NSFW Best Thread Ever [No SJW-related posts allowed]

[ixg]

Could some1 please lock this thread?! There being mean agian

 

[OccupatedVoid]

Could some1 please lock this thread?! There being mean agian

This is the codex n00b!

 

[MINIGUNWIELDER]

NetZero is not only awesome, but has earned me A RETURN TO THE OB FORUMS, SOWTHPARCFaN8973 SHALL RETURNS!

 

[golgotha]

Guess she's like a carnival mirror. how you percieve her depends on where you stand.

Nah, she's pretty much ugly as fuck from any distance.

Though a carnival mirror could help her confidence.

 

[OccupatedVoid]

NetZero is not only awesome, but has earned me A RETURN TO THE OB FORUMS, SOWTHPARCFaN8973 SHALL RETURNS!

Let us know when you post!

Though a carnival mirror could help her confidence.

Yeah, seriously.

 

[aweigh]

Some Bloom lighting would really help her out.

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

Cochran and Paul Ewald actually wrote the book on when it is advantageous for an infection to not harm its host severely.

Whoops. It had been a while since I read that, and after looking over it again, I noticed that it doesn't actually mention any book, and the one I was thinking of is Plague Time, which is by Ewald but not Cochran. You should still read the article I linked to, it's really, really good and should help you understand some of the things we've discussed.

 

[galsiah]

Incentives matter in all situations involving intentional/purposive action.

That's just not true without further assumptions.
For instance it's trivially incorrect when the goal is either guaranteed to happen, or guaranteed not to happen, irrespective of intentional/purposive action.

Clearly that isn't the case for mating. However,pretty much everything is in the grey area between the case where incentive doesn't matter at all (e.g. when outcome can't be influenced by action, or action can't be influenced by desire), and the case where it matters completely (e.g. trivially, when your goal is to have the intention - concrete cases are unlikely since other factors nearly always have a bearing).

For any usual case you can be fairly sure that incentives (or desires - not the same thing) will have an impact. Whether that's a 1% impact or a 99% impact will be highly dependent on the situation.

Do you know of any situation of the type I described in which incentives do not matter?

First, if your argument is very specific to the type of situation you described, you ought to point out what specifically about that situation justifies the argument.

Situations where incentives (of any type) don't matter are probably confined to cases where the actors are unaware of the incentives, or the actors' actions have no bearing on the goal. These are both common enough, though the first case clearly makes no sense in this context.

However, we were talking about one particular incentive to mate. Removing that does not remove all incentives.
It's simple to imagine many situations where the natural impulse to mate might not be the most important factor. E.g. where having children is very important (e.g. economically/religiously/culturally...); where not mating means you get burned as a witch etc.

Whether any such situations were prevalent enough to make a big difference is far from certain. Assuming that the existence of such situations is impossible is illogical.

but mating involves not only that but also requires desire at a very base level to physically carry out the act.

Not really - what it requires is a physical state. Whether that occurs through desire, or any other form of stimulation is not too relevant. I don't think anyone suggests that homosexuals are incapable of mating.

...the heterosexual has a clear advantage in creating offspring.

Only if there aren't other strong incentives to mate.

Also, sexual dimorphism ...degree of polygyny... if anything social pressure has acted against that.

Then that'd be more helpful to the monogamous homosexual mating for non-desire based reasons, wouldn't it?

Did you read my link on group selection?

Not yet. Will do at some point.

Also, as I mentioned, in Africa (where the bulk of human evolution took place), we find the brother of the mother rather than the father investing in children

Sure - that makes sense - but it's going to be highly dependent on the structure of the society. Isn't homosexuality supposed to be rarer now in such areas? Couldn't that indicate a higher degree of selection against it due to less societal pressure towards monogamy?

There are some traits that have emerged relatively recently (lactose tolerance, brain volume), but those were surprises to many scientists.

Sure, but it doesn't make sense to argue about the evolutionary effects of homosexuality without considering when it first appeared. (by "thousands", I meant thousands rather than many millions - I didn't mean to exclude amounts of the order of say 50000 years).

At one time it was thought that the younger generation benefits the older generation when the latter is past their physical prime, but it turns out that the benefit ALWAYS flows from the old fogies to the young whippersnappers.

Perhaps that makes sense on an individual level, but it completely ignores the (vital) higher level considerations: i.e. if your family/tribe grows more slowly than others around it, it will have less control, less power, less land... and be highly vulnerable.

