[General Battuta]

You think that speculative science is something you can link to in a conversation and expect the other to concede? What do you know about science?

He's just moving the goalposts. He doesn't understand that science in peer reviewed journals has been rigorously vetted, so he calls it speculative science so he can avoid giving up. Nor does he understand the process by which scientific inferences are reached.

Just another garden variety crank. We're done here.

[Mikes]

The verifiable amount of children married women have that come from sexual partners from outside that marriage is pretty conclusive proof that "selection" does not necessarily end with the selection of a partner.
Unless husband and wife stopped having sex alltogether, the sperm of the husband will indeed have to compete with the sperm of the lover(s), which means the selection of the father does happen inside the vagina.

It means no such thing.

No evidence at all huh?

If that's the kind of evidence, it's zilch. Nada.
 

Sadly if this is what you believe then you not only have misconceptions about porn and sex, but also about science.

You think that speculative science is something you can link to in a conversation and expect the other to concede? What do you know about science?

A mere refusal to face verifiable facts does not make an argument.

Sorry Luis, but we can't continue a discussion on the basis of "lalala i can't hear you".

P.S. Is it possible to get this thread back on track? It was actually quite interesting before it got derailled by a continuous retreat into more and more flawed arguments that leaves the original topic a thing of distant memory.

[General Battuta]

captain i'm detecting some turbulence in steps 1 2 3 4 and the other steps

[newman]

captain i'm detecting some turbulence in steps 1 2 3 4 and the other steps

All hands, abandon topic. This is not a drill.

[Luis Dias]

Ok, let's see:

# Cordero, C., and W. G. Eberhard. “Sexual Conflict and Female Choice.” Evolution. Theoretical and empirical treatments of possible male–female conflict need reexamination because of flawed calculations of costs to females.

What this has to do with homo sapiens post-coital selection "empirical evidence"? Zero.

# Darlington, M. B., D. W. Tallamy, and B. E. Powell. “Copulatory Courtship Signals Male Genetic Quality in Cucumber Beetles.” More energetic copulatory courtship in a beetle induces the female to relax the walls of her reproductive tract and allow the male to deposit a spermatophore; male offspring of especially stimulating males are better stimulators.

What this has to do with homo sapiens post-coital selection "empirical evidence"? Zero.

# Eberhard, W. G. Sexual Selection and Animal Genitalia. Cambridge, Mass., 1985. Proposes that male genitalia evolve rapidly and divergently due to sexual selection by cryptic female choice and critically evaluates this and other hypotheses.

Finally. Can't find it, only third parties discussing it. It's basically an informed guess. Circumstancial evidence. I could be very rude and state that they are probably seeing what they want to see. Their rethoric seems more potent than the evidence. Good stuff.

# Eberhard, W. G. “Evidence for Widespread Courtship during Copulation in 131 Species of Insects and Spiders, and Implications for Cryptic Female Choice.” Evolution 48 (1994): 711–733. Apparent male courtship behavior occurred during copulation in 81 percent of 131 species of insects and spiders, suggesting that cryptic female choice is common.
# Eberhard, W. G. Female Control: Sexual Selection by Cryptic Female Choice. Princeton, 1996. A summary of arguments and data indicating that cryptic female choice may be a major evolutionary phenomenon.
# Eberhard, W. G. “Female Roles in Sperm Competition.” In Sperm Competition and Sexual Selection, edited by T. Birkhead and A. P. Moller, pp. 91–116. New York, 1998. Summarizes arguments regarding cryptic female choice and discusses its possible relationships with male–female conflict.
# Edvardsson, M., and G. Arnqvist. “Copulatory Courtship and Cryptic Female Choice in Red Flour Beetles Tribolium castaneum.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 267 (2000): 559–563. Experimental manipulations showed that female perception of the rate of male copulatory courtship behavior in a beetle affected the male's fertilization success when the female mated with two different males.

Dr Eberhard seems quite the specialist. The beetles paper's data is all over the place, and then they get a p value and declare victory. Figures.

