31–40 of 69 posts
This is the old theory that the nobility domesticated peasants while the peasants were domesticating animals.
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>> It's the idea that less aggressive individual were naturally selected, partly via sexual selection of the males by the females, partly by pruning of the most violent individuals by the whole group. Not buying the notion of females selecting more docile males. Women almost unversally tend to be attracted to alpha male characteristics and often get into trouble chasing that type of guy. The ones who want more docile…
The thing is that if you are an established "alpha male" either in the hierarchical sense or in the sense that you are self-sufficient, there is little need to engage in intra-group aggression, and in fact that would likely be detrimental as others are more likely to want to strip you of leadership roles if you are violent to them. So it's quite possible (but uncertain) that women are attracted to dominance and leade…
The tribal and clan-based politics of most of human history would seem to disagree with you. It's only relatively recently, post Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, that "alpha-male status" wasn't often established or leadership imposed directly through violence, albeit mediated through some kind of "code of honor" which usually only applied amongst nobles.
Look at classical literature. Who are the heroes? Often not merely poets, scholars or subtle artisans - but the men who carve their name out of the world in blood, the soldiers and warrior-kings.
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I see that theory about female selection being pushed a lot lately, but it's a fairly easily debunked theory. Female selection didn't occur in human society. Females didn't get to choose who they married. Rather it was the men who decided which females marry which male. Also, there is far less diversity in the Y chromosome than the X. The best possible explanation is during ancient tribal war, the winning side killed…
I think you missed a very important detail: Everything you wrote talks in terms of groups. There's a cutoff level of aggression past which individuals wouldn't be able to function as a group. Evolution doesn't work in terms of positively selecting the "strong", it works by selecting out the "weak". In this case, the point isn't that we positively selected the most peaceful. Instead, we selected out those so violent t…
Now we may have refined it and grown it to form tribe of tribes, but the point still stands.
When it comes to humans, we have to talk in terms of groups because that's the human experience. Humans don't exist outside of a group. Humans never have existed outside of a group. The "group" is what we inherited from our non-human ancestors.
Also, my point isn't that we selected the most peaceful. It's that female selection isn't the drive force behind human "evolution" or the human "taming". Humans were tamed through sheer brutality and concentrated power along with bread and circuses.
Take away the bread and circuses and loosen the concentration of power and I doubt we'd be as tame as we are now.
Funny, Freud suggested something very similar in _Totem and Taboo_, and faced a lot of ridicule for it. Would be interesting if he were finally vindicated to some extent.
WWI and WII basically selected to kill off Europe's bravest and most nationalistic men, those who immediately signed up to fight and were thrown in the meat grinder.
I'm partly convinced that's why America is so different from Europe, we managed to avoid most of the carnage of those wars
Funny, Freud suggested something very similar in _Totem and Taboo_, and faced a lot of ridicule for it. Would be interesting if he were finally vindicated to some extent.
Common sense would tell you there's some truth to it. For centuries we killed murderers and rapists and thus removed them from the gene pool. Data shows testosterone levels, which are correlated with violence, have dropped massively over the last few decades, whether that is genetic or environmental and to what extent for each is up for debate WWI and WII basically selected to kill off Europe's bravest and most natio…
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What is the effect of males selecting for docile females on future sons and daughters? Or do you believe that males aren't discriminating?
>> What is the effect of males selecting for docile females on future sons and daughters? Or do you believe that males aren't discriminating? What makes you think males get to select a mate? And who deliberately goes for a docile female?
We're not talking about insects, or birds, we're talking about human beings. Humans don't select mates, we select partners with whom we may or may not mate, and the process of selection is social, mutual and complex.
New? This was part of the philosophy in Fight Club. I remember hearing Chuck Palahniuk talk about it. Ted Kaczynski (of all people) believed humans had domesticated ourselves. I'm not sure what to make of an article that boldly claims "Wrangham grapples fully for the first time" with a theory older than I am. Certainly the author of the article didn't do his homework. Perhaps in the book the author acknowledges he di…
From TFA: “In fact, Wrangham’s notion of human evolution powered by self-domestication has an ancient lineage: The basic idea was first proposed by a disciple of Aristotle’s named Theophrastus and has been debated several times since the 18th century. This latest version, too, is bound to provoke controversy, but that’s what bold theorizing is supposed to do.“
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In my reading of the TFA, it's not. It's the idea that less aggressive individual were naturally selected, partly via sexual selection of the males by the females, partly by pruning of the most violent individuals by the whole group. Nothing to do with the domestication of one group by another.
I see that theory about female selection being pushed a lot lately, but it's a fairly easily debunked theory. Female selection didn't occur in human society. Females didn't get to choose who they married. Rather it was the men who decided which females marry which male. Also, there is far less diversity in the Y chromosome than the X. The best possible explanation is during ancient tribal war, the winning side killed…
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None of what you wrote debunks female selection theory.
If females don't get to choose who they mate with and breed with, how would female selection theory work? If tribe A conquers tribe B and kills all the males in tribe B and breeds with all the females in tribe B, how exactly is female selection involved here? Or even if the males in tribe B weren't killed but all the resources were taken by males in tribe A, where does female selection apply?
This doesn't invalidate literally hundreds of other possibilities where it could exist. Are you really serious about this right now? Do you not see flaws in the argument you constructed?
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None of what you wrote debunks female selection theory.
If females don't get to choose who they mate with and breed with, how would female selection theory work? If tribe A conquers tribe B and kills all the males in tribe B and breeds with all the females in tribe B, how exactly is female selection involved here? Or even if the males in tribe B weren't killed but all the resources were taken by males in tribe A, where does female selection apply?
The war scenario and arranged marriage mix things (which is one of the reasons what you say is interesting) but I don't think it's so black and white.