Family Forum / Marriage / Divorce / August 2009

Ted wrote:

And it it won't be long after that its results are deemed legally
inadmissable.

That remains to be seen, as having the children of bad-boy short
termers is an *irrational* evolutionary strategy which has
perservered
through a successful history of evolutionary outcomes.

Pressures selected for this behavior, so (female pessimal)
'pressures'
will have to select against it.

Then, if you want to contribute something of value, please refrain
from arguing things of which you are demonstratedly ignorant - its
obnoxious(lending to parsimonious interpretations of 'trolling').

Uniformed, untested opinion(even if held as a 'social norm') is not
knowledge(for the purpose of inquiry).

'Love' could quite easily have evolved  as some kind of co-operative
altruist "glue" mechanism to cohere the evolutionary advantages of
paternal investment.

But this would not preclude the co-evolution of alternate, female
pessimal, strategies for enlisting fidelity.

No, what I'm saying is, that if males tended towards co-operation
more
than conflict(as you imply) than long term male strategists could
converge upon a strategic unanimity of infringing upon contrary
lattitudes in female sexual choice(strategic pluralism) which have
commonly hindered their selective value - this could be accomplished
both anonymously and passively.

Their inability to do this shows that competitive rigors(from a
greater dispersion of fitness optima) too frequently subverts male
co-
operation towards cryptic, opportunistic conflicts in short-term
goals
(sexual competition).

This follows from a relative function of dimorphic reproductive
interval, where longer female intervals(corresponding with
choosiness)
force males into expediently betraying each other for contested
evolutionary gains.

Thus, males will never be able to resolve this dimorphic dilemma,
as they are intrinsically entangled within it.

The crux of my argument has been from the beginning, that(with
supporting evidence) feminism was borne of an emergent problem in
unregulated eusocial prosperity(social welfare in
technological advancement following from increased organizational
complexities and economies of scale, if you will), where a selfish
replicator strategy found an invasion vector through unforseen
efficiencies where it could thrive.

So this whole, 'technological/economical' theme you appear to be
constructing as
a false dichotomy, is something I know well enough not to make.

You do realize that marriage traditions are rooted in a precursor of
female capture(where roving bands of unmated rogue males made off
with
'wives', after slaughtering the men).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptio

"The practice is surmised to have been common since anthropological
antiquity. In Neolithic Europe, excavation of the Linear Pottery
culture site at Asparn-Schletz , Austria,  the remains of numerous
slain victims were found. Among them, young adult females and
children
were clearly under-represented, suggesting that the attackers had
killed the men but abducted the nubile females.
Abduction of women is a common practice in warfare among tribal
societies, along with cattle raiding. In historical human migrations,
the tendency of mobile groups of invading males to abduct indigenous
females is reflected in the greater stability of Human mitochondrial
DNA haplogroups compared to Human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups. Case
in point, "Mitochondrial Eve" is estimated to be about twice as old
(140,000 years) as "Y-chromosomal Adam" (60,000 years)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_kidnapping

"Some modern cultures maintain a symbolic kidnapping of the bride by
the groom as part of the ritual and traditions surrounding a wedding,
in a nod to the practice of bride kidnapping which may have figured
in
that culture's history. According to some sources, the honeymoon  is
a
relic of marriage by capture, based on the practice of the husband
going into hiding with his wife to avoid reprisals from her
relatives,
with the intention that the woman would be pregnant by the end of the
month"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_Monogamy

"The amount of social monogamy in animals varies across taxa, with
over 90 percent of birds engaging in social monogamy but only 7
percent of mammals engaging in social monogamy."

"Polygynous males are often 1.5 to 2.0 times larger in size than
females. In monogamous species, on the other hand, males and females
have more equal access to mates, so there is little or no sexual
dimorphism in body size."

Neither do I think you appreciate that social monogamy was a recent
invention, born of a best response male strategy for *manipulating*
effective female availability, and thus mate security.

"Monogamy could be social but rarely genetic. Thierry Lodé  argued
that monogamy should result from conflict of interest between the
sexes called sexual conflict. Organized from territory defense and
mate guarding, monogamy appears as a response of male for the control
of female sexuality, but exclusive monogamy would be rare and the
biological evolution would privilege the diversity of sexual
behaviors."

Please try doing some actual research in the future before pulling
romantic notions out of your a.s to support your fancy.

The only one at issue, is the one I have already demonstrated as
poorly formed(and will
continue to do so).

Yes, its nonsense.

A meaningful interpretation of conflidence implies an expectation
based upon some history of prior outcomes.

Thus, to be meaningful, confidence in males must depend on some
unspecified condition *other* than confidence which effects those
outcomes.

So, merely stating that females prefer confident males is a perfectly
meaningless tautology, which must either speak to blind credulity, or
an unspoken agenda.

I further submit that this conclusion can only avoid a person who
cannot negotiate the rather simple feat of deduction it entails.

And I regret to say that such a person would appear to be you.

When you talk about a dominance hierarchy today, in terms of
selective
value, what you are really talking about is 'social proof/peer-
pressure' effects.

