

Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature - mixmax
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200706/ten-politically-incorrect-truths-about-human-nature

======
IsaacL
I used to be a massive evo-psych fan, but somehow reading this post with it's
tabloid 'aren't we daring to be politically incorrect' attitude really rankled
me. I think it was reading Douglas Hofstadters 'Metamagical Themas' that made
me more favourable to political correctness - and more likely to see articles
like this, which no doubt have a lot of scientific fact behind them, as
presenting those facts to push a particular worldview.

~~~
frossie
I have no idea where these people get their "scientific facts" from. Blond
hair evolved in Sweden so that women could advertise their youth under all
their heavy winter clothing? Why aren't Inuits (Eskimos) blond then?

At least half the stuff in there seems either like urban legends or dubious
speculations to interpret limited data.

~~~
amichail
_Why aren't Inuits (Eskimos) blond then?_

Evolution need not give you what you expect.

~~~
frossie
Of course it doesn't. But if you are making claims that a particular feature
is adaptive in a specific way, you had better be able to provide some evidence
for it - and one way of doing this is showing the trait being adaptive in a
different population in the same ecological niche, or having an explanation as
to why not, or being able to somehow rule out the other dozen perfectly
plausible reasons as to why the trait exists.

Not every phsysiological trait has to be adaptive.

------
russell
Fun read. All human nature is sexual, so not all suicide bombers are Muslim,
but nearly all Muslim suicide bombers are male, and that is so because of the
shortage of women. Rich men have more wives, mistresses, concubines, because a
woman would rather have one-tenth of a rich man than all of a poor man.
Industrial societies are monogamous because a working class man isn't all that
bad. And also why gentlemen prefer blonds.

------
prodigal_erik
"preference for blue eyes seems both universal and undeniable"

I've literally never heard this claimed before. They give a plausible argument
for it, but is there any basis to think the preference really exists?

~~~
_pius
Seems like a highly Euro-centric view presented with no reasonable evidence
whatsoever. _And_ they're begging the question, trying to argue the point that
everyone prefers blondes with blue eyes by assuming it to be true and
backwards rationalizing from there.

------
_pius
Interesting article. Largely bullshit, I suspect, but an interesting read
nonetheless.

That being said, I found the article obnoxious. The authors are hoping that,
by presenting their claims as "politically incorrect truths," anyone skeptical
of their conclusions for methodological reasons (lack of evidence, begging the
question, fundamental attribution error, bias blind spot, cum hoc ergo propter
hoc, selection bias, etc.) will simply be dismissed as not being able to deal
with their edgy, courageously neutral, politically incorrect "truths."

------
TomOfTTB
sorry for the long comment but I had to address these because they're all kind
of silly to me.

Men Like Blonde Bombshells: The article claims this is all but universal
but...to be honest...I like redheads. So that's disproved right there.

Humans are naturally polygamous: Well...duh. If this is so politically
incorrect why did I learn it in my 8th grade science class?

Most women benefit from polygymy: The example they give as "proof" is women
can share wealthy men in polygamous societies. That only works if women value
wealth overall. I can show you thousands of studies where a poor man got the
girl by being more attentive than a rich man. So this is bunk,

Most suicide bombers are Muslim: Well again...duh. The sheer number of muslims
combined with their religion being in a struggle between fundamentalism and
progressivism pretty much guarantees that. But that probably wasn't the case
2,000 years ago and it probably won't be the case 2,000 years from now.

Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce: Maybe. But it seems like a
pretty complicated thought process to be an instinct. Most men I know don't
consider how they're going to pass on wealth to their son when getting
divorced.

Beautiful people have more daughters: Completely unproven hypothesis.

What Gates and McCarthy have in common with criminals: Stupid. Yes, young
people take more risks and people who take more risks produce more. That's
common in all humans.

It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair: Politicians are
risk takers. Duh. They're in a job where they have to win over millions of
people every few years or lose their job.

Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist: Their theory is that
men treat women aggressively just like they do men so they aren't sexist. But
not being sexist means realizing women are different than men and treating
them accordingly so their theory is nothing more than a word game.

~~~
blhack
_Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist: Their theory is that
men treat women aggressively just like they do men so they aren't sexist. But
not being sexist means realizing women are different than men and treating
them accordingly so their theory is nothing more than a word game._

You have got a number of bizarre arguments in this post, but they're all
arguable (kindof) except this one.

Sexism is _exactly_ thinking that somebody is different simply because they
are a specific sex. The goal of "political correctness", as idiotic as it
seems, is to have everybody treated as if they were carbon copies of one
another.

Not being a sexist would mean not acknowledging the differences between the
sexes.

------
jleyank
I have read that the Y-chromosome is more "brittle" (for lack of a better
word) than the others in the human genome. Therefore, as environmental factors
get worse, the likelihood of females increases. Rich, not too old males are in
pretty good shape, so their progeny should be split between gender. Less-rich,
or old, or disadvantaged folks should be in worse shape leading to increased
XX's.

It's inductive reasoning, but most of the folks I've know the last 10-20 years
have had daughters - older parents, often in chemical laboratories.

~~~
stavrianos
Y-chromo doesn't recombine much, so it figures that it'd be more fragile.
Mutations have probably been building up basically forever.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam>

