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Young women are more attractive because, through evolutionary selection, men find fertile women more attractive. Genes which caused men to find unfertile women

Young women are more attractive because, through evolutionary selection, men find fertile women more attractive. Genes which caused men to find unfertile women more attractive quickly died out.

drewcoo 5y ago
> men find fertile women more attractive Do they? How can they tell? Do they ask to see the eggs first? > Genes which caused men to find unfertile women more attractive quickly died out. Die out? I don't think genes work that way. But maybe language is a stumbling block here. I will grant you that fertile women have been fertilized historically because tada - here we all are! But that does not in any way mean that all sex was for the sake of fertilization. Or even between semen- and egg-bearing people. And the amount of non-child-producing sex both today and historically seems to suggest that fertility is not the primary concern, let alone cause for non-childbearing sexual urges to "die out."
- zdkl 5y ago
  You're replying social sciences to a biology comment, where the mechanism described above can absolutely be shortened to "genes die out" in a given population pool.
- kragen 5y ago
  I can't tell if you just missed the point, lack the background knowledge to understand it, or are pretending not to understand it for some kind of political reason, so I'll try to explain it in a different way. Men who only sought sex with other men* or with postmenopausal women may have had a lot of sex, as you say, but they also have no descendants (unless a fertile woman raped them at some point, or they were born late enough to donate to a sperm bank). So their genes died out. Even a fairly small inclination in this direction is enough to produce a very large difference in gene prevalence after many generations. In only 200 generations, an allele that gives you an only 5% lower chance of having children will decrease in its relative prevalence by a factor of thirty thousand (0.95 ** 200 = 3.5e-5). That is the way genes work. Of course most sex among humans (and hominins in general) doesn't produce offspring, and in humans and bonobos (but not chimpanzees) most of it can't possibly produce offspring. That's fine. Sex isn't a limited commodity. Sex is abundant. But hominins, especially humans, are choosy about who they have sex with, and any alleles that can get them to be choosy in a way that will increase their chances of reproducing will become more abundant over time. Is 200 generations a long time? Hominins are about 300,000 generations old. Australopithecines are about 200,000 gnerations old. Homo is about 100,000 generations old. Homo sapiens is about 10,000 generations old. Agriculture and Catal Hoyuk are about 500 generations old. So I don't think it is. Does that help? ______ * Unless those other men they were having sex with were trans men equipped with a fertile uterus, anyway.
  - amatic 5y ago
    So... gay men are descendants of gay men who were raped by fertile women? Edit: of course not. I'm just pointing out the conclusion coming out of this: >Men who only sought sex with other men [...] have no descendants (unless a fertile woman raped them at some point [...]). So their genes died out
    - kragen 5y ago
      That is not one of the leading theories, no: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation#Sexual_orientation_and_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation... Women rape men fairly rarely, and even a woman who raped thousands of men generally cannot have more than a dozen offspring as a result. By contrast, one in every 200 men today has Genghis Khan's Y chromosome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan This should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: the fact that rape can produce offspring does not make rape morally commendable or tolerable. It's true that the stubborn existence of gay people poses challenges to any kind of simple ev-psych explanation of human sexuality, and it's tempting to conclude that although sexual behavior in sheep and partridges is instinctual, sexual behavior in humans is purely culturally constructed, because humans are rational beings not controlled by instinct, and this is why some humans are gay. This explanation runs into several big problems: 1. Lots of sheep and partridges are also homosexual. Also several hundred other species at least. 2. If you have ever met a human, you know they are not very rational, and cultural conditioning is in a constant pitched battle with human instincts. 3. For decades in the US the standard treatment of male babies born with deformed genitalia was to perform sex-reassignment surgery on them and raise them as girls. If human sexual behavior were purely culturally constructed, then as adults about 90% of them would have sought male partners, like 90% of other children raised as girls. Instead, most of them sought female partners. 