A striking analogy:

"Dugatkin & Godin (1998) compared peer pressure with instinctive bias
in female guppies who prefer the males with the most orange colour on
their bodies. They established that females did indeed prefer a male
with more orange than another male but then staged a copying
opportunity in which the test female observed another female
apparently choosing the less orange of a pair of males. They found
that when males differed by only small amounts of colour, a female
would be influenced by peer pressure, but when the males differed by
a
large amount of colour then the genetic biases held firm. In guppies
there is thus a colour threshold, below which social cues steer mate
choice, and above which genetic factors are more important."

- Dugatkin, L.A., & Godin, J-G.J. (1998). How females choose their
mates. Scientific American, April, 46 - 51.

In other words, there is a cutoff point, beyond which social proofs
cannot compensate for apriori sensory biases.

In order for signals to be honest/meaningful, and say something
about
fitness, they must focus selective pressures which are rigorous enough
to limit
a signal's frequencies and resists falsification.

This lends to the fact that it is infinitely less difficult to fake/
bluff social status than, say, physical stature, body composition, or
facial symmetry(etc, etc.).

Apriori sensory biases like those which identify certain *physical
Characters* are thus less falsifiable as honest signals which are not
only bounded by some
property of inheritence(which cues rigorous selection), but also
represent efficient/acute intervals of assessment that entail a
primacy of selective value - strongly indicated where the fitness of
human females(in the form of viable, survivable offspring) are no
longer beholden to direct/material mating benefits because the
welfare
state(eusocial prosperity run amok) has *broken* these dependencies.

No, we're not(see above).

Well, armies are a special case of  case of provisional male
unanimity... until you consider the other army(making for an assinine
example).

To females, 'good men' are the *complete package*(ie conditionally
dependent upon a rare combination of physical attractiveness and
socioeconomic status - a ubiquitous hollywood ideal that is rare in
nature, posing an imbalance in supply and demand).

That male socioeconomic status is a strong determinant of female
sexual choice(remember: we must differentiate sexual choice from mate
choice) is a popular misconception found in two related causes:

Honest miscommunication:  Males and females are generally seeking two
different things.

*All* Females are looking for(and even solipsistically expecting) the
'complete package'('Mr. Right'),  demanding both great looks *and*
high socioeconomic status such that one does not trade off against
the
other(an unrealistic ideal, given the rarity of such a male).

This is because females covet the highly visable courtship benefits
implied by such a male(which validates an inflated female sexual
value),
and thus females are not merely looking for sex(which they can
acquire
discreetly, and with negligible effort).

Males, on the other hand, are *always* looking for sex(given that
disparities in reproductive interval likewise imply differences  in
optimal mating rate), a bias that has been preserved through
stochastic fitness benefits(particularly from short term sexual
relationships/encounters).

Further, now that the welfare state prevails, maternal 'competencies'
are
less indicated as more of these burdens shift onto extended families
and welfare programs('relaxing' selection for such competencies).

Given this, honest miscommunications arise where sexual morphs
project their expectations onto the opposite sex(ie. females may
assume that male courtship is less strongly motivated by sexual
outcomes, since sex is so ludicrously easy for females themselves to
attain).

Intentional miscommunication:

Females may also be consciously manipulating a male ignorance/
credulity of female
motivations(by sending them conflicting/false signals as to their
desires and intentions), thereby making it easier for them to exploit
males for unconditional benefits(material courtship, et al), behind a
pretext of concealed motives which disarm male scrutiny(and thus
resists potential male counterstrategies).

Either way, this poses strategic outcomes where 'misguided'
competitive investments in males(ex. physically unattractive high
status males who errantly believe that improving their socioeconomic
status will reap sexual benefits) lure them into false(and thus
'insoluble') arenas of  competition where such investment is not
significantly indicated in differential success.

Such strategies are what I call 'Lek Baiting'(something that both
females and males can play against other credulous/sucker males).

We also know that before eusocial prosperity broke it's fitness
dependencies, male socioeconomic status enjoyed high selective value.

So, false media proofs romanticizing past status quo also promotes
misconceptions, but how much media miscommunication tends towards
the honest or intentional remains cryptic(and largely
irrelevant to the point I'm struggling to make).

Further consider the following points:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080213133337.htm

"For a month, the romantic lives of study participants were
scrutinized, including their prospects within and outside of a speed-
dating event.
What people(edit: *females*) said and did in choosing romantic
partners were two different matters.
"True to the stereotypes, the initial self-reports of male
participants indicated that they cared more than women about a
romantic partner's physical attractiveness, and the women in the
study
stated more than men that earning power was an aphrodisiac," said
Paul
Eastwick, lead author of the study and graduate student in psychology
in the Weinberg School of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern.
But in reality men and women were equally inspired by physical
attraction..."

In other words, women strategically *lie* about their preferences, so
those preferences can be less vulnerable to male scrutiny, and thus
potential counterstrategies in their subversion/manipulation
(suggesting that
characteristic female duplicity is an evolutionary strategy).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080320155237.htm

"Although women's selectivity across categories reflected how
attractive they appeared to other people, the researchers found the
characteristics men desired in a partner did not vary based on their
own physical attractiveness."

