
Why Women Have Breasts - IsaacSchlueter
http://www.evolution-x.com/breasts.htm
======
kirse
I can't help but chuckle every time someone takes a human feature or habit and
then attempts to force it into the massive speculative jigsaw puzzle that is
biological Evolution. Not to mention the fact that we're conveniently trying
to solve a jigsaw puzzle where we get to continually redefine the picture on
the box so it suits our latest jigsaw piece that we just found or made up...

Talk about a self-validating world-view. We have absolutely no way of ever
empirically confirming what the _real_ picture on the box is, yet we continue
to find and force _only_ the pieces that fit our conjectured "picture on the
box".

This article is borderline farcical given that these conjectures are so far
into the domain of unempirical "science" I would hardly call it science or
even presentable theory.

I'm all for science when it works on the authority of empiricism, but once
this authority is borrowed for claims about the unempirical, that's when I get
incredibly skeptical. This is an intelligent community and I hate to see such
reddit-level "science" passed around here.

Another example of pseudo science from this website:
<http://www.evolution-x.com/dumbgirls.htm>

~~~
randomwalker
Unlike you, I greatly enjoy articles such as this one.

Let me begin with the caveat that I agree that it is more speculation than
science, and it is unfortunate that the author presents it as if it were a
scientific paper rather than a blog post. But note that it hasn't been
published anywhere, so it is not as if the scientific community is accepting
it as science.

You seem to have the opinion that anything that is not science is at best not
worth doing, and at worst evil. I urge you to re-examine that assumption.

Now, if there were a scientific way of answering the question that the article
considers, that would be a very different situation. In the absence of one, it
is ridiculous to suggest that no one should think about it. And if people
think about it, they will present their attempted answers to the world.
Hopefully, their arguments will rest on logic, even if not empirically
verifiable. This is an expression of human curiosity, and I think it is
natural and wonderful.

I say we should continue to discuss articles like this, but doing our best to
keep in mind that they are not proven theories. As our experimental abilities
improve, it might turn out that today's speculation is fertile ground for
tomorrow's experimentation as a bed of hypothesis to test and accept or
discard.

Finally, even if one's sole concern is the dissemination of scientific
knowledge, I contend that the article is still useful if it makes people think
and learn more about the fascinating, fascinating phenomenon of Fischerian
runaway (to give just one example).

~~~
kirse
_\-- In the absence of one, it is ridiculous to suggest that no one should
think about it._

I'm not saying that no one should think about it, I'm saying we should have a
better filter that immediately separates garbage science from good science. It
takes about 10 minutes of reading and a few paragraphs to realize that this is
absolute garbage and doesn't need to be voted up.

 _\-- but doing our best to keep in mind that they are not proven theories._

Now that I think about it, what really irks me here is that I know people are
actually reading stuff like this (which throws around enough scientific
terminology and academic quotes to _sound_ reasonable) and then some of those
people go on believing that _really_ is the answer to the hypothesis
presented.

That is what has happened to a lot of science these days. There's so much
semi-believable trash and conjecture like this tossed out in so many different
fields of study that I just wish people would get a better sense of what even
has a remotely logical basis for validity. It pains me to know that even one
person is reading this trash and coming away thinking that _"Gee, science has
solved another one!"_ when in fact it has not.

~~~
ellyagg
He is speculating, and some of his speculation is interesting. At this point,
I think you are rationalizing your intuitional dislike of the article. It
seems more likely that some of his speculation just rubs you the wrong way.

We're a long way from being able to tell why animals developed the traits they
did through evolution. We're a _really_ long way from being able to
empirically prove it. That doesn't mean speculation isn't fun in the meantime.

~~~
kirse
_At this point, I think you are rationalizing your intuitional dislike of the
article._

Maybe you're not understanding me, and maybe this is partially because you're
new to the community...

But when I visit HN, I don't want to be presented with the 99.99% of
speculative trash that fills the internet. I can go to Digg or Reddit for this
sort of junk science that gets us intellectually nowhere. I (and everyone
else) want to see that _quality_ .01% that presents legitimate scientific
inquiry, regardless of whether we agree with it or not.

~~~
dejb
I think you don't get it. Speculation is not the same as junk science.
Speculation can be insightful, interesting and intelligent or it can be the
opposite. Obviously you thought it was trash and just as obviously a larger
number of HN'ers thought it was good. You seem to arguing that everyone else
should use your criteria for what should be on Hacker News.

~~~
dejb
Actually I had a look at a few of the guy's other articles and it seems he is
a little loose with his facts. I love good speculation and I thought that
article had some. But the author often does seem to miss the distinction
between fact and opinion. Still you (kirse) should be prepared to back
yourself up if you are going to label the article as trash.

