This seems very lazy. The entire second description is a description of how he lacks dominance, implying dominance is necessary. How, for example, do they know the results would be especially different if they looked at some _other_ quality, like stamina or adaptability, and used similar language that worked to describe the second guy as utterly lacking in that quality?
The stuff that cracks me up -- later in that chapter I believe -- is where they find, surprise surprise, that high-status women with college educations prefer high-status men with college eductions.
There's also a recency effect in NonDominant John. That he won 60% of his games gets forgotten after all the stuff which says, basically, he loses more often than he wins.
Huh? How could the women have any opinion of either John's attractiveness, if they are given no info about the size of his cock? I thot that was the key criterion.
e.g. John is 5'10" tall, 165 lbs., 9" uncut. He has been shooting amateur anal for one year and is currently involved in scripting his tour-de-force Backstage At The Mineshaft. Despite his limited amount of training he is a very skilled porn director,...
The study doesn't account for Control John's evolutionary advantage.
And what was the percentage of respondents who said, "I have to pick one of these guys for his tennis game, knowing nothing else about him? Get real."
I reckon tennis is a pretty good proxy for Quality.
Perhaps it's because the vagueness of how John III is described allows women more freedom to "project" or fantasize desired qualities onto him, where the John I and John II are "already described" and the way they were described makes it sound like John I would be overbearing all the time and John II would be a doormat all the time (when in truth, that info does not exist because they just describe their personality in a relatively new sport, not their career or home or even more experienced sports).
Fuck these losers John:
"John is 5'10 tall, 165 lbs. He has been playing tennis for one year but is still unable reliably to return from his eight year old nephew. In other news, John has a $250k private income but devotes his time to working for a homeless charity, except in August when he visits Milan to buy his suits and then holidays in his villa near Sorrento. He bears a striking resemblance to the young Jimmy Stewart, and is a sensitive and imaginative lover, well proportioned without being intimidating. his interests include cordon bleu cookery, and playing tenor sax in a Coltrane tribute band."
#9 sounds right. But that's way too much psychology for evolutionary psychology.
re: 12
Yeah. Jimmy Stewart isn't who'd have sprung into my mind if I was trying to describe some hot guy to women. Also, the Coltrane-tribute thing is pretty much a 'tailored towards other men' thing.
Jimmy was adorable without being intimidatingly attractive.
Why would the Coltrane tribute band bit be aimed at men? Some of us women like Trane, too.
In other news, John has a $250k private income but devotes his time to working for a homeless charity,
I think, "Works as an I-banker, but intends to open a pet sanctuary," may work better.
I don't prefer Coltrane tribute band to the simpler jazz quintet (say). With the former, I'm imagining Jimmy Stewart in pinstripes and a fedora.
On re-reading the Dominant and Non-Dominant descriptions I'd be far more likely to prefer Non-Dominant John. He doesn't sound so much like a crazed control freak.
winna, how do you know what either of them are like outside of tennis?
I'm going off solely of the descriptions, just as the women in the study had to do.
I would hate to think of what a study that attempted to rate my attractiveness by describing how I play Monopoly.
Maud is 6'3" and 130 lbs. She has been playing tournament Scrabble (tm) for about a year and is currently working her way through the Collins Scrabble (tm) Dictionary. Despite her relatively limited vocabulary she is a fiercely competitive Scrabble(tm) player and tries to psych out opponents by staring at them aggressively when it is their turn and muttering under her breath about their mothers. When she does not have a good word in her hand she has been known to make one up, and stare down her opponents to intimidate them out of making a challenge.
Oh hell, I'd fuck an old Robert Redford.
Ack, sorry, joke misfired.
When dating Maude, insist on playing Diplomacy and use real armies.
In the EEA, most tennis courts were made from clay. Also the balls were rocks and the rackets were made from sticks and sun-dried hyrax entrails. So men with a good baseline game had a significant evolutionary advantage over men who were one-dimensional serve-and-volley players, as success in tennis conferred a significant advantage in mating.
Ernie is 5'2" and 240 lbs. He has been working as a clown at children's birthday parties for a year and is currently attending clown college. Despite his lack of people skillz he is fanatically devoted to making children laugh. All his movements tend to communicate buffoonery and mania.
