Gender differences in sexual attraction: An illustration of the complex nature -nurtue interaction

[rousseau]

That statement is so broad as to be meaningless. You can do better than this.

Can you explain why in reference to the core point of my post?

The core point being what? As far as I can tell, you just like the sound of "biology is the prime mover" without being able to construct any kind of hypothesis out of this proposition that's precise enough to derive any predictions whatsoever.

This forum is social science, not social musings.

Ok, can you explain this:

That statement is so broad as to be meaningless. You can do better than this.

I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just more interested in your argument than I am in explaining mine.

 

[Jokodo]

Certainly humans will help others but not (or extremely rarely) at the cost of their own well being.

Unless you're living a life in total isolation, I'm pretty certain you've done so several times today. I'm sure I did

- when I held the door of the tramway open for a stranger
- when I passed my colleague a cup during coffee break
- when I held my daughter tight instead of moving to the couch to get some proper sleep
...

The cost in each of these cases may be minor, but it's very real. Far from "extremely rare", it's so common that we don't even notice it.

That is a really odd interpretation. None of those actions were at a cost to your well being. In fact common courtesies are generally helpful to your well being because they make you more acceptable in society. Now if you had taken a homeless family into your home or some other action that actually cost you a reduction in your personal living standards (to raise the living standards of someone needy) you would be closer to what my post said.

All of them were - if only in the sense that they were an unnecessary expenditure of calories. Though the potential cost is actually more severe than that in each of those examples and many others: e. g. by holding the door open, I might cause the tramway to miss the green light and be minutes later than I otherwise would have been - and thereby attract the wrath of everyone else on the tram who was in a hurry; by handing the cup, I risked dropping it, in which case I might have been held liable to replace it.

And while what you call "common courtesies" towards people you expect to regularly interact with are arguably beneficial in the long term, I chose an example involving a total stranger I might not see again.

 

[Jokodo]

The core point being what? As far as I can tell, you just like the sound of "biology is the prime mover" without being able to construct any kind of hypothesis out of this proposition that's precise enough to derive any predictions whatsoever.

This forum is social science, not social musings.

Ok, can you explain this:

That statement is so broad as to be meaningless. You can do better than this.

I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just more interested in your argument than I am in explaining mine.

I don't see what there is to explain.

Here's some statements you've made throughout this thread.

1. but most cultures should have core and unchanging components
2. I'd call biology the primary influence on our behavior
3. I'm more or less of the opinion that those mold-able parts of our culture are actually much more rigid
4. Besides things like variation in political ideals, religious beliefs, and sexual practices, human cultures don't really vary that much.

each one of them is a non-statement as long as you don't give as a hint what those unchanging components are or should be, relative to what it is a big or small influence, what counts as 'things like', etc. It is trivially true that behaviours that are impossible to perform with human physiology will never become the cultural norm, and from all we know that's about all you're saying. And every one of those statements can be said with equal validity if we replace biology with physics: Just like whatever set of norms or beliefs you believe are running against human nature isn't going to materialize in any culture (and you have barely given us an idea what that would be), so equally you aren't going to find a lot of cultures where people expect a stone dropped to start moving towards the sky, or where people put on heavy woolen jumpers in summer only.

The whole point of the OP is that the ways biology influences cultural practices can be quite indirect, and it's arguing against a naive nativist conception where people take every (seemingly) universal behaviour as sufficient evidence that this behaviour was specifically selected for.

 

[skepticalbip]

That is a really odd interpretation. None of those actions were at a cost to your well being. In fact common courtesies are generally helpful to your well being because they make you more acceptable in society. Now if you had taken a homeless family into your home or some other action that actually cost you a reduction in your personal living standards (to raise the living standards of someone needy) you would be closer to what my post said.

All of them were - if only in the sense that they were an unnecessary expenditure of calories. Though the potential cost is actually more severe than that in each of those examples and many others: e. g. by holding the door open, I might cause the tramway to miss the green light and be minutes later than I otherwise would have been - and thereby attract the wrath of everyone else on the tram who was in a hurry; by handing the cup, I risked dropping it, in which case I might have been held liable to replace it.

