aberglas comments on Natural selection defeats the orthogonality thesis - Less Wrong

-13 Post author: aberglas 29 September 2014 08:52AM

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Comment author: aberglas 29 September 2014 11:45:25PM 1 point [-]

Humans are definitely a result of natural selection, but it does not seem to be difficult at all to find goals of ours that do not serve the goal of survival or reproduction at all.

I challenge you to find one.

We put a lot of effort into our children. We work in tribes and therefor like to work with people that support us and ostracize those that are seen to be unhelpful. So we ourselves need to be helpful and to be seen to be helpful.

We help our children, family, tribe, and general community in that genetic order.

We like to dance. It is the traditional way to attract a mate.

We have a strong sense of moral value because people that have that strong sense obey the rules and so are more likely to fit in and be able to have grandchildren.

Comment author: Caspar42 30 September 2014 01:06:38PM 1 point [-]

I challenge you to find one.

One particular example of those "evolutionary accidents / coincidences", is homosexuality in males. Here are two studies claiming that homosexuality in males correlates with fecundity in female maternal relatives:

Ciani, Iemmola, Blecher: Genetic factors increase fecundity in female maternal relatives of bisexual men as in homosexuals.

Iemmola, Ciani: New evidence of genetic factors influencing sexual orientation in men: female fecundity increase in the maternal line.

So, appear to be some genetic factors that prevail, because they make women more fecund. Coincidentally, they also make men homosexual, which is both an obstacle to reproduction and survival (not only due to the homophobia of other's but also STDs. I presume, that especially our (human) genetic material is full of such coincidences, because the lack of them (i.e. the thesis that all genetic factors that prevail in evolutionary processes only lead to higher reproduction and survival rates and nothing else) seems very unlikely.

Comment author: aberglas 30 September 2014 11:31:05PM 1 point [-]

Interesting point about fecudity.

Perhaps the weakness of evolutionary thought is that it can explain just about anything. In particular organisms are not perfect, and therefor will have features that do not really help them. But mostly they are well adapted.

The reason that homosexuality is an obstacle to survival is not homophobia or STDs, but rather that they simply may not have children. It is the survival of the genes that counts in the long run. But until recently homosexuals tended to suppress their feelings and so married and had children anyway, hence there being little pressure to suppress it.