Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

[Darth Wong]

It's amazing how the unscientific mindset can manifest itself even among people who parade around pretending to have the opposite frame of mind.

This was an EXCERPT from a larger source. Do I know for certain that this larger source backed up its claims with sound science? No, I can't say that without reading it, which I would like to do sometime (unlike a lot of you fuckers, who apparently think that you judge scientific research by the coffee-table summary).

What I can say is that all of the objections raised to this article in this thread are of the same exaggeration-strawman and "if that's true, then why isn't <bogus prediction> true" variety that dominate creationist and anti-global warming diatribes on conservative websites across the Internet.

[Spoonist]

I think that a lot of the posters here are missing the point: these are supposed to be indications of human nature, not universal human absolute truths. Just because we have biological instincts, as DW points out in his second post, doesn't mean that every action we take is necessarily ruled by this instinct.

I'm not trying to say that everything in the OP is the gospel -- I'm far too ignorant of the subject matter to make such a statement -- but saying that these "truths" are disproved because you don't like blondes, for example, tells me that the point has sailed over your head.

So you defend the author's opinions by claiming to be ignorant???
Now if the author of that article then had produced such "indications of human nature" it would have been interesting. Instead it is unfounded opinions labeled as "truths". Instead of a factual basis the author provides arguments and speculation. This is not science, this is tabloidworthy material. Appeal to popular opinion and disguise it as "politically incorrect" as if it was being suppressed not for being stupid but for being on the wrong side of correctness. The mistake the author makes is that he takes a factoid, then puts speculation to the factoid as if that makes the speculation factual as well. This is a fallacy.

Just to point out the flaws I'll give you the same list but just keep the truths.
1) Humans prefer youth, or perceived youthful traits = factoid based on observation and research
1) Men have a universal preference for women with a low waist-to-hip ratio = factoid based on research
1) 15th century italians died their hair blond = factoid based on archeological finds
1) Men like blond bombshells = baseless speculation promoted by the authors own cultural preference easily proven false
2) Primates show a correlation between male vs female size and polygyny = factoid based on observation
2) Women tend to be attracted to power/wealth = factoid based on observation
2) Humans are naturally polygamous = unfounded speculation, instead observation dictates that culture is stronger than nature
3) If the option is harm (starving) women benefit from polygyny = true in context
3) If the option is no reproduction men benefit from monogamy = true in context
3) Most women benefit from polygyny = stupid speculation based on faulty data/reasoning, can only be true in a given context
3) Most men benefit from monogamy = stupid speculation based on faulty data/reasoning, can only be true in a given context
4) There are muslim suicide bombers = fact
4) Inequality leads to violence/abuse = fact
4) Most suicide bombers are Muslim = false on so many levels that its not even funny
5) A study of US census shows correlation between divorce rates and # of female offspring = factoid based on study
5) Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce = false speculation, only true in bad context, the study shows that a mix of gender in offspring is best
6) Testosterone has high impact on male reproductive ability = fact
6) There is correlation between testosterone level in the mother and bigger chance for female offspring = factoid based on research
6) There is correlation between wealth and child survivability = fact
6) Beautiful people have more daughters = true in context of 1 ctritisized study
6) wealthy parents of high status have more sons, while poor parents of low status have more daughters = Trivers-Willards hypothesis is highly debatable since there is no conclusive data to show this, the studies refered to is most probably Kanazawa's which are critized for using selective data and being highly subjective
7) Testosterone has high correlation to male risk behaviour = factoid based on research
7) (Author doesn't even make a claim here, instead gives pure speculation and conjecture, but it seems that occam's razor hasn't even crossed his mind)
8] male midlife crisis is a myth = false, it is a description for a social cultural state of mind, hence it is true in its own context
8] Male midlife crisis is caused by female partners menopause = stupid speculation, any crisis in the relationship can trigger a midlife crisis
9) Power can increase your chances of getting sexual proposals = factoid based on observation
9) Availability increases the risk of infidelity = factoid based on observation
9) It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair = huh? it might be human nature and common to boot, but that is not what the word "natural" implies in this context, neither does it merit any news status unless you are writing for a tabloid
10) males tend to be more interested in casual sex than females = factoid based on observation, but less true in western civilization as time progresses
10) Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist = does not compute, this can only be true in the context of all men being bisexual, this is simply put there for chock value, the logic behind this is totally flawed, opportunity gives a higher risk so the casuality is false, then the dig at feminism is unfounded since sexual harassment is more prevalent when the offender(s) are in a position of power regardless of sex

So to sum it up, the author is full of shit and he knows it, because the article is written for chock value not to show any scientific conclusions.

