It's targeted at the narrow audience of those who are politically motivated to strawman & deny evolutionary psychology but scientifically literate enough to get the jokes. It's a bit sophomoric.

Your video, The Evolutionary Advantage of Really Annoying Babies, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. If you eat all the young of your prey, you run out of prey.

One of the many core and wrong ideas in Feminism is that the sex of a person doesn't seem to play much of a role in anything. And in this case, Feminism is responsible for holding back medical science. Feminism is a blight on intellectual discourse. I'm not going to spend the time it takes to unravel a snake like Feminism here, but in brief, it's an untenable ideology.

One of its core philosophies is the idea of the Patriarchy, which is not only theoretical, but creates hypocritical scenarios in Feminist debate.

For instance, Feminists state that the Patriarchy supports and allows men to lead privileged lives. Yet when it is pointed out that men are sentenced twice as long for exact same crimes; men have zero protection of their genitals as babies; that there is FAR more funding for women's schooling, businesses, and health; or that in any emergency situation it is expected that men's lives are forfeit - the argument you'll get back is "See, Patriarchy hurts men too!". This rebuttal is in obvious contradiction to the idea that Patriarchy allows men to live privileged lives.

Another core idea is wage gap which has been disproven over and over for decades, even by some Feminsts:

http://www.topmanagementdegrees.com/women-dont-make-less/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html

Feminism also focuses a great deal on "objectification", which presupposes that men are (always) sexually attracted to something *other* than the curves of a womans body. This is not only obviously off kilter for anyone with a basic understanding of evolutionary psychology, but has been scientifically proven false. Men are biologically wired to base mate finding on looks.

So the word 'objectification' actually becomes Feminist propaganda for the demonizing of male sexuality.

Furthermore regarding female objectification in society - we all often see the viral videos "How Women's Bodies Are Changed Beyond Recognition in Photoshop!" But consider that 80% of consumer dollars are spent by women. So in essence we have women complaining about women being objectified while women buy into objectification. What exactly do we expect advertising agencies to do?

I've even seen scenarios for men in which, if he found a woman attractive, then he's objectifying her; and if he found her unattractive, then he's shallow for only caring about looks.

Then there is argument from Feminists that Feminism helps to empower men as well. No, it doesn't. In fact much has been shown in the opposite: http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/g2eme/feminists_tell_you_that_the_solution_to_mens/

98% of workforce deaths are male. You never see Feminists rallying to take on these jobs on the front lines in combat, or in jobs that involve heavy machinery, working outdoors in inclement weather, inhaling toxic fumes, or apprehending dangerous criminals. Why not? After all, fair is fair! Let's remove the stigma around men being "losers" if they are stay-at-home Dads, while Moms can be the breadwinners for once.

It's clear that Feminism isn't about gender equality. You never see Feminists rallying about how He-Man set an unrealistic body image for boys, but the focus and attention on Barbie has been unreal.

Take into consideration, among everything else I've stated, that words like "mansplaining" are part of Feminist vocabulary, and I think you start to get a picture why no self respecting man has anything to do with Feminism.

There's much much more research, evidence, and articles I can cite, but the final point is that Feminism is a toxic and counterproductive movement.

Perhaps there will be "equality between the sexes" when the likelihood of men becoming estranged from their children and families after a divorce is the same as it is for women... Or when the expectation of "supporting" one's family is actually spending time with them and not simply being their "wallet"...

I'll see equality when the life expectancy between men and women is the same... Or when the risk of becoming homeless is the same... Or to become a victim of violence (or simply being suspected of violence or threatened with violence due to ones gender) is the same.. Or when the probability of dying by suicide is the same. . . Perhaps we'll all be equal then.

I don't care to get into a pissing contest with you but there are things that just don't fit the evolutionary thought.

If evolution is the order of the day why would we need to have multiple dimensions. Physicists theorize that there are about 10 or 12.

Where does Quantum physic fit into evolution?

We all believe in the big bang theory but where did all the matter come from? What evolutionary reasoning explains this?

There are stuff out there that just make you stop and think otherwise.

