On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:17:31 +0000 (UTC), 
Kevin Aylward  wrote:
> Larry Moran wrote:
>> On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 04:39:36 +0000 (UTC),

[snip]

>> Such a difference is absolutely essential for any adaptionist
>> just-so story. Does anyone have any data to suggest that facial beauty
>> correlates with evolutionary fitness either now or in the past?
> 
> The argument in my other post shows that there is no requirement for
> there to an evolutionary fitness requirement for selection based on
> averages. The human is a general purpose computing unit. In general,
> selecting traits to copy thoses that are already maximised, will
> maximise those traits, obviously. Evolution is about maximizing traits,
> so general techniques have evolved that ensure humans preferentially
> select what ever happens to be the most numerous traits. Its a default
> algorithm, that usually works. The most numerous traits of a gaussian
> distributed random generation of traits, are those that are at the mean.
> Therefore that is what we copy. Evolution does not demand that the
> random generation of traits have any advantage at all. If the traits are
> neutral fitness wise, whatever just happens to be generated the most,
> will be the ones that will get further copied. Note that each facial
> trait (sizes) is individually being selected for, very few have all of
> the mean traits of a population, which, compared to film stares, the
> majority of the population is ugly:-)

This isn't an answer. It's gibberish. We already have enough kooks
on sci.bio.evolution - we don't need any more, thank-you very much.



Larry Moran
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