natural selection is wrong.

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by NMSquirrel, Feb 10, 2011.

  1. NMSquirrel OCD ADHD THC IMO UR12 Valued Senior Member

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    as per a conversation i just had with my daughter..

    natural selection says that a woman will be attracted to those types of guys that will ensure their survival (big,beefy,musculature, guys that can handle any conflicts that occur)
    those types are not alway beneficial to ones survival as they may just end up being the means of their destruction.

    the question that came up is how does intentional/unintentional selection enter into this?
     
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  3. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    No - Personal selection/taste determines what kind of man a woman is attracted to.

    Natural selection says that those who survive are capable of passing their genes on to the next generation.
     
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  5. NMSquirrel OCD ADHD THC IMO UR12 Valued Senior Member

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    so natural selection (where humans are concerned) is not alway beneficial to us as a species, as 'bad' genes can be passed down to the next generation.
     
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  7. WillNever Valued Senior Member

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    You need to look up information on "sexual selection."

    Humans do not reproduce on the basis of natural selection only -- because human behavior is not all natural. They reproduce on the basis of sexual selection too.
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    This type of natural selection is properly called sexual selection. Extreme examples of this are the peacock's tailfeathers, which can be large enough to be a hindrance when being chased by a predator. The idea is that any male that can maintain such plumage must be strong and fit.

    Human culture has progressed far faster than human evolution. We still retain some evolutionary traits that would have benefited a hunter/gatherer tribe. But we also have large brains, and the ability to adopt cultural traits that go against what an objective observer might say were good for the species. This doesn't mean natural selection is wrong. In fact, women today value intelligence and skill as much as large size. Many women still feel an attraction to physical strength, but they are able to temper that desire with an appreciation for the attributes of an intelligent man. Why are musicians so desired by teen groupies? Because their musical skill shows off an agile brain and their popularity shows off their skill in navigating in the social sphere. Just because an individual makes a choice that is bad for her future genes (musicians are notoriously unreliable) doesn't disprove natural selection as a whole. Just the fact that in general women are attracted to powerful brave man (like firefighters) is proof enough.
     
  9. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    If you're a married American, your marriage is between 40 and 50 percent likely to end in divorce.

    If your parents were divorced, you're at least 40 percent more likely to get divorced than if they weren't. If your parents married others after divorcing, you're 91 percent more likely to get divorced.

    So if she doesn't make the right choice it seems that she will try again to do so, isn't divorce great!
     
  10. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    That's all fine and good, but when an extinction event happens, it will weed out the weak(natural selection, whom may have some "sex-selected" traits by chance).
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    It's very common--although not universal--for humans to be attracted to "exotic" looking people from another ethnic group, i.e., someone who is clearly not a very close relative. This was a species-survival trait in the Paleolithic Era, when nomadic hunter-gatherers lived in small extended-family units in which incest was virtually unavoidable. Even though they regarded other tribes suspiciously, as competitors for scarce resources, anthropologists tell us that they would occasionally make a ritual trade of adolescent children.

    Who knows what reasons they gave themselves and each other for doing this--probably religious!--but the effect was to bring some new DNA into the gene pool and enhance the survivability of the tribe.
     
  12. ULTRA Realistically Surreal Registered Senior Member

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    There is evidence of a a trend towards the 'exotic' due to the diversity of genes on offer. More diverse genes normally lead to fewer birth abnormalaties compared to a closed gene pool. This means the mothers' genes are more likeley to survive in perpituity whether the man is particularly manly or not!
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I'm surprised you didn't bring up homosexuality, it seems to be a more extreme case.
     
  14. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    I forgot where I got this, but some women can have many children in to their 40’s or so since their menopause comes later on. Since this is a heritable trait, it even seems to advance the trait by a year every so many years, which I also forgot, but was measured.

    ‘Unfortunately’, these women and their offspring tend to be short and stout as well. I hope this doesn’t portend the end of beautiful women.
     
