The Origin of Humour
Mankind has been breaking its head over what constitutes humour. Everyone knows what they find funny, but there is a general lack of consensus what it comprises. I wish to doctor this by filling the gap.
I started with these observations:
- each joke has a surprise element, which provides an unexpected ending
- each joke has a tragic element: some person gets a real bad treatment
- each joke has a relief element: the listener is assured he is not the same person that the joke is on the expense of
- laughter is the natural response to humour
I came up with the following theory:
1. The people who lived at the time when humour developed in man's psyche, faced many perils.
2. Two or more people could find themselves in a situation in which all face the same peril, but only one gets sucked in to suffer damage due to the peril.
3. Most of these situations involved running. (Away from a sabre-toothed tiger, for instance.)
4. Those who survived felt relief, felt surprised because they had expected the worst.
5. When these survivors after a run from the peril got the relief and joy of surviving, they breathed heavily.
6. When the survivors got back to the tribe, they staged a performance of the perilous situation, and at th end they pretended to be breathe heavily.
7. The audience had enough ability to emphatize so they felt the relief, the unexpected ending, and the peril; and they also imitated the heavy breathing.
8. Thus was the joke telling and stand-up comedy formed: Someone said a story with a bad omen, a relief, and about a third person who was the loser; then the teller pre-laughed, by quickly breathing through the mouth, as if they were doing a laugh-track, which the audience actively was supposed to imitate.
I started with these observations:
- each joke has a surprise element, which provides an unexpected ending
- each joke has a tragic element: some person gets a real bad treatment
- each joke has a relief element: the listener is assured he is not the same person that the joke is on the expense of
- laughter is the natural response to humour
I came up with the following theory:
1. The people who lived at the time when humour developed in man's psyche, faced many perils.
2. Two or more people could find themselves in a situation in which all face the same peril, but only one gets sucked in to suffer damage due to the peril.
3. Most of these situations involved running. (Away from a sabre-toothed tiger, for instance.)
4. Those who survived felt relief, felt surprised because they had expected the worst.
5. When these survivors after a run from the peril got the relief and joy of surviving, they breathed heavily.
6. When the survivors got back to the tribe, they staged a performance of the perilous situation, and at th end they pretended to be breathe heavily.
7. The audience had enough ability to emphatize so they felt the relief, the unexpected ending, and the peril; and they also imitated the heavy breathing.
8. Thus was the joke telling and stand-up comedy formed: Someone said a story with a bad omen, a relief, and about a third person who was the loser; then the teller pre-laughed, by quickly breathing through the mouth, as if they were doing a laugh-track, which the audience actively was supposed to imitate.
Comments (85)
Maybe humor is like consciousness and arose from the same source. Now you've given us the Hard Problem of Humor.
First, your theory is less implausible than limited, and unless I get the whole picture, I can't really judge your theory.
I'll start with laughter. You say, laughter is the natural response to humour - so what's the relationship between laughter and humour? If I'm not mistaken, babies start laughing at around 3 to 4 months. I'm sure they're not old enough to understand narrative jokes, which your theory seems to rely on. Laughter seems to be more basic, to me, than what you seem to be interested in.
Second, jokes. I'm not convinced all humour is about peril. Visual gags are often about impossibility, or incongruity. I'm thinking, for example, about the lolcat craze a couple of years back, which was kitty picture with captions in faulty grammar. There are non-narrative jokes ("What's the difference between a banana?" - "Huh?" - "Exactly." - Some people find that funny, some don't.)
I can see your theory making sense under a more abstract mother theory: for example - humour involvest he unexpected - unexpected stuff can be dangerous - relief when it isn't. Not sure I buy that, though, since baby laughter seems to be more about enjoyment than relief, but again, not sure.
As for the final quesiton: I think people shouldn't laugh at someone else's expense. Your final options talks about the "audience", and, well, I don't trust an audience to judge what's "benign", and part of it is that I seem to connect humour to pleasure more than you do (not only, but also), and that I think laughing at others misfortune gives some people pleasure, but it might be something they don't like to admit to themselves, because they might end up a little unhappy with themselves. So I ended up voting the "never" option, which I'm not completely happy with either, since my response is more based on a I-wish-people-weren't-like-that pipe dream. Bascially, I could have chosen any option, here, and I'd have been about equally unhappy. Maybe I should have picked the third option, after all.