The first paper is seemingly (I won't obviously review it) good evidence that courtship is important to fertilization. One should not read any more than that.

# Otronen, M., and M. Siva-Jothy. “The Effect of Postcopulatory Male Behaviour on Ejaculate Distribution within the Female Sperm Storage Organs of the Fly Dryomyza anilis (Diptera: Dryomyzidae).” Behavioral Ecological Sociobiology 29 (1991): 33–37. More postcopulatory genitalic tapping by the male increases the likelihood that his sperm will be used to fertilize the eggs that the female is about to lay.

Not seemingly relevant.

# Thornhill, R. “Cryptic Female Choice and Its Implications in the Scorpionfly Harpobittacus nigriceps.” 122 (1983): 765–788. Females laid more eggs immediately following copulations with larger males; also coined the term cryptic female choice.

Scorpionflies.... ok. More p values.

# Ward, P. “Cryptic Female Choice in the Yellow Dung Fly.” Evolution 54 (2000): 1680–1686. Gives reasons for supposing that cryptic female choice occurs in this species when females shuffle sperm among their multiple storage organs and thus bias male chances of fertilization, a possibility that has been hotly debated.

"Hotly debated" does not seem to me as something that is as solid, as say, gravity. To call me a denier with this kind of paltry evidence is just ridiculous.

[Luis Dias]

You think that speculative science is something you can link to in a conversation and expect the other to concede? What do you know about science?

He's just moving the goalposts. He doesn't understand that science in peer reviewed journals has been rigorously vetted, so he calls it speculative science so he can avoid giving up. Nor does he understand the process by which scientific inferences are reached.

Just another garden variety crank. We're done here.

Should I report you or something?

[Luis Dias]

captain i'm detecting some turbulence in steps 1 2 3 4 and the other steps

You brought this subject up, not me. It's not my fault if you ridiculously decide that I *must* accept speculative science as factual.

[The E]

...

Actually, you do. UNLESS you have better science to back you up.

[Luis Dias]

...

Actually, you do. UNLESS you have better science to back you up.

Ahahahahah! That made me chuckle. Thanks.

You got the onus the other way around dude. Take your time. Think it through.

[The E]

Wrong. Battuta posted his references. Instead of giving us proper reasons why these might be not applicable, you chose to dismiss them on the basis of their titles. Instead of giving us alternate references, you simply continue to say that his references are wrong.

You have 2 posts to back up your positions.

[General Battuta]

He's got nothing. Put him out of his misery.

[Luis Dias]

Wrong. Battuta posted his references. Instead of giving us proper reasons why these might be not applicable, you chose to dismiss them on the basis of their titles. Instead of giving us alternate references, you simply continue to say that his references are wrong.

I actually took the time to read a couple of them, and a part of a book referencing three more of them.

Did you read it?

It's mostly speculation driven from a paultry empirical observation (the data is *all over the place* with a fit line over it) that fertility increases with postcoital male courting.

It's all very interesting. What can I say? It is what it is, and Battuta is trying to erect a whole edifice out of a pinhead.

It's not that it *could well be the case*. Why not? The speculation seems relevant. But in all cases where science is still so much in its infancy, and clearly the level of evidences in this case are so circumstancial and so indirect, the level of speculation is so great, that such adjectivation seems euphemistic even, we shouldn't take it too seriously.

And specially we should confront people who are ready to make a fatwa against you if you don't accept the Truth(tm) from Above, if such aboveness is this weak.

My skepticism is always invertionally proportional to the quality and directedness of evidence I'm presented with. For instance, I may be swayed by these arguments in the following way: a positive value means that I am convinced by it, a negative one doesn't. Right now, it's somewhere at +3.5 +-2300. I'm slightly more convinced by the evidence that, for instance, the earth orbits the sun (+3000000000 +-0.1).

He's got nothing. Put him out of his misery.

This conversation is over. I'm done with your shenanigans.

[The E]

You are still not presenting your counterarguments. You are still basing your skepticism on simply being skeptical, not anything quantifiable.

1 post left.


