IntenseDebate - Andrew

14 years ago @ Evolvify - Foundations for a Hunt... · 0 replies · +1 points

Never fear. Posts about Jefferson are timeless.

14 years ago @ Evolvify - Male Physical Attracti... · 1 reply · +1 points

"beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder."

Indeed, and since all the beholders are humans with human brains, we can make some predictions about similar eyes and ways of beholding.

The validation and mirroring stuff is a little too Freudian.

14 years ago @ Evolvify - Male Physical Attracti... · 0 replies · +2 points

I'm not sure that your understanding of evolutionary psychology matches up with the state of the field. For a nice overview, you might check out "Evolutionary Psychology: Controversies, Questions, Prospects, and Limitations".

"there seems to be no direct relationship between the finger ratio and genetics. This would imply that the degree of masculinity(and probably attractiveness) is to a certain extent based on pure chance."

Saying that this has nothing to do with genetics and implies pure chance are both incorrect. Most of the genetic code can be thought of as a set of "if-then" clauses. For instance, if testosterone level x, then grow y. This roughly how the genotype interacts with signals from the environment and expresses a particular phenotype.

"It used to be that the most physically fit male used to get the most number of mates."
It did? When?

None of the questions you seem to have about evolution are new. They were all explained by Darwin in his second major work, The Descent of Man, and have since been explained rather robustly.

I would recommend a review of The Mating Mind. It nicely explains most of the concepts influencing your misunderstandings.

14 years ago @ Evolvify - Training for the Unkno... · 0 replies · +1 points

yeah, the philosophy of gym/crossfit training kind of feels like a band-aid solution to me. applied to the paleo diet framework, it might be something like continuing to eat garbage, then trying to supplement yourself to health.

14 years ago @ Evolvify - Book and Documentary: ... · 0 replies · +1 points

agreed. you do have to wade through a bunch of misandry to get to the point, but it's worth it.

14 years ago @ Evolvify - Book and Documentary: ... · 0 replies · +1 points

yeah, i like allan savory's work. it's a strange notion to think ecosystems can exist without animals, and savory gets the answer to that question right.

14 years ago @ Evolvify - Hunter-Gatherer Though... · 0 replies · +1 points

thanks, Neal. that sounds familiar. i'll move it up the to-read list.

14 years ago @ Evolvify - Hunter-Gatherer Though... · 1 reply · +1 points

someone was just asking me whether the biblical Abraham was a hunter-gatherer. i'm inclined to think not, but if you go back far enough, we all were. i saw a statistic recently that said 2/3 of the world's population still lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle during when jesus was being written about.

14 years ago @ Evolvify - Hunter-Gatherer Though... · 0 replies · +3 points

"Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?" Oh, but by the way, "it doesn't matter. People have beat you down this path".

"Everything has been said yet few have taken advantage of it. Since all our knowledge is essentially banal, it can only be of value to minds that are not." - Raoul Vaneigem

i don't yet believe that all paths have been previously trodden. but even if they had, who cares? everyone hasn't heard them, and few have yet understood them to the point of being able to take advantage of them. perhaps if jefferson and paine had come after darwin (and after evolutionary psychology) we'd be closer to having a classical liberalism not mired in ethnocentric agrarian myopia. the insight available to us from applied evolutionary theory is faaaaaarrr from complete. thinking otherwise is a guarantee of a banal mind.

drop the utopia shtick; rhetorical attempts at debunking by epithet bore me. it also doesn't interest me to provide a custom argument (on a random thanksgiving post) to a cynic who already has all the answers (including other people's arguments before they've made them). i'll get to a full post when i think my research is sufficiently complete. in the interim, i'd suggest brushing up on evolutionary psychology from somewhere besides VH-1.

14 years ago @ Evolvify - Weekly Recap - Novembe... · 0 replies · +1 points

Then they must be doing something right!

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