No, really, the $17,000 Apple Watch IS all about getting your leg over There was a certain amount of consumer resistance to my assertion that the Apple Christometer's $17,000 worth of bling was all about sex. But I'm afraid that this really is so. Bling is about getting sex: and it's the women who decide that it is as well. We have a less than reputable source for this: …conspicuous consumption …
So all our descendants are going to be from a few iThing/iShiny purchasers?
I don't think so. They are so captivated by bling that they have given up intercourse with humans of opposite gender.
Besides they can't afford Apple upgrades and rug rats as well.
Slow news day?
Mine is the one with the "selfish" gene in one pocket and Origin of the species in the other :-)
This post has been deleted by its author
My comment wasn't directed at you, I was suggesting that Mr. Worsthall was relying on an understanding of natural selection that is already rather out of date.
Whether I was being downvoted for that, or for suggesting that the gospel according to St. Richard isn't semper, ubique et ad omnibus I don't know.
This only works if the girl has the nouse to tell the genuine bling from the fake bling.
As Tim's previous arcticle indicated, there is not $17000 worth of gold in the Gold Apple watch, so a solid gold knock need not cost a lot.
And how many people would be able to tell the diference between the solid gold Rolex and the gold plated knock off?
Depending on which side of the line you are on, this is either a problem or an advantage. A problem if you are a woman trying to determine which bloke to shag. An advantage if you lack real resources as it means that you can fake being rich and get a shag.
Evolutionary biology knows all about faking it. Harmless insects that look like wasps, toads that inflate themselves to look bigger, there are many examples. It's a game in which the rules are constantly shifting.
The "best" attractants therefore are the ones that can't be faked. A Chinese knockoff Porsche 911 might work in the Chinese backwoods where nobody has ever seen or heard the real thing, but it won't work in London. It's quite difficult to fake an ocean going yacht. Watches, OTOH, are very easy to fake. As the news of this gets around, their value as indicators of the ability to burn £20 notes to warm the pigsty must decline - which is why Rolexes are no longer very special and things that have lots of visible strange little mechanisms are better, as being harder to fake.
I think Apple have chosen the wrong product unless it is aimed mainly at China.
Quote: A Chinese knockoff Porsche 911 might work in the Chinese backwoods where nobody has ever seen or heard the real thing, but it won't work in London. It's quite difficult to fake an ocean going yacht
Indeed. Confirmed by the mandatory Despair.com reference:
http://www.despair.com/love.html
> Evolutionary biology knows all about faking it
I think you missed the point slightly. If the female goes for the male, whether he is faking it or not is irrelevant. The point is that she CHOSE him and therefore the "faking", as you put it, was successful. The point is for her to chose the mate most likely to provide offspring that will go on to have offspring. So, in a sense, there is no "fake". Whoever she chooses is the real deal as defined by HER choice, not his actions.
Sigh... You need at least several hundred years _AND_ an absense of major conflict or migration to create a proper "genetic narrowing" on wealth accumulation grounds. That is why it is observed during the neolithic period and not after.
With the foundation of first tribal unions sometimes around the bronze age no human civilizaiton in Eurasia saw more than a few hundred years without a major invasion (to mix up the gene pool). Further to this, the periods of peace got progressively shorter and shorter. Thus, an "economic" factor in relation to genetic diversity would have been unable to kick in from sometimes around 2000 bc and onwards till this day.
This post has been deleted by its author
Bling is about money and wealth (and the subset of power). One may have all these and still not get sex but those who see them (and their "stuff") will believe they are getting it on daily if not hourly. Very much like peacock plumage.
I'm wondering why this article even needed to be written unless it's because of our very geekdom that makes us need to be reminded of this basic premise.
Perhaps, but then I don't think it's really that accurate. At least not anymore and at least not everywhere. One only needs to look at the less-affluent to see that they are just as likely to produce additional humans as the more affluent. Anecdotally, some might suggest they are actually more likely to produce children - and more of them.
What may have been true in a smaller, simpler society does not necessarily have to be true in the huge and rather more complex society we live in today. Especially not where social welfare is available.
After all, the difference between a 'rich' male and a 'poor' one may have been more likely to make a noticeable difference to the likelihood of grandchildren in neolithic agricultural times than it is today.
The problem is not that the poorer people in our society are not able to have children, but that their children are more likely to be poorer as well, creating a cycle of poverty in the offspring, but not necessarily reducing the chance or number of those offspring.
