Reddit Reddit reviews The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us

We found 6 Reddit comments about The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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6 Reddit comments about The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us:

u/slagnanz · 5 pointsr/Christianity

Much like the avian world, it seems that planes have developed a complicated system of reproduction that may not so much be based simply on fitness survival, but ornamental choice. So we've observed that planes participate in complex, breed-specific mating rituals. Fascinatingly, many actually enlist the help of humans in these ancient, elaborate rites. It seems that the variance in breeds developed over time based on female plane preference, and so we have not been able to observe any cases of interbreeding.

However, we have found fossil records of certain planes that do seem to be interbred in some fashion, those these may be relics of a time when planes had penises.

u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/PurplePillDebate

>Very subtle changes give great information on health, genetic quality, providership (in males) and fertility (in females).

What evidence establishes this link?

Anecdotally, I myself am fortunate to have a lot of the good aesthetic features that the WAW guy discusses, and this has made me do a lot better with women than I would have otherwise.

However, I feel like a walking "false advertisement," because my genes are fucked up in various ways. I guess my immume-system is OK. To be honest, I guess my health is OK. But my brain is fucked five ways to Friday, and it runs in the fam.

There are tons of sexy male celebs who simply aren't that healthy or aren't that well-endowed neurologically in terms of the REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF that governs your success.

And it certainly has zero correlation with intelligence, as we all know.

This book also challenges the idea that you put forward:

>https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Beauty-Darwins-Forgotten-Theory/dp/0385537212

>A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed “the taste for the beautiful”—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world.

>In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature?

>Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin’s own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin’s long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change.

>Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time.

>The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature’s splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.




u/Deoxysxx · 2 pointsr/Braincels

There are some things that work outside the scope of evolution/natural selection. I recommend everyone to read 'The Evolution of Beauty.'

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3391426/

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/19/15659294/richard-prum-evolution-beauty-biology-darwin-interview

Those two links above are also worth reading.

u/shr00mydan · 1 pointr/evolution

I saw a talk by Richard Prum last week on his book:
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Beauty-Darwins-Forgotten-Theory/dp/0385537212

From what I understand, the idea is that natural selection will always have the final say, in the sense of determining what species continue to exist and which go extinct, but sexual selection can drive evolution to decadence within a species, where decadence is understood as traits selected for their beauty which are maladaptive for generally surviving and getting around. Prum's target position is the idea that beauty is a mere indicator of fitness, where fitness is understood in the Darwinian sense of being matched to one's environment. Sexual selection can drive a species to be unmatched to it's environment, and the evolution of decadence can ultimately lead to extinction.

u/berf · 1 pointr/evolution

We had a discussion about this in the biology interest group of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science while discussing a paper by Prum. Prum's book makes it clearer.

What do you mean by "natural selection"? Do you define it like Darwin did, so it does not include sexual selection? Or do you define it like the population geneticists do, so it does include sexual selection (sexual selection is also changes in allele frequencies in populations)?

That is why Prum is very careful in how he describes what he calls the Lande-Kirkpatrick null hypothesis. A display trait is "arbitrary" if is doesn't "code" for anything other than what it appears to be: a phenotype that pleases the opposite sex. It is not necessary that any trait any organism has is adaptive in the engineering sense. An arbitrary display trait does help organisms reproduce because potential mates prefer it, but it doesn't do anything other than that. This is more than just a theoretical possibility Darwin, Fisher, Lande, Kirkpatrick, and Prum argue. It actually happens in nature (so Prum argues).

Of course, both natural selection and sexual selection (as defined by Darwin, so these are different) occur. Lande and Kirkpatrick worked out the math of what happens when both operate. There is not necessarily Fisherian "runaway". There can be a line of equilibria along which the display trait and the aesthetic preferences of the opposite sex drift. There is no fitness optimum achieved.

u/xxx_house · -6 pointsr/TrollXChromosomes

Your point about the older woman with multiple kids is insanely stupid. Older women are much, much worse when it comes to creating children.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/02/28/having-baby-past-35-what-women-should-know/98523070/

From the USA Today article:
>Yes, it’s possible for a 40-, 45-, 50-year-old woman to carry a child, but age still comes with more risks. Pregnant women past the age of 35 have an increased risk of pregnancy complications, including gestational diabetes, preeclampsia (high blood pressure) and intrauterine growth restriction (causing premature delivery). They are also more likely to have a C-section, because older uteruses often do not contract as well as needed for vaginal delivery. Women choosing to become pregnant through fertility techniques are more likely to become pregnant with twins, sometimes triplets. Singer says it’s difficult for women in their 40s and beyond to safely carry more than one child. There are also greater risks to an older mom after the child is born, including postpartum hemorrhage or excessive bleeding.
>
>Babies born to older moms are also more likely to develop chromosomal problems, including Down Syndrome.

A 90 yr old woman with 12 kids is NOT better for making kids than a 25 yr old woman who has all the body characteristics of a healthy, capable of child bearing woman.

Your point about nurture vs nature is also stupid. Let's just pretend that sexual/ dating preferences are 100% dictated by culture (they're not*). Culture only exists because the human brain evolved to able to think, problem solve, communicate, etc. in particular ways. Culture is a result of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of years of evolution, and such, any "cultural preference" is also a result of evolution.*

>Unless the husband kills his wife. Which is frighteningly common.

Citation needed. "Frighteningly common" makes it seem like 1 of every 5 marriages end with the husband killing the wife lol

https://phys.org/news/2015-03-men-body-evolutionary-roots.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/books/review/evolution-of-beauty-richard-prum-charles-darwin.html

https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Beauty-Darwins-Forgotten-Theory/dp/0385537212