Note that I, personally, have no interest in this debate one way or another. My only interest is in having a good debate, and your behaviour is not helping in this.

[Mars]

Good thread, would read again. . .


Seriously though, the evidence presented in this debate has changed the way I view sexuality.


Also, Luis, you may want to start out your argument by taking some time to think of what your hypothesis IS and then finding evidence for it, rather than simply posting. You appear to be posting emotionally.

Also, would I be out of line to request a split?

[Luis Dias]

You are still not presenting your counterarguments. You are still basing your skepticism on simply being skeptical, not anything quantifiable.

I do not need to present "counterarguments" to a theory, when the null hypothesis is just as likely (or more, given Ockham) to occur.

Suppose you are in the middle ages. Someone argues with you that god creates thunderbolts. He gives you a weak argument about it, but it is nevertheless an argument. You give none, you're just skeptical about it. Does that mean that he has a point and that I should concede it, otherwise I'm a "crack"?

Do I need to refute all the theories in the world in order to be rightfully skeptical of them?

Ridiculous.

1 post left.

Don't worry. If simple logic doesn't sway you, nothing will so I won't bother anymore.

[General Battuta]

This is the phase of the debate where the loser tries to retrospectively reconstruct his arguments to make him look like he knew what he was talking about all along. He thought postcoital sperm selection was ridiculous and laughable, now he's admitting there's a line of evidence for it and trying to argue it doesn't definitely happen in humans as if that was somehow ever a point of contention.

MCN'd to hell and back. Bury someone under enough evidence and eventually they get rubbed back to the naked fact that they're arguing because they don't want to look wrong. Like Mars said I don't think he has a core argument any more. I've seen it many a time in my years of educating fools about why women have biological incentive to **** around.

Now I'm gonna dig back to find the point where he conceded that and make the biggest smug face. :smug:

[Mikes]

You are still not presenting your counterarguments. You are still basing your skepticism on simply being skeptical, not anything quantifiable.

I do not need to present "counterarguments" to a theory, when the null hypothesis is just as likely (or more, given Ockham) to occur.

I hope you are not basing your argument on something you heard on "Fringe"...   honestly wondering, because it sounds so eerily familiar  to the kind of flawed reasoning that made me despise that show.

Especially the reference to Ockham to gloss over the fact that one simply has no clue or argument left.

[Luis Dias]

Nice. Grab the point where I said I wasn't posting anything more to take a final stab at me. I guess it was stronger than you, and then you lie deliberately. You *did make the point that women made postcoital sperm selection*. ****, if that wasn't the case, we would have never gone down that road. I *admitted* the line of *evidence* in the same sense that I admit there's a line of evidence for aether. It doesn't mean that I accept it.

MCN'd to hell and back. Bury someone under enough evidence and eventually they get rubbed back to the naked fact that they're arguing because they don't want to look wrong. (...)  I've seen it many a time in my years of educating fools about why women have biological incentive to **** around.

More Psychoanalybull****ting your interlocutor. You just can't help yourself. It's like someone coded you genetically to be a bully.

(This commment should also be moved, sorry)

[Sushi]

My understanding of what Luis is saying is simply that he doesn't see this particular topic as firmly established science, and would rather err on the side of disbelieving it until it is proven more solidly.

[Luis Dias]

You are still not presenting your counterarguments. You are still basing your skepticism on simply being skeptical, not anything quantifiable.

I do not need to present "counterarguments" to a theory, when the null hypothesis is just as likely (or more, given Ockham) to occur.

I hope you are not basing your argument on something you heard on "Fringe"...   honestly wondering, because it sounds so eerily familiar  to the kind of flawed reasoning that made me despise that show.

Jesus ****ing christ. Why are you always making the mistake of assuming your interlocutor is stupid, when all you've done here has been misrepresenting all I said?

Especially the reference to Ockham to gloss over the fact that one simply has no clue or argument left.

My understanding of what Luis is saying is simply that he doesn't see this particular topic as firmly established science, and would rather err on the side of disbelieving it until it is proven more solidly.

There you go. Thanks.