Discuss

One of the more sensible - and fascinating - articles I've read in a while. I wish they would teach this stuff to kids in school rather than let them find out about it years later on the internet.

Since we are delving into psychology, this is one of the more interesting psychology papers I have read.

Pure speculative nonsense. The author locates all causality of behaviour in the individual psyche, ignores the fact that our species is a SOCIALIZED species and ignores other explanations. Rubbish.

One of the more silly - and amusing - articles I've read in a while.

(Sorry, Andrew - I could not resist).

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. It's not always about sex.

Blindly attributing everything to natural selection may nicely sedate the conscience, but it is stupid science.

Make up your mind: is it sex or reproductive access? And if the gene is so selfish that it is the answer to everything, then why do we bother about anything?

Oh, immortal Double Helix, thou great DNA! We worship and adore Thee. No narrative is complete without Thee. And blessed is Chaos transcripted, Sex.

There must be a lot of really thick people running around. I've seen variants of this article in the popular press and on popular science shows for, quite literally, decades now. Even kids who are forced to sit in PC-saturated schools have access to those things, after all. I'd be willing to bet that the linked magazine has probably published a dozen variants, in as many years, its own self. Not that I'd ever underestimate the capacity of academics or edu-bureaucrats to be shocked, shocked, at the obvious (see "Larry Summers"), but why do normal people be find it refreshing, or wonderfully iconoclastic, or original, or whatever, when they come across the 500,000th reiteration of "men want young, pretty women, women want tall, successful men, etc."? I realize Psychology Today doesn't cater to the rocket-scientist demographic, but geez.

OK, the Trivers-Willard stuff isn't common knowledge and likely new and interesting to a reader, as is the discussion on why polygyny screws most men. I'm probably just snarly because I hate it when pop magazines mix up facts (e.g., blue eyes are attractive) with moron-level speculation: "Blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential mates because it is easiest to determine whether they are interested in us or not." Yeah, whatever. (I've seen the same pupil-size explanation advanced for why dark eyes are more sexually alluring - they give the illusion of dilated pupils.)

But Psychology Today is never gonna sell me a subscription, so why should they care?

John,

They taught that idea in psych class back in university although the way they told it then was that most employees think they're performing better than they are, that they are more necessary than they are and that they're better in relation to their peers than they are.

I only read the first part of this one but it's along a similar vein but on the low end of the scale. The criminal who wiped juice on his face was victim of stupid but an amusement for the rest of us.

Although I suppose there may be an ulterior motive to your posting, it was still interesting.

I emailed it,

Luckily I can type in winnipeg and find someone to help with my personal problems.

:)

I agree big time with ET and Tenebris.

Concerning percentages of boys to girls: in the limit towards large numbers and populations it is a wash - even if the families are small. Most of my relatives and friends come from very big families (9+). The only time you see far greater girls than boys (or vice versa) is when there is death in infancy, or stillborn, or miscarriage. (It is true that you may have 4 girls first followed by 4 boys - but overall it becomes a wash.).

It is not a wash however when the state or individuals the want to control the number or sex of their offspring - for cultural or economic reasons.

cconn: Concerning percentages of boys to girls: in the limit towards large numbers and populations it is a wash - even if the families are small. Most of my relatives and friends come from very big families (9+). The only time you see far greater girls than boys (or vice versa) is when there is death in infancy, or stillborn, or miscarriage. (It is true that you may have 4 girls first followed by 4 boys - but overall it becomes a wash.).

Not true, cconn. The effect under discussion has been measured in various non-human populations, too. I'll grant that "beautiful people have more daughters" strikes me as a bit iffy - success = beautiful mate, beautiful mate = better-looking children, success = helping your children be winners = your sons being able to attract more beautiful women, rinse, repeat, = more daughters, 'cause your all so good lookin', BUT success = more sons. Something not quite clear there. The malleable sex-ratio effect does exist, though. I don't think your friends and relatives constitute a large enough sample to see it.

There are so many flaws in this article that it's almost not even worth reading.
Consider the first "point" about men preferring blond bombshells. The author suggests that blond hair evolved in Scandinavian countries to advertise young age, since their bodies were covered in clothes. By this "logic" the Inuit should also all be blond. Furthermore, he seems to think that blond and big boobs go together. This isn't true. The same ethnic group he looked at (Scandinavian women) are also more likely to have small breasts. It is also not true that blond hair goes through the most dramatic change with age. One could just as easily argue that turning from jet black to grey and then white is a more dramatic change. It is also not true that hair grows slowly in all individuals. Ask any hair dresser. The healthier the hair, the faster it will grow. It is not true that long hair indicates several years of health. It could indicate only one year.
Preferences for blue eyes are not universal. The preference may be more likely among whites, but this is certainly not the case among blacks.

