, you have babies, you raise babies, etc. Mothers may be a good target for a massive dose of brainwashing hormones & chemicals (lord knows they’ll need it), but a love of babies and cuteness is valuable for dads as well (where there is no convenient set of biological triggers like giving birth) and other relatives.
Animals tend to hide their young and protect them, so encountering a cute puppy or kitty would have been a rare occasion for almost all people.
The domestication of dogs could have begun as long ago as ~100,000 years; and even so, this is just an argument for weak pressures.
I agree with most of this, but I think it’s not countering what I was trying to argue: With regards to a certain individual’s reproductive fitness, the “precision” of that individual’s cuteness criteria is not that important. The actual reproductive advantage is in caring for one’s young, thus raising the probability of perpetuating one’s genes further.
Thus, even a not-very-well calibrated “cuteness” factor might not be very important (in the sense of not causing much selective pressure) as long as something else causes the individual to actually care for zer young. In this case I (weakly) conjecture that the “something else” is a mechanism that “focuses” the “cuteness evaluation” on one’s young.
As an analogy, consider a myopic species. Selective pressure might be expected to cause it to develop better vision, to help it avoid predators and find food. However, if the same species happens to have, e.g., good (not dog-like, only good enough) smell — which brings it close enough to food for its myopic vision to work, and keeps it far enough from predators to not need eyes for defense, the selective pressure can be very diminished.
Consider vision: it is an extremely old feature, so it had ample time to evolve. In fact, I’m told it evolved separately several times on Earth. All current vertebrates come from a common ancestor, which as far as I can determine had eyes. However, their vision acuity varies greatly, even in species that share a habitat. Better vision is always an advantage wherever there is light, but it’s obvious from the world around us that the selective pressure exerted by that advantage is often not enough to cause evolution (sometimes, the reverse happens).
Hmm, I just had another thought, reading your comment about “[a] deep structure” blocking selection: It’s not blocking as much as making irrelevant.
It may be that we’re just wrong. It’s possible that the “cuteness” factor was useful, as we think, for causing us to like babies and thus propagate our genes by caring for them. However, another trait with similar final consequences (but better in some way) just happened to evolve with better efficiency, maybe some new hormonal pathway or something related to primate brains, or anything I can’t think of.
The “cuteness” factor might actually atrophy in such a case. If a species develops very good smell for finding prey, they might not actually need their eyes much. The selective pressure for better vision diminishes, and drift takes over. I’m told this happened with some races of dogs. In our case, it’s obvious that no matter how cute we think some things are, we actually do take care of our children a lot (and a visible majority of people, at least at the start, seem to quickly become very attached to their babies).
“Cuteness acuity” might simply be irrelevant. It might have become so a long time ago, and become re-purposed for something else (beauty, art, whatever; the brain mixes things from many evolutionary eras).
‘other trait’? Unless you have a specific other factor in mind, it’s just a fully general counterargument. (I nullify your other traits with other-other traits!)
Huh? The traits in us that make babies less cute than bunnies. Hairlessness appears to be a popular example (most people think furry things are cute), there may be more. Maybe baby eyes are smaller relative to their head than bunnies because of selection for larger brains. It is true that you can’t disprove the hypothesis by finding trait that makes bunnies cuter than babies that I haven’t thought of. The argument is general in that sense. But we can evaluate the hypothesis in the case of each trait. Name a trait and then we can see if our explanation of that trait is the kind of thing that would be selected for over cuteness.
Why would our cuteness criteria have not changed to reflect baby traits (like small eyes which are selected for on non-cute grounds)?
Well, an obvious explanation would be that it didn’t have time to. Since Jack’s theory claims it’s an old trait, it might be embedded deep in an old structure of the brain (IIRC at least some emotions are seated very deep), and it might be hard to change, in the sense that most mutations that would make babies seem cuter would have other deleterious effects. As long as people find babies cute enough, the selection effect from the bad effects would delay the change until the rare mutations that don’t have bad effects happen.
Also, note that our cuteness criteria don’t matter that much unless one has a baby. I’ve heard enough reports of (and had some first hand experience with) people that didn’t care much about babies before they had them, but then had a “revelatory” experience once they met them. This suggests there’s a separate effect (pheromones, hormones, whatever) that makes up for whatever inefficiency in human cuteness criteria, but that mostly activates just when it matters. This would also reduce the evolutionary pressure for any “general” cuteness criteria adjustment.
Note also that our “badly adjusted” criteria were not a big deal (in the sense of decreasing reproductive fitness) during most of human evolution. Animals tend to hide their young and protect them, so encountering a cute puppy or kitty would have been a rare occasion for almost all people.
A bad one; it’s something like 2 million years back to our LCA with our nearest primate relatives, and I wouldn’t want to guess how many tens of millions back to our last common ancestor with the rabbits. What deep structure would be blocking decamillions of years of pressure? Again, you can hypothesize all sorts of outside reasons but without any specific reason...
Everyone deals with babies at some point, from evolution’s perspective. You are a baby, you interact with babies, you have babies, you raise babies, etc. Mothers may be a good target for a massive dose of brainwashing hormones & chemicals (lord knows they’ll need it), but a love of babies and cuteness is valuable for dads as well (where there is no convenient set of biological triggers like giving birth) and other relatives.
The domestication of dogs could have begun as long ago as ~100,000 years; and even so, this is just an argument for weak pressures.
I agree with most of this, but I think it’s not countering what I was trying to argue: With regards to a certain individual’s reproductive fitness, the “precision” of that individual’s cuteness criteria is not that important. The actual reproductive advantage is in caring for one’s young, thus raising the probability of perpetuating one’s genes further.
Thus, even a not-very-well calibrated “cuteness” factor might not be very important (in the sense of not causing much selective pressure) as long as something else causes the individual to actually care for zer young. In this case I (weakly) conjecture that the “something else” is a mechanism that “focuses” the “cuteness evaluation” on one’s young.
As an analogy, consider a myopic species. Selective pressure might be expected to cause it to develop better vision, to help it avoid predators and find food. However, if the same species happens to have, e.g., good (not dog-like, only good enough) smell — which brings it close enough to food for its myopic vision to work, and keeps it far enough from predators to not need eyes for defense, the selective pressure can be very diminished.
Consider vision: it is an extremely old feature, so it had ample time to evolve. In fact, I’m told it evolved separately several times on Earth. All current vertebrates come from a common ancestor, which as far as I can determine had eyes. However, their vision acuity varies greatly, even in species that share a habitat. Better vision is always an advantage wherever there is light, but it’s obvious from the world around us that the selective pressure exerted by that advantage is often not enough to cause evolution (sometimes, the reverse happens).
Hmm, I just had another thought, reading your comment about “[a] deep structure” blocking selection: It’s not blocking as much as making irrelevant.
It may be that we’re just wrong. It’s possible that the “cuteness” factor was useful, as we think, for causing us to like babies and thus propagate our genes by caring for them. However, another trait with similar final consequences (but better in some way) just happened to evolve with better efficiency, maybe some new hormonal pathway or something related to primate brains, or anything I can’t think of.
The “cuteness” factor might actually atrophy in such a case. If a species develops very good smell for finding prey, they might not actually need their eyes much. The selective pressure for better vision diminishes, and drift takes over. I’m told this happened with some races of dogs. In our case, it’s obvious that no matter how cute we think some things are, we actually do take care of our children a lot (and a visible majority of people, at least at the start, seem to quickly become very attached to their babies).
“Cuteness acuity” might simply be irrelevant. It might have become so a long time ago, and become re-purposed for something else (beauty, art, whatever; the brain mixes things from many evolutionary eras).