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I'm not sure I'm following the tortured logic here. Are you saying people will "like sex less and less as time goes on" because they're less likely to have an

I'm not sure I'm following the tortured logic here. Are you saying people will "like sex less and less as time goes on" because they're less likely to have an unintentional pregnancy? That makes no sense at all! It seems to me that the article linked to in the post makes a fairly compelling economic case that sexual promiscuity will continue to increase in the future. IMHO, that's a good thing. :-)

daniel-cussen 17y ago
Are you saying people will "like sex less and less as time goes on" because they're less likely to have an unintentional pregnancy? Yes. It's the Red Queen effect here; your mind works with incentives that one must not be able to permanently conquer. If happiness is too easily attained with fake thrills, you end up with contented humans who don't reproduce as much as the ones who find it harder to be happy and therefore work harder to make more babies. I agree the free love thing is great, and it will remain vestigially for a long time, but it isn't going to be driving reproduction like it was before the twentieth century. I agree the logic is a little tortured, but that's evolutionary biology for you.
- Eliezer 17y ago
  But evolution doesn't know its being cheated. There has to be some way for people who like sex less to end up with more children.
  - orangecat 17y ago
    There has to be some way for people who like sex less to end up with more children. It's somewhat plausible. Individuals and couples who like sex more than average may be more likely to forgo having children to avoid negatively impacting their sex lives.
- btilly 17y ago
  The logic of evolutionary biology can get tortured, particularly when someone missing something obvious is torturing it. The obvious point that you're missing is that evolutionary status and social status are pretty much unrelated things. Evolutionary status is how many descendants you have in the far future. Social status is what society thinks of you. In our evolutionary past the cost of being "ruined" was access to fewer resources, which lead to a decreased survival rate for you and your kids, and decreased prospects for future children. Today the result of out of wedlock pregnancies is more descendants since we all have sufficient resources for basic survival. The result is an evolutionary pressure towards avoiding the effective use of contraception, and for enjoying sex. This happy state is, of course, unlikely to remain for an evolutionarily significant time. The simple reason for that is that the continuation of this state will result in exponential growth in human population, leading to resource exhaustion and a Malthusian nightmare. (Current projections appear to show a halt to exponential growth due to economic and societal pressures. But that won't last more than a few generations as birth control creates a very strong evolutionary pressure for avoiding the effective use of birth control. Even modest success at that will reignite exponential growth.)
- theBobMcCormick 17y ago
  Still sounds highly illogical to me. IMHO whether we look at his from an individual motivation perspective, or from an evolutionary biology perspective, it looks to me like either perspective predicts greater, rather than lesser, promiscuity. From an individual motivation perspective, increases in the effectiveness and convenience of contraceptives and improvements in preventing/curing STD's increase an individuals motivation and desire to have sex by reducing the potential for any negative consequences (ie, disease or unwanted pregnancy). On the other hand, from an evolutionary biology perspective, the people who will successfully reproduce are either 1)those who are purposely planning to have children, 2)those who don't use contraceptives regularly or properly, and 3)those who have frequent enough sex that the slight percentage of contraceptive failure catches up to them. :-) In all three cases, but particularly in the second and third, those individuals who enjoy sex and have it frequently are much more likely to pass on their genes than those who don't enjoy it and don't have it regularly. Hence, I would say that the evolutionary pressure to enjoy sex and seek it out will continue as it always has, relatively unaffected by our modern medical advances. :-)

daniel-cussen 17y ago

Are you saying people will "like sex less and less as time goes on" because they're less likely to have an unintentional pregnancy? Yes. It's the Red Queen effect here; your mind works with incentives that one must not be able to permanently conquer. If happiness is too easily attained with fake thrills, you end up with contented humans who don't reproduce as much as the ones who find it harder to be happy and therefore work harder to make more babies. I agree the free love thing is great, and it will remain vestigially for a long time, but it isn't going to be driving reproduction like it was before the twentieth century. I agree the logic is a little tortured, but that's evolutionary biology for you.

Eliezer 17y ago
But evolution doesn't know its being cheated. There has to be some way for people who like sex less to end up with more children.
- orangecat 17y ago
  There has to be some way for people who like sex less to end up with more children. It's somewhat plausible. Individuals and couples who like sex more than average may be more likely to forgo having children to avoid negatively impacting their sex lives.
btilly 17y ago
The logic of evolutionary biology can get tortured, particularly when someone missing something obvious is torturing it. The obvious point that you're missing is that evolutionary status and social status are pretty much unrelated things. Evolutionary status is how many descendants you have in the far future. Social status is what society thinks of you. In our evolutionary past the cost of being "ruined" was access to fewer resources, which lead to a decreased survival rate for you and your kids, and decreased prospects for future children. Today the result of out of wedlock pregnancies is more descendants since we all have sufficient resources for basic survival. The result is an evolutionary pressure towards avoiding the effective use of contraception, and for enjoying sex. This happy state is, of course, unlikely to remain for an evolutionarily significant time. The simple reason for that is that the continuation of this state will result in exponential growth in human population, leading to resource exhaustion and a Malthusian nightmare. (Current projections appear to show a halt to exponential growth due to economic and societal pressures. But that won't last more than a few generations as birth control creates a very strong evolutionary pressure for avoiding the effective use of birth control. Even modest success at that will reignite exponential growth.)
theBobMcCormick 17y ago
Still sounds highly illogical to me. IMHO whether we look at his from an individual motivation perspective, or from an evolutionary biology perspective, it looks to me like either perspective predicts greater, rather than lesser, promiscuity. From an individual motivation perspective, increases in the effectiveness and convenience of contraceptives and improvements in preventing/curing STD's increase an individuals motivation and desire to have sex by reducing the potential for any negative consequences (ie, disease or unwanted pregnancy). On the other hand, from an evolutionary biology perspective, the people who will successfully reproduce are either 1)those who are purposely planning to have children, 2)those who don't use contraceptives regularly or properly, and 3)those who have frequent enough sex that the slight percentage of contraceptive failure catches up to them. :-) In all three cases, but particularly in the second and third, those individuals who enjoy sex and have it frequently are much more likely to pass on their genes than those who don't enjoy it and don't have it regularly. Hence, I would say that the evolutionary pressure to enjoy sex and seek it out will continue as it always has, relatively unaffected by our modern medical advances. :-)