This kind of rationalizing doesn't sound really serious. Does that not imply that women deceit their partners and are thus genetically predisposed liars?
Also, if she has chosen a partner it means he (and his sperm) are better genetically. If anything, she should be avoiding others' (inferior) sperm.
It does imply that. I know a lot of guys who have gone through a period in their life not being able to sympathize with women after learning about this. They would question why even bothering marrying a woman if she is just going to be a cheating whore?
The second point you make is very interesting and I have the perfect rebuttal. Unfortunately I don't have the book with me right now but a quote from a review on Amazon will suffice:
"And on pages 217-218 [Matt Ridley] explains why women cuckold their mates: "This is because her husband is, almost by definition, usually not the best male there is-else how would he have ended up married to her?" She wants the parental care of her husband and some other man's superior-she thinks-genes."
The theory is that the woman would want the more hearty sperm, but also want the father who is more faithful and more able to provide. It's a sound evolutionary strategy.
How is it sound? Bearing the children of a male that is not a proven provider is more risky than bearing the children of a proven provider (the children will thus be more likely to be providers themselves). The sperm competition would be based solely on sperm motility which is a very poor indicator of evolutionary advantage.
It's not about competition at the sperm level, gene quality as a whole. An individual is attempting to maximize its own genes. So a woman mating with a more masculine man will give her offspring the advantage of having "alpha" genes. But alpha men are not usually strong providers as they have their pick of women and so they spread their genes widely and divide their resources (or withhold them altogether). Thus maintaining the solid provider as the adoptive parent makes up for this. Of course, a man (evolutionarily speaking) has no interest in raising another man's kids. So the woman has to be sneaky with the affair. If the deceit remains hidden, this setup is by far the best the woman can do.
As far as having kids who are themselves not good providers, an alpha man's strategy is usually one of spreading his genes far and wide. If you're desirable enough, that may be a winning strategy for you.
>Alpha Males are by definition strong providers, since they get preferential access to food
That doesn't follow. The male gets preferential access, but that doesn't mean he shares that access with his offspring. And even if he did, he would still have a larger than average number of offspring thus the amount each one gets may still be lower than the beta male's offerings to his own.
Of course in practice whether the alpha is the best provider is determined by how the community is organized. In a alpha-male-with-harem setup, the alpha is the best provider. In other arrangements this isn't always the case.
What would favor having a proven provider son? A faithful proven provider son will produce at most 6 or 7 grandchildren for his mom, an unfaithful cheat might produce an order of magnitude more.
Of course I'm being sarcastic. The person I responded to was spouting evo-pshyc nonsense. Evolution has no "goals" or "strategies". What possible explanation could you have for something like this arising? How would you falsify a theory of its existence?
That person spouting nonsense was me! These "intelligent" behaviors arise through random chance and the successful ones stick around. I'm not sure how one could doubt that somewhat complex behaviors could arise through evolution while at the same time accepting that, say, the eye could. It's the same exact process.
An evolutionary "strategy" is simply a behavior that an organism exhibits to enhance its survival. Don't get caught up in the anthropomorphic terminology, its just a convenience to aid understanding. Dawkins uses that exact phrasing in his books.
>An evolutionary "strategy" is simply a behavior that an organism exhibits to enhance its survival.
You're describing a rather complicated behavior (who's actual existence itself is controversial!) and describing how that came to be. That's just fantasy. There's no evidence that this happened, it's pure speculation. If the behavior even exists, it could have come about some totally other way.
>say, the eye could.
I accept that the eye exists and that it got there somehow. I'm not convinced that the arm chair speculation of how that might have happened is true. If we actually made one that would be stronger but still wouldn't conclusively prove that it happened that way.
>Dawkins uses that exact phrasing in his books.
Dawkins' books are also largely philosophical in nature, not scientific (which is why he gets blasted in the philosophical community, since his philosophy isn't even always sound and ignores tremendous bodies of work).
I swear no one knows a thing about science these days. People are so disconnected that they think "science" only happens in a sterile lab by guys in lab coats.