Despite his lack of people skillz he is fanatically devoted to making children laugh. All his movements tend to communicate buffoonery and mania.
Yet below this whimsical exterior lies a building rage...
I think using the name "Ernie" automatically makes him 80% less attractive. That's why they used "John" for the study.
The book is fascinating, although I'm not done with it yet. I don't know enough about EP (the attacked theoretical paradigm, rather than the general field of study) to know if Buller describes it fairly, but if he does, it's an immensely satisfying critique.
I always end up in arguments about EP as follows:
Me: That's just stupid.
EP proponent: What are you, anti-science? Don't you agree that people's minds evolved just like their bodies?
Me: Well, sure. But the particular argument you're making is stupid.
And this gets disturbing after a while, because their arguments always seem to be wrong, and I can't figure out why. It's tempting to make cracks about 'Funny how the Stone Age looks a lot like 1950's Levittown,' but there just seems to be too much wrongness out there to be explained purely by political tendentiousness.
What Buller does is explain the theoretical framework all of these theories are hanging on (which was entirely new to me -- I am here assuming that it's a fair representation of EP thinking), and then explain why it doesn't work. EP researchers are wrong so much because they're starting from a deeply, fundamentally screwed up set of premises.
Much more satisfying than my prior assumption that they just all sucked.
Warren Cassius Oliver Rock Wolf is 5'2" and 240 lbs. He has been working as a clown at children's birthday parties for a year and is currently attending clown college. Despite his lack of people skillz he is fanatically devoted to making children laugh. All his movements tend to communicate buffoonery and mania.
Nah.
Percival is 5'10" and 165 lbs. He has been commenting on Unfogged for a year and is currently making his way through the archives looking for in-jokes. He spends most of his day thinking about active threads and how he could contribute some wit to them. His dreams feature Unfogged commenters and he has built a shrine to Standpipe Bridgeplate in his back yard.
Ogged is 6'4" and 93 lbs. He has been watching Veronica Mars for less than one month, but has already developed a catalog of surly rejoinders to anyone who criticizes the show's campy Hollywood-assistant-chic dialogue. Ogged is fond of spectator sports and frequent siestas, and has lately been plagued by an easily-hidden two year erection.
re: 32
I've read some critiques of Buller's stuff. Chris at Making Memory -- top blog, btw -- for example, is pretty sceptical about his attack on EP work on cheater detection systems. Although he's quite happy with what Buller has to say about EP work on mating and marriage -- which is the stuff that infuriates everyone anyway.
See: http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2005/05/has-evolutionary-psychology-been_30.html
re: 36
Mixing Memory, I mean.
Anyway, it's a pretty good cognitive science/philosophy blog.
re: 32
Buller's portrayal of EP views on massive modularity, the nature of mental modules, the existence of a relatively fixed and universal human nature, and so on, are all fair. I don't think he misrepresents those views at all.
Percival is 5'10" and 165 lbs. He has been commenting on Unfogged for a year and is currently making his way through the archives looking for in-jokes. He spends most of his day thinking about active threads and how he could contribute some wit to them. His dreams feature Unfogged commenters and he has built a shrine to Standpipe Bridgeplate in his back yard.
This is not entirely correct. I'm down to 157 lbs. now and recently moved the Standpipe shrine to my front yard.
John is 5'10 tall, 165 lbs. He has been a hypothetical person used by EP researchers for one year and is currently being used to demonstrate a point about women’s sexual preferences. Despite his limited connection to reality he is a very useful hypothetical, who has been used to prove over 60 points. He is never attracted to women over 22 years old and would not be happy being married to someone who makes more money than him.
Well, I've read the link in 36 and can honestly say I've learned some things, about what EP is or ought to be about, and some clues that allow me to place it in the history of psychology and philosophy as I understand them.
I recommend it.
Hrm -- the Cheater Detection module chapter was something that I did have to pretty much take on faith, and it was incomprehensible in parts that, while I couldn't be sure, I do associate with handwaving.
Although, I do think Mixing Memory is unfair in their first critique. It seems clear to me, as Buller argues, that social exchanges, in which each of the players agrees to benefit the other directly, are a small subset of social contracts, in which a player is entitled to receive a benefit from some other individual or group because of his obedience to a rule, and the theory that says we should have a cheater detection module for social exchanges does not obviously apply to social contracts generally. Which gets you to the point that studies showing facility with social contracts other than exchanges (most, but not all, of the studies discussed) can't be used to support the theory that expects a social exchange cheater detection module.