------
CodeMage
The article started out fine. It's an interesting topic that I've never really
wondered about and it made me curious. And then I came across things like
this:

 _Instincts are coded for by genes. Genes are made up of DNA strands which use
a sort of language, Gattaca. In English words, a man’s instinct may have been
quite simple, and something like the following:

"Look at women, and see if they have a pair of round wobbly things on their
chests. If they have such a thing, feel sexually repulsed. Increase this
feeling as they are bigger, rounder, wobblier."

One might argue that a man with such an instinct would do well, in the light
of the changes in the bodies of women, to delete this programming entirely.
However, a much smaller mutation could alter the programming to:

"Look at women, and see if they have a pair of round wobbly things on their
chests. If they have such a thing, feel sexually stimulated. Increase this
feeling as they are bigger, rounder, wobblier."_

Can we say "pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo" here? Just because it's a smaller
change in a natural-language description of an instinct, it doesn't
necessarily mean that the mutation is smaller. The author is making a huge,
unwarranted and rather silly assumption about the relationship between the DNA
structure and the complexity of the natural-language description of the
consequences of that DNA structure.

~~~
joeyo
The way the author phrased this is unfortunate. However, there are very good
reasons to believe that even small mutations could have resulted in large
changes in morphology or behavior. A mutation in even a single base-pair could
result in cascading effects. See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeobox>

------
pavlov
_Dr. Boguslaw Pawlowski of Wroclaw suggested a theory to explain permanent
breasts in 1999._

I thought this was a dead giveaway that the whole article is a parody, but
googling reveals that Dr. Bogusław Pawlowski apparently does exist.

~~~
randomwalker
I just tried that search, and your comment is already the second result. If
that's a real scientist, he/she is certainly not a very prominent one!

~~~
Tichy
Or the way Google ranks things is not very suitable to that query (a ka there
is no Hacker News/Digg/Reddit for science).

German Google actually finds a lot of links and the HN reference is further
down.

------
markessien
He's wrong for a simple reason: Breasts are expensive. They are expensive to
maintain, and no other animal maintains them. So even if it had an advantage
at some point in time, as he describes, rather than maintaining an expensive
evolutionary line, this "fashion" would change quickly.

I think that breast serve a concrete purpose that is essential for our
society. And the fact that we have breasts is strongly tied in with the
difference between us and other animals. We are different from other animals
in that we are more clever and more social. We are also different in that we
have breasts. It's likely that the two are tied together.

My theory is this: breasts are an age indicator. In traditional human
societies it's difficult to judge the reproductive health of a woman. A woman
can hide her true reproductive health by various means (like body painting or
ovulating on the sly), so as our societies grew bigger and bigger, it was
neccessary for the society as a group to make non-hideable means of judging
how fit the particular woman is.

Breasts benefit the community more than they benefit the woman according to my
theory. I.e, humans are supremely social, and the best evolved human is the
one that works the best to move the entire community forward. A society of
very selfish people will not survive.

Humans have certain traits that help the community more than they help
themselves. Breasts could be one of them.

Small, large, medium, the size of breasts is not really critical. However,
perk and 'young' breasts would always be judged more attractive than long
sagging breasts. It's clear that the function of breasts is correlated to age.
And that sexual attractiveness increases the more attractive the breast is.

Similarly, if a young woman is starved for a long time in a sand blown
deserts, the first things to go are the form of the breasts. She is not in an
ideal reproductive state, as rearing children requires a lot of water. Old
women who are past reproductive age often have their breasts change to a
different less attractive form.

Conclusion: Breasts, and some other female parts are a simple indication of
youth and reproductive health for a society that is clever enough to fake the
other things usually used by other primates.

~~~
ckuehne
>He's wrong for a simple reason: Breasts are expensive. They are expensive to
maintain, and no other animal maintains them.

Your argument is not valid. It's not the cost alone that count, but the
benefits minus the costs. Imagine your argument against human intelligence
instead: Human intelligence could not have evolved for a simple reason: brains
that produce intelligent behaviour are expensive. They are expensive to
maintain, and no other animal maintains them.