4. Homosexuality seems to be a cultural universal. So, the evidence in favor of the "born this way" hypothesis is pretty overwhelming, especially for men. So, how did "gay genes" not get wiped out? Among the numerous theories mentioned in the WP article: "There was genetic material being passed down on the X chromosome which both promotes fertility in the mother and homosexuality in her male offspring." (Camperio-Ciani, Corna, and Capiluppi 2004) Another possibility is that being gay is biological and congenital, just not genetic, for example due to fetal hormone exposure or immune response by the mother's body. Historically, lots of gay men have been voluntarily married to women, had sex with them, and had children with them. This still happens today. I have known gay men who have never had sex with women, but they are very much the exception to the rule. (There are men who are exclusively attracted to postmenopausal women, too, just not very many of them.)
- globular-toast 5y ago
  > Do they? How can they tell? Do they ask to see the eggs first? They can't tell. They are just attracted to women who look a certain way. They are attracted to women who look that way because they are descended from men who were attracted to women that looked that way. It's similar to the old story about how giraffes got long necks so they could reach higher leaves in the tree. Giraffes don't look at each other and think "wow, he can reach a lot of leaves!" They look and think "wow, he's got a long neck!" Why are they attracted to long necks? Because they are descended from giraffes who were attracted to giraffes with long necks, and those giraffes were, on average, more successful at getting leaves from trees.
wumpus 5y ago
> Genes which caused men to find unfertile women more attractive quickly died out. I don't know about you, but I'm an uncle. Cheers.
bawolff 5y ago
Seems like a just so story. E.g. why did that happen instead of say making woman fertile for longer? Why is the sterotype that youth is very attractive in woman, but the same sterotype doesn't apply to the same extent in men? Seems like there are a lot of other possibilities that that justification could argue for. Sure, its possible or even likely that evolution has something to do with it, but i think you need a more compelling evidence than that to be convincing.
- username90 5y ago
  > why did that happen instead of say making woman fertile for longer Human children takes over a decade to become adults, so it is pretty likely evolution selected for women who stopped getting pregnant once they neared the end of their lifespan. Producing kids is super expensive so better take care of those you already have at that point. > Why is the sterotype that youth is very attractive in woman, but the same sterotype doesn't apply to the same extent in men Reasonable theory: Women mostly select men with good genes. Men mostly select women who can get pregnant and survive said pregnancy and bring the kid to adult. The main predictors for a woman being able to get and survive pregnancy is that she has a flat stomach (so not already pregnant) and she is young and healthy. Also existing kids will hurt your kids so better select a woman who doesn't already have kids, which historically meant young women. Good genes is much more complicated, age is a positive factor here since it means the man could survive for that long but there are all sort of things women could look for here.
  - dwighttk 5y ago
    > pretty likely evolution selected for women who stopped getting pregnant once they neared the end of their lifespan Would love to hear your proposed mechanism
    - username90 5y ago
      A woman will live for 5 more years. She already has three kids at age 2, 5, and 7. In this scenario it is very likely the reduced resources these kids will have from sharing with a new sibling will reduce their chance to survive more than the 5 year old motherless child will add to the expected number of descendants. You could argue that it would be better if the genes considered these scenarios better and adapted. But genes are very crude, they can't encode for all those things, so instead they just do what is best in the typical scneario.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
This is a naïve take. For instance, it doesn't explain men who find other men attractive. Shouldn't that have died out too since it is significantly more incapable of producing healthy offspring? Human sexuality is absurdly complicated because our brains are absurdly complicated.
- Teever 5y ago
  I've always found evolutionary concepts to be a bit tautological so the answer to your question is quite straight forward: homosexuality is obviously not so great of a detriment to reproductive fitness because if it was it would be and homosexuals would be as rare as cannibals.
  - prirun 5y ago
    I have a completely unscientific theory that homosexuality is an evolutionary advantage to humans (and maybe some other animals) because homosexual aunts and uncles contribute their resources (time, money, wisdom, etc) to the raising of their sibilings' children since they don't usually have children of their own to raise. So in a family with 2 straight and 1 gay kids, the next generation has the resources of 5 adults to help raise them instead of 4.