Thus, that female sexual choosiness significantly correlates their
own
mate value(thresholds of choice are more variable, consistent with
the
continuous function I alluded to earlier), while the same is *not*
observed in males, interestingly, agrees with a greater varience in
male fitness traits(suggestive of greater selective pressures acting
on
males).

http://www.jsecjournal.com/NEEPSfishercoxbennettgavric.pdf

"it is also interesting that women
believe their physical attractiveness (as defined by the looks
component in the factor
analysis) is related to their ability to find a mate for a short-term
sexual relationship,
although data from Kenrick et al. (1993) has established that men’s
standards are
significantly reduced when seeking sexual relationships. In fact,
women’s standards for
physically attractive mates significantly increase when they are
seeking a short-term
sexual relationship, which might suggest that they are unaware of
men’s views and
instead, are using their own standards.

As well, for neither sex did attractiveness correlate with current
income"

This further explains why female sexual choosiness is *increasing* as
information efficiency works over time to demonstrate to females just
how
sexually indiscriminant males are(observed in how the attractiveness
standards
of very young females actually increase with age).

If you triangulate these three points(such that two are in
support of one) you will reach(IMO) a plasubile interpretation
(assuming the information is correct and meaningful).

Which is:  Females are more choosy(which no one but female apologists
and victimologists would deny) *AND* that their *sexual choices*
(rermember:  this is differentiated from their *mate* choices) weight
most strongly for male *physical characters*.

And there you have it.

Again you are posing a false dichotomy.

The crux of my argument has been from the beginning, that(with
supporting evidence) feminism was borne of an emergent problem in
unregulated eusocial prosperity(social welfare in
technological advancement following from increased organizational
complexities and economies of scale), where a selfish
replicator strategy found an invasion vector through unforseen
efficiencies where it could thrive.

Since we are talking about the relative selective value of long term
vs. short term male fitness strategies, the frequency outcomes which
result from indicated selection pressures focusing upon their
epistatic
neighbourhoods is the only relevant observation.

So, it is all relative upon which strategy/trait group represents
greater epistatic fitness.

The conditional advantage of short term strategies is strongly
indicated by a body of *evidence* that while deemed impolitic to
explicate publicly, is tactfully skirted in academic circles as
commonly held assumptions.

Consider:

A fundamental assumption of all evolution-based human mating theories
is that mate preference and mating strategies evolved to solve either
the specific adaptive problems encountered by the ancestral
population
or the specific selection pressures that occurred in the environment
of evolutionary adaptiveness (Buss, 1994; Symons, 1979; Thornhill,
1997; Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). The reproductive success of ancestral
human females depended on their ability to evaluate potential mates'
willingness to invest in their offspring as well as their phenotipic
and genetic qualities. Human females invest heavily in reproduction
and in feeding, caring for, and raising their children. The
reproductive success of the female, therefore, would be greatly
enhanced if she could accurately assess the ability of her mate to
acquire resources and his willingness to divert those resources to
her
and her children and to protect her children. Mortality rates for
father-absent children are reported to be significantly higher than
those for two-parent children (Geary, 1998).

In addition, the reproductive success of females would depend on
their
ability to evaluate genetic quality of their potential mates. Mates
with higher genetic quality would give the gift of good health and
attributes desired by others. There are some facial and bodily
features that are reliable indicators of genetic quality of males.
One
such indicator is the degree of deviation from bilateral symmetry of
faces and bodies. Males with greater facial and body symmetry are
healthier and cope with emotional and physical stress more
effectively
than less-symmetrical males (Shackleford & Larson, 1997; Thornhill &
Moeller, 1997). Thus, ideally, females should mate with males who
control resources, direct such resources to their children, and
possess morphological features indicative of high genetic quality.

Such males, however, are limited in number. Furthermore, given
paternal uncertainty (fertilization being concealed) and risk for
cuckoldry and the fact that paternal care is beneficial but not
essential for offspring survival, high-genetic-quality males are able
to seek out short-term mating with many females instead of investing
in a long-term committed relationship. Symmetrical men report greater
numbers of sex partners and are reported to invest less in
relationships than nonsymmetrical men (Gangestad & Thornhill, 1997).
Attractive males with optimal WHR are also perceived to be less
faithful (Singh, 1995). As a result, females frequently encounter the
problem of trading off between male provisioning and their genetic
quality (Bellis & Baker, 1990; Cashdan, 1996; Emlen, 1995). Females
have evolved mechanisms to deal with trade-offs, as is evident from
the findings that ovulating women (when the probability for
conception
is high) more often than nonovulating women seek out extrapair
copulation (Baker, 1996) and prefer mates who exhibit highly
masculine
facial features indicative of testosterone for short-term
relationships (Johnston, Hagel, Franklin, Fink, & Grammer 2001). When
the possibility of conception is low (nonovulatory period), women
prefer mates with relatively feminine faces indicative of
prosociability, low aggression, and willingness to invest in
offspring
(Gangestad & Simpson, 2000)."

Now, what this shows, is that short term strategies enjoy an
evolutionary advantage due to the stochastic fitness effects of
increased sexual encounters at key times during the most fertile
stages of female ovulation.