T. Ryan Gregory makes an important point about how evolutionary biologists should approach problems.
I will avoid the political aspect of this discussion and focus on the science involved in the debate, because I think it highlights an important issue: namely, the need for evolutionary biologists to consider and test alternative hypotheses, even if they are not as intuitively plausible as the main hypothesis. This is one of the reasons that evolutionary biologists often take issue with claims from evolutionary psychology — because evo psych often tends to present a plausible hypothesis but does little to critically evaluate its underlying assumptions and even less to present and rule out alternatives. In particular, evolutionary biologists should know better than to restrict the list of hypotheses ones based on selection, because there are usually viable non-adaptive hypotheses as well. Natural selection is not the only mechanism of evolution.
And then he does precisely what we should do: he lays out a series of alternative explanation for size differences between males and females, and includes non-adaptive explanations. I know way too many boosters for evolutionary science whose brains would explode if you tried to tell them Trait X, which they think is important, doesn’t necessarily provide a selective advantage.
This is why I like to foist Elisabeth Llloyd’s book, The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution on my brighter students: each chapter lays out an evolutionary explanation for female orgasms, and shows the evidence pro and con…and often the evidence con is so strong you have to marvel at the psychological appeal of adaptive explanations, that people would advance and promote such poorly evidenced ideas.
Gregory also points to a good post by Jesse Singal that highlights these fallacious explanations. He highlights arguments made by Holly Dunsworth that are particularly good. She’s not very happy with the adaptive just-so stories that reinforce bogus ideas about male dominance.
…and it's as if women don't exist at all in these tales except as objects for males to fight over or to fuck but it's nice to have choice!
— Holly Dunsworth (@HollyDunsworth) December 16, 2016
They’re all criticizing a post by Jerry Coyne that makes a standard complaint from the conservative side of science.
After providing some more evidence that “the larger size and strength of males is reflected in their behavior … and was almost certainly promoted by sexual selection,” Coyne bemoans the fact that so many on the left refuse to acknowledge it. “To deny that the differences between human males and females in size and strength are evolved is to deny at the same time that differences in behavior between males and females is evolved,” he writes. “Only the blinkered ideologue would do that. Sadly, these ideologues continue to promote antiscientific ideas on the Internet.”
Apparently, the “blinkered ideologue” he’s sniping at is…me. Unfortunately for his case, I don’t deny evolved differences between men and women — it would be rather difficult to do so with the evidence in such plentiful supply. What I reject is the notion that a) these are all adaptive, and b) that all of the differences are biological. There is a tendency to extrapolate unwarrantedly from the fact that many women have distinctive lumps of fat on their chests, to a sweeping judgment that therefore, their brains must be completely different than those of men. Worse, they then abuse evolutionary biology to claim that these differences are necessary and intrinsic, and anybody who thinks differently is one of those awful “blank slaters”.
But you can’t do that!
It’s taking a statistical property of a group, which is the product of both biological predispositions and cultural influences, and saying that Trait X must be biological in nature because Trait X exists. It’s nonsense. It takes hard work, which usually hasn’t been done, to tease apart environmental and genetic influences, and too often we fail to appreciate that the trait under consideration is a product of both.
Unfortunately, Singal also makes a statement that annoys me.
There really are people who deny there are any innate, evolutionary driven differences between men and women, and as Coyne points out this belief tends to come out of certain political movements who don’t view such differences as compatible with feminist or progressive beliefs and goals.
Who are these people? I’ve read a fair bit of feminist and scientific literature, I’m friends with a number of people who are labeled as ‘weird feminist extremists’ (usually by the kind of ignorant people who think “cuck” is a cogent insult), and I don’t know any who hold this view. Most feminists start with the position that men and women have differences, but these are unfairly and inappropriately extended to apply to every behavioral property, and fairly consistently to the detriment of women.
What’s usually going on is that some anti-feminist has made a bizarre, unbelievable, and often incorrect claim about feminism (they hate men, they want to rule the world, they think my penis is tiny, etc.), and people agree — yes, that is crazy — without checking to see whether any one of them actually said that. I’ve got people ranting that I don’t believe genes or chromosomes or hormones have any effect on humans, for instance, which is flat out crazy talk. But hey, vilifying your ideological opponents with lies is fair game, right?
I’ve seen some, but they are exceedingly rare and have no political clout whatsoever. The people that cite them are overstating the significance of that group; naturally, MRA / gamergate / slyme types love overgeneralising from that tiny sample.
I guess I was taking Coyne’s comments as maybe relating to trans men and women?
I want them to make a specific claim. One specific difference between men and women and then I want them to show their very good evidence for its evolutionary origin and adaptiveness.
It’s always this broad “oh you deny all claims of differences” while never ever showing some evidence themselves.
That is just another face of the appalling ‘post-truth’ political and social discourse we are all enduring right now. It has already given us Brexit and the horrifying specter of the soon to be sworn in President Trump – is it any surprise that its principle cheer leaders should be the usual MRA suspects who will happily say and do anything so long as it protects their privilege and helps them treat women like objects with impunity?
@Giliell
Humans fall somewhere in the middle between being a tournament species and a pair-bonding species. That men tend to be more physically aggressive is likely related to the same-sex competition that the males (in some species, the females) of tournament species engage in as part of mate selection.
@Giliell #3
I think there probably are some (psychological) differences between average man and woman that have been shaped by our evolution. However trying to separate them from the differences that are purely cultural is in my opinion nigh impossible, due to the extreme plasticity of human brain. Some of the alleged differences have already been falsified – like the assumption that oxytocin is a female hormone and that women brains are uniquely fitted to care for babies. And it has been found that males under the same conditions have high oxytocin levels and their brains behave similarly -click-
I actually think that this is the opinion PZ is trying to convey in his writings on this subject.
So the only one clear difference is the sexual attraction to opposite sex – men are mostly attracted to women and vice versa. And that one can be identified only because it is shared across all mammals and without it the species would go extinct. And even there are exceptions across the animal kingdom where sex is repurposes from its primarily procreative role to secondary roles like dominance, conflict settling, social bonding etc.
Jessie Foster
That’s what I mean: this is an awfully vague claim with a “just so” story behind it. As I argued on the initial thread, humans seem to be relatively similar when compared to other great apes (and HJ Hornbeck quickly jumped in with some evidence). Looks like our evolutionary path is to lose dimorphism.
Also, that claim about “tournament species” and “pair bonding species” is one that lacks evidence to be rooted in biology as well.
Charly
Which wouldn’t then be a difference between “men” and “women” but a general trait*
*Though, as an aside, I’m wondering about the biology of this as well. If you grow up in a heteronormative society it might not even occur to you that maybe you don’t have to choose between them and only people on the extreme homosexual end of the Kinsey scale go for opposite .
Jessie Foster: did you so much as glance at Gregory’s or Singal’s articles? Because they directly address your comment.
@Giliel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Oa4Lp5fLE
1:32:29-1:36:10
@PZ
I don’t think they do. My point wasn’t actually about the cause of differences between males and females, only about the existence of differences between males and females. I think the cause is probably related to sexual selection, but I could be wrong.
Nobody here is denying that there exist differences between males and females, especially in physique. The real question is that how does one differentiate between genetics and culture when it come to the abilities of males and females to participate in all facets of society where sheer muscle bulk isn’t needed.
From what I have read, most of the differences shown come down to cultural learning, like the trope that young women should bad at math. When the clutter is stripped away, there is not much difference in mental ability, with more variation within a sex than between the sexes.
Jessie Foster
That’s not terribly convincing.
Yeah, there’s a general tendency, although some species are different. To say that because humans have some traits of A and some of B and are therefore in the middle is a leap of faith.
Both examples he gave of polygyny were cultural and not related to those dudes being good at competing.
@Giliel
What…? If humans exhibit different traits associated with both pair-bonding species and tournament species, how is it a leap of faith to describe us as somewhere in the middle?
Jessie @ 14
Because you’re mixing ideas between innate behavior and learned behavior. For animals where mating behavior appears to be innate, sure, talk about pair-bonding vs. tournament. But it just doesn’t make sense to talk that way about humans. It’s not that almost every member of the species falls into this middle ground strategy, it’s that cultural factors end up strong driving the apparent strategy, and since various cultures can be radically different yes, if you throw everyone into a bucket and average it all out it’s some middle ground between pair-bonding and tournament, but that’s not providing any meaningful incite.
@ 13, and insight. Jeez, going to bed…
Jessie Foster
You really didn’t read Gregory’s article, did you?
There’s a hell lot of claims wrapped up in this:
One: all these traits co-evolved for either the one or the other, that every single trait on that list is a result of natural selection for either tournament or pair bonding.
The second one follows: that therefor a mix of both lists of traits must also mean a mix of lifestyles.
As Gregory points out, there can be multiple other explanations for such traits and you cannot just claim that just because it sounds nice it’s also true.
JAC did an excellent job with Why Evolution is True, but on his blog he has produced so much bad thinking on all kinds of other topics I don’t even want to read his second book.
@gmcard
I think it does provide insight. Sapolsky didn’t cite cultural traditions as the only evidence. He brought it up because it was consistent with the genetic and morphological evidence.
“Natural selection is not the only mechanism of evolution” I thought this article should be about other mechanisms behind evolution than Natural Selection, e.g. neutral drift. But no other mechanisms are mentioned, and the theme seems to be quite narrow. Instead of general evolution, it seems that the evolution of human sexes is what is in focus.
@Giliell
Is the issue the cause of differences or the existence of differences?
@Nerd
Not really an issue. Obviously both males and females are capable of participating in all facets of modern society (with a few exceptions; there will almost certainly never be a female defensive lineman in the NFL).
Jessie Foster
Actually, sometimes it’s both.
We have some observable facts: Human men are on average larger and stronger than human women. This is true even in societies where well nourished people have well-nourished babies and not only in societies where malnourished people give birth to malnourished babies and where then the babies with the penises get more food than those with the vaginas. Femicide exists.
This is a very clear cut one, other “facts” have turned out not to be true at all (oxytocin levels) or very culturally biased. Let’s accept this as a fact and move on.
But then you get a whole lot of assumptions and claims:
-This was selected for and is adaptive
-That the selective pressure was on men, not on women
-That we can interpolate from other species*
*Looking at other species of singing birds: do cuckoos exist?