BTW, saber tooth tigers were extinct by 10,000 years ago. How did they go extinct? We wiped them out -- along with other megafauna. How did we manage to do that? Sharp objects.
Meanwhile, back at the comedy club...
I suspect laughter has more ancient roots than the lithic or neolithic periods, but you are spot on in identifying tension and relief as key elements. Our primate ancestors may have developed the vocalized relief breathing that developed into laughter. We also LEARN when to laugh and when to not laugh. For instance, if you see someone slip and fall in a muddy puddle, you probably won't laugh, being a sophisticated urbanite who understanding that laughing at other people's misfortunes is not just schadenfreude, it makes you look like a rube. God forbid! So, if you dislike the person in the muddy puddle, you'll laugh inwardly.
When we hear a joke that promises to be racist and/or sexist (what's black and white and rolls around in the sand), there is first a tension then a release, anticipating the punch line confirming our racist/sexist attitudes. These days sophisticated urbanites are never racist and/or sexist, so no laughter.
Maybe 25 years ago, The Prairie Home Companion Joke show featured a batch of "Your mother is so fat..." jokes. "Yo mama's so fat, when she fell down I didn't laugh, but the sidewalk cracked up." for example. The humor in the joke derives from the surprise exaggeration.
A major component of humor is founded on our negative beliefs and attitudes. Fat people (yo fat mama, for instance) are often the subject of negative attitudes which Fat Liberation (there is such a thing) tries to combat. I am too fat, and I have no time for fat people's liberation. [If you look at crowd photos from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s--all kinds of people--you will see far fewer fat people.]
So, are fat people legitimate targets of humor?
Satire and travesty are two kinds of more extended humor. Tom Lehrer (Harvard Mathematician turned satirist in the 1960s) said, 'When Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize, satire died." The next step after satire is travesty. Travesty too becomes impossible, at times--the entire Trump administration, for instance,
And if wishes were horses the peasants would ride. I don't believe "human nature" is infinitely malleable. We are not all that nice, a good share of the time,
They brought in Paula Poundstone and Roy Blount Jr. to help out the regular guys. They were wonderful. One joke after another non-stop. I had stopped listening to PHC after a while when it became too strident, but I still tried to listen in for the joke shows.
I think it sensible to argue that laughter is a form of alleviating stress and dangerous situations. But if it arose for those specific reasons, as opposed to reasons of bonding or anything else, who can say? It's a great topic.
Consider this doozy:
How do you make a handkerchief dance?
Put a little boogie in it.
A kid joke. Maybe even edgy for an 8 year old. A joke nonetheless.
No bad treatment here, so your joke formula doesn't work. Or maybe you suggest this isn't a joke. If that is your argument, I'll beat your mother to death.
A joke obviously because someone got real bad treatment.
Boogie! Kills me every time.
Been there. Done that.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2152/philosophy-joke-of-the-day/p1
One day, after the fall but before eviction from paradise, Adam went to see Eve. The snake, seeing a humorous opportunity, slithered up Adam's leg and hid in his crotch as Adam approached Eve.
Seeing a bulge, Eve asked, "Is that a snake under your fig leaf or are you just happy to see me?"
Fixed.
are going to have the last laugh,
Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher?
Life is no laughing matter!
Don't take life too seriously!
Opinions seem divided as to whether humor is good/bad.
There's a time and place for everything. Like the tale of the fool who didn't know the difference between sadness and joy recommends, don't cry at weddings and don't laugh at funerals! It'll only get you in trouble, big trouble!
Laughter is the best medicine!
[quote=FrIEdrich NIEtzsche]Not with wrath do we kill, but with laughter. Come, let us kill the spirit of gravity![/quote]
Nobody likes to be made the butt of a joke!
Followed by several intense volumes on the meanings of the punch lines.
For your next project please dissect the taste of chocolate ice cream.
My thoughts:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/388913
Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about the Tao, take it and practice it earnestly.
Scholars of the middle class, when they hear of it, take it half earnestly.
Scholars of the lowest class, when they hear of it, laugh at it.
Without the laughter, there would be no Tao.[/quote]
Life is, much to my dismay, one helluva funny joke! My suffering, alas, all for nought!