"(Sorry, Andrew - I could not resist)"

No problem, Tenny, your age cohort hasn't gotten a thing right since 1964, why start now?

The article exposes 10 truths, not 10 opinions. It is a fact, not an opinion, that having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce (and if you are a swordsman of any repute you already knew this fact). When you reject this fact, you reject reality, and you expose your brain as tiny and useless.

OK Ruth, you master sleuth, you've uncovered our secret: men really don't like blonde bombshells. Clearly, this article is nonsense as evidenced by how few women dye/streak their hair blonde these days.

This type of article is interesting because it discusses trends of behavior that are universal across human societies, and then speculates about causes. While the trends are measurable, real and could even be described as fact, the speculation on causality drifts into sillyness.

There is another conflict here. We have all seen the scientist who informs us that we are just animals, driven by the whip of evolution, and as faultless and blameless as insects as we blindly fulfill our baser urges.

I reject that. I am not an animal. I can and will and do rise above those things that make me an animal; and strive to be a person.

The rules our society lives by, dismissed by scientists/psychologists as unnatural, are a combined attempt by our society to make it a better place for most. The people who drew up our moral and legal code, some of it many thousands of years old, knew very well that people (men and women) can be impulsive, animalistic bastards.

A better understanding of *why* the moral and legal codes exists are fine and dandy. Adjusting those codes to reduce unnatural strain between external rules and internal desires would be a mistake.

ET: "Pure speculative nonsense. The author locates all causality of behaviour in the individual psyche, ignores the fact that our species is a SOCIALIZED species and ignores other explanations. Rubbish."

I'm with you on this one, ET :-)

I think it's worth noting that the point is not so much that all humanity is doomed to repeat these patterns, as that the patterns around which a society forms do have a very great deal to do with the instinctive behaviours developed by environmental biological adaptation. The most important sentence in the article, I think, is this one: "[M]most social scientists explain human behavior as if evolution stops at the neck and as if our behavior is a product almost entirely of environment and socialization."

I think it's much more likely that our socialization and our instincts are a mutually reinforcing circle, and any attempt to direct that process is doomed if we don't learn to tell which parts of our behaviour come from where.

One of the important things to realize about articles of this nature is that observations about statistical tendencies within groups do not equate to ironclad prescriptors for all examples of that group. The particular explanations for particular social trends advanced are certainly not correct or explicative for all people, but no social explanation is. No human truth is absolutely universal in that it applies to every human ever born (with the possible exceptions of death and taxes). That does not make the explanations valueless; it simply means that one has to employ them differently.

"Human Nature" as an idea is politically incorrect.

According to socialists, humans are infinitely malleable in their social behavior. Therefore inequities, racism, sexism, homophobia, in fact anything other than “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” is a broken social mechanism, fixable by legislation and the tax code.

Which only goes to show what idiots these socialists be.

"Many middle-aged men do go through midlife crises, but it's not because they are middle-aged. It's because their wives are."

Hmf. Then why can't I stop thinking about Tina Turner's legs?

exile - you are making me nervous. I'm used to disagreement; you must be misunderstanding me!

andrew - I don't believe you really mean that this article is providing us with TRUTH! Come on; how about some statistics that show that a family that has boys is less likely to divorce than one with girls.
The rest of the opinions - really, they have no scientific basis and can't be truths - are hogwash.

By the way - if women dye their hair blonde - that doesn't mean that men are genetically geared to like blonde hair; it means that both are SOCIALLY programmed to like blonde hair. Kindly provide proof of the former, ie, the 'gene'.

How do you explain the robustness of reproduction in non-blonde societies, such as Asia and the ME?

Psychology Today being the bastion of political correct control in the US has been caught guilty of taking realities and selling them as myths...pretty much everything they promote in this article as a "myth" seems to defy the reality of my personal experience and observations.

Talk about inverted realities..this mag's editorial staff really need time on the couch ) or maybe in sexual therapy) if they think men don't like sex object females (blonde bombers) and that females do not like being lusted after as sex objects.

Seems the trend in revisionist Psyche today is to deny Freud and his rudimentary observations of the human id.

