Is Evolutionary Biology a Flawed Mental Model for Dating?

[KJ Francis]

Our dear old Anatman posted this recently on X. Personally I have always found it a saving grace to have something to distill any conundrum back to. What are your thoughts?

https://xcancel.com/hekkycastillo/status/1995384333327073524

Don't be tempted to frame everything in dating and relationships from the lens of evolutionary biology. "It all comes down to who she wants to reproduce with! Who will give her the maximum genetic advantage?!"

The one who won't impregnate her and leave her to die.

So much of dating makes NO sense if this is your fundamental framework. Why would people do it with condoms if it was ONLY about making babies?

Because we evolved on a way longer timescale than the condom.

What's the evolutionary advantage of wanking your banana?

We still have this pleasure reward circuit. If I was really thirsty in 100 degree weather and saw someone pouring out a bottle of anti-freeze, I'd have at least a few seconds thinking "damn - looks like some real thirst quenching juice".

How come less attractive women or promiscuous women can still end up getting a guy in the end because of toxic seduction tactics that get the man hooked, even if he has higher quality options on the table?

Distortion of value, attainability, and compliance, just like marketing any product.

If men are creatures who just want to spread their seed to the maximal amount and quality of women, wouldn't they mechanically just choose the hottest chick/the most loyal chick who is least likely to compromise his chances at offspring? Why can a guy completely outplay another man who is clearly the survival of the fittest superior, cuz of the man's height, status, wealth, etc.? But because the loser dude is funny and charming, he gets the girl? You'll spin yourself into some weird pretzels trying to piece that into an evolutionary biology framework.

Attainability - subconscious likelihood of pair bonding and nurturing or protecting the children long term (or immune system scent, validation of your long term SMV throughout the satisficing process, etc.), even if you know it's a ONS in Cancun.

This doesn't mean that these physical instincts have no role in dating. They obviously do, but where are THOSE coming from? Are they the cause or a product of something deeper?

Yes, evolution... Darwin's sexual selection.

Eventually your questioning will lead to your decision to see the world from a materialist framework (there is only physical reality) or a more robust framework.

Yep, we're in purgatory.

Come back Hector!!!

 

[Chase]

@KJ Francis,

Haha, I saw that post on X... didn't want to debate him on it on there or anything (Hector is cool), but, yeah... that is just a basic misunderstanding of some of the science.

1. Women have a dual mating strategy (cads vs. dads). Ideal is to find a 'cad-dad' who has the sexy good genes signals but will also provide. But many girls can't find the all-in-one-package, so must resort to a backup strategy (keep jumping from cad to cad, hoping one will settle; settle for a dad, and just make peace with her lingering "What if?"s; or marry a dad, but cheat with cads).
   
   
2. Condoms are overwhelmingly used by sexually inexperienced people (i.e., the most fearful / least "following their instincts" types). Sexually inexperienced animals do all kinds of awkward things, like how dogs freak out at their first mating when the male's penis knot gets stuck inside the female and they can't separate for like 20 minutes (it's an evolved phenomenon for sperm competition). The more experienced you get, the harder it gets to keep yourself using condoms... and once you go over to the dark side (barebacking ONSes ) it is hard to ever go back... the penis wants to be free... nature calls... Also: women on birth control, who are not behaving instinctively because their brains are all hopped up on progesterone, are far more likely to ask the man to wear a condom, even though they are much less likely to get pregnant, than fertile women who are ovulating are. Makes no sense unless you understand the biology of it. (Why do women go on birth control in the first place? What is the evolutionary psychology reason for that? These girls are overwhelmingly playing "Chad roulette", where they are banging a bunch of sexy cads hoping to rope one of them into being dads... it is strategic: avoid getting impregnated by a man unlikely to wife you up, while you rotate among such men trying to see if one of them WILL wife you up, at which pint you go off birth control. Most players who have gotten into relationships with a girl who started off on birth control have experienced this. At some point once she feels 'safe' enough, she comes off the birth control, ready for her cad-dad's impregnation!)
   
   
3. Masturbation has a 'sperm refreshment' effect, clearing older, more likely to be damaged sperm out of the reproductive tract. There was also a study on college students showing that the men who had the most sex also masturbated the most (you'd think counterintuitively, if you were a no-fap kinda guy, but these guys were just keeping their sperm top quality for the horny chicks they were servicing!).
   
   
4. As for seductive women getting quality guys: what is actual GENETIC quality? Is it her raw beauty or intelligence? Or is it her cunning, her strategy ability, her seductive qualities that are the real mark of quality? Different men will have different opinions! One poll I saw found 2/3 of men prefer 'beautiful' women (i.e., passive, raw genetic beauty), while 1/3 prefer 'hot' women (i.e., flashy, consciously made-up & advertised beauty). What you see with mate selection is a varied preference among individuals prizing different traits. You see this across animal species as well, with animals selecting somewhat different sorts of mates that tickle whatever that animal's personal preference is for 'attractiveness'.
   
