For instance, if the current political structure is one in which families preserve authority and power making members marry close relatives, then genes that encourage the carrier to marry outside the family will be at a disadvantage and, given enough time, eventually go extinct. So you'll end up with a society in which people have a tendency to marry their cousins. Since social conditioning usually reinforces instinct, it will therefore be the next sure step in social evolution: to end up with a society where people are encouraged to marry their cousins.
Except there are several other cultures where marrying within the family would be advantageous yet marriage between cousins is taboo.
Which makes me beg the question why would he pick homosexuality as his study?
The chapter has like 15 different parts. Homosexuality is only one of them.
I have not read this book. tell me does he address the issue solely in Modern American cultural terms? Homosexuality is by no means homogeneous. Using statistics about homosexuals in San Francisco i the 80s says little about anyone but homosexuals in San Francisco and their behavior. What does it tell us about Ancient Greece where homosexual relations amongst married men was common?
When you start using really loaded terms like "human nature" you better be ready to defend the positions from all historical and cultural fronts. This is why evo-pych is damn near impossible to prove since there's too many factors involved to isolate genetics.
The point he makes is not really about homosexuality itself, but rather about what it can tell us about average men and average women; homosexual and heterosexual alike.
He is not saying "this is what homosexuals in SF act like, so that is how they probably act like everywhere else". He is saying "this is how homosexuals in SF act like, and this supports the theory that their actions reflect their tendencies associated with their respective genders."
For instance, if the current political structure is one in which families preserve authority and power making members marry close relatives, then genes that encourage the carrier to marry outside the family will be at a disadvantage and, given enough time, eventually go extinct. So you'll end up with a society in which people have a tendency to marry their cousins. Since social conditioning usually reinforces instinct, it will therefore be the next sure step in social evolution: to end up with a society where people are encouraged to marry their cousins.
Except there are several other cultures where marrying within the family would be advantageous yet marriage between cousins is taboo.
Like I said, without specific examples it is really hard to speculate on the issue because there are likely very many factors that natural and sexual selection take into consideration.
For instance, if the current political structure is one in which families preserve authority and power making members marry close relatives, then genes that encourage the carrier to marry outside the family will be at a disadvantage and, given enough time, eventually go extinct. So you'll end up with a society in which people have a tendency to marry their cousins. Since social conditioning usually reinforces instinct, it will therefore be the next sure step in social evolution: to end up with a society where people are encouraged to marry their cousins.
Except there are several other cultures where marrying within the family would be advantageous yet marriage between cousins is taboo.
Like I said, without specific examples it is really hard to speculate on the issue because there are likely very many factors that natural and sexual selection take into consideration.
Many parts of modern America, Catholicism, many Asian cultures, and several Eastern Orthodox Churches.
Why the Hell do you even need an example for that?
Which makes me beg the question why would he pick homosexuality as his study?
The chapter has like 15 different parts. Homosexuality is only one of them.
I have not read this book. tell me does he address the issue solely in Modern American cultural terms? Homosexuality is by no means homogeneous. Using statistics about homosexuals in San Francisco i the 80s says little about anyone but homosexuals in San Francisco and their behavior. What does it tell us about Ancient Greece where homosexual relations amongst married men was common?
When you start using really loaded terms like "human nature" you better be ready to defend the positions from all historical and cultural fronts. This is why evo-pych is damn near impossible to prove since there's too many factors involved to isolate genetics.
The point he makes is not really about homosexuality itself, but rather about what it can tell us about average men and average women; homosexual and heterosexual alike.
I think it's a poor method of study. You take the most extreme study you can find and extrapolate it to encompass everyone? Should all studies about murderers be based on Hilter now?
For instance, if the current political structure is one in which families preserve authority and power making members marry close relatives, then genes that encourage the carrier to marry outside the family will be at a disadvantage and, given enough time, eventually go extinct. So you'll end up with a society in which people have a tendency to marry their cousins. Since social conditioning usually reinforces instinct, it will therefore be the next sure step in social evolution: to end up with a society where people are encouraged to marry their cousins.