Shiny, from the context in which Volump used the quote, it really seems that he did understand what Lumbsten was saying, and was accurately pointing out that it is incorrect, or at least misleading. The human eye has a pretty significant blind spot as the result of the nervous connections having to pass through the layer of photoreceptors. While there are some who argue that the layout of the vertebrate eye helps to cope with damage cause by UV radiation, it doesn't make sense to argue that it functions this way because it is 'designed' for use out of water. The eyes of fishes have the same design (...extremely good evidence for evolutionary relatedness), and fish, of course, usually use their eyes underwater.
A stronger argument suggesting an adaptive trade-off between the costs of having nervous connections in front of the photoreceptors and some other benefits of this anatomy would be that the arrangement of the vertebrate eye allows for the photoreceptors to be closer to their blood supply in the choriod.

...the question he should of asked is how on earth was he granted a PhD?
I mean, believe in creation if you like... but to no be able to answer the questions posed by that graduate student means that you do not have a graduate level understanding of evolutionary theory.

It's not just funny--it's science. The eyes pre-process images just like a computer would process from a computer cashe. In evolutionary terms it stores data so that threats can be more readily identified. This is why one race typically looks like everyone in their race.

I must be, if you sayeth so-This is truly a sad day for all trolls, including the ones who post non-stop political party-line rhetoric suggesting 'change' in the form of politics as usual, atheism is best/god is fantasy, and 'cry racism' fare, and who can't consider any transformative alternatives to planetary existence beyond their programmed, DE-evolutionary cattle talk.


Your all hairless apes in a cattle car sir, I mourn the death of art and freedom of thought as well as this sincere user's banned account.

A small group of trollish assholes run this site, who fail to see the forest for the fucking trees they have clear-cut to make way for a stultified meat blob instead of a brain that functions.

returning* to his evolutionary roots, eh?

..also, why is everyone (or maybe just people who produce pop science content) obsessed with octopus intelligence? Like many cool things that octopus do, this is complex behavior.. but likely innate, and not a sign of intelligence.


*Dear inevitable trolls: I do not mean to imply that cephalopods evolved from bivalves, only that they had a molluscan ancestor with an external shell.

It's a set-up for what's going to be ubiquitous in less than 20 years A10anis, cameras on every pole (wi-fi, infrared, audio, facial recognition software) and a cop's nose up every corner of your ass at the great cost of having ended the 'great experiment' -

Feinstein is only a shill for power-brokers and a miniature version of someone whose mentality of "I, Me, Mine" let's a few people dictate the their will over of every person on the planet who is not in their small circle.

Mind you, they believe that the bulk of humanity are not suited to dictate the course of the planet but hey; The same people who have chosen to guide the course of humanity's burst off the planet would keep us rhesus monkeys in small, manageable boxes while they romp freely around the globe with the bulk of our assets and the maximum amount of power to dictate further every aspect of our lives.

The real power they will not wield is to provide for the basic needs and education of the throw-backs of humanity who would rather perpetrate violence and promulgate fear to maintain arcane sensibilities and uncivilized backward ideologies which are anti-evolutionary and savage, using anti-evolutionary and savage people to enforce what looks like order, which is in actuality, the same barbaric practice of subjugation, imprisonment, and fear.

The solution is to limit expansion of population until these ideologies are stamped-out like the insectoid disease that they are, that of a limited perspective based on arcane patterns of thought. We could do this through compassion and education but the established powers see a different solution that will protect their interests-

People like Diane Feinstein and her ilk see the rest of humanity as dogs and cattle. Unprivileged, unworthy flesh with which to extort from them their labor, their minds and souls to their utopian ends, at the cost of our unique humanity.

The same virulence that atheist's have against the western Christan diaspora, these elites have for anyone not aligned with their totalitarian ends.

That they justify their courses of action with propaganda like this, fear-induced surrender to force and control, is against all that is humane and righteous.

Bombs in subways?? Solution: No one has privacy or freedom of expression or thought beyond that which exist behind their eyes and between their ears-Greeeeeat. Your world, not mine.

Next will come thought crimes, cordoned neighborhoods, etc.

