Re: How to delay a moving van?

David Friedman <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1ialxpx.14di2qw12k3fy1N%zeborah@xxxxxxxxx>,
zeborah@xxxxxxxxx (Zeborah) wrote:

How about "male people, on average, are more interested in and available
for sex than female people?"
<snip>
what one would
expect from rational behavior until quite recently (i.e. until reliable
and readily available contraception), and what one would predict from
evolutionary biology.

Given how fun sex is and how useful it is to create and reinforce social
bonds, from rational behaviour and evolutionary biology one would
predict that a) pregnant women would be as interested and available as
males, perhaps even more so to make up for lost time; and b) all women
would be as interested in and available for non-tab-A-in-slot-B sex.
Yet somehow our culture doesn't assume these things as it assumes that
"randy males" trope; in fact it rather assumes the opposite.

Interesting points. But ...:

1. Evolutionary biology doesn't care about fun, although rational
behavior does.

Evolutionary biology doesn't 'care' about anything, but fun is very
relevant. (In a circular way, perhaps, but much of evolutionary biology
is circular.) As an example, an animal is more likely to survive to
reproduce if it eats tasty food than if it eats untasty food -- because
the tasty food is more likely to be high in nutritious elements and the
untasty food is more likely to be poisonous, because... well, etc.
Fun/pleasure is set up in our brains to reward us for behaviours that
promote the survival of our genes, so a certain amount of hedonism is a
useful survival trait, so from an evolutionary biology point of view we
should want to do fun things. (And look, we do want to do fun things,
so I must be right. This is the great thing about evolutionary biology
as popularly practised: it's so easy to prove something you already
believe.)

2. One of the social bonds sexual behavior reinforces is the pair bond
associated with long term mating in our species. That makes extra-pair
intercourse risky if the pregnancy is in the context of long term
mating. If it is in the short term context, then I agree with your
point.

I made no mention of extra-pair intercourse. To be more explicit: it
would be an evolutionary advantage to a pregnant woman to be "interested
and available for" sex with her husband in order to reinforce the bond
between them so that he'll stick around. Yet we as a culture do not
assume as a matter of course that pregnant women are desperate for sex
with their husband 24/7 in the same way that we assume that a man is
desperate for sex with anything that moves 24/7.

And in terms of extra-pair intercourse, a pregnant woman A in a
relationship with B who succeeds in covertly sleeping with C has an
evolutionary win: if B happens to run away then she's got a bond with C
which increases the chances that C will hang around and look after her
child. Yet we as a culture do not assume as a matter of course that
pregnant women are evolutionarily driven to cheat on their husbands in
the same way that we assume that men are evolutionarily driven to cheat
on their wives.

<tangent to talk about (gasp) actual sf-relevant stuff>

It would be fun to work out various other whacky "Evolutionary biology
predicts that..." theories and assign those beliefs to an alien culture.
I've done this a bit with one species who firmly believe that the, hmm,
drone gender -- whose genes get passed on only if their siblings
reproduce -- is evolutionarily programmed to help their families, that
this is therefore their overriding motivation in everything, and that
it's unnatural for them to display any kind of extra-family altruism.

</tangent>

3. Non procreative sex leads to arousal, which can lead to procreative
sex.

No, you're thinking of foreplay. Non-procreative sex starts with
arousal and leads to climax. Kind of like procreative sex, really, just
without the procreation....

4. In any case, the question is not whether women are interested in sex
but whether they would be expected to be as interested as men. All of
your arguments apply to both.

I don't think the pregnant woman one applies to very *many* men.

My argument--that a man who succeeds in
sleeping with a woman who he is not going to be having a long term pair
relationship with has gotten an evolutionary win, and the woman has
probably gotten an evolutionary loss--still remains as a factor
encouraging promiscuity in men, discouraging it in women. Hence we would
expect men to be more inclined to promiscuity than women.

A man who succeeds in _making a woman pregnant_ when he's not going to
have a long-term pair relationship with her has gotten an evolutionary
win. Merely having sex with her, however, he's got an evolutionary loss
(in some small amount of fluid, and in the opportunity to get someone
else pregnant instead, and in time to help ensure the success of any
existing offspring) just as she has (in time anyway; she wins slightly
on the fluids, assuming they sweated equally; in opportunity I've
succeeded in confusing myself, because there's opportunity-to-bond as
well as opportunity-to-reproduce and it's possible that she wins on
this).

And the way humans do the K-strategy thing, such that children require
time and effort to be put into them to ensure their survival, and
demonstrably do better the more people put such effort into their
raising, it's not obvious to me that genes that encourage promiscuity in
their bearers are necessarily going to do all that much better in the
long run than genes that encourage their bearers to stick around and
make sure not only that their offspring survive in order to reproduce,
but also that their offspring's offspring survive in order to reproduce.

And even if after all this there is some small net differential between
the benefits of male and female sex drives... Well, so what? There'd be
net benefits if we didn't have appendices, or if our knees or eyes were
better designed -- and those things don't need any extra complicated
sex-linking programming. Evolution doesn't do things just because
they'd be a good idea. The human sex drive is pretty damned necessary,
yes, but setting up a specifically male sex drive *and* a specifically
female sex drive isn't necessary, any more than it's necessary for men
to not have nipples. Why go to that effort / why would such a thing
evolve when a plain old "Mmm, sex *good*!" drive will do 99.9% of
everything you need it to do?

Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
rasfc FAQ: http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
.

Relevant Pages

  • Epigenetics of sex determination and its evolutionary implications
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  • Re: How to delay a moving van?
    ... Given how fun sex is and how useful it is to create and reinforce social ... interested in and available for sex than female people." ... the benefits of male and female sex drives... ... Evolution doesn't do things just because ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: Sex outside of marriage
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  • Baby Factories!
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