On 27 March 2014 16:33, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't think you can infer anything about gender preference for "triple > or bust" vs "maintain what we've got" from evolutionary biology. >
Well OK, but what I've read (and indeed observed and experienced throughout my life) indicates that people, and most animals who care for their young, employ strategies which could (roughly) be described as male-risky, female-play-it-safe (or at least safer). E.g. it's the male grasshoppers who keep me awake with their racket, the male birds who wake me in the morning with THEIR racket, peacocks with the big showy tails, male bower birds who expend the energy to make the bowers - all males employing (relatively) risky strategies to attract females. (Because, you see, we're just naturally fabulous and you guys have to make the running. Sorry!) > Kent's idea would be to look around and see whether people were > overwhelmingly type A or type B. If MWI is true they should be type B, if > false type A. > Yes, I realise what he was saying. I don't think it makes much sense, because it would require people to believe in the existence of a multiverse before they could formulate a reproductive strategy involving that knowledge, and the idea of a multiverse has only existed for about 50 years. Otherwise, I'd expect people to act as though they are in a single universe, regardless of whether that is so, because that's how things appear to be. I'd expect genes to exhibit a similar strategy - they aren't (can't be) "interested" in what happens in a parallel world which can't communicate with the one they're in. > There shouldn't be any split along gender line. > Well there is, at least in my experience (and in various books, articles, nature documentaries and so on that I've come across). Indeed, apart from a few die-hard feminists I don't know of anyone who still adheres to the notion that people are "blank slates" and that gender roles are purely assigned by culture (humans exhibit sexual dimorphism, and brain scans indicate that it doesn't magically stop at our necks. Plus, why would blank-slatism only be true of us, but not the rest of the animal/fish/insect kingdom where it - often blatantly - isn't the case?) Anyway, that's why I don't think one can sensibly analyse an entire species' reproductive strategy to see if it was A or B (or something else), because reproductive strategies tend to be gender specific. It seems like a daft idea - maybe it's a guy thing? ;-) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
