4 ms·

Yet, courtship in the yesteryears appears to have been much more involved and complex. Are humans bucking this trend?

by iwwr 15y ago

ars 15y ago
Birth control. Sex for a female is now free, so she is not as selective. This is bad news for human fitness, but is not likely to change.
- JoachimSchipper 15y ago
  That is a pretty big simplification. If nothing else, consider Romeo and Juliet and the hundreds of similar plays: pre-modern women (and men) [EDIT: were not always in a position to marry/have sex with their first choice] - resources (food) were finite and the family was (sometimes) placed above the individual. As to human fitness - I expect that we'll widely use gentech before that becomes an issue [1], and anyway I think "smart/succesful people have fewer kids" would be a bigger issue than slightly less careful mate selection, if indeed modern females are less careful in selecting a mate (I doubt it.) [1] This is a prediction, not a value statement. I think it's a good idea, but I'm somewhat squeamish.
  - ars 15y ago
    > pre-modern women (and men) could not always marry/have sex with anyone they liked - resources (food) were finite and the family was (sometimes) placed above the individual. Doesn't that confirm what I said? She can't just marry whoever she wants, she needs to very carefully pick. Edit: I see your clarification, and I'm not so sure it argues against me. Her first choice is (presumably) a romantic choice, but instead she must choose the practical choice. I would assume the practical choice is fitter.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - ovi256 15y ago
    >As to human fitness - I expect that we'll widely use gentech before that becomes an issue That would be even worse. Whatever our notion of fitness would be, it's definitely different from nature's needs. If anything, gentech would make fitness worse before making it better.
- doyoulikeworms 15y ago
  I don't think that this makes sense. In the end, males and females are mating, so there is selectivity going on as before in terms of choosing who you want to father/birth your children. The introduction of birth control could be said, though, to reduce the impetus for selectivity with regard to sex, but not mating.
  - ars 15y ago
    I thought of that, but once the person has spent a lot of time with another person they are more likely to continue to mating (as you call it) with that person, rather than find someone else. Even if they would have never chosen that person in the first place (for mating) if they were more selective at the outset.
    - doyoulikeworms 15y ago
      Ah, that's a good point. Either way, I think that you can just as easily say that a woman is more likely to leave a "bad" candidate for mating, since she is not tied down by the presence of offspring. I guess we'll just have to see :)
- jasonwocky 15y ago
  Ah yes, because today's demographies without easy access to birth control are rocketing past us in fitness. Increased female reproductive choice (of whether and with whom to mate) yields an upward trend in fitness because it results in fewer, better cared for offspring.
  - ars 15y ago
    > Ah yes, because today's demographies without easy access to birth control are rocketing past us in fitness. It takes a lot longer than that, and it would be impossible to measure due to birth control being correlated with medical care. > ...yields an upward trend in fitness because it results in fewer, better cared for offspring. The level of care to an offspring has no effect on its genes, and if anything can mask genetic weakness by substituting extra care. So it does not cause an upward trend for the children of the offspring. Interestingly one trait that is being selected for is female non-sensitivity to hormone contraceptives. Now that would be interesting to measure. Another trait that is theoretically being selected for is behaviors that would discourage contraceptive use (physical or hormone based), but I doubt that that would be measurable - at least not for many more generations. It's an interesting world we've made for ourself, I would love to see demographics for 250 years from now.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Ah yes, because today's demographies without easy access to birth control are rocketing past us in fitness. They're outpopulating us. That's more or less all that Darwinian fitness boils down to.
  - scythe 15y ago
    >Ah yes, because today's demographies without easy access to birth control are rocketing past us in fitness. Meanwhile, in Africa, human beings are evolving resistance to AIDS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_disease_progression_rates#Highly_exposed_persistently_seronegative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_disease_progression_rates#H...
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  In the absence of data one random-ass hypothesis is as good as another. Here is a different one: Thanks to the invention of reliable birth control, the declining risk of childbirth (particularly late-in-life childbirth), and the decreasing economic value of children in modern urban societies, human mating rituals in such societies have tended to become orders of magnitude more baroque and complex, now typically extending over decades and involving multiple pairings-off, moving in and out with each other, extended auditions with both sets of families, and careful correlation of childbearing attempts with career paths and financial flows. Remember, though: This is a hypothesis, no data. Consult your friendly neighborhood sociologist, who will tell you that the world is more complicated than that. Consider, for example, that not everyone in America is in the same social class...
JoachimSchipper 15y ago
More ceremonial, yes, but more involved? People do spend a lot of time dating...
- ars 15y ago
  Except in the name there isn't much distinction between what we call "dating" (of the co-habitating type) today, and what they called marriage in the past.