And while what you call "common courtesies" towards people you expect to regularly interact with are arguably beneficial in the long term, I chose an example involving a total stranger I might not see again.

Just bedamned... you are really stretching. If you honestly believe (rather than just being argumentative) that such simple common courtesies are personal sacrifices of your self interest then you are an extreme, over the top example of what I was talking about. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone who honestly believes simple curticies are sacrifices to actually go out of their way and sacrifice to help a stranger. When you do the minimum and simply buy a hungry stranger a meal, let me know.

 

[rousseau]

Ok, can you explain this:

I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just more interested in your argument than I am in explaining mine.

I don't see what there is to explain.

Here's some statements you've made throughout this thread.

1. but most cultures should have core and unchanging components
2. I'd call biology the primary influence on our behavior
3. I'm more or less of the opinion that those mold-able parts of our culture are actually much more rigid
4. Besides things like variation in political ideals, religious beliefs, and sexual practices, human cultures don't really vary that much.

each one of them is a non-statement as long as you don't give as a hint what those unchanging components are or should be, relative to what it is a big or small influence, what counts as 'things like', etc. It is trivially true that behaviours that are impossible to perform with human physiology will never become the cultural norm, and from all we know that's about all you're saying. And every one of those statements can be said with equal validity if we replace biology with physics: Just like whatever set of norms or beliefs you believe are running against human nature isn't going to materialize in any culture (and you have barely given us an idea what that would be), so equally you aren't going to find a lot of cultures where people expect a stone dropped to start moving towards the sky, or where people put on heavy woolen jumpers in summer only.

The whole point of the OP is that the ways biology influences cultural practices can be quite indirect, and it's arguing against a naive nativist conception where people take every (seemingly) universal behaviour as sufficient evidence that this behaviour was specifically selected for.

Ok, I'll try to go into a little more detail, keep in mind here that I'm talking about biology and human nature as a framework, and I'm going to tie this back into the OP eventually.

Core, Unchanging Components of Culture

Need for Food, Need for Water, Need to maintain internal temperature

Let's start with the stuff that is intuitively obvious about human nature and our survival: we need to maintain an internal metabolic temperature, we need to eat, we need water. Right there we've already identified three aspects about human nature that are absolutely critical to any human society, and if you want to call it that: culture.

This may seem trivial at first glance, but in reality every aspect of our day to day life is centered around these three facts. As children we go to school so we can be trained how to work (yes I realize this varies but lets generalize), as adults we spend our lives working or otherwise trying to obtain money so we can eat. This kind of thing is so essential to society that it almost seems arbitrary and not worth any notice, but already we're looking at the overwhelming majority of any given human's behaviour throughout their entire life, simply because it is essential that they eat.

No this is not predictive of what schools someone will go to, or what work they will do, but it is predictive of a few things:

- it is essential that people have food, and a mechanism to get food
- it is intrinsic to any culture that there are functions which work toward the end of obtaining food
- people's behaviour for an overwhelming majority of their time will be focused on finding and eating food

With internal metabolic temperature we get a few more facts:

- housing, buildings, and architecture are universal among human communities
- without the invent of fire, and later the technology to use natural resources, most modern day societies just wouldn't exist in the first place

Reproduction and Gender Roles

Now let's move to the sexual aspect of our genetics, which is nearly as critical as those already mentioned: our species needs to reproduce itself, and men and women have real psychological differences due to variance in gender roles

Due to these facts we will assuredly see that every human culture will have fertility rituals, and that men and women will generally have a different path in life.

No this isn't predictive of what fertility ritual a community has, but it is predictive of that existing, and the likelihod of how both man and woman in a relationship will live their lives. There is going to be variance from community to community, but again, biology now has it's hand in another overwhelming aspect of human behavior, how we spend most of our lives looking for a partner, and later raising kids. It also has a real hand in our psychology and how genders approach this game.

Religion, sexism, racism, tribalism

Ok so some of the obvious stuff is out of the way, let's move to our psychology: a need to resolve our cognitive dissonance about suffering, sexism, racism and prejudice, tribalism.

Honestly, at this point I'm just getting tired of writing this post, but I'll continue. Some would argue that these things are fixable, I don't think that they are. Because of the above points religious and/or idealistic beliefs are universal across human cultures. If not religion, it's idealism and utopian thinking about politics.

