All the cool biopunk stuff seems to be happening in China these days: Chinese scientists have put human brain genes in monkeys—and yes, they may be smarter
Here is the paper in question:
Shi, Lei, Xin Luo, Jin Jiang, Yongchang Chen, Cirong Liu, Ting Hu, Min Li, et al. 2019. “Transgenic Rhesus Monkeys Carrying the Human MCPH1 Gene Copies Show Human-like Neoteny of Brain Development.” National Science Review, March. https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwz043.
Brain size and cognitive skills are the most dramatically changed traits in humans during evolution, and yet the genetic mechanisms underlying these human-specific changes remain elusive. Here, we successfully generated 11 transgenic rhesus monkeys (8 first-generation and 3 second-generation) carrying human copies of MCPH1, an important gene for brain development and brain evolution. Brain image and tissue section analyses indicated an altered pattern of neural cell differentiation, resulting in a delayed neuronal maturation and neural fiber myelination of the transgenic monkeys, similar to the known evolutionary change of developmental delay (neoteny) in humans. Further brain transcriptome and tissue section analyses of major developmental stages showed a marked human-like expression delay of neuron-differentiation and synaptic signaling genes, providing a molecular explanation to the observed brain developmental delay of the transgenic monkeys. More importantly, the transgenic monkeys exhibited better short-term memory and shorter reaction time compared to the wild type controls in the delayed matching to sample task. The presented data represents the first attempt to experimentally interrogate the genetic basis of human brain origin using a transgenic monkey model, and it values the use of nonhuman primates in understanding human unique traits.
I strongly support this, we need to uplift the animals.
Intelligence is almost always adaptative. There are almost no conceivable ethical downsides to this.
There are questions on how we will support support these animals.
Well, if animals are uplifted, they could become as intelligent as humans. For instance, chimps would only need around 7-8 S.D.’s worth more of IQ to be competitive with humans. This would allow them to compete in the market economy.
To be sure, they will fall behind if we upgrade humans too – as we should – but the economy will become much more productive, allowing uplifted animals to be subsidized even as we use what we learned from uplifting them to further upgrade ourselves.
Conceivably, some animals may become even more intelligent than humans, e.g. elephants due to their high cranial capacity.
I am in general in favor of such biosingularity scenarios for a couple of reasons.
1. They seem safer than machine intelligence singularities (e.g. they are not as “fast”, and we can be pretty sure that we won’t accidentally scrub consciousness through genetic augmentations – unlike the case of mind loading).
- It would certainly appear to be superior to dysgenic-technological slideback, which is the default future if there is no intelligence exposion this century (i.e. the Age of Malthusian Industrialism).
If it’s going to happen anywhere, it is going to happen in China. Judeo-Christians and SJWs are not going to allow it in the West.
I also want to uplift the animals but mostly so we will learn to fear the dark again…
Elaphants have always been my favorite animals, it would be cool to talk to them if they were more intelligent.
I suppose the scientists give the monkeys this particular gene and then have them euthanized (even though young and healthy) to see its results on the brain tissue. Is it OK to be repelled by something like this?
Haven’t you seen Planet of the Apes?
But, seriously, if we were uplifting animals, then would there really be any objection to making smart Neanderthals and other hominins once we have sufficient DNA?
Might result in more zoonotic diseases if the apes could frequent San Francisco bathhouses, or Middle Eastern countries.
But other animals lack language capacity. They may develop the mental capacity for language with the help of human genes, but they do not have the physical capacity for it.
Should note that in the research so far with increasing animal intelligence, of which there are a couple – its much easier to increase animal intelligence by using human genes or cells than it would be to increase human intelligence. This is because human neurons, etc, are a known factor of more efficient processing or otherwise better design for what we consider as intelligence and seem significantly better such that just transplanting astrocytes is enough to increase intelligence, while increasing human intelligence is relatively harder.
I’d find the experiment and your corollaries more plausible if they have used CRISPR. On a more serious note, if this BS would work, it should first be used on BN.
On a practical level, I think there might be a market for spreading the smart genes in dogs – effectively trying to copy the most intelligent dogs known. Maybe, they could even be imprinted to know certain tricks. Since there were many working dogs only a 100 years ago, one can even imagine some genemod dogs being economically viable – think of scent or guide dogs that would require nearly no training, but have great abilities.