[quote=Laozi]The Tao is ruthless[/quote]
We're straw dogs (chogou) in front of the Tao!
X: We need to have a serious discussion.
Y: About what?
X: Humor!
X and Y: :rofl:
Z: Not funny!
:grin:
Jokes aside, what is it that makes things hilarious?
The philosophical joke I'm familiar with is the reductio ad absurdum (reduce to an absurdity). How much of a thigh-slapper it is depends on whether you contradicted yourself or your opponent did (schadenfreude).
Then there's satire which I feel is the highest form of humor! There's critical, life-changing, messages in them, plus you get to :rofl:
1. Creamy.
2. Chocolatey.
3. Cold.
Always happy to help.
Distinguish:
1. Comedy from tragedy.
2. Wit from folly.
3. Playful from serious.
My first thought is that humour is an antidote or inoculation to fear, disgust, and other negative emotions. One laughs out one's negativity, and this reduces stress. Or else one refuses to recognise one's negative emotions and projects them onto others - 'that's not funny, it's disgusting/offensive/cruel/ puerile.'
Send not to know on whom the butt lands, it lands on thee.
But never mind me or thee, let's get serious about humour: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255480/
C-
You forgot sweet.
It's not even about human nature, for me. I think any kind of utopian ideal, perfection, or whatever you may want to call it ignores inconvenient apsepcts of reality. Or differently put:
Dawnstorm: I wish people weren't like that.
Unbeknownst to Dawnstorm somewhere a monkey paw's finger curls.
Satire is highbrow populism.
Humor, like sex, is idiosyncratic and people are turned on or repelled by different things. I generally dislike and avoid anything that is created to generate laughter - stand up comedy especially, but also comedy movies or TV. There are enough funny things in the world already - people, events, animals, conversations, situations, philosophy fora... I greatly prefer unintentional humor to contrived mirth.
Quoting Agent Smith
Given people find different thing hilarious, there may not be an 'it' as such - perhaps being generous towards a joke or a comedian or being susceptible to comedy is more akin to mysticism.... :gasp:
I notice too how humor has a status unlike most behavior in humans. To describe someone as having 'no sense of humor', is in most cases an immense put down.
Well yeah, but that's too narrow a definition in my humble opinion. Satire comes closest to what Wittgenstein said about how serious philosophy can be done with nothing but jokes.
Quoting Tom Storm
Probably, there's something called Holy Laughter, supposedly happens during religious activities like sermons, etc. and can range from :smile: to :rofl: . Speaking for myself there's the possibility that our subconscious realizes how ridiculous faith is.
Quoting Tom Storm
Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher,
Sad Clown Paradox
Sta?czyk (painting)
Comedians are not always happy people.
Can you give me an example?
Quoting Agent Smith
The sad clown is a cliché but having met some comedy writers and performers over the decades, I'd have to say that most were very anxious and depressed. The idea that you would want to make people laugh as a career does pose some questions.
A cliché simply means overused to the point of no longer being interesting. It doesn't mean it's false. There are many comedians who can make you :rofl: but they're themselves battling severe depression. Having a sense of humor doesn't necessarily mean you're on cloud nine (24/7).
Quoting Tom Storm
Google.
I don't usually do things Google can do.
Inaccurate, much of what we all write here can be found on google as you well know. Ok, I take it this has hit a nerve of some kind. Let's forget it.
A joke is something that milks that by presenting a situation where the answer to the riddle has an especially surprising and pleasing aptness to its fit.
To increase the degree of physiological arousal, the punchline must be well concealed in the set-up and then very abruptly revealed, forcing the rapid cognitive reframing. And being sexual, scatalogical, or in other ways socially transgressive, cranks up the said physiological arousal, amplifying the whole effect.
So the cognitive neurobiology is easy enough. It boils down to manipulating the natural mechanics of an orientation response - creating a surprise that isn't a nasty one but instead a clever socially-situated play of words and ideas.
Then as for the social utility of "a good sense of humour", it is a way for the group to feel happy and tight-knit while collectively sealing its shared identity by mocking some convenient "other".
Edgy comedy is the funniest as it even makes you embarrassed about the transgressive other - queasy attitudes about immigrants, minorities, country folk, whatever, that you can still find even find in some small hidden corner of yourself.
