Can anyone explain the appeal of Pete Doherty? Looks like shit, attracts women like flies.

BTW, I was on the Tube the other day and saw an American model, probably here for London Fashion Week (couldn't be anything else - about 6' tall, legs like pipecleaners, can't have weighed more than 100 pounds) chatting with her boyf - a total sleazeball, with arms covered in tattoos and horrible plugs in his earlobes. Just what is it about chicks and 'bad boys'?

I like the lizards. I had been looking off and on for a case of cyclical evolution, and while this is kind of a tight loop to qualify as 'evolution' I still like it very much.

It seems to me that among humans the cycle goes the other direction. Bored housewives mess around with pretty boys, barbarians kick the pretty boys asses and take the women, family values guys band together to fight off the barbarians.

No badasses among those Vikings, no sir. The endless cycles of violence, honor killings, and taking slaves for concubines are signs of stability and male nurturing.

Here's just a single data point for interpretation. Lt Audie Murphy was extremely mild-mannered and appeared boy-like but killed more Germans personally in WWII than any other soldier. He won the Medal of Honor. Here is his citation:

http://www.audiemurphy.com/award1.htm

Maybe women can see the craft and seriousness behind some handsome faces.

Isn't it likely that girls like pretty boys for the same reason that boys like pretty girls, that prettiness is largely a proxy for parasite/disease resistance?

BTW, I was on the Tube the other day and saw an American model, probably here for London Fashion Week (couldn't be anything else - about 6' tall, legs like pipecleaners, can't have weighed more than 100 pounds) chatting with her boyf - a total sleazeball, with arms covered in tattoos and horrible plugs in his earlobes. Just what is it about chicks and 'bad boys'?

The boyfriend might have significant money. He certainly doesn't sound like a high-powered executive type but might be living off Grandad's huge trust fund.

Besides, it's not as if the woman sounds like a prime catch, not enough cushion for the pushin'. Except maybe for men who enjoy lying on piles of wire coat hangers.

The attraction is more likely to be that he is supplying her with drugs.

In human models of attractiveness, it seems necessary to now build in the chemically induced aberrations as well as the cultural influences. Like, wire coat hangers are considered to be 'attractive' even though they're not much fun to have sex with and would seem bad choices to procreate with.

Besides, it's not as if the woman sounds like a prime catch, not enough cushion for the pushin'. Except maybe for men who enjoy lying on piles of wire coat hangers.

sir,

truly, is there such a need for vulgarity to accent the thrust of your argument?

sincerely,
c.v. snicker

It's simply silly to group ugly musicians with pretty boys. The major sexual draw for women regarding musicians is clearly their musician status, not their looks.

Chet, not to put too fine a point on it, fat chicks look like shit, but they're tight.

Al smitty -- quit being retarded and re-read the post. I was not arguing existence vs. non-existence of certain types in certain areas. That's for schoolchildren. What takes minimal effort is to figure out the rank-ordering of the frequency of types across areas. The Viking period of Scandinavian history lasted, what, 200-300 years? Compare that to how long there's been the local version of that in Western Africa.

Civilization increases the raw number of people killed, but it decreases the frequency since populations grow huge.

Just to be clear, look for key words like "more likely," "higher levels," etc. Those are comparatives.

Chet, not to put too fine a point on it, fat chicks look like shit, but they're tight.

Always suspected you groped more than just sand.

In human models of attractiveness, it seems necessary to now build in the chemically induced aberrations as well as the cultural influences. Like, wire coat hangers are considered to be 'attractive' even though they're not much fun to have sex with and would seem bad choices to procreate with.

It's not straight men that consider skinny and masculinized women beautiful, but rather gay fashion designers.

interesting article!

Not me, Henri.

Point taken, Hugh. Logic should dictate it's driven by the appearance of reproductive fitness. Well, this woman gave birth 8 months before winning the 400 m hurdles at the World Championships in Tokyo last month, after having got pregnant exactly when she wanted to:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,2...37092- 2,00.html

I'd have to figure her reproductive fitness is pretty high, but I doubt many men would consider her the ideal of feminine beauty - big, lean, mean and muscular, and with a face you could crack rocks on. Probably her only saving grace would be an obvious lack of distinction in math and science. In fact she's distinctly unpopular with her male countrymen, despite being one of the most successful female athletes ever produced by a sport-obsessed country. Sample of one, but the big lean muscular athletic type seems not to be widely regarded as 'feminine'.