Once we are talking about dog-human hybrids, I start to think of The Island of Doctor Moreau. Though I must say, augmenting pigs to guard the borders and fight Islamic militants has a strange sort of appeal. That is, until we can turn chickens into dinos.
The problem with bringing back to life extinct species is that their gut microbiota DNA (gut metagenome) will never be available and the gut microbiota (which is specific the functioning of a species) is fundamental to the correct functioning of an organism.
They euthanized the three 2nd generation monkeys only. Five of the 1st generation monkeys are still around conducting their (upgraded) monkey business.
Also relevant: authors write: “The rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta), an Old World Monkey species widely used for biomedical research, is an ideal choice, due to its high sequence similarity with humans (>93% for protein coding genes) [28] and yet relatively large phylogenetic distance (about 25 million years of divergence from humans), which alleviates ethical concerns [29].”
So ethical concerns are alleviated by phylogenetic distance. Do you feel better?
I remember reading BLINDSIGHT by Peter Watts, where he fictionalizes the somewhat disturbing idea that consciousness is in reality a great hindrance to intelligence, and that intelligence, once freed from the slow, heavy and costly deliberations of consciousness, is finally free to develop according to a far greater capacity.
Finally someone who read that book!
Though Watts is a despicable leftist, who literally had a vasectomy to prevent global warming (I’m kidding you not), and there were some stupid things in it (the woman soldier whose great strategy was compassion so that she fully understood the thinking of the enemy and managed to turned them over to her side by sacrificing his own soldiers who committed atrocities…), I really liked this book. (The “sidequel” Echopraxia was still good, but Blindsight was much better.)
Regarding resurrecting ancient species, it contains the idea of vampires as a predatory human sub-species who are way smarter than humans, and are fully psychopathic. (So that eating other humans wouldn’t be a problem for them. Watts apparently doesn’t understand the concept of ingroup, so he thinks that if a human is capable of easily killing and eating another without psychological problems, he must be a psychopath. It’s of course wrong.) The humans stupidly resurrect the vampires, and keep them in captivity (to use their superior intelligence), but as a result of being much smarter, they quickly escape and proceed to take over from humans.
The book was so full of new (at least new to me) ideas that even several bad ideas (all related to Watts’s inability to understand that a subset of humans could be his outgroup) don’t make it impossible to enjoy.
I disagree that we should “uplift” animals. Intelligence is not always adaptive (it comes with costs, after all), which makes it a dubious enterprise in the case of wild animals. Many animals could easily become way way way smarter than we are – most notably whales. They might be like Guild Navigators in Dune:
And of course they could take over, even if physically they were inept and required enormous equipment to move outside the sea. (Probably they’d stay in the sea for the most part.) Though maybe they wouldn’t be as horrible as machine AI taking over.
Another problem with uplifting animals is that we use many of them for food. Animals used for food should instead be dumbed down. (I have already written why I don’t consider intelligence as a very good proxy for ability to suffer: a smart psychopath is capable of less suffering than a moderately intelligent normal person, because psychopaths are only capable of shallow physical suffering. Empathy and ability to bond might actually be better proxies, for example dogs have empathy for humans and an ability to bond with them, so being cruelly killed by humans could cause more suffering in them than in other animals who don’t expect anything from humans and so won’t feel a sense of betrayal. Still, obviously very dumb creatures cannot suffer so much as smarter ones.)
Smarter animals might cause more suffering to dumber ones: by uplifting some animals, we could cause them to dominate others. It also could be another source for environmental damage, enhanced smart monkeys might find ways to destroy the habitats of still dumb creatures, or even if all animals were “uplifted” the exact same way, the playing field could still change, because some animals might be more suited for an intelligent lifestyle. (Like intelligence might be more of a boon to a monkey which has hands than to a cat which only has paws.)
I don’t think it’s a good idea to change too many things. It’s bad enough that we keep changing things when it’s good for us. Changing things when it’s not even beneficial carries the same risks, but without any benefits to balance them out it just shouldn’t be done.