I don't quite see what MM says that effectively contradicts that.
32: I haven't read Buller, and I tend personally to be skeptical of EP triumphalism. As you say, it's often underargued, and it has a 'new marxism' feel of a theory-to-explain everything. That said, the response of the Cinderella effect people make me concerned about Buller's general reliability. Nor does Buller's response here go far to allay these concerns.
re: 41
Yes, I think that seems right. It's been a while since I read that chapter of Buller's book -- so I'd need to double check. I've been dipping into it a chapter or so at a time when I'm not busy with other reading. I still haven't read the last two chapters and I've had the book for ages.
I'm still eagerly waiting for Control Maude here; a description of whom must surely include the size of her breasts.
43: Buller's response looks reasonably convincing to me: The US data does, on closer examination, show overreporting of stepparent violence in relation to genetic parent violence, meaning that the Canadian data showing much more stepparent violence can't be taken at face value without the same sort of close examination.
What's your issue? (and do you have a link to the original critique?)
re: 46
baa linked to the Wilson/Daly critique here:
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/buller/reply%20to%20david%20buller.pdf
45 -- at 6'3" and 130 lbs., there is not a lot of extra room for titties.
47: Thanks! I missed Baa's link. Damn, this is the sort of stuff I'd need to sit and work out with a pencil and paper to figure out who's more convincing, and I really shouldn't take the time today.
A problem with EP is that its friends do it no favours. Most non-specialists have to judge such propositions by the internal consistency with which they're defended and by their conformity to observed reality.
So when you get an EP superstar like Pinker devoting (for example) a chapter of The Blank Slate to asserting that non-figurative art and atonal music can never reach a significant audience because art has to be decorative (bad luck, Goya) and music diatonic (bad luck, India) to be appreciated by your "art modules", you stop reading. Because you know perfectly well that a decent performance of Wozzeck can fill any hall in the world. So Pinker is just riffing on his own prejudices.
Which means that if there are good evolutionary psychologists doing unimpeachable ground breaking work somewhere, most of us will never hear about it. Because the popularisers in the field have erected this huge barrier to it.
a decent performance of Wozzeck can fill any hall in the world.
Right but appreciation of that modern stuff occurs in the prissy-intellectual-status module rather than the music module.
he has built a shrine to Standpipe Bridgeplate in his back yard.
I appreciate the sentiment, but let's think seriously about toning it down.
I appreciate the sentiment, but let's think seriously about toning it down.
The Great One has spoken! We shall obey!
I like Slavoj Zizek's position on the evolution of consciousness -- it was the ultimate anti-adaptive step. What is most distinctive about humans is their relative freedom with regard to evolutionary pressures. Consciousness actually did arise due to a development of the physical infrastructure of the mind, but it was a horrible, horrible mistake.
That seems to cohere well with my experience. I'm getting more anti-adaptive every day. I wonder how the ladies would respond to my profile.
Try re-naming yourself Dominant Adam, see if that helps.
a decent performance of Wozzeck can fill any hall in the world
No, seriously, Clown, my honey convinced me to go see Wozzeck, and I went thinking it was going to be educational, but it fucking rocked.
The effects referenced by Cinderella propoenents are simply enormous (the Canadian study, the vicitmization surveys). The degree and pervasiveness of reporting bias (both by child care professionals and by victims of non-lethal abuse) necessary to confound these effects is accordingly huge. Again, I haven't rigorously looked at this, but the treatment in Buller's paper would not have helped me to realize the magnitude of the data set cinderella proponents are referencing.
Years ago, I went to see a performance of Varèse's Ionisation which was similar. Just a mind-bogglingly great musical experience.
57: This is really a take a couple of hours, sit down, and work things out with a pencil problem. There are points where between the Cinderella proponents and Buller, someone has to be flat wrong, but it's not initially obvious which is true -- Buller, for example is claiming that only around half of cases of abuse make it into the examined records; the response is that there aren't enough unaccounted for deaths for that to be the case. One of those statements, obviously, can't stand up, but I'd need to do some independent looking at the numbers to say which.
