One of my students sent me this today. I thought I’d share it with LPers.
We’ve recently been discussing class in another thread, this is an interesting take on *underclass*. It’s also interesting how, when comparing male and female anatomica, the researchers think the equivalent of a big *member*, is pert breasts. Fantasy or wankwurthy?
Another interesting twist, the headline refers to “Brave new world” [Aldous Huxley] and the copy refers to HG Wells. What the?
At the bottom of the piece it notes that the research was commissioned by a men’s *satellite TV channel*. No surprises there then, but perhaps we can expect more of this uplifting content when Ms Coonan’s new diversity rules come into play.
I did an in-depth appraisal of this report a few days ago and scientifically concluded the theory needs some refining.
Oh wow! There’s something to look forward too: An uberrace of supermodels
I really don’t think penis size is sexually selected for, unlike the other indicators of attractiveness.
After all you don’t actually get to the see the penis until such time as you have already selected your mate.
And I would think this sort of divergence would take a great deal longer than 10,000 years, and assumes (a very big assumption) that genetic engineering will never play a part in human development.
In humans most instances of sexual intercourse don’t actually lead to pregnancy and if the apparatus of either sex is unsatisfactory after the first time another mate can be selected for the next sexual adventure.
Anecdotally, I know more women who’ve admitted to breaking up with men for being uncomfortably large than women who’ve admitted to dumping men for being underendowed, so I doubt the sexual selection will work at all in the direction suggested.
Yobbo, it usually takes more than one root to make a baby.
Unless you believe in selecting a mate for life before you’ve even had sex. Get with the times, dude!
Plus they said 100,000 years, which seems to me to be a ludicrous underestimate, given the average height of an adult human changing like it has in the last 2000.
It’s 100 000 years, not 10 000, and strong selection could easily bring about those kinds of changes in 100 000 years. Look at all the weird and wonderful varieties of doggies that exist today. That’s all come about since domestication, though admitedly canines remain one species.
Also, genetic engineering, which would more likely among the rich I’d guess, would increase the likelihood of divergence, not decrease it.
I’m not sure about his “squarer jaw for men” idea either. Looking just at movie stars the aesthetic in the West seems to be away from square jaws, not towards squareer ones.
There’s a rather fun post here which gives the full text of the article in more legible detail. He has thoughtfully illustrated it according to its scienciness. [link]
Average height of adult humans over the last 2000 years has changed solely through nutrition. The processes of evolution grind exceeding slow – much too slow to change height drastically in a mere 2000 years.
Interestingly, when we moved from a nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyle to fixed farming settlements, average human height decreased.
But genetically we are essentially the same as we were in the late paleolithic period – evolution just doesn’t move that fast.
“I know more women who’ve admitted to breaking up with men for being uncomfortably large than women who’ve admitted to dumping men for being underendowed”
Perhaps that has more to do with reportage than incidence, TT.
can I just say that I love the word “scienciness”.
But surely this will happen only if RWDBs leave their bunkers and go in search of equally horrific sexual partners.
Thus, by engaging them on blogs such as this we are performing a eugenic service to humanity.
That was the perceived wisdom until recently. The discovery of evolution ‘hot-spots’ littered amongst the human genome has changed that – though these would be unlikely to be associated with ‘looks’.
Secondly, when the genetic variation already exists, evolution can easily move that fast. Bigger bits, perter bits etc. – they’re already there in some of the population. They just have to be selected for. It’s not like waiting for a 1 in 10 000 mutation to make them possible, and then start selecting.
“Average height of adult humans over the last 2000 years has changed solely through nutrition. The processes of evolution grind exceeding slow – much too slow to change height drastically in a mere 2000 years.”
Claptrap. As Nexus 6 points out, the variation is already there, and selecting for height in sexual partners is straightforwardly going to produce taller offspring. There are exceptions, but they just prove the rule.
“Interestingly, when we moved from a nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyle to fixed farming settlements, average human height decreased.”
What, even though we moved to that lifestyle because of the better nutritional prospects? Maybe we just stopped needing to see prey from a distance, and instead needed to dig the fields.
Quite possibly, FDB, which is why I phrased it as I did. Still, who wants to be rammed by a treetrunk when one could be skillfully swizzled by a more agile, shall we say, specimen?
Also, [puts on gyn-physio hat], a 3-inch penis is plenty long enough for successful impregnation, whereas a longer penis would actually tend to be beyond and to the side of the cervical os (where the sperm enters the uterus) by a long way at the point of ejaculation. This would I think be a point where natural selection issues would trump sexual selection per se. It could aslso be the point wheere the genetic engineering for larger penises could fall down in the face of natural selection.