[Darth Wong]

So to sum it up, the author is full of shit and he knows it, because the article is written for chock value not to show any scientific conclusions.

You're a fucking moron. The article states right up-front that it's merely an excerpt, and that the actual documentation is elsewhere. This is like saying that a news article on global warming is based on bogus science because it doesn't show the science itself, and merely references a source that does. And saying that its conclusions are "for shock value" is a glaringly obvious Appeal to Motive fallacy, genius.

If you read the abstract for a scientific paper by itself, would you deride it as failing to back up its conclusions even though it is merely an excerpt of a larger whole? Now if the whole article is bogus that's another thing, but what you're doing is bullshit.

[Zixinus]

But what point exactly? Blonde hair is one of the rarest hair colours in the world; why would that be if it is so attractive?

Exactly because its rare. Blondes stand out when everyone else has raven hair. In a community or society where blonde is norm, raven hair would be considered beautiful.
Since it was already pointed out that the author as a European bias or an USAian bias, and I recall that there are fewer blondes there, it is somewhat reasonable (but not logical or absolute) to say that men prefer blondes, because blondes stand out.

Here is an idea for a bullshit experiment: take a bunch of single collage students and put them into three groups: one hair colour is kept natural, one where its dyed blonde and one that is dyed blue. Record their dating successes. See what happens. I'm willing to bet that the people with blue hair will receive allot more attention.

[Akhlut]

It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe, probably as an alternative means for women to advertise their youth, as their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing.

Which totaly does NOT explain Inuits or Siberian folks. Or the original Tasmanians, who were pretty damn dark skinned and lived much further into the temperate zone than most folks north of the equator realize.

From what I've heard, it has to do with some sort of necessary vitamin that requires sunlight to be produced, but that can also be had from fish, which is why, say, Asians and descendents of Asians (Siberians, Eskimos, Inuits, other northerly Native Americans) have darker skin than Europeans. I think it may have been folic acid, but I could be wrong.

Also, there is no objective evidence that blond hair evolved in Sandanavia, or that those who are currently living there are representative of those who were there 5,000 year ago. Unless you prove that the current inhabitants of Sandanavia both evolved blond hair (rather than it diffusing into their population from another, such as the Norse Vikings bringing red hair to the British Isles), and have been in their present location since prior to that development the statement is speculation, not science, and is on the level of a "just-so" story.

This article from the Times Online talks a bit about the appearance of unusual hair colorations in Europe appearing about 11,000 years ago.

Unfortunately, the journal itself requires a subscription, so I couldn't look at the article to see what they did to determine the origination of blonde hair, though, it seems pretty legit from what I've seen thus far.

Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times.

It also has to do with fewer men dying young in wars and raids. Another trait of polygamous societies is warfare (as pointed out elsewhere) which can drop the man side of the gender ratio to the point where men must have multiple wives to ensure as many women of reproductive age as possible have as many children as possible.

Very true, that. In some of the few surviving hunter-gatherer societies on earth, their deaths by warfare and homicide can reach something absurd like 50%.

[Dooey Jo]

What I can say is that all of the objections raised to this article in this thread are of the same exaggeration-strawman and "if that's true, then why isn't <bogus prediction> true" variety that dominate creationist and anti-global warming diatribes on conservative websites across the Internet.

How is it a bogus prediction that populations in similar conditions should exhibit similar traits? It is their own prediction! They even say that "this is why there are many blondes in Scandinavia", as if to mean that their prediction is true. But this prediction matches only Scandinavia and northern Europe (and even then, only parts of it; I think the Sami people of northern Scandinavia have a lower occurrence of blondes), it falls flat everywhere else, even in Japan and East Asia, where the people generally have less skin pigmentation.

