I’m not saying it’s better to mate with anything that moves, just that it can be good to take advantage if she sees a good set of genes. Keep in mind that if she’s partnered with the dominant male in the group, she has the resources and security to raise extra offspring.
Like brazil84’s puerile comment about Bill Clinton, this is just an example of how discussions of evolution are overwhelmingly colored by people’s own personal experiences and biases.
What about it did you find flippant? It was intended to be a serious comment.
My point is that quick visual judgements of male fitness may well be less reliable than a serious trial of strength between contenders for the alpha male position.
Instincts don’t have a “point.” They only have incidental and self-perpetuating effects. There is no such thing as “perverting” an instinct because instincts have no “purpose” which can be perverted.
Really? Would it be wrong to say that, for example, the “point” of the migration instinct in birds is to keep them in habitat where there’s food to exploit?
It surely isn’t an incidental thing - a great deal of selection has been necessary to yield a population of blackpoll warblers that muster on Cape Cod each fall, waiting for just the right weather pattern to enable a 3.5-day nonstop flight to South America.
Yes, it would be inaccurate to say that. The better access to food is just an incidental benefit to the instinct and therefore the instinct perpetates itself genetically.
It’s all incidental, not goal oriented. Those birds who happen to have the instinct to migrate reproduce and pass on that gene to their offspring. Evolution is not goal oriented and all adaptation is a result of incidentally beneficial mutations. The genes don’t actually care how they’re used. None of them have predetermined “points.”
You’re taking the use of “point” to imply “goal-oriented.” It’s one interpretation, and a fully reasonable one.
But to say that the point or purpose of the instinct is to put the birds in food-rich territory is also a way of invoking a very common metaphor. Among a vast number who use it, no less an authority than Richard Dawkins often does. I think these threads would benefit from the stipulation that this metaphor need not be taken to imply that those who use it believe genes have cognition, will, or a view of the future - any more than Dawkins believes this.
I think “purpose” implies intention. Instinct does not exist in order to get migratory birds closer to food. Migratory birds get closer to food because they just happen to have the migratory instinct.
In any case, it cannot be said that non-reproductive sex “perverts the point” of the sex drive because the sex drive has no “point.” Reproduction is an incidentally beneficial effect of the sex drive bit that doesn’t mean that reproduction is the reason for the sex drive or that any intention or goal exists which can be frustrated or “perverted.”
I totally agree. This exchange is reminiscent of the debate between Richard Dawkins and Mary Midgley over the “selfish gene.”
You may think that, but that’s absolutely NOT what I mean when I talk about the “purpose” or “point” of some genetically informed instinct. When I talk about the “point” or “purpose” of some instinct, I am referring exactly to the “incidental” and “self-perpetuating” effect of that instinct.
In other words, I’m simply using shorthand. To use Xema’s words, it’s a useful metaphor and nothing more.
Do you believe that it’s appropriate to characterize a gene as “selfish”?
And here’s a nice quote from Dawkins from his debate with Midgley:
It seems to me that Diogenes’ argument is unreasonable in a similar way. He has jumped into this discussion with his own definition of “purpose” and “point,” and essentially argued that my claim is incorrect using HIS definitions. Even though it’s fairly obvious that I am using a different definition.
Saying that genetic behavior has a “point” is like saying “the point of glass fragility is to create hazardous shards that would deter anyone from dropping it.” Taken as pure shorthand in some limited contexts it’s convenient and inconsequential, but generalized any further than that tends to obfuscate cause and effect. It also invites the invocation of the naturalistic fallacy. If nature clearly has a “point” in its actions, then anyone who acts “against nature” is automatically on the defensive.
In the case of the so-called ‘selfish gene’, I would say this is a specialized case taken in limited context. Arguably, if genes can even be said to have any ‘purpose’ or ‘intention’, it is selfishness alone. They appear to have no guiding principle except to pass themselves along, even at all odds to the organism’s own well-being. So I would say that until you’re as well-published as Dawkins, or if you’re talking about genes seeming ‘desire’ to pass themselves along, then you ought to be extremely precise about how you use terms like ‘point’ and ‘purpose’.
Several people have posted in this thread that money did not exist in our evolutionary history, and therefore women who marry rich men do it as a conscious decision.
