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>don't need to exist because of a reason that's explicit Why do men have nipples? Because there is no reason not to. Evolution need not a reason, but unless t

>don't need to exist because of a reason that's explicit Why do men have nipples? Because there is no reason not to. Evolution need not a reason, but unless things do have a purpose, all things have a cost, whether it is raw unnecessary complexity, inefficient energy expenditure, or a novel external selective pressure. Taboos and traditions may not _seem_ to have purpose - but that ignorance is basically the inverse of our God of the (Knowledge) Gaps. Not being attracted to individuals you spent a large amount of time with - and shaming/shunning those who do - is a positive instinct that directly reduces the incidence of incest, which is an act that _literally_ degrades biodiversity. Sexism and racism make sense too. Sexism gives an immediate rise to familial hierarchies, which have more benefit in a hunter-gatherer context. Racism/Xenophobia is a geat instinct when we were territorial primates - those with differing skin tones/significantly different facial structure were likely competitors for resources and carried diseases you wouldn't have defenses for. Religions all stem from the upper castes of ALL developed civilizations. The priests/shamans/wizards/sorcerers/wise men were the ones with the celestial knowledge required to dictate when to plant crops. We evolved from apes; taboos and traditions are just remnants of our collective unconscious, and are just unneeded artifacts we will grow out of as technology and modernity progress.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
To some degree Chesterton's fence applies here: if you don't know why a fence was put up, don't demolish it until you find out. Many taboos and instincts have their roots in completely outdated utility - racism and sexism both used to serve evolutionary purposes, but stuck around LONG after they became useless. Other taboos and traditions are still useful for society today, but are somewhat under attack - like the taboo on divorce/single parenthood. Studies show that children of divorced parents have much worse outcomes than children of parents who are still together, controlling for most variables. I think there is a large chunk of society that is afraid we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so they think it's better to keep the bathwater...
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  I'm quite sceptical of these studies. I don't see how you control for the fact that couples who stay together are happier on average. That's why they're still together(at least some of the time), whereas divorcees are by definition not happy together. To have a proper comparison you need to compare divorced parents to married, but miserable parents. Growing up with the latter can be just as miserable or possibly even more if it's an abusive marriage.
  - GauntletWizard 4y ago
    You don't need to control for that. We're looking at total outcomes, not individual points; it doesn't matter how it reaches the effect. Here's a proposition: Learning to make compromises and achieve partnership with your partner and growing into it is the behavior most associated with happiness of couples. Having removed the obvious necessity of it, we've created a society with much more focus on individual wants and needs that gains less from cooperation, resulting in lower average outcomes. Absolutely, the stigma on divorce was once too high, resulting in people staying in abusive relationships too long. But people still stay in abusive relationships. We can recognize that committed partnerships are healthy and encourage them without saying that any one individual is at fault if a relationship didn't work out.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
      That's a very nice just-so story, no doubt carefully constructed to fit your world view. Now, a vague reference to "studies" and a biased just-so story might convince you but I'm far from convinced by this.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      > We can recognize that committed partnerships are healthy and encourage them without saying that any one individual is at fault if a relationship didn't work out. Do we really need to encourage happy, healthy, and successful committed partnerships? Don't most people desire that for themselves? We should probably avoid outright discouraging them, but I suspect that most people are wanting a good, happy, loving, relationship and that if they divorce it's because they didn't have one. I really don't think that it's simply a matter of most people seeing divorce as being so easy and consequence free that there's no value in putting in the effort to work things out with their spouses either. Especially not when children are involved.
ravenstine 4y ago
> all things have a cost Yes, and it's not a simple matter to estimate those costs, let alone any point where a cost reaches the threshold of evolutionary pressure. There are plenty of examples in nature of things that are inefficient and suboptimal but the pressure to remove them is lacking. Or, there is an unseen benefit to things that seem to be "bad" that 21st century humans haven't figured out yet. In theory, everything has a cost, just as the First Law of thermodynamics suggests that energy is conserved, even though in the real world neither energy or mass are conserved, making it much more complicated if not impractical to make predictions from alone. On the flip side, all matter has the added factor (substituting cost) of gravitation, which one might assume to always matter to some degree, yet it's so inconsequential at the molecular level that it's basically not even factored into most chemistry. My point being that whether we are capable to actually determine whether anything is a meaningful cost on a system is dubious. > Taboos and traditions may not _seem_ to have purpose And that could be a result of them actually having no purpose, but consequently having an effect that manages to allow them to survive and propagate. > We evolved from apes; taboos and traditions are just remnants of our collective unconscious, and are just unneeded artifacts we will grow out of as technology and modernity progress. Be careful what you wish for.
anenefan 4y ago
A bit off topic but it might be an idea to move away from men's nipples [1] as an example of redundant evolution. It's true to say often an evolution trait has no obvious reason, possibly the reason no longer exists. Most every community have a tangle of a belief system outside of anything religious. Moving away from more obvious isms, I grew up surrounded by fierce ageism especially in regard to the dating set. As young adult I eventually realised it was another ism that was BS, but also realised its presence waxed and waned over a number of years - it's clearly a product of social interactions. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-males-can-lactate/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-...
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Men's nipples are probably useful for the same reason many electronic products have various things on their circuit boards that aren't used: on those products, it's cheaper to manufacture a single circuit board to cover multiple variations of the product, and just attach the components needed for that particular model, leaving the rest unused. Genetically, it's probably easier for men and women to just share the same genetic code that produces nipples.
  - anenefan 4y ago
    I understand but it was less fun to go down the shared male / female development path of why men end up with nipples :) The fact that men can lactate under unusual conditions has made me rethink using the idiom "as useless at tits on a bull" ... but I'm fairly sure that a bull would not let a hungry baby calf nuzzle long enough for it to find the bulls nipples.
  - Jerrrry 4y ago
    Exactly, it would take a costly mutation with dubious benefit - and since there is no selective advantageous pressure (men without nippples arent that _more_ attractive, definitely not enough to warrant the mutation) they continue to exist.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

