[ExI] sex - was Re: The smart-stupid dimension

[John Clark]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2017 at 1:34 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> ​ ​
> What do evolutionary theorists say about the origins of this? [prudishness]


Genes don't care if we have fun or not, they only care about getting passed
onto the next generation. So it's not surprising that genes would endow
their gene delivery vehicles (us) with a revulsion at the very thought of
mixing our genes with a very close relative because that would increased
the likelihood the resulting offspring would not live long enough to reach
reproductive age. If someone is unrelated to me my genes would say it's OK
to mix my genes with her if she looked healthy, but my genes don't want
competition so they would be prudish about 2 people unrelated to each other
and unrelated to me having sex and producing offspring.  My genes don't
want me to have sex with a close relative but they encourage me to be
altruistic to them because, being relatives, we have many genes in common.

But if all that is true why does homosexuality exist and why do people make
condoms? Because although genes can create tendencies they are not the only
thing driving behavior, not since Evolution invented brains half a billion
years ago. Brains were a necessary invention because the environment was
far too complex to preprogram the behavior most likely to benefit the
individual's genes in all circumstances. The downside of this, from the
genes point of view not ours, is that although still far from powerless the
genes are no longer it total control of the robots they created, us.

John K Clark     ​
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