how did the peacock's handicap arise?
A- Why do peacocks have huge tails?
B- Because peahens find them attractive.
A- and why do they?
B- because it's a handicap: any peacock that survives with such a ridiculously long tail must be pretty fit otherwise. His genes must be good.
A(1)- well, why do we care about "otherwise"? It's not like the peacock can chuck his tail when he's in danger, so any kids coming out of this mate will suffer all the same negative effects of this handicap. Are these females just hoping that future females will find their kids attractive for no good reason too? Are they betting on the Equal Fool Theory?
B(1)- there are probably mathematical principles (as well as empirical evidence) explaining why a peacock with such a handicap is still fitter than one without one.
A(2)- So the purpose of the tail is to impress females, right? Well, this seems to answer all of our questions, doesn't it? The problem is that this is a case of co-evolution: how did the peahens come to find long tails attractive in the first place? It's not like they could reason "well, if he has such a large handicap, then he must be good to mate with!". Attraction doesn't involve logical reasoning*: it is hard-coded genetically! So it would require an enormous coincidence for the long-tail mutation to come at the same time as the long-tails-are-attractive mutation in a large enough number of individuals simultaneously.
B(2) - Larry Gonick to the rescue!
(in case the link breaks, the answer is: learning biases in neural networks. A NN trained to identify "male" will respond more strongly to huge tails.)
(*) it is interesting to think about whether and how logical reasoning affects. In human, such reasoning processes can definitely affect attraction. Maybe this is due to our strong ability to imagine.
B- Because peahens find them attractive.
A- and why do they?
B- because it's a handicap: any peacock that survives with such a ridiculously long tail must be pretty fit otherwise. His genes must be good.
A(1)- well, why do we care about "otherwise"? It's not like the peacock can chuck his tail when he's in danger, so any kids coming out of this mate will suffer all the same negative effects of this handicap. Are these females just hoping that future females will find their kids attractive for no good reason too? Are they betting on the Equal Fool Theory?
B(1)- there are probably mathematical principles (as well as empirical evidence) explaining why a peacock with such a handicap is still fitter than one without one.
A(2)- So the purpose of the tail is to impress females, right? Well, this seems to answer all of our questions, doesn't it? The problem is that this is a case of co-evolution: how did the peahens come to find long tails attractive in the first place? It's not like they could reason "well, if he has such a large handicap, then he must be good to mate with!". Attraction doesn't involve logical reasoning*: it is hard-coded genetically! So it would require an enormous coincidence for the long-tail mutation to come at the same time as the long-tails-are-attractive mutation in a large enough number of individuals simultaneously.
B(2) - Larry Gonick to the rescue!
(in case the link breaks, the answer is: learning biases in neural networks. A NN trained to identify "male" will respond more strongly to huge tails.)
(*) it is interesting to think about whether and how logical reasoning affects. In human, such reasoning processes can definitely affect attraction. Maybe this is due to our strong ability to imagine.