To some degree Chesterton's fence applies here: if you don't know why a fence was put up, don't demolish it until you find out. Many taboos and instincts have their roots in completely outdated utility - racism and sexism both used to serve evolutionary purposes, but stuck around LONG after they became useless. Other taboos and traditions are still useful for society today, but are somewhat under attack - like the taboo on divorce/single parenthood. Studies show that children of divorced parents have much worse outcomes than children of parents who are still together, controlling for most variables. I think there is a large chunk of society that is afraid we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so they think it's better to keep the bathwater...

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
I'm quite sceptical of these studies. I don't see how you control for the fact that couples who stay together are happier on average. That's why they're still together(at least some of the time), whereas divorcees are by definition not happy together. To have a proper comparison you need to compare divorced parents to married, but miserable parents. Growing up with the latter can be just as miserable or possibly even more if it's an abusive marriage.
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  You don't need to control for that. We're looking at total outcomes, not individual points; it doesn't matter how it reaches the effect. Here's a proposition: Learning to make compromises and achieve partnership with your partner and growing into it is the behavior most associated with happiness of couples. Having removed the obvious necessity of it, we've created a society with much more focus on individual wants and needs that gains less from cooperation, resulting in lower average outcomes. Absolutely, the stigma on divorce was once too high, resulting in people staying in abusive relationships too long. But people still stay in abusive relationships. We can recognize that committed partnerships are healthy and encourage them without saying that any one individual is at fault if a relationship didn't work out.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    That's a very nice just-so story, no doubt carefully constructed to fit your world view. Now, a vague reference to "studies" and a biased just-so story might convince you but I'm far from convinced by this.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    > We can recognize that committed partnerships are healthy and encourage them without saying that any one individual is at fault if a relationship didn't work out. Do we really need to encourage happy, healthy, and successful committed partnerships? Don't most people desire that for themselves? We should probably avoid outright discouraging them, but I suspect that most people are wanting a good, happy, loving, relationship and that if they divorce it's because they didn't have one. I really don't think that it's simply a matter of most people seeing divorce as being so easy and consequence free that there's no value in putting in the effort to work things out with their spouses either. Especially not when children are involved.

ravenstine 4y ago

> all things have a cost Yes, and it's not a simple matter to estimate those costs, let alone any point where a cost reaches the threshold of evolutionary pressure. There are plenty of examples in nature of things that are inefficient and suboptimal but the pressure to remove them is lacking. Or, there is an unseen benefit to things that seem to be "bad" that 21st century humans haven't figured out yet. In theory, everything has a cost, just as the First Law of thermodynamics suggests that energy is conserved, even though in the real world neither energy or mass are conserved, making it much more complicated if not impractical to make predictions from alone. On the flip side, all matter has the added factor (substituting cost) of gravitation, which one might assume to always matter to some degree, yet it's so inconsequential at the molecular level that it's basically not even factored into most chemistry. My point being that whether we are capable to actually determine whether anything is a meaningful cost on a system is dubious. > Taboos and traditions may not _seem_ to have purpose And that could be a result of them actually having no purpose, but consequently having an effect that manages to allow them to survive and propagate. > We evolved from apes; taboos and traditions are just remnants of our collective unconscious, and are just unneeded artifacts we will grow out of as technology and modernity progress. Be careful what you wish for.

anenefan 4y ago

A bit off topic but it might be an idea to move away from men's nipples [1] as an example of redundant evolution. It's true to say often an evolution trait has no obvious reason, possibly the reason no longer exists. Most every community have a tangle of a belief system outside of anything religious. Moving away from more obvious isms, I grew up surrounded by fierce ageism especially in regard to the dating set. As young adult I eventually realised it was another ism that was BS, but also realised its presence waxed and waned over a number of years - it's clearly a product of social interactions. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-males-can-lactate/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-...

midoridensha 4y ago
Men's nipples are probably useful for the same reason many electronic products have various things on their circuit boards that aren't used: on those products, it's cheaper to manufacture a single circuit board to cover multiple variations of the product, and just attach the components needed for that particular model, leaving the rest unused. Genetically, it's probably easier for men and women to just share the same genetic code that produces nipples.
- anenefan 4y ago
  I understand but it was less fun to go down the shared male / female development path of why men end up with nipples :) The fact that men can lactate under unusual conditions has made me rethink using the idiom "as useless at tits on a bull" ... but I'm fairly sure that a bull would not let a hungry baby calf nuzzle long enough for it to find the bulls nipples.
- Jerrrry 4y ago
  Exactly, it would take a costly mutation with dubious benefit - and since there is no selective advantageous pressure (men without nippples arent that _more_ attractive, definitely not enough to warrant the mutation) they continue to exist.