Except there are several other cultures where marrying within the family would be advantageous yet marriage between cousins is taboo.
Like I said, without specific examples it is really hard to speculate on the issue because there are likely very many factors that natural and sexual selection take into consideration.
Those political structures would have to be in place for many generations.
Looking back over the past ten generations, I note a great many changes in political structures. I assume the future will not buck this trend.
Let me amend my posts a little. Don't 100% dismiss his ideas. I think the term human nature is generally a useless one and should be avoided. I think the study he seems to be using are far too small to make such generalization he is making. He also seems to be ignoring non-western cultures and historical records. This would put him more in the "sociology" category and less in the "science" field.
Feel free to correct my assumptions as I am going based solely on the post you made.
I think it's a poor method of study. You take the most extreme study you can find and extrapolate it to encompass everyone? Should all studies about murderers be based on Hilter now?
Wasn't that how the 'Bell Curve' infamously worked out? Fuzzy numbers to say minorities are dumb?
Which makes me beg the question why would he pick homosexuality as his study?
The chapter has like 15 different parts. Homosexuality is only one of them.
I have not read this book. tell me does he address the issue solely in Modern American cultural terms? Homosexuality is by no means homogeneous. Using statistics about homosexuals in San Francisco i the 80s says little about anyone but homosexuals in San Francisco and their behavior. What does it tell us about Ancient Greece where homosexual relations amongst married men was common?
When you start using really loaded terms like "human nature" you better be ready to defend the positions from all historical and cultural fronts. This is why evo-pych is damn near impossible to prove since there's too many factors involved to isolate genetics.
The point he makes is not really about homosexuality itself, but rather about what it can tell us about average men and average women; homosexual and heterosexual alike.
I think it's a poor method of study. You take the most extreme study you can find and extrapolate it to encompass everyone? Should all studies about murderers be based on Hilter now?
Did you... did you just Godwin my thread?!
Let me amend my posts a little. Don't think I 100% dismiss his ideas. I just think the term human nature is generally a useless one and should be avoided. I think the study he seems to be using are far too small to make such generalization he is making. He also seems to be ignoring non-western cultures and historical records. This would put him more in the "sociology" category and less in the "science" field.
Feel free to correct my assumptions as I am going based solely on the post you made.
Don't worry; the vast majority of examples he gives in the book are about non-Western societies, both in the present and in the past. That is why I was hesitating to make a thread; the scope of the discussion can after all only be so large before it becomes a trainwreck.
There would be societies in which... parents did not love their own children. But there aren't any such societies.
Actually, there is a society in which (at least at one point in the recent future) fathers did not love their offspring. The society didn't understand the connection between sex and reproduction: they thought women became pregnant by bathing in the ocean. Hence, they lacked a notion of fatherhood. While there would often be a boyfriend around to help care for a woman's children, he did so out of obligation to her and not out of love for the child, and often it wouldn't be his genetically.
South Pacific, right?
There are some tropical fruits in the passionfruit family that act as mild birth control, so there are a couple of small South Pacific cultures where the notion of 'have sex, get pregnant' never took hold, because all sorts of young folk had sex all the time and never got pregnant (because their diet was intermittently preventing it). Consequently these cultures buck many of the typical concepts of parenthood that otherwise seem more-or-less universal.
I'm wondering if we're thinking of the same thing.
I'm not sure I accept the assertion that social sciences assume all behavior is derived from culture rather than biology. Culture plays a larger role in human behavior than many people realize, but denying biological factors would be foolish, and I don't think any mainstream social science does.
You know, I'm probably one of the most vocal opponents of evo-psych on the boards, and I'd have to say that this is not my position, nor is it the position of even the most diehard feminists I've met.