And before Aggers rips me head off, I note that I'm a mile off topic, so as you were - back to the lizards.

This went to an earlier post (height of pretty boys), but I guess no one is reading that anymore.

I think "women like tall men" is partially a myth. Most women like men taller than them (but an average man IS taller than an average woman). Only a minority of women have really an obsession with male height. This means that on average, the 'best fitness' (if we look at sexual selection alone) would be just a little bit over average height guys. The same goes for body structure: only a few women like really muscular men, most prefer somehow fit and only moderately muscular men.

I believe this height-issue is partly related to US coulture (there was an article about your height obsession...): for instance in Finland succesfull politicians (and businessmen) vary greatly in height and there seems to be no clear trend. If you go to a night club there will be no visible difference between success of (say) a 5'9'' and 6'4'' guys. Overwhelmingly greatest factors in picking up women are good (facial) looks and self-confidence.

Here is a canadian discussion about optimal male height. It seems that females would prefer 5'11-6'. And that height is not TALL, only a little bit over average. There is a similar discussion in Finnish, and the preferences often ranged "I prefer 170-180 cm men", "I like taller, 180-190 cm men", "I want to wear high heels and I am 170 cm" and the rough conclusion would be around 180 or 181 cm (which is only slightly above the Finnish average).

I don't know if there are actually any good studies done in this topic (height and sexual selection) at all. Questionnaire is not good enough - people say that they prefer intelligent and nice partners (which is not actually true if you look at the actual choises). People don't really seem to know what they want: you have to look the actual choises in a night-club or some dating event which would reflect more peoples own preferences rather than coulturally traditional "dark and tall" answers.

Only other kind of study (which counted the childlesness levels) I have seen is the one from Poland (Pawlowsky et al.) - which is a bit vague for several reasons (and Polish women I know actually preferred masculin and ugly men to good-looking men, hardly an universal trend). If they would make a height study in India (or Yanomamo, whose unokai show now height trend) they would not probably get any results backing the height hypothesis. Many of the studies also make clusters of "short" and "tall" men; of course we should have to compare the actual heights and not artificial clusters.

Actually, if you compare humans to othe great apes (and earlier hominoids), you can clearly see the declining sexual dimorfism. Most human cultures actually have polygynous marriages, so if the height would have been a great selective factor we would expect a bigger difference in the sizes of women and men, and smaller variation in male height. If selection would have worked in physical combat over females, the short and really tall would have had a disadvantage. We would expect a preference for muscular males (which would correlate more with fighting success than height which is actually harmfull because higher balance point etc): and this is not true as we know. Humans are pathetically skinny and unathletic; if you have ever compaired an ape arm and your own, you would be convinced by this as well.

One reason why most Hollywood actors are mid sized could be that mid sized people in general might be better looking. The body proportions and the face would be most average (and most attractive) in roughly mid sized males: I think it is quite hard to find an attractive basketball player compaired to say, football or even ice hockey.

David B, I don't get the Pete Doherty thing either. He was with supermodel Kate Moss for awhile. Chicks must be blind. http://dlisted.com/taxonomy/term/40

iematta -- It depends on where you are. David Buss did a huge study of mating preferences around the world, and I think Finnish and Zulu females cared the least about good looks when selecting a male. So, they might be less obsessive about physical features in general, including height.

I don't think David B and Peter understand the handicap principle.

iemaatta: we should be talking about males in dating age and 180-181 cm is not slightly above the Finnish average for them, it's rather the average Finnish height. See page 135 of

http://www.ktl.fi/attachments/su...a_b/ 2004b13.pdf

Their age group for 25-34-year-olds should be the closest. This is self-reported height, though, but my experience as being 185 cm is definitely that of a slightly above average guy, not a tall guy.

But if you listen to women's self-reported mate preferences, you'll die a virgin...

Human Flesh: YEAH! I feel like I'm back in school listening to the nerds wondering why the guy who drinks, is in trouble with the authorities and gets bad grades is so much cooler than the nice guy with a perfect grade in behaviour. A rock star has already proven that he's no loser, so every bit of "loserish" behaviour like drug use is actually just adding his attractiveness - he doesn't have to care, because he's such a winner.