Maybe we shouldn't jump the gun on this book before it is published, but apart from baseless speculation (which could be supported in the book), this article also contain actual falsehoods (maybe they're corrected in the book, but then I can only argue against the article, which is the only source of information we have here, and I see no reason to assume that this will be corrected), such that blonde women turn into brunettes as they grow old, which is not true, unless, as I (and Broomstick) said, they actually meant to say young girls (and boys). I think that is reason enough to cast the whole thing into doubt...

Here is an idea for a bullshit experiment: take a bunch of single collage students and put them into three groups: one hair colour is kept natural, one where its dyed blonde and one that is dyed blue. Record their dating successes. See what happens. I'm willing to bet that the people with blue hair will receive allot more attention.

That may be another explanation, but it also has a strong cultural aspect. For instance, if one of the groups shaved their heads, they would very much stand out, but probably not get much attention, likewise if they dressed up as emos. Personally, I don't see what's so horrible about the idea that most human behaviour, and maybe even some instincts, are learned (that is after all what the human brain is extraordinarily good at doing), and thus due to cultural evolution, rather than natural selection (which would also require a huge amount of genetic changes, which I suppose we could look for).

From what I've heard, it has to do with some sort of necessary vitamin that requires sunlight to be produced, but that can also be had from fish, which is why, say, Asians and descendents of Asians (Siberians, Eskimos, Inuits, other northerly Native Americans) have darker skin than Europeans. I think it may have been folic acid, but I could be wrong.

You're thinking of Vitamin D, which can indeed be sustained from certain fish (and most famously, fish liver oil). Is there a causative relationship between skin and hair colour though?

[SCRawl]

I think that a lot of the posters here are missing the point: these are supposed to be indications of human nature, not universal human absolute truths. Just because we have biological instincts, as DW points out in his second post, doesn't mean that every action we take is necessarily ruled by this instinct.

I'm not trying to say that everything in the OP is the gospel -- I'm far too ignorant of the subject matter to make such a statement -- but saying that these "truths" are disproved because you don't like blondes, for example, tells me that the point has sailed over your head.

So you defend the author's opinions by claiming to be ignorant???

I can see that reading comprehension is just a hobby for you. I'll try again.

You see, I'm not defending the article in the OP. I'm not. I said that I don't know enough about the subject matter to say so either way. What I *am* saying is that I won't reject their positions out of hand, as you and others have, because you have simplistic objections to them. It's as though, by reading the OP you've become an expert in their field, qualified to dismiss their arguments. I suppose it's possible that you are an expert in their field, but I'm finding it easy to doubt that that's true. Call it a hunch.

[Turin]

From what I've heard, it has to do with some sort of necessary vitamin that requires sunlight to be produced, but that can also be had from fish, which is why, say, Asians and descendents of Asians (Siberians, Eskimos, Inuits, other northerly Native Americans) have darker skin than Europeans. I think it may have been folic acid, but I could be wrong.

You're thinking of Vitamin D, which can indeed be sustained from certain fish (and most famously, fish liver oil). Is there a causative relationship between skin and hair colour though?

Both folic acid and Vitamin D (subscription required) play an evolutionary role in skin color. Vitamin D requires sunlight to be produced. Folic acid production, vitally important to successful pregnancy, is harmed by sunlight. The balance between these two results in the range of skin colors we see on earth, with the exception of a) groups which gain vitamin D from external sources such as fish, and b) groups which have migrated to their particular region in relatively recent history -- the last couple thousand years.

[General Zod]

I can see that reading comprehension is just a hobby for you. I'll try again.

You see, I'm not defending the article in the OP. I'm not. I said that I don't know enough about the subject matter to say so either way. What I *am* saying is that I won't reject their positions out of hand, as you and others have, because you have simplistic objections to them. It's as though, by reading the OP you've become an expert in their field, qualified to dismiss their arguments. I suppose it's possible that you are an expert in their field, but I'm finding it easy to doubt that that's true. Call it a hunch.

