Mild clarification....

[bathroom_ninja]

I feel like clarifying my last post. I didn't bother explaining things fully because I didn't think anyone on my FL would read it or have any interest in sociobiology.

Instead of just randomly talking about big boobs... I should had said that sociobiologists are trying to figure out why men like big breasts. Most everything in sociobiology is

Comments

Re: soup

[bathroom_ninja]

[I’m assuming you meant illogical?]
I defend sociobiology a lot too…which is sort of awkward considering most of my focus is on cultural differences with my major, but I think sociobiology is absolutely necessary to understanding human nature. Unfortunately it is frequently abused as well…but that’s a topic for another day >_>;

Anyhoo, you’ve read Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters? What did you think? For the most part I liked it because it introduced me to a lot of new concepts, but there were a few things I didn’t agree with. As far as the anthropology part goes he mentions how Margaret Mead’s and Napoleon Chagnon’s tribes were hoaxes [Samoa and Tasaday], yet decides to omit other cultures with real differences [Arapesh, Mundugumor, Tchambuli].

The book would have been much more interesting to me if he had taken those cultures and attempted to explain them through sociobiology instead of just leaving them out. As far as the breasts thing goes, I like the idea that breasts are distinctly female much more than ‘age-defining.’ And then the issue of homosexuality. He doesn’t even attempt to explain why homosexuality would occur, he just assumes it's biological. There are theories to explain WHY, but I don't know enough about them. I was talking to Garibay about this actually, so I only know it from him not from a book. But the thought is homosexuality developed so that males [and females?] without heterosexual partners would form attachments to the same sex throughout sexual activity and increase their chances of survival because of that bond. It sort of ties into monogamy being good for males and polygamy being good for females. In a polygamous society some males would be without wives, so they would need to form an attachment/partnership another way.

I also had issue with his arguments of more boys being born during wars, that doesn’t seem to fit well with evolutionary theory to me but I don’t completely grasp how it works, and if you have any evolution-specific book recommendations I would love to read them :D

You’ve read The Selfish Gene right? At the end of one of the chapters he says, “Has the male really become the sought after sex, the one that is in demand, the sex that can afford to be choosy? If so, why?” This can be explained through history, sociology, [and philosophy if you’re feeling fancy enough]. I was just flipping through the pages when I read that so I may be talking out of my ass here and he may have explained it somewhere else.

The only issue I have with most sociobiologists is that too often they only look at scientific ‘empirical’ data and don’t pay attention to anything else. And often times the ‘anything else’ have very good explanations as to why these things occur.

I think that was kind of rambly and it might not have made any sense... I'm kind of hungover right now sorry about that XD