This is why higher level (i.e. not directly genetic) evolutionary considerations are important. It makes no difference whatsoever if you have a tribe of 50 wonderfully capable, developed, genetically amazing members, if that tribe gets wiped out by another with 500 members.

Given that we're discussing males (who'd almost certainly be killed in such conflict), tribal dynamics are a vital consideration. To get power in tribal situations, you need as many members as possible (and to take as many resources as possible to support this).
Tribes who have a stable, low population, are very likely to end up dead.

I don't have much solid fact to back up the above thinking - beyond "it stands to reason" -, but I'm pretty sure it's right.
I'm absolutely sure that ignoring such higher level considerations is a mistake - regardless of the validity of my conclusions.

It does involve biology. We've disected brains, and those of homosexuals are different

Yes, of course.
I'm just saying that not all evolution is directly biological. It's perfectly reasonable to look at the evolution of tribes / tribal systems, without necessarily looking at individual human biology. Long term evolution of tribal systems will be highly influenced by the genetic evolution of their members, but that's not true over say 1000 years.

Since tribal structure has the ability to change much faster than human genetics, tribes / tribal systems can evolve much more quickly. This is still evolution in exactly the same sense as individual human evolution (i.e. survival of the fittest etc.). It just doesn't operate through a genetic mechanism (in the short term).

Where this is relevant to homosexuality is through the impact (if any) of homosexuals on their tribes. If homosexuality pushes a tribe in some direction whereby that tribe becomes fitter / less fit, that's a big deal for the tribe. By extension, it's a big deal for any genes affecting (or effecting ) homosexuality.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that homosexuality has any such effect - but it could have. Ignoring the possibility is a mistake.

Once again I'm going to recommend looking at the link on group selection.

Ok - I've read it.
One thing to consider is that it there doesn't need to be group selection for homosexuality. All that's necessary is that there's some type of selection towards wanting to breed regardless of desire (making homosexuality largely evolutionarily irrelevant in a mainly monogamous society).

In some cases, this might simply be a by-product of intelligence: tribes who know they are threatened by other tribes will tend to want to increase in number of members. This is just individual selection through game theoretic considerations.

Of course it also might be the case that individual homosexuals, or groups with homosexuals tend to do better. Importantly, this needn't be causative - it could be another effect of some gene(s) which govern(s) homosexuality.
For instance perhaps homosexuals are smarter (i.e. intelliegent - not necessarily well-dressed). Perhaps they happen to be less vulnerable to some disease etc. etc.

Alone these probably wouldn't be huge factors - but if combined with some very good reason to breed, such factors could be significant.

Again, the above is not what I consider to be fact. It's just a set of possibilities which ought to be considered.

Are you arguing in favor of a genetic explanation or against a pathogenic explanation?

Neither - I'm arguing in favour of a logical, scientific approach to the issue. I think I'd be more surprised if the pathogenic explanation turned out to be true, but I freely admit the genetic explanation has difficulties.

My problem with Greg's argument wasn't his proposed solution, or his highlighting of problems with genetic answers. Rather it's his readiness to jump to convenient conclusions, and state things as fact/obvious, instead of taking a more reasonable "It seems likely that... it's possible that... we might hypothesize..." approach.

For instance, again, the 80% statistic on reproductive fitness of homosexuality in the modern USA, is entirely anecdotal. Using it as a guide to make educated guesses is one thing. Presenting it as part of the basis for an argument is quite another.

The taste for lemonade would be the result of a taste for the components that go into it (like sugar and lemons).

Sure, but you're ignoring the possibility that combinations introduce more complicated issues.
There's a difference between eating a large spoonful of sugar, chasing it down with a bite of lemon and a glass of (fizzy?) water, and having a glass of lemonade.

Without specific detailed study of lemonade drinking, all you have are hunches based on more general results.
Without answering the following, can you honestly say you've solved the Lemonade Controversy:
Why do some people like it fizzy? Why do some people like it cold? What's the relationship between liking it fizzy/cold/sharp/sweet? Does the glass matter? Does the colour matter? Are there cultural effects? Is lemonade simply cool? Is ice important? What are the climatic effects? Economic considerations? Do people drink lemonade to live, or live to drink lemonade? Which of these effects are genetic? Which environmental? Which a combination?

A genetic study of lemonade drinking, is of course impossible though.