We would have to give them large chunks of India and Africa to live in, but as we’ve seen, enough of the people who actually live in India and Africa aren’t so keen to do that, or prospects would be better for the average, non-augmented elephant.
They are magnificent creatures though. The late Mark Shand (brother of Prince Charles’ current wife) was travelling through India when he saw a working elephant being mistreated, bought it (having never had anything to do with them) and rode it across India. Cool story – “Travels With My Elephant”, worth a read.
“Watts is a despicable leftist, who literally had a vasectomy to prevent global warming (I’m kidding you not)”
His wife has two children – are they not his then? Some people think two is enough (I know a guy who had a vasectomy after two, because his wife didn’t want more kids or to use pill/coil – she then left him for someone else).
Very interesting, but likely not adaptive. As you stated, the modified animals experience delayed cognitive development, like humans, which could be a killer in the wild.
Judeo-Christian and SJW values?
The inability to examine one’ position from the vantage point of higher principles is a sign of intellectual decrepitude.
I didn’t think of you as an incel, but you fit the bill.
Go read Doctor Faustus young man. Find some depth.
By the time they married (in 2011) she already had those children. I’m also pretty sure he already had the vasectomy. I’m not 100% sure they aren’t his children, but when I read his blog around that time I was pretty sure she had already had those children before they met.
We are already living in a real world Planet of the Apes.
Consciousness doesn’t exist
Comically far from being an actual argument.
There are animals who suffer, and if they get smarter, they might suffer more. That’s a serious argument for lobotomizing the whole of creation – except that of course life couldn’t work that way. So, at least we shouldn’t get them smarter, not to increase suffering, because, realistically, all animals suffer a lot. Luckily, selection seems to select for as much stupidity as it can get away with.
Also, smarter animals might conceivably cause more suffering to other animals. Again, an argument against making them smarter.
They might cause environmental damage – on top of more suffering (environmental damage now means getting smarter animals getting killed) it is an evil in and of itself (since preserving the environment, all else equal, is a value in itself).
And yes, intelligence is usually selected against, unless it comes without a cost. (Rare.)
Wouldn’t it be a lot more productive to ‘uplift’ blacks instead?
It’d be the ultimate Affirmative Action!
Doesn’t have to cause more suffering.
-The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
All of that is true.
There are also reasons to think that animal intelligence would be bad for humans. I care about the interests of (even non-white) humans more than animals. Intelligent animals would be both more able to compete with humans for resources and have a claim to them and could be more dangerous to humans.
If increasing the number of sentient beings is good, then increasing the number of humans would be better (both from a human stand-point and neutrally) as less risky and requiring fewer resources.
Ceteris paribus, it does.
What is your definition of “Judeo-Christian”?
That is amazing. Do you have a link to a story for that?
I’m reminded of the story of Henry Wise and John Brown.
Henry Wise was a fervent Southern pro-slavery radical, whose radicalism was almost too much for his fellow Southern Democrats; John Brown, of course, was the exact opposite.
Wise, in interrogating Brown after Harpers Ferry, came to respect Brown. They admired the other’s craziness, which led to action. Years after the war, Wise sincerely told a shocked and misunderstanding crowd of his fellow white Virginians that John Brown was, “a great man!”
In a certain sense, I respect Watts’s dedication to his insanity. Thank you, Watts, for taking your insanity to a logical extreme.
I agree about uplifting animals, if I can get my cat to do housework instead of sleeping all day that’d be great.
That said, what I find puzzling and scary is why evolution didn’t take care of it by itself. Intelligence appears to be a dysgenic trait for reasons I don’t understand.
We know for a fact that human level intelligence is very easy to make – it only took a few million years to diverge us from our ape ancestors. Few millions years to build our current level of intelligence is a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.
If it’s so fast an easy, why don’t we see hundreds of ape species constructing buildings, farming, and composing poems? Beyond apes, why dont we see dolphins teaching algebra to their kids? Why are the very few fellow hominids that embarked on the same course as us (Neanderthals etc) extinct?
Why are our very own species dysgenic when it comes to intelligence? Generally, females will want to mate with males in possession of stronger muscles, not brains. If education is proxy for intelligence, based on fertility rates, universities are genetic extermination camps. Japanese are some of the smartest people on the planet, and they are self eliminating as we speak. It’s as if there is a barrier in intelligence that nature doesn’t want crossed.
