The main evolutionary function of sex for humans is obviously procreation. Yet our deep values regarding sex don’t seem to pay that much attention to info we have about if procreation is likely to actually happen in any given sex-related context. Consider our preferences regarding context for pornography, strip clubs, romance novels, and contraception. Oh our sex preferences do attend to cues that robustly correlated with procreation success for our distant ancestors. Such as the status of males and the youthfulness of females. But regarding kinds of context rare among our distant ancestors, our sex preferences seem drawn to the naive appearance of the possibility of successful sex, and neglect the more detailed context info that we have.
Perhaps there are social pressures that might prevent a woman or a man from wanting to engage in sex even if she feels evolutionary pressures to do so. 1000 years ago, if a woman wants to have sex before marriage, society gives her every reason in the world not to do so. Today, this kind of puritanical psychological restriction is not completely gone.
That, and women now have a path to status that is not related to how many children they have or what kind of children. They can get status through work, just like a man. Could that cause them to be fulfilled and thus reduce any evolutionary pressure to reproduce as soon as possible?
So there have been genetic changes which cause us to behave in the ways Robin has described when we experience high sugar consumption (and/or maybe other easily-detected signals which were status-correlated long enough to leave a genetic imprint)?
Maybe its easier signal. For millions of years sugar consumption signal high relative status very well, so its used as shortcut. In modern age, where sugar is cheap, everybody think they are high status.
Could it be that people try and demonstrate relative high status through (e.g., paternalism) b/c other, more direct signals of high status (e.g., look at my pay stub) would be less subtle and more socially objectionable? Discrete signals of asymmetrical info. Great post; thank you!
Great find, so there seems to be virtually no difference for more or less attractive women in that regard (x-axis is age). Does this in turn make your hypothesis also less likely? https://uploads.disquscdn.c...
Do more physically beautiful women also have children later? Attractiveness should be a stronger predictor for a woman having a shot at mating with a very high-status man. Of course this also interacts with declining attractiveness with age, but there still should be an effect, right?
But isn’t it the case that relative wealth tends to have much more impact than absolute wealth on human happiness and psychological well-being? If so, why would this be, if at a deep level we mistake one for the other?
Re: "The main evolutionary function of sex is obviously procreation". Nope. There are two main modern theories: protection against parasites (the red queen) and mutation repair. Sex is not needed for reproduction.
If we do neglect context at a fundamental level does that neglect go in both directions. If I can have virtual high status is that something I want and does it feel any different than actual high status. Instead of having a fake friendship with high status people what if I was treated as high status by fake people. If a virtual world were created whose whole reason for being was to affirm that I was relatively high status would that be a good thing. Would it solve my desires for variety and paternalism. Could they be satiated in this virtual world? If they were would I behave differently outside of it. Are queens more or less promiscus than queens in waiting? Are sports stars moral scolds amongst each other. This world may not even need to be of high quality. Imagine having thousands of twitter followers,facebook friends, etc who interact with you as though you are the highest status person they want to affilate but are only software. Perhaps the software could be drawn from how fans interact with celebrities.
It is probably obvious, but the sentence in question has subsequently been edited.
Perhaps there are social pressures that might prevent a woman or a man from wanting to engage in sex even if she feels evolutionary pressures to do so. 1000 years ago, if a woman wants to have sex before marriage, society gives her every reason in the world not to do so. Today, this kind of puritanical psychological restriction is not completely gone.
That, and women now have a path to status that is not related to how many children they have or what kind of children. They can get status through work, just like a man. Could that cause them to be fulfilled and thus reduce any evolutionary pressure to reproduce as soon as possible?
So there have been genetic changes which cause us to behave in the ways Robin has described when we experience high sugar consumption (and/or maybe other easily-detected signals which were status-correlated long enough to leave a genetic imprint)?
It seems queens and kings would be in a better position to engage in rentseeking activity with long term positive effects
Maybe its easier signal. For millions of years sugar consumption signal high relative status very well, so its used as shortcut. In modern age, where sugar is cheap, everybody think they are high status.
Could it be that people try and demonstrate relative high status through (e.g., paternalism) b/c other, more direct signals of high status (e.g., look at my pay stub) would be less subtle and more socially objectionable? Discrete signals of asymmetrical info. Great post; thank you!
Making new unusual choices can make sense for the high status, if they can use this as a way to show that they are leaders.
Is that why Trump and Sanders have such unusual hair?
Did Queens have more surviving great grandchildren even if they delayed procreation in order to invest in status markers?
Great find, so there seems to be virtually no difference for more or less attractive women in that regard (x-axis is age). Does this in turn make your hypothesis also less likely? https://uploads.disquscdn.c...
Some data: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...
I'm obviously talking about human behaviors related to sex, not about why humans use a sexual form of reproduction.
Do more physically beautiful women also have children later? Attractiveness should be a stronger predictor for a woman having a shot at mating with a very high-status man. Of course this also interacts with declining attractiveness with age, but there still should be an effect, right?
But isn’t it the case that relative wealth tends to have much more impact than absolute wealth on human happiness and psychological well-being? If so, why would this be, if at a deep level we mistake one for the other?
OTOH, we don't see more adaptive behaviors from people who think of themselves as low status.
Re: "The main evolutionary function of sex is obviously procreation". Nope. There are two main modern theories: protection against parasites (the red queen) and mutation repair. Sex is not needed for reproduction.
If we do neglect context at a fundamental level does that neglect go in both directions. If I can have virtual high status is that something I want and does it feel any different than actual high status. Instead of having a fake friendship with high status people what if I was treated as high status by fake people. If a virtual world were created whose whole reason for being was to affirm that I was relatively high status would that be a good thing. Would it solve my desires for variety and paternalism. Could they be satiated in this virtual world? If they were would I behave differently outside of it. Are queens more or less promiscus than queens in waiting? Are sports stars moral scolds amongst each other. This world may not even need to be of high quality. Imagine having thousands of twitter followers,facebook friends, etc who interact with you as though you are the highest status person they want to affilate but are only software. Perhaps the software could be drawn from how fans interact with celebrities.