I'm just saying that any question of the form "Why do people like X", is usually going to have an extremely complex answer. You can simply identify some important factors (e.g. the energy in sugar, the nutritional value of citrus fruit), but that's not a complete answer.

Perhaps with homosexuality there is one (or a few) simple very important factor(s) (e.g. the pathogen), but there's no compelling reason to expect such a simple answer.

I was thinking while I was writing.

Always a mistake - I avoid it whenever I can.

There are always epigenetic influences and other such things, which is why most genes are described as giving a propensity toward a trait, but identical twins are discordant 80% of the time when one is homosexual, which doesn't even make the trait given the genes "likely" (as in more likely than not).

Sure, but 20% is significantly higher than 4%. [What's the concordance between fraternal (non-identical) twins?]
Such data might imply that genes were one factor of several. It's only a strong case against a simple genetic cause - which I'd be surprised at in any case.

What's the expected error in the classification of homosexuals though? I'm not sure that "Are you gay?" is a question for which an honest answer can be assumed. Also, has account been taken for any skewing of statistics? How is data collected? Isn't it possible that pairs of twins with one gay and one not would be more likely to be willing to contribute to, or interested in such studies?

A gene that gave even a small propensity toward homosexuality we would still (ceteris paribus) usually assume would be selected against and its incidence fall to the level of random mutation.

And if ceteris non paribus? If it had other benefits; if homosexuals had had no other strong incentive to breed...

...But stating that it should logically stop causing harm for that reason is ridiculous...

And not something I did by the way . I just indicated that it'd be (one of) the most effective ways to evolve. Not that that evolution would be quick, easy, or necessarily happen at all.

It begs the question for the innumerable diseases which keep rapidly evolving because they harm us, many of which have been around in roughly similar form damn near forever.

Not really - some sections of such diseases probably do evolve so as to stop causing harm. It's just (as I mentioned) that not all varieties will do this.

The fact that some proportion might evolve away from causing harm to humans is just not important, since the one's we're interested in are those which continue to cause harm [and of course there's no reason why some pathogen diverging means that either type necessarily becomes less common].

I was probably thinking while I was typing. It occurred to me that dieseases which kill people (either quickly or slowly) have a much greater incentive to evolve away from that behaviour than would any homosexuality-inducing pathogens.
However, it also occurred to me that that didn't make what I'd just said wrong - just mostly irrelevant. It seemed a shame to delete it .

I'm kind of confused. What is the significant difference? Not admitting in the problem sounds the same as resistance.

Sure, but there's some difference between an evolved protection system [blood-brain barrier], and happening not to be harmed by something.
You wouldn't say that you're "resistant" to air would you? Neither would you say you're "resistant" to nut allergies (presuming you don't have them).

The important difference would be that evolving standard resistance to the threat is not effective in the long term - the pathogen adapts.
If humans evolved so as not to be vulnerable to the effects of the pathogen (e.g. by developing redundancy, so as not to rely solely on the affected area of the brain to fulfill the necessary function), it's very unlikely that it'd simply adapt to cause the same problem - since as you say, there's no reason for it to "want" to cause homosexuality. It'd almost certainly just be a side-effect of its presense.

For pathogens with catastrophic, system wide effects, becoming immune to their effects might not be a reasonable prospect. For a pathogen which affects only one very specific target, in one specific area of the brain, becoming immune to the effects (rather than avoiding the effects through resistance) would be more reasonable.
How reasonable, I'm not sure - it's just a thought.

The same points you are raising would seem to fall on all the diseases that infect the brain at an early point in the development that we evolved the BBB for.

Sure, but the BBB is very useful since it's a general purpose defense.

Do these other diseases also adapt to get around the BBB?
Have they been in the population for (many) thousands of years?
Do they target very specific brain areas?
Do they have as much (or more) of a negative effect on fitness as homosexuality?

If the answers to the above are all positive, then I agree it's reasonable for there to have been no compensation against the effects of a pathogenic cause of homosexuality.

It'd be interesting to know if there are any pathogens for which such compensation has occurred though. Perhaps it's unlikely - perhaps such redundancy only makes sense where there are many possible causes of damage to a system.

Given the lower incidence there is less of a need to explain how it could be so prevalent. Cochran hasn't suggested that his theory would also cover lesbianism, and I'm not going to try to stretch it out to far.