Nothing beats humour for socially-acceptable norm enforcement! It is both useful and fun at the same time - even for the butt of the joke if they are lucky.
I don't want to insult your intelligence by doing something you can do effortlessly.
Coming to satire, I find it very stimulating, intellectually that is. May be it doesn't evoke similar sentiments in you, but you said something that's on point - different strokes for different folks. Forgive my oversight, I should've made it explicit, but then pornography...
:up: That's what to me is a joke that stands out from the rest.
No. It is not a plausible theory at all. You would have to provide some solid evidence for this and I cannot see how you can.
Also, you seem to be talking about ‘laughing’ rather than humour/comedy mostly.
I think you have certainly hit on something important about storytelling. Aristotle wrote about comedy, tragedy and general performance too. Nietzsche also developed ideas on this theme. Theatre and general entertainment in the modern world is more ‘passive’ in its format. We sit and merely observe whereas if we trace back the performative arts we can see how the distinction of ‘audience’ and ‘performers’ has been a gradual development.
For example, in Shakespearean times members of the audience would actively try and attack actors playing villains because the line between ‘real’ and ‘performance’ was not like today. Today at the theatre no one would take a murder scene to be an actual murder. If go back further, or look at different cultures, there are instances where the ‘performance’ is something that ‘audience members’ actively participate in - they take on the role of some character in a trance-like fashion.
As for humour in general there is certainly a common theme of ‘surprise’ and, as Aristotle put it, viewing comedy as something bad happening to someone deserving of the bad element, whereas tragedy is something bad happening to someone perceived as ‘good’ - in simplistic terms. Sympathetic feelings play into the humour, or lack of, as well as simple surprise/shock.
People in high emotional states of suffering will often laugh. People have many different reactions to many situations.
I don’t see how it makes any sense to suggest that physical exhaustion is a precursor to laughter. We do know that hyperventilation can induce certain states, and that physical exertion can create a certain high. In what you are saying there is a very tenuous link at best.
It's a cliche, the hot girl with the inexplicably ugly guy. Why is she with him? "He makes me laugh".
We are all the products of runaway sexual selection, which selected for intelligence, by means of humor. Humor is the origin of human intellect. This same process selected, secondarily, for taking pleasure in hurmor: after all, it was the females who enjoyed humor the most who selected the funniest guys. They bore both the funniest and smartest guys, and the smartest girls who loved their guys the funniest. These outcompeted their duller contemporaries, both due to the intelligence for which humor is a pretty reliable marker, and because of the growing population-wide preference for funny men, resulting from this same process.
Just my theory.
Creativity would likely still be a good marker for sexual selection, but I would also imagine too much difference in creativity between mates could cancel this out?
The existentialist Albert Camus thought life's basically a waste of (precious) time - Sisyphus rolls the rock up the hill, it rolls down, Sisyhus rolls it up again, it rolls back down once more; lather, rinse, repeat! The so-called Nietzschean eternal recurrence. Camus then advises that we should "imagine Sisyphus happy". What does that mean? Is Sisyphus sporting a Buddha-like half-smile of nirvana or is he :rofl: ?
You speak with authority, I guess you have conducted a comprehensive review of the relevant research. But a cursory search does not support your findings. Just an example, which cites multiple papers:
https://www.lifehack.org/378304/there-any-link-between-humor-and-intelligence
Plus if some people have a bad sense of humour they still find each other funny and mate just as much.
Not to mention that ‘emotional/social intelligence’ is not actually ‘intelligence’ (as in the ‘g’ factor).
Correlation is all that is required here
Quoting I like sushi
Except, they have studied both. Humor is more correlated
Quoting I like sushi
Unattractive people also mate, so what
Quoting I like sushi
Humor correlates with spatial, verbal, and logical intelligences
Fair enough. Show me.
Quoting hypericin
Show me please. Thanks.
Intelligence correlates poorly with creativity, well with humor:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20157303?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contentswo
Here is one which both describes the link between humor and verbal/logical reasoning, and... completely supports my theory!!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachments/95822/humor-predicts-mating-success.pdf
Everything is funny to someone.
What do you mean by life?
I agree.
Quoting Tom Storm
Everything.
