Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Alicorn 22 February 2010 01:53AM

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Comment author: DanArmak 22 February 2010 12:15:44PM *  6 points [-]

That looks like just the evo-psych kind of reasoning Alicorn is warning against.

Compare: given 5000 species of mammals that are guaranteed to have many physical features in common with humans, shouldn't some happen to super-stimulate our sexual attraction just by chance? Why would mating choice be that much more strongly selected than baby nurturing behavior?

ETA: some good explanations for this difference have been proposed in the comments below:

  1. Only mating choice is subject to sexual selection, which is a powerful force. (Eliezer)
  2. Animals aren't deliberately trying to appear cute. But other humans are always trying to appear sexy. Therefore our sexual choice heuristics evolved to better eliminate false positives. (Me)
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 February 2010 08:10:28PM 8 points [-]

Actually, it makes perfect sense for sexual selection on sexual-attractiveness-features to be subject to far greater selection pressure and fine-tuning than baby-cuteness.

I'll make a testable prediction here: Cases of parental superstimulus (like baby ducks following a stick figure, infant monkeys getting attached to puppets, etc., if I'm remembering correctly) ought to be far more common / easier to fake than sexual superstimulus. I'll limit the key part of the prediction to complex vertebrates so that they have large enough brains to be complicated, but I wouldn't be surprised to find the rule more universal than that.