Also, there's the coolness factor that has nothing to do with sex or gender: nobody likes a saint, except at a distance (it's best if they're dead). Everybody has vices and everybody feels guilty of them. A person who has (or displays) fewer vices makes the other feel inferior and nobody likes feeling inferior. You're more comfortable around people when you're the one in position to judge. A rock star with no serious vices would be DEAD socially, because he'd usually make people feel completely inferior in his company. A rock star with a wild, unstable life represents the ultimate coolness, because he's displaying the most valued talent of all (among young people) and he's still giving the opportunity for anyone to feel superior to him. This works especially well with women, because they're more judgemental and more afraid of being judged than men and for the obvious evolutionary reasons they wish to believe that they're the ones bringing responsibility to the relationship (they'll walk away the second they feel a guy is more conscientious than they are).

Jaakkeli, actually you sent counter evidence against the height's effect on marital status. Average height of married is 179 cm (of all age groups), 179 cm for unmarried/single, 177 cm for divorced and 177 cm for widowed.

Agnostic, if it depends on where you are, then you cannot really talk about an universal can you? And I don't think Finnish women wouldn't care about the looks of their potential partner, actually many of them are superficial, compaired to East European women (but this kind of evaluation is not worth much). But as I said the questionnaires Buss is using have some problems...

I do agree that most males are turned on by smaller females (than themselves) and most females by larger males (than themselves), but this has something to do with a rough estimation of femininity/masculinity. The rest about (american) height obsession is mostly coultural.

And remember, even the female 'universal' waist-hip ratio turned out to be not so universal...

jaakkeli - Maybe that works where you are, but it sure as hell doesn't where I am. Here the guy who drinks, is in trouble with the authorities and gets bad grades is almost universally regarded as a total dickhead and a loser and is avoided like poison. Even being rich won't help him much.

Here the guy who drinks, is in trouble with the authorities and gets bad grades is almost universally regarded as a total dickhead and a loser and is avoided like poison.

I doubt that, unless he actually IS a loser. (The only thing that might be different elsewhere is the drinking part... that changes when people mature, but for underage guys being an absolutist without some damn cool reason means volunteering for complete loser and/or religious fruitcake status unless you have godlike social skills.) Remember, the point is to have something that gives you status (like rockstardom); THEN loserish behaviour becomes just "peacocking". There are also real, actual losers, those who do the stuff without the status.

Those grades are a good example. If you know someone, you already have a pretty good idea of how smart they are, so you can predict the kind of grades they should be getting with a given amount of studying, sucking up to the teachers, attendance and so on. Thus, the main thing those grades actually tell you is how much time someone invests on studying (and not being social, having fun or doing something actually useful), how approval-seeking they are, how confident and daring they are (school is terminally boring to everyone, but not everyone has the guts to skip class or have fun in class and face bad grades) and so on. Or, alternatively, how conscientious someone is, but the trouble with conscientiousness is that even those people who consider it good will feel inadequate if they're forced to "play" with someone more conscientious while the company of a not very conscientious person will make them feel good about themselves. Conscientiousness is just lethal to coolness.

(This of course fails at the extremes, ie. for those people who are too dumb to get anything except the worst grades and for those who automatically get the best grades even if they don't study.)

jaakkeli - "Conscientiousness is just lethal to coolness."

With due respect, no, not here it isn't. I wouldn't presume to dispute the relavance of your observations to Europe, but here the conscientious, high achieving student is regarded as cool, clever and someone desirable to be with, emulate and learn from. High academic achievers, classical musicians and sportsmen who make it big internationally are regarded as having far more status; rock stars are kind of a yucky curiosity not to be taken too seriously. Everyone knows what happens to rock stars - they piss off everyone they know, publically humiliate themselves and their families, and die young and friendless - only barbarians or people who are corrupted by barbarians behave like that.

Hard to imagine, I know, but that's the way it is, except for a small Westernised fringe who are a really isolated subculture, and laughably wimpish about it by Western standards.

Sandgroper - you say "no, not here it isn't." Where are you?