In my original post I tried to point it out how it all started. I touched on some aspects of humour, true, but the main thrust of the post was to show how it may have started. I mean, sea urchins don't laugh and tigers have no sense of humour at all.
I contest though, that humour is an intellectual faculty. I have seen really dumb people make really good jokes. And my girlfriend of the distant past, Ruth, pointed out to me that the difference between domesticated animals and wild animals is that the domesticated ones "have a sense of humour". If you think about it, it's true. You can tease a dog or a cat, but you can't tease a chimpanzee or whale, because they will tear you to pieces in the end. And both of these two species are smarter than either of the other two species.
Many respondents raised some really good points, I'll read them all (sorry, I can't promise a response to each) in the next few days.
There are moods, as well, that fluctuate within an individual. One day life may seem funny, the other day, vexing, the third, sad. "You can't step into the same life twice."
One measurement is the recipient's admittance to the level of the humour in a joke.
One other measurement how loud, long, and tearfully one laughs. Some people die during a good laughing session: their asphygos clams on their dorsal step muscles, they can't breath from being paralized, and they die.
One measurement is cross-cultural: tell an English joke to a Papuan, in original Sanskrit, and see if it makes him react any way, other than saying "do you wanna come over for dinner tonight at my house?"
One must account as well for Borons. Borons are boring morons. They think a joke, any joke, at any time, is a frivolous piece of despicable garbage. Thus was the owner of the Plenty of Fish website equipped. He was a stupid fucking idiot who deleted some of my BEST one-liners.
You've gotta be right. I met my present girlfriend six or seven years ago at a garage sale. I made a joke, everyone laughed, she too. I asked her out for breakfast. She has never done anything like that ever, but she accepted.
The thing was that the joke was not even all that funny, but the timing was good.
I think a good joke-teller exudes self-confidence and laisses-fartire or however it's spelled. A healthy dose of "I don't care attitude" that signals a healthy ego, while at the same time not beating up on your wife, or children, which is also a sign of strength and ability. In cavemen days, there was no TV or Internet, so the only form of entellectual entertainment was story telling. A good one-liner went a long way. Oh, and there was no alcohol, either. So if you wanted to engage in the only other activity available that passed the time, you had better pay your dues with hilarious jokes. Or poetry, actually, too.
This does make sense, exept for one glitch. The same glitch that all theories presented about selection of the survival of the fittest to fuck.
The problem is that less funny guys dated less good looking girls, and Borons (boring morons) dated ugly girls. They all had children, who survived to adulthood.
There is no indication that a pretty woman with a funny husband will have more children than a less attractive woman will with a boring and dull husband.
The trickle-down effect. Each person will find a partner who is available for the amount of "sex dollars" they are willing to or are capable to pay. And I believe everyone has a sexual socio-economic class to find a mate to reproduce with.
I like this very much.
------------
Quoting Dawnstorm
Laughter is an expression of delight. It could be due to many things, one being enjoying a joke that hits your funny bone.
Quoting Dawnstorm
I was the acquaintance of a university professor who specialized in jokes. He categorized the morality of jokes into three sections. I forgot what the first two sections were, but his thesis hinged on these three things. And the last one was that there are some jokes that are not made on anyone's expense, they are kind, gentle jokes. I wrote back to him (we were in email correspondence as well as meeting once a month at secular humanists' meeting in town) and asked him to send me two gentle jokes that exemplify the "no victim". He was unable to, I suspect, and he never talked to me again. It hurts when one's life-work is shot down with one question or request.
Quoting Dawnstorm
I agree with this. I think the laughter at the peril TRANSMOGRIFIED into other senses of humour. I believe humour was STARTED with relief from danger; and the skill or trait became transferable and applicable to some (but not all) other reliefs.
------------------
Dawn, I liked your response the best. You
1. dealt with my proposition and you did not use the post to promote your own theory
2. did not use quotes, jargon or theory already uttered or established by philosophers but used your own brain and explained from a reasonable point of view that has not been gleaned from years of study, but was gleaned (to me obviously) by thinking about the topic
3. stated your criticism not as judgment, but as a series of objections, well explained, and finally
4. put your opinions in a format that were easily answerable by their enticing response.
Thanks!!
