DICK? THAT IS YOUR NAME, RIGHT?
18 June 2007
Sunny Monday (25 Degree Celsius)
Morning @ 0805 (Washington DC Time)
Listen: Darth Vader Talking cock…
Mood: *So-So*
One interesting field of studies in my undergraduate years is the study of Human Behaviour. Not withstanding that we are more than mere mortal, which makes us technically more difficult than say studies of other animals for two simple reasons. One is that the volunteers come from the same species as the studied (as obvious), which both reduces their objectivity and causes complacency, or even fail to notice them altogether, like racism for example. A subcategory of volunteerism is that we actually volunteered our services compare to say; the guinea pig… As much as most wanted to believe, the pig DO NOT actually have a choice. The other being Culture.
Indeed, it is generally agreed that we have far more complex cultures than of other species we known and studied (sic). It is like an endless fascination for many. But it is wrong to assume that this is the cause of human nature, rather than a consequence. For example, this sort of reasoning is about the same (give or take) as mistaking the decorative makeup of a lady for her underlying beauty. Right, moving on, many of these questions (naturally) address sensitive issues of sex and violence, which is another reason why evolutionary psychology are not universally popular. Some interesting finds;
Helen Fisher (Rutgers University): Dissected the evolutionary factors that cause marriages to succeed or fail. She reckons, for example, that the tendency of females to prefer high-status mates is at odds with the increasing economic independence of women in the modern world (Man Hater is a classic example of what NOT to do if you are women… then again, its funny how she react to such…)
Laura Betzig (University of Michigan): Put an explicitly Darwinian spin on the tendency of powerful men to accumulate harems (Our Neighbour just proves this point…)
Randy Thornhill (Unversity of New Mexico): Physical beauty is far from being in the eye of the beholder. In fact, those features rated beautiful, most notably bodily symmetry, are good predictors of healthy, desirable attributes such as strong immune systems; in other words, aesthetic sensibilities such as Good Looks = Healthy… Understand?
Even murder has not escaped the attention of the evolutionary psychologists.
Martin Daly & Margo Wilson (McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario): Adults are far more likely to kill their stepchildren than their biological children. They then propose a Darwinian explanation for this; step-parents have no direct interest (in the evolutionary sense) in the welfare of stepchildren.
Last but not least, David Buss (University of Texas): Demonstrated experimentally what most people know intuitively; women value high status in a mate in a way that men do not.
These traits are not uniquely homo sapiens. Indeed, it is often comparison with other species that sparked the investigations in the first place. The males of many other species gather harems, and their females rarely do so. Female Swallows prefer their mates to have symmetrical tails and they are also more faithful to high-status males; both male lions and male baboons kill the infants of females in groups they have just taken over; and so on. Where evolutionary explanations of behaviour become really interesting is when they home in on what is unique to humanity. It is just like this short joke I am telling my colleagues;
Bill has 3 Gf and he has to decide which one to marry. So he gave them 10K each and told them to use it to their fullest potential
GF 1 hit the town and got herself the biggest diamond ring
GF 2 bought Bill the best suit and shoes
GF 3 invested the sum and made a neat profit of 100k for Bill
So who did Bill marry? He chose the one with the biggest breasts.
See told you its sexist liao…
Sunny Monday (25 Degree Celsius)
Morning @ 0805 (Washington DC Time)
Listen: Darth Vader Talking cock…
Mood: *So-So*
One interesting field of studies in my undergraduate years is the study of Human Behaviour. Not withstanding that we are more than mere mortal, which makes us technically more difficult than say studies of other animals for two simple reasons. One is that the volunteers come from the same species as the studied (as obvious), which both reduces their objectivity and causes complacency, or even fail to notice them altogether, like racism for example. A subcategory of volunteerism is that we actually volunteered our services compare to say; the guinea pig… As much as most wanted to believe, the pig DO NOT actually have a choice. The other being Culture.
Indeed, it is generally agreed that we have far more complex cultures than of other species we known and studied (sic). It is like an endless fascination for many. But it is wrong to assume that this is the cause of human nature, rather than a consequence. For example, this sort of reasoning is about the same (give or take) as mistaking the decorative makeup of a lady for her underlying beauty. Right, moving on, many of these questions (naturally) address sensitive issues of sex and violence, which is another reason why evolutionary psychology are not universally popular. Some interesting finds;
Helen Fisher (Rutgers University): Dissected the evolutionary factors that cause marriages to succeed or fail. She reckons, for example, that the tendency of females to prefer high-status mates is at odds with the increasing economic independence of women in the modern world (Man Hater is a classic example of what NOT to do if you are women… then again, its funny how she react to such…)
Laura Betzig (University of Michigan): Put an explicitly Darwinian spin on the tendency of powerful men to accumulate harems (Our Neighbour just proves this point…)
Randy Thornhill (Unversity of New Mexico): Physical beauty is far from being in the eye of the beholder. In fact, those features rated beautiful, most notably bodily symmetry, are good predictors of healthy, desirable attributes such as strong immune systems; in other words, aesthetic sensibilities such as Good Looks = Healthy… Understand?
Even murder has not escaped the attention of the evolutionary psychologists.
Martin Daly & Margo Wilson (McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario): Adults are far more likely to kill their stepchildren than their biological children. They then propose a Darwinian explanation for this; step-parents have no direct interest (in the evolutionary sense) in the welfare of stepchildren.
Last but not least, David Buss (University of Texas): Demonstrated experimentally what most people know intuitively; women value high status in a mate in a way that men do not.
These traits are not uniquely homo sapiens. Indeed, it is often comparison with other species that sparked the investigations in the first place. The males of many other species gather harems, and their females rarely do so. Female Swallows prefer their mates to have symmetrical tails and they are also more faithful to high-status males; both male lions and male baboons kill the infants of females in groups they have just taken over; and so on. Where evolutionary explanations of behaviour become really interesting is when they home in on what is unique to humanity. It is just like this short joke I am telling my colleagues;
Bill has 3 Gf and he has to decide which one to marry. So he gave them 10K each and told them to use it to their fullest potential
GF 1 hit the town and got herself the biggest diamond ring
GF 2 bought Bill the best suit and shoes
GF 3 invested the sum and made a neat profit of 100k for Bill
So who did Bill marry? He chose the one with the biggest breasts.
See told you its sexist liao…
1 comment:
Dear Bird,
You never cease to amaze me with your intellectual ramblings ...
and
... (on your post) some academics are just so d*mn free ... especially Dabid Bus
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