And it’s puzzling why. I understand that human brain is an energy sink and requires a lot of food, but lots of animals require a lot of food (elephants, whales etc), it doesn’t seem to stop them. And you’d think that the ability to predict the future and act accordingly would be a major evolutionary advantage. And yet it isn’t. Very strange. We are missing something here, and that something may lead to extinction of humanity if we dont figure it out. Scary stuff.
I used to read his blog.
Not yet, in 2100 maybe.
How crazy or cogent was the rest of his work?
It has a lot to do with costs. Intelligence is pretty expensive. So it cannot be a luxury product. Use it or lose it.
Having said that, animals seem to have gotten progressively smarter over the course of geological history. So it’s probably pretty useful, provided that you are competing with other intelligent animals. Apparently there was a runaway process with humans over the last couple million years. Yes, short term it’s a disadvantage in most modern human societies right now, but if you take a longer view, it’s been moderately to highly beneficial for most of human history.
The problem is people are not adapted to modern living – that is the reason why intelligence is linked to low fertility now. It is a problem of the modern environment. And why it would be hard to make smart, functional animals.
You need to tailor the psychological traits. Most of these animals don’t have hands, so it is like you are making double amputees. If a dog were too smart, he would probably be melancholy or go insane and maul everyone.
That is why, if we must make smart animals, then I favor it being done in small doses, more like a breeding program, copying and spreading the smart genes within a species.
You also don’t want to trigger the egalitarian response in people or all these animals will be on basic and breeding like rabbits.
I have read it also. TBH, I thought the general plot was sort of bland and derivative, though I did appreciate the vampire as apex super-intelligence, like unto us as we are to cows. Though even that indirectly reminded me of the shark DNA mixed into some of the smart dolphins in one of Brin’s uplift books – the predator instinct on the loose in the ship, through irresponsible DNA engineering.
I appreciated it because I think there is a general lack of HBD in sci-fi. Funniest of all is perhaps Star Trek with its endless alien miscegenation.
A surprising amount of sci-fi seems to fall into two political camps – SJWism, or libertarianism. I have wondered if that is a reflection of the psychology of the authors or of the publishing process. Very little of it seems to be race realist, or traditional conservative.
Uplifted primates and elephants are one thing. But do we really want to see uplifted lions and tigers? I think not.
In any case, I’m not a fan of animal uplift. I prefer them just as they are now.
Shouldn’t we strive to uplift humanity first? Plenty of people around the world still die of starvation, disease, war. Suicides rates world wide are slightly decreasing, but in the US slightly increasing?
With so many people still unemployed around the planet (the world economy is rather good right now too), does this sound a little bit hollow if not a ridiculous proposition, or is it just me?….
If this continues to fruition, could those like Karlin be creating a new class of Democratic voters in the US? What next, walls to keep the animals from immigrating to the US? 🙂 .
It’s a nicer way of calling someone a “Shabbos goy”.
Absolutely! And since this importance seems especially true for humans (explaining our relatively small genome) it would pose a particular problem for bringing back anything from genus Homo. (Not that I see the slightest reason to do so.)
This isn’t true. It only seems that way because you live in a social system deliberately designed to pervert the natural order.
Women are supposed to be the ones driving the mating strategy and bearing the brunt of the consequences for mating choices.
Absent a government system funding a safety net to encourage women’s bad choices and fixing the wreckage, women don’t care about strong muscles at all.
Imagine if you lived in a dystopia where government propaganda and welfare agencies encouraged men to murder and steal to their heart’s content; we’re living exactly in that dystopia, except with gender roles swapped.
Right, I know that
But it’s usually used by people who think it’s good to be a Shabbos goy. The classic example would be neoconservatives
Hence why I asked
It sounds like an entirely praiseworthy action in this particular case.
I actually would like to see a historical analysis of this sort of thing: the nature of women’s physical preferences in recent centuries.
Like, for one thing, I can tell you that the vast majority of Americans once were not like the supposed ideal man of today.
They were strong enough to do hard work all day long but they were remarkably SKINNY.