To the people who reject this article: have you considered joining the Liberal Party of Canada? Because you are not conservative, nor libertarian. You are a left wing socialist, probably a careerist too. So embrace your true socialist politically correct careerist nature, stop trying to fool yourself and others and proudly display your Trudeaupian colours. In the long run, everyone will be better off.

"How do you explain the robustness of reproduction in non-blonde societies, such as Asia and the ME?"

I would attribute it to their penchant for aphrodisiacs, gambling, or both.

A politically not-quite-correct implication:

If and/or to the extent that #1-10 in that article are true, then the greatest interest in detaching sex from reproduction is felt by older women and/or low-status men.

FWIW.

andrew - are you saying that the Conservative Party promotes genetic determinism? That they ignore socialization? Could you provide some proof?

What's a 'careerist'? I know that, for you, it's an insult - but what exactly does it mean?

How about answering some questions - such as the one's I've posted above? Surely you don't expect us to accept conclusions without any data! Or do you? Such a tactic isn't about truth, it's about dogma.
So, andrew, rather than threatening us with derogatory labels if we don't like the article, why not provide us with some proof - ie, the proof that leads you to be such a firm believe in those ten opinions.

wlmr- I'll deny Freud anyday, anytime.

I read an article by a Saudi man and former Al Qada member that that confirms some of points 3 & 4.
- “Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don't realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all,”

-“the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth”

This guy was sent to live and study at a madras as a teenager. Like hundreds or thousands of other poor Saudi boys this was how he spent his adolescence and early adult years. This segregation from females and lack of any hope of access to them for many years because he lacked financial resources created frustration and rage. Jihad became the vehicle for his anger and pent up energy.
To keep peace at home, Saudi Arabia has exported these angry young men to teach around the world, including mosques in Canada.

The most credible of these 'politically incorrect' truths is #4. There is no question that unfulfilled sexual urges leads to more aggressive behavior. In highly repressive societies, such as in Islamic countries this is made worse by the restrictions on access to female partners. Mark Steyn, in 'America Alone' writes very convincingly about the impact of demographics on the political nature of a society. The point about polygamy reducing the pool of available females, thereby increasing the pressure on young males, makes a lot of sense. Young men who have (or think they have) little chance of getting a female companion are easily duped by promises of 72 virgins in the next life. As well, in such societies, killing off many of the young males, by sending them into battle, also relieves competition for females and resources for other males in society. For unconscious biological reasons, rationalized by a perverted ideology, their problems become ours.

In the article psyhologist Kingsley R. Browne is quoted as saying that women who complain of intimidation, abuse and degradation at work are in fact being treated the same way men have historically been treated by other men in competitive situations; in other words, the abuse and degradation is due to a lack of discrimination: "Men harass women precisely because they are not discriminating between men and women."

Hmm, wonder if a "Discrimination Now!" campaign would get off the ground....

I hope Kate that you don't believe all the nonsense in that article. Maybe some of the statements are valid, but the reasons behind them are complete drivel.

'Psychology' cannot be called a science by any stretch of the word.

ET: "exile - you are making me nervous. I'm used to disagreement; you must be misunderstanding me!"

heh. I thought it might! But there's almost always some point of agreement, I think. I can't imagine disagreeing with anyone about absolutely everything ....

ET: "Come on; how about some statistics that show that a family that has boys is less likely to divorce than one with girls."

Well, you could assume that people just pulled this out of their butts. (Which, I admit, they sometimes do. See women use 20,000 words a day to men's 7,000.) Or you could, say, do a quick search on "'likelihood of divorce' sons daughters" and judge the quality of the studies for yourself, if you've got the statistical chops to evaluate them.

"How do you explain the robustness of reproduction in non-blonde societies, such as Asia and the ME?

Um, because a trait that doesn't exist in a given population can't be selected for? (You could probably google up a lot of stuff pertaining to why there seems to be a cross-cultural preference for (relative) fairness in women, but I think a basic explication of sexual selection might be more helpful.)

Always fun to read speculation without proof. My opinion is that there is such a thing as human nature simply because we are a carnate species. Having grown up on a farm I noticed that each species had its own social norms. However to limit the human species to its carnate nature is to do a great disservice to all involved. The nobility of humans usually runs counter to biological urges. The greatness of any individual is not based on his or her reproductive abilities or other base urges. The nobility of the individual is determined by what that individual selflessly gives back to his or her society for the betterment of that society.

"Human Nature" as an idea is politically incorrect.

