[ExI] IQ and beauty

John Clark johnkclark at gmail.com
Mon Oct 19 01:09:54 UTC 2015


On Sun, Oct 18, 2015  Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

​>​
>  you say it's in the bible, it's your job to quote chapter and verse.
>

​I don't have a bible, but maybe the October 28 1982 issue of Nature pages
818 to 820 will do, if not try
page 201 of Richard  book "The Blind Watchmaker".  ​



> ​> ​
> Also, I already provided links to articles arguing against your position.
>

​You provided no links that say a peacocks tail aids in a individuals
survival or is aerodynamic or does anything other than help in finding a
mate.
​You did provided 3 links and you were correct when you said ​"
All three point towards sexual selection as generally increasing the
likelihood of species survival
​". Well...how could it be otherwise? I
f it did not then either ​sexual selection or species would have
disappeared long long ago, it has not so sexual selection must generally
increasing the likelihood of species survival
​. QED.

However the key word is "generally" and that means there are exceptions,
and that means that sexual selection can cause Evolution to make mistakes
as it did with the ridiculous antlers of the Irish Elk and drive the
species into extinction.


> ​>
>>> ​>>​
>>>>>> anthropomorphic psychologizing has no part in figuring out how evolution
>>> works.
>>>
>>
>> ​>> ​
>>>> Why not?
>>
>> ​>​
>  Because off-the-cuff anthropomorphic psychologizing doesn't rigorously
> (i.e. mathematically)
>

​Evolution will never be totally as rigorous as some other sciences because
it depends as much on history as it does on mathematics. And ​psychoanalyzing
is not needed to know that humans and animals are attracted to some things
and repelled by others and at least some of those likes and dislikes are
genetic.


> ​> ​
> tackle the stuff of evolution (mutation frequency, fitness payoff,
> heritability, etc.).
>

A trait is not heritable if a mate can not be found. Human females are
sexually attracted to human males they find attractive and the same is true
for female Irish Elk. For female Irish Elk the larger the antlers the more
attractive, and so antler size increased explosively with disastrous
results for the species. Our ancestors must have found something else
attractive, something else that could be used as a obvious marker for
fitness; perhaps it was intelligent behavior, if so that would explain the
unprecedented increase in brain size hominids underwent in the last million
years or so.  Fortunately for us intelligent behavior does more does more
that just help in finding a mate and so
​we ​
are not extinct
​, at least not yet.​

 John K Clark
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