From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Sep 27 1999 - 18:47:18 MDT
Eric Watt Forste wrote:
>
> Robin Hanson apparently wrote:
> > I have hope that evolutionary psychology is onto some insights into
> > why we have evolved to be the sort of creatures who like to do art.
> > Hopefully these insights will help explain many of these puzzling
> > details.
>
> It has long been my opinion that human artistic behavior is primarily
> a product of sexual selection, not natural selection. People who
> can sing, paint, draw, dance, etc. in a very pleasing way give
> evidence of having sufficient wealth (in the form of leisure time)
> to be attractive mates.
I've also come to the same conclusion, from a completely different
starting point - I observe that in most/many/all cases where there's a
perception of "beauty", it seems to be involved in attracting mates -
poetry (typical lovesick behavior, I hear), music (rock bands and
groupies), even humor (top response on "What do you want in a husband?"
questionaires: "A sense of humor"), and of course the obvious case of
the "beauty" of a female/male form. In my opinion, most of the
"mysterious" beauty - the beauty that people claim mere computer
programs will never see; i.e., poetry, music, and humor - is the result
and insignia of sexual selection.
On the other hand, I know of at least one case where the flow of
causality is reversed - flowers may be used to woo the fair, but flowers
are (started out as being?) beautiful because they indicate healthy
foraging grounds. So it's by no means certain.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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