Also: please read up on the unit of selection
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_selection>. Selection on the level of
groups (let alone "society") is very, very unlikely (to say the least) and has
long been abonded as theory <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection>.

~~~
markessien
I just read through the group selection wikipedia article. It does not seem to
be abandoned as a theory, it seems to be a topic with proponents on both
sides, and there are strong arguments for both sides. The selfish gene
argument is an old one, and it's just mainstream, that's all.

------
joeyo
Wow. I was prepared to dislike this article but I find the argument extremely
compelling and well reasoned.

Edit: An especially good point is his suggestion that permanent breasts would
likely have evolved _before_ men started to find them attractive. This makes a
lot of sense and is consistent with how we think other traits evolved (i.e.
feathers came first; then came flying).

------
russell
> Men, meanwhile, are stuck with a sub-optimal instinct. Their desires are
> fired by a pair of useless bags of fat. Men cannot afford to lose this
> instinct, however. Non-lactating breasts are like nuclear missiles: we only
> need them or want them because other people have them.

That has to be the least sexy description of why breasts are sexy. Love it.

------
cool-RR
A related thing that's been bugging me: Why do guys have balls? Specifically,
why is such a sensitive organ placed in such an easy-to-hit place? I know that
balls are hanged outside the body because they need to be at a lower
temperature, but there must be another reason for it.

~~~
rue
Well, here is the thing: _no, there does not have to be a reason_.

Nearly all of the problems "accepting" or understanding evolution stem from
the mistaken assumption that evolution has "goals", or "reasons" or even that
it is the "survival of the fittest." Essentially, from conceptualising it as
an active force.

Mutations happen. Some will cause fewer offspring in the same genetic line,
some will cause relatively more. Some just stick around because they are not
actively harmful.

Your question has many facets: at its simplest, it could be asserted that the
benefit outweighs the hazards. You are already making one assumption, though:
that they are external because they need to be cooler than body temperature --
but that relationship could be inverse (and in my opinion actually makes more
sense if it is.) And so on and so on.

~~~
cool-RR
When you see a feature of our bodies that has obvious disadvantages, it will
almost always have some redeeming advantage, obvious or not. And the bigger
the disadvantage is, the bigger the advantage must be.

I know there are exceptions to this rule, like maybe the appendix or the
little finger in our feet, but these are exceptions, not the rule.

So I have pointed out the disadvantage of having the testicles placed in an
exposed part of the body; I ask, what is the advantage?

~~~
rue
I pointed out that there is no need for a _seeming_ disadvantage to be offset
by some redeeming advantage.

You could come up with any number of possible reasons if you were looking for
a "reason," although it could simply be a side-effect of some other mutation
(such as the layout of the pelvis, intestines and abdominal muscles being more
efficient for hunting/etc. without the "extra" parts.)

Here is another important inversion that you seem not to have considered,
though: do you think that when externalisation first happened, testicles were
as sensitive to pain as they are now?

------
cunard-n
wouldn't women who were very fertile be able to become pregnant while
lactating? Such women would appear to have permanent breasts because they were
always pregnant or lactating, thus signalling their fertility continuously and
in that way having what appeared to be permanent breasts and permanent
fertility? That would be very tiring for those women, but it would give them
the advantage of being demonstrably able to become pregnant.Perhaps the bumps
evolved as a leveler of the playing field, as it were...

------
vaksel
Family Guy: So you have something to look at, when you are talking to them

------
Tichy
"Look at women, and see if they have a pair of round wobbly things on their
chests."

That kind of thing always made me wonder a bit: can genes really encode for
"like round wobbly things on chests"? There would have to be a complete image
recognizer implemented in the genes?

Not that I am saying it is impossible, but maybe it also works together with
breast-feeding for a bit (as infants we get exposed to a lot of breast, so
that would be an opportunity to learn to like them). And people do develop
different and weird things to be attracted to.

Just saying maybe the genes don't encode "like breasts" directly, maybe they
encode "like that stuff you are exposed to as a baby" (more specific than
that, of course, not everything we are exposed to as infants becomes sexy).

~~~
joeyo

      > There would have to be a complete image recognizer
      > implemented in the genes?
    

Are you questioning the fact that humans and animals _have_ image recognizers?
Or do you doubt that genes play a major role in their development?

~~~
Tichy
No, of course humans have image recognizers. I just question that they come
preprogrammed with a recognition loop for breasts. Obviously our image
recognizers can learn after birth, that is, not all images we recognize are
given to us by the genes.

It seems easier to me program reactions to smells, for example, as they are
mostly binary receptors?

Also, coming back to the seagull example, I think there are no equivalents for
faking beaks to faking breasts? A breast has to look fairly real to be
attractive, it is not enough to just have a huge circle with another circle
inside of it.

~~~
joeyo
I think it is at least _plausible_ that some fairly complex image recognition
could be genetically determined. Indeed, the classic example of the seagull
proves that pre-programming such circuitry is _possible_ in animals with
significantly simpler brains than mammals. I don't think it's such a wild leap
that more complicated image recognition _could_ be possible at birth.

At any rate, it's not even necessary that such image recognition be completely
formed at birth. It can develop along with the rest of the visual system and
other systems that are tuned for sexual attractiveness. (I'm ignoring breasts-
for-food-purposes, the recognition of which is largely determined by tactile
stimuli, mediated by the trigeminal nerve).

------
chanux
Wow! Was really a good read. I don't care if the writings are biologically in
good quality, but it definitely fed something different in to my tech-wired
brain after a long time.

------
jzachary
The real question is "why don't men have breasts?" The answer is "because if
they did, they would stay home and play with them all day long."

------
jhancock
frankly the reasoning in this article is so weak, it gives credit to a
"design" approach. Imagine this equally plausible statement:

"God so loved man, he created beautiful features on woman for his happiness."