  15. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    Darwin constructed his revolutionary theory of evolution through natural selection over a lifetime of meticulous observation and thought. It is perhaps the must powerful idea in science and still drives the contemporary research agenda. Life was staggeringly dull a billion and a half years ago, and, of course, in the 3 billion years before that, the once steaming ocean having become a cold, thin, dreary broth of look-alike organisms.

    Eukaryotic cells with internal structures had appeared, but not yet were there any multicellular creatures. Life lazed through those doldrums for a million millennia. Imagine the lengths of these times.

    Then some combination of environmental circumstance and genetic novelty triggered a wild diversification in the variety and complexity of animal life over tens of millions of years, climaxing in what is now called the Cambrian Explosion. By 530 million years ago the seas held a multitude of bizarre creatures—as now seen fossilized in the Burgess Shale.

    As is often the case, many of those weird Cambrian monsters were evolutionary dead ends, but a certain few were the progenitors of every animal alive today. Darwin’s real breakthrough was that evolution became inevitable, since, in organisms whose environment had changed, those who had reproductive success depended on inherited traits. Then, too, there was the simple mechanism of natural selection, although there could be more methods. Since then, Darwin’s ideas have connected up with genetics, molecular biology, ecology and embryology. Today, Darwin’s legacy is a larger, more richer, more diverse set of theories than he could have imagined.

    While the competition for ecological resources, also called natural selection or “survival of the fittest”, demonstrably drives much of evolution and speciation, biologists are now onto the elaboration of Darwin’s ideas about sexual selection, plus ongoing debates about roles for selection at the single level of genes, the individual organism, whole species, and/or all of the above.
     
  16. NMSquirrel OCD ADHD THC IMO UR12 Valued Senior Member

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    duh.. irrelevant, they can't have babies..

    and sci, i can agree with that for anything but humans..how does natural selection play in humans?
     
  17. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps if global warming comes to pass in some big way, then only some of the equatorial people who are used to extreme heat will survive, presuming all other infrastructure breaks down.
     
  18. SilentLi89 Registered Senior Member

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    But how is this not beneficial? Men with more testosterone supposedly have "healthier" genes, so their children will be healthier and possibly not suffer from as many genetic abnormalities. If the man lives long enough to reproduce it doesn't matter what kills them afterwards. since as far as nature is concerned males loose their usefulness right after ejaculation. Everything else they might do is just a bonus (or hindrance) for women and children.
     
  19. NMSquirrel OCD ADHD THC IMO UR12 Valued Senior Member

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    it does not speak to their mental stability..

    more testosterone means more aggressiveness, increasing the chances he will harm his mate.(will not argue percentages)
     
  20. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    No it's not irrelevant. If a woman being attracted to a man that isn't ideal is somehow a violation of your notions of natural selection, how much more so is a man or woman attracted to the same sex? How would such an attribute evolve?
     
  21. NMSquirrel OCD ADHD THC IMO UR12 Valued Senior Member

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    no not violation..a result..i guess it brings up the question of what determines the selection process,
    what causes women to be attracted to the bad boy?
    what causes a woman to be attracted to another woman? (man to man?)
    what are the survival factors in w/w m/m ?

    how indeed..
     
  22. SciWriter Valued Senior Member

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    Since all human embryos begin as female, then, in order for some to become male, both the body and the brain have to be masculinized.

    Sometimes, a mistake occurs and so one or the other of these doesn't happen, thus an opposing body-brain state, like female-brain with male-body, resulting in gay, and male-brain with female-body, resulting in lesbian.

    Other mistakes such as a half-and-half brain might result in bisexual, or half-and-half body becoming hermaphrodite.
     
  23. Saquist Banned Banned

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    That's not completely true.
    Recently on the "Earth" series they described the flamboyant mating dance of some male South American birds and their elaborate wing modifications were actually products of the natural selection of the female part of the species.
     

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