(no subject)

[jack]

Apparently, Desmond Morris proposes that men are gay when they fail to leave the "boys together" phase of development.

The articles read like odes to the "make plausible declarative statements telling stories about what might happen in [field of "soft" science] and pretend the fact that the conclusions accord with reality is evidence for the stories".

The comments are full of people objecting that what he says in no way accords with their experience.

My main reactions were to the first sentence, pointing out that by the theory of natural selection, heterosexual males are favoured by evolution. That this is so, I think *is* clear. And you can [edit:] tell this is the *only* case from evidence such as the extinction of honey bees (where all but one female bees in a hive are non-sexual) and the breeding out of sickle-cell anaemia (being a single-gene controlled contra-survival trait) in all of the human population.

And to the title. I don't know if male and female homosexuality are related or not. But an explanation that claims to explain one of them smacks of suspiciciosity to me.

I'm afraid I couldn't read further. Does anyone actually know any details? Presumably his book actually says something, you can't dismiss a theory based on its title, even if that would be fun :)

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Thank you, edited. "Tell".

Nice identity, by the way :)

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

hm, okay, I still missing something. the only case of what?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry, that paragraph was possibly unclear.

I mean, that heterosexuality is an evolutionary advantage seems obvious. But his argument (as reported in headlines) sounds like he thinks it must be universal, and if it isn't, the exceptions must be some strange aberration explained by humans' complex socialisation. Whereas in actual fact, there are lots of exceptions to what seems the "obvious" best answer. (By "the only case" I meant, that heterosexuality should be universal.)

But there are many exceptions to everything having the "obviously" most advantageous trait, some genetically determined, for instance as a side-effect of some positive process, or having a hidden benefit. So being gay might have all sorts of explanation.

However, because I was being ironic, I didn't say "there are lots of cases where the obvious doesn't happen, so no surprise it doesn't happen here either," but "there aren't any cases where the obvious doesn't happen, so it must happen here too, wink wink"...

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

Ah, so it means, "[heterosexuality is obviously evolutionarily advantageous], so you can tell that [heterosexuality is universal] [from the evidence that things that are obviously not evolutionarily advantageous get selected out]" ← this bit is the ironic bit because they haven't really been selected out.

Maybe I need to turn up the heating knobs on my brain. (I've just installed them, they may be faulty). *twiddles*.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*heats up your brain*

However, I often write things a bit disjointed. They may or may not be clever, but they'd definitely be better if people (or me) understood what I was trying to say :)

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

ooer.

brain warmer with knobs on

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:)Very cool :)