Then we get into sexism, racism, prejudice, and those aspects of our psychology that keep us feeding the people who are close to us (family) and ignoring the people who aren't close to us. I won't get into much detail here, but I presume that you get the point.

Once again, a huge portion of our behavior is dictated by a few simple facts about our psychology, that have evolved over a huge amount of time. They aren't predictive of individual human behavior, but they are predictive of these phenomena existing in any given culture: ethnic conflict, racism, nationalism, you name it. I would say that's some important predictive power.

Tying back to the OP

So when I tie this back to ronburgundy's point that behavior isn't necessarily dictated by actual neural differences, I'm left with the notion that behaviour is dictated largely by neural realities, and our ability to conform tightly to these neural realities is selected for. So where biology isn't ipso facto causing the behavior, it's instead producing the culture where the behaviour is derived, and the selective pressure is actually coming from our ability to conform to the culture that's been derived by our biology. This selective pressure is certainly going to mold real genetic differences where necessary, and I would probably go as far as saying that it's the most critical aspects of our culture that actually become embedded in our genetics.

So when we start talking about how to mold culture to our will, we're contrained by biological reality. And with the above in mind I'm not completely sure what's left to mold.

And bear in mind, that the above list of unchanging components of culture is anything but exhaustive, I could go on for a while.

 

[Jokodo]

That is a really odd interpretation. None of those actions were at a cost to your well being. In fact common courtesies are generally helpful to your well being because they make you more acceptable in society. Now if you had taken a homeless family into your home or some other action that actually cost you a reduction in your personal living standards (to raise the living standards of someone needy) you would be closer to what my post said.

All of them were - if only in the sense that they were an unnecessary expenditure of calories. Though the potential cost is actually more severe than that in each of those examples and many others: e. g. by holding the door open, I might cause the tramway to miss the green light and be minutes later than I otherwise would have been - and thereby attract the wrath of everyone else on the tram who was in a hurry; by handing the cup, I risked dropping it, in which case I might have been held liable to replace it.

And while what you call "common courtesies" towards people you expect to regularly interact with are arguably beneficial in the long term, I chose an example involving a total stranger I might not see again.

Just bedamned... you are really stretching. If you honestly believe (rather than just being argumentative) that such simple common courtesies are personal sacrifices of your self interest than you are an extreme, over the top example of what I was talking about.

It is an objective fact that they are. They are small, and I've said so, but they're enough to demonstrate the falsehood your sweeping claim humans basically never make personal sacrifices for the good of another. Far from being "extremely rare", humans helping another and making a personal sacrifice in doing so is so common that we've built a whole ideology of "courtesy" and "manners" around it to hide the costs it does incur.

 

[skepticalbip]

Just bedamned... you are really stretching. If you honestly believe (rather than just being argumentative) that such simple common courtesies are personal sacrifices of your self interest than you are an extreme, over the top example of what I was talking about.

It is an objective fact that they are. They are small, and I've said so, but they're enough to demonstrate the falsehood your sweeping claim humans basically never make personal sacrifices for the good of another. Far from being "extremely rare", humans helping another and making a personal sacrifice in doing so is so common that we've built a whole ideology of "courtesy" and "manners" around it to hide the costs it does incur.

So you really are an extreme, over the top example of the human nature I described? You really, really believe that handing a work mate a cup is a sacrifice of your personal well being? Sad.

That hungry stranger is just going to have to suffer.

 

[rousseau]

Just bedamned... you are really stretching. If you honestly believe (rather than just being argumentative) that such simple common courtesies are personal sacrifices of your self interest than you are an extreme, over the top example of what I was talking about.

It is an objective fact that they are. They are small, and I've said so, but they're enough to demonstrate the falsehood your sweeping claim humans basically never make personal sacrifices for the good of another. Far from being "extremely rare", humans helping another and making a personal sacrifice in doing so is so common that we've built a whole ideology of "courtesy" and "manners" around it to hide the costs it does incur.