According to social conservatives, humans are infinitely malleable in their social behavior. Therefore sexual urges, violent tendencies, inebriation, coveting other people's property and wives, swearing in fact anything other than Bible thumping is a broken moral mechanism, fixable by legislation and the tax code.

Which only goes to show what idiots these social conservatives be.

Posted by: The Phantom II at July 6, 2007 11:27 AM

'cause it's only socialists who believe "human nature" needs to be fixed and can be fixed, right Phantom?!?!

@Andrew at 10.47am
"It is a fact, not an opinion, that having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce (and if you are a swordsman of any repute you already knew this fact)."

Please consult the research literature...

Racial Variation in the Effects of Sons versus Daughters on the Disruption of the First Marriage, C. André Christie-Mizell, Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, Vol. 38(3/4) pp.41-60, 2003
From the abstract: "...However, with regard to whites, the number of sons heightens the probability of divorce, while daughters have no effect on the marital union."

Indeed, I am not a swordsman of any repute, unless you consider my approaching two decades of wedded bliss and five children (4 girls, 1 boy).

Crawl back under your bridge, Andrew. The billy goats here are too much for you.

Tenebris posted "However, with regard to whites, the number of sons heightens the probability of divorce, while daughters have no effect on the marital union."
Indeed, I am not a swordsman of any repute, unless you consider my approaching two decades of wedded bliss and five children (4 girls, 1 boy).

4 sons two daughters here and 30 years of marriage ... Maybe my data base is too small to disprove your theory.

Tenebris posted "However, with regard to whites, the number of sons heightens the probability of divorce, while daughters have no effect on the marital union."
Indeed, I am not a swordsman of any repute, unless you consider my approaching two decades of wedded bliss and five children (4 girls, 1 boy).

A single example does not disprove a theory especially in the pseudo-sciences. That is why they are not real sciences. They run on "da proof is da proof" school of logic and the copious use of words like probability and likely. Kind of like social "engineering". It isn't engineering in any true sense of the word.

BTW, two grown kids, one of each and 33 years of marital union.

Don't EVER backtalk me again:

"New research shows the secret of a successful partnership could be in the sex of your children. Caroline Overington reports.

If you want to prevent your own divorce, don’t have daughters, have sons. As startling as it may seem, a new study from the United States has shown that parents of girls are 5 per cent more likely to divorce than parents of boys.

Not only that, in the US at least, the more daughters you have, the worse the effect on your marriage: a couple with two girls is 8 per cent more likely to divorce than a couple with two boys. A couple with three daughters is 13 per cent more likely to divorce than a couple with three sons.
...
"There is no room for statistical error," says Dahl. "In a sample that size, you have smoothed out any differences you might get from looking at a group with too many white mothers, or too many black mothers, or too many people with financial problems. All of life’s circumstances are balanced across a group this size."

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/12/1068329629547.html

LEARN HOW TO USE GOOGLE YOU RETARDED BABY BOOMER @#$^&%$#^$#!!!S!!!!!!!

Not my study - I vaguely recall that the author used US census data.

TC - Yes, indeed...the pseudo-sciences are innoculated against "proof by counter-example" by their inherent lack of logical and intellectual rigor. :-)

OK, the inherent perversity of the autonomous subjects under study may also have a small effect.

Nothing wrong with words like "probability" though. Quantum mechanics, our present premier illustration of scientific and mathematical rigor only gives answers in such language.

I might even add that QM is logical, as long as one does not pray in the direction of Copenhagen, or lend any credance to Everett's many worlds musing.

yoo hoo, andrew - how about answering the questions?

After all, you were adamant about the Truths of this post - so, how about telling us why you consider them as Truths rather than specious opinions?

If you want to prevent your own divorce, don’t have daughters, have sons. As startling as it may seem, a new study from the United States has shown that parents of girls are 5 per cent more likely to divorce than parents of boys.

Not only that, in the US at least, the more daughters you have, the worse the effect on your marriage: a couple with two girls is 8 per cent more likely to divorce than a couple with two boys. A couple with three daughters is 13 per cent more likely to divorce than a couple with three sons.

"It certainly surprised me," says one of the researchers, Gordon Dahl, who is an associate professor of economics at the University of Rochester in New York. "You wouldn’t think that having girls made a difference to whether or not you get a divorce, but it very clearly does."

Dahl and his colleague, fellow economist Enrico Moretti from University of California, Los Angeles, based their study on data from 6 million mothers, which was extracted from the past 60 years of the US census.