John is 5'6" and 180 lb. of solid muscle and fat. He's gone repeatedly on record saying that no one should ever marry, get involved in a relationship, or date. It would take a very powerful woman to change his mind. Are you a very powerful woman?
I don't think that's strong enough. I think that I'll also pretend to be on death row for killing three men with my bare hands.
I like Slavoj Zizek's position on the evolution of consciousness -- it was the ultimate anti-adaptive step. What is most distinctive about humans is their relative freedom with regard to evolutionary pressures. Consciousness actually did arise due to a development of the physical infrastructure of the mind, but it was a horrible, horrible mistake.
Human consciousness might impair the species' adaptive responses to environmental pressures and competition (damned liberals), but it also ensures that we can control our environment much better than, say, the dinosaurs could. I've seen Armageddon—we ain't goin out like that.
Also, creating artificial intelligence and machines would seem to be a pretty massive step forward on the evolutionary scale.
It seems to me to be a qualitative rather than a quantitative shift -- we're not just better at controlling our environment, we're better at it in a different way from previous species (with all due allowances for other primates, etc.).
I believe no other species has developed the cock-joke to the human level.
On the other hand, the males of many other species can lick their own balls. Evolutionary progress, or regress?
I am reading "adaping minds" too and am up to the begining of the "cheater detection" section. The book is better than I thought it would be.
I don't see it as the the cure-all for inane cocktail party conversation. If it is right, it makes the theories in the "the bell curve" much more plausible as well as leaving an opening for hormonally mediated differences between men and women's brains.
Cultural evolution (which includes technological evolution) is different than biological evolution. Some claim that it has superseded biological evolution entirely, though that's not the consensus.
Also, creating artificial intelligence and machines would seem to be a pretty massive step forward on the evolutionary scale.
Armsmasher lays the groundwork for his pro-overlord credibility.
65: Well, everything all the assholes selling the Bell Curve and various sex differences say about how 'If it's true, it's true, you have to face up to the science' is, generically, right -- the problem isn't that we should stick out fingers in our ears and yell lalalala for fear of finding out there are unsavory ethnic or racial differences. What's wrong with the Bell Curve, etc., is that their arguments are specifically bullshit, not that there's anything generically improper about considering the possibility that they might be so.
On the 'opening the door' issue, I assume your talking about the stuff asserting that noticable evolution is possible in the timeframe after humans left Africa? I don't see a reason to avoid that as a possibility so long as there's good evidence for it.
66: I don't think it makes sense to talk about "supercession" in this context, but it seems obvious to me (and apparently doesn't seem obvious to evolutionary psychologists) that cultural evolution is not reducible to the kind of evolution that eventually led to consciousness, and that is still going on. It's a different kind of thing, and if we were to project a "scale" of evolution based on the state of things before humans became the dominant species, I don't think we could've predicted cultural evolution as a "stage," no matter how far forward we projected.
I'm not trying to posit some kind of teleology here, but it seems that consciousness is a qualitatively higher level of complexity that is not helpfully explained in terms of the level beneath it -- it has its own more or less autonomous mode of functioning. Similarly, I'm not convinced that cognitive science is going to tell us "the whole story" about consciousness, because it's yet another reductive account -- "You think you're conscious, but really it's just neurons firing!"
68: I'd like to apologize to the commenting community for all of those typos. "Your" for "you're"? Yikes.
Specifically cultural evolution is Lamarkian, rather than Darwinian: it's chiefly characterised by the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
What's wrong with the Bell Curve, etc., is that their arguments are specifically bullshit, not that there's anything generically improper about considering the possibility that they might be so.
One of Steve Gould's constant refrains was, "Human equality is a contingent fact of history." Historically, it's just as likely that humans wouldn't have been broadly equal. But it so happens they are.
I like Slavoj Zizek's position on the evolution of consciousness -- it was the ultimate anti-adaptive step.
All this makes me think of is Kant's completely true claim that if nature had wanted men to be happy, they would not be conscious, but live by instinct alone. This is repeated, I think, by Benjamin Constant in that book of his that I read and liked a lot but whose name I can't remember.
