ChristianKl comments on When does heritable low fitness need to be explained? - Less Wrong

15 Post author: DanArmak 10 June 2015 12:05AM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 10 June 2015 09:13:02AM 1 point [-]

For obvious political and social reasons, it's hard to be sure how many people are homosexual.

Without defining exactly what you mean by homosexual the question of how many people are homosexual isn't very meaningful. Different definitions are going to give you different answers.

Comment author: DanArmak 10 June 2015 09:55:26AM 1 point [-]

We're interested in homosexuality that lowers fitness by making people not marry and not have children, in societies where same-sex couples are not accepted. A necessary condition is the lack of attraction to the opposite gender.

Comment author: ChristianKl 10 June 2015 10:01:58AM *  0 points [-]

What exactly does "lack of attraction to the opposite gender" mean? How do you measure it?

Why is this important? The standard political definition of homosexuality is about self identification and not about attraction.

Comment author: DanArmak 10 June 2015 10:23:09AM 2 points [-]

It's important because we're trying to make a definition of homosexuality-that-reduces-fitness. If fitness is not reduced, there is no need to explain evolution not reducing homosexuality rates.

Comment author: HungryHobo 10 June 2015 10:27:53AM 3 points [-]

It's not the political definition that anyone here is using. It's the meaningful one related to behavior.

Talking about the "political definition" is like turning up to a group of electrical engineers talking about "positive" charges and complaining that electrically charged things can give you shocks hence aren't very "positive"(political definition).

Comment author: ChristianKl 10 June 2015 01:06:46PM *  1 point [-]

It's not the political definition that anyone here is using. It's the meaningful one related to behavior.

There not a single one but multiple different ones that you can pick that relate to behavior. That's why when having a discussion like this it makes sense to explicitly define terms.

Comment author: DanArmak 10 June 2015 12:37:05PM *  1 point [-]

like turning up to a group of electrical engineers talking about "positive" charges and complaining that electrically charged things can give you shocks hence aren't very "positive"(political definition).

This reminds me that people do complain about a related issue.