It’s biologically ingrained into us to avoid incest. Revulsion for the act is built directly into our brains due to the severity of the act. I can’t even joke about incest without a pit forming in my belly and my shoulders slumping. Anon was the more neurotypical of the two.
Not even a little bit. That is only present cultural norms and is entirely arbitrary. Incest is historically common and even considered preferential and a right in the past.
Take it up with three separate professors at my uni and several scholarly sources. Though I warn you, they are either dead or capable of screaming far louder and more eloquently than you. Here’s a Wikipedia article
Well yeah, but that is still “biologically ingrained to avoid incest”, since being raised separately and then reintroduced as adults is an edge case. The effect is biological even if what it’s directly testing for isn’t genetics.
In the case of the Israeli kibbutzim (collective farms), children were reared somewhat communally in peer groups, based on age, not biological relations. A study of the marriage patterns of these children later in life revealed that out of the nearly 3,000 marriages that occurred across the kibbutz system, only 14 were between children from the same peer group. Of those 14, none had been reared together during the first six years of life.
And lots of other examples across different cultures that would be consistent with this being an instinctual reaction of humans, rather than a cultural thing that is taught.
How on Earth do you think that reflects a biological imperative? If anything doesn’t it suggest the opposite? A biological connection resulting in an aversion to coupling would mean the absence of a biological connection should not result in aversion. Yet your example showed that the biological connection was not a factor at all.
I think you’re talking past each other. What they’re saying is that we have a biologically based aversion to mating with those we have been raised with, and that this aversion has arisen due to evolutionary pressure to avoid incest.
Of course, our body has no way of telling whether someone is a close relative or not, and evolution doesn’t “care” why we change our behaviour, as long as the new behaviour gives a higher chance of propagating our genes. Because of the historically high overlap of “people you grew up with” and “people you share a lot of genes with”, creating a biological aversion towards mating with those you grew up with serves as a good proxy for creating an aversion to incest (which is pretty much impossible to recognise without gene testing).
Their point is that it’s not “taught” behaviour in the sense of being culturally dependent, like we are taught that “everyone should have equal rights”, and “being naked in public is not ok”. Both of those are cases where there is a massive variation between cultures and through history, indicating that they are things we are taught, rather than being biologically ingrained.
It’s ingrained to avoid attraction to siblings we grow up alongside, though anecdotally there have been many cases of siblings who grew up apart discovering they were siblings after meeting as strangers and feeling mutual attraction, so the biological instinct may just have evolved around the most common case.
It’s biologically ingrained into us to avoid incest. Revulsion for the act is built directly into our brains due to the severity of the act. I can’t even joke about incest without a pit forming in my belly and my shoulders slumping. Anon was the more neurotypical of the two.
Not even a little bit. That is only present cultural norms and is entirely arbitrary. Incest is historically common and even considered preferential and a right in the past.
Take it up with three separate professors at my uni and several scholarly sources. Though I warn you, they are either dead or capable of screaming far louder and more eloquently than you. Here’s a Wikipedia article
That article doesn’t support your argument. The effect isn’t based on relation but on being raised together before the age of 6.
Well yeah, but that is still “biologically ingrained to avoid incest”, since being raised separately and then reintroduced as adults is an edge case. The effect is biological even if what it’s directly testing for isn’t genetics.
No, your arguments about cultural and learned behavior not biologically ingrained Behavior.
From the above linked article:
And lots of other examples across different cultures that would be consistent with this being an instinctual reaction of humans, rather than a cultural thing that is taught.
How on Earth do you think that reflects a biological imperative? If anything doesn’t it suggest the opposite? A biological connection resulting in an aversion to coupling would mean the absence of a biological connection should not result in aversion. Yet your example showed that the biological connection was not a factor at all.
I think you’re talking past each other. What they’re saying is that we have a biologically based aversion to mating with those we have been raised with, and that this aversion has arisen due to evolutionary pressure to avoid incest.
Of course, our body has no way of telling whether someone is a close relative or not, and evolution doesn’t “care” why we change our behaviour, as long as the new behaviour gives a higher chance of propagating our genes. Because of the historically high overlap of “people you grew up with” and “people you share a lot of genes with”, creating a biological aversion towards mating with those you grew up with serves as a good proxy for creating an aversion to incest (which is pretty much impossible to recognise without gene testing).
Their point is that it’s not “taught” behaviour in the sense of being culturally dependent, like we are taught that “everyone should have equal rights”, and “being naked in public is not ok”. Both of those are cases where there is a massive variation between cultures and through history, indicating that they are things we are taught, rather than being biologically ingrained.
Are instincts not biological?
The aversion often didn’t work for royalty, since they weren’t raised with their siblings.
/>hypothesis
/>Therefore not proven
It’s ingrained to avoid attraction to siblings we grow up alongside, though anecdotally there have been many cases of siblings who grew up apart discovering they were siblings after meeting as strangers and feeling mutual attraction, so the biological instinct may just have evolved around the most common case.
Oh, like that one Weird Al song!
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No, that’s step-siblings. Doesn’t count.
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that business with the step siblings doesn’t, doesn’t count
You even had the extra doesn’t in there. Perfection.
That’s the closest I’ve gotten to a compliment all week
I believe you.
We get it, your relatives are all uggos.