"There is no room for statistical error," says Dahl. "In a sample that size, you have smoothed out any differences you might get from looking at a group with too many white mothers, or too many black mothers, or too many people with financial problems. All of life’s circumstances are balanced across a group this size.

www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/12/1068329629547.html

No, andrew, your error is the basic one of equating correlation with causality. Because a study (one study - just one study) correlates two variables, such as daughters and divorce, doesn't mean that having daughters causes divorce. The differentiation between correlation and causality is basic statistical and analytic TRUTH.

A common example of spurious variables, ie, ones that are incidental to causality, is the one that provides three variables: fluoridated water, HIV and large cities. The conclusion provided is that fluoridated water causes HIV - when, it's simply a spurious (accidental variable); the valid relation is between large cities and HIV. And no, large cities don't cause HIV but the prevalence of behaviour that does cause it - is found in large cities.

So, andrew, it's extremely unscientific to accept one report and unscientific to mix up correlation with causality.

Now - how about answering the other questions?

What's a careerist? Is the Conservative Party promoting genetic determinism?
Proof that men are 'genetically programmed' to like blonde hair? What about Asians?

My answers to your many questions, ET, would not make it through Kate's sophisticated "real time" comment filtering system, which is unfortunate.

I might have some time this weekend to make a bare bones blog site so I may host the verbal thrashing that you so deserve for being so dense, I might not. How much you willing to pay per month for it? You sure seem to value my insight given your many questions and demands on my valuable time.

I'd like to reiterate my "back it up with data" rate remains 100%, and I am surprised you people don't notice this sort of thing. I didn't even need to look up that women with daughters get divorced more often; I already knew it.

Sounds about right to me. How many critics have read Jung's claims re archetypes and the role of the collective unconscious gathering and affecting unconscious behaviour over eons? Human hubris in claiming all starts anew when each is born is ludicrous.

Ted wrote "According to social conservatives, humans are infinitely malleable in their social behavior. Therefore sexual urges, violent tendencies, inebriation, coveting other people's property and wives, swearing in fact anything other than Bible thumping is a broken moral mechanism, fixable by legislation and the tax code."

Uh no Ted maybe you should go back to Church and learn what is actually being taught there as opposed to your perception of same. The Christian Church has taught that mankind has a fallen nature but that fallen nature is not repairable with a written code. If that were the case then Christ died for nothing. In fact the Christian teaching is that through faith in Jesus Christ mankind actually receives a new nature that runs in parallel with the old nature and that we have the challenge of trying to live by the new nature not the old nature. BTW no amount of "Bible thumping" is going to change the human condition.

I'm astonished; I'm aghast! Incredible, andrew - you don't have to rely on facts, on empirical observations, on data collation! You just 'know' the truth!

ahhh, if only we were all so wise. To know truth. Innately.
That's actually quite a lazy strategy to gain knowledge. No need for empirical data gathering, no need for comparative studies, no need for logical analysis. Nothing. Just 'it's true because I say it's true'.

No, don't try the excuse that your answers 'got lost in the screener'. Or, that you might charge me for your answers.
Or, the irrelevant tactic of trying to say that I only want your answers because I admire your wisdom. Nope. Won't work.

You've postulated that ten opinions are 'truth'. We've asked you to provide proof. You've failed to do that - and now, you are attempting to claim that these are 'a priori necessaries'. Wow.

No, andrew - those ten are empty opinions. The fact that you believe them - is your problem. But, don't try to tell other people to do so. You see, others rely on data and reason to arrive at truth. You reject both. Hmmm.

@Andrew 4:24 PM

Thanks for the reference, although I was hoping for peer-reviewed research literature, not a reference to Slate or the New York Times. The point is to be able to assess the authors analysis and the validity of their causal attributions.

You may enjoy the following:

Andreas Diekmann, Kurt Schmidheiny (2004)
Do Parents of Girls Have a Higher Risk of Divorce? An EighteenCountry Study
Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (3), 651–660.
doi:10.1111/j.0022-2445.2004.00044.x

From the abstract:

"Using data from the June 1980 Current Population Survey, Morgan, Lye, and Condran (1988) reported that families with a daughter have a higher divorce risk than families with a son.... We investigate the relation between gender composition of children and parents' divorce
risk with crossnational data from the Fertility and Family Survey. These data, which cover 16 European countries, Canada, and the United States, do not support a general hypothesis that sons contribute more to marital stability
than daughters."