It would be more accurate to say that the anti-evo-psych position is that where gender behavioral differences are concerned, biology is a relatively smaller contributor than culture; there is more potential for behavioral differences within genders than between them (if culture is not putting them into pink and blue boxes); and that appeals to biology are so frequently steeped in unchallenged assumptions that we need to be additionally skeptical of them in much the same way we need to be additionally skeptical of any field that still has one foot in pseudoscience.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
0
Options
MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
There would be societies in which... parents did not love their own children. But there aren't any such societies.
Actually, there is a society in which (at least at one point in the recent future) fathers did not love their offspring. The society didn't understand the connection between sex and reproduction: they thought women became pregnant by bathing in the ocean. Hence, they lacked a notion of fatherhood. While there would often be a boyfriend around to help care for a woman's children, he did so out of obligation to her and not out of love for the child, and often it wouldn't be his genetically.
South Pacific, right?
There are some tropical fruits in the passionfruit family that act as mild birth control, so there are a couple of small South Pacific cultures where the notion of 'have sex, get pregnant' never took hold, because all sorts of young folk had sex all the time and never got pregnant (because their diet was intermittently preventing it). Consequently these cultures buck many of the typical concepts of parenthood that otherwise seem more-or-less universal.
I'm wondering if we're thinking of the same thing.
Looking it up, it's the Trobriand Islanders, and yeah. Anthropologists cream their jeans over that sort of shit.
2. Symons, D. 1979. The Evolution of Human Sexuality. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
3. Tripp. C. A. 1975. The Homosexual Matrix. Signet, New York.
We're having a nature vs. nurture discussion using primary sources from the 70s?
Insta-fail.
Those are the sources he used in that homosexuality paragraph only. The book itself uses sources from as recent as 2002.
But the homosexuality paragraph was the seed for this thread.
More specifically, there's nothing the paragraph itself to suggest that the homosexual male tendencies described are more genetic than cultural in origin. In fact, the paragraph as quoted has no relevance to nature vs. nurture at all, so if the author managed to draw a connection between these concepts elsewhere in the book, I hope he did so using more recent sources.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
2. Symons, D. 1979. The Evolution of Human Sexuality. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
3. Tripp. C. A. 1975. The Homosexual Matrix. Signet, New York.
We're having a nature vs. nurture discussion using primary sources from the 70s?
Insta-fail.
Those are the sources he used in that homosexuality paragraph only. The book itself uses sources from as recent as 2002.
But the homosexuality paragraph was the seed for this thread.
More specifically, there's nothing the paragraph itself to suggest that the homosexual male tendencies described are more genetic than cultural in origin. In fact, the paragraph as quoted has no relevance to nature vs. nurture at all, so if the author managed to draw a connection between these concepts elsewhere in the book, I hope he did so using more recent sources.
Yeah, that's my bad. I noticed the disconnect as well when I was typing up the OP, but decided to leave it there thinking it might spur an interesting discussion nevertheless.
Trust me, I'm usually very skeptical of any book that treads the evo-psych field but I'm almost done with the book and I have yet to go O_o at anything the author has said. This may be due to confirmation bias, though.
jesus, ege. The last sentence in your OP is just so unutterably stupid. And Ridley's position on male homosexuality is also pretty ridiculous, largely in its massive underestimation of heterosexual fucking-around.
Any underestimation he is doing on the part of heterosexual fucking-around, he must also be doing it on the part of homosexual fucking-around. He has survey data supporting both.
no, nonsense, bollocks. Hets have been underreporting sexual encounters in a way that homosexuals never really needed to on anonymous surveys for a long time, because they didn't have the ingrained bias against admitting even to themselves the amount of casual sex they'd had. If homosexuals were willing to admit to homosexuality at all, they didn't bother hiding the extent of it. In contrast, rates of reported infidelity and casual sex among hets have been rising for ages, particularly among females, because the stigma about admitting status as a sexual person, and the stigma surrounding casual relationships, is fading fast. Ridley's using largely old research to support that chapter, so of course his view is skewed. It also appears to fail to take into account things like the far more permissive free-love movement and the pre-AIDS sexual culture's influence on those old-ass studies, and I certainly see no mention of any attempt by these researchers to correlate that sexual behaviour with any of the study participants' life characteristics. God, I could go on for paragraphs here. Suffice to say, I know a dodgy conclusion when I see it.