Sorry, Sushi; my "measurement of humour" were ad-hoc ideas by myself. Humour is an art form as well as a form of pushing the limits of good taste; both have marks at different levels by each human being.
I don't think there is a metric to measure humour. My measurements were taken from American sit-coms, from high-school giggles in class, and from actually generating laugher in crowd. The measurements I offered were not scientific or objective, because humour is an art form, and the humour lies in the eye of the beholder.
in the Dilbert cartoon strip, the head of HR explains to the employees whom they can't discriminate against: "disability, religion, age, political views, education level, racial or ethnic origin, first language spoken, and sex or sexual orientation; gender."
Somebody pipes up in the audience: "So we can still discriminate against poor people?" The presenter looks at her list, and says, "Yep, they are not on the list. You can also discriminate against fat people, short people and ugly people. They are fair game for discrimination." Wally, a character in the strip, who is fat, ugly and short, says as he is walking out of the meeting with his buddy, "Well, that is a nice how-do-you-do."
I think the recipient of the joke's "hurt" is the audience himself or herself. The relief comes from not hurting that much actually. The audience feels that the joke and the joke teller outsmarted him or her... and the relief comes from the fact that it's not really antagonistic but rather friendly.
It was a precursor at the time when humour developed. Strenuous exercise before laughter is not a prerequisite any more. Although laughing audiences at comedy clubs will tell you that it is heavy physical and mental labour to listen to comedians who are not funny, and you feel compelled to laugh.
Sounds like some projection perhaps on your part. Not everyone is braced for impact when the comedian comes on stage. I can think that might be the case with some comedians, but think of Barney telling jokes to kids. There would be no edge there
Modern conditions are a mere blip, and irrelevant to our evolutionary history. This might be true today, where huge, concentrated populations, and monogamy, are the norms.
But we evolved as tiny, polygamous populations. There, fucking of the fittest reigns.
Polygamous marriages gained popularity with the emergence of civilization, where there were enough resources to keep some people in the population idle.
But there is evidence that there had been both poly- and monogamous marriages in our pre-historic past (before agriculture). They measured the gonads of chimpanzees and of gorillas. Chimpanzees are promiscuous, gorillas are polygamous. Chimpanzees have much larger gonads in proportion to their bodies than gorillas. Humans? they are halfway between chimps and gorrs in this aspect. So human beings tend to have covered both lifestyles.
I still maintain that puns hurt. You hear that all the time. Groaners, too. They are normally not violent, but they do cause pain with their forcing incongruency on the audience, because that is one thing humans don't abide by: self-contradiction, incongruency, atavism, coupling of ideas or things in impossible ways.
(*) I am only half-joking. I actually don't know who Barney is / was as a celebrity. I did not grow up in Canada. The entire childhood and babyhood culture is wasted on me, and references to it don't tell me anything... not your fault, it's just that that's how it is. I was 18 when I came to Canada, and had no language skills in English whatsoever.
But I still don't know which character was Barney, after which the show had been named.
Those were characters from the Barney show. Barney is a big purple dinosaur and he loves you.
There is another logistics-related argument against "only the best-looking and sexiest" survive. Or humorous, intelligent, etc., as the case might be.
The sexiest male will couple with the sexiest females. The sexiest females will couple with the sexiest males. (Promiscuity assumed, as per your theory.) There is a stratum which is least sexy, both genders. What are they going to do? Live a celibate lifestyle? No, life is better with bad sex than with no sex. So the unsexiest members of the small populations still made babies.
Barney.
You can't conclude unsexy people have bad sex, but only that they have ugly sex. I mean it's enough you've called them ugly, but don't deny them the mad skills they might have. I'd think there'd be a negative correlation between skills and looks just because the hotter you are, the less hard you must try.
I dunno... I looked at my post, read it really closely four times. Then I ran a search for the word ugly. No hit.
Maybe in a previous post?
Quoting god must be atheist
You win.
To be sure, unattractive "borons" still have sex, now, and most likely prehistorically. All that is required is that the sexy attributes provide an advantage. You are arguing against sexual selection in its entirety, which is a non-starter.
You bet I am arguing against that. Have you been able to read my posts in their entireties, or just skimmed them over?
The sexiest will couple with the sexiest.
The unsexiest will couple with the unsexiest.
