Gotnews reports that the Amtrak driver was gay. Freepers were quick to wonder if the crash may have happened because he was a gay affirmative action hire, fastracked to Amtrak driver from his last position as Target cashier.
There is an interesting question which does arise from the study of r/K and the amygdala. To quickly recap, if you follow the research in the book, the gay male is probably just exhibiting an exaggerated form of the amygdala modeling underlying the r-strategy. r-strategist males exhibit diminished amygdala volume and diminished volume is assumed, in the study of psychopathy, to underlie diminished functionality. It is likely the diminished volume is diminished development, due to diminished use of such a conflict-managing/risk-assessing brain structure when resources are freely available, as occurs in r-selected environments.
In matters of sexual preference, the r-strategy reverses the normal sexual dimorphism, where males are large, masculine, and aggressive, and females are petite and feminine. In the r-strategy, since females raise offspring alone, females tend to be larger, more aggressive, and more masculine to protect and provision their offspring, while males become more petite and feminine to facilitate showy mate displays and fleeing in the face of aggression. If normal males exhibiting an r-strategy prefer masculine characteristics in their female mates, to maximize the likelihood of their offspring being successfully raised to adulthood, then a slight over expression of that masculine-attracted sexual preference would produce full on homosexuality, where males prefer such a masculine mate that they end up embracing full on males as mates.
Thus a mild r-strategist would simply prefer a manly, angry, aggressive feminist, prone to cuckold him, for a mate, while the over-expressed trait would take things just a little farther, to the point of preferring an actual man. There is other evidence in the book indicating homosexuality is an over-expression of a highly fecund trait, mainly the fact that in families with homosexuals, the non-homosexual relatives have more mates and shorter relationship durations. That would also support the idea of homosexuality as an over-expression of the more fecund, r-selected rabbitism that is the root of the liberal political ideology.
The book also shows how the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondi, (which preferentially infects the amygdala with cysts, presumably diminishing its functionality and mimicking the effects of diminished volume) produces symptoms similar to liberalism, aka the human r-strategy.
Now where it is interesting is this. T. gondii is also associated with car accidents. Presumably, as you diminish the amygdala’s functionality with cysts filled with T.gondi, you diminish the ability to perceive threat, and to prioritize data properly. Thus you may drive faster, not notice you are driving faster, and be less able to experience the aversive stimulus cognitive “flag” in response to the danger of driving faster, which would make normal people slow down. You also will exhibit diminished reaction time, so when that car pulls out in front of you, you will be just a little slower in hitting the brakes. I’d imagine you would also be less able to multi-task, and shift focus between different stimuli smoothly, prioritizing the importance of each activity, and assigning focus to the most important stimulus at any one moment. Thus if you are texting, looking at a map, and driving, you would have trouble shifting focus between those tasks, and keeping an eye on the road (or track). You would also feel less cognitive drive to focus on the road to begin with.
It would be interesting to see a study of gay vs heterosexual car accident rates, as well as conservative vs liberal car accident rates.
It raises an interesting issue. If the r-selected rabbits have diminished amygdala functionality and reduced ability to perceive threat, should they occupy positions requiring robust amygdala function, such as driving public transportation with hundreds or thousands of lives depending upon their less capable amygdalae, or structuring government in such a way as to forestall a future economic collapse.
Obviously, we know the answer.
Update: This was not the first gay train engineer to crash his train.
I can’t find the study everyone cites to check the methodology, but the common statistic is that homosexuals are 18 times more likely to be in a car accident than heterosexuals.
Looking at the Linkdin page of this clown, check the timeline. He spent six years (!) getting a BS in business management — so he could be a train conductor.
The whole degree-mill thing is out of control Why in the world are we trusting important blue collar jobs to white-collar idiots? Train conductor is a skilled labor position that certainly does not require a college degree.
It reminds me of my wife’s favorite example from her job hunt. There was a listing for an office administration position. The requirements were literally:
Must type 25 wpm
Must be familiar with Outlook Exchange
Must be able to staple
Bachelors degree required
“If normal males exhibiting an r-strategy prefer masculine characteristics in their female mates, to maximize the likelihood of their offspring being successfully raised to adulthood, then a slight over expression of that masculine-attracted sexual preference would produce full on homosexuality, where males prefer such a masculine mate that they end up embracing full on males as mates.”
You blew my mind with that one.
This is a significant post. Even though I very impressed, I am not sure it is quite correct.
Your hypothesis does not answer why
– r-selection and k-selection exist in the same species
– if it’s from r-selection, named after rabbits, why are there not lots of gay rabbits?
– why in humans are the youngest children typically the gay ones
– tops vs bottoms
I am sure I could think of a few more questions
why r-selection and k-selection exist in the same species
r/K is a very big part of this site, so this isn’t the only place it has been discussed, nor is it an entire review of all the data and analysis here. You really need to review all the information presented here before becoming too critical. That’s not criticism, just a statement for others who come after, hopefully to dissuade them from letting initial questions lead to a dismissal of the material here without knowing there is a lot of other material which may answer questions that are raised by a single post.
To answer the question, in humans, we had two variables operative on us evolutionarily. First, we developed the ability to hunt animals using unique new methods, such as hunting in the daytime heat in Africa, giving us initially an enormous supply of essentially free resources. But we had a high protein requirement, and were quite lethal, so inevitably the food would end up exhausted, leaving a lot of humans with not a lot of food.
At the same time, we began to spread. This meant at the frontier, individuals would operate as more of an r-selected species, until resources were exhausted, at which point that area behind the frontier would turn K. Some r-strategists would take off to a new territory, where they could have another spate of free resources. Some might stay and shift toward K. And K’s from deeper in might show up and fight for the territory as well.
Today, the gene associated with all the traits of r-selection ( a dopamine receptor gene regulating the reward (neurochemical resource-acquisition signal) system) is also associated with migration, and there is one study linking it to homosexual behavior.
– if it’s from r-selection, named after rabbits, why are there not lots of gay rabbits?
In humans, as time went on, and we grasped technology, and agriculture, and complex economic systems, we swung between resource excess and resource shortage, and those who navigated that best, were those who could adapt their strategy. I believe this created both a genetic variability within the population, and a physical adaptability to differing dopamine levels which swings individual reproductive strategy with resource availability. In my view it is this swing in strategy which allows the occasional production of outliers who swing a little too far.
Rabbits don’t swing their strategy, because predation leave them in a fairly constant r-selecting environment. As a result, they have adapted with a fairly steady pressure and an established sexual dimorphism which is constant, and which can be adapted to. It is my suspicion that if they experienced an environmental variability, where sometimes it was advantageous for males to be the big, aggressive protectors, and females to be petite, submissive nurturers, and other times it was advantageous for males to be smaller and more feminine, and females to be larger and more masculine, then that system might occasionally produce confusion, and sexual appetites which were “not productive,” merely due to quirks of fate and occasional overshoots in the attempt to swing one way or another.
– why in humans are the youngest children typically the gay ones
Strangely enough, now that I think about it, every youngest child I have known has had the most positive atmosphere, as the baby of the family – something which could be characterized as mimicking r-selected free resource availability. Mother’s protect them most, they never have to go without to allow a younger sibling to have something, and they may even get a surplus of attention and hand-me-downs. Of all the siblings, it is the