Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature | Hacker News Reader

Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

psychologytoday.com

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I used to be a massive evo-psych fan, but somehow reading this post with it's tabloid 'aren't we daring to be politically incorrect' attitude really rankled me. I think it was reading Douglas Hofstadters 'Metamagical Themas' that made me more favourable to political correctness - and more likely to see articles like this, which no doubt have a lot of scientific fact behind them, as presenting those facts to push a particular worldview.

I have no idea where these people get their "scientific facts" from. Blond hair evolved in Sweden so that women could advertise their youth under all their heavy winter clothing? Why aren't Inuits (Eskimos) blond then?

At least half the stuff in there seems either like urban legends or dubious speculations to interpret limited data.

I agree. You could just as easily argue that Scandinavian people are fair because it helps camoflage them in snowy environments. Perhaps all the black haired ones got eaten by bears and wolves.

There's a kernel of truth behind most of this, but it's wrapped in tabloid watercooler talk.

I'm pretty sure the mutation in the single gene which determines how much melamine is deposited in skin, eyes and hair is due to vitamin D levels.

Vitamin D is produced in the skin when exposed to UV light. People from the north don't get enough of it, even with today's modern diet and vitamin D fortified foods.

The Inuit get more D from their fatty marine diet.

And blonds are not universality preferred. Try it, if you're darkish go to the Scandinavian nations and see what kind of attention you get from the opposite sex.

Rarity is preferred, blonds just happen to be rare in most of the world except Northern Europe.

Why aren't Inuits (Eskimos) blond then?

Evolution need not give you what you expect.

Of course it doesn't. But if you are making claims that a particular feature is adaptive in a specific way, you had better be able to provide some evidence for it - and one way of doing this is showing the trait being adaptive in a different population in the same ecological niche, or having an explanation as to why not, or being able to somehow rule out the other dozen perfectly plausible reasons as to why the trait exists.

Not every phsysiological trait has to be adaptive.

While I can't speak to the specific claim, there's no reason to expect that two disconnected populations will necessarily develop the same adaptations in response to similar pressures.

Fun read. All human nature is sexual, so not all suicide bombers are Muslim, but nearly all Muslim suicide bombers are male, and that is so because of the shortage of women. Rich men have more wives, mistresses, concubines, because a woman would rather have one-tenth of a rich man than all of a poor man. Industrial societies are monogamous because a working class man isn't all that bad. And also why gentlemen prefer blonds.

"preference for blue eyes seems both universal and undeniable"

I've literally never heard this claimed before. They give a plausible argument for it, but is there any basis to think the preference really exists?

Seems like a highly Euro-centric view presented with no reasonable evidence whatsoever. And they're begging the question, trying to argue the point that everyone prefers blondes with blue eyes by assuming it to be true and backwards rationalizing from there.

Interesting article. Largely bullshit, I suspect, but an interesting read nonetheless.

That being said, I found the article obnoxious. The authors are hoping that, by presenting their claims as "politically incorrect truths," anyone skeptical of their conclusions for methodological reasons (lack of evidence, begging the question, fundamental attribution error, bias blind spot, cum hoc ergo propter hoc, selection bias, etc.) will simply be dismissed as not being able to deal with their edgy, courageously neutral, politically incorrect "truths."

sorry for the long comment but I had to address these because they're all kind of silly to me.

Men Like Blonde Bombshells: The article claims this is all but universal but...to be honest...I like redheads. So that's disproved right there.

Humans are naturally polygamous: Well...duh. If this is so politically incorrect why did I learn it in my 8th grade science class?

Most women benefit from polygymy: The example they give as "proof" is women can share wealthy men in polygamous societies. That only works if women value wealth overall. I can show you thousands of studies where a poor man got the girl by being more attentive than a rich man. So this is bunk,

Most suicide bombers are Muslim: Well again...duh. The sheer number of muslims combined with their religion being in a struggle between fundamentalism and progressivism pretty much guarantees that. But that probably wasn't the case 2,000 years ago and it probably won't be the case 2,000 years from now.

Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce: Maybe. But it seems like a pretty complicated thought process to be an instinct. Most men I know don't consider how they're going to pass on wealth to their son when getting divorced.

Beautiful people have more daughters: Completely unproven hypothesis.

What Gates and McCarthy have in common with criminals: Stupid. Yes, young people take more risks and people who take more risks produce more. That's common in all humans.

It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair: Politicians are risk takers. Duh. They're in a job where they have to win over millions of people every few years or lose their job.

Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist: Their theory is that men treat women aggressively just like they do men so they aren't sexist. But not being sexist means realizing women are different than men and treating them accordingly so their theory is nothing more than a word game.

You have got a number of bizarre arguments in this post, but they're all arguable (kindof) except this one.

Sexism is exactly thinking that somebody is different simply because they are a specific sex. The goal of "political correctness", as idiotic as it seems, is to have everybody treated as if they were carbon copies of one another.

Not being a sexist would mean not acknowledging the differences between the sexes.

> Men Like Blonde Bombshells: The article claims this is all but universal but...to be honest...I like redheads. So that's disproved right there.

It can be statistically universal without being true of every instance.

For example, if you ask 100k Americans their favorite color, you'll find that more people say "blue" than any other color. I don't know if the same is true wrt blonds in almost every culture, but ....

> Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce: Maybe. But it seems like a pretty complicated thought process to be an instinct. Most men I know don't consider how they're going to pass on wealth to their son when getting divorced.

It doesn't have to be a "thought process". It merely has to affect the odds of genes being passed on. If male children of separated parents have lower odds of passing on their genes than female children of separated parents and children of unseparated parents, a mutation that encourages parents of male children to stay together will be favored.

I have read that the Y-chromosome is more "brittle" (for lack of a better word) than the others in the human genome. Therefore, as environmental factors get worse, the likelihood of females increases. Rich, not too old males are in pretty good shape, so their progeny should be split between gender. Less-rich, or old, or disadvantaged folks should be in worse shape leading to increased XX's.

It's inductive reasoning, but most of the folks I've know the last 10-20 years have had daughters - older parents, often in chemical laboratories.

Y-chromo doesn't recombine much, so it figures that it'd be more fragile. Mutations have probably been building up basically forever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam

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