If you're not qualified enough to defend or reject the op one way or another as you're claiming, then how can you possibly be qualified to determine whether or not someone's objections to the OP have merit? As opposed to being "simplistic" as you're saying they are?

[SCRawl]

I can see that reading comprehension is just a hobby for you. I'll try again.

You see, I'm not defending the article in the OP. I'm not. I said that I don't know enough about the subject matter to say so either way. What I *am* saying is that I won't reject their positions out of hand, as you and others have, because you have simplistic objections to them. It's as though, by reading the OP you've become an expert in their field, qualified to dismiss their arguments. I suppose it's possible that you are an expert in their field, but I'm finding it easy to doubt that that's true. Call it a hunch.

If you're not qualified enough to defend or reject the op one way or another as you're claiming, then how can you possibly be qualified to determine whether or not someone's objections to the OP have merit? As opposed to being "simplistic" as you're saying they are?

The problem I have with the better part of the objections here follows this pattern: "I think blondes are ugly, so the idea that we are instinctively drawn to them is complete bullshit". You can substitute for the blondes argument, as others have. This is a simplistic refutation because the article quoted in the OP doesn't state that every man is attracted to blonde women: it states that human men are instinctively attracted to them. There's this whole disconnect that seems to be causing this confusion: we have other things that affect our behaviour besides basic instinct. Just because we aren't led around exclusively by our instinct doesn't change what that instinct is. Am I the one to say that the OP is wrong? Of course not, since I'm not an authority on human instinct aside from my own observations. It's entirely possible that the entire article is complete bullshit, but the argument pattern I mentioned says nothing at all about it.

[General Zod]

The problem I have with the better part of the objections here follows this pattern: "I think blondes are ugly, so the idea that we are instinctively drawn to them is complete bullshit". You can substitute for the blondes argument, as others have. This is a simplistic refutation because the article quoted in the OP doesn't state that every man is attracted to blonde women: it states that human men are instinctively attracted to them. There's this whole disconnect that seems to be causing this confusion: we have other things that affect our behaviour besides basic instinct. Just because we aren't led around exclusively by our instinct doesn't change what that instinct is. Am I the one to say that the OP is wrong? Of course not, since I'm not an authority on human instinct aside from my own observations. It's entirely possible that the entire article is complete bullshit, but the argument pattern I mentioned says nothing at all about it.

Or it could just be that the article is making sweeping generalizations in some instances, which is a logical fallacy easily disproven by showing several exceptions to the rule.

[Tahlan]

So to sum it up, the author is full of shit and he knows it, because the article is written for chock value not to show any scientific conclusions.

You're a fucking moron. The article states right up-front that it's merely an excerpt, and that the actual documentation is elsewhere. This is like saying that a news article on global warming is based on bogus science because it doesn't show the science itself, and merely references a source that does. And saying that its conclusions are "for shock value" is a glaringly obvious Appeal to Motive fallacy, genius.

If you read the abstract for a scientific paper by itself, would you deride it as failing to back up its conclusions even though it is merely an excerpt of a larger whole? Now if the whole article is bogus that's another thing, but what you're doing is bullshit.

DW beat me to it. Spoonist is mentally deficient. You, Spoonist, accuse the author of the article of spouting undocumented and unsupported facts, when you do the same thing when you say something is a fact, a factoid, or that it's crap. So where is your proof?

[Dominus Atheos]

This was an EXCERPT from a larger source. Do I know for certain that this larger source backed up its claims with sound science? No, I can't say that without reading it, which I would like to do sometime (unlike a lot of you fuckers, who apparently think that you judge scientific research by the coffee-table summary).

If you're really interested, one of the authors published a paper on the Muslim suicide bombers truth, and the Beautiful People Have More Daughters truth.

Linky 1

Linky 2

[Darth Wong]

How is it a bogus prediction that populations in similar conditions should exhibit similar traits? It is their own prediction! They even say that "this is why there are many blondes in Scandinavia", as if to mean that their prediction is true. But this prediction matches only Scandinavia and northern Europe (and even then, only parts of it; I think the Sami people of northern Scandinavia have a lower occurrence of blondes), it falls flat everywhere else, even in Japan and East Asia, where the people generally have less skin pigmentation.