The transition to “big muscles” as opposed to “wiry and tough” began with the conquest of the American prairies and the subsequent explosion in our agriculture and surplus. As Steve Sailer has pointed out, my native state of Pennsylvania in the mid 20th century produced awesome (white) football players (and other athletes) from a region (Western PA) that was a hub of steel and coal. Pennsylvania’s stereotypical product was the likes of Mike Ditka or Chuck Bednarik, whereas England’s northern athletes seem to have been far smaller. But England didn’t border on the farms of Iowa and Ohio.
That was football. In baseball, the best players were usually “stout” with short but powerful arms (Babe Ruth) or rather thin. Shoot, you could probably blow over Ty Cobb with a stiff breeze. Then again, baseball’s also a sport where an actual alcoholic (Mickey Mantle) could be the best player in the world for like 15 years
So you deny your immediate, moment-to-moment experience of being an observer of both yourself and the external world?
Joking aside, it does seem that creating slaves is part of motivation here… But this time it will be A-OK because they are “just” sentient animals, not humans.
Used to be an idea that we would genetically modify lions so that they would be able to hunt and eat but not ever attack a person. It was just a vague idea in sci-fi, not really spelled out, but I think that is a potentially interesting path, if you were set on playing God – implanting instincts into animals.
Of course, if you were making them smarter, you might eventually get to Phillip K. Dick’s idea of Martian predators that would use telepathy to ask, “Can I eat you?” That would be pretty unsettling.
It’s a reflection of the times. Very little modern literature is race-realist or traditionally conservative especially after WWII. The greatest American sf editor, John W. Campbell, had views close to race-realism though most of his writers (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, van Vogt) didn’t share them. He once forced Heinlein into writing a yellow-peril U.S. invasion story, Sixth Column, Robert never really agreed with.
When it comes to tales of uplifted animals used as slaves by future society Cordwainer Smith’s Instrumentality of Man stories must be considered. He made the liberation of these creatures, granted human-like intelligence partial humanity while co-existing with old instincts, a central element of many imaginative works.
Heh, why not? It’s a clown world anyway. Uplift them all, to the point they can even uplift themselves. Cue Terran domination of the entire universe as literally 100% of the Earth’s biomass is sapient, allowing for ludicrous and infinitely-increasing brainpower
Your upgraded chimps might object to being treated like animals. They’re gonna want reparations.
I think elephants may already be smarter than people. If people were smart they would live in peace and prosperity.
I’m thinking they would become like Larry Niven’s Kzinti.
If Detroit’s current population was replaced with GM intelligent chimps, would that lower or raise the crime rate?
I had two thoughts after reading this:
OMG! They gave the monkeys autism!
For the love of God, keep the monkeys away from crack.
And Karlin away from the monkeys!…
Animal uplifting is a very dangerous idea. We already have blacks bitching about muh slavery and shiet every single day. Do we really need humans to apologize to cows for eating beef for many years? Seriously animal uplifting can easily lead to uplifted animals attempting to exterminate humanity.
We can fix that.
We can write a bunch of “post-apocalyptic world” stories for fun. Basically a religious war in the Middle East caused all high-IQ races to be involved and ethnobioweapons from unknown sources began to devastate the world. When all high-IQ races destroyed each other blacks (and maybe Amerinds, Pacific Islanders and Australoids) surprisingly found that they are the only inhabitants of the world. Due to their low IQ & high time preferences tech rapidly declined and the world deteriorates into a mess.
Then either the world manages to be partly rebuilt or the world will be destroyed forever depending on your flavor. For example we can claim that a few Igbos, Ashantis and Yorubas become the new rulers of the world and manage to rehabilitate tech to the point that 100 years later they manage to go to space again. We can also claim that the world just gradually collapses to Iron Age levels permanently.
I’m a bit partial to the general outline of Niven and Pournelle’s Lucifer’s Hammer – I think it would make a great movie with a few small modifications.
In that novel, there were roving gangs of blacks who ally with white pols and adopt cannibalism as a unifying religious ceremony, and try to attack the last surviving nuclear power plant, after the comet hits. These perhaps should be dressed in Black Hebrew Israelite costumes, but not otherwise changed. Meanwhile, the black astronaut that lands in a white farming community, and has implied future miscegenation with some mudsharking white women, should be cut out completely.