Kinda OT, but isn’t it remarkable that those societies which have managed to provide adequate nutrition for everybody have also managed to come up with beauty standards which encourage women and girls to starve themselves voluntarily?
I’d be curious to see if those size and strength differences would persist in a culture which didn’t fetishise malnutrition…
@Dunc
I think you may be overstating the issue. Anorexia is certainly a problem, but obesity, at least in America, is far more prevalent.
And yes, size and strength differences persist in healthy adults. That’s why the UFC has a division for men and a division for women.
Just based on what I know I can give alternate just-so stories that is also consistent with biology.
1) Due to a developmental feed-back loop male peoole end up larger, stronger, and more muscular on average than female people because of a social effect where being allowed/encouraged to act dominant and assertive raises hormone levels that “masculinize” size and strength.
2) Non-genetic Inherited predispositions exist that influence developmental fates for male and female people. Some of those processes relate to “masculinized” and “feminized” behaviors and associated instincts. These predispositions amount to inherited social information.
When people want to blame genes I say prove it, if you can’t you have literal bigotry, an irrational bias.
@Brony
Lmfao
@Jessie Foster.
Be more specific.
@Giliell
For other sexually dimorphic apes, male strength and size is selected for. I don’t know if it’s very likely, but maybe we evolved differently.
@Brony
If you teach your daughter to speak up in class, she will grow biceps like J.J. Watt.
@Be more specific. What developmental or inheritance phenomena do you have a problem with?
So far the only information you have given me that you have a need to transform negative information through mockery. All that remains for me is identifying the underlying negative emotion. If you truly wish to only take a social conflict posture I’m fine accommodating you, but you now appear distntetested in the same scientific world that investigates genetics.
I’ve seen female people participate in this sport Jessica Foster.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caber_toss
They were bulky, muscular, impressive and attractive people. Fuck statistics, they exist. Your ignorance of the world creates anticipatory social filters that will leave you incompetent at relating to people. I have no problem taking social advantage of your weakness when you choose mockery, a socially aggressive and assertive posture.
@chris61
I would say that you should give me your source for what you just asserted. I will need to identify the kind of social information and look at what us known about it with respect to inheritance and developmental processes. That would be the sort of thing you would have already posted if you were actually interested in an answer.
@Brony
My daughter once told a boy “no” when he tried to steal her orange crayon. She learned how to be assertive that day. Today she is a 6’6″ 290lb defensive tackle. After completing 41 reps of 225lbs on the bench press during her pro-day, she is now projected to go early in the 1st round of the NFL draft.
@Jessie Foster
So no actual interest in the science then? All your interest is based on how the pop-culture version benefits you socially? That did not take long.
If you wish to stop tossing social turds like our relatives do when they want to mess with someone let me know. The adults are interested in how the world works and don’t flee from what they find inconvient.
@Brony
Your idea carries about as much scientific weight as the idea that the moon is made of green cheese. It is informative only in what it indicates about your own current mental health.
Jessie Foster
Hmm, ever looked at gorillas? They’re gorgeous creatures, I love them. If you want to make the “argument at other primates” then you must acknowledge that actually, compared to gorillas (females usually weigh about half as much as males) and orangutans (female: 115cm, 37 kg, male 136cm and 75 kg), we’re really close. You cannot look at the large differences in other primates, then look at the small differences in humans and conclude that the same force that drove the large differences in gorillas drove the small differences in humans. On the contrary, it’s much more reasonable to conclude that humans evolved to be much more similar. Look at the original post and look at the evidence HJ provided.
@Giliell
What about chimpanzees?
That seems relatively close. And we see some aspects of a tournament species:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_chimpanzee
So let’s recap.
1) In a post about having multiple hypotheses for biological differences between male and female people I mention the ideas of behavior contributing to altered hormone profiles that in turn influence developmental processes, and non-genetic inheritance (such as altered DNA methylation, or histone modifucation, or pre-loading gametes with RNA.. ) having an impact on social behavior. Precisely what the post is about.
Jessica just laughs. They do not ask me what science science I am talking, or why I believe it’s connected to biological differences as someone interested in more than social victory would.
2) I ask them to explain the laughter since that is not a reply that contains any useful information that can be responded to in a manner that adds to the discussion.
They spin a made up anecdote that try to tie to me like I should find such a reality a problem.
3) I ask them to explain again so that an interaction that adds to the discussion can occur, and I toss in some rhetorical consequences of their need for humor because I get to (social moral symmetries).
They try another version of the anecdote.
4) I point out a real-world example of people a simplistic reliance on genetics would not explain, and some more conflict related rhetoric they let me use in addition to the consequences of having errors in one’s social assumptions and awareness.
They talk about cheese, the moon, and things with criteria they do not point to in my posts.
Cowards gonna cow…
@Brony
I don’t care. Nobody but you believes that the size and strength difference between men and women is caused by how assertive men are allowed to be.
@33 Brony
You’re the one who made the evidence-free assertion that differences in hormone levels between males and females are the result of a social effect. I’m just asking you to provide a plausible explanation for why your social effect (males are larger on average than females) co-segregates most of the time with the presence or absence of a Y chromosome across multiple species in which males are larger than females.
I watched a Nova show on human evolution this week. Some of it was good, and then there was a whole section of EV that had me shaking my head at the sloppy thinking and broad, unsupported conclusions.
They started by noticing that in general, men are taller and stronger than women. Then they asked a few white women what traits they look for in a sexual partner. All of the women said they preferred tall men, or men who were larger than themselves. Conclusion: Men are taller because some women like it.
My family is tall and narrow, and 5 out of six siblings chose a mate who is on the shorter/more heavily built end of the size spectrum. Spouse’s family was just the opposite, and it was really obvious when we had family reunions. The blood relations would go line up for a group photo, and all of us taller spouses would suddenly notice the marked family preference for tall thin mates, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
Clearly there is some sort of sexual selection happening, but it seems to be based on genetic diversity, rather than apparent body size.
If I get it right the point of the post is to high light that it is not possible or rational to make a connection between a trait that exists and is not in dispute and other traits that are in dispute like are not seen to exist or are not shown to have a distribution that over laps with the first trait.
it is interesting that we ended up with a “debate” over sexual differences and not “racial” differences.
it is also interesting that the traits that are in dispute in such debates regardless if it is sexual differences or racial differences are not very well defined but mostly assumed by the particular outcome that is selected out and is always cultural referenced.
In this one it sounds like or is implied that females are not aggressive or do not engage in competition.
as a none female it don’t look that way to me.
uncle frogy
FOR FUCKS SAKE!
Using animal models to get at human psychology requires we understand animal psychology: and that requires that we understand that goals and intentions of the animal as perceived by the animal itself.
So… unless and until you can tell me how an animal would answer the question, “What are you thinking?” you should shut up about how the choices of some non-human animal or non-human species totes made you understand the evolutionary history of Australopithecus, the meta-consciousness of australopithecines, and how the choices of homininae that were made under the influence of heritable traits influenced the distribution of heritable traits in the next few generations of homininae and how that new trait distribution influenced choices which influenced trait distributions which led to Tim Tebow.
Jesus Fucking Moses, how is it that so many people
—-people who can’t tell you whether the weaknesses of a specific published psych experiment’s methodology should or should not demand a more tentative sent of conclusions than the authors provide—-
are so completely confident in their analysis of the genetic effects in large populations of the choices of individuals of species who have never, ever existed contemporaneously with any human being?
Either get the fuck over yourselves or publish the findings from your time-travel-enabled observations of extinct hominids. One or the other.
@Jessie Foster
What part did you not care about? Was it the part where I referenced parts of science that I’m actually reading about right now? Or was it the developmental differences in human beings that you mentioned in your first comment? I would not want someone who thinks it’s ok to mock someone and refuse to explain themselves to think I had them wrong.
Also I did not say what you just said I did. You should stop lying.
@chris61
>”You’re the one who made the evidence-free assertion…”
Point out the assertion. I’m more than happy to discuss the areas of research that I mentioned if you, you know, actually mention them. Your first reply to me was an assertion about reality and I asked you for what I needed to look it up for myself since you felt free to just toss assertions about reality around.
Fucking autocorrect on phones…
In my reply to Jessie at 40 that should be their name and not “Jessica”.
@Crip Dyke
The subject was selection as it relates to sexual dimorphism, not animal psychology. And not that it’s relevant, but we actually can study animal psychology (Pavlov’s dogs, for example).
I’m not really interested in arguing against creationist talking points.
@Brony
Lol.
You:
My summary:
Point out where I “lied.” Thanks.
@Jessie
>”Nobody but you believes that [the size and strength difference between men and women is caused by how assertive men are allowed to be.]”
I never said the part in the brackets and you never quoted me.
Now have the spine to back your shit up.
@Brony
YES YOU DID. THIS IS YOU:
Men are bigger and stronger than women because they are allowed to act assertive. READ WHAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN.
@51, Jessie Foster
Brony wasn’t saying that position was correct, only that it was a just-so story that could be invented. You missed Brony’s whole thesis.
@Brony
evidence free assertion
@Brony
you: “male peoole end up larger, stronger, and more muscular on average than female people”
=
me: “the size and strength difference between men and women”
you: “because of a social effect where being allowed/encouraged to act dominant and assertive raises hormone levels that “masculinize” size and strength.”
=
me: “caused by how assertive men are allowed to be.”
SAME
You see Jessie, I proposed an alternate explanation to the gene obsessed narrative being complained about here. It references real patterns found in human beings and there are places in society with differences between the sexes that they can be applied to. It’s a testable explanation, and an explanation that is being tested right now. And if you ask nicely I will link the research.
I brought it up to create a counterpoint to just-so stories. It’s also useful as an alternative hypothesis.
The “just-so” story part of my comment has to do with appealing to such explanations as causes without having provided good reason. You never once actually asked me to demonstrate anything, you just laughed so I’m having fun yanking your chain.
I mean it, you change your tune and apologize and we will talk about the non-genetic inheritance of social information, how that relates to gametes and sexual differences in inheritance, and complex human social behavior as it relates to development and inheritance. I’m literally reading about this for fun and am enjoying poking at you since you round behavior gave me permission.
Make that “own behavior” in my last comment instead of “round behavior”.
