Everything we do is biased, and if you wanted to get technical, then the reasons I am no longer friends with people are also clearly biased, however, they have nothing to do with my morality. I do not think the people “wronged” me. I was not ending the frienships to pay them back or to do anything really. I simply…got bored.

I think you’re being a bit too general with morality, though I might just be misinterpreting what you wrote—keep that in mind. It’s only morality if you in a sense, are imposing your ideas on someone else, i.e. ending a friendship because of your own standards of what is “acceptable” of other people. Meaning they are doing something that offends your ideas of right and wrong. Nobody offended me, and they never went “against my morals”. I just decided at the time that friendships in general were not something I was interested in pursuing any longer.

However, since morality is a code of concepts to guide one’s actions, on what criteria would you burn a bridge or sever a tie? You had a criteria, and that my friend, IS a morality.

As far as I’m concerned however, morality has little to do with it; I consider it to be hypocritical to even pretend that there is such a thing, on ANY level. Even my own personal beliefs rarely are ever the cause of the severing of friendship. And I’ve severed quite a few.

I think that we limit ourselves, even by simply judging others on the basis of what we personally believe is right and just. Everyone has their reasons, and as separate people we can’t always know them. I think that often that leads people to make the wrong conclusions and consequently the wrong choices (not that I’m saying you made the wrong decision, as I’m not there and I don’t know the situation to begin with…).

But then again I’m on the verge of being a complete nihilist as far as life is concerned. What would I know.

You can have fun with European women, easier to talk to, get along with, more romantic, enjoy having fun with out every little thing being a headache and they do not seem to have an agenda like American women.

They just do not seem to have the entitlement agenda plus they are far hotter and even after having kids get their body back and do not turn into miserable slobs like the modern american women.

I do not date modern american women and am more than happy with my Belgium bride and does not have the attitude american women seem to have.

i would never ever marry a modern american women as they give up to easy when things don’t go there way and then take you to the cleaners.

Seriously men should not marry a modern western women. Google “Modern western women” and you will see what i mean.

BTW: This post is directed at the MEN here. I stopped interacting with American and Western Eurpoean women a long time ago, and I’ve been oh so happy ever since.

I appreciate your candor and i agree that, now more than ever, Natural Selection is more complicated than just a matter of physical traits, in a sense. I hesitate to say that for sure only because the definition of Natural Selection has had many sub-definitions and qualifiers etc, such as the idea of Social Darwinism. I can’t say that I REALLY understand the concept of Natural Selection to the extent that I am absolutely certain of anything.

As per the issue of rape: I think we are coming at it from a couple different perspectives. I’m thinking that it is more of an issue of genetic evolution vs. Natural Selection (NS) in the sense of an active “selection.” And, I’ve been going over this all afternoon and still can’t really articulate exactly what the difference is; but here goes… bear with me.

I think that rape can help explain how the genetic base is passed on and adapted over time. Physiologically. But, rape is not about choice per se. Of course we would assume that the perpetrator, usually male, has chosen his victim for any number of reasons. (As a side note, in trying to do some more research on the link between rape and NS i came across some articles that hypothesized that the act of rape itself is biologically determined due to evolution. However, that’s another very interesting topic that i don’t necessarily want to get into at the present moment.) Anyway, in many cases in nature, especially the animal kingdom, it is the female who picks a mate since there are generally more males to a species. This would also explain why male birds, for example, are much more colorful than females. They need to look their best to be able to pass on their genes. I would say that in this case most procreation is consensual. Even in non-consensual cases like rape, we don’t really understand what is motivating the rapist yet. It could be any number of either sociological, psychological, and/or physiological reasons. If the rapist were picking a target because they wanted to procreate with a worthy specimen to pass on their genetic material, then that would make this discussion easier. But, based on the studying I have done on the subject of deviant psychology, this is not usually the case. So I guess I’m trying to illustrate that NS also relies on active choices and not just survival of the fittest genealogically. Is this at all coherent?