EVERYONE will couple.
It's not rocket science. Even unsexy-looking people have the sexual urge, and they will choose whoever is purchasable by their "sex dollars", so to speak.
Just because someone is totally unsexy, it does not stop him or her from coupling. That is a MAJOR logical and empirical fault in the sexual selection myth.
Clincher: Think about it another way: let's suppose that you were right. Therefore the "unsexy" gene ought to have been eliminated from the gene pool by now, 100,000-300,000 years after the first humans appeared. So... then why do we still have unattractive / unsexy people on the face of the planet? This is clear empirical proof that the sexual selection theory is false.
"However, if a man does not want to marry his brother’s wife [ed: after the brother dies], she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.” 8 Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, “I do not want to marry her,” 9 his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.” 10 That man’s line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled."
What if there is more than one brother of the dead husband? What if he is still alive, but she is not a widow but a divorcee? What if she is SEXY?
It is not an all or nothing thing. Ugly people/animals still get opportunities to mate. Sexual selection just needs to provide an advantage, both numerically (how many times do I get to mate?), and qualitatively (how good of a mate can I get?). The offspring of good mates will have this same advantage over the offspring of less favored individuals.
Quoting god must be atheist
Everyone you see is the product of rampant sexual selection. All the really "ugly" genes, unfavorable to sexual selection, have been weeded out already. How attractive do you think a hairy, minimally verbal proto-human would be to you? What you perceive as ugly is one point on a very narrow band, compared to possible physical and mental variation.
How do you explain that some features are attractive to you, and others are not? How did that happen?
What if she was like Oholibah of Ezekiel:
" 18 When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her naked body, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. 19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. 21 So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled."
:rofl: :up:
That is a good argument. I have no counter argument.
Quoting hypericin
Thanks for arguing against your own point. I could not have come up with this myself.
A minimally verbal, hairy, proto-human would have been eliminated by warring tribes who fought over resources.
There is NO TELLING whether these MVHPHs died out because of their inferior other survival skills, or because of their unsexiness.
Other than that, by describing them as MVHPHs, you nicely described half of the males of the currently surviving specimens of the human race. (Joke.)
My counter point will be this: mutations occur randomly, and at times in groups. The more intelligent, more verbal, more sexy humans of today may have mutated from proto-humans all at once in these aspects: sexual features, sexual preferences for looks, intelligence, and verbal skills.
Who is to say this has not been one whopping mutation?
Who is to say this has been one whopping mutation?
I contest that this question can be decided.
And if it can't be decided with our present knowledge, then neither the theory of "sexual selection" must be accepted necessarily, nor must its opposite be accepted necessarily.
This is a debate that needs more empirical evidence for the theory ("sexual selection") to stand on its own two feet and to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
"20 There he lusted after his female lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emissions were like those of horses."
This would also put a dot on the i in my private argument with @hipericin.
The human race is a mammalian species where the division of survival functionality is most specialized between the sexes. Their extent of gender-specific specialization places humans above not only mammals, but among all vertebrates. Every other species with spines in the animal kingdom has less division of labour between genders than us. (I'm a human.) The mammalian species with the closest approximation to our conspicuous sexism are lions. Lionesses do the job of hunting down a kill. The males' job is to chase away hyenas and other scavengers and to reign over the animal kingdom.
Everyone's heard of praying mantises that eat their mates after they've finished propagating their DNA. And everyone has also heard of black widow spiders that do the same. Or of the merry divorcee octopuses that take off with their mate's entire manhood from the act of consummation on their wedding night. Other forms of sexism exist among these animals. But they're invertebrates. They're less like mammals and more like wind-up toys. They fly because they've got determination, not because natural laws are on their side. They go through weird metamorphoses in their development. These insects have eight eyes and six legs, and some voted for George W. Bush.
Humans are mammals, not insects, yet very much a two-species species within their own species. Men are stronger and taller; women are softer and kinder. Men hunt and find bars easily; women are naturally-born healers and naturally-born educators. Guys care about sports and getting laid; women get true enjoyment from children and are more demonstrative emotionally. Some other differences developed through cultural and societal indoctrination and they make the gap seem wider than it actually is, though the actual gap is already wide. Sometimes it's the men whom societal pressures force to respect the differentness of women; other times it's the other way around.