Basically “believe” does not come into it when alternative hypotheses are the issue and my use if the material was in constructing a possible alternate reality. To say that I believe those things is to imply I act as if they are true in my interactions with people. In isolation the alteration of tissue and behavior by hormone levels is not controversial. But aparently the alteration of hormone levels from social behavior is rediculious because “reasons”. We do inherit non-genetic changes to gene regulation that include the kind of gamete as a variable, but apparently inherited changes in hormones relavent to male/female and man/woman is rediculious because “reasons”.
So either someone is lying or they have shitty reading comprehension. Either way they are amusing to me.
@Brony
No, you don’t get it. I think your useful alternative hypothesis is fucking stupid. I do not want to talk about your useful alternative hypothesis because it is so fucking stupid.
@Jessie
I know you think it’s stupid. I also know you think mockery is ok instead of discussing the science related to it. So I’m picking at the fact that your rhetoric is a dishonest reflection of reality while offering you the chance to stay on topic.
@Brony
Don’t care, bye.
Oh and chris61, you are doing the same thing. It just simpler to deal with the more intense persin first. Try to avoid letting the feelings about the subject warp you social awareness like that. I’m fine with feeling, Jessie can keep the mockery, all I care about is is the substance attached to it. If the mockery is attached to something mockable the social instincts are just doing thier job.
@Brony
Not Jessie of course but I will ask nicely because I still believe your statement about a social effect is an evidence-free assertion. But I’m willing to be shown why I’m wrong.
Reduced to pissing on a bush right after the last dog. No interest in the actual point of this blog post or the science or the science connected to it. All you want to do is the social dominance display. Feelngs causing avoidance of the subject, and a desire to socially oppose it without a reason to justify it.
Right where I want you Jessie. Unless anyone’s enjoying this I’m done with my link to Jessie’s impulse problems, I may comment 9n Jessie’s literally irrational need to peck at the rest of you later.
@chris61
I go into a lot of of it in this comment at WHTM.
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/10/11/birth-movies-death-top-editor-devin-faraci-steps-down-after-sexual-assault-accusation/comment-page-6/#comment-1016168
While I focus on Tourette’s Syndrome and inheritance of social impulsivity (a condition that has to do with complex human social behavior, aggression social dominance behaviors), we also have inheritance patterns for ADHD which has social dimensions. Epigenetic modifications figure in research into both as well as in things like autism. There are gene forms that increase likelihood but no one gene stands out suggesting that these is a cognitive system with different settings. Social information changes feelings, feelings are distinct body states and they will involve chances in the activity of cells in tissues. The activity of hormones that act in concert with brain activity (or as neurotransmitters themselves, neuroactive steroids) is a fine place to look for developmental changes that can also be connected to inherited information.
All those loci that these conditions map are also likely to contain methylation, histone binding sites.
Jessie Foster, what makes you believe your ethnocentric, culturally-specific examples (conventions in exceedingly trivial and uninteresting American sport* and rhetorical “do you even lift bro?”** queries) are proof of anything?
*lard save us from the notion that the NFL is a “facet of modern society,” much less a tortuous explanation for what “modern society” has to do with a comparatively narrow “sexual” dimorphism we can trace back many centuries BCE
**in the real world, an elite-level 290-lb woman could lift quite a bit more than three-quarters her bodyweight, while nobody benches 41 repetitions of anything, but I suppose that would ruin your snide chuckles about “assertiveness” and female strength as a reaction to male aggression (why some men might consciously pursue mass building, or, for that matter, cultivate a leaner, slenderer physique or — gasp — a round, plush, and hourglass one in the face of such aggression, is strangely unexplored here)
@brony
How does your link in any way address your assertion
that I said I consider evidence-free?
@snuffcurry
Lol. My mentioning the NFL seems to have really set you off there.
NFL
NFL
NFL
HOW BOUT DEM COWBOYS?!
They’re not proof, idiot. They’re illustrations of the fact that men are, in general, stronger than women.
(I am providing NFL specific examples because you do not like when I provide NFL specific examples)
http://www.nfl.com/combine/profiles/stephen-paea?id=2495210
http://www.nfl.com/combine/profiles/Russell-Bodine?id=2543622
http://www.nfl.com/combine/profiles/David-Molk?id=2532914
http://www.nfl.com/combine/profiles/Dontari-Poe?id=2533435
@chris61
Because it’s not an assertion. It’s:
1) an alternative hypothesis consistent with the areas of research I cite.
2) Presented as a “counter just-so story” rhetorically in my first comment, but since I’m comfortable with actual research showing I am wrong and want all the potential explanations available for testing it’s not really a just-so story (saying I was using a just-so and meaning it would be silly, they are irrational).
@brony
Explain how it is consistent.
@chris61
It’s in my comments to Jessie. I’ll do it again.
*Social interaction and activity changes the levels of messenger molecules. Hormones are one of those categories and some hormones also act as neurotransmitters in that they change the activity of neurons. Changing the activity of muscle and size development systems at early developmental stages is not an unreasonable thing to appeal to in a hypothesis.
*Hormones are part of anatomical changes and behavioral changes. Things like PTSD change in all three. I’m comfortable that there will be changes associated with other behaviors and that externally shaping behavior by other means like social control of male and female aggression and assertiveness will likely also have such changes. The research will be the final word and I have no reason to think that muscle tissue and size can’t be part of this (which is what I am doing, acting as counterpoint to irrational social bias).
*Having an ancestor with PTSD makes it more likely that you will develop an anxiety related problem. That effect comes from somewhere (non-genetic mechs being studied) and there is no reason to assume that our inherited behaviors don’t also involve the gendered ones like my very masculinized Tourette’s Syndrome (also non-genetic investigations, ADHD too). Again, the physical parts that go with behavioral hardware/software being affected is not unreasonable.
*Maternal social stress is a risk factor for Tourette’s Syndrome. The in-utero window for the development will likely share machinery with the inherited components. An inherited preparedness for ones social world is a reasonable function for such a phenomena, especially since many with it use it to thier benefit.
All that complex shit with layers of reinforcing phenomena, places for events to influence behavior and body, there is no way things connected to sex and gender can be left out.
Fuck, Jessie is evidence that it’s worth a look as far as I am concerned. They are clearly disgusted by the idea of strong, bulky and dominant female people. The thought such people with such characteristics were worth applying as an insult (they did not limit themselves to my potential social connection to their existence in mocking me). That’s a social judgement about the sorts of things that should go with being female. It’s not evidence that pushes amy scales over, but If I’m right of course I’d attract a reaction like Jessie’s. Humor and it’s role in reducing and transforming emotional negativity make shallow mockery of a suggestion of social responsability for the physical makeup of a population understandable. But I still don’t give a fuck.
Those people exist and understanding them and any social factors that led to their existance is a good thing. I don’t give a fuck what I’m triggering in the heads of people like Jessie. If I’m right I can’t afford to.
@brony
Well, yes it is unreasonable because there is no evidence for it. Hormones exist. Yes. Hormone levels can change in response to environmental/social conditions. Yes. The rest of it (“male peoole end up larger, stronger, and more muscular on average than female people because of a social effect where being allowed/encouraged to act dominant and assertive raises hormone levels that “masculinize” size and strength) is a flight of fancy, not a hypothesis.
@Brony
LOL. Idk dude, I play Zarya in Overwatch. I even set her voice line as “I can bench more than you!”
Seriously though, go fuck yourself. You know nothing about me.
@Jessie
I know what your behavior suggests of your nature. As far as I’m concerned choices in video game playing do not detract from that. You’ve already fucked yourself. Your suggestions for my fuckery mean nothing in light of your choices in how you expressed your disgust right here.
Brony
I guess you did not see Jessie’s comment way up at the beginning of your tangent? #34
So clearly you are mistaken. Your hypothesis about aggression making individuals of either gender grow larger than their less aggressive peers is either a mistaken reading, or really awful evo psyche.
lord love a duck
@Brony
I can tell from your behavior that you really hate black people. You’re absolutely disgusted by black people. You believe black people are subhuman.
Why do you hold these awful beliefs? What’s wrong with you?
The whole argument has been similarly silly, but still not cool to inform people what opinions they hold and then beat up on them for holding the opinions you claim they hold.
@Jessie
Terrible try. The feelings based characterization has to have a link to something in the the writing.
You used a combination of traits considered masculine on female people who were hypothetically my child as if this were something bad that could be connected to social behavior. Such a thing would be neutral at the species level and specific examples would be where any morals would come into play.
If it was just the idea that social behavior can affect physical development you found ridiculous you would have chosen characteristics specific to my reasoning to act as the focus of the emotions. Mere female with masculine traits are not something that I have a problem with.
Now if you want to point to something I said with respect to race that is a problem feel free to do so. Otherwise don’t pretend that all I had were impressions, there were things attached to them. Things like the ones I drilled you for when it came to your feelings about my writing. All you have there is spiteful name-calling. Some craven to go with the cowardly.
@Brony
No, I used the example of a 6’6″ 290lb female defensive lineman not as an example of something bad, but as an example of something EXCEPTIONAL.
Also, I’m getting a lot of racist vibes from your post. You must really hate black people. I mean, the disgust is practically dripping off my computer screen. I’m going to assume you’re a dedicated member of the alt-right, right? Heil Trump, right?
@Tethys 75
I read it as another mocking example to go with the one they directed at me. 29 and 34 are of a kind with me as the focus in the first, and them as the focus in the second. Going from fighting off stealing crayons to being in the NFL matches the pattern.
I’m not wedded to the idea that social permissiveness and/or reinforcement of behavior necessarily leads to physical differences. I am suggesting a reasonable hypothesis is that society playing a role in shaping who gets to use dominance and aggression will impact physical changes known to go along with the hormones associated with those behaviors at a group level. Individuals are still individuals and may not express such physically, especially when social dominance often comes in forms that don’t need brute strength.
There is still much room for nuance. I’m mostly about opposing the the standard assumptions and if there is a better strategy that does not help people irrationally invoking evolution excuses in modern behavior, or hurt people that tend to be hurt by them I’m open to suggestions.
I don’t think aggression and dominance influence body mass or height in human growth. Some of the most aggressive individuals I have ever known have been tiny little 4’11’ grandmothers from Eastern Europe.
Humans have sexual dimorphism, but it is not true that the largest individuals are also the most aggressive individuals or the socially dominant individuals.
@Jessie
You do not seem very good at pointing out parts of comments, and I find it unlikely that it is female people associated with typically masculine characteristics being exceptional based on your actual comments. I could be wrong and it’s because of people who I respect more that I am willing to consider.
