Post: #26

(01-17-2015 11:36 PM)Low Status Beta Wrote:  I think the correct pathogen could = gluten & dairy.

Homosexuality was pretty common in 19th century Japan, so that doesn't seem likely. They had next to no bread or dairy.

Post: #27

(01-20-2015 02:42 AM)dispenser Wrote:  

(01-17-2015 11:36 PM)Low Status Beta Wrote:  I think the correct pathogen could = gluten & dairy.

Homosexuality was pretty common in 19th century Japan, so that doesn't seem likely. They had next to no bread or dairy.

They had that problem even earlier than that.

Post: #28

I felt like homosexuality is caused security and comfort because like art , it isn't required but can be enjoyed if you had time and money. In america I feel we have so much comfort that we go beyond our natural creation as animals to a sentiment refined against the grain of our genes only because we can. Could be ignorant however, I don't see developing countries struggling for the basics food, water, shelter having to many homosexuals.

Post: #29

(01-20-2015 02:15 AM)The Reactionary Tree Wrote:  Personally I have hypothesized that homosexuality comes about as a subconscious psychological assessment of the environment. I got this from studying r/K selection theory. Homosexuality would be a form of r-selection because they are seeking out sexual novelty instead of breeding like they are supposed to. Look at prison populations. Those guys aren't gay but they are having gay sex and even gay relationships.

That's because one of the most common secondary traits of sociopaths is sexual fluidity, and sociopaths are over represented in prison populations.

Sociopaths are also over represented when it comes to having multiple baby mommas, and that could just mean that the born gays (twinkle, twinkle, little star) are merely the sickle cell anemia of sociopaths, ie, a genetic mishap due to hybrid vigor.

However, it would seem that most people in today's world that identify as non breeders, are merely that way due to societal conditioning. Females from a lack of strong male mates and models, and males primarily from porn.

The porn reason is that first, you're training yourself to be submissive while other men fuck their women, and two, you're not training yourself that sex involves women's bits but just using your own. It may not make you blind or grow hair on your knuckles, but that can't be a good behavior to train all the time.

I could be wrong, though.

Post: #30

Some points-

Homosexuality as we know it, is existing in a large open society, where homosexuals can meet up and congregate together. In past human history, it's quite possible, that despite being born gay or having extremely homosexual tendencies, you simply werent around enough homosexuals to keep you from boinking a woman at some point

Point 2- even here in the US, where homosexuality is relatively open, and there's endless options for dating, I know a lot of gay men who have had sex with women.

Point 3- The idea behind a family unit first, and then socially accepted affairs on the side (from the male), has occurred for ages, and doesn't exclude gay males (consider the Romans, or even the study done in the early 50s that found most men who frequented male prostitutes were married men)

Not against his hypothesis, but I don't think it seals everything

Post: #31

A much more intriguing approach would be to assume homosexuality is tied to pressures of overpopulation, which hunter gatherer tribes rarely experience.

Post: #32

I'm quoting this from memory of an article I read two months ago, so I'm sorry for inaccuracies.

But someone speculated that homosexuality does have a genetic component, which survives because societies are so homophobic. A guy who is attractive enough to women and would be openly gay in a homo-tolerant society is forced to marry a woman in a homo-intolerant society. This homo-intolerance allows him to survive and reproduce, which passes on the genes responsible for his homosexuality onto his children.

The article then speculated that homosexuality is more threatened by homo-tolerance, because openly gay people wouldn't reproduce as often.

Post: #33

(01-26-2015 03:03 PM)MMX2010 Wrote:  I'm quoting this from memory of an article I read two months ago, so I'm sorry for inaccuracies.

But someone speculated that homosexuality does have a genetic component, which survives because societies are so homophobic. A guy who is attractive enough to women and would be openly gay in a homo-tolerant society is forced to marry a woman in a homo-intolerant society. This homo-intolerance allows him to survive and reproduce, which passes on the genes responsible for his homosexuality onto his children.

The article then speculated that homosexuality is more threatened by homo-tolerance, because openly gay people wouldn't reproduce as often.

And that seems to fly directly in the face of everything we're witnessing in the gay-accepting part of the world.

Has anyone been noticing fewer gay people, especially among the younger people out there? I get the sense that their numbers are increasing.

Post: #34

(01-26-2015 04:35 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  

(01-26-2015 03:03 PM)MMX2010 Wrote:  I'm quoting this from memory of an article I read two months ago, so I'm sorry for inaccuracies.

But someone speculated that homosexuality does have a genetic component, which survives because societies are so homophobic. A guy who is attractive enough to women and would be openly gay in a homo-tolerant society is forced to marry a woman in a homo-intolerant society. This homo-intolerance allows him to survive and reproduce, which passes on the genes responsible for his homosexuality onto his children.

The article then speculated that homosexuality is more threatened by homo-tolerance, because openly gay people wouldn't reproduce as often.

And that seems to fly directly in the face of everything we're witnessing in the gay-accepting part of the world.

Has anyone been noticing fewer gay people, especially among the younger people out there? I get the sense that their numbers are increasing.

It could be that there's always been a certain percentage of them, but since it's actively encouraged now more are going public with it.

Post: #35

(01-16-2015 09:20 AM)DaveR Wrote:  I'm not sure either way, but regardless, it's only a matter of time before science finds the cause of homosexuality. Once found, it will not be long before it's screened out, inoculated against or treated in some way.

Despite all of the social justice rubbish being thrown around, I would bet that 99% of parents would want normal children if given the choice.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I would be genuinely sad if my kid was gay. That would be like god punishing a parent.

Post: #36

(01-26-2015 03:03 PM)MMX2010 Wrote:  I'm quoting this from memory of an article I read two months ago, so I'm sorry for inaccuracies.

But someone speculated that homosexuality does have a genetic component, which survives because societies are so homophobic. A guy who is attractive enough to women and would be openly gay in a homo-tolerant society is forced to marry a woman in a homo-intolerant society. This homo-intolerance allows him to survive and reproduce, which passes on the genes responsible for his homosexuality onto his children.

The article then speculated that homosexuality is more threatened by homo-tolerance, because openly gay people wouldn't reproduce as often.

I am not buying the genetic argument and here's why:

Knowing what we know in this community about approach anxiety, it is apparent to me that is it genetically ingrained into us (anyone remember Roosh's experiment with his brother in Day Bang?). This is because pre-civilizational societies were tiny and everyone knew everyone. Also, if you approached a woman, you could potentially be killed for it by other men in the village/tribe.

So I am not buying the argument that for over 150,000 years of human evolution that gay men have been hiding in the closet and breeding with women when anytime they approach a woman they could be killed for it. That is what would have had to happened in order for that genetic material to be passed along. If you weren't sexually attracted to a member of the opposite sex, then why would you approach them for sex if it meant you could potentially be killed for it?

Post: #37

(01-26-2015 03:03 PM)MMX2010 Wrote:  I'm quoting this from memory of an article I read two months ago, so I'm sorry for inaccuracies.

But someone speculated that homosexuality does have a genetic component, which survives because societies are so homophobic. A guy who is attractive enough to women and would be openly gay in a homo-tolerant society is forced to marry a woman in a homo-intolerant society. This homo-intolerance allows him to survive and reproduce, which passes on the genes responsible for his homosexuality onto his children.

The article then speculated that homosexuality is more threatened by homo-tolerance, because openly gay people wouldn't reproduce as often.

This is a mathematically & historically ignorant argument. This is basically arguing that, currently, homosexuality imposes almost 100% fitness penalty, but that in the past social mores reduced this fitness penalty to 0% by encouraging homosexual men to marry and procreate.

This is clearly false, since societies in the past had all kinds of eunuchs, celibate monks, and other figures who weren't expected to have children. If homosexuals were truly not attracted to women, you'd expect to see a disproportionate number of them in these kinds of professions. Even if 80% of homosexuals were married and having children, with 20% not doing so the fitness cost of being homosexual would dictate their numbers would dwindle quickly. (And that's assuming that being homosexual doesn't pose other fitness costs in a pre-modern society. We know that's not true since homosexuals have a different behavioral profile to normal heterosexual men.)

Post: #38

I don't understand why homosexuality is such a big deal on this forum. Live and let live. Just let the gays do their thing, though gay white knighting is a nuisance.

Post: #39

I am glad to know I am not the only one on RVF who reads Greg Cochran's blog. Some comments:

• Cochran's hypothesis is based on an argument that uses quantitative genetics. The "gay uncle" theory seems to be a mathematical impossibility. He makes fun of Harvard Professor Emeritus E. O. Wilson and calls him innumerate.
  

Gregory Cochran Wrote:When E. O. Wilson supported a hypothesis that attempted to explained homosexuality by gay men helping close relatives in ways that produced more nieces and nephews, he sure sounded like an idiot. Because, looking at Hamilton’s rule, they’d have have to produce twice as many of those nieces/nephews to break even – a behavior twice as effective as mother love – which is impossible, of course, in any kind of Malthusian world. Moreover, they don’t even perform these helping behaviors.

• Cochran compares his hypothesis to toxoplasmosis. Mice catch the toxoplasma parasite, which goes to their brains and reprograms the mice's sexual instinct. Suddenly, mice get turned on by cat urine, meaning that the mice will hang out where there are cats, which increases their chances of being eaten by cats. Once a toxoplasma-hosting mouse is eaten by a cat, while in the cat's digestive tract, the toxoplasma parasite reproduces, and when the cat shits, the parasites are released to infect other mice. Parasites that reprogram a mammal's sexual instinct do already exist.
  

• Cochran claims that there are no gay eskimos. Why is that so? Perhaps the "gay parasite" does not survive at extreme latitudes. Are there more gays close to the equator?
  

Here is a list of Cochran's posts on homosexuality:

• Depths of Madness (Feb. 2012)
• Paternal Age and Homosexuality (Jan. 2013)
• Group Selection (and homosexuality) (Jan. 2013)
• Heads exploding (March 2013)
• Hamilton rules OK! (April 2013)
• Biological Determinism (April 2013)
  

Post: #40

(01-15-2015 09:34 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  Anyhow, I think that due to consciousness and the thinking mind it's possible for humans to rationalize a vast array of lifestyle choices and strange behaviors, and if they're exposed to a reason to find something attractive or intriguing, they'll rationalize it until it becomes a part of them. In other words, not everything we do in our wacky civilization is based in evolutionary principle - is this guy insisting every subculture in the world and every strange cultural practice or minority group behavior requires an evolutionary basis to understand?

You are probably already familiar with the distinction between memes and genes, but if not: Memes, in their creators(Dawkins) view, are the cultural equivalent of genes. They are a function of human society, or rather human brains, and are in his view currently the only other replicator known to us. The other, of course, being genes.

In some way genes and memes can fight each other for dominance, but for the most part the genes are ultimately in control. I think it was another biologist, EO Wilson, who used the metaphor of a dog on one of the newish leashes which the owner can let out or reel in depending on what is going on in the environment. Sometimes the leash is long and the dog is far from the owner (i.e. the memes can "cause" genetically non adaptive behaviour). But the dog is still on a leash, rather than free, and at some point will be reeled in.

Not exactly an explanation for homosexuality, which is a very significant problem for evolutionary theory since it is so obviously catastrophically maladaptive from a selfish gene point of view. And the selfish gene point of view is the basis of probably 99% of contemporary evolutionary theories. The competitors have other even more serious shortcomings such as described below...

(01-15-2015 09:34 AM)Beyond Borders Wrote:  All that said, one possible evolutionary motive to homosexuality that has often occurred to me is that it could be a natural overpopulation pressure release valve of some sort. That's not to say I support it, but it would make sense. And would explain the high rate of gays in cities and in crowded places in Asia.

You seem to be suggesting something like "Group Selection" which has serious mathematical and other problems and is only applicable, or at least has the appearance of being applicable, for a tiny fraction of life where most members of a group are essentially clones of each other. Like bees and ants. Definitely can't work for humans since the game theory shows that cheaters will predominate. In your example a man, or woman, who somehow becomes "designated" as homosexual to help keep the tribes population down has the (genetic) incentive to cheat. Maybe play along and, I don't know, go to the gay pride parade, but actually have sex with the opposite sex on his/her own time. over time the cheaters genes will predominate and the gig is up.