Yet, courtship in the yesteryears appears to have been much more involved and complex. Are humans bucking this trend?

by iwwr 15y ago

Yet, courtship in the yesteryears appears to have been much more involved and complex. Are humans bucking this trend?

ars 15y ago

Birth control. Sex for a female is now free, so she is not as selective. This is bad news for human fitness, but is not likely to change.

JoachimSchipper 15y ago
That is a pretty big simplification. If nothing else, consider Romeo and Juliet and the hundreds of similar plays: pre-modern women (and men) [EDIT: were not always in a position to marry/have sex with their first choice] - resources (food) were finite and the family was (sometimes) placed above the individual. As to human fitness - I expect that we'll widely use gentech before that becomes an issue [1], and anyway I think "smart/succesful people have fewer kids" would be a bigger issue than slightly less careful mate selection, if indeed modern females are less careful in selecting a mate (I doubt it.) [1] This is a prediction, not a value statement. I think it's a good idea, but I'm somewhat squeamish.
- ars 15y ago
  > pre-modern women (and men) could not always marry/have sex with anyone they liked - resources (food) were finite and the family was (sometimes) placed above the individual. Doesn't that confirm what I said? She can't just marry whoever she wants, she needs to very carefully pick. Edit: I see your clarification, and I'm not so sure it argues against me. Her first choice is (presumably) a romantic choice, but instead she must choose the practical choice. I would assume the practical choice is fitter.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- ovi256 15y ago
  >As to human fitness - I expect that we'll widely use gentech before that becomes an issue That would be even worse. Whatever our notion of fitness would be, it's definitely different from nature's needs. If anything, gentech would make fitness worse before making it better.
doyoulikeworms 15y ago
I don't think that this makes sense. In the end, males and females are mating, so there is selectivity going on as before in terms of choosing who you want to father/birth your children. The introduction of birth control could be said, though, to reduce the impetus for selectivity with regard to sex, but not mating.
- ars 15y ago
  I thought of that, but once the person has spent a lot of time with another person they are more likely to continue to mating (as you call it) with that person, rather than find someone else. Even if they would have never chosen that person in the first place (for mating) if they were more selective at the outset.
  - doyoulikeworms 15y ago
    Ah, that's a good point. Either way, I think that you can just as easily say that a woman is more likely to leave a "bad" candidate for mating, since she is not tied down by the presence of offspring. I guess we'll just have to see :)
jasonwocky 15y ago
Ah yes, because today's demographies without easy access to birth control are rocketing past us in fitness. Increased female reproductive choice (of whether and with whom to mate) yields an upward trend in fitness because it results in fewer, better cared for offspring.
- ars 15y ago
  > Ah yes, because today's demographies without easy access to birth control are rocketing past us in fitness. It takes a lot longer than that, and it would be impossible to measure due to birth control being correlated with medical care. > ...yields an upward trend in fitness because it results in fewer, better cared for offspring. The level of care to an offspring has no effect on its genes, and if anything can mask genetic weakness by substituting extra care. So it does not cause an upward trend for the children of the offspring. Interestingly one trait that is being selected for is female non-sensitivity to hormone contraceptives. Now that would be interesting to measure. Another trait that is theoretically being selected for is behaviors that would discourage contraceptive use (physical or hormone based), but I doubt that that would be measurable - at least not for many more generations. It's an interesting world we've made for ourself, I would love to see demographics for 250 years from now.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Ah yes, because today's demographies without easy access to birth control are rocketing past us in fitness. They're outpopulating us. That's more or less all that Darwinian fitness boils down to.
- scythe 15y ago
  >Ah yes, because today's demographies without easy access to birth control are rocketing past us in fitness. Meanwhile, in Africa, human beings are evolving resistance to AIDS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_disease_progression_rates#Highly_exposed_persistently_seronegative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_disease_progression_rates#H...
mechanical_fish 15y ago
In the absence of data one random-ass hypothesis is as good as another. Here is a different one: Thanks to the invention of reliable birth control, the declining risk of childbirth (particularly late-in-life childbirth), and the decreasing economic value of children in modern urban societies, human mating rituals in such societies have tended to become orders of magnitude more baroque and complex, now typically extending over decades and involving multiple pairings-off, moving in and out with each other, extended auditions with both sets of families, and careful correlation of childbearing attempts with career paths and financial flows. Remember, though: This is a hypothesis, no data. Consult your friendly neighborhood sociologist, who will tell you that the world is more complicated than that. Consider, for example, that not everyone in America is in the same social class...

JoachimSchipper 15y ago

More ceremonial, yes, but more involved? People do spend a lot of time dating...

ars 15y ago
Except in the name there isn't much distinction between what we call "dating" (of the co-habitating type) today, and what they called marriage in the past.