And then it was repeated by every Romantic writer evah.
well excuse me for being behind the times.
men to be happy, they would not be conscious
Actually, I'm not sure that makes sense. Crazy Kant.
Makes sense if you define happiness as a prereflective state.
"Historically, it's just as likely that humans wouldn't have been broadly equal."
You mean biologically speaking? Can you name another (non-domesticated) species whose members display widely varying levels of biologically-rooted survivalistic dominance? Or are you talking about some other axis of equality?
This is on-topic, and I apologize for that, but Non-Dominant John is obviously the better tennis player, since he wins the same percentage of matches even though he's easily psyched. I just thought of that.
Here's my favorite version of it (from memory):
Action is transitory--a step, a blow,
A motion of a muscle--this way or that;
Tis done. And in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves, like men betrayed.
Can you name another (non-domesticated) species whose members display widely varying levels of biologically-rooted survivalistic dominance?
Many spiders? Lots of insects generally?
76: "conscious" wasn't the correct word. It's somewhere in the Groundwork.
82: I don't think he was talking about sexual dimorphism. Is that what you're referring to?
bees, ants, virtually all social animals display some degree of inequality.
young male babboons are spurned from their ancestral pack by dominant older males. Nature is cruel.
I can see how my-own-balls-licking would discourage reproduction.
I'm not exactly sure what 'survivalistic dominance' is.
Leaving that to one side, there are all sorts of species with two or more easily physically distinguishable subspecies -- they can and will breed together, but they have different geographical ranges and differ substantially from each other. Human ethnic groups differ much less from each other than animal subspecies do, but they didn't have to -- in a different world, they might have been strongly differentiated.
It's not just sexual dimorphism else, you know, crabs. I was thinking of the killing after copulation thing.
Sometimes, in some kinds of, I think, wasp, the male generation never even gets born, but rather lives out its entire life within the mother.
I see the media isn't progressive enough to acknowledge a gay interspecies relationship for what it is. "Mother," indeed.
Human ethnic groups differ much less from each other than animal subspecies do
A half-hearted and unsuccessful attempt to deny the obvious truth. Accept our natural overlord.
Human ethnic groups differ much less from each other than animal subspecies do, but they didn't have to -- in a different world, they might have been strongly differentiated.
That kind of diversity isn't a different world, it was our world a while back.
87: I'm not sure what it is either. I was just trying to make some sense out of 72.
Specifically, I can see where it's possible to have multiple subspecies and even species that can interbreed (say lions and tigers). But any two populations of these, in territorial animals, are either going to be mostly equal, or are going to kill off the other. There is no stable situation where an inferior cousin of humans coexists with some other subspecies for an extended period of time. In fact, one could argue that, given thousands more years and ignoring technology completely, the differences between racial groups that currently exist within our species could widen further and give one group an advantage decisive enough to wipe out another. (As it is, we don't really need evolution to wipe each other out.)
What does 'equal' mean? They'd be different; each well adapted, but adapted to slightly different niches. A lion isn't 'equal' to a tiger, although they can interbreed -- the tiger is probably bigger, and a better swimmer, the lion is better able to hunt in groups. If there were differences between groups of humans comparable to those differences, it would be reasonable to describe them as innate inequalities.
Oh, reacted to your first sentence without looking at the rest of your comment (although I think you're throwing around 'equal' and 'inferior' in an unexamined way still) Yeah, I can see that one possible reason that there aren't substantially different human populations is that the most successful subspecies would wipe the others (Neanderthals, for example) out. But imagine a Neanderthal population in Australia, where it wasn't vulnerable to modern humans until very recently - it didn't happen but it could have.
Specifically cultural evolution is Lamarkian, rather than Darwinian: it's chiefly characterised by the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
That's a mighty fraught "chiefly," there. Plain ol' vanilla biological evolution continues to work upon human bodies; it's just that our environment, culturally, dictates how it does so to a greater effect than it would in a natural setting. It looks Lamarckian, but that's equal parts truth and hubris. So, for example, which model is the real model for the social distribution of intelligence: the one that correlates it with wealth (those who attend the best schools) or the one which blames it on wealth (the libertinism of the bourgeoisie and their betters)?
