this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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I'd be cautious with saying evolutionary advantage here.
I don't believe the "Gay Uncle hypothesis" any more than the somewhat debunked "Grandmother Hypothesis", which aimed to explain menopause with biological altruism. Just because we could think of a way in that it might be advantageous for a species doesn't mean it's advantageous for an individuals fitness.
Of course, it can be still an advantage, but we'd only know with more free, uncensored research.
Does evolutionary pressure only exist on individuals? I've never heard that. There's a wide variety of species that are highly socially organized, do you not accept that that's through evolutionarily pressure?
I never said that. What I meant is that a behaviour, which benefits a species as a whole but reduces one individual's fitness, is not evolutionary competitive. It's evolutionary game theory, like the prisoners dilemma from normal game theory.
And to determine if some behaviour is such a dilemma, you have to consider costs and benefits of it, which is not at all clear in natural situations. That's why I said it needs to be studied.
But I must concede, I sort of assumed what exactly you called an evolutionary advantage. Common homosexuality in penguins or not discriminating against homosexual individuals in penguins have very different analysis here.