A species that prioritizes people outside of it's own family above it's family can't exist. We can extend our goodwill to strangers, but only as far as our own family is still provided for. As soon as we sacrifice to an extent that our children die, are never born, or don't reproduce themselves, we fall out of the gene pool.

Any abundance of goodwill we see in rich countries basically come from the fact that we have too much fucking money at the expense of the environment.

 

[Jokodo]

Ok, can you explain this:

I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just more interested in your argument than I am in explaining mine.

I don't see what there is to explain.

Here's some statements you've made throughout this thread.

1. but most cultures should have core and unchanging components
2. I'd call biology the primary influence on our behavior
3. I'm more or less of the opinion that those mold-able parts of our culture are actually much more rigid
4. Besides things like variation in political ideals, religious beliefs, and sexual practices, human cultures don't really vary that much.

each one of them is a non-statement as long as you don't give as a hint what those unchanging components are or should be, relative to what it is a big or small influence, what counts as 'things like', etc. It is trivially true that behaviours that are impossible to perform with human physiology will never become the cultural norm, and from all we know that's about all you're saying. And every one of those statements can be said with equal validity if we replace biology with physics: Just like whatever set of norms or beliefs you believe are running against human nature isn't going to materialize in any culture (and you have barely given us an idea what that would be), so equally you aren't going to find a lot of cultures where people expect a stone dropped to start moving towards the sky, or where people put on heavy woolen jumpers in summer only.

The whole point of the OP is that the ways biology influences cultural practices can be quite indirect, and it's arguing against a naive nativist conception where people take every (seemingly) universal behaviour as sufficient evidence that this behaviour was specifically selected for.

Ok, I'll try to go into a little more detail, keep in mind here that I'm talking about biology and human nature as a framework, and I'm going to tie this back into the OP eventually.

Core, Unchanging Components of Culture

Need for food, Need for Water, Ned to maintain internal temperature

Let's start with the stuff that is intuitively obvious about human nature and our survival: we need to maintain an internal metabolic temperature, we need to eat, we need water. Right there we've already identified three aspects about human nature that are absolutely critical to any human society, and if you want to call it that: culture.

This may seem trivial at first glance, but in reality every aspect of our day to day life is centered around these three facts. As children we go to school so we can be trained how to work (yes I realize this varies but lets generalize),

No, let's not generalize. A universal claim is either universally true, or it's false.

as adults we spend our lives working or otherwise trying to obtain money so we can eat. This kind of thing is so essential to society that it almost seems arbitrary and not worth any notice, but already we're looking at the overwhelming majority of any given human's behaviour throughout their entire life, simply because it is essential that they eat.

I don't know about your shitty job, but I'm pretty sure I could buy a month's worth of supplies plus pay the electricity bill for cooking the stuff with one or two days worth of my salary, without suffering any kind of malnourishment nor indeed relinquishing any of my favourite foods. Add a couple hours a day for cooking, eating and washing dishes, but this still isn't getting us anywhere near a majority of my waking time.

So this claim about an "overwhelming majority" of one's time is clearly false. This isn't even something particular for modern post-industrial societies. Studies on hunter-gatherer societies in the 20th century suggest an average of at most 3-5 hours a day spent on acquiring food - and these were studies on societies living in some of the world's scarcest environments (remember the 20th century? Most of the world's fertile land had long been occupied by farming cultures). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society or

No this is not predictive of what schools someone will go to, or what work they will do, but it is predictive of a few things:

- it is essential that people have food, and a mechanism to get food

Sure. It's also essential that people have ground to walk upon since we're born without wings.

- it is intrinsic to any culture that there are functions which work toward the end of obtaining food

Whatever that means

- people's behaviour for an overwhelming majority of their time will be focused on finding and eating food

This is simply not true - see above.

With internal metabolic temperature we get a few more facts:

- housing, buildings, and architecture are universal among human communities
- without the invent of fire, and later the technology to use natural resources, most modern day societies just wouldn't exist in the first place

This is true, but I don't see how it helps make your point. You're basically saying: Without culture, we couldn't even exist, therefore, biology is king.