In other words, one can't deny that Darwinian selection--say, of immunoresponsiveness to avian flu--still has hold over the direction of human history; nor can one deny that culture--say, one in which immunologists can manufacture a vaccine to accomodate for the lack of said immunoresponse--is equally powerful. Both the EP and the anti-EP factions err on the side of absurdity, I think.
Isn't the main reason why there isn't much difference between groups of humans the gene flow between the groups? If the gene flow hadn't been there, historically, as it has been, then we would likely see more differentiation.
And I second LB on the throwing around "inferior" as the flip-side of "equal." Really, what we mean is "similar" and "dissimilar." And there are all sorts of dissimilar subspecies in nature; no reason to think humans wouldn't have developed that way, without the flow of genes between populations. Which could be one net benefit from all the wars we've engaged in.
Another way to say this is that EP suffers from disciplinary bias and pushes the cognitive angle too hard.
Actually, if Buller gets it right, the real problem with EP the theoretical paradigm, rather than ep the field of study, it's much more that they misunderstand the structure of the mind, and thus misconstrue how selection can operate. They conceive of the mind as consisting of thousands of specialized and genetically determined modules, each of which can, separably, be the subject of selection -- Buller argues convincingly that this is not true.
Isn't the main reason why there isn't much difference between groups of humans the gene flow between the groups? If the gene flow hadn't been there, historically, as it has been, then we would likely see more differentiation.
Actually, we do see more variation. One of the points thrown around in The Bell Curve Wars (I think that's the name of the collection) was that one reason we see more African-Americans on the high and low side of the spectrum is that the "African-American" gene-pool is far more diverse than the Caucasian. That makes perfect sense, if you think about, since "African" refers to any descendent of a former slave who could have come from almost any part of Africa. Given how those groups of "Africans" evolved in geographically isolated areas, and only came in contact with each other in America (where that difference was flattened), we're likely to see more of any particular trait:
More African-Americans will be extremely tall and extremely short than Caucasians; more will be extremely intelligent and extremely unintelligent than Caucasians, &c.
I remember Gould outlining this argument, but that his answer--"if more people in Group A have terrible eyesight, they just buy glasses"--not altogether satisfying.
One reason I loved that argument was the idea that the legacy of slavery would, eventually, be Our African-American Overlords.
Enough of this idle chatter.
Look, more pictures of Mzee and Owen!
I think you've got your argument a little muddled there. As I recall it, the claim is that there is more genetic diversity among those of historically recent African descent, because that's where the human race originally evolved -- Africans have been accumulating diversity since the initial speciation event what, 300K years ago? (I don't remember at all.) Those of European/Asian/American/Australian descent all descend from a small group of Africans that left Africa 100K? years ago, and didn't represent the whole spectrum of intra-African diversity, and so those populations are less genetically diverse than the African population.
It's not African-Americans v. white Americans, it's Africans v. everyone descended from those who left Africa.
I'm not trying to posit some kind of teleology here, but it seems that consciousness is a qualitatively higher level of complexity that is not helpfully explained in terms of the level beneath it -- it has its own more or less autonomous mode of functioning. Similarly, I'm not convinced that cognitive science is going to tell us "the whole story" about consciousness, because it's yet another reductive account -- "You think you're conscious, but really it's just neurons firing!"
I don't understand this comment, maybe because I don't understand what is meant by consciousness. There isn't an agreed upon bright line between how humans' experience consciousness and how primates do, and I don't think the conventional definition of "consciousness" includes only what humans experience (could be wrong about how other people use the word). I recently read a book and mentioned it here, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, that argued that the bright line was this: that humans were able to understand other creatures as intentional (and events in the world as having causes--that's as opposed to merely learning to associate an antecedent with an effect), because of a biological adaptation that allowed them to identify with others. Primates, so went the argument, understood themselves as intentional agents, but couldn't identify with others, so couldn't see them as creatures with desires and goals like theirs. And, per this book, that's what allows teaching, and the kind of learning that understands the end goal, rather than just associating two events. But I don't think it makes sense to say that the prior stage is not consciousness.
105: Razib (at Gene Expression) recently brought up the possibility that there was some interbreeding between Neanderthals and Sapiens in Europe, where a few of the more advantageous Neanderthal alleles were able to be successful in the Sapiens population. It's one possibility to keep in mind.
