[ExI] IQ and beauty

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 1:00 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> ​Well... I've read Robert Axelrod's The Evolution of Cooperation and the
> entire book is pretty much a report on the outcome of evolutionary computer
> simulations that Axelrod performed. And I've read Richard Dawkins's The
> Extended Phenotype (the best book on evolutionary biology I know of)
> which has a good amount of math. And the work of E O Wilson and Robert
> MacArthur got me interested in the subject in the first place. Was there
> anything specific you have read that I may have overlooked?
>

### So where in these books did you find mechanistic descriptions of
species dying out because males' tails got too long? Please give chapter
and page numbers.

-----------------------

>
> ​
> From an Evolutionary point of view it doesn't matter if individuals
> survive or not, it only matters if their genes do.
> ​ ​
> It might not reduce the survival of the female but it would reduce the
> survival of the female's genes because they will now be mixed with the gene
> for enormously impractical antlers (a male elk could receive the gene for
> exceptionally large antlers from his mother). So now the female's offspring
> have the gene for liking big impractical antlers that they got from their
> mother AND the gene for producing
> ​ ​
> big impractical antlers that they got from their
> ​ ​
> father; so that team of genes is headed for a positive feedback loop. And
> positive feedback
> ​ ​
> loops
> ​ ​
> seldom have gentle
> ​happy ​
> endings.
>

### This is incomprehensible. Just give me references to peer-reviewed
primary literature (not Gould's though) showing that runaway sexual
selection feedback loops plausibly cause species extinction.

----------------

> ​And if I asked why it is silly I already know what you'd say "because
> you're being anthropomorphic". Yes I know I'm being anthropomorphic but it
> is a fact that human beings are part of the universe thus anthropomorphism
> can be a useful tool in figuring out how Evolution works, sometimes as an
> analogy and sometimes, as in this case, literally. The female elk REALLY
> doesn't want to settle for a geek with ugly small antlers regardless of
> how practical they are, and she REALLY does want bling not practicality.
>

### No, anthropomorphic psychologizing has no part in figuring out how
evolution works.

Rafał
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