I also know an ignorant-ass dig at the social sciences when I see it
A Kinsey Institute study of gay men in the San Francisco Bay Area found that 75 percent had had more than one hundred partners; 25 percent had had more than one thousand.
Wait, so 100% of the gay men consulted for the report in the SF Bay Area had over 100 partners?
What? Were they talking to the guys in a 100 man orgy?
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
A Kinsey Institute study of gay men in the San Francisco Bay Area found that 75 percent had had more than one hundred partners; 25 percent had had more than one thousand.
Wait, so 100% of the gay men consulted for the report in the SF Bay Area had over 100 partners?
What? Were they talking to the guys in a 100 man orgy?
Uh, no... that's not what it means.
75% of the men had over a hundred partners.
25% of the men had over a thousand partners.
A thousand is over a hundred, so the 25% is a part of the 75%.
I think this is interesting research. As corner case as it is, the San Francisco study is still useful in discerning the lengths of behavior that a culture may go to.
I'm of the firm belief that society's opinions on things like homosexuality and incest are going to change drastically in the near future: we might think that having sex with one's siblings or parents is grody to the max, but that instinct comes from both cultural and biological imperatives: as birth control improves and is more widely accepted, there won't be a risk of inbred children. There's already no risk of such genetic damage in same-sex sexual activity between relatives, which opens the door to extreme corner-case examples as the identical twin incest fetish in pornography (ever the vanguard of crazy shit the mainstream culture would be horrified about but generally starts to accept more).
The cultural imperative against incest stems from the fact that a whole lot of incest is also abuse of children, who don't generally have agency to consent to such activity, and is therefore a rape crime.
Between adults, the problem with incest is, largely, the protection of the gene pool. Ancient cultures, for example the Israelites, had strongly enforced laws about marrying non-Israelites for similar reasons: Don't corrupt our gene pool or have half-breed children because there aren't many of us and we can't afford to divide our assets. Homosexuality, too, was frowned upon, in part because it's an activity that won't provide more Israelites.
As we're not too worried about humanity not breeding enough now, homosexuality is becoming less and less of an issue: heck, we even have gay and bisexual dating shows now (see: A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila).
Culture changes faster than biology, but it tends to sieze on biological imperatives when it finds them (as in the San Francisco case).
Posts
The point he makes is not really about homosexuality itself, but rather about what it can tell us about average men and average women; homosexual and heterosexual alike.
He is not saying "this is what homosexuals in SF act like, so that is how they probably act like everywhere else". He is saying "this is how homosexuals in SF act like, and this supports the theory that their actions reflect their tendencies associated with their respective genders."
Like I said, without specific examples it is really hard to speculate on the issue because there are likely very many factors that natural and sexual selection take into consideration.
Why the Hell do you even need an example for that?
I think it's a poor method of study. You take the most extreme study you can find and extrapolate it to encompass everyone? Should all studies about murderers be based on Hilter now?
Those political structures would have to be in place for many generations.
Looking back over the past ten generations, I note a great many changes in political structures. I assume the future will not buck this trend.
I conclude it is rather unlikely.
Feel free to correct my assumptions as I am going based solely on the post you made.
Wasn't that how the 'Bell Curve' infamously worked out? Fuzzy numbers to say minorities are dumb?
Did you... did you just Godwin my thread?!
Don't worry; the vast majority of examples he gives in the book are about non-Western societies, both in the present and in the past. That is why I was hesitating to make a thread; the scope of the discussion can after all only be so large before it becomes a trainwreck.
You should check it out though. It's a good read.
We're having a nature vs. nurture discussion using primary sources from the 70s?