It is a pity that China produces mass propaganda against the Japanese, but seems to have language which bans racism against blacks, no doubt because of their mineral and farming interests in Africa. I would like to see China produce this type of entertainment, in order to combat Hollywood propaganda.
Yes, but you are white. You probably have some kind of Christian morality, be it Christian or SJW, as Karlin points out. Chinamen don’t have any problems with this.
“Christian-liberal morality” is a term I like to use because I simply consider SJ and Communism to be extremely distorted versions of Christianity.
China on the other hand is Social Darwinist.
Wow Anatoly’s really gone off the deep end, unless April 11th has been declared double April fools? No conceivable ethical considerations? Shows the poor excuse for “ethics” some people operate under, what could be more deeply unethical than creating abominations like animal-human hybrids in a fit of pique? So in your mind they have an ethical interest in not being humanely killed and eaten, but no legitimate interest in not being the subject of doctor frankenstein’s mad experiments, the results of we have no idea and to which they could never possibly consent? How does increased intelligence have a real benefit to their quality of life? I suspect there are many more very depressed people per capita than there are among even animals in captivity. And I mean even feeling the need of extending the realm of serious quality of life consideration or the concept of “consent” to animals shows the absurdity of the “ethical calculus” of utilitarian “ethics”, hybrids of this sort are a crime against nature and human dignity.
And the economic argument is literally laughable; you can recognize the economic wrongheadedness of importing a foreign underclas which has net negative human capital, and yet a race of literal ape-men is just the boon the economy needs? You might think of taking a vacation and unwinding for a bit, you’ve got a screw loose mate.
Public opinion in China is massively against this kind of fly-by-night Frankenstein science, as shown by a poll I saw from one of the bloggers here (I believe it was AE? Could have been Sailer). It was support for “eugenic” genetic manipulation of an unborn human baby, and support was barely higher than in Western countries, perhaps not even high enough to conclude a generally greater openness to it as distinct from noise in the data.
Paraphrasing a comment on that: the Chinese are human too, who knew?
Sounds interesting.
I personally prefer stories about black worlds though because as long as whites or NE Asians continue to exist so will civilization which makes the story just another story of human recovery from WWII 2.0 instead of a real collapse story.
Think about that scenario: Assume that everyone other than blacks and Australoids magically disappear for whatever reason, what will happen? Well, blacks in North America etc will be reduced to cannibalism since they tend to be really poor at farming and pastoralism. Blacks in Africa will also experience an immediate collapse and widespread cannibalism but it won’t be that serious because at least they know non-intensive farming.
We can think about for example vehicles. Can blacks occasionally produce some vehicle? Yes. However they are highly dependent on non-blacks for parts. In a black world there will be less and less vehicles until there won’t literally be even one operational vehicle left. In terms of military affairs there might be tank battles or even air battles between black countries or armed groups for a while..until all sides can no longer produce even one tank.
Yeah commies are traitors who aid Sub-Saharan Africa against the will of the public. We call it
取之于韭，
用之于匪，
赠之于非。
aka “Money is robbed from the defenseless ordinary Chinese people, used by the commie bandits and sent to Africa as aid.” But yes many of us hate blacks because they are nothing but sources of never-ending trouble. They are already attempting to ruin Guangzhou. Thankfully the city isn’t Detroit yet.
Very true.
Among educated upper class women in America, big muscles are a big turn off. Steve Sailer made a post about that a while ago.
In large parts of continental Europe and East Asia, ditto.
And there was a study a while back about the ideal man in Jane Austen times – thin, non-square face, little musculature, pale.
The big muscle thing is an American or Anglo thing that has to do with very specific cultural and sociological reasons. And even in America it’s class based.
But people don’t realize that because they are historically and culturally ignorant, because they tend to take what’s happening in their time and place as eternal truths about humanity, and because alt right and “game” type people want it to be true that women like big muscles, because it vindicates their childish world view.
Women like athletic muscular ectomorphs, not body builders. Muscular ectomorph is not very muscular for a body builder, but he could still be quite strong (obviously weaker than mesomorphs), especially relative to body weight, and has better endurance and ability to survive a famine. Ectomorphs are better suited to be soldiers, hence, nobility was probably more like that. (It’d be interesting to see a study. Charlemagne was very tall and thin.)