Humor tends to be based on expected versus unexpected narratives juxtaposing as a means of referencing things that are socially sensitive while relieving the tension of negative emotions for yourself and/or someone else. If you found my reasoning to be a problem why would you think what you said was a workable mock? I think a collection of such small events are what produce people willing and able to assert dominance.
If you did intend for that to be what conveyed the humorous transformation you were at the least very sloppy because the juxtaposition of female with masculine characteristics is treated as ridiculous. While I can see how I could be wrong it would have been less risky to just leave them out of it and go right at my reasoning about social interaction and physical effects.
@Tethys
Do you have anything specific in mind observation wise?
I’m mostly bothered by the stereotypes associated with behaviors and sex. The physical alteration angle I can dispense with. Especially since I can imagine a scenario where someone inherits predispositions for a larger body size that is compatible with aggressive and dominant behavior, but the social instincts are not affected the same or socially reinforces in culture. The body and brain aspects don’t have to come together, especially since there is social dominance that does not require mere physical strength (it just does often enough for research to be reasonable).
What would the joke even be if I meant it as something bad?
“Ha-ha, you have a family member who made it to the NFL! She’s literally a one-of-kind elite athlete who’s going to make tens of millions of dollars, how embarrassing for you!”
The joke is that it’s not something that happens in reality. Jesus fucking Christ. The negative spin, the idea that a female exhibiting masculine traits is a bad thing, comes ENTIRELY FROM YOU.
P.S.
Your newest post is easily the most racist thing I have ever read. I bet you were one of those people throwing the Nazi salute at that Richard Spencer rally, weren’t you?
This is starting to become abusive behavior. Stop being snide and childish.
I’ll lay off for the night and give some time before I type anything else tomorrow. If there are better ways for me to go about this or problems with the ones I am using I want people to have to opportunity to point it out without Jessie’s reactions being an added complication.
Brony
Napoleon comes to mind as an example for people. Social dominance is also not generally correlated with aggression in humans. If anything it is the less socially dominant individuals who tend to be far more aggressive in behavior. None of it has anything to do with sexual dimorphism.
In many mammals the males are slightly larger on average than the females due to differences in hormones. However, if the model for all primates is something like a gibbon then we aren’t really too far outside the size range of mammals. I think that is part female sexual selection, part males compete against each other for females.
@Tethys
No.
@Brony
Just gonna curl up in bed with a nice cozy cup of hot chocolate, turn on some tunes, and dive right back into Mein Kampf, huh? G’night.
This is fairly simple from an evolutionary anthropologist’s view point. There is a small but undeniable difference in size and mass between human sexes. Comparatively, if we look those taxa that are most closely related to humans, we see more pronounced sexual dimorphism. When we look at early hominids like the Australopithecines, we see more dimorphism then present day humans but increasing less as the fossil record gets more recent. In evolutionary biology, we explain dimorphism as usually a product of sexual selection in polygynous mating systems. The conclusion here that most anthropologists generally accept is that selection for sex differences in humans has been gradually attenuated in our lineage after the split with the other extant apes. The left over differences are in fact biological and culture doesn’t completely explain them away.
@Tethys, #88:
I don’t have anything substantial to add to the discussion, and I agree with your general hypothesis, but Napoleon is a bad example, as he seems to have been of average height for France at the time:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1mddv0/how_tall_was_napoleon_really/
(yes, reddit, but the AskHistorians sub is good, and sources are given in the text).
It also seems to me that it shows that “aggression” is a vague term that adds to the confusion in the original claims, because being militarily aggressive isn’t really the same as being aggressive in interpersonal relations, is it? I mean, Napoleon was a brilliant strategician, which doesn’t follow from aggression on a personal level – rather, one needs to be rational and controlled in difficult situations.
I thought Dunsworth’s suggestion of “perhaps men can make babies while growing, but perhaps women can’t” is a really interesting one. I know human evolution is so short and unusual it’s hard to tell what is going on, but does it make sense as a possibility for other species where trends can be inferred?
My understanding is that in most dimorphic animals females tend to be larger than males, but virtually all mammals are the other way around, except mole rats. This at least seems compatible with the idea that preparing for pregnancy is expensive enough to inhibit growth; you could even imagine that coming first, and then cases where males fighting for females as a result of it. Though it’s not obvious to me why the reptiles wouldn’t have at least some of the same trend, since eggs are still more costly than sperm.
Is there anything more anyone can say about how plausible this is?
Damn, Jerry Coyne is such a child.
First, he says these:
And then says this:
So accusing others of being ideologically driver is totally fine and rational but no way dare to call Jerry Coyne’s theory a ‘story’. That would be rude, unscientific and snarky!
And on top of that, his post has literally 0 evidence and new information and postpones presenting them until tomorrow. Why not wait and make the post tomorrow? My favorite part is this:
Preparing for pregnancy does not inhibit growth. Producing masculinizing hormones alters the body to produce a larger and more muscular version of a human than would result from not having those hormones. Reptiles can have gender determined by genes, or temperature. In many of the species where the females are the larger animal, (alligators/raptors) and they reproduce by laying eggs in nests, there is a clear benefit to being larger. For an eagle, a larger bird will have a better chance of successfully incubating a a clutch of eggs. Alligators guard their nest, so being larger than the males helps to produce the next generation by being larger than any predators, or competition for territory.
brony this
is the source of the difficulty you are having with this post and thread.
yes I too can “imagine” any number of stories about almost any subject , situation or idea but that is not how science is done or what science is about
it is very easy to make up a story that holds together internally, it is much harder to discover what the true story, the facts and their relationship to real events in the real world.
here with this crowd and on this blog the latter is preferred
to quote a great old rock steady song “what you know ,you know, what you don’t know you don’t know!”
uncle frogy
Jessie Foster
Still a much more pronounced difference than in humans. Also, see what lemurkatta wrote. We evolved to be more similar, not different.
@Giliell
Actually, it looks like the difference is slightly more pronounced in humans than in chimpanzees. I think what lemurcatta wrote makes sense.
Chimpanzee:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_chimpanzee
Female: 32-47 kg
Male: 40-60 kg
47/60=.783
32/40=.8
39.5/50=.79
Human:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
Female: 54-64 kg
Male: 76-83 kg
64/83=.771
54/76=.71
59/79.5=.742
Lol, where did they get those numbers for humans from? Apparently I don’t know any of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
I saw that link the first time. I just trust my knowledge of actual people more than those numbers. If you click the “source” you’ll see it’s not actually a source at all.
Pffft…. it says human women range from 118 to 140lbs?
I was a fit, muscular 13 year old (able to run a half mile in 3:33, with severe asthma. Only did it once because I was practically dead at the end, but I did do it)…. and 150lbs at 5’6″ tall.
Height is directly affected by nutrition as well as genes, and the majority of my fellow women coworkers are 5’8″ or taller. In fact, of the 50+ women I work with, there are exactly 5 that are shorter than I am. I’m in some lonely hell where you’re either 5’3″ or smaller, or 5’8″ or taller. So I can’t reach anything in either direction. :P
@Giliell, you mean you don’t accept the definitive source of “articleworld.com”. You must be one of those science deniers. /sarcasm
FWIW, the CDC, in a 2007-2010 study, found a much closer ratio of .85 in the US.
@above:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_weight
Actually here it seems that average female/male weight in almost all countries are closer to one than the chimps:
Country Average male weight Average female weight Sample population /
age range Methodology Year Source
Brazil 72.7 kg (160.3 lb) 62.5 kg (137.8 lb) 20–74 Measured 2008–2009 [2]
Canada 80.3 kg (177 lb) Measured [citation needed]
Chile 77.3 kg (170.4 lb) 67.5 kg (148.8 lb) 15+ Measured 2009–2010 [3]
Finland 82.1 kg (181 lb) Measured [citation needed]
Germany 82.4 kg (181.7 lb) 67.5 kg (148.8 lb) 18+ Measured 2005 [4]
South Korea 68.6 kg (151.2 lb) 56.5 kg (124.6 lb) 18+ Measured 2007 [5]
Sweden 81.9 kg (180.6 lb) 66.7 kg (147.0 lb) 16–84 Measured 2003-2004 [6]
UK – Wales 84.0 kg (185.2 lb) 69.0 kg (152.1 lb) 16+ Measured 2009 [7]
United States 88.3 kg (194.7 lb) 74.7 kg (164.7 lb) 20+ Measured 2003-2006 [8]
Okay, fair point. That data doesn’t seem to sourced in anything.
CDC data:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm
Average U.S. weight:
Men: 195.5 lbs
Female: 166.2 lbs
166.2/195.5 = .85
Those obviously aren’t healthy human weights (both are right on the borderline between overweight and obese), but both genders have roughly the same BMI, so we can assume that the ratio is probably correct.
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/educational/lose_wt/BMI/bmi_tbl.pdf
Oh gawd, Jessie Foster is over here too? Hope no-one minds if I recycle old content,’till I deliver with some new material. First, in regards to humans,
So you’re kinda grasping at straws, Foster. Dimorphism is a more complicated than “different shape = different behavior,” and you’d be wise to do some research on it beyond Wikipedia. I hear they have a bit of a gender bias, anyway.
@HJ
That supports my point. Lol. The person I was arguing against was making the point that comparison with other apes is invalid because of differences in the magnitude of dimorphism. But as you’ve just pointed out, dimorphism is more complicated than that, which would mean it’d be unfair to dismiss a comparison based solely on those grounds.
Thanks.
No prob! It’s good to see you agree that arguing for sex differences on the basis of physiological dimorphism is fallacious, at least in the human case. Other species that possess greater dimorphism are another story, of course, but we can save that for another time.
Dimorphism is complicated therefore we’ll simplistically reduce it to what we can see in different species.
Yes, sounds correct.
You still need evidence for humans. Looking at other primates is interesting, especially when we’Re looking at how much less dimorphism is in humans compared to them (so you’re not actually even correctly stating my position), but it’s not a compelling argument to go from gorillas to humans. You wouldn’t make claims about chimp behaviour based on your observation of low land gorillas, would you?
But I’m asking you again: Based on your studies of singing birds, how do cuckoos raise their young?
@Hj
Oops! Not according to the source you just cited.
and,
LOL.
The author wasn’t making the point that behavior and dimorphism are unrelated, only that behavior doesn’t correspond perfectly with the magnitude of dimorphism.
