These were funny. My favourite... Why did the chicken cross the road twice? Because it was a double-crossing chicken.

But I still don't know which character was Barney, after which the show had been named.

But I still don't know which character was Barney, after which the show had been named. — god must be atheist

Those were characters from the Barney show. Barney is a big purple dinosaur and he loves you.

But we evolved as tiny, polygamous populations. There, fucking of the fittest reigns. — hypericin

There is another logistics-related argument against "only the best-looking and sexiest" survive. Or humorous, intelligent, etc., as the case might be.

The sexiest male will couple with the sexiest females. The sexiest females will couple with the sexiest males. (Promiscuity assumed, as per your theory.) There is a stratum which is least sexy, both genders. What are they going to do? Live a celibate lifestyle? No, life is better with bad sex than with no sex. So the unsexiest members of the small populations still made babies.

Barney is a big purple dinosaur and he loves you. — Hanover

Barney.

The sexiest male will couple with the sexiest females. The sexiest females will couple with the sexiest males. (Promiscuity assumed, as per your theory.) There is a stratum which is least sexy, both genders. What are they going to do? Live a celibate lifestyle? No, life is better with bad sex than with no sex. So the unsexiest members of the small populations still made babies. — god must be atheist

You can't conclude unsexy people have bad sex, but only that they have ugly sex. I mean it's enough you've called them ugly, but don't deny them the mad skills they might have. I'd think there'd be a negative correlation between skills and looks just because the hotter you are, the less hard you must try.

it's enough you've called them ugly — Hanover

I dunno... I looked at my post, read it really closely four times. Then I ran a search for the word ugly. No hit.

Maybe in a previous post?

dated ugly girls. — god must be atheist

You win.

There is another logistics-related argument against "only the best-looking and sexiest" survive. Or humorous, intelligent, etc., as the case might be. — god must be atheist

To be sure, unattractive "borons" still have sex, now, and most likely prehistorically. All that is required is that the sexy attributes provide an advantage. You are arguing against sexual selection in its entirety, which is a non-starter.

You are arguing against sexual selection in its entirety, which is a non-starter. — hypericin

You bet I am arguing against that. Have you been able to read my posts in their entireties, or just skimmed them over?

The sexiest will couple with the sexiest.
The unsexiest will couple with the unsexiest.

EVERYONE will couple.

It's not rocket science. Even unsexy-looking people have the sexual urge, and they will choose whoever is purchasable by their "sex dollars", so to speak.

Just because someone is totally unsexy, it does not stop him or her from coupling. That is a MAJOR logical and empirical fault in the sexual selection myth.

Clincher: Think about it another way: let's suppose that you were right. Therefore the "unsexy" gene ought to have been eliminated from the gene pool by now, 100,000-300,000 years after the first humans appeared. So... then why do we still have unattractive / unsexy people on the face of the planet? This is clear empirical proof that the sexual selection theory is false.

@Hanover I read your profile. I had to check Deuteronomy 25. I found another juicy bit:

"However, if a man does not want to marry his brother’s wife [ed: after the brother dies], she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.” 8 Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, “I do not want to marry her,” 9 his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.” 10 That man’s line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled."

What if there is more than one brother of the dead husband? What if he is still alive, but she is not a widow but a divorcee? What if she is SEXY?

So, do you not believe in sexual selection in other animals as well? Or is it just humans? Not that either are in dispute, afaik.

It is not an all or nothing thing. Ugly people/animals still get opportunities to mate. Sexual selection just needs to provide an advantage, both numerically (how many times do I get to mate?), and qualitatively (how good of a mate can I get?). The offspring of good mates will have this same advantage over the offspring of less favored individuals.

Clincher: Think about it another way: let's suppose that you were right. Therefore the "unsexy" gene ought to have been eliminated from the gene pool by now — god must be atheist

Everyone you see is the product of rampant sexual selection. All the really "ugly" genes, unfavorable to sexual selection, have been weeded out already. How attractive do you think a hairy, minimally verbal proto-human would be to you? What you perceive as ugly is one point on a very narrow band, compared to possible physical and mental variation.

How do you explain that some features are attractive to you, and others are not? How did that happen?

What if she is SEXY? — god must be atheist

What if she was like Oholibah of Ezekiel:

" 18 When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her naked body, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. 19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. 21 So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled."