The only way the separation into separate species would occur is if not only are the upper classes using genetic engineering, but if there is no interbreeding at all with those who are not gen-engineered. Human history makes that rather unlikely, so the gen-engineered genes would end up spreading through the general population anyway.
Curry’s scenario requires that somehow we’d end up with sympatric speciation, not even allopatric, which is really a strange claim.
er, my 5:07 is in response to your 4:43, not your 5:05, FDB.
Hey, I never knew Flash Gordon dresses to the left.
Interesting sentence fragment:
“larger penises could fall down in the face”
Bring it on!
Sorry, I’ve started on the turps after the good news about my newfound avuncularity. It’s a boy!
Incidentally, how crazily big are newborn’s cocks? If the proportions stayed that way, there’d be some radical cervical adjustment required.
If this theory is true – why are there still females with small breasts?
“………After all you don’t actually get to the see the penis until such time as you have already selected your mate…..”
You are not much of an OBSERVER of women are you young fella? There are women giggling at you all over Australia no doubt.
Also I want to point out that your wing of the human race did NOT evolve clothes either.
>>>>>>>>>>
Ok you heard it from Eric Blair. He’s a teacher or a lecturer.
NOW do you see just how critical it is to raise the tax-free threshold and throw all these guys off the public tit?
I’ve told you MANY TIMES.
But did you believe me………?
No.
Now that you’ve seen Eric Blair in action doubt me no more.
IN Brave New World there are five classes of humans from gen-eng stock and then there are the savages. It is the savage who actually has the most fun with his *member*, the rest of them seem rather limp by comparison.
It should be noted that in BNW we really only see/hear/experience the lives of the wealthiest class who are all party members (a Staliniod, state-capitalist race of effete snobs and snivelling women). There is no real description of the lower orders, but they are bred to work, not to think. We have no way of knowing if they were more aesthetically pleasing than the Ones.
Mr Huxley makes no mention of the size of the savage’s appendage.
FDB, Rebekkah has Jared Diamond on her side. He points out that when we went for agriculture we went for quantity rather than quality and it did indeed reduce the size and the longevity of people living in the agriculture-based societies.
I guess that has been fixed now, partly because of medicine and public health and partly because more sophisticated markets allow us to get variety back into our diets.
All I want to know is, why can’t I have pert man-boobs?
Jeeze, you don’t have to wait 1,000 years for that stuff. Don’t you guys read your emails?
Have you had success with it, Tim?
Women will undoubtedly evolve even to more unbearably cute and pert-breasted forms, but fellas? Nah, a generously-proportioned wallet will always compensate for physical shortcomings.
Nexus 6:
Where on earth did you find that specimen? The first thing that crossed my mind when I saw that picture was the success of the cane toad in displacing native frogs. Also, you are right about the variety of dogs …. this happened in a matter of cenuries not in aeons.
Tigtog [at 4:16pm]:
On behalf of the majority of us ordinary blokes – Thank You ever so much for your kind, inspiring and wonderfully cheering words. It’s the nicest thing that has been said on the subject for ages.
Everyone:
Apart from Huxley’s novel “Brave New World”, the Irish film “Zardoz” (acted by a rising Sean Connery and a young Charlotte Rampling) was an interesting look at two varieties of human beings. Worth a look on a quiet evening.
Eric
we have read Brave New World
Btw – It’s not science. It’s an essay by a political theorist at LSE. The Guardian looks at how PR companies slipped this one in as a science story into the media.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1927869,00.html
Zardoz! Sir Sean in an orange nappy!
Andy, there will be no selection pressure for women to evolve perter breasts etc whilever non-pert tissues are affordably surgically augmented/tightened.
In fact, breast augmentation and nose-minimisation procedures becoming more and more commonplace means that the alleles for small boobs and large noses are likely to be spread more widely in the population, instead of being bred out.
Mark, that’s exactly what turned out to be behind the recent patently nonsensical cod-science reports, in respectable papers which should have known better, that English cows moo with regional accents. Language Log say it started with a PR firm working for a cheese company.
Mark, that Guardian piece is by Ben Goldacre, whose blogpost on the story I linked to earlier [link]
He has a rather good blog-community there at BadScience, where he throws up ideas and discusses them both before and after publishing his Guardian columns. He gets to be a bit more playful on the blog.
Sorry, tigtog, hadn’t read the whole thread.
This sort of crap (amusing as it might be) needs to be called for PR flak-ery.