But the differences are there, unmistakably, and the contrasts are sharp and very much in-your-face. It has been speculated by some theorists that men and women did not evolve from the same race, but were amalgamated into one species from two distinct groups.
More recent archeological evidence has unearthed support for the two-species theory of the origin of homo sapiens.
Evidence suggests that a coursing band of the species that gave rise to apes and man, and a herd of beautiful white fawns collided on the African savannah. The pre-apes eyed the fawns, their soft, white skin, their clearer-than-sky turquoise eyes, the graceful movements of the bodies and the regal stature of these noble and kind animals. So the apes went at the fawns and ravished them all. They ravished them mercilessly, vigorously, and with gusto. The mayhem went on with great enthusiasm by the apes, and with very little, almost none, by the fawns. It was not only the male apes that were ravishing the fawns; their females were ravishing them, too, and even the ape children were doing it. They ravished the fawns to rags, and then they ravished them again and again, and then again.
Slowly but surely, the intermixing of DNA structures allowed the two species to meld, and you guessed it, my gentle reader: the two created the human species, in which the men eerily resemble hairy-chested bow-legged apes with immense strength and egos, whereas the females are reminiscent of the white fawns in their personality, in their lack of ability to turn in the right direction when stepping out of an apartment elevator, and in their soft physical beauty.
Who is to say that god didn't create all the animals in their present form 5000 years ago, and leave fossils in the ground to tease heretical archaeologists.
I contest that this question can be decided.
Quoting god must be atheist
:rofl:
Are you saying that there are fossil records on ancient pre-historic man, where it is visible that hair disappeared first, then intelligence rose, then humour developed? Or the other way around? Or fossil record that ancient men did not like hairy ancient women? You are proposing an equivalence between supported theory (the world is older than 5000 years) and an unsupportable theory (that men did not like hairy women).
I put to you that there is no way we can say what men liked 200,000 years ago. We could say that, if only the sexual selection theory was available to explain why there are not hairy women these days; but there are other equally viable theories explaining that, namely, the hairiness accompanying low verbal skills and low IQ, just like you said.
One day after the fall God went to see Adam & Eve in paradise but couldn’t find them so, hoping to draw their attention, he knocked twice on a tree.
Feeling embarrassed, Adam timidity responded, “Uh, who’s there?”
“Betta”
“Betta who?”
God boomed, “Betta pack your bags cuz it’s eviction day in Eden!”
I am proposing an equivalence between arguments: they are equivalent, and equally weak. You can (incorrectly) claim sexual selection is unsupportable. But not because, "what if it all just happened at once?". This is a miracle, and as an explanation, compared to the Darwinian model, it is fantastically unlikely trash.
If you are a caring individual that goes a long way. On top of that, if you are skilled/smart then you will go further still. A sense of humour seems more or less to be a little extra.
When it comes to social environments women tend to select men who earn more (can provide), show forms of protection (financially/physically) and/or are capable of developing friendships within the social structure. Humour could act as a detriment as it could act as a benefit.
I have a pretty good sense of humour but it veers from silly to dark, which can rub people up the wrong way. I am not exactly a very sociable person though, but I have made groups of stranger laugh out loud on public transport on a few occasions when in a high mood.
Have you ever been tempted to try stand up comedy? It is something I think about from time to time.
As to mega-mutations happening or not, you're right, their chances are very small, but then again, "regular" mutations that change human appearance and functionality in huge ways are not happening every five minutes either within a lineage of humans. Such as opposable thumbs, locking knees, or liking to do crossword-puzzles. When was the last time you witnessed a guy's child get born with non-opposable thumbs? It must be happening just as often as some Goffo-bodom monkeys in the Amazonas rain forest getting children with opposable thumbs. So declaring yourself that "such and such mutation can't happen" is like the story of the proverbial man, who comes to the big city from his farm, goes to the zoo, stands in front of the enclosure with the giraffe, looks at the animal, up and down, up and down, and they he solemnly and categorically declares, "Such an animal as this does not exist."
I don't know whom you are addressing there, as you did not refer to whose post you are responding to. But I find it rather odd and at the same time dangerously complimenting, that you think, from time to time, about my ever getting tempted to try stand up comedy.