"although I think you're throwing around 'equal' and 'inferior' in an unexamined way still"
Don't see how. Equality as adaptively neutral diversity just doesn't have much relevance to the topic (I don't think that's what 72 meant), so I didn't bring it up. I don't deny that it's possible. I may not be using them clearly, but I think I understand them clearly enough.
107: I'm not sure what who you quoted meant by the comment, but what I understand to mean is that there are only two kinds of universes: those with conscious beings and those without. I.e., that's a very important quality in understanding how things work. It's analogous to classifying complex systems into different basic patterns, like chaotic, rythmic, etc. (Not that I know anything about complex system dynamics.)
Another way to look at it is that the class of possible conscious systems is a class with a number of specific properties that apply no matter what substrate the conscious intelligence is implemented on. I.e. that "consciousness" on some alien planet would be comparable to our own, even if the biology wasn't even similar.
Not "adaptively neutral" doesn't mean 'superior' or 'inferior'. The differences between a tiger and a lion aren't adaptively neutral -- which is inferior?
110: I'd have to taste both to make that determination.
Steeping lion-bits in vodka? I hear it has a subtle beefiness.
110: Two things: I didn't mean "inferior" in any sense except the adaptive sense. A superior species will tend to push out an inferior one in a niche. (Whether through the spread of genes or through competition.) Also, the terms only make sense relative a particular niche, and I used them that way. But humans don't have any particular niche. They're very general mammals. So that complication doesn't really need to be given too much attention in discussions of humans.
Also, the terms only make sense relative to a particular niche
That was pretty much what I meant by querying your usage -- that you can't say 'inferior' in an evolutionary context without saying for what.
Tigers headline shows in Vegas.
113: Any thoughts on hippo veal vs. aged tortoise?
Are there hard and fast rules for species classification, or is it a messy project? Some part of classification project may be based, consciously or not, around the specific niche each occupies. Which is to say, you won't find competing species in a particular niche, because definitionally (perhaps) only one species occupies a niche.
Species classification is a messy project, even messier than figuring out what a planet is (Go Pluto!!!). One issue is the historical legacy of species classification via a "what do they look like?" or "can/do they interbreed successfully?" approach versus more modern attempts to base classification on genetics.
My impression, although I don't know that it's based on much more than reading a magazine article somewhere, is that it's theoretically tricky, but practically pretty easy. If you use the rule "will these two populations spontaneously interbreed and produce fertile offspring where they're in contact" I think you pick out clear species without a lot of hard calls. (e.g., lions and tigers can interbreed, and the offspring may (I think) sometimes be fertile, but there's no question that they're different species because they never do interbreed spontaneously.)
This: Which is to say, you won't find competing species in a particular niche, because definitionally (perhaps) only one species occupies a niche.
is, I think, roughly true.
On the speciation question, read the stuff in italics. I can't tell whether it makes sense without the rest, however, so I included it too, just in case. (This is known as "having your head so far up your dissertaton's ass as to make it impossible to tell whether what you say makes any sense to people who aren't you," a.k.a. "Why Dawkins and Gould Deserves Big Ups.")
[Before Darwin], a species had been “an originally distinct creation, maintaining its primitive distinction by obstructive generative peculiarities.” Darwin forced individuals to transition from a perspective in which species are the stable, beloved products of divine artifice into one in which they are no better than the victors of a constant, cutthroat struggle over limited resources. His evolution rendered all determinations of species tautological. Philip Kitcher explains: “the most accurate definition of ‘species’ is the cynic’s. Species are those groups of organisms which are recognized as species by competent taxonomists. Competent taxonomists, of course, are those who can recognize the true species.” After Darwin all species became fiat-species. Is a wolf a breed of dog? Is it a variety? A sub-species? Another species altogether? These familiar questions belong to a long taxonomic tradition, but they no longer referred to distinctions between, say, “wolf-ness,” “dog-ness,” “dachshund-ness” and “Dane-ness.” Those essential points of reference no longer existed. Now the difference between a wolf and a dog or a dachshund and a Dane depended instead upon their degree of relatedness, that is, the narrative account of how wolves became wolves, dogs became dogs, and some of those dogs became dachshunds, while others became Danes.
theoretically tricky, but practically pretty easy.
Well, the easy cases are easy.
