arteteco @arteteco@qoto.org

One of the best #book I read in a long time: The Mating Mind, by Geoffrey Miller

George Miller is a professor of Evolutionary Psychology, and the main thesis in this book is that our astonishing mental capacities come (mostly) from sexual selection.

In order to prove that, Miller takes the reader in a trip around the history of the theory of evolution, especially of sexual selection of course, and I tell you: I've done multiple exams on Evolution, Miller is the one who really gave me a good idea of how, how much, when and what sexual selection is all about.

It's packed with juicy, easy to chew paragraphs like how we think the courting worked in the paleolithic, what are the current hypothesis about the origin of the mind, why Wallace was after all a creationist (he denied sexual selection and thought the soul was given to us by a god), and so on. And in some moments I laughed hard, the guy has a razor-sharp humor.

The case he makes lacks evidence here and there, by his own admission, but frankly I'm sold on this hypothesis now.

I totally recommend it, a beautiful read

#psychology #evolution #biology

By now I have read enough articles to say that: the most attractive #bmi
in males goes from 23 to 26 (which is technically even overweight), and it's not a normal distribution at all.

We also have difficulties understanding our own mating value, which is absurd from an evolutionary standpoint. Especially since we humans have more mutual choice than many other animals, one should have kind quite an accurate estimate of its own attractiveness to attract the best it can. Looks like it's not the case.

One thing I wonder without having an answer though si whether IQ is correlated to an error in the self-estimate of the mating value, and if so how much and in what direction.

I'm kinda screwed anyway (no pun intended), I may as well explore all the areas I'm failing in this sense

#beauty #evolution #psychology

A very interesting article I just read.
Did you know that social hymenoptera are pretty important for the yeast biodiversity too?
They host Saccharomyces and other yeasts in their intestine, and act as basic overwintering site, protecting the yeast genetic biodiversity and therefore our fermented food

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3421210/

#fungi #evolution #entomology #nature

Out of curiosity, I searched on youtube "theory of evolution". Out of the first 20 results, 4 were about trying to prove that evolution is a myth, and it never happened.

Then I tried in Italian, "Teoria dell'evoluzione". 9 results of the first 20 were about "debunking" the theory of evolution.

I'm not sure this is related to my personal feed, but I found it interesting. It's almost half of the results in Italian!

#evolution #Darwin