Jessie Foster @110:
What part of
are you having difficulty with?
@Hj
What part of
are you having difficulty with?
Once again, Hj has cited research that explicitly contradicts the point he is trying to make. Too funny.
UH-OH
Jessie Foster@113:
Alas, it appears you lack sufficient reading comprehension to sustain a logical argument. Hopefully with training and effort you’ll be able to overcome that.
This is so much fun. Hj strolls into the thread, promptly shoots himself in the foot, and is now trying to slink away with whatever dignity he has left. I have a big stupid smile on my face.
Bye-bye, Hj!
@Giliell
I’ll refer you to the source Hj was kind enough to provide:
Do you understand that is not really evidence? It is just an inaccurate statement. We are not doing ‘proof by authority’ here.
Jessie Foster has had a two parts for evidence of their claims.
The first is that there is a difference genetically between men a women that causes differences in physique. This has been both conceded and established and Jessie should shut up about that. It is now irrelevant, and has been for over a day now.
The second is that these genetic differences lead to different manifestation of the human mind, that allow for all but sexual traits to be classified rigorously as male/female. That is where Jessie is stuck, as the first does not prove the second, due to human cultural learning, and the large plastic human brain.
So Jessie, stop with the dimorphism, as it doesn’t prove the second part. That requires a whole different set of evidence, which you have failed to present, and people have repeatedly asked for.
Perhaps Jessie does not comprehend that fossils don’t have much information on social behavior? If we have enough complete fossil hominids to compare, we see that like all other primates and many mammals, they exhibit sexual dimorphism, so we can safely infer that the females and the males had different behavior as regards sexual selection and mating.
Hey, Jessie, connect the dots: If this is the hill you want to die on, what does constantly decreasing dimorphism mean?
This is really your own argument biting you in the butt.
Well shit, apparently peer-reviewed studies published in academic journals don’t count as evidence.
I’m having flashbacks to arguing against creationists.
@Giliell
Probably a continuing trend away from the behaviors associated with dimorphism. Have I ever disagreed with the idea that this might be happening?
@Tethys
Yeah, uh, you appear to be agreeing with me there.
Jessie Foster @121:
You’re not the only one. Here’s what you quoted …
… and here’s the full sentence from the original, plus the following one.
Note too that both citations are from the same author. Seriously, you don’t have the reading comprehension skills to carry a rational argument. Maybe you need to take a break for a bit, instead of jumping around multiple threads and misquoting people.
@Hj
1. Dimorphism is directly causally related to social behavior.
2. The degree to which an organism exhibits dimorphism does not correspond perfectly to the degree to which it exhibits behaviors associated with dimorphism.
That is:
1. Having an engine is directly causally related to a car moving.
2. The size of the engine does not correspond perfectly with how fast the car moves.
3. The car is moving. What can we infer about the size of the engine?
Nothing, EXCEPT THAT IT EXISTS.
THAT’S MY POINT.
NOT BY YOUR INANE AND STUPIDLY REPEATED ARGUMENTS.
You have no idea of your point.
Try three clear sentences, and never try to change those sentences to weasel out.
Err, got it backwards there. We’re not observing social behavior and inferring dimorphism, we’re observing dimorphism and inferring the existence of social behavior.
Nope, the dimorphism does not cause the social behavior. Dimorphism is the result of the social behavior. Since humans exhibit far less dimorphism than other primates, logic dictates that something other than dimorphism is the causal factor.
@Nerd
As usual, you have no idea what is going on.
Yes to one, and no to the second. You are presupposing. Inferring implies you can show evidence to back up the inference. IT IS MIA.
And you have no idea of what your real argument is.
@Nerd
It’s like there’s a part of your brain that prevents you from registering evidence when you see it.
Say “red” if you can see this link: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/667605.pdf
@Tethys
As we’ve already gone over, the degree to which an organism exhibits dimorphism is not a perfect reflection of the degree to which it exhibits the accompanying social behaviors.
I’m wondering what Jessie’s argument actually is and so is probably the argument.
@Jessie Foster:
Really? Car metaphors? You have no direct evidence of a specific claim you choose to clearly communicate, so you make vague claims and then use analogies without even bothering to specify precisely what in your metaphor corresponds to precisely what in your claim?
Just…wow. Even Hj Hornbeck is way to generous with you. Try this one instead:
I’d bet thousands of USD$ if I had it to hand that Jessie Foster gets the question of point 7 wrong on the first try typing an answer in this thread. As it is, I can bet USD$100.
I’ve never knowingly met Hj Hornbeck, but I’d be happy to send the money through HjH to independently confirm I’ve done so, if HjH happened to be willing. That, of course, is in the unlikely event that I lose.
There are, in general, differences between the behaviors of men and women that are not rooted in culture.
@Crip Dyke
Learn to read, idiot.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/667605.pdf
Jessie Foster, in #127, responding to Hj Hornbeck in #126
You are wrong, Jessie Foster. Care to try again, or should I just explain to you the error you’ve made?
This paper on dimorphism in primates lays it all out quite clearly and succinctly.
source
If I’m an idiot, take the challenge.
@Crip Dyke
I actually was, but not for the reason you think.
We can see an engine and infer the car moves. We do not know how fast the car moves.
Jessie Foster @127:
Due to environmental regulations, many of the cars that get blown up or destroyed in movies have their engines removed. The prevents oil and other fluids from spilling all over the place, making cleanup a LOT easier. This creates a problem if the car is supposed to crash into something, and the typical solution is to use a gas catapult.
I ask again: a car is moving. What can we infer about the size of the engine?
Show us evidence that isn’t related to sex and sexual attraction, which is what, from I read, most of us have been asking for. And exactly what you have been avoiding.
@Giliell, who said:
I’m sure that once Jessie Foster determines what, precisely, is the proposition being argued, it will be a bit easier to identify itself.
In the meantime, if JF’s argument is having trouble finding a bathroom that isn’t restricted to either Empirical Arguments or Existentialist Arguments, the argument is always welcome to visit my house and buzz up. I don’t discriminate.
@Hj
You have the question exactly backwards.
@Hj Hornbeck:
It’s less than or equal to the size of the hill down which the car is rolling, while being greater than or equal to zero?
Jessie Foster actually said this.
I preserve it here so that future generations so that they do not erroneously believe that human beings are (or, please Demeter, were) incapable of inanity of this magnitude.
my #147 forgot to specify that we also know the engine size is less than the total size of the all the car’s parts.
@Crip Dyke
Holy fuck, do you understand what an ANALOGY is? I do not mean this literally, idiot.
To underline the point:
Wow. Serious linguistic barriers here, but okay, Jessie Foster, if it helps move the conversation along:
Answer the question, Jessie Foster: We see a car is moving. What can we infer about the size of the engine?
@Hj
Fuck, idiot, in the analogy the engine is dimorphism. DIMORPHISM IS DIRECTLY OBSERVABLE.
You are asking this:
We see social behaviors associated with dimorphism. What can we infer about the degree of dimorphism?
That has been conceded, so shut the fuck up about it.
What you must do is show anything you infer from dimorphism has a basis in fact, which is called evidence.
Those of us arguing with you are waiting for you are waiting for that evidence.
Don’t repeat dimorphism again, unless you are admitting you have no evidence.
@Jessie Foster, #150:
Since I’ve posted here several times, perhaps you’d like to specify to which of my comments your #150 responds.
In the meantime, while I’m perfectly comfortable with analogies, I have yet to discover
1) the exact assertion you wish to defend
2) what your exact argument in defense of that assertion might be
and
3) which parts of your analogy relate to which parts of your argument
such that
4) it is clear what you are trying to explain and how understanding that explanation might lead to better understanding your original assertion or more willingness to accept as justified a belief in the truth of your original assertion.
I expect we’ll never see any such thing, but with minds as skilled as that of Hj Hornbeck on the case, generously pointing out errors in your thought process even before we have a clear idea of your assertion or your argument, it is possible that at some future point you might actually understand the need for someone making an assertion both to make it clearly and, if the person making the assertion intends for others to reasonably believe in the truth of the assertion, make an argument for the truth of the assertion that is as valid and sound as the proponent is able.
At that point, I suppose, we’ll learn whether you can ever be more clear or make better arguments than you have been or made so far.
Jessie Foster is reminding me of creationists. They make plenty of arguments, but when it comes down to something that can refute their asses, they simply ignore it. Since what they ignore, could be the existence of their creator, it shows their lack of conviction in the ability to present evidence for something that doesn’t exist…
Take the next step Jessie. Or, by your inability to do so, we will draw our own conclusions as to your honesty and integrity.
I have to remember to stop using analogies. There is apparently a wide swath of the population that is completely bewildered by them. I remember trying to explain my concept of bodily autonomy to an anti-abortion activist using a kidney analogy (I do not have the right to use your body (take your kidney) just because I will die without it). All I got back was a dull stare and, “well, a babay ain’t a kidnee.”
Kinda similar things here.
Yes, sometimes cars can move without engines. Sometimes cars cannot move with engines. Sometimes cars don’t have engines. Literally all of that is irrelevant.
@Nerd
I’ve provided evidence. I addressed it at you SPECIFICALLY. You have ignored it. You’re free to view it any time you want.
@Nerd:
I’m happy to concede sexual dimorphism for the purpose of focussing on one part of Jessie Foster’s argument, because I think parts of JF’s argument ***other than*** the premise that sexual dimorphism exists possess flaws that are easier for bystanders/lurkers to perceive than the flaws in the premise “sexual dimorphism exists”.
Nonetheless, I prefer to have it on record that I am not unconditionally conceding the existence of sexual dimorphism.
In the meantime, Jessie Foster, since we can’t infer the existence of the engine from the movement of the car, care to send me USD$100?
Jessie Foster @153:
No, if I was asking that I would have said this: we see a car with a running engine that is driving the wheels of the automobile that is moving. I instead said: we see a car that is moving.
Now will you answer my question? Or Crip Dyke’s? Or the one I asked earlier in another thread, which you suddenly seem keen to ignore?
@Crip Dyke
You don’t know what sexual dimorphism is.
Average male is roughly 15% larger than the average female.
That’s sexual dimorphism.
@Hj
Just ask the question in its own terms.
Jessie, quit lying. I have acknowledge dimorphism exists, about a hundred posts ago.