The origin of humor is existential complacency.

There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses — Hanover

:rofl: :up:

Everyone you see is the product of rampant sexual selection. All the really "ugly" genes, unfavorable to sexual selection, have been weeded out already. — hypericin

That is a good argument. I have no counter argument.

How attractive do you think a hairy, minimally verbal proto-human would be to you? — hypericin

Thanks for arguing against your own point. I could not have come up with this myself.

A minimally verbal, hairy, proto-human would have been eliminated by warring tribes who fought over resources.

There is NO TELLING whether these MVHPHs died out because of their inferior other survival skills, or because of their unsexiness.

Other than that, by describing them as MVHPHs, you nicely described half of the males of the currently surviving specimens of the human race. (Joke.)

My counter point will be this: mutations occur randomly, and at times in groups. The more intelligent, more verbal, more sexy humans of today may have mutated from proto-humans all at once in these aspects: sexual features, sexual preferences for looks, intelligence, and verbal skills.

Who is to say this has not been one whopping mutation?

Who is to say this has been one whopping mutation?

I contest that this question can be decided.

And if it can't be decided with our present knowledge, then neither the theory of "sexual selection" must be accepted necessarily, nor must its opposite be accepted necessarily.

This is a debate that needs more empirical evidence for the theory ("sexual selection") to stand on its own two feet and to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

It would be MUCH more meaningful if Oholibah was a male prostitute selling his stuff to ladies. Thus:

"20 There he lusted after his female lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emissions were like those of horses."

This would also put a dot on the i in my private argument with @hipericin.

The Origin of the Human Species

The human race is a mammalian species where the division of survival functionality is most specialized between the sexes. Their extent of gender-specific specialization places humans above not only mammals, but among all vertebrates. Every other species with spines in the animal kingdom has less division of labour between genders than us. (I'm a human.) The mammalian species with the closest approximation to our conspicuous sexism are lions. Lionesses do the job of hunting down a kill. The males' job is to chase away hyenas and other scavengers and to reign over the animal kingdom.

Everyone's heard of praying mantises that eat their mates after they've finished propagating their DNA. And everyone has also heard of black widow spiders that do the same. Or of the merry divorcee octopuses that take off with their mate's entire manhood from the act of consummation on their wedding night. Other forms of sexism exist among these animals. But they're invertebrates. They're less like mammals and more like wind-up toys. They fly because they've got determination, not because natural laws are on their side. They go through weird metamorphoses in their development. These insects have eight eyes and six legs, and some voted for George W. Bush.

Humans are mammals, not insects, yet very much a two-species species within their own species. Men are stronger and taller; women are softer and kinder. Men hunt and find bars easily; women are naturally-born healers and naturally-born educators. Guys care about sports and getting laid; women get true enjoyment from children and are more demonstrative emotionally. Some other differences developed through cultural and societal indoctrination and they make the gap seem wider than it actually is, though the actual gap is already wide. Sometimes it's the men whom societal pressures force to respect the differentness of women; other times it's the other way around.

But the differences are there, unmistakably, and the contrasts are sharp and very much in-your-face. It has been speculated by some theorists that men and women did not evolve from the same race, but were amalgamated into one species from two distinct groups.

More recent archeological evidence has unearthed support for the two-species theory of the origin of homo sapiens.

Evidence suggests that a coursing band of the species that gave rise to apes and man, and a herd of beautiful white fawns collided on the African savannah. The pre-apes eyed the fawns, their soft, white skin, their clearer-than-sky turquoise eyes, the graceful movements of the bodies and the regal stature of these noble and kind animals. So the apes went at the fawns and ravished them all. They ravished them mercilessly, vigorously, and with gusto. The mayhem went on with great enthusiasm by the apes, and with very little, almost none, by the fawns. It was not only the male apes that were ravishing the fawns; their females were ravishing them, too, and even the ape children were doing it. They ravished the fawns to rags, and then they ravished them again and again, and then again.

Slowly but surely, the intermixing of DNA structures allowed the two species to meld, and you guessed it, my gentle reader: the two created the human species, in which the men eerily resemble hairy-chested bow-legged apes with immense strength and egos, whereas the females are reminiscent of the white fawns in their personality, in their lack of ability to turn in the right direction when stepping out of an apartment elevator, and in their soft physical beauty.