I guess that you could also be thinking about rape in terms of the question of why there are still ugly people in which case, of course. But that seems a bit obvious to be debated…

Another example is what I mentioned before, in a culture where most people can “fake” the beauty standards, it changes the game from a biological standpoint. True, as kristin pointed out, that means the standards are in place, however, the ability to fake them, means that an individual’s DNA can be selected for, despite not having the beauty traits to begin with (like non-poisonous frogs that have nearly identical markings as those of poisonous ones).

(along those lines, I think that “beer-goggles” are actually an evolutionary advantage, in that they encourage mating with less inhibition/standards, etc, thereby generating more unique genetic combinations that can be “tested”)

As far as chaos and randomness go, those are vital parts of the theory of natural selection, without them, in fact, the theory doesn’t work.

The reason why organisms change over time is because every single individual has a handful of genes that are “broken”, there are so many genes that, because of sheer chance, some must have “problems”.

(a note: what I mean by “broken” and “problems” is that in the genetic recombination and replication process, some do not simply match the combination or either of the parents. They go haywire and produce something unique)

These “imperfections” are mutations. Most of the time, the mutations are imperceptible when viewing the organsim, the fingernails may be imperceptibly thicker, fingers imperceptibly longer, etc.

Since every generation is a recombination of DNA, everyone’s mutations, as well as their non-mutations, recombine. Most, I’d wager, simply disappear in a generation or two, the gaps filled in by the mate’s DNA.

However, since you’re dealing with such massive numbers of individuals over massive amounts of time, certain traits gain momentum. When they gain enough momentum to possibly make a difference, then the new traits become “tested” by the environment, society, etc where they are then selected for or against.

And this selection process is also governed by chaos and randomness, which individuals with which traits in which culture in which environment are matters of chance. Those that are an advantage are selected for, those that are not an advantage may have no effect (ie, the non-functioning appendix), and those that are a disadvantage may die without mating.

At every step of the way there is chaos.

The nature of chaos, though is not egalitarian, it’s a bell curve which contains a wide variety of complexity, weight, importance, etc.

In a chaotic system, given enough time, natural selection is almost inevitable.

A really great book to check out is Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body

http://www.amazon.com/Mutants-Genetic-Variety-Human-Body/dp/0142004820/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212080961&sr=1-1

It’s more about how genetics work than evolution, but when you look at how genetics work, variation and evolution become obvious inevitabilities.

I see what you’re saying and the points you bring do bring a whole lot of variability into the mix I hadn’t considered specifically, but knew had to be there. I think what synopsizes the difference in both our points of view in regards to science I guess is that you seem to favor a horizontalized, even plain of variables whereby all variables tend to have equal weight, and the outcome of reality is a big melting pot.

I don’t view it this way. In fact, I’d argue that reality isn’t structured this way at all since it is impossible for every variable to have equal weight, some are more important than others, even still, others are FAR more important causally. This means that causality of variables is an upside-down pyramid, structured into a heirarchy of variables in which it is possible to have OVERRIDING variables, and fewer and fewer as one moves down the upside-down pyramid toward the pinnacle . Not to say that the point at the bottom consists of one variable, not at all, just progressively fewer and I am simply disagreeing with what seems to be your horizontal ‘egalitarian’ (for lack of a better term) view of causality.

The reason for my view? You seem to tend to bring up ALL variables as if they were ALL relevant in the same way, like a melting pot. Also, as I think Kristin was alluding to in an earlier response, it seems rather than working like a scientist, from variables to controls, you are working from controls to variables, ending up with scattered nothingness, or CHAOS. Which is interesting, perhaps that’s where we collide, I don’t tend to lean toward the belief that randomness or chaos even exists.

Far from wanting this to go too far off the beaten path though, I am arguing that biological beauty very possibly exists. That’s all, and is A factor, a BIG one in my opinion, however, its measure is not what I’m arguing.