And you studied the actual thesis in its original form in order to determine that it makes this prediction as you describe?

Maybe we shouldn't jump the gun on this book before it is published, but apart from baseless speculation (which could be supported in the book), this article also contain actual falsehoods (maybe they're corrected in the book, but then I can only argue against the article, which is the only source of information we have here, and I see no reason to assume that this will be corrected), such that blonde women turn into brunettes as they grow old, which is not true, unless, as I (and Broomstick) said, they actually meant to say young girls (and boys). I think that is reason enough to cast the whole thing into doubt...

Yes, that's right, you can "throw it into doubt" without knowing ANYTHING at all about its methodology

[Broomstick]

From what I've heard, it has to do with some sort of necessary vitamin that requires sunlight to be produced, but that can also be had from fish, which is why, say, Asians and descendents of Asians (Siberians, Eskimos, Inuits, other northerly Native Americans) have darker skin than Europeans. I think it may have been folic acid, but I could be wrong.

You're thinking of Vitamin D, which can indeed be sustained from certain fish (and most famously, fish liver oil). Is there a causative relationship between skin and hair colour though?

Both folic acid and Vitamin D (subscription required) play an evolutionary role in skin color. Vitamin D requires sunlight to be produced. Folic acid production, vitally important to successful pregnancy, is harmed by sunlight. The balance between these two results in the range of skin colors we see on earth, with the exception of a) groups which gain vitamin D from external sources such as fish, and b) groups which have migrated to their particular region in relatively recent history -- the last couple thousand years.

Which still does not explain the original Tasmanians who lived far enough south that they "should" have had pale skin by that theory, unless of recent arrival or having a lot of fish in their diet. Archaeological evidence indicates that the aboriginal Tasmanians arrived slightly later than the original Australians - something like 30,000-40,000 years ago. They were cut off from all other peoples at least 10,000 years ago, meaning they were in place much longer than either the Sandanavians or the Inuit or any other significantly temperate-zone peoples. And they ate little or no fish, because they had lost fishing technology millenia ago. (In fact, as incredible as it may seem, they had even less material techonology than the indigenous Australians did.) The point being, the were very dark skinned, did not have a lot of vitamin D in their diet, and lived at a lattitude where others had lost considerable skin color.

Of course, it may be as simple as seeing a very dark skin as beautiful and the trait was maintained wholly by sexual selection. But that would mess up the "pale skin preferred" hypothesis.

[Turin]

Which still does not explain the original Tasmanians who lived far enough south that they "should" have had pale skin by that theory, unless of recent arrival or having a lot of fish in their diet.
<snip>
Of course, it may be as simple as seeing a very dark skin as beautiful and the trait was maintained wholly by sexual selection. But that would mess up the "pale skin preferred" hypothesis.

The "pale skin preferred" hypothesis falls apart under the evidence, however (and the Tasmanians are a documented exception to it). This article (PDF warning) documents the long-standing observation that women tend to be lighter than men.

The documentation of lighter skin in females than in males for all populations raises a serious question concerning the validity of the hypothesis that human skin coloration is in large part determined by sexual selection (Diamond, 1988, 1991). Were this so, one would have to postulate that there was a universal preference of males for females slightly lighter than themselves, even in populations purported to prefer dark skin (e.g., Tasmanians; Diamond, 1988, 1991). Avoidance of the sun by females is practiced in some cultures and is probably maintained as a custom in those cultures in part by mate choice. It is unlikely, however, that this acquired custom would have any effect on constitutive pigmentation through time unless inherently more lightly pigmented females who also avoided the sun were more reproductively successful than more darkly pigmented females who followed the same practice. We suggest that lighter pigmentation in human females began as a trait directly tied to increased fitness and was subsequently reinforced and enhanced in many human populations by sexual selection.

[Dooey Jo]

And you studied the actual thesis in its original form in order to determine that it makes this prediction as you describe?

