181–190 of 207 posts
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Upvote for "The Selfish Gene". Should be mandatory for anyone interested in science and/or biology! A great eye opener about how evolution really works.
Definitely. And you shouldn't let the fact that it was written by Richard Dawkins scare you off if you have a negative opinion of him -- it has very little to do with his atheism.
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Adultery and murder have happened in just about every human society in the history of time but nobody thinks we shouldn't bother trying to suppress those impulses.
Am I the only one not seeing the adultery/murder connection here?
"Third Cousins Have Greatest Number Of Offspring, Data From Iceland Shows"
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207140855.h...
Not exactly what you'd expect given how often we see "hybrid vigor" touted as a purported benefit of interracial marriage.
The same is true of spouses, and in fact, the healthiest couples (or at least those with the most children) seem to be third or fourth cousins: "Third Cousins Have Greatest Number Of Offspring, Data From Iceland Shows" https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207140855.h... Not exactly what you'd expect given how often we see "hybrid vigor" touted as a purported benefit of interracial marriage.
The same is true of spouses, and in fact, the healthiest couples (or at least those with the most children) seem to be third or fourth cousins: "Third Cousins Have Greatest Number Of Offspring, Data From Iceland Shows" https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207140855.h... Not exactly what you'd expect given how often we see "hybrid vigor" touted as a purported benefit of interracial marriage.
I have anecdotally noticed this with tall people and short people, I will notice a group of friends who are all 6'2"+, or who are all <=5'7", both of which seem statistically unlikely. There are plenty of more diverse groups (in terms of height) but its hard to say whether they are work friends or something else where you have less overall choice.
A few possible explanations: * People who are statistical outliers tend to seek out similar outliers to form a support network. * People who are involved in activities in which their physical size is pertinent (e.g. dancers in the Rockettes) tend to befriend others in those activities. * If height affects success (whether or not that is warranted) and if friendships are stratified along success-based lines, then you…
and then studies happen and less normies take part in them.
This is interesting as I've typically made friends along lines of interest. I guess my next question would be are genetically similar people more likely to have similar interests. edit: corrected grammer
> I guess my next question would be are genetically people that have genetic similarities more likely to have similar interests. If that is the case, it would lead to the politically uncomfortable question of different genders or ethnic groups being more likely to have particular interests.
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> there's typically little meaningful distinction anyone would pick up on We don't know. At least I don't. But it would hugely surprise me if we are not constantly picking up on all sorts of subtle gene expressions. And this needs not in any way be a conscious process. Sophisticated ability to suss out degrees of relatedness would be a far too useful feature not to have been selected for again and again and again.
I have two thoughts there: 1. Surely very high intermarriage rates between different European ethnicities complicate that. 2. In that case, wouldn't the opposite behavior be expected? If the goal were to have as little genetic variation as possible humans would be better off reproducing asexually.
Very high intermarriage rates? Wherever did you pick up such an idea?
> In that case, wouldn't the opposite behavior be expected? If the goal were to have as little genetic variation as possible humans would be better off reproducing asexually
There is no 'goal'. And too little variation seems to be a universally bad idea. It is a simple, observablke fact that most of us stick to partners reminiscent of ourselves. We may argue about the reasons, but the thing itself is clear and obvious.
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It’s obvious that gender and genetics have an effect on interests. I doubt that anybody challenges that, and you can go talk about that without anyone raising an eyebrow. What is a problem is if you use that to justify discrimination. Just because members of a demographic are statistically different, it isn’t okay to treat individuals differently because they belong to a certain demographic. And that’s what people ar…
I don't mean to start a flame war here, but when you say: People don’t complain when you say: “A lot of the fastest marathon runners are from Kenia”. People will complain if you use that fact to justify an imbalance in your workforce: “Well, it’s obvious that we hire only people from Kenia since marathons show they are much faster!” This is precisely the point. If objectively they are better, why is it discrimination…