Start now by getting some of the comparatively neanderthal segments of humanity into those boxes, limit THEIR freedoms through educating them to at LEAST the level of 17th-century socialization before turning the entire world into a forced labor-camp.

Bread and circuses only work for so long before the emperor's clothes are set alight by those less inclined to hear shit as well as being forced to eat it.

Anarchy would solve some of the discord in civilized countries.

Fucking China-Get those insects to stop cranking-out useless consumption items at an exponentially toxic pace as well-Their version of the world makes Orwell's look like a clam bake. How? Stop using it. Create artisans and craftsman again and develop in every human an appreciation for THAT WHICH LASTS, rather than I WANT NOW, FIRST!

Americans, Europeans drunk on technology, disposable clothing, instant gratification and entertainment are a herd of disposable mental midgets to the Diane Feinsteins of the world.

Sick dance we're learning....I just hope we can stand the dervish without blacking-out.

This is pretty funny for a lot of reasons, the biggest being all the people involved are so obviously not cat owners nor have they even bothered to understand cat behaviour.

First of all, the snarky comments at the end of the video, actually, it's not about wanting to believe my cat needs me, I'm very well aware it doesn't need me, that has no correlation to loving me. I appreciate that's just the person writing this script but it puts an underlining tone that cat owners are delusional and sets people up to believe the experiment was a "success", even with the little bite about it not being conclusive.

Not all cats are the same, the beauty of them is precisely their individuality! Breed also plays a very large factor and so does upbringing, not to mention social behaviour of the animal in question. Let's ignore that cats are evolutionarily independent and dogs/babies are not.

Why would a cat care if its owner left momentarily? It is not built to care about such a frivolous event, it takes notes of it (which btw, no other animal was capable of and the narrator incorrectly says the cat is distracted while it distinctly watching the owner leave) and carries on, the situation pans out.

Likewise when the owner comes back, the cat again takes note of this and because it was rather brief, it resumes carrying on its business. This wasn't some "OH MY GOD WHAT DO I DO WITH MY LIFE!??!?!" drastic event. Quite frankly, the cat has the most intelligent behaviour.

The reason it check outs the stranger is because it's an *unknown*, cats don't immediately trust *anything* until they've inspected it. If they had replaced that stranger with a paper bag, the reaction would have been the same. It's not that it is ignoring its owner, it's that it knows its owner is safe. It is inspecting a potential threat.

Cats are simply not basic enough to compare in this experiment and their evolutionary traits are directly opposed to these rather bias tests of affection.

"to me life is about progressing"
Yeah, that sounds very developing and shit, but i doubt breaking bones is really "learning and progressing", this is just ego, adrenalin chasing, limit-pushing non-evolutionary barely for any benefits, non-beneficial, dangerous fun stunts...

I don't have a problem with them doing insane stuff and dying or whatnot.
But wrapping it up like some noble life achieving struggle for something amazing is just BS.

upvoted for the conversation sparked, not the video in and of itself.

Just to throw my two cents in: I think the vast majority of civilizations out there probably have intelligences similar to our own just because that is what evolution would dictate. This is of course based only on observing our own evolutionary path which is unfortunately the only model we have access too. But it does actually tell us quite a bit, based on an environment similar to ours it would appear that intelligence would plateau at a certain point because it just isn't beneficial to beings in early societal stages. Ie: you only need a certain amount of intelligence to outsmart a mammoth, this does not involve an innate understanding of complex mathematical principles.

That being said, since there are (probably) billions of planets that could support life I'm sure there are a couple outliers whose intelligent life has a more innate understanding of complex knowledge. It would "probably" be more nuanced than just beings whose intelligence completely dwarfs our own. Parts of their brain (or however you want to translate it to extraterrestrial anatomy) which handle physics or mathematics etc. may be larger giving an added dexterity to problem solving in that SPECIFIC cognitive fields. Similarly to how certain people have added capacity in one portion of their brain or another but does not make them gods in comparison to other.

The reality is that we probably already have met the superior godlike species and we created them. Computers already excel vastly over us in many areas and I'd assume it's only a matter of time before they surpass us entirely.

But hey there are almost assuredly an near infinite amount of planets out there, so maybe there is one where GOD evolved?