Sigh. Why do I get the impression you are somewhat humour-impaired?

"Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)"

Can't speak for women, but as a man I prefer athletic women. Blonde Bombshells look good for sure, but in my limited experience, their beauty practically eliminates any need to hone their intellectual skills. Sitting across from one for any length of time quickly becomes arduous and boring. That doesn't mean a quick roll in the hay wouldn't be desirable, as long as its quick.

"Humans are naturally polygamous"

I think a man won't stay very far from a great partner. Tragically, if a woman forgets that her man experiences love through sex, then you can bet he will be on the alert for an alternate source.

"Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy"

I will leave this one for the women. That said, nothing beats a loving wife who places you number one before kids, friends, house and clothes. Hard for me to imagine risking a fabulous wife for a stray bit of fluff. Like most men though, if she ramps up her weight I would take that as indiffence to my desires, and ditch her.

"Most suicide bombers are Muslim"

When I was 18, I would have blown my own head off if it meant I was going to get 72 virgins. I gotta say, this guy might actually have this one right though I will leave it to more scholarly folks to tell me if he is. Just sounds right to my formerly 18 year old mind.

"Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce"

Can't see how that would work on a genetic level. Thanks for the Post Tenebris. I think I will run with that theory rather than the good Dr.'s Miller and Kanazawa

"(The biological mechanism by which this occurs is not yet understood.)"

That makes sense. Probably nothing to understand because these guys's seem to be stretching to make the point.

"What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals

Paul and Bill paint and dodder around because they don't feel like pushing themselves anymore. Natural consequence of the aging process. What distinguishes Paul and Bill from criminals was there career choice. Pretty big difference.

"The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of"

He got one thing right here. Once mama closes up shop papa starts looking around.

"It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male)"

He was married to Hillary. Nuff said.

"Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist"

Now if women would only sexually harass men, then all would be right in the world.

Tenny says "Using data from the June 1980 Current Population Survey..."

Give me a break. Was divorce even invented in 1980? TWENTY SEVEN YEAR OLD DATA????????

Which part of "6 million mothers" and "There is no room for statistical error," DO YOU IDIOTS NOT UNDERSTAND DUHDUHDUHDUH DO NOT EVER DISPUTE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY AGAIN YOU BOTH OWE ME $500 PLUS DEMURRAGE FOR GROSS STUPIDITY AND INDECENT IGNORANCE LEARN GOOGLE LEARN HUMANS FOR F@CKS SAKE DUDUHDUH MY STATISICS HAVE 6 - COUNT EM, SIX - MILLION DATA POINTS YOU HAVE NO POINT ET YOU HAVE NEVER POSTED A SINGLE SOLITARY POINT OF SOURCED DATA IN YOUR LIFE DONT EVER EVER EVER ASK ANYONE TO PROVE ANYTHING AGAIN YOU USELESS LUMP OF SKIN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Andrew is off his meds again.

Well, Andrew, I've done some checking and it turns out that divorce was invented well before 1980. I'm told that "you can googul it", whatever that means.

I don't see what the age of the data has to do with anything; aren't these supposed to be universal truths about human nature? Or do they only apply to the 21st century? Did pre-Google societies value daughters relatively higher? They weren't very enlightened societies, obviously - how did they learn anything without Google - but perhaps they still took the time to instinctively ponder the potential generational reproductive success to be gained from male offspring. Even in the primitive 1980s, that must have been more important than love and stability.

At any rate, obviously with six million f-ing data points correlation really does prove causality - and with those many points, peer review is a waste of time. Six million! It just resonates truthiness.

Please, if you do respond to this, respond in all caps. It's funnier. And be sure to include some more appeals to authority, because otherwise a post just gets bogged down with reasoning and crap.

Oh, my...

Andrew, take a deep breath, have a glass of water and a quiet lie down. Then read my earlier post again. Pay particular attention to the author list and the publication date. Then read the paper. That is why I gave you the reference.

Dahl's popular press report of his findings was not a new "revelation" since Morgan et al determined the same thing based on the June 1980 Current Population Survey. Diekmann and Schmidheiny's international study, however, fail to support the earlier asserted child gender correlation.

Conversation closed.

Preferences for blue eyes are not universal. The preference may be more likely among whites, but this is certainly not the case among blacks.

B.S. everone knows that as soon as a brother "gets on" he'll leave your ass for a white girl!
Kanye West.

It seems to me that successful Asian and Black men prefer blonds! The proof is in the pudding!