My counter point will be this: mutations occur randomly, and at times in groups. The more intelligent, more verbal, more sexy humans of today may have mutated from proto-humans all at once in these aspects: sexual features, sexual preferences for looks, intelligence, and verbal skills.

Who is to say this has not been one whopping mutation? — god must be atheist

Who is to say that god didn't create all the animals in their present form 5000 years ago, and leave fossils in the ground to tease heretical archaeologists.

I contest that this question can be decided.

Other than that, by describing them as MVHPHs, you nicely described half of the males of the currently surviving specimens of the human race. — god must be atheist

:rofl:

Who is to say that god didn't create all the animals in their present form 5000 years ago, and leave fossils in the ground to tease heretical archaeologists. — hypericin

Are you saying that there are fossil records on ancient pre-historic man, where it is visible that hair disappeared first, then intelligence rose, then humour developed? Or the other way around? Or fossil record that ancient men did not like hairy ancient women? You are proposing an equivalence between supported theory (the world is older than 5000 years) and an unsupportable theory (that men did not like hairy women).

I put to you that there is no way we can say what men liked 200,000 years ago. We could say that, if only the sexual selection theory was available to explain why there are not hairy women these days; but there are other equally viable theories explaining that, namely, the hairiness accompanying low verbal skills and low IQ, just like you said.

The second joke ever told was a knock knock joke.

One day after the fall God went to see Adam & Eve in paradise but couldn’t find them so, hoping to draw their attention, he knocked twice on a tree.

Feeling embarrassed, Adam timidity responded, “Uh, who’s there?”

“Betta”

“Betta who?”

God boomed, “Betta pack your bags cuz it’s eviction day in Eden!”

This post is a joke! Or... serious?

I think it's a joke to relate being funny to procreation. Being funny as a compensation for being ugly. If that's the reason of being funny or tell a joke then it ain't funny anymore.

You are proposing an equivalence between supported theory (the world is older than 5000 years) and an unsupportable theory (that men did not like hairy women). — god must be atheist

I am proposing an equivalence between arguments: they are equivalent, and equally weak. You can (incorrectly) claim sexual selection is unsupportable. But not because, "what if it all just happened at once?". This is a miracle, and as an explanation, compared to the Darwinian model, it is fantastically unlikely trash.

Overall I don’t really see how a ‘better sense of humour’ would massively impact on sexual selection and general success.

If you are a caring individual that goes a long way. On top of that, if you are skilled/smart then you will go further still. A sense of humour seems more or less to be a little extra.

When it comes to social environments women tend to select men who earn more (can provide), show forms of protection (financially/physically) and/or are capable of developing friendships within the social structure. Humour could act as a detriment as it could act as a benefit.

I have a pretty good sense of humour but it veers from silly to dark, which can rub people up the wrong way. I am not exactly a very sociable person though, but I have made groups of stranger laugh out loud on public transport on a few occasions when in a high mood.

Have you ever been tempted to try stand up comedy? It is something I think about from time to time.

I did not say sexual selection is unsupportable. I just said there is a chance that it does not work, and if we were to decide once and for all whether it works or not, we need more empirical evidence.

As to mega-mutations happening or not, you're right, their chances are very small, but then again, "regular" mutations that change human appearance and functionality in huge ways are not happening every five minutes either within a lineage of humans. Such as opposable thumbs, locking knees, or liking to do crossword-puzzles. When was the last time you witnessed a guy's child get born with non-opposable thumbs? It must be happening just as often as some Goffo-bodom monkeys in the Amazonas rain forest getting children with opposable thumbs. So declaring yourself that "such and such mutation can't happen" is like the story of the proverbial man, who comes to the big city from his farm, goes to the zoo, stands in front of the enclosure with the giraffe, looks at the animal, up and down, up and down, and they he solemnly and categorically declares, "Such an animal as this does not exist."

Have you ever been tempted to try stand up comedy? It is something I think about from time to time. — I like sushi

I don't know whom you are addressing there, as you did not refer to whose post you are responding to. But I find it rather odd and at the same time dangerously complimenting, that you think, from time to time, about my ever getting tempted to try stand up comedy.