sure, but my reasoning is pretty simple while his is a convoluted maze of barely related facts.

Your reasoning: humans are like other primates. His response, humans are different because our offspring require more care.

Doesn't seem that confused to me

heh, I read the sites on that network every day

that guy's movie reviews. He has made me want to see The Hunger Games even less than before, which I didn't know was possible

I said convoluted, not confusing.

It's just such a stretch to go from "human babies are slightly weaker than ape offspring" to "human instinct is to fall in love".

And what about the fact that men and women cheat on each other all the time. And break up all the time too. Do other species that mate for life do that?

You said you think pair-bonding is a societal invention. Which would mean that things like school-boy crushes on girls, getting hung up on an ex, etc. are a societal invention. It's a ridiculous assertion. The fact that longer-term relationships are hard and people cheat doesn't hurt henholland's point at all, when his reasoning is that babies are hard to raise for the first year or two.

sluts

you guys should read "the selfish gene" by richard dawkins

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene

ok, i didnt explain it so well first time. Here i go again

- Humans have biggest brain to body ratio for all mammals, meaning our heads are also biggest compared to our bodies. For babies that are born the head is biggest thing that needs to get though the birth channel and out. As it is now this is barely doable. If we had to wait several months extra for it to become more developed the head simply wouldnt fit. Scientist estimate that if this wasnt an issue then ideally women would wait another 9-12 months. Human babies would then be on par in maturity to most other mammals.
This is an established fact btw and not a theory.

- humans do fall in love. This is also a fact, and it is something that also generally isnt found in other animals. (correct me if im wrong on this pls)


The theory is then that the second point here is explained by the first. The problem of big heads and small birth channels is taken care of by giving birth to a totally helpless baby, which then needs way way more care than other animals. The woman is probably meant in a perfect world to spend 100% of her time on raising the child and the man then on providing food and a place for the woman+baby to live. For one woman to do it both would be extremely hard, and in a lot of cases so hard it could jeopardize the survival of the baby. So to have 2 to take care of it definitely should be the +EV way from a human survival ship perspective.

It all makes perfect sense to me anyway. After a few years though the fatherly support is no longer as needed, so to be with the same woman for 5++ years i would guess is probably not genetically intended for human men. And this might be more of a socially forced thing than anything else if i had to guess.

Stop interrupting. I want to hear about the back nine day 1. It is well known that as the head of the driver has gotten larger, the male will hang onto it longer but will actually experiment with more other clubs off the tee.

If it's so ridiculous then explain to me why Hareem behavior is so common in men that have the power to do so and are not constrained by societal judgment? (sultans, kings, cult leaders)

And lets not forget the islamic heaven,where every man gets his personal hareem of 71 virgins

.

Only other monogamous animal I can think of is prairie voles, due to oxytocin and AVP (Humans have this as well). Remove those neurotransmitters, and they are unfaithful whores . (addressing both Hen's and Wolf's point of other animals)


I understand your point Wolf. It's not like you are basing your opinions by throwing darts at a board. Most of the behavior you refer to is due to social status; the more land/money/women a man may 'possess' - the more powerful he is perceived. It persists in today's society as well, many men brag about either a) how much money (re: land) they make 2) how hot the women they sleep with 3) how smart they are.

This has been ingrained in societies through many years. Lifespans were shorter and deaths were more frequent then, so men sought to protect their lineage by making sure some of their offspring would survive. Some reproduced more than others. Eventually over time, lifespans became longer and thus the need for reproducing so much was diminished. Society always 'evolves' faster than biology.

If some event occurred where selection favored those with strong oxytocin/AVP receptors (such as a low chance of death), than it's possible less faithful men may be weeded out.

The way I see it, you're both right. Men have evolutionary pressure to both see that their offspring survive and to have as many offspring with as many women as we can. They are at odds with one another so you get both behaviours. It's advantageous to have pair bonding. That seems clear to me. Some cultures get around this by having the women raise the children in groups though so there is some choice. Even then though, that's the men finding a way to have both pair bonding and some freedom. Because of our dueling pressures we often try to have it both ways and sometimes succeed.

The evolutionary process probably worked along these lines: 1) most mammals originate with the typical behaviour of the females raising the children, thus being selective, and the alpha male producing all the offspring. We have this element to us obviously due to our common ancestors with other mammals. 2) We developed bigger brains and it became advantageous for us to develop pair bonding and this is reinforced chemically. This was a big step for us. 3) Our brains continue to evolve and we develop things like mirror neurons which allow us to instantly side step the typical Darwinian process of evolution. Lots of steps have been excluded, but I think everybody agrees that we developed to nurture a large brain that can continue to evolve through mass genetic diversity. In the end though, we still have our primitive roots and we have both bottom up and top down pressures in our brain that continue to influence us.

good posts guys.