Young women are more attractive because, through evolutionary selection, men find fertile women more attractive. Genes which caused men to find unfertile women more attractive quickly died out.

drewcoo 5y ago

> men find fertile women more attractive Do they? How can they tell? Do they ask to see the eggs first? > Genes which caused men to find unfertile women more attractive quickly died out. Die out? I don't think genes work that way. But maybe language is a stumbling block here. I will grant you that fertile women have been fertilized historically because tada - here we all are! But that does not in any way mean that all sex was for the sake of fertilization. Or even between semen- and egg-bearing people. And the amount of non-child-producing sex both today and historically seems to suggest that fertility is not the primary concern, let alone cause for non-childbearing sexual urges to "die out."

zdkl 5y ago
You're replying social sciences to a biology comment, where the mechanism described above can absolutely be shortened to "genes die out" in a given population pool.
kragen 5y ago
I can't tell if you just missed the point, lack the background knowledge to understand it, or are pretending not to understand it for some kind of political reason, so I'll try to explain it in a different way. Men who only sought sex with other men* or with postmenopausal women may have had a lot of sex, as you say, but they also have no descendants (unless a fertile woman raped them at some point, or they were born late enough to donate to a sperm bank). So their genes died out. Even a fairly small inclination in this direction is enough to produce a very large difference in gene prevalence after many generations. In only 200 generations, an allele that gives you an only 5% lower chance of having children will decrease in its relative prevalence by a factor of thirty thousand (0.95 ** 200 = 3.5e-5). That is the way genes work. Of course most sex among humans (and hominins in general) doesn't produce offspring, and in humans and bonobos (but not chimpanzees) most of it can't possibly produce offspring. That's fine. Sex isn't a limited commodity. Sex is abundant. But hominins, especially humans, are choosy about who they have sex with, and any alleles that can get them to be choosy in a way that will increase their chances of reproducing will become more abundant over time. Is 200 generations a long time? Hominins are about 300,000 generations old. Australopithecines are about 200,000 gnerations old. Homo is about 100,000 generations old. Homo sapiens is about 10,000 generations old. Agriculture and Catal Hoyuk are about 500 generations old. So I don't think it is. Does that help? ______ * Unless those other men they were having sex with were trans men equipped with a fertile uterus, anyway.
- amatic 5y ago
  So... gay men are descendants of gay men who were raped by fertile women? Edit: of course not. I'm just pointing out the conclusion coming out of this: >Men who only sought sex with other men [...] have no descendants (unless a fertile woman raped them at some point [...]). So their genes died out
  - kragen 5y ago
    That is not one of the leading theories, no: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation#Sexual_orientation_and_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation... Women rape men fairly rarely, and even a woman who raped thousands of men generally cannot have more than a dozen offspring as a result. By contrast, one in every 200 men today has Genghis Khan's Y chromosome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan This should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: the fact that rape can produce offspring does not make rape morally commendable or tolerable. It's true that the stubborn existence of gay people poses challenges to any kind of simple ev-psych explanation of human sexuality, and it's tempting to conclude that although sexual behavior in sheep and partridges is instinctual, sexual behavior in humans is purely culturally constructed, because humans are rational beings not controlled by instinct, and this is why some humans are gay. This explanation runs into several big problems: 1. Lots of sheep and partridges are also homosexual. Also several hundred other species at least. 2. If you have ever met a human, you know they are not very rational, and cultural conditioning is in a constant pitched battle with human instincts. 3. For decades in the US the standard treatment of male babies born with deformed genitalia was to perform sex-reassignment surgery on them and raise them as girls. If human sexual behavior were purely culturally constructed, then as adults about 90% of them would have sought male partners, like 90% of other children raised as girls. Instead, most of them sought female partners. 4. Homosexuality seems to be a cultural universal. So, the evidence in favor of the "born this way" hypothesis is pretty overwhelming, especially for men. So, how did "gay genes" not get wiped out? Among the numerous theories mentioned in the WP article: "There was genetic material being passed down on the X chromosome which both promotes fertility in the mother and homosexuality in her male offspring." (Camperio-Ciani, Corna, and Capiluppi 2004) Another possibility is that being gay is biological and congenital, just not genetic, for example due to fetal hormone exposure or immune response by the mother's body. Historically, lots of gay men have been voluntarily married to women, had sex with them, and had children with them. This still happens today. I have known gay men who have never had sex with women, but they are very much the exception to the rule. (There are men who are exclusively attracted to postmenopausal women, too, just not very many of them.)
globular-toast 5y ago
> Do they? How can they tell? Do they ask to see the eggs first? They can't tell. They are just attracted to women who look a certain way. They are attracted to women who look that way because they are descended from men who were attracted to women that looked that way. It's similar to the old story about how giraffes got long necks so they could reach higher leaves in the tree. Giraffes don't look at each other and think "wow, he can reach a lot of leaves!" They look and think "wow, he's got a long neck!" Why are they attracted to long necks? Because they are descended from giraffes who were attracted to giraffes with long necks, and those giraffes were, on average, more successful at getting leaves from trees.

