From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Sep 10 1999 - 16:13:13 MDT
k_aegis@mindspring.com wrote:
>
> Eliezer writes:
> >I'd be slightly surprised to find that homosexual beauty standards
> >evolve. Right?
>
> I attended a fascinating panel discussion in June on the topic of the development of body image among gay men and in male photography. Based on the insightful commentary from the panel, comprised of photographers, intellectuals, and psychologists, I can say that, yes, homosexual beauty standards evolve. And not for the same reasons that heterosexual beauty standards evolve. They are simultaneously exploring paths of machismo and androgyny in ways that only tangentially show up in mainstream culture, usually in the realm of fashion such as Calvin Klein ads.
Not *cultural* evolution. Who cares about cultural evolution? You can
do anything you want with culture; it's all software.
Let me rephrase: I'd be surprised to find non-cultural innate
preferences for homosexual beauty, unless it was a spandrel (= side
effect of something that evolved for a different purpose) - probably the
result of retargeting the heterosexual preferences. I'd be *very*
surprised to find innate preferences that had evolved directly. What's
the selection pressure? To the extent same-sex preferences would evolve
at all, you'd expect them to evolve out of existence.
--
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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