Reproduction and Gender Roles

Now let's move to the sexual aspect of our genetics, which is nearly as critical as those already mentioned: our species needs to reproduce itself, and men and women have real psychological differences due to variance in gender roles

What is universal is that men and women, on aggregate, show differences within any one culture. What exactly is considered typical male or typical female behaviour varies to some degree from culture to culture, and even when it doesn't, concluding that the reason is directly caused by genetics is a leap of faith. All adult traits, not just psychological ones, are determined by an interplay of genetics and environment, and not just in humans either. We call a trait "innate" for short when it reliably materialises in all typical environments of the species, but that doesn't make it any less co-determined by environment.

Due to these facts we will assuredly see that every human culture will have fertility rituals, and that men and women will generally have a different path in life.

No this isn't predictive of what fertility ritual a community has, but it is predictive of that existing, and the likelihod of how both man and woman in a relationship will live their lives. There is going to be variance from community to community, but again, biology now has it's hand in another overwhelming aspect of human behavior, how we spend most of our lives looking for a partner, and later raising kids. It also has a real hand in our psychology and how genders approach this game.

Religion, sexism, racism, tribalism

Ok so some of the obvious stuff is out of the way, let's move to our psychology: a need to resolve our cognitive dissonance about suffering, sexism, racism and prejudice, tribalism.

Honestly, at this point I'm just getting tired of writing this post, but I'll continue. Some would argue that these things are fixable, I don't think that they are. Because of the above points religious and/or idealistic beliefs are universal across human cultures. If not religion, it's idealism and utopian thinking about politics.

This is may well be true, but it doesn't follow from anything above.

Then we get into sexism, racism, prejudice, and those aspects of our psychology that keep us feeding the people who are close to us (family) and ignoring the people who aren't close to us. I won't get into much detail here, but I presume that you get the point.

No I don't. Innate psychology doesn't even dictate who we do and do not consider family.

Once again, a huge portion of our behavior is dictated by a few simple facts about our psychology, that have evolved over a huge amount of time. They aren't predictive of individual human behavior, but they are predictive of these phenomena existing in any given culture: ethnic conflict, racism, nationalism, you name it. I would say that's some important predictive power.

Tying back to the OP

So when I tie this back to ronburgundy's point that behavior isn't necessarily dictated by actual neural differences, I'm left with the notion that behaviour is dictated largely by neural realities, and our ability to conform tightly to these neural realities is selected for.

What would an "ability to conform to neural realities" even mean?

So where biology isn't ipso facto causing the behavior, it's instead producing the culture where the behaviour is derived, and the selective pressure is actually coming from our ability to conform to the culture that's been derived by our biology. This selective pressure is certainly going to mold real genetic differences where necessary, and I would probably go as far as saying that it's the most critical aspects of our culture that actually become embedded in our genetics.

Another leap of faith. If an advantageous trait more or less reliably materialises in the vast majority of environments where the species typically lives without being specifically coded in the genetics, there is 0 selective pressure to change that. Evolution doesn't do unit tests with edge cases.

Conversely, if a trait reliably with no selective advantage shows up due to the interplay of other, selected traits and environmental constants, it's going to be just as universal as a selected trait, so finding that a trait is universal is sufficient neither to conclude that it is genetic, nor beneficial.

 

[Jokodo]

Just bedamned... you are really stretching. If you honestly believe (rather than just being argumentative) that such simple common courtesies are personal sacrifices of your self interest than you are an extreme, over the top example of what I was talking about.

It is an objective fact that they are. They are small, and I've said so, but they're enough to demonstrate the falsehood your sweeping claim humans basically never make personal sacrifices for the good of another. Far from being "extremely rare", humans helping another and making a personal sacrifice in doing so is so common that we've built a whole ideology of "courtesy" and "manners" around it to hide the costs it does incur.

So you really are an extreme, over the top example of the human nature I described? You really, really believe that handing a work mate a cup is a sacrifice of your personal well being? Sad.

That hungry stranger is just going to have to suffer.

You made a generalization that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Ad hominems and intentional misunderstandings of my point won't change that. I'm not making a claim about what should, nor drawing any conclusions about what I or you should do. I'm making an observation about what is: That humans, including you and me, make sacrifices small and big for others, including strangers, all the fucking time (of course, more often small than big).

