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From: dls@mtgzz.UUCP (d.l.skran)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Re: Intelligence & SocioBio
Message-ID: <875@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 30-Jun-85 01:05:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtgzz.875
Posted: Sun Jun 30 01:05:52 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Jun-85 07:55:34 EDT
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Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Middletown NJ
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By all means, read "Not in Our Genes" that "devastating critique"
of sociobiology. I did. So did the reviewer for "New Scientist."
We weren't impressed. Period. The authors of this book have placed
their politics above science. 

No doubt many of the sociobiological claims concerning religion
are ill-conceived. However, I believe most serious scientists 
believe that genes and behavior, nature & nurture interact in a complex
fashion to create us as we are, and that this has important
implications concerning mating & dating, even for humans. However,
just what those implications are seems *confused* at this point,
as should be expected in a young science.

On a practical every day level, women do chose men, and men
women, and they use various criteria to make these decisions.
Whether these criteria are somehow genetically controlled seems
unimportant to me. They may or may not be. However, they do 
exist. Women tend to chose men(baring mental illness) that they
see some advantage in associating with. 

This is a much broader concept than "a good physique," and it
seems to me much better approached via game theory than
idle theorizing about sociobiology.


Dale

All opinions are my own, & not those of AT&T.