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I'd like to start a new discussion cause this one has kinda been beaten to death.

Let's say that for some reason starting today humans would be sterile unless they took a universally available and free birth-enabling pill. There would be no accidental pregnancies. Both the male and the female would need to take the pill and you'd need to do it each time you wanted to get pregnant and it would have a 100% success rate after being taken.

How long would it take for the human race to go extinct?

I think most people get to the point in their late twenties-early thirties when they want kids, even those who had been hardcore anti-kids all their lives. I'm seeing this over and over again around me (both on the male and female part). So I don't really think we would go extinct at all. Although it's hard to tell for sure but I suspect that those who don't change their mind and don't want kids would probably be balanced out by those who want more than one.

And what about the fact that most developed countries that have ready access to birth control and little social stigma are experiencing a population stagnation or even decrease in recent decades (see Japan and Scandinavia).

Iceland for example has basically stood in place for 20 years, even though we have one of the highest standards of living in the world. If it wasn't for immigration we'd probably suffer population loss.

Don't forget that it's not enough to want to have a child. Every single person needs to have ~2.2 just to maintain the population. And some people that want children are unable of having them.
I actually think that's the biggest reason we aren't expanding the population. More and more families are stopping at 1-2 children and that just ain't enough.

Edit:
I guess I should amend the scenario in a way that the pill wouldn't magically make traditionally sterile people non-sterile.

It would probably depend largely on how long it's going to take the third world to catch up developmentally (assuming it happens).

The incentive for having many children in poor countries with no social welfare is just too large right now. They are your meal ticket once you get old.

If the whole world would become affluent like the US or western europe and giving birth would become voluntary then I think there's no chance we would survive unless something drastic would happen (govmnt intervention, aliens, religious or social revolution).

If there were boy and girl pills one generation before there would be no women.

I think at one point we would realize that we are ****ing ourselves quite directly through the unsustainable pension systems b/c of higher avg lifespan and not enough young/new taxpayers. This is already causing huge problems in many countries so governments will likely come up with some benefits sooner or later which will very strongly encourage higher rate of childbirth imo, tipping the scale from stagnating/slightly decreasing to slightly increasing

Oh man this is gold. This guy shows up for a job interview at the BBC, the news shows producer sees him thinking he's the expert they have booked for the live show and brings him in, his facial reaction is priceless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5evS-ApSNQ


HAHA just realized this is from 2006, never seen it before.

This.

F.ex in Norway they introduced a lot of very nice welfare goodies for those having children some years ago, and the birth rate then almost instantly increased. We now have a solid population increase in norway (ofc immigration makes up good chunk of this).
But i believe they could increase the birth rate even further just by adding some extra incentives for couples having 2/3+ children f.ex.
Even if u only look at it from an economics perspective this would be a solid investment as having a solid birth rate is likely the most important resource of any country.

So basically i think there is 0% chance humanity would go extinct with wolframs conditions. Im pretty sure unwanted children doesnt make up that big of a part of total births that it couldnt then be easily compensated down the line by external incentives from the government.

Anyone doing a wsop house?

What I'd like to know is if the "Idiocracy Theory" of human development is true. Are humans getting collectively dumber? The hypothesis is that less intelligent people (who generally have anti-intellectual leanings) have children at a far more proficient rate than more intelligent people, and so each generation is slightly dumber. Is this true genetically-speaking (I'm not positive that B actually follows from A but it does seem logical), and if so, is it offset by increasingly widely available sources of information? And if so, is THAT offset by the facts that the quality of life our species enjoys and the preponderance of "easy/lazy entertainment" options that we have access to are increasingly superior and widely disseminated, respectively?

Also, advanced medical care and social nets allow dumb people to stay alive (and procreate like ****ing rabbits) for far longer than they were able to in the past when people had to rely much more strongly on their wits alone. Maybe switching to a more individualistic, laissez-faire society (although here it'd probably just be called a mass of individuals instead of "society") would benefit "us" on a macro level even though certain individuals would be **** outta luck and would die off.

I feel like this has some merit. After all, it's not like George Dubya is all that much more intelligent than President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho.

Hmm, apparently "The Idiocracy Theory" is an actual thing, and more based upon measurable biological evolution than my more philosophical ramblings. Our brains are getting smaller: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...iocracy-theory. However, I'd assume that this phenomenon would taper off at some point because we're fast reaching a point at which it becomes "perfectly easy", technologically speaking, to live comfortably.

The last paragraph seems to support my assertion about the safety nets/medical care, which is good because that part seemed evidently true to me.

I think you're overvaluing the difference in people's intellect.

There really isn't that strong of a correlation between very high IQ and success.

So whether or not we're getting slightly dumber as a whole will probably not affect the success of the human race much at all.