AlexSchell 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: MugaSofer 12 December 2012 11:06:04AM 0 points [-]

Yes, but evolution is stupid, so our sexual instincts are not very well-aimed. Rather, like much else of cognition, they are a bunch of hacks thrown together, which then require arbitrary patches like a cuteness response to solve problems like parental care. (Compare: if our decisionmaking were perfect, we should have accurate agency detection rather than hyperactive agency detection; if we could control our nonverbals well enough, we should have accurate rather than inflated estimates of our own attractiveness.)

But that wouldn't work as well. I, as a human, would like to be that way; it would still reduce my genetic fitness.