Upper-middle class English women are well-known for their absolute hatred of muscular rowers. I remember from my time at school and university that such people were practically social pariahs who were always avoided by women.
Athletic ectomorphs are definitely preferred to body builders, but some places and times women prefer slender and refined with little to no muscle. I believe there was/is a fad in Japan where men were slimming down to extreme thinness because Japanese women find it cute.
But yes, thin athletic ectomorphs, all things considered, are probably the ideal for women.
You are right about this build being ideal for soldiering, too. In Israel, soldiers in physically demanding units typically have that thin athletic build rather than the beefy American look. But American soldiers until the Vietnam war were also thin and wiry – the beefy look is really quite recent, and rather deplorable. Its probably connected to our culture of excess.
You can find portraits of nobility from the 17th century, and they are exactly as you say, thin and athletic looking. And portraits of 19th century English nobility show them that way, too.
Beefy muscularity has always been associated with farmers, laborers, and peasants.
You mean these guys?
https://i2-prod.cambridge-news.co.uk/incoming/article15972729.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200/0_JS177509577.jpg
While I don’t think that, all else being equal, muscular guys ever had a problem getting laid, it’s a well known phenomenon that while guys wanted to look like Bruce Willis in his prime, women preferred Brad Pitt (in his prime) or Ryan Gosling. It doesn’t matter. You can hardly change your body type, and working towards bigger muscles is always better than the alternative of becoming a couch potato. While running marathons is ultimately neither very healthy nor a very good way to achieve being tough and wiry, it’s certainly beneficial to add some endurance training (not necessarily running) to your schedule. Having Bruce Willis as an ideal is usually a good motivator for ectomorphs to work their way towards looking like Brad Pitt in Fight Club.
Even if it’s true (I’m somewhat skeptical), it’d be a very good example of some over-civilized unnatural fad, not much different from body building, except in the other direction, and perhaps even less healthy.
I agree. Its not healthy.
But it does suggest that female desire is more elastic than many think, and sometimes – seemingly – not driven by any obvious concern with evolutionary fitness.
Humans can be quirkier than we think.
The most important thing for women is social hierarchy. Sometimes animals signal their extreme fitness (in this case their social dominance) by displaying a costly and useless feature, like a peacock’s tail or perhaps the lack of muscles for a Japanese male. Until very recently a male couldn’t avoid being at least somewhat muscular, unless he was very rich and could afford several servants doing the simplest tasks for him. So the lack of muscles, like the long fingernails of Chinese mandarins (or the bound feet of their women) showed extreme social dominance: it was a very costly feature, which only upper class men could afford. Even now, you have to be at least middle class (and more likely upper middle class) to be able to follow such a silly fashion.
Anyway, such signaling is a sign of decadence, and should be frowned upon.
Yes, it is extremely unhealthy.
Emasculate men plague both ancient & modern China and Jewish communities. We have already seen what this has caused, namely tribes that can only manipulate but do not want to fight. Any tribe that follows this trend is likely to be conquered by the next dominant nomadic tribe.
That’s true.
And yes, attraction is mediated through the mind, which processes data on the environment (it is not just an ‘instinct’ from the Stone Age).
However, I’m not sure that’s what’s going on in the Japanese case. Or the upper class American case (where the ‘uselessness’ signal would be big muscles – little utility in modern economy, access to expensive guns, lots of free time).
Access to expensive gyms.
That’s nothing but a sophism, a mumbo–jumbo of words which don’t mean anything. Hook a neural net to a camera, it will also be observing the “external world”. Make that net siufficiently complex and it will be the exact same thing as you and I
Nonsense. Are you denying that you exist as a “self” that is consciously aware of its existence? That is, quite literally, insanity, as it requires disbelieving exactly what you experience with every passing second.
Mechanistically sensing it, with no entity present realizing that it is a self being an observer of the sensory information. I’m not talking about the simple fact that sensing is taking place.
A faith statement. Why would adding layers of complexity necessarily make a “self” spring into existence?
I posted that poll.
However, I had reservations about that poll. It was rushed out soon after CRISPRgate. And there seemed to be precious few details about it (e.g. even n).
Might have been made to political order.