wumpus 5y ago

> Genes which caused men to find unfertile women more attractive quickly died out. I don't know about you, but I'm an uncle. Cheers.

bawolff 5y ago

Seems like a just so story. E.g. why did that happen instead of say making woman fertile for longer? Why is the sterotype that youth is very attractive in woman, but the same sterotype doesn't apply to the same extent in men? Seems like there are a lot of other possibilities that that justification could argue for. Sure, its possible or even likely that evolution has something to do with it, but i think you need a more compelling evidence than that to be convincing.

username90 5y ago
> why did that happen instead of say making woman fertile for longer Human children takes over a decade to become adults, so it is pretty likely evolution selected for women who stopped getting pregnant once they neared the end of their lifespan. Producing kids is super expensive so better take care of those you already have at that point. > Why is the sterotype that youth is very attractive in woman, but the same sterotype doesn't apply to the same extent in men Reasonable theory: Women mostly select men with good genes. Men mostly select women who can get pregnant and survive said pregnancy and bring the kid to adult. The main predictors for a woman being able to get and survive pregnancy is that she has a flat stomach (so not already pregnant) and she is young and healthy. Also existing kids will hurt your kids so better select a woman who doesn't already have kids, which historically meant young women. Good genes is much more complicated, age is a positive factor here since it means the man could survive for that long but there are all sort of things women could look for here.
- dwighttk 5y ago
  > pretty likely evolution selected for women who stopped getting pregnant once they neared the end of their lifespan Would love to hear your proposed mechanism
  - username90 5y ago
    A woman will live for 5 more years. She already has three kids at age 2, 5, and 7. In this scenario it is very likely the reduced resources these kids will have from sharing with a new sibling will reduce their chance to survive more than the 5 year old motherless child will add to the expected number of descendants. You could argue that it would be better if the genes considered these scenarios better and adapted. But genes are very crude, they can't encode for all those things, so instead they just do what is best in the typical scneario.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

This is a naïve take. For instance, it doesn't explain men who find other men attractive. Shouldn't that have died out too since it is significantly more incapable of producing healthy offspring? Human sexuality is absurdly complicated because our brains are absurdly complicated.

Teever 5y ago
I've always found evolutionary concepts to be a bit tautological so the answer to your question is quite straight forward: homosexuality is obviously not so great of a detriment to reproductive fitness because if it was it would be and homosexuals would be as rare as cannibals.
- prirun 5y ago
  I have a completely unscientific theory that homosexuality is an evolutionary advantage to humans (and maybe some other animals) because homosexual aunts and uncles contribute their resources (time, money, wisdom, etc) to the raising of their sibilings' children since they don't usually have children of their own to raise. So in a family with 2 straight and 1 gay kids, the next generation has the resources of 5 adults to help raise them instead of 4.