YOU HAVE PROVIDED NO EVIDENCE THAT BECAUSE DIMORPHISM EXISTS, IT MEANS MEN AND WOMEN THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT ALL SUBJECTS OTHER THAN SEX AND SEXUAL ATTRACTION.
When will you show that hard evidence?
Show us, or acknowledge you can’t. It isn’t hard.
That has been my point from my first post.
Literallyall of that isirrelevant.a logical progression of ideas.Logic is far from irrelevant you silly ninny. If you make bad analogies, and then defend them while being an asshole, you should logically expect people to dismiss your analogy and your opinion. See how that works?
@Nerd
Yeah, uh, I never claimed that. Like I said, you have no idea what’s going on.
@Jessie Foster:
It is? Then what was the point of your analogy at all? You seemed very clearly to be implying that:
1) since sexual dimorphism exists, and
2) since differences in average frequencies in choice making exist when comparing the averages of one sexual monomorph within our species and the averages of another (you would say the other sexual monomorph within our species
but
3) no correlation can be made between the size of the physical sexual dimorphisms and the size of the differences we find in the choice-making averages we established in each sexual monomorph.
THEN we can make some conclusions:
4) if we observe differences in average choice making between two monomorphs
THEN
5) we can conclude sexual dimorphism exists, even if we can’t make conclusions about the magnitude of that sexual dimorphism.
BUT YOU CHOSE TO ILLUSTRATE THIS IMPLIED ARGUMENT
by using engines and movement, in an analogy such that
engines = sexual dimorphism and
movement = average differences in behavior between monomorphs.
We then pointed out that even in analogy the argument doesn’t hold. Your premises include the idea that sexual dimorphism ***can cause*** differences in average behavior.
Your premises do not include the idea that ONLY sexual dimorphism can cause differences in average behavior.
Unless your premises include that crucial word “only” then your argument doesn’t hold: you cannot use the existence of differences in average behavior to proves that sexual dimorphism exists,
…nor can you use the existence of physical sexual dimorphism to prove that differences in average behavior exist (since you said PSD **can cause** differences in average behavior, not that it ***must always cause*** differences in average behavior). Neither your conclusion nor its converse will hold under your implied argument.
Mercifully, in this case your analogy **does** hold – cars can move without engines and engines can exist in a state integrated with a car without that car being in motion.
So we point out the flaws in your analogy in the (apparently vain) hope that you actually understand your own argument and will examine your own argument and, yourself, find it flawed.
“Huh,” we hoped you’d say. “I guess my conclusion doesn’t really follow from my premises in my argument in the same way that my conclusion doesn’t really follow from my premises in my analogy.”
Instead, we point out the flaws and you put your fingers and your ears and shout, “Lalalalalalalalala!” Well, okay, you put your fingers to the keyboard and type
Fuck, if you weren’t prepared to have your analogy stand in for your argument, why did you use the analogy in the first place? Don’t you understand how an analogy is used in argumentation?
At least we can find some agreement around this statement of yours:
Make a specific claim.
Make a specific argument in support of that claim.
Or you could always cut your losses & run away. Up to you, I suppose.
Jessie Foster @163:
I did, and yet you continue to run from it in fear. Will you stop running, and actually engage in an argument?
Then what the fuck is YOUR CLEARLY WRITTEN AND EVIDENCED CLAIM?
If it is that sexual dimorphism exists, that has been conceded.
If it is that sexual dimorphism means male/female brains think differently about any other than sex/sexual attraction, you haven’t shown jack-shit.
Because I am amused to do so, I will reproduce some obviously false and/or obviously unsupported claims of Jessie Foster. Some of these claims will also, by the mere fact that they are being made in the form that they are being made, demonstrate the extreme ignorance of Jessie Foster on topics fundamental to Jessie Foster’s own argument(s). Let’s bring the fun.
First? This gem:
Emphasis mine.
Jessie, you keep saying that dimorphism leads to an inference about brains.
Define what inferences you mean. That is the crux of what is going on.
And if you are trying to get that women think differently than men on most subjects, as the saying goes, Citation Needed.
I think that men are generally more physically aggressive than women is something which is rooted in the fact that humans are a sexually dimorphic species (yes, culture may also contribute to male aggression). I think it is likely that our ancestors exhibited a higher degree of behavior associated with sexually dimorphic species than us.
@Crip Dyke
Until an hour ago, you were unaware that humans are a sexually dimorphic species. Go fuck yourself.
Assumes facts that are not in evidence. Behavior of modern humans cannot be inferred from sexual dimorphism in fossils, or the fact that humans are dimorphic. The second part of your comment
is also false for the same reason. “A higher degree of behavior” is the thing you have zero evidence for. What is a degree of behavior? We have no evidence of the behavior of early hominids other than they exhibit dimorphism, consistent with most mammals.
Fuck yourself. CD is much smarter than you. Presume everybody arguing with you is smarter than you.
You need to up your game. Evidence, not assertions, can be your friend.
(Emphasis mine). You admit you have nothing about today. What you think about past behavior is pure speculation.
As I said, up your game to the present time, and to the evidence available today.
So far your arguments remind of some of the MRA’s, who will try to do anything to show that there differences in the sexes. Funny how the differences always make the males smarter/more important than the females and POC, who are second class citizens.
@Tethys
Wait, are you actually disputing the fact that men are generally more physically aggressive than women?
We don’t need to infer the behavior of modern humans, we can observe it.
I mean behaviors associated more with tournament species.
Scroll up. You provided the source.
An actual coherent assertion?
Hmmm.
Well, let’s tackle that second sentence first, it will be easier:
Since Homo sapiens is, for the purposes of this conversation, a sexually dimorphic species, what could this possibly mean?
Our ancestors exhibited a higher degree of behavior associated with us than we do? How can other species’ behaviors be more closely associated with us than our own behaviors are associated with us?
Bzzzzt. JF will have to go back to the drawing board completely with this one.
Back to the first, where its flaws force us to take it clause by clause:
What is the definition of “physically aggressive”? How will we measure physical aggression? To what precision does it make sense to measure physical aggression? After all, even if “physical aggression” was for all relevant purposes identical, if you carry out your test to an absurd degree of precision, eventually you’ll get a quantitative difference and it is 50% likely to be in support of your hypothesis. Have you verified that your test/s for physical aggression can reliably and accurately measure magnitudes of physical aggression at the degree of precision you’ve proposed to test?
.
What does it mean to be “rooted in”? Are you asserting a causal relationship? If yes, which is the cause and which the effect? If no, do you have a better phrase than “rooted in” that can be subbed into your claim so that we know what, precisely you do mean?
It’s rooted in a fact? Or rooted in specific dimorphisms? For clarity, if we took away all specific dimorphisms not minimally necessary to meet the definition of a sexually dimorphic species (some humans produce ova & some humans do not produce ova, or whatever other minimal characteristic/s you define as necessary to physically distinguish male from female) including such things as average hormone levels, would any average differences in physical aggression still “be rooted in” the mere fact of dimorphism?
If average differences in physical aggression are rooted in specific dimorphisms not logically necessary to produce 2 physically distinguishable sexes, which dimorphisms are required for differences in physical aggression to take root?
I have no problem with this statement’s clarity for the purposes of our discussion, but I do think it reveals yet more of your skewed thinking.
so:
If you can come up with
1) an operational definition of physical aggression, that is
2) reliably measurable by
3) mutually agreeable methods
and
4) if you can get rid of the ambiguity currently found in your phrase “rooted in”
and further,
5) if you can specify the traits in which you assert physical aggression is “rooted”
then we will have a claim that is sufficiently clear to argue about. At that point, you could start presenting evidence for your claim.
Well, the first sentence is wrong to the extent that I continue to be exactly as unaware that humans are a sexually dimorphic species as I happened to be one hour ago, two hours ago, a day ago, and even years ago. As long as I’ve been aware of the term, I’ve been clear that humans are a species that meets most persons’ definition of sexual dimorphism. For at least decades, I’ve also been aware that to the extent that humanity meets most persons’ definition of sexual dimorphism, the assertion that H. sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species is a deepity…
…not that you would have any insight into why someone might reasonably conclude such.
As for the second sentence: thanks for the encouragement, but it’s really unnecessary.
How does logic work?
@Crip Dyke
No, that our ancestors exhibited a higher degree of behavior associated with the archetype of a tournament species than us.
Aggression that is physical, lol. Violence is an example, but physical aggression does not have to be necessarily harmful.
Previous evolutionary selection pressures that promote aggression, cause aggression.
The accompanying behaviors. That is, sexual dimorphism evolves because of male v. male (sometimes female v. female) competition for mates. This creates selection pressure for aggression.
I’m trying to avoid further derailment.
JF
Yes. I dispute that males are more aggressive than females. I further dispute that social behavior of modern humans is determined by biological gender.
@Crip Dyke
So sorta like a creationist refusing to believe humans are apes?
Jessie Foster, you claimed:
I asked for a definition of physical aggression – including a whole paragraph specifying that it has to be a definition that permits the measurement of physical aggression. This is necessary because you’re making a claim about ***quantity*** when you use the word “more”.
So we need an operational definition of physical aggression that allows us to repeatedly, reliably measure physical aggression. Without a definition that allows us to assign numeric, quantitative values to individuals’ aggression, your claim that some people have “more” is useless and not only can’t be proven true, but it can’t even be tested. Your response when given the opportunity to define physical aggression?
Good show. I’m really taking you more seriously now.
@Tethys
Physically aggression.
What do you mean by “determined?” Do you think I am making the claim that all, or at least most, social behavior is determined by sex?
@Crip Dyke
There are studies which demonstrate this, but if you want something to measure, try rates of violent crime.
That is the logical implication of “males are more physically aggressive than females”. As also noted by CD. you have to figure out what exactly what aggression is before you can determine anything about it.
Is infanticide a violent crime?
@Tethys
No, it isn’t. Not all social behavior relates to physical aggression.
I refer you to PZ and the OP.
Jessie Foster is wiggling that she’s using “all” literally. If there is a single behavior that is not driven by testosterone, then to assume she thinks all behavior is testosterone influenced is a big mistake so therefore she wins and everybody else wrong. tada.
?
—
that’s my interpretation…
I am having some google-fu problems…
does anyone have links to actual biologists using the phrase
“tournament species”.?
@Chigau
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Oa4Lp5fLE
1:32:49
https://biology.stanford.edu/people/robert-sapolsky
At 1:32:49 Professor Sapolsky is discussing the answers to the question “Why have you taken this course.” No mention of tournament species so far.