I did not, but based on the information we do have about it, would you say that it is a very unreasonable assumption?

Yes, that's right, you can "throw it into doubt" without knowing ANYTHING at all about its methodology

We do know that they use (and apparently base whole ideas on) incorrect facts; is that not a typical result of shitty methodology?

[Darth Wong]

And you studied the actual thesis in its original form in order to determine that it makes this prediction as you describe?

I did not, but based on the information we do have about it, would you say that it is a very unreasonable assumption?

Yes. In order to generate a prediction from a theory, you have to understand the mechanism of the theory. What you're doing is looking at one prediction of the theory, assuming other predictions from that prediction without finding out more information about the underlying mechanism, and then declaring that you've disproven it. That is PRECISELY what creationists do with evolution.

Yes, that's right, you can "throw it into doubt" without knowing ANYTHING at all about its methodology

We do know that they use (and apparently base whole ideas on) incorrect facts; is that not a typical result of shitty methodology?

The fact that something is not necessarily a universal generalization does not mean the identified correlation is an "incorrect fact", moron. This is like those fucking idiots who say that cigarette/cancer correlations are false because they know people who smoked and didn't get cancer.

But why the fuck should I even have to explain this? I feel like I'm back on the twcenter forums, arguing with religious kiddies and trying to explain the most basic elements of logical thought to them.

[Spoonist]

So to sum it up, the author is full of shit and he knows it, because the article is written for chock value not to show any scientific conclusions.

The article states right up-front that it's merely an excerpt, and that the actual documentation is elsewhere. This is like saying that a news article on global warming is based on bogus science because it doesn't show the science itself, and merely references a source that does. And saying that its conclusions are "for shock value" is a glaringly obvious Appeal to Motive fallacy, genius.

If you read the abstract for a scientific paper by itself, would you deride it as failing to back up its conclusions even though it is merely an excerpt of a larger whole? Now if the whole article is bogus that's another thing, but what you're doing is bullshit.

[Correction: I did not claim their data to be wrong I claimed their conclusions based on the data to be overly speculative and therefore not "true".]
Umh??? This was about excerpt in the article, so I attacked that.
Care to point out the specific points where I'm wrong instead of a generic rejection? Or which parts where you think that the author is actually right? Do you disagree that the author has "spiced up" the article to make it more sellable?
Its this baseless speculative reasoning made for getting more attention and getting more interest that I disagree with. It's easy to spot the signs, first its a 10 list which is easy to sell to editors, then its argumentative instead of fact presenting, then its the author of the paper that is the author of the article, then its not really a scientific study instead its a book they are selling, its not peer-reviwed magazine, etc. All this gives me a big warning sign which makes me question the conclusions, which I don't think correlates to the data.
Its akin to saying that since people in sub-sahara has lower score on recent IQ tests and since the region is poor and has lots of conflicts, it follows that sub-saharans are predicted by evolutionary principle to be less intelligent and therefore poorer. Instead of coming to the simpler conclusion that conflict & poverty correlates to lower scores on IQ tests. Oh wait, that is exactly what the author claims in another shock-value paper (p521).

You see, I'm not defending the article in the OP. I'm not. I said that I don't know enough about the subject matter to say so either way. What I *am* saying is that I won't reject their positions out of hand, as you and others have, because you have simplistic objections to them. It's as though, by reading the OP you've become an expert in their field, qualified to dismiss their arguments. I suppose it's possible that you are an expert in their field, but I'm finding it easy to doubt that that's true. Call it a hunch.

I'm not an expert nor do I claim to be. But when I read the article my BS detector started flashing read. So then I actually looked things up and others in the scientific community called it bad science as well. My argument was then that they have a basis of factoids but their conclusions and reasoning is faulty. When checking this top ten list there is only two items that can be called true based on the facts given (5, 9) the rest is hypothesis and speculation open to critisism. Now if I present I scientific idea I would wait for peer-review or someone else repeating my conclusions in their test environment before claiming it to be "true".
I think that it is quite easy to setup negative testing for most of the claims and then check if their theories are valid.