What wealth does allow a male to do is to mate with more desirable females. Desirable in this society generally being synonymous with 'attractive'. Which, can mean that the offspring of a richer male may be more attractive, as they will have an attractive mother.
And of course, those children, being more likely to be attractive (and more likely to be rich as well), are more likely to be able to secure a more desirable match, thus concentrating both wealth and attractiveness.
So, being a wealthy male means you are more likely to have attractive children and being an attractive woman means you are more likely to have wealthy children, but does not mean you are more likely to actually have children or that you will have more of them or that they are more likely to reach maturity and reproduce, yielding grandchildren.
At least not in a 'modern' society or one where there is a relatively equal number of males and females.
Distilled, I suppose what I am saying is that money allows less attractive* males to have sex with more attractive females - people who would normally be 'out of their league'.
In Australia, for example, it is unlikely that Geoffrey Edelsten could entertain his penchant for well-endowed women several decades his junior if he did not have the wallet for it. He doesn't have children, but of course that doesn't change the argument because the sex-drive exists to further procreation regardless of whether one actually procreates.
Look anywhere and you will see rich men with younger, more attractive wives. Not everyone of course, but you will see it everywhere.
* - However that attractiveness is defined.
One only needs to look at the less-affluent to see that they are just as likely to produce additional humans as the more affluent. Anecdotally, some might suggest they are actually more likely to produce children - and more of them.
Agreed, but it only works because of the welfare state. As society runs out of money to fund its continual expansion as a share of GDP, it will have to be trimmed, capped, or abndoned, depending on your politics. That will reduce the quantity of the breeding of the less affluent, if not the possibility of it.
The rich will simply continue their lives unimpeded, free as they are to select any other country of residence, and having much of their wealth spread across jurisdications and domiciles. Absent being globally uber rich, however, the rich will always have fewer children than the poor for they understand that wealth divided loses its power; inheritance across a growing number of children, makes all heirs less rich with each successive birth. The poor, having nothing to split, are unimpeded by such concerns and in the modern world have no worries about how to feed, cloth or house their brood, the tab for such being picked up by the state in part or in full.
@LucreLout
I would argue that the highest birthrate is among the poor in countries with little or no access to state supported welfare. When you have no state sponsored safety net your only viable retirement plan is to have lots of children and hope some of them survive long enough and are successful enough to support you in old age. Children also make for cheap farm labour for food production.
Countries with strong social safety nets generally have low birth rates.
We learn that airheaded golddiggers are attracted by expensive shiny shiny. Who knew!
However extensive field research by me and my friends has come to the amazing discovery that you can also get laid if you're a normal decent human being with a sense of fun and humour however much money you have or don't have.
Is this another example of "read all the theory, little practical experience", or one of the more feeble attempts to crowbar free maket theory into any subject, no matter how relevant? Whatever the case, using these articles as the basis for any conversation on a date, or even idly mentioning them within a relationship will surely lead to a great implementation of the Singleton pattern (sorry, for that gag, have a bit of a design patterns related bet on at the moment...)
This post has been deleted by its author
I won't write over-simplistic posts about economics if Worsthall stops writing over-simplistic articles about evolution?
It's almost painful to say it, but Worstall is rather better known in his feild than perhaps you are in yours - certainly once your pseudonym is applied.
If you'd care to write an indepth rebuttal of his points along evolutionary lines, I can certainly promise to read it, even if I can't guarantee comprehension.
The owners of these 1970-aesthetics watches are welcome to the super-chavs they'll attract. I'll stick to my trusty PAG240. Tells the time. Looks foxy (hint: thin isn't automatically better in a watch unless you are Steve Jobs - all those spreads* in Playgirl can't be wrong). Solar powered so it goes for more than three hours without me frantically looking around for a wall socket ("Is that a wall-wart charger in your pocket or etc etc"). Has a barometer with a memory so I can see if the evening's ents are going to be rained off *without* an internet connection.
And it has a compass and altimeter in it so I can always tell how high I am and which way I'm pointed.
I liked my PAG40's display better but I broke it when I took it apart to change the batteries.
* - Ahahahahaha
So if the watch is only about getting your leg over, exactly how many times would it help you get your leg over? Looking at the numbers, if it's less than 17 times then you might as well cut out the middle-man (Cook) and spend $1000 each on 17 of those ladies who charge extra for scrubbing up well.
Or maybe it's not just only about getting your leg over.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