   
5. Hector's bit about guys with game outcompeting tall money Chads shows a basic misunderstanding of sexual fitness indicators (he should read Geoffrey Miller's The Mating Mind, or at least my summary of the relevant bits). But anyway, yeah -- the brain is the #1 sexual ornament in man. Female attraction to males is predominantly behavioral; it is not visual. Natural selection has nothing to do with it; Darwin himself concluded toward the end of his life that sexual selection is the evolutionary force governing far more individual variation than what natural selection is capable of.

Anyway, yeah.

I think maybe Hector was trying to get at how there is spiritual stuff going on.

However, you can have both spiritual stuff + a logically consistent universe.

You are not forced to choose between the two, where a universe with spirituality must have breakdowns in logical coherence, or where a logically coherent universe cancels out all potential for anything beyond the material.

You can have both.

Chase

 

[OldGuy]

In your case 2, using condoms with birth control is reasonable, since they do reduce the chance of getting a veneral disease, which is bad for reproduction.

 

[West_Indian_Archie]

This part is painfully obvious to me

So much of dating makes NO sense if this is your fundamental framework.

Most of the pairings I see in real life, that i've been a part of - just don't conform themselves to how things should happen.

Things don't work in a blue pill way, and they don't work in a red pill way, or in an evo-psych way.

This was my beef with Mystery's "attraction triggers" from back in the day.
It's my beef with self-proclaimed but not saying it out loud "alpha" Mike Sartain.
It's kinda my beef with Orion Taraban.
It's definitely my beef with "I'm not telling you what to do, but I'm telling you what to do" Rollo Tomassi

As for his specific examples - most of them can go either way. They aren't really strong examples.

And as an internet veteran - it's hard to pick examples that can't be picked to death by "devil's advocates" and "trolls". Folks prefer to get bogged down in minutaie/focus on the examples not the argument and miss the point on purpose. Happened to me yesterday, lol.

 

[Absolutely_Human]

I believe many of our behaviors are explained grosso modo by limbic system vs neocortex, e.g.:

We evolved the desire to fuck (limbic) which leads to babies, we then bypass the baby-making part with condoms (neocortex).

We are tricking the primitive brain.

 

[Chase]

I believe many of our behaviors are explained grosso modo by limbic system vs neocortex, e.g.:

We evolved the desire to fuck (limbic) which leads to babies, we then bypass the baby-making part with condoms (neocortex).

We are tricking the primitive brain.

From a sexual selection standpoint, if the ‘neocortex tricking the limbic system’ leads to reduced reproductive success, what you would see is individuals with less neocortical inhibition proliferating, and a demise of people with strong inhibitions.

That’s basically the premise of 2006’s Idiocracy, but doesn’t seem to be how things worked until recently, or still work among some populations. Until the mid-20th Century, in Europe and America higher IQ was associated with a larger number of surviving children. It was only after the introduction of the welfare state (burdening high earners and funneling resources to the impoverished) that high IQ birthrates fell and low IQ birthrates exploded.

It seems to me the neocortex basically fulfills its normal role as a ‘manager’, planning reproduction out longer-term (e.g., “Well, limbic system, I know you want to make babies with this mate, but I say we vet a little more carefully plus fully consider our alternative options”). Since we are seeing increasing development of the brain over time (e.g., ASPM haplogroup D first appeared as a mutation 5,800 years ago, yet is already in 28% of all humans; 44% of Europeans and Middle Easterners have it; IOW, at least 30% of humans today are descendants of whoever that mutation first appeared in 5800 years ago… an incredible rate of spread! Coincides with the emergence of agriculture, settled cities, and written language in the Middle East, which is probably not a coincidence), that strategy appears to raise reproductive fitness (presumably by allowing people to select fitter mates that are better to mix genes with and/or will provide a stabler environment for child-rearing, rather than just knocking up the first potential mate who stumbles along).

So… yeah, you could say there is ‘tricking’ (or more accurately ‘suppressing’) of the primitive brain going on, though it is in fact more of the same balancing / counterbalancing / competition between various brain regions to decide what the organism’s action will be. (If the limbic brain urge is strong enough, the neocortex may not be able to refrain it, for instance… or may not want to / may decide not to.)

Anyway… I am getting into “evolution nerd” territory here

I will stop myself now before I start talking about group evolution and population-size-dependent sexual selection bottlenecks

 

[James D]

Because we evolved on a way longer timescale than the condom

exactly word for word my thought when I read on twitter haha. there was a "duh!!" at the end of mine