Sure, but the point would be (from a pro-genetic explanation point of view), that if the same set of genes were to be (partially) responsible for homosexuality in both genders, then considering only the fitness of males, doesn't make much sense.

Or, perhaps more to the point (a rather silly point, but still), what if such homosexual genes were not homosexual genes at all, but rather genes which favoured being attracted to men/women?
That way, a women who carried the gene for male homosexuality would instead be much more attracted to men than usual (and we know incentives = breeding ). Therefore the gene would be strongly favoured in women, and thus carried in the population over the long term.

Similarly, any lesbian genes could in fact be genes which favoured strong attraction to females (even in men). Thus men with such genes would be more attracted than usual to females, so the lesbian gene would be selected for in men.
This explains the lower rate of lesbianism compared with male homosexuality too - since men will shag anything that moves in any case, so the extra "lesbian" gene doesn't get them to reproduce much faster.

In any case, this could perfectly reasonably keep such genes in the population over the long term. Unless, of course, reproductive rates aren't randiness reliant - in which case perhaps homosexuals have been reproducing like crazy in any case.

 

[JrK]

Holy Ghuge posting Batman!

 

[Codices]

You guys are a bunch of callous bastards.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=18&t=578533&hl=&view=findpost&p=8396054

I hope you learn something from this.

 

[Rat Keeng]

Callous? Callous callous callous... callous...
/dictionary
lol ur rite

Not your best angle by the way.

<picture from back when summer was '69>

Ass, titties, ass 'n' titties
Ass ass, titties titties, ass 'n' titties

 

[Ahzaruuk]

Guess she's like a carnival mirror. how you percieve her depends on where you stand.

Nah, she's pretty much ugly as fuck from any distance.

Though a carnival mirror could help her confidence.

...

Metaphore is wasted on some.

 

[Blacklung]

That was an Interesting, well thought out post Galsiah. I'm most intriqued by the last bit though. A gene or group of genes responsible for male/female attraction might explain how certain individuals might consider themselves as bisexual. Furthermore, it might explain how certain bisexuals might have stronger preferences for men or women.

 

[Vidken]

Ugh. This gives me an idea for a shock picture using an Oblivion screenshot:

I HAVE NO GREETING

 

[galsiah]

A gene or group of genes responsible for male/female attraction might explain how certain individuals might consider themselves as bisexual.

It's a thought certainly.

However, simple, single-cause explanations (like the pathogenic cause) make more sense in some ways, since there's only one unlikely event to explain. If many different genes made contributions, there'd probably be reason for all of them to be selected against individually. It'd be pretty unlikely that so many such genes survived in the face of that pressure (if we assume that homosexuality does reduce fitness severely) unless there were some unifying factor promoting all of them.

Being beneficial to one sex, while harmful to the other, is a possible such factor. It'd be pretty odd though. It's the sort of thing that ought to be considered, but I'd expect investigation (or thought from someone with more facts) to show that it wasn't the case.
That said, every explanation seems a little wacky on the face of it, so who knows.

 

[Monica21]

Ugh. This gives me an idea for a shock picture using an Oblivion screenshot:

I HAVE NO GREETING

K, I'm watching Dawn of the Dead right now, and that freaked me out.

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

That's just not true without further assumptions.
For instance it's trivially incorrect when the goal is either guaranteed to happen, or guaranteed not to happen, irrespective of intentional/purposive action.

Well then I don't think intentional/purposive action is really "involved".

Clearly that isn't the case for mating. However,pretty much everything is in the grey area between the case where incentive doesn't matter at all (e.g. when outcome can't be influenced by action, or action can't be influenced by desire), and the case where it matters completely (e.g. trivially, when your goal is to have the intention - concrete cases are unlikely since other factors nearly always have a bearing).

Where on the spectrum do you think mating falls?

However, we were talking about one particular incentive to mate. Removing that does not remove all incentives.
It's simple to imagine many situations where the natural impulse to mate might not be the most important factor. E.g. where having children is very important (e.g. economically/religiously/culturally...); where not mating means you get burned as a witch etc.

I can see that being the case for females, who are often passive actors (or in the case of rape actively resisting), but for males external pressures would seem to be reduced to nagging. Considering all the illegitimate children out there, adultery, rape, prostitution, the birth control and pornography industries today and the practice of infanticide in the past, that nagging seems like a negligible incentive compared to the base desire among males for sex.

