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NancyLebovitz comments on Is there evolutionary selection for female orgasms? - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: NancyLebovitz 13 October 2010 02:07PM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 14 October 2010 08:38:33PM 0 points [-]

It does look like some modest hints in the direction of heritability, but nothing as solid as stats on actual reproductive effect.

Comment author: timtyler 14 October 2010 08:55:35PM 1 point [-]

How about this one:

"Wealthy men give women more orgasms"

It seems as though the female orgasm still has something to do with selecting an appropriate mate.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 15 October 2010 10:23:10AM 0 points [-]

If it doesn't pay out in increased chances of reproduction (and that hasn't been proven), then it's not enough for a sound argument.

Comment author: timtyler 15 October 2010 07:55:06PM 1 point [-]

I haven't seen much evidence supporting the idea that it doesn't pay out.

The evidence for the adaptiveness of female orgasms may be relatively weak - but it seems much better than the evidence for the hypothesis that they are near-neutral - or exist by force of homology.

Comment author: orthonormal 15 October 2010 11:16:05PM 0 points [-]

It's evidence that female orgasm is doing something adaptive (and distinct from what it does in men), even if we don't know what. While it's good to be skeptical of particular ev-psych stories and to acknowledge the cases where we don't yet know the mechanism of causality (e.g. humans' musical sense), the presumption ought to be that complex adaptations rarely arise for no reason.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 16 October 2010 12:47:54AM 0 points [-]

Part of the hypothesis is that variations which give a significant advantage should be close to universal.

Comment author: Manfred 15 October 2010 07:42:10AM 0 points [-]

Wow, that's interesting.

Still, it doesn't look like it separates correlation from causation. All sorts of things might cause the partners of rich men to be more likely to have orgasms.