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Bikura comments on Open Thread, Jul. 20 - Jul. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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But how significant did the the male father role used to be among hunter-gatherers for a good upbringing of a child? If that task was for example shared between the group members (which I think I’ve read before it was) then it’s questionable whether there would be significant differences in knowing one’s genetic father or not. One hint that this might have been the default mode among hunter-gatherers is that monogamy is a minority marriage type among human cultures today 1 (meaning if polygamy was prevalent, it would have been difficult to ensure that all partners of an alpha male would remain faithful). I also think I’ve read that in many ingenious people, women are readily shared among the alpha males. Besides that, it seems that most things that have to do with reproduction considerations seem to be either on the physical attraction level or on a very high cognitive level (Are there enough resources for the upbringing? Is the the mother’s environment healthy?). Predetermined high-level stuff is memetically encoded rather than genetically (or it is just common sense our cognitive abilities enable us to have).
Edited for clarity. Please consider removing the downvote if it makes sense now to you.
Our (nearly) cavemen-optimized brains fear our children will starve or be eaten if we don't help them. Sexual jealousy is probably genetically encoded meaning lots of men want their mates to be exclusive to them. The following is pure speculation with absolutely no evidence behind it: but I wonder if a problem with open relationships involving couples planning on having kids is that the man might (for genetic reasons) care less for a child even if he knows with certainty that the child is theirs. A gene that caused a man to care more for children whose mothers were thought to be sexually exclusive with the man might increase reproductive fitness.
Yes, until recently it was impossible to know with certainty that the child was his.
And even today feminist organizations are doing their best to keep it that way. For example, they managed to criminalize paternity testing in France.
By that standard, sex is also criminalized in many countries -- after all, it's only legal if the participants consent.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of the French law, but your interpretation of facts seems a little... creative.
They criminalized it for the main purpose that one would need to use it for.
If the traditional male role involves making sure the pregnant or nursing woman does not starve, very.
Heh. How about among successful human cultures? :-D
See the link above; it's not clear that the food provider role of males was actually widely present in prehistoric people, and the upbringing of the children might have been predominantly a task carried out by the entire group, not by a father/mother family structure.
Not sure what causes your amusement. Isn't there still the possibility that this is memetics rather than genetics?
I don't see support of this statement in your linked text (which, by the way, dips into politically correct idiocy a bit too often for my liking).
I'm easily amused :-P
What exactly is "this"? Are you saying that there is no genetic basis for males to be attached to their offspring and any attachment one might observe is entirely cultural?
Here is the part I'm referring to: "Nor does the ethnographic record support the idea of sedentary women staying home with the kids and waiting for food to show up with the hubby. We know that women hunt in many cultures, and even if the division of labor means that they are the plant gatherers, they work hard and move around; note this picture (Zihlman 1981:92) of a !Kung woman on a gathering trip from camp, carrying the child and the bag of plants obtained and seven months pregnant! She is averaging many km per day in obtaining the needed resources."
Attachment to cute babies is clearly genetically predetermined, but I'm trying to argue that it's not clear at all that considerations whether or not to have sex are genetically determined by other things than physical attraction.
Yes, and how does it show that "it's not clear that the food provider role of males was actually widely present in prehistoric people"? The observation that women "work hard and move around" does not support the notion that they can feed themselves and their kids without any help from males.
I am not sure I understand. Are you saying that the only genetic imperative for males is to fuck anything that moves and that any constraints on that are solely cultural? That's not where you started. Your initial question was:
But not among individual humans, i.e., most men in polygynous cultures couldn't afford more than one wife.