 

[Jokodo]

Just bedamned... you are really stretching. If you honestly believe (rather than just being argumentative) that such simple common courtesies are personal sacrifices of your self interest than you are an extreme, over the top example of what I was talking about.

It is an objective fact that they are. They are small, and I've said so, but they're enough to demonstrate the falsehood your sweeping claim humans basically never make personal sacrifices for the good of another. Far from being "extremely rare", humans helping another and making a personal sacrifice in doing so is so common that we've built a whole ideology of "courtesy" and "manners" around it to hide the costs it does incur.

A species that prioritizes people outside of it's own family above it's family can't exist.

Who said otherwise? The question is whether people help others at a cost to themselves at all, which skepticalbip denied (and he didn't even exclude family from this generalization).

We can extend our goodwill to strangers, but only as far as our own family is still provided for. As soon as we sacrifice to an extent that our children die, are never born, or don't reproduce themselves, we fall out of the gene pool.

Individuals cannot logically fall out of the gene pool - they were never in the gene pool. Genes can fall out of the gene pool.

This may seem like a nitpick, but I really don't think it is: I think it's symptomatic of the way you oversimplify the connections between genotypes and phenotypes.

 

[Jokodo]

Take something like Marxism as an example - we had some high ideals, but they ended up having a massive human cost.

Social change needs to be slow, intentional, scientific, deliberate, and based on the reality of how people work

It's ironic by the way how you quote Marxismas an example of how things can go bad of we don't do it your way and in the very next sentence say something that could have been straight out of Stalin's mouth.

 

[rousseau]

Take something like Marxism as an example - we had some high ideals, but they ended up having a massive human cost.

Social change needs to be slow, intentional, scientific, deliberate, and based on the reality of how people work

It's ironic by the way how you quote Marxismas an example of how things can go bad of we don't do it your way and in the very next sentence say something that could have been straight out of Stalin's mouth.

Going to go enjoy my weekend now, thanks for the conversation.

 

[Jokodo]

Take something like Marxism as an example - we had some high ideals, but they ended up having a massive human cost.

Social change needs to be slow, intentional, scientific, deliberate, and based on the reality of how people work

It's ironic by the way how you quote Marxismas an example of how things can go bad of we don't do it your way and in the very next sentence say something that could have been straight out of Stalin's mouth.

Going to go enjoy my weekend now, thanks for the conversation.

Do enjoy it.

 

[rousseau]

Individuals cannot logically fall out of the gene pool - they were never in the gene pool. Genes can fall out of the gene pool.

This may seem like a nitpick, but I really don't think it is: I think it's symptomatic of the way you oversimplify the connections between genotypes and phenotypes.

I think this is symptomatic of your tendency to look for reasons why an argument is wrong, and take individual idioms way too literally, rather than reading into a post and actually trying to understand it. From your above response (not the one I'm responding to, but the larger one above) I'm still not convinced you've gauged my meaning, and it took me about half an hour to write that post.

So you can see why I'm not super enthused to take part in these conversations, because they turn into a turkey chase of me explaining myself with more and more depth, which is becoming increasingly common at this forum. I end up spending an enormous amount of energy writing a bunch of shit for no reason.

 

[rousseau]

A species that prioritizes people outside of it's own family above it's family can't exist.

Who said otherwise? The question is whether people help others at a cost to themselves at all, which skepticalbip denied (and he didn't even exclude family from this generalization).

You're flat out wrong here, and honestly I'm genuinely surprised that you're even attempting to make this claim, and not admitting that it's misguided.

Carrying out common courtesies are not a sacrifice in any way, because by not carrying out common courtesies you stand to lose more than you would by just granting the courtesy, which is the point skepticalbip was making. If you can't concede on this point I just give up.

 

[skepticalbip]

A species that prioritizes people outside of it's own family above it's family can't exist.

Who said otherwise? The question is whether people help others at a cost to themselves at all, which skepticalbip denied (and he didn't even exclude family from this generalization).

You're flat out wrong here, and honestly I'm genuinely surprised that you're even attempting to make this claim, and not admitting that it's misguided.

Carrying out common courtesies are not a sacrifice in any way, because by not carrying out common courtesies you stand to lose more than you would by just granting the courtesy, which is the point skepticalbip was making. If you can't concede on this point I just give up.