The behavior of a female mating with a more "alpha" male while at the same time deceiving her mate has been observed in a plethora of animal species. That this behavior exists is without question.
What Evolutionary Psychology does is provide an explanation for a behavior given what we know about evolution, biology, economics, game theory, etc. It is quite scientific. Many EP theories are very much testable, albeit usually impractical. Science is always a game of probabilities and finding the best explanation for an observation given known facts.
>Dawkins' books are also largely philosophical in nature, not scientific
His first (biology) book, The Selfish Gene, which established him as a leader in the field, is 100% science. An Ancestors Tale is also purely science.
>I swear no one knows a thing about science these days.
Funny, I was thinking the same thing.
>What Evolutionary Psychology does is provide an explanation for a behavior given what we know about evolution, biology, economics, game theory, etc.
It provides a guess on what could have happened based on those fields. To be science you need to be able to form theories and for an assertion to be a theory it must be falsifiable. An assertion to explain the modern woman's behavior toward mating in terms of evolution can not be falsified, so it doesn't qualify as a theory. Doesn't sound much like science to me.
As far as I know, you're in a pretty small minority with your claim that Evo Psych is science. A lot of people debate Psychology itself being science, but Evo Psych. Wow, may as well put homeopathy, voodoo and everything else in.
>His first (biology) book, The Selfish Gene, which established him as a leader in the field, is 100% science.
Nice. You imply that I know nothing about science yet you say a book that is largely speculating on what might have happened and why it might have happened is 100% science.
I'm sorry but you're really under- and mis-informed here. Evolutionary Psychology is a bit of a misnomer, it doesn't attempt to explain the mechanisms by which genes act on the mental to influence or create behaviors. It simply provides an explanation for the set of selective pressures and economic interactions that result in certain behaviors. It very much side-steps the question of psychology altogether. It is similar to the behavioral model of psychology in that it studies behaviors (and their likely genetic basis) rather than trying to divine mental states.
EP as a field is very much testable and falsifiable. Take the study that showed human women in economically depressed areas choose more masculine mates compared to more economically well-off areas. An EP theory would be that in an environment of scarcity and uncertainty, it is beneficial to mate with stronger males for the sake of protection and competition. Such an environment could be set up that controls for scarcity of food, level of testosterone in the males, etc. We could then measure the economic benefit of such a mate choice and the resultant improvement in selection fitness. The theory could be validated/refuted based on that. Of course, its applicability to humans would still be in question, but if animal models match the observed patterns in humans, that would be strong evidence in itself.
EP is based on a few assumptions, all of which have a preponderance of evidence in their favor. That genes influence behavior and that gene selection follows laws of economics.
I really don't understand most people's grief with EP. Perhaps you could explain it to me? Is it the fact that its theories aren't directly observable? Well, so is much of every scientific result. Evolution itself has been proven by the massive amounts of indirect evidence in its favor. Do you dislike the fact that EP removes some of our autonomy? Well, science has been slowly chipping away at that for decades. EP simply provides a framework to understand our behavior outside of the (dying) view of pure free-will.
>You imply that I know nothing about science yet you say a book that is largely speculating on what might have happened and why it might have happened is 100% science.
Please, explain to me what about The Selfish Gene is unscientific. If you honestly call the content of this book "speculating on what might have happened", then you either didn't read it or didn't understand a bit of it. The book provided a (mostly new at the time) look on a gene-centric view of selection and provided a framework that better explained the behaviors of various organisms that we see today. It is not speculation: it is informed, testable and falsifiable. Science is a framework for understanding the world; not studies and soundbites. It is a process of refining these frameworks in the face of new evidence and new ideas. E=MC^2 is much more than just the soundbite people have made it out to be; it was an entirely new look at the universe and how matter and energy are intimately connected. It's a shame that the vast majority of people only see it as a soundbite, and as a consequence think soundbites are the entirety of science.
Also, if she has chosen a partner it means he (and his sperm) are better genetically. If anything, she should be avoiding others' (inferior) sperm.