Only if there aren't other strong incentives to mate.

I said "a strong advantage" rather than "the advantage" to indicate that the desire constitutes an advantage even if it is not the only one. What aspect of homosexuality constitutes an advantage?

Then that'd be more helpful to the monogamous homosexual mating for non-desire based reasons, wouldn't it?

I have no idea what you're getting at.

Sure - that makes sense - but it's going to be highly dependent on the structure of the society. Isn't homosexuality supposed to be rarer now in such areas? Couldn't that indicate a higher degree of selection against it due to less societal pressure towards monogamy?

No, homosexuality is unknown among the more monogomaus Khoi-San, who have heard of it in neighboring populations with agriculture.

Sure, but it doesn't make sense to argue about the evolutionary effects of homosexuality without considering when it first appeared. (by "thousands", I meant thousands rather than many millions - I didn't mean to exclude amounts of the order of say 50000 years).

Well there's not much point in considering when we don't have enough evidence available to consider. We don't know when it first appeared and barring the invention of a time machine we won't know unless we have a theory of what causes it that can restrict it to a certain time period.

Perhaps that makes sense on an individual level, but it completely ignores the (vital) higher level considerations: i.e. if your family/tribe grows more slowly than others around it, it will have less control, less power, less land... and be highly vulnerable.

Are you saying that the individual wants to have kids so they can defend his tribe from invaders when he is dead and they are adults, or the tribe pressures individuals to have kids to protect it?

Given that we're discussing males (who'd almost certainly be killed in such conflict), tribal dynamics are a vital consideration. To get power in tribal situations, you need as many members as possible (and to take as many resources as possible to support this).
Tribes who have a stable, low population, are very likely to end up dead.

Nice jab at "sustainability" advocates there :twisted:. Group selection seems to be exactly what you're talking about here. It's generally swamped by individual selection. If one were to attempt to demonstrate how it would work it would be through Price's Equation, but as I noted earlier there are few who have done so.

Yes, of course.
I'm just saying that not all evolution is directly biological. It's perfectly reasonable to look at the evolution of tribes / tribal systems, without necessarily looking at individual human biology. Long term evolution of tribal systems will be highly influenced by the genetic evolution of their members, but that's not true over say 1000 years.

Since tribal structure has the ability to change much faster than human genetics, tribes / tribal systems can evolve much more quickly. This is still evolution in exactly the same sense as individual human evolution (i.e. survival of the fittest etc.). It just doesn't operate through a genetic mechanism (in the short term).

Where this is relevant to homosexuality is through the impact (if any) of homosexuals on their tribes. If homosexuality pushes a tribe in some direction whereby that tribe becomes fitter / less fit, that's a big deal for the tribe. By extension, it's a big deal for any genes affecting (or effecting ) homosexuality.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that homosexuality has any such effect - but it could have. Ignoring the possibility is a mistake.

With the pathogenic theory we have something that explains many of the facts we have available, removes obstacles to a theory of genetic individual selection and fits a pattern with other syndromes thought to be caused by penetrators of the BBB that would present similar evolutionary problems. There is no credible counter theory. Pointing to group selection, itself a mechanism that has not had much explanatory power in the evolutionary context, without any sort of theory or model is essentially shrugging your shoulders and saying "Maybe. Who knows?". In short there is no reason to suspect an alternate explanation and good reason to look to the pathogenic theory.

Ok - I've read it.
One thing to consider is that it there doesn't need to be group selection for homosexuality. All that's necessary is that there's some type of selection towards wanting to breed regardless of desire (making homosexuality largely evolutionarily irrelevant in a mainly monogamous society).

Want and desire sound synonymous to me, but I assume you mean wanting to have children as opposed to wanting to engage in the act without regard to children. As I mentioned earlier, the more monogamous Khoi-San have only heard of homosexuality in their neighbors, who exhibit little monogamy and where fathers invest little in their children as they can't be sure they are the fathers.

In some cases, this might simply be a by-product of intelligence: tribes who know they are threatened by other tribes will tend to want to increase in number of members. This is just individual selection through game theoretic considerations.

So they make the decision like the Dey Turk Ur Jerbs guys in South Park to start getting gay with each other? And wasn't the point of that to decrease their number of members?