I already gave up, deciding that it wasn't worth the effort. Jokodo for some weird reason seems to honestly believe that the cost in personal well being (all that wasted energy and effort) of a simple courtesy like handing a workmate a cup would outweigh the personal well being boost of a cordial working relationship. Being courteous, even with strangers, strengthens social bonds. People have a tendency (human nature) to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude when they see uncaring ass holes in serious need of help but will generally jump in to help when that person is known to be friendly and congenial rather than an uncaring ass. A little courtesy will keep a person out of the ass hole category in the eyes of others. Congeniality in human society is a damn good survival strategy.

 

[Jokodo]

A species that prioritizes people outside of it's own family above it's family can't exist.

Who said otherwise? The question is whether people help others at a cost to themselves at all, which skepticalbip denied (and he didn't even exclude family from this generalization).

You're flat out wrong here, and honestly I'm genuinely surprised that you're even attempting to make this claim, and not admitting that it's misguided.

Carrying out common courtesies are not a sacrifice in any way, because by not carrying out common courtesies you stand to lose more than you would by just granting the courtesy, which is the point skepticalbip was making. If you can't concede on this point I just give up.

To the extent that this is so (and in interactions with strangers, it's often not true), is is because the other people around you are inclined to go out of their way to punish you if you don't conform to the expectation of helping others when the cost to yourself is reasonably small. They do so even at a cost to themselves, e. g. by declining mutually beneficial interactions with you.

There's a whole literature on this if you search for "altruistic punishment" (arguably a misleading term, but what can you do once it's the established terminus technichus) on e. g. google scholar, including on candidates for its neural and genetic basis (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811910010244), on cultural influences on the extent of it (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2596817/), and to what degree it is present in non-human primates (hint: not a lot in our closest relatives https://www.pnas.org/content/109/37/14824, https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050184, though interestingly capuchin monkeys come much closer) and literally hundreds more. This could be a very interesting discussion if we were actually talking about the ways something like this shapes the environment in which we make our choices in which we either learn to behave pro-socially or even in which it doing so becomes a genetically selected trait.

Pretending that humans are chimpanzees when we're more like overgrown capuchin monkeys behaviourally isn't very interesting.

 

[Jokodo]

You're flat out wrong here, and honestly I'm genuinely surprised that you're even attempting to make this claim, and not admitting that it's misguided.

Carrying out common courtesies are not a sacrifice in any way, because by not carrying out common courtesies you stand to lose more than you would by just granting the courtesy, which is the point skepticalbip was making. If you can't concede on this point I just give up.

I already gave up, deciding that it wasn't worth the effort. Jokodo for some weird reason seems to honestly believe that the cost in personal well being (all that wasted energy and effort) of a simple courtesy like handing a workmate a cup would outweigh the personal well being boost of a cordial working relationship. Being courteous, even with strangers, strengthens social bonds. People have a tendency (human nature) to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude when they see uncaring ass holes in serious need of help but will generally jump in to help when that person is known to be friendly and congenial rather than an uncaring ass. A little courtesy will keep a person out of the ass hole category in the eyes of others. Congeniality in human society is a damn good survival strategy.

It is, but mostly because others will punish those who don't conform to the expectation of helping others even at a cost to themselves.

This is miles apart from your claim that "Humans can, and do, have altruistic ideals of how cultures should be to attain whatever lofty goals they can imagine but it really boils down to how they think others should live."

 

[Jokodo]

Individuals cannot logically fall out of the gene pool - they were never in the gene pool. Genes can fall out of the gene pool.

This may seem like a nitpick, but I really don't think it is: I think it's symptomatic of the way you oversimplify the connections between genotypes and phenotypes.

I think this is symptomatic of your tendency to look for reasons why an argument is wrong, and take individual idioms way too literally, rather than reading into a post and actually trying to understand it. From your above response (not the one I'm responding to, but the larger one above) I'm still not convinced you've gauged my meaning, and it took me about half an hour to write that post.

My posts don't write themselves either. I believe I got what you're trying to say, I just don't think it's well reasoned. You're invited to convince me otherwise.