[lbo-talk] Language of Contempt

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 6/5/06, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> Luke Weiger wrote:
>
>
> >"2. From the perspective of reproductive success, there are obvious
> >advantages for women who have multiple partners: not all men are fertile,
> >more opportunities for support/food/protection, etc.  Again, this is well
> >documented in a number of primate species."
> >
> >Different primate species have different sexual predispositions.  One of the
> >"obvious [potential] advantages" you point to is just as obviously very
> >negligible.  What proportion of men between the ages of 15-35 are infertile
> >today?  1 in 10?  1 in 20?  In the EEA, the proportion would've been even
> >smaller.  When balanced against the costs of detection (e.g. partner
> >withdraws resources), it's unlikely that it would be in a woman's interest
> >to take on an additional partner solely to increase the odds of pregnancy.
> >
> >
> Luke demonstrates two things that drives me nuts about evolutionary
> psychology:
>
> 1.  Confident predictions about what life must have been like for humans
> hundreds of thousands of years ago in diverse environments.  We have
> absolutely no way of knowing whether or not male infertility was common
> in human prehistory.
> 2.  The naive assumption that there was one period of time (the EEA) in
> which human psychological traits "evolved".  Again, this reflects a
> gross misunderstanding of the theory of evolution: all species are
> always under selection pressure; the EEA on this planet has been since
> the first life forms developed to the present day.  In fact, we have
> pretty convincing evidence that many basic psychological and physical
> characteristics of humans are the products of evolutionary processes
> that predated homo sapiens (e.g., operant and classical conditioning).
> The period that evolutionary psychologists call the EEA is not the only
> period in which evolution shaped human characteristics.
>
> Miles

What's funny about "just-so" stories of origins of this, that, and
other things is that they are all elaborate attempts to avoid the
obvious explanation.  Q. What's the advantage of having multiple
partners?  A. It relieves tedium.
-- 
Yoshie
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