Of course it also might be the case that individual homosexuals, or groups with homosexuals tend to do better. Importantly, this needn't be causative - it could be another effect of some gene(s) which govern(s) homosexuality.
For instance perhaps homosexuals are smarter (i.e. intelliegent - not necessarily well-dressed). Perhaps they happen to be less vulnerable to some disease etc. etc.

Homosexuals actually have shorter lifespans and tend to have more diseases and (with A.I.Ds) more vulnerability to them. Yeah, that's recent but you've got no evidence of the vector you're highliting pointing the way you want it to, just the opposite. Then, as stated earlier, the discordance in identical twins indicates that genes play a rather small role, smaller than twin studies on the heritability of IQ have shown it to be.

Again, the above is not what I consider to be fact. It's just a set of possibilities which ought to be considered.

It is possible the moon is made of green cheese and NASA and everyone else has been deceiving me. It is possible we are all just the dream of a magic beetle. I am not going to consider those possibilities until I am given good reason to.

Neither - I'm arguing in favour of a logical, scientific approach to the issue. I think I'd be more surprised if the pathogenic explanation turned out to be true, but I freely admit the genetic explanation has difficulties.

Why do you find the genetic explanation more probable than the pathogenic?

My problem with Greg's argument wasn't his proposed solution, or his highlighting of problems with genetic answers. Rather it's his readiness to jump to convenient conclusions, and state things as fact/obvious, instead of taking a more reasonable "It seems likely that... it's possible that... we might hypothesize..." approach.

I know Greg does not have a very likable approach in his internet writing. Just look at his quote that I have in my sig! What we've been discussing is his theory though, which he does explain using terms like "reasonably confident" rather than "sure of the exact mechanism" other than in the negative.

For instance, again, the 80% statistic on reproductive fitness of homosexuality in the modern USA, is entirely anecdotal. Using it as a guide to make educated guesses is one thing. Presenting it as part of the basis for an argument is quite another.

Do we have any evidence to weigh against it or a reason to believe it would not be likewise in different contexts? If anything the higher variation in reproductive fitness throughout human history would cause fitness effects to be larger.

Sure, but you're ignoring the possibility that combinations introduce more complicated issues.

There's a difference between eating a large spoonful of sugar, chasing it down with a bite of lemon and a glass of (fizzy?) water, and having a glass of lemonade.[/quote]All those can be explained using simple dietary knowledge and genetic evolution. People did not usually have access to spoonfuls of sugar so it overwhelms our tongue. Eating fruit is more common and wouldn't seem so odd, but lemons are still pretty acidic and lemonade moderates the effect as well as adding other elements we like.

Without specific detailed study of lemonade drinking, all you have are hunches based on more general results.
Without answering the following, can you honestly say you've solved the Lemonade Controvers

There is no Lemonade Controversy. Perhaps if it had major fitness effects or if it was a politically weighted subject there would be, but there isn't. Lemonade doesn't really matter enough to examine it very thoroughly and once a reasonable explanation is given little argument would greet it. In an examination of the issue, we'd still be looking at genes and evolution to understand it, although the differences in geography would probably be much more important.

A genetic study of lemonade drinking, is of course impossible though.

Perhaps for the behavior of drinking lemonade, which isn't going to happen if you live in North Korea regardless of your genes, but we could test to see how much people like the taste of lemonade. We could even examine their brains while they're drinking it and see what areas light up and how much.

I'm just saying that any question of the form "Why do people like X", is usually going to have an extremely complex answer. You can simply identify some important factors (e.g. the energy in sugar, the nutritional value of citrus fruit), but that's not a complete answer.

Perhaps with homosexuality there is one (or a few) simple very important factor(s) (e.g. the pathogen), but there's no compelling reason to expect such a simple answer.

Perhaps higher order behaviors are more complicated and can't be discussed in terms of genetic evolution. But here we've got differences in brains we'd like to explain, and a trait (attraction to the opposite sex, usually involving things like pheromones) that we see in animals that don't exhibit the kind of higher order thinking and behavior we find in humans.

Sure, but 20% is significantly higher than 4%. [What's the concordance between fraternal (non-identical) twins?]
Such data might imply that genes were one factor of several. It's only a strong case against a simple genetic cause - which I'd be surprised at in any case.

