When you look for someone to marry, you’ll care about many things: Are they smart? Healthy? Kind? Funny? Educated? Employed? And are they, like, wicked hot? But ask your parents. They won’t say that hotness is irrelevant. But they’ll probably care about it less than you do.
My thought: A person doesn't choose hotness because he's made a rational decision to have healthy descendants. He chooses hotness out of of simple desire—which serves the same purpose. His parents likely chose each other out of their desire, but their hormones don't kick in when they're evaluating mates for their children. So other factors become more salient.
Absolutely. But in theory evolution *could* have given parents similar "simple desires" for their kids should pursue hotness. It chose not to do that for some valid reason or another. (I think either incentives or because the kids basically have that issue covered.)
A hypothesis for why parents find it weird to encourage kids to marry hot: maybe it sounds like the parent wants to lech on the kid's spouse if they're emphasizing looks above other things they might bring to the table like vast tracts of land or a professional asset. Prioritizing non-sexual assets is diplomatic.
Another hypothesis: maybe the "tools of hotness" for adults are the same as for other forms of self sufficiency. In other words, a person who can become a doctor can probably also take care of their own physical health and the health of their family. That would also save a lot of money, yeah? Having someone around the house who knows what to buy for the best deals and how to use it?
Another possibility is that parents and children don't have the same incentives w/r/t short and long-term relationships. A hotter partner has more relationship options and so is presumably less likely to be a long-term relationship. If the relationship ends and leaves a single parent there will be more demands on the rest of the family for support; maybe an ok tradeoff for the parent but not the grandparents.
Mar 22, 2022·edited Mar 22, 2022Liked by dynomight
Another way to look at it could be that evolution is somehow “blind” to this problem. It seems assumed that what needs explaining is why evolution selected for the dissension, but the best way to look at it could be that it didn’t select *against* it.
Let’s assume that what is relevant for lots of healthy children is not only hotness nor status but a combination of both (and probably other things).
1. The dissension might arise organically from several “selected for” traits of different categories or ‘simple laws’ of interraction:
- biology: transient maximum of hormonal levels
- social dynamics: we value what we are able to obtain. Younger people can more easily obtain hotness, and older status
- cognitive ability: we give advices based on *our* view of the world
etc..
2. It is difficult to fix this: any of these categories would requires a fair amount of convergent adaptation, and all of those needs to happen concurrently as fixing only one doesn’t solve the problem by itself.
But admittedly, evolution managed to come up with such things as eyes, so it is still possible. Yet, it would require a gain
3. The gain really is not obvious: hotness and status oftenly enough aren’t opposed. Higher status people can more easily obtain hotness, naturally or artificially, and hotness, being socially valued, ease the path to higher status. So more often than not, dad and daughter agree on the mate, no matter the different reasons to do so.
It would require an extreme deviation for the opposition to trully arise: hotness in a badly inadapted mate (drug abuse, stupid thug…) or high status in someone barely able or willing to procreate. In such cases, the dissensus is an advantage as it tends to maintain balance.
PS: Thanks for your always great posts, and please excuse my english, I’m not a native speaker.
Interesting theory! If I understand it, you're suggesting that maybe the exact weight that we give to hotness vs. other factors isn't all that important in practice, and so evolution didn't really care if the weights float around over time? This seems possible to me. The only things I can think of that argue against it are: (1) The fact that in most cultures parents do try to influence child mate choice and (2) The fact that in most animals, traits close to reproduction seem to show very strong selection effects. (E.g litter size in pigs). But I don't find either of those super convincing.
My thought: A person doesn't choose hotness because he's made a rational decision to have healthy descendants. He chooses hotness out of of simple desire—which serves the same purpose. His parents likely chose each other out of their desire, but their hormones don't kick in when they're evaluating mates for their children. So other factors become more salient.
Absolutely. But in theory evolution *could* have given parents similar "simple desires" for their kids should pursue hotness. It chose not to do that for some valid reason or another. (I think either incentives or because the kids basically have that issue covered.)
A hypothesis for why parents find it weird to encourage kids to marry hot: maybe it sounds like the parent wants to lech on the kid's spouse if they're emphasizing looks above other things they might bring to the table like vast tracts of land or a professional asset. Prioritizing non-sexual assets is diplomatic.
Another hypothesis: maybe the "tools of hotness" for adults are the same as for other forms of self sufficiency. In other words, a person who can become a doctor can probably also take care of their own physical health and the health of their family. That would also save a lot of money, yeah? Having someone around the house who knows what to buy for the best deals and how to use it?
Another possibility is that parents and children don't have the same incentives w/r/t short and long-term relationships. A hotter partner has more relationship options and so is presumably less likely to be a long-term relationship. If the relationship ends and leaves a single parent there will be more demands on the rest of the family for support; maybe an ok tradeoff for the parent but not the grandparents.
Another way to look at it could be that evolution is somehow “blind” to this problem. It seems assumed that what needs explaining is why evolution selected for the dissension, but the best way to look at it could be that it didn’t select *against* it.
Let’s assume that what is relevant for lots of healthy children is not only hotness nor status but a combination of both (and probably other things).
1. The dissension might arise organically from several “selected for” traits of different categories or ‘simple laws’ of interraction:
- biology: transient maximum of hormonal levels
- social dynamics: we value what we are able to obtain. Younger people can more easily obtain hotness, and older status
- cognitive ability: we give advices based on *our* view of the world
etc..
2. It is difficult to fix this: any of these categories would requires a fair amount of convergent adaptation, and all of those needs to happen concurrently as fixing only one doesn’t solve the problem by itself.
But admittedly, evolution managed to come up with such things as eyes, so it is still possible. Yet, it would require a gain
3. The gain really is not obvious: hotness and status oftenly enough aren’t opposed. Higher status people can more easily obtain hotness, naturally or artificially, and hotness, being socially valued, ease the path to higher status. So more often than not, dad and daughter agree on the mate, no matter the different reasons to do so.
It would require an extreme deviation for the opposition to trully arise: hotness in a badly inadapted mate (drug abuse, stupid thug…) or high status in someone barely able or willing to procreate. In such cases, the dissensus is an advantage as it tends to maintain balance.
PS: Thanks for your always great posts, and please excuse my english, I’m not a native speaker.
Interesting theory! If I understand it, you're suggesting that maybe the exact weight that we give to hotness vs. other factors isn't all that important in practice, and so evolution didn't really care if the weights float around over time? This seems possible to me. The only things I can think of that argue against it are: (1) The fact that in most cultures parents do try to influence child mate choice and (2) The fact that in most animals, traits close to reproduction seem to show very strong selection effects. (E.g litter size in pigs). But I don't find either of those super convincing.