~~~
Tichy
What do you find weak about the reasoning, specifically?

The differene to the "god created it" theory is that one can be falsified, the
other can't. "God made it" is a useless statement with no practical value
whatsoever.

~~~
tome
Could you point to an theory from the article that can be falsified? I'm
having trouble thinking how I could devise an experiment to falsify, for
example, this:

"Having breasts would be a sign of having a fair amount of fat, and men would
find this sexy, because fatter women would give rise to fatter children, who
would survive better."

~~~
Tichy
That is a quote from the "rival theories" section, isn't it - so it is not the
opinion of the author of the original piece.

However, one way to falsify it (for starters) would be to look at the actual
survival rates of fat children, and at the fatness of fat women (do fat women
actually have fatter children, and do they actually survive better?).

Also one could look at other species to who the same conditions apply, and see
if the prediction comes true - they should have something signalling "healthy
fat levels", too. If they don't, the theory is in trouble.

Just some things to do off the top of my head. There seem to be countless ways
to have a go at that hypothesis, no?

~~~
tome
Sorry if I picked an inappropriate example. It was quite hard to get to the
meat of what the author was saying, which I think just goes further to
highlight my point.

And no, I don't think looking at the survival rates of fat children is going
to help test the hypothesis. For one thing, we live in very different
conditions today to those we evolved in so very few observations of modern
society are relevant.

It may well be impossible to test the claim "God made it", but it's bordering
on impossible to test these evolutionary claims too.

Not to suggest that I disagree with the study of anthropology -- far from it.
I just don't think it's a science.

~~~
Tichy
"For one thing, we live in very different conditions today to those we evolved
in"

I think ultimately biology goes back to the laws of physics, and I don't think
those have changed much in the last couple of 1000 years. Also, I think we
have some idea what life was 10000 years ago - there certainly was no breast
enhancement surgery, and no anti baby pill, for example.

That is precisely where I see a difference from the "god made it" hypothesis:
for evolution and biology, and relationships and stuff, there ARE models,
which can be used to predict things (either for the future, or for data points
in the past). There is no such thing for "god made it". Therefore I don't
understand why you think the "fat" theory can not be put to the test. Maybe my
ideas were not convincing - I am not a biologist anyway. But that doesn't
prove that there can be no test. In physics, there also is not always a test
to test a theory. There are theoretical physicists and practical physicists,
and some practitioners are considered brilliant for finding good way to test
certain theories.

Of course I admit that strictly speaking, I am not making a 100% case against
the god hypothesis. You could answer "of course, god made it so that {insert
elaborate theory from physics}, then there would be something to test". But I
hope you know what I mean anyway.

Not 100% sure what constitutes a science, either - this discussion made me
think of court cases. Suppose you want to find out who committed a murder. You
can not test that either - you can only collect evidence that person X did it,
but I don't think you can test it (no repeatable test for the future - you can
only kill the victim once). Is it therefore not a science? But still it seems
possible at least in some cases to identify the murder with high certainty.

~~~
tome
I'm not trying to make a very important point really, just point out that I
don't think anthropological theories can be falsified, despite your assertion
otherwise.

That's not to suggest I think the "god created it" theory has the same
intellectual standing as the anthropological theories, just that neither of
them are scientific.

By the way, according to Popper, a scientific theory is exactly one that can
be falsified, hence my introduction of the word "science" into the discussion.

------
chanux
Reading the article I got the question "Then why people say Paris Hilton is
sexy?"

------
unbannable
I read that essay, and I think the reason for their existence is simpler: they
make face-on mating more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing, which
facilitates pair bonding.

One disagreement I have with the OP is in the assertion that permanent breasts
would be a necessary disadvantage, ignoring the size issue. Permanent breasts
probably evolved gradually, from unnoticeable to male-like to small to the
size they are today. A prehistoric hominid female who sprouted D-cups among
her flat-chested peers would be at a disadvantage for the reasons the OP
gave-- she'd appear infertile at all times-- but the permanent-breasts/no
dichotomy is false. The change almost certainly occurred incrementally.