Not just a simple genetic cause, but even a mostly genetic cause. I can't remember the discordance for fraternal twins, but I recall it being negligibly lower, which might indicate that the infection occurs post-birth although still early in development. PRE-POST EDIT: I just found this comment thread, which reveals that the discordance in fraternal twins that Cochran is using due to methodological problems in previous studies was 0%, which he points out still makes polio "more genetic" though it is clearly caused by an infection. Greg's a lot ruder here because he's talking to people who know little about biology but have much to say about it. The thread has a bunch of other stats for concordance in MZ and DZ twins in other diseases and traits. The link that the post subject was about has unfortunately dissapeared though.

What's the expected error in the classification of homosexuals though? I'm not sure that "Are you gay?" is a question for which an honest answer can be assumed. Also, has account been taken for any skewing of statistics? How is data collected? Isn't it possible that pairs of twins with one gay and one not would be more likely to be willing to contribute to, or interested in such studies?

The link above explains how the data is collected and the standards used, and the last reason you give is why previous studies with higher concordance are rejected by Cochran.

And not something I did by the way . I just indicated that it'd be (one of) the most effective ways to evolve. Not that that evolution would be quick, easy, or necessarily happen at all.

Not really - some sections of such diseases probably do evolve so as to stop causing harm. It's just (as I mentioned) that not all varieties will do this.

The fact that some proportion might evolve away from causing harm to humans is just not important, since the one's we're interested in are those which continue to cause harm [and of course there's no reason why some pathogen diverging means that either type necessarily becomes less common].

I was probably thinking while I was typing. It occurred to me that dieseases which kill people (either quickly or slowly) have a much greater incentive to evolve away from that behaviour than would any homosexuality-inducing pathogens.
However, it also occurred to me that that didn't make what I'd just said wrong - just mostly irrelevant. It seemed a shame to delete it .

If you haven't read the Atlantic piece on Ewald and Cochran's "new germ theory", you should, as it goes it just this subject.

Sure, but there's some difference between an evolved protection system [blood-brain barrier], and happening not to be harmed by something.
You wouldn't say that you're "resistant" to air would you? Neither would you say you're "resistant" to nut allergies (presuming you don't have them).

I suppose I could say that I'm "resistant" to air as too much would cause an imbalance and possibly kill me but my body regulates it in such a way that it usually is not a problem, but we didn't need to evolve a "resistance" because air has never threatened us in our evolutionary history.

The important difference would be that evolving standard resistance to the threat is not effective in the long term - the pathogen adapts.
If humans evolved so as not to be vulnerable to the effects of the pathogen (e.g. by developing redundancy, so as not to rely solely on the affected area of the brain to fulfill the necessary function), it's very unlikely that it'd simply adapt to cause the same problem - since as you say, there's no reason for it to "want" to cause homosexuality. It'd almost certainly just be a side-effect of its presense.

For pathogens with catastrophic, system wide effects, becoming immune to their effects might not be a reasonable prospect. For a pathogen which affects only one very specific target, in one specific area of the brain, becoming immune to the effects (rather than avoiding the effects through resistance) would be more reasonable.
How reasonable, I'm not sure - it's just a thought.

I don't know of any adaptations of the type you are proposing, and brains are fairly complicated expensive things. We've got multiples of other organs, but with brains we need the left and the right and the cerebellum. Duplication has not occurred for narcolepsy, polio, schizophrenia or anything else of the sort. Keep in mind that the virus is going to keep evolving with little concern to how much we don't like that. Adapting a "resistance" to it like cold, or heat, or acid or some other sort of environmental factor will not work, which is why we have always used other defenses against infectious agents.

Sure, but the BBB is very useful since it's a general purpose defense.

Do these other diseases also adapt to get around the BBB?
Have they been in the population for (many) thousands of years?
Do they target very specific brain areas?
Do they have as much (or more) of a negative effect on fitness as homosexuality?

Yes, apparently, yes, and no but homosexuality appears to be a huge fitness cost so these are still extraordinarily large.

If the answers to the above are all positive, then I agree it's reasonable for there to have been no compensation against the effects of a pathogenic cause of homosexuality.

The existence of such things is what prompted the idea to be extended to homosexuality.

It'd be interesting to know if there are any pathogens for which such compensation has occurred though. Perhaps it's unlikely - perhaps such redundancy only makes sense where there are many possible causes of damage to a system.

This is beyond me, but I have never heard of such things. The brain seems to be very sensitive, although the BBB is very good at restricting access. Also, the many possible causes of damage are why the BBB exists, although I suppose "system" in that context is the entire brain rather than a sector.

 

[KreideBein]

But Oblivion really is an RPG!