->Both of you
I can't even begin to understand why you are defending bad science. Sure I'm not perfect and probably doesn't give a fully cohesive argument, but to me its easy to spot the flaws in the article. The author is confusing association with causation, has not employed occams razor and is presenting untested hypothesis/theories as "truths". Usually none of this would fly but because it is a "soft" science you don't think that mine and others critisizm is valid?
Just one blatant example which I hope you agree with is that they are trying to give cultural evolutionary explanations for something which is really hormonal.This since 6, 7, 9, 10 can be explained by testosterone, then occams razor dictates that the more complex explanation is unnecessary/highly questionable.
Mind you I think that Kanazawa was a brilliant scientist in his younger days, but nowadays I think that he is blatantly vainglorious and is trying to cash in on his earlier work without coming with any new real science, by producing new material based on selected sources that only gives positive proof of his earlier theories but then he adds lots of "spice" to get published.

Do you know what the Trivers-Willards hypothesis is? It's what Kanazawa has based his career on, but his extrapolations are truly his own and not the original hypotheses'. Go check it out. Its a nurture/nature discussion.

[Spoonist]

DW beat me to it. Spoonist is mentally deficient. You, Spoonist, accuse the author of the article of spouting undocumented and unsupported facts, when you do the same thing when you say something is a fact, a factoid, or that it's crap. So where is your proof?

I'm accusing the author of overspeculation based on facts/factoids.

For instance being attracted to youthful qualities is an evolutionary fact based on research and observation both of humans and of animals. But from that it does not follow that men are attracted to blond/fair women with big boobs, that is a contextual cultural bias that does not live up to controlled tests in other cultural contexts. Regardless if Iranians bleached their hair or not.

If you think me mentally deficient then select one of the 10 positions in my post above and you and me can have a seperate debate about that. (Having it about all 10 would be a waste of time and too large a discussion).

[General Zod]

For instance being attracted to youthful qualities is an evolutionary fact based on research and observation both of humans and of animals. But from that it does not follow that men are attracted to blond/fair women with big boobs, that is a contextual cultural bias that does not live up to controlled tests in other cultural contexts. Regardless if Iranians bleached their hair or not.

Regardless of cultural tests blond hair was in fact a mutation that came about as a result of sexual selection. Women with blond hair would have been given preference because it set them apart from others in a positive way.

[Darth Wong]

I'm accusing the author of overspeculation based on facts/factoids.

Without reading the article from which the text is excerpted. Saying (as you do in your previous post) that you are only attacking the excerpt is hardly an excuse.

For instance being attracted to youthful qualities is an evolutionary fact based on research and observation both of humans and of animals. But from that it does not follow that men are attracted to blond/fair women with big boobs, that is a contextual cultural bias that does not live up to controlled tests in other cultural contexts. Regardless if Iranians bleached their hair or not.

It does explain why men are attracted to that trait in regions where it occurs naturally, you idiot. The underlying thesis has to do with sexual selection for traits which allow quick evaluation of age and fitness. If you understood that prediction comes from thesis rather than going the other fucking way around, you would realize this. The fact that this mechanism would apply differently in other parts of the world does NOT invalidate it, fool.

If you think me mentally deficient then select one of the 10 positions in my post above and you and me can have a seperate debate about that. (Having it about all 10 would be a waste of time and too large a discussion).

See above, moron. That's what happens when you choose to ignore the mechanism in favour of a half-assed generalization about the conclusion presented to one particular audience (ie- white people). If you take the mechanism and apply it to (for example) Africa, you get different conclusions. Science is about MECHANISMS, not generalizations from any particular conclusion.

As I said, you treat science the same way creationists do: ignore the mechanism, focus on what offends you about the conclusion and see if you can mis-apply that conclusion elsewhere rather than going back to the mechanism.

[Darth Wong]

Care to point out the specific points where I'm wrong instead of a generic rejection?

What are you, fucking retarded? You are saying that HE is wrong, therefore you have to show where he's gone wrong, and you don't even know how he arrived at his conclusions yet. It's only an excerpt, so screeching about the lack of documentation is just childish, and saying that I have to show why YOU are wrong for saying that HE is wrong is just sad.

