In response to James...

Ecmandu wrote:
99.99999999999% of species are engaged in the selection of conspicuous consumption aggression and are sexually stratified.

James wrote:
I think that you need to start a thread on that topic (Philosophy Forum) and realistically, philosophically, support exactly why you believe that … and more importantly, try to elaborate on exactly, precisely, what you mean by it.

There’s a concept called run-away sexual selection… there’s the most famous example which is the Irish Elk, the females selected so heavily for the traits of large horns at the expense of more agile males (presumably ganging up on the more agile males so they could mate with the crippled ones) that the Irish Elk evolved to the point that when it reached maturity, it’s horns were so large on the males that they couldn’t lift their heads up off the ground anymore. The species went extinct from this. Plumage on the male peacock is another famous (and current) example.

That is the selection of conspicuous consumption. They are basically the same concept, run-away sexual selection and the selection of conspicuous consumption.

In most species it is the strongest males who get almost all of the mates, even though from a game theory PoV there are so many other weaker mates that they could all gang up on the strong one, and have more of a community… they would fundamentally be more intelligent animals… running consent through group decisions rather than fighting (conspicuous consumption aggression) (fighting which decreases the overall security of the group). [Not many species actually enjoy their orgasms, so there aren’t many species that have sex outside of heat.] This pressure causes what’s called “sex dimorphism”, where one gender is larger than another. It is noted in any species where one gender is significantly larger than the other gender, that this process has occurred, we can rewind and see the conspicuous consumption aggression rather than other forms of game theory being implemented by these creatures. It is noted that the larger one has more aggressive traits in all of these species (it was the aggression which came from being the largest with the most sexual choice that was selected for), though mothers can be quite aggressive to protect the young when the father is gone, she is neither as aggressive as the father or as large in most species.

Sexual stratification occurs throughout the entire animal kingdom with some exceptions. Sexual stratification is defined by two metrics… the first metric is the number of partners one has in a life time, the second is access to at least one sexual resource. As noted above, the largest males are the ones with the most sexual choice, they can and often do (depending on the size of the group), pick hundreds of partners in the wild. This is why conspicuous consumption aggression gets the most partners in terms of species sexual stratification. You can tell just from the sex dimorphism that this is the case.

I didn’t cite a damn thing! This argument stands on its own. Through random mutations some are going to be larger than others, when an entire gender is larger than another gender, it’s proof of sexual stratification, and also conspicuous consumption aggression for the choices in the context of that sexual stratification. Social game theories work better for species survival than “king of the hill” game theories do. Sexual stratification interferes with apathy, depression, agitation (and I forget the other one… I’ll look it up later) in the part of the population which is sexually stratified, particularly in species that enjoy their orgasms, which ends up dividing the community and making the species less adaptive from a game theory PoV.

The word I was looking for was “stress”, sexual stratification causes increased stress, depression, apathy and agitation in animal populations for the stratified members. Or to put it in laymens terms, the ones who aren’t getting laid will experience this. What sexual stratification does is it leaves one gender with these symptoms and the other gender without these symptoms, in a relative sense. When you have say 1 out of every 10,000 males getting 10,000 lifetime partners and 4,000 of every 10,000 males getting 4 partners… it causes problems in the species.

Humans may have other pastimes, mothers for example can be content to just look after their children without partners, a monk due to religious practice and belief. Lesbians/gays would get stressed due to their gender? when they are receiving sexual gratification and love from a partner? I don’t understand why one gender gets such symptoms, though i do understand to some extent why those who don’t get it are not satisfied, and would of course get symptoms such as depression, possibly hormonal and hence serotonin imbalance.

If however you are only referring to non-human species, then i think you are right. Hmm though apparently animals and birds sometimes take gay partners when members of the opposite sex aren’t present for some reason, so the gender thing may be wrong, but stratisfication for sure exists in the animal kingdom imho.

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Well monks and nuns are using the fact that people who don’t engage in sex are looked upon as supremely moral agents, (they are less likely to be attacked because of human sexuality, because humans engage in sexual competition, being out of the competition raises their social status, and thus make them less likely to be killed - this is historically able to be proven. They trade social status and security for vows of celibacy and chastity - they are cowards - and they are contributing to the suicide and war rates in the world), but they aren’t.

I just wanted to clarify the basic thesis that sex dimorphism proves sexual stratification and run-away sexual selection, as opposed to other forms of game theory being implemented by these creatures.

It’s not only proof of 1:1 competition for mates (rather than all the males and females ganging up on fighters to stop fighting in the species) for sexual choice, which ends up being stratified, because the strongest one wins (sex dimorphism over time). This also raises the aggression levels of the larger ones in the species relative to the smaller ones. It shows that rather than being social, species are anti-social in nature.

I’m not sure that I see the relevance.

There is a distinction between the genders. That distinction leads to “stratification”. Societies are very largely pretentious realities wherein many concerns of nature are compensated by pretense and social reaction (faking out other people). Which type of society leads to different concerns from both genders. The recent effort (sense WW2) has been to feminize the West and masculinize the East (reverse/flip the poles). It is entirely pretentious and seen as a means to keep society busy and “alive” struggle to keep the fires warming the feet of the wealthy while replacing human servants.

What is going on today, has almost nothing at all to do with nature, but rather with too much social freedom from nature (snakes in the cradle and a silver spoon). The primary effort is to replace all of nature with predesigned technology (including insects, germs, and all species) to suit the whims of the wealthy.

Well… it’s proof that species are fundamentally anti-social, including ours, so i don’t see how we’re disagreeing here, the Bonobo is the only truly social species I know of… but they are not the highest on the food chain because they haven’t evolved long enough. A Bonobo evolved to human capacity could easily crush the human species, being a more social species than humans.

Rationality requires that you have to get up to the point wherein pretentious and/or cooperative societies can exist. Until that time, creatures are largely on their own. If the creatures cannot handle life on their own sufficiently, there can never be enough of them to form any kind of society. And even after they form some kind of society, they have to spend thousands, if not millions, of years choosing which form of society “works best” … when they don’t even know what “working best” even means.

So yes, “fundamentally” every species must be largely anti-social, else they could never get a society started. And if they become too social, too quickly, they will die out anyway due to interdependence issues. They all have to gradually do what works in the immediate while somewhat accidentally falling toward what will work out a little better later. And just keep that up for millions of years until they finally get it all perfected.

If you want to take the shortcut, you just have to forget all of this non-sense and go for what always works in every situation and never changes throughout social development.

The Bonobos know what it means to work best… the problem is that we are an anti-social species, and you don’t need to be anti-social to start the social, obviously everyone is going to be different, it’s the communal understanding of how to manage this for species optimization that counts. The Bonobo’s understand on a fundamental level that sexual stratification causes sub-optimzation, when or if they start speaking, this will probably be one of the first things they say, unlike the humans.

You try to start a new species that is all loving and social. See how far you get.

What isn’t an endangered great ape? They still defend themselves and hunt. They just don’t have inner conflict.