I’ve no doubt some women do this as a conscious decision, but many others, I suspect, simply have an attraction to high status and ‘money’ is a good modern-day indicator of status. And I’m further postulating that ‘status’ is something that would’ve been important to our ancestors too, the same way it is for many other primates.
Other indicators are fame, respect and popularity. And what do you know – all these things are generally attractive to women too (and anyone who thinks “well, duh!” to this, may I point out that these attributes have little to no effect on how attractive a woman is to a man).
Even among some primates, there are females who will have sex in exchange for gifts of food from males.
Though it certainly isn’t Dawkins only use of this kind of analogy.
You appear here to invoke an analogy. Genes have no guiding principles - there’s a chemical process by which they are replicated; their environment controls which are passed along.
Your point about the value of precision is certainly valid. But expecting amateurs to exhibit more of it than does Dawkins seems seriously naive. Analogy and metaphor can be found in much writing on most subjects.
Back on the topic of mating selection, here’s an interesting post (#5, by astro) from this current GQ thread.
It’s interesting that female choice seems relevant in only one of the two modes. It appears that males contribute little or nothing to the raising of young.
But “point” and “purpose” don’t even work as metaphors. They’re highly misleading and the notion that those “points” can be “perverted” is just factually wrong. There is no such thing as a “wrong” use for a gene or an instinct.
That’s a bad analogy, because it’s an incidental relationship with no self-perpetuating or selective aspect.
Let me ask you this: Suppose somebody asked “What’s the purpose of adrenalin?” Which is a better answer: (a) To give you an extra boost in physical performance when you are in an emergency situation; or (b) there is no purpose at all.
It’s one thing to say “I disagree with the way you are using the words ‘point’ and ‘purpose,’” but using you definitions, your point is correct."
It’s another thing to say “I disagree with the way you are using the words ‘point’ and ‘purpose,’ so I will use my own definition to interpret your statement and using my definition, your statement is wrong. Therefore you are wrong.”
The latter statement – which is essentially Diogenes’ position – is not reasonable.
And by the way, this sort of shorthand is very common. Here’s a Cecil Adams collumn called “What is the purpose of pubic hair?”
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_064a.html
Maybe you need to tell Cecil that pubic hair actually has no purpose whatsoever.
The age range and wealth has never been important to me. I was nine years older than my first husband and earned more. And I never asked my second husband about his finances before we married.
This is an age when women are expecting to become the economic equals of men. And the children will be his children, not just hers. If she wants him to stop thinking in the old stereotypical ways, then she must set an example.
The age range of the men I have been attracted to spans about fifty-two years. And as I have grown older, they have grown older. I’m sixty-four and I think that seventy year old Robert Redford would do in a pinch. But not all of the celebrities that I have found sexy have been particularly attractive and none of them are young. I think the premises of the OP might be flawed.
The fact that you’ve chosen something that:
a) Doesn’t have a clear purpose
and
b) Of the theories posited for its purpose, it fails to satisfy its purpose in the modern world (e.g. It doesn’t make us sexually attractive).
Shows that there can be difficulty in assigning a purpose to some biological features.
In any case, I think there’s a big difference from considering something to have a purpose, based on its specific characteristics, and what I would consider to be a value judgement of saying the purpose of genes is to perpetuate themselves.
I doubt it. I can’t google it right now but I suspect it would be easy to find stats to support the view that most women are attracted to men somewhat older than themselves and at least as successful as they are.
Still, a lot of the language in this thread, and the OP itself, have generalised and made it sound as though women are all of one mind. This (at least in my case) was not the intention.
Of course there can be. So what? If the purpose of pubic hair were clear and obvious, why would Cecil bother discussing it?
It’s one thing to say that the “purpose” can be difficult to ascertain. It’s another to say that it doesn’t even make sense to talk about such a “purpose.”
Let me ask you this: Suppose somebody asked “What’s the purpose of adrenalin?” Which is a better answer: (a) To give you an extra boost in physical performance when you are in an emergency situation; or (b) there is no purpose at all.
What exactly is the difference? And please, let’s stick with the actual statement I made, which is basically that birth control and abortions can potentially pervert (actually frustrate would be a better word) the purpose of a man’s instinctual sex drive.
Perhaps, but generally speaking, status and success mean a lot to most women – so much so that it hardly needs a cite.
If I may ask, what were the jobs/professions of your husbands?