Its this baseless speculative reasoning made for getting more attention and getting more interest that I disagree with.

The Appeal to Motive fallacy does not become any less of a fallacy with repetition, asshole.

Describing his work as "shock value paper" WITHOUT showing what's wrong with his methodology is what you're doing, and it's totally invalid. You have to show what's wrong with his METHODOLOGY. Without doing that, and attacking only what you see as offensive conclusions or conclusions that you dislike based on no particular research of your own other than an off-the-cuff argument you make up on the spot, all you're doing is blowing hot air.

[Edi]

I read the excerpt and did not find anything actually wrong with it as long as we are assuming it speaks about tendencies. It'd be interesting to see the full thing and then judge that. I can certainly see why Mike is getting short-tempered, the objections so far are mostly pathetic.

[Spoonist]

I'm accusing the author of overspeculation based on facts/factoids.

Without reading the article from which the text is excerpted. Saying (as you do in your previous post) that you are only attacking the excerpt is hardly an excuse.

Since his claims aren't exactly new and based on already published material his paper is not necessary to be critical of his faulty logic. As I said before, when doing my long post I checked out the different arguments elsewhere and got more than enough info to claim that the article was BS. However I do not like posts that are only copy&pasted links to others so I did my own answer. So just as I said before to Tahlan pick one of the claims and we could have a go.

For instance being attracted to youthful qualities is an evolutionary fact based on research and observation both of humans and of animals. But from that it does not follow that men are attracted to blond/fair women with big boobs, that is a contextual cultural bias that does not live up to controlled tests in other cultural contexts. Regardless if Iranians bleached their hair or not.

It does explain why men are attracted to that trait in regions where it occurs naturally, you idiot. The underlying thesis has to do with sexual selection for traits which allow quick evaluation of age and fitness. If you understood that prediction comes from thesis rather than going the other fucking way around, you would realize this. The fact that this mechanism would apply differently in other parts of the world does NOT invalidate it.

If his claim was that we are attracted to healthy/youthful/fertile partners you would be correct. Unfortunately in this article that is not his claim.
Since noone would think it newsworthy to say that evolition favors the healthy, young and fertile the author changed the claim to "Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)", then continued to back that up with observations that are only true in a context without mentioning the specific context. It is a simplification of the issue and popularized beyond what can be claimed to be "true" hence it is bad science.
[Getto edit: in the post above I wrote Iran where it should have been Italy]

then select one of the 10 positions in my post above and you and me can have a seperate debate about that. (Having it about all 10 would be a waste of time and too large a discussion).

See above, moron. That's what happens when you choose to ignore the mechanism in favour of a half-assed generalization about the conclusion presented to one particular audience (ie- white people). If you take the mechanism and apply it to (for example) Africa, you get different conclusions. Science is about MECHANISMS, not generalizations from any particular conclusion.

If the article and the published paper was about confirmed predictions of the general Trivers-Willards hypothesis then you would be correct. Unfortunately it was not.
For instance if the author would have claimed that evolutionary psychology predicts and is supported by evidence that when the female partner goes into menopause their still fertile male partner will be inclined to look for a more fertile partner. Instead the author claimed that "The midlife crisis is a myth", which again takes the idea so far as to make it false. Unless you change the definition of a midlife crisis it cannot be a myth since it is a description of a psychological concept. It is like claiming that "Oedipus complex" is a myth. (Now personally I don't like the "midlife crisis" label but that doesn't change its use).

As I said, you treat science the same way creationists do: ignore the mechanism, focus on what offends you about the conclusion and see if you can mis-apply that conclusion elsewhere rather than going back to the mechanism.

BS
If we would pick up one of the 10 claims, one of the first thing we would have to do is look at the mechanism in question and why his exemples doesn't fit. In my lengthy post I actually made reference to the mechanism in question, the problem being that the way that Kanazawa has modified it beyond its original premise and intention, and then running wild with speculative claims is not good science, even though the mechanism itself could be (the jury is still out with studies going both ways).