Insta-fail.
South Pacific, right?
There are some tropical fruits in the passionfruit family that act as mild birth control, so there are a couple of small South Pacific cultures where the notion of 'have sex, get pregnant' never took hold, because all sorts of young folk had sex all the time and never got pregnant (because their diet was intermittently preventing it). Consequently these cultures buck many of the typical concepts of parenthood that otherwise seem more-or-less universal.
I'm wondering if we're thinking of the same thing.
You know, I'm probably one of the most vocal opponents of evo-psych on the boards, and I'd have to say that this is not my position, nor is it the position of even the most diehard feminists I've met.
It would be more accurate to say that the anti-evo-psych position is that where gender behavioral differences are concerned, biology is a relatively smaller contributor than culture; there is more potential for behavioral differences within genders than between them (if culture is not putting them into pink and blue boxes); and that appeals to biology are so frequently steeped in unchallenged assumptions that we need to be additionally skeptical of them in much the same way we need to be additionally skeptical of any field that still has one foot in pseudoscience.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Looking it up, it's the Trobriand Islanders, and yeah. Anthropologists cream their jeans over that sort of shit.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Those are the sources he used in that homosexuality paragraph only. The book itself uses sources from as recent as 2002.
But the homosexuality paragraph was the seed for this thread.
More specifically, there's nothing the paragraph itself to suggest that the homosexual male tendencies described are more genetic than cultural in origin. In fact, the paragraph as quoted has no relevance to nature vs. nurture at all, so if the author managed to draw a connection between these concepts elsewhere in the book, I hope he did so using more recent sources.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yeah, that's my bad. I noticed the disconnect as well when I was typing up the OP, but decided to leave it there thinking it might spur an interesting discussion nevertheless.
Trust me, I'm usually very skeptical of any book that treads the evo-psych field but I'm almost done with the book and I have yet to go O_o at anything the author has said. This may be due to confirmation bias, though.
jesus, ege. The last sentence in your OP is just so unutterably stupid. And Ridley's position on male homosexuality is also pretty ridiculous, largely in its massive underestimation of heterosexual fucking-around.
I also know an ignorant-ass dig at the social sciences when I see it
Wait, so 100% of the gay men consulted for the report in the SF Bay Area had over 100 partners?
What? Were they talking to the guys in a 100 man orgy?
Uh, no... that's not what it means.
75% of the men had over a hundred partners.
25% of the men had over a thousand partners.
A thousand is over a hundred, so the 25% is a part of the 75%.
I think this is interesting research. As corner case as it is, the San Francisco study is still useful in discerning the lengths of behavior that a culture may go to.
I'm of the firm belief that society's opinions on things like homosexuality and incest are going to change drastically in the near future: we might think that having sex with one's siblings or parents is grody to the max, but that instinct comes from both cultural and biological imperatives: as birth control improves and is more widely accepted, there won't be a risk of inbred children. There's already no risk of such genetic damage in same-sex sexual activity between relatives, which opens the door to extreme corner-case examples as the identical twin incest fetish in pornography (ever the vanguard of crazy shit the mainstream culture would be horrified about but generally starts to accept more).
The cultural imperative against incest stems from the fact that a whole lot of incest is also abuse of children, who don't generally have agency to consent to such activity, and is therefore a rape crime.
Between adults, the problem with incest is, largely, the protection of the gene pool. Ancient cultures, for example the Israelites, had strongly enforced laws about marrying non-Israelites for similar reasons: Don't corrupt our gene pool or have half-breed children because there aren't many of us and we can't afford to divide our assets. Homosexuality, too, was frowned upon, in part because it's an activity that won't provide more Israelites.
As we're not too worried about humanity not breeding enough now, homosexuality is becoming less and less of an issue: heck, we even have gay and bisexual dating shows now (see: A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila).
Culture changes faster than biology, but it tends to sieze on biological imperatives when it finds them (as in the San Francisco case).