Threads like these are enough to bring a tear to one's eye. Really:

Why Oblivion is an RPG:

1: It won "Best RPG of E3"

2: You can play the role of different people

3: It's a game.

Hopefully this will put the myth that oblivion is not an RPG to rest, and possible death.

Going by this guy's definition, the RPG can be officially considered dead.

 

[Ahzaruuk]

(if we assume that homosexuality does reduce fitness severely)

yeah...I know for a fact that that's bull.

There was one gay guy in my local community marching band, and he lifted the huge metal podium by himself, something not even the football people could do. He also was extremely phisically durable when it came to parades.

So if anyone says Homosexuality reduces Physicall fitness, that's bull. Fitness is something that the person shapes.

 

[Lord Chambers]

I took my arm out of it's sling so I could type this reply fast.

You are a fucking idiot.

 

[TheGreatGodPan]

(if we assume that homosexuality does reduce fitness severely)

yeah...I know for a fact that that's bull.

There was one gay guy in my local community marching band, and he lifted the huge metal podium by himself, something not even the football people could do. He also was extremely phisically durable when it came to parades.

So if anyone says Homosexuality reduces Physicall fitness, that's bull. Fitness is something that the person shapes.

You are an idiot. The evolutionary concept of fitness has already been defined and it is what we are discussing here. It doesn't matter if you're absolutely super awesome at everything, without kids your genes dissapear. You don't have enough understanding of the subject to contribute to the discussion. So stay out of it.

 

[Data4]

Whew! and I felt bad for getting religious in this thread. That's got NOTHING on this.

-D4

 

[KreideBein]

Whew! and I felt bad for getting religious in this thread. That's got NOTHING on this.

-D4

I feel bad for bringing it up. Even another retarded ESF thread about RPing couldn't stop the gay debate.

 

[Ahzaruuk]

(if we assume that homosexuality does reduce fitness severely)

yeah...I know for a fact that that's bull.

There was one gay guy in my local community marching band, and he lifted the huge metal podium by himself, something not even the football people could do. He also was extremely phisically durable when it came to parades.

So if anyone says Homosexuality reduces Physicall fitness, that's bull. Fitness is something that the person shapes.

You are an idiot. The evolutionary concept of fitness has already been defined and it is what we are discussing here. It doesn't matter if you're absolutely super awesome at everything, without kids your genes dissapear. You don't have enough understanding of the subject to contribute to the discussion. So stay out of it.

I was just making a comment on that one statement. No need to explode over it.

 

[galsiah]

No time for a long reply at present.

Just a few quick points:
Most of my arguments above aren't suggesting that homosexuality (might) give(s) a significant advantage (i.e. be selected for). Rather that it could happen that it wasn't enough of a disadvantage to be selected against (e.g. if it's a side-effect of something good, and didn't stop men from breeding).

The "increases fitness in women" line is one way in which it could be selected for, but that seems pretty far-fetched to me.

Most of my references to what tribes-people would want to do, don't relate to group selection, but rather just to expediency: i.e. having children will help the family and help the tribe. This doesn't make homosexuality an advantage at all - it just makes it irrelevant in a monogamous society where having children is important.
Many people these days want children. I don't see a reason to think things would have been so different throughout history.

Also, I'd guess that in most tribal situations the number of surviving children is much more dependent on availability of resources, than on the number of times people have sex. If things aren't monogamous, then I agree that homosexuals would have a definite disadvantage. If they are, then perhaps not.

To be fair though, I guess that for homosexuality to survive for so long (if it had a genetic cause) it wouldn't be enough for this to be true some of the time in some tribes. It'd need to be true all the time, pretty much continuously for thousands of years in many tribes.

I agree that adaptation of the brain to make effects of specific pathogens ineffective would be unlikely. It was just a thought.

Mainly my negative gut-reaction to the pathogenic explanation is merely because it seems a little silly at first. As I say though, my scientific objections were always to the arguments rather than the conclusions.

I agree that you've been arguing the most likely case (with all the "homosexuality reduces fitness" stuff). I'm just pointing out that it'd be dangerous to consider such things as clear facts (since they're not), rather than the most likely hypothesis (which they probably are).

Having been through things, and given the twins evidence, I probably agree that the pathogenic explanation seems more reasonable. It's still just a reasonable guess though. Presenting it as more than that just makes Greg seem unscientific.