Jessie Foster
okay
anyone other than Sapolsky?
Sapolsky’s primatology seems to be a yearly vacation lark.
are there publications?
.
sincerely asking
I am having InternetsIssue tonite
@Tethys
Is the link not working? You must have the wrong video.
The link works, it is a lecture on behavioral evolution. Currently going through the differences between natural selection, sexual selection, and kin selection.
——-
Chigau
He has written several books.
Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death (MIT Press, 1992) ISBN 0-262-19320-5
Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers (1994, Holt Paperbacks/Owl 3rd Rep. Ed. 2004) ISBN 0-8050-7369-8
The Trouble with Testosterone: And Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament (Scribner, 1997) ISBN 0-684-83891-5
Junk Food Monkeys (Headline Publishing, 1997) ISBN 978-0-7472-7676-0 (UK edition of The Trouble with Testosterone)
A Primate’s Memoir (Touchstone Books, 2002) ISBN 0-7432-0247-3
Monkeyluv : And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals (Scribner, 2005) ISBN 0-7432-6015-5
@Chigau
And,
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/professors/robert-sapolsky/?pid=124
I understand.
@Tethys
I’d recommend the lecture series if this is an interesting subject for you.
I think I’m done here. Goodbye everyone.
Hallelujah
You were done before you started.
Hm, the explanation of game theory as a proxy for human behavior is fascinating. Humans are good at detecting cheating, but bad at detecting acts of altruism.
@Jessie Foster:
So we need an operational definition of physical aggression that allows us to repeatedly, reliably measure physical aggression. Without a definition that allows us to assign numeric, quantitative values to individuals’ aggression, your claim that some people have “more” is useless and not only can’t be proven true, but it can’t even be tested. Your response when given a second opportunity to define physical aggression?
Sigh.
Men, on average, live shorter lifespans than women. For “rates of violent crime” do we measure the number of violent crimes per lifetime? Per lifetime excluding crimes committed before age 18? Per year?
Your definition has to have a number. Note also that some measurement methodologies would strike most people as unfair. “Per lifetime” introduces certain kinds of bias. “Violent crime” can be defined in ways that are injury-focused or intent focussed. If I cyberstalk you with the intent of getting you to kill yourself, and through my hacking skills I gain access to secrets that can really, really cause a lot of damage to your relationships with family, peers, employer/school, etc. …
…if I use that information’s release (or credible threats to release it) to torment you and (ultimately successfully) coerce you to attempt to kill yourself…
…have I committed a violent crime? If your answer is no, what about abandoning a neonate in the snow? Accidentally dropping a baby over the railing of a boat or pier into the ocean …but then purposefully deciding not to tell anyone?
But let’s assume for argument’s sake we have it all ironed out as to what types of behaviors are or aren’t violent crimes, even if we have to accomplish that merely by ideographically listing each behavior, one at a time, spelling each out long hand.
“Crimes” are violations of law, so presumably this list would be established by combing through statutes until we have ascertained on a one-by-one basis whether each and every single statutorily crime is a “violent crime” for our purposes.
Now we get to the next problem: are we going to use rates of conviction? Rates of arrest? Rates of victim reporting to authorities, whether or not those reports lead to arrests or convictions? Popular self-reports during methodologically rigorous interviews of persons selected at random within certain guidelines which attempt to insure the ability to draw population conclusions from our sample?
Will we use annual rates? lifetime rates? When/If dividing by population, will we divide by the entire population, or by adult population? Or by the total number of adult men for men’s crimes and the total number of adult women for women’s crimes?
Yet more problems: are we using legal violation rates? Here one conviction = +1 to the raw total that will later be divided by time and by population. But that means that when 100 men are each convicted for the murder of a single person, because the way most murder law is written all persons taking part in a murder are fully and independently liable, we get +100 murder convictions to the raw total even though there’s only one body. So should it be per victim instead? What if it’s not a murder, but an assault? How much time needs to pass between one blow and the next before we can start counting the victim twice (or 100 times) because the same person is the victim of a new, separate crime? Sure, if a year goes by, even though we say we want to go “per victim” so that we don’t add +100 for a single murder, we probably want to count that as two instances of violent crime and add +2 to our violent crime total. But what if it’s a day? What about an hour? Does it matter if the criminals are hunting for the victim for that whole hour? Chasing across an open prairie where the victim is in sight the whole time, but it takes 61 minutes for the second attacker to catch up enough to land another blow?
=========================
You haven’t begun to do the work necessary to have a clear, falsifiable claim that is subject to testing.
You keep claiming that “studies” prove you right, but we don’t even know for sure what you want to be right about.
Since you appear to have little knowledge of the requirements of crafting operational definitions that can be used to test claims of relative quantity/magnitude, what if you just got hold of one of these studies that proves you right, linked to it, and asserted, “I agree with this sentence from page 487,” and then quoted the sentence?
Then once we agree on what that study shows or doesn’t, you could try to extend the conclusions of the authors by saying, “Given we have just learned X from the study I shared, I propose that it’s reasonable to believe Y.”
It would sure as hell get us a lot farther than me holding your petulant hand while you complain no one is taking you seriously when you make claims about which number is bigger than which other number without ever putting forward a damn number.
Oh, crap, Horde.
I didn’t realize Jessie Foster had decided to be done. Hope I haven’t re-opened anything with my #205.
It really does strain the brain, though, how someone can be so insistent that others agree while being so damn resistant to making a clear statement about what, precisely, the person expects others to agree with. I hope Jessie Foster wasn’t actually injured by that completely unexpected burden of proof landing on JF’s shoulders, but I kinda do hope the burden is heavy enough to pin down JF’s typing hand/s for a couple years.
@Crip Dyke
No, I kinda run outta steam at 200+ posts. Apologies for any confusion, but it can be difficult when you’re talking to a half dozen people, all of whom are arguing different points at you and responding not just to responses directed at them, but also to responses directed at different people. Things tend to get mixed up.
Have a good night/day/morning/evening.
The behavioral section is filled with male perspectives and some really illogical things presented as female choice, though the basics are non-controversial.
A tournament species (a loaded term if ever I’ve read one) is generally referred to as polygynous. Gorillas, cattle, horses. One male breeds with a group of females. Humans are monogamous, and follow the general convention of the mates being fairly close to the same size.
Gorillas are not a good model for early hominids, yet many people seem to picture Lucy as acting like modern gorillas. Gibbons are the root of the primate branch, and Gibbons display very little dimorphism. IANADB, but it makes sense to think this is the ancestral trait, and the various branches of great apes have all developed from that mating strategy.
is not useful.
We should stop saying it.
I express surprise that you consider it a criterion of things to be said, that they be useful.
(It is not congruent with your own behaviour, O elliptical one.)
Jessie Foster @201:
For the benefit of the lurkers, let’s review. You ran away from answering this:
You also ran away from answering Crip Dyke:
And, in another thread, you ran away from this:
And for the cherry on top, when you were finally pressed for a sex difference, the one you threw out was… physical aggression. It’s fitting that you’ve run away before I could answer that, because I could fill a comment section on the topic. Here’s a copy-paste of what I’ve written elsewhere, as a sampler:
That latter line is a bit dodgy, alas; I later learned that women tend to downplay and excuse violence against them, while men hype up, and since that stat comes from self-reports it probably underestimates the violence men commit against women.
Anyway, here’s some citations for the lurkers:
Björkqvist, Kaj. “Sex differences in physical, verbal, and indirect aggression: A review of recent research.” Sex roles 30.3-4 (1994): pg. 177
Maccoby, Eleanor Emmons, and Carol Nagy Jacklin, eds. The psychology of sex differences. Vol. 1. Stanford University Press, 1974. pg. 349
Archer, John. “Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: a meta-analytic review.” Psychological bulletin 126.5 (2000): 651.
Emma Fulu, Xian Warner, Stephanie Miedem, Rachel Jewkes, Tim Roselli, and James Lang. “WHY DO SOME MEN USE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND HOW CAN WE PREVENT IT?: Quantitative Findings from the United Nations Multi-Country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific.” Partners for Prevention, 2013. *
Hyde, Janet S. “How large are gender differences in aggression? A developmental meta-analysis.” Developmental Psychology 20.4 (1984): 722.
And as for the coward Jessie Foster, I hope you too have a pleasant awakening.
* I think this one’s the source of the “women downplay violence” claim, but I might be mis-remembering. If not, I can point to studies from Koss and Littleton that establish plausibility.
Jessie Foster
Back to square one. Right at the top of the thread I said that the proponents of this argument must make
-a claim about a specific behaviour
-present evidence that this behaviour is rooted in biology
-that this behaviour is adaptive
Yep, and it has been observably decreasing, so all arguments that go “men evolved to be bigger than women” have it fucking backwards as they seem to assume a starting point at which there was little dimorphism and in which the larger males subsequently had a reproductive advantage when the opposite seems to be true*.
Do you even see all the assumption you’ve wrapped up in this claim and the absolute lack of evidence you’ve presented for any of them?
And you separate culture from biology how?
*Which, in turn, could mean, that our grandmothers kept fucking the smaller dudes more similar to their own size instead of the bulky strong dudes. Which means the end to all those nice “just so” stories about women cuckolding the nice caring dudes and fucking the strong jerks when fertile.
HJ
I’m still waiting for an answer to my question about cuckoos. Apparently analogies are only OK for Jessie.
@Hj, Giliel
I’ve posted over 70 times in this thread. I really wish I could answer everyone, but this is becoming an issue with how I am allocating my time. I’d like to sincerely apologize for any and all offense I may have caused, and I’d like to remind everyone that it’s healthy to not take arguments on the internet too seriously.
Goodnight.
@ ^
Translation: Chill out, I cant defend anything I said, I was trolling. lolz.
If you had any degree of intellectual integrity you would simply admit to being wrong. Snide remarks that imply that everyone else is to blame for attempting to correct your ignorance, poor logic, and childishness aren’t particularly healthy behaviors, and are the reason you will continue to not be taken seriously. Sleep well.
I cannot defend anything I have said. I was wrong. Nobody is to blame but myself. I am an ignorant illogical child. I am not taken seriously, and I will not be taken seriously.
I am conceding every single argument I have made in this thread and others as unequivocally wrong.
Translation: I’m really an ass and I cannot even back out gracefully
+++
But since we’re having so much fun examining faulty assumptions, I’d like to take a look at this one:
We get three pieces of information
1) He’s got a A.B. in Biological Anthropology, which is relevant to the discussion
2) He got his A.B. in Harvard
3) His grade was summa cum lauda
Why are points 2 and 3 mentioned here at all? Clearly his qualification should be sufficient to lend his claims some credibility. I propose that those are mentioned to convey additional information.
“Harvard” is mentioned to suggest that he is in fact at the top of the research ladder or he wouldn’t have gotten a place there. Now of course we know that the admission process to prestigious universities is seriously flawed, with legacy admissions, personal connections, money and last but not least gender and race bias. Therefore, throwing in “Harvard” as if it meant something relevant here can be seen as a false premise.
Then there’s his grade. Sounds impressive, right? What I want to know is: What’s the average? Since this is kind of my field, I know how unreliable grades are, especially when mentioned without additional information. I know for Germany that averages are really different for different fields of studies. My mum in law is eternally proud that her son got an A for his PhD thesis in biology and I’ll never tell her that about everybody gets an A in their PhD thesis in biology. IT’s even kind of understandable: At least here your biology PhD thesis is an independent research project in which you demonstrate that yes, you can carry out research. Nobody expects you to get some really breaking results on a tiny budget working all alone. It would be flat out wrong to give them better or worse grades depending on whether their research was successful. So unless you fuck up some basic principles and don’t ever listen to your adviser, you’re cool. That’s why only laypeople are impressed by an A.
If you go for law, on the other hand, getting a C+ is considered quite something, if you make it into the B territory you’re probably a genius. Law firms know how to interpret grades on an application.
So, what information am I supposed to take away from his grades without knowing the general distribution?
[meta]
Jessie Foster, don’t do that. It’s not the way.
I know getting dogpiled is nasty.
I’m not supporting your claims, I’m supporting you.
Take a breather.
Okay, here’s a serious question for people who think they can infer a lot from sexual dimorphism (e.g., Jessie):
Please tell me what is wrong with this reasoning:
Emperor penguins show sexual dimorphism, and in fact to a greater degree than humans.
Therefore, we can conclude that penguins are less monogamous than humans and that male penguins must be fighting over females with each other and that larger males should be getting more females and thus passing more of their genes compared to smaller males.
Any comments?
lotharloo
Dunno, have you looked at ducks to get the answer?
lotharloo, unlsess I am missing something, I think your choice of example is not correct. Emperor penguins are not especially dimorphic, quite the opposite.
The matter of average body size differences between human males and females might also be due to different reproductive strategies. Human females generally are sexually mature at an earlier age than males, and this comes as a trade-off with body size. Why might this be? It may be because females are relatively limited compared to males when it comes to reproduction and by maturing sexually at an earlier age their reproductive chances are increased. This may be as much of a driver in body size difference as male competition being a factor in selecting for larger bodies.
@Charly:
I thought I remembered that male penguins are a little bit heavier than females when comparing their weight peaks (but as you say, not their low weights) because they stay a longer stretch of time with the egg but I can’t find the reference for it now so I guess my claim should now be taken with a grain of salt. I’ll have to see if I can find the reference.
I love you, lotharloo. Thanks for setting such a great example.
@ unclefrogy
Thank you for your reply. I agree with your general point. Imagination is what just-so stories consist of. It’s imagining what a contextual truth could be given what a person knows, and presenting that as if it were experienced fact. I don’t know.
I also agree that is related to how people are reacting to me, and that’s where this gets relevant to the social context. They are reacting to a use of evolution in a social context and feel threatened by it. I’m not surprised that I got a couple of people reacting to what I said, what is interesting to me are the assumptions that my example of a just-so story revealed in other people here. The very use of “just-so story” by me directly implies using it as an assumption in communication would be invalid. I’m providing a deliberate counterpoint (opposite end of a bias spectrum) as a way of modeling a bias range between me and the people being criticized. There is no way that I am using that in assumptions about reality.
The reactions of Jessie Foster and chris61 are fascinating. They assumed I actually believe this and act on it and I wanted to know precisely what parts of it they felt strongly about.
Jessie laughed and I asked them to explain. They made two personal connections between my example and each of us individually (26 and 28). Then they talk about the worth of my idea as if I did not just include it in a set of things that are implicitly bad reasoning and question my mental health. I would love to know precisely what objects in my comments arouse this reaction.
Chris61shoves a Y-chromosome and the number 95% at my implicitly unreasonable story about reality and demands an explanation that I am not making. Of course I’m going to ask them for a source. Why should I demonstrate something that is not an argument? There has implicitly been no comparison with the world outside of my mind. Again I’m fascinated by what it was in my comment that prompted chris61 to act like I could do something impossible given the context.
@Tethys
You should know something about my participation in this thread. I chose to let argument between me and Jessie go on. I’ve deliberately dragged it out because I’m fascinated by the patterns in the behavior that they are displaying. However I did not think about the effect this would have on other people so if I caused you (or anyone else) distress I want to apologize. If it was a problem please let me know.
As for me I honestly don’t care about what Jessie has wrote, I don’t feel insults the way that most people do. I analyze them for the nature of the target, the experiences or meanings associated with the application and receipt of them, the implicit assumptions they contain and other things like the nature of the social appeal. They contain reasoning problems. Ablism for example means that the user likely has no idea how to articulate what they are really bothered by so they suggest you are broken (insults are often comparisons or contrasts). That’s a vulnerability.
I’ve been outlining the structure of the various bits of rhetoric and very interested in what they thought I should be offended by. I’m actually really fascinated by why they did what they did. I want to know why they think what I did was racist. I want to know why they think I would be interested in how I measure up to Hitler or Nazis (you have to know what to avoid bad people so you don’t stereotype). I want to know what it was in my first post they were sensitive to. I legitimately triggered something and it’s interesting.
@Jessie Foster
Now that you have had some time to think about this I hope that you came to the realization that it was impossible for me to be making any claims about reality. That’s in the very nature of creating a just-so story and it was very interesting that you homed in on something you did not properly understand and pounced on it (see my response to unclefrogy for more detail). I have nothing against laughing at ridiculous things in a general sense. It’s impossible for me to actually believe what you think I do because it would be like me knowingly making an example of an ad hominem as an example only and you thinking I actually believe that. Why the fuck would I do that?
I’ve been pulling at your reasoning. You actually made a reasoning error. There is no way that is not the case. So your behavior has been fascinating to me. I am genuinely concerned for you on a basic human level. I don’t care about your laughter, I’m interested in what it’s connected to why it’s connected to it. I’m not worried about your accusation of racism. I WANT you to outline what is racially biased in my words. Similar things apply for Hitler, Nazies…I really don’t give a fuck beyond intense and fun morbid fascination.
Everything I mentioned would apply to me and anyone I was related to as readily as it would anyone else. I can see what you are doing. You are creating a connection to the “black savage” stereotype. I take that stereotype seriously so I welcome the opportunity to see what you do. The worst that can happen to me is that I make my mind stronger by removing something irrational and harmful. So can have two hypotheses in my head and take them into account. I was really being racist, and you are shielding yourself with black people.
I see similar problems in everything else you think I should be bothered by. I suggest you think about things and work on your reasoning. It suggests some problems in how you look at the world that should be investigated.
@chris61
You have fallen prey to the same thing as Jessie but have been less willing to get personal so I have more respect for your part in this. I could not have been asserting anything about reality because I created an example of bad reasoning. So I will not show you any connections because there can’t be any if this is to be a legitimate just-so story (see my response to unclefrogy). but just-so stories can be true, they just have a significant chance of being untrue due to being bad reasoning. Just-so stories effectively are scientific hypotheses and I’m actually going to do some looking around with respect to changes to anatomy driven by hormones during development. Keep in mind that anatomy means more than muscles, new learning changes the structure of elderly brains in measurable ways. While changes to muscles are not far-fetched, this is not something that I would call a belief. I would keep that out of assumptions.
Brony
No problem at all! I wasn’t bothered by anything but the part where it started turning into trading personal insults, and you immediately (unlike jessie) understood why those are not cool. I didn’t realize that there are multiple threads full of JF arguing nonsense.
Ah, so you were trolling with an ‘implicitly unreasonable story about reality’ to garner a reaction. Thanks for the explanation.
@chris61
I’d hardly call it trolling since I said I was I was coming up with my own example of irrational reasoning…but I’m of the opinion that trolling is just triggering a conflict even if one is not trying to (it’s a felt thing rather than an an objective tactic as a category IMO). So yeah, I guess I was trolling.
@228, Brony
Hmm, I think it makes more sense in such cases to consider feelings to be conclusions that can potentially be mistaken about reality.
@Brian Pansy
I effectively agree in that feelings are often conclusions about the objects we sense. At some point in the decision-making part of pattern detection something makes a choice among options based on the information it has and can collect. We all have our own level of certainty and ability to “abort/modify current context/paradigm”. And social symbols can be notorious in impricision when it comes to capturing the diversity of kinds among what they are applied to (I think evolution of language due to solidly conflict is a big part of this). I try to hold in and out-group perspectives in my head at the same time as models because it makes decision making easier when things get intense.
I’ve seen people called trolls who were overtly and consciously there to cause social disruption. Even then “just trolling” is a lie because that is a person using behavior that is implicitly social. Ones instincts and experiences tend to try to ensure you only overtly and consciously troll when personally advantagious and advantageous to your in-group (barring situations like mine where the dominance instinct likes to be included when you don’t want it to).
And on the other end of the spectrum I’ve seen people called trolls who wanted to talk about things that some present react strongly to. The reasons for reacting can be good or bad. When I was moderating at Ponychan my most frequent punching bag was a “Dash Mercury” who insisted that if you were a communist you are also a murderer and used that justification to harass communist people from having academic and historical discussions about communism. To him the communists were the trolls.
In social conflicts the difference is very often academic to the individual kind of social space. “Just stop fighting” has different consequences here than it would at places like Breightbart.
“…solidly conflict…” above should be “…social conflict…”.
Fun fact. There are repetitions of text in some of my comments above that I did not catch on edit that are Tourettic repititions. Jessie is so out of his league when it comes to appeals to mental illness. I would have loved to have seen them try. I can find signs of many shapes of mind in text and it makes my “social appropriateness alarm” scream on a regular basis.