Sandgroper, it's not hard to imagine, if the math works out right. It's always simply a question of what's the most likely case given the limited information about a person. In Finland, it's easy to get any level of education you want, as long as you're not stupid; the state forces you to stay in school until certain age and will support studies financially for a long time. A few generations ago being able to continue schooling to the next level was always a privilege and education was actually a guarantee of future status; today, the system fights hard to keep you at school and a lot of degrees are almost useless at the job market. A construction worker who finished education as a teenager can end up making a lot more money during his life than the guy who sponged off the state to study liberal arts for an extra decade. Does education mean something where you live?

Having good grades in everything when you're a teenager usually means that you're either completely clueless about what you actually want to do in life (and hence feel that you have to study it all to keep your options open) or that you're incredibly insecure and approval-seeking AND socially clueless (terribly afraid of what other people would think of you and mistakenly believing that more than a few (completely uncool) people think less of people with bad grades). It isn't predicting great future success, it's predicting future mediocrity or even loserdom (even very talented people will end up working at crappy jobs if they don't have a clue on what they want to focus on and end up getting a PhD in philosophy). The grades mean absolutely nothing in later life.

Popular music doesn't get you status if you're in a country where teenagers don't have much money to spend on entertainment.

jaakkeli - Yes, education here means everything, and there is intense competition to get into the best schools and then into the best universities. Then there is intense competition to get into the preferred faculties. Medicine, engineering and science are regarded as much more prestigious than arts. I have heard 15 year olds say things like "I am going to choose the science stream because only the less well performing students study arts", not "I am going to choose science because I like it and I am good at it." I think that is something undesirable, people need talent and vocation to be good at what they do, not just pieces of paper obtained by years of self-imposed slavery.

And sorry, yes, your last statement is also true - in the general case there is not a lot of money available for entertainment. Education is regarded as a worthwhile investment, entertainment is just a waste of time and money that should be spent on something with a high return.

jaakkeli - Serial posting is regretted, but to give my own daughter as an example - at the age of 4 she had to sit alone before an interview board of adult teachers to determine whether she would be permitted to enrol in our preferred primary school. My wife and I were not permitted even to be in the same building, we had to wait outside.

I was watching through the window from some distance outside - she was seated on a small stool in front of this board of 6 or 7 very stern looking adults who took turns to fire questions at her. No one smiled. No allowance was made for age except (as we know from what she told us later about the questions they asked her) obviously the intellectual level of the questions. It's a tough and unrelenting system.

Sandgroper, I would also be very curious to know where you live...

In the future, of course :)

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/ 200...hp#commentsArea

Sandgroper, remember that handicap principle: spending money on "useless" flashy stuff is the most reliable way to display your wealth without actually directly advertising it, so it is not without returns - the return is status. Even kids find these signals obvious and kids are particularily cruel about them. In Western countries, kids can easily end up bullied and isolated, if they show up at school in cheap, unfashionable clothes and are unable to participate in the latest expensive fads. A few decades from now, as your wealth builds, you'll also end up locked in the race to own pointless expensive items. (Although technology may transform the music industry a lot - I remember how owning a Metallica CD when most people didn't have CD players was super cool since the other kids had to listen to crappy tape copies or beg the guy with the CD for a better copy, but I doubt spending money on CDs ups your status much in the MP3 era.)

Also, as the wealth of a country increases, it can afford to expand the school system, until you're eventually saturated at the point where almost everyone can afford any level of education they want and a lot of people are coerced to stay in school longer than they want to. The prestige in a simple degree will drop like a stone as this happens. Large countries will end up having a few elite schools which do transfer some actual prestige to graduates (ie. you can only get in if your family is wealthy or if you're actually good), but the vast majority won't be getting in them. For young kids, school choice by parents will be much less about the prestige or the kind of education you get from the school (since it's more or less the same everywhere) and much more about finding the least dangerous school (ie. avoiding students of certain ethnicities, Finnish parents only have to do this in the Helsinki area, but it's a growing issue).

What Sandgroper says is consistent with what I saw in Taiwan in 1983. (I would bet even more so in Singapore). The few locals I ran into who seemed countercultural in some sense looked like they had given up their chance of reaching the Taiwan middle class, and the Taiwan working class still had a pretty hard lot. A few who expected to make it to the US were very mildly countercultural.

jaakkeli, very sharp analysis of how social status works for young people in western societies!

John - still the case in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Chinese community in Malaysia. Chinese students are a stand-out group of high achievers in Australia, and there is no evidence yet of a degradation of the value of education emerging in Mainland China.

Given the current situation in China it would take a very long time to saturate the system. I doubt they will ever get to that point.

As a non-Chinese I see good and bad in it - for the kids who can't compete successfully, the system is a meat grinder. I'm one of the lucky parents with a kid who has handled it without difficulty so far. I see some of my friends in tears.

since we're off on a complete tangent:

flashy by itself usually isn't effective. it has to look effortless like you have good sense but don't care, otherwise its seen as a desperate or transparent attempt to manipulate

jaakkeli - "Conscientiousness is just lethal to coolness."

Sandgroper: "With due respect, no, not here it isn't. I wouldn't presume to dispute the relavance of your observations to Europe, but here the conscientious, high achieving student is regarded as cool, clever and someone desirable to be with, emulate and learn from. High academic achievers, classical musicians and sportsmen who make it big internationally are regarded as having far more status; rock stars are kind of a yucky curiosity not to be taken too seriously."

Yes Sandgroper, this is true. And for a blog that purports to acknowledge the importance of intelligence and self-discipline in human evolution (nobody likes the word 'progress' anymore), more than a few commenters prefer to ignore that it is those who are self-disciplined in developing their minds and capabilities, who achieve anything worthwhile and create the world in which we live. The party-animals and self-destructers may contribute to the extent they can control their urges and provide entertainment for their neighbors. If they fail to control their lower urges (or even to want to control said urges) they just become a cross the more conscientious much bear.
A rich society can absorb/support a number of them, but they are a black hole for a declining culture. It is true that a few faults can create interesting tension and contrast in an otherwise productive person, but a crap-load of faults is just crap. Any attraction is pure derangement.

Charlotte:

"nobody likes the word 'progress' anymore"

Are you critical? Would you prefer "progress" to other words connoting change?

I believe the reason that "progress" has lost favor is simply that it connotes change to which its user is favorably disposed and thereby introduces a concept of favored changes into an attempt at, ideally, value-free, scientific discussion.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the word; most (or at least very many) would find little on which to differ in so describing many changes. But, in considering evolutionary change, we have no guide for making such evaluations other than that of apparent success (provisional though that may be).

If the foregoing were not reason enough, there is the added (though only partially deserved) onus with which the word has been saddled in association with certain political groups and ideas. Successively, terms such as "liberal," "progressive," "democratic," "humanist," etc., have been so misused to disguise policies and programs nearly diametrically opposite original meaning that they serve equally well as epithets--at least for those opposed.

The party-animals and self-destructers may contribute to the extent they can control their urges

Bah. Deep down everybody is a creative genius - those who appear boring are just controlling their urges. "Creative" people are mostly just the ones with low self-control.

You're, BTW, providing a fine example of why conscientiousness isn't cool with that supreme sense of superiority of yours. The only thing worse for coolness than having a trait that makes others feel bad about themselves (eg. superior conscientiousness) is feeling superior because of it. If you wish to be cool & conscientious, you have to display some other vices (which conscientious people rarely do, because conscientiousness tends to go hand in hand with the bizarre belief that people will like you less for having vices) or carefully avoid giving the impression that you feel superior to others (one reason why school is traumatic for conscientious people is that it shows so obviously).

This is the first plausible explanation I've seen for the existence of men who own like ten pairs of shoes.

"Creative" people are mostly just the ones with low self-control."

I don't know--who are you talking about exactly? Bjork? she's pretty creative, but I'm not up to the minute on that sort of thing.
Perhaps you and I bow to different icons. When I think creative, I think of Michelangelo on his back at the age of 80 something painting the Sistine Chapel. or Bach or Mozart. Camille Claudel. Anything of a high order takes discipline, dedication, at least in that particular discipline. If they can do it while drunk, lucky for them.

"Charlotte:

"nobody likes the word 'progress' anymore"

Are you critical? Would you prefer "progress" to other words connoting change?

I believe the reason that "progress" has lost favor is simply that it connotes change to which its user is favorably disposed and thereby introduces a concept of favored changes into an attempt at, ideally, value-free, scientific discussion."

sorry Gene--the word progress is perfectly fine with me, I was not being critical of it at all. In the context of gnxp, "evolution" seems more readily understood for what I wanted to say. "Pro" means forward or in favor of, I think. And "gress" means movement. Going back to the etymology of a word can do a lot to retrieve respect for it.