> And the brain knows that. Yet, our evolutionary selection criteria, eh....let's just call it what it is... the desire of people to have sex with you, hasn't caught up yet.
I disagree. There is a tremendous selection pressure going on, constantly.
I always chuckle when I read something by some disaffected 19 yr old whining about how girls don't like him. And what does he do? He talks about going to the gym. Even if that were to work, how likely is he to stand out among all the other thousands doing the same, some of which are almost certain to be more advantaged than he (genetics, whatever) ?
He'd do better to get a good job and start looking responsible. So few do, that even if he isn't perfect at such, he'd succeed just because he's in a seller's market (in that niche, at least).
> There is a reason big breasts and biceps arouse desire when they logically shouldn't.
There is. But I contend that this is because of a psychological defect in the human species: we want what other people want. Why do we want this?
It's advantageous. Let's assume that there is a guy called "Bob". He's not very bright, and while he does have his moments where he figures out something clever, these moments happen on a year-to-year basis, rather than a second-to-second basis (or even hour-to-hour). Figuring out what to want is a difficult intellectual problem, with thousands or millions of factors to consider.
So if Bob tries to figure this out himself, he will have to expend enormous effort to do so. And even then, he might make the wrong conclusion.
He can instead just "want what everyone wants". This takes minimal effort. You observe what seems to be popular, and want that. And even though it requires very little effort, the results are very, very close to as good as those had he expended enormous effort himself.
And so, we want what others want.
In small hunter-gatherer societies, this is very optimal. It almost never backfires. But as societies get bigger, this behavior becomes odd very quickly. We get runaway feedback loops in short order.
This doesn't mean that the behavior is now disadvantageous... in many scenarios, it works as well as it ever did. So the selection pressure to tamp this behavior down is lowered or suppressed completely.
So, if even a few people want something, with the right timing and the right random events, everyone will start wanting it. The novelty can even help, at first.
And everyone else wants it because they thought others did at some point. And as soon as they decided they wanted that thing (gym muscles) they added to the perception of others that this should be desirable. And the more people buy into it, the more extreme the desire becomes... after all, the only way to stand out among all the rest is to be the most X, for whatever X is.
The hilarious part though is how sterile this behavior is. None of the people participating in it are particularly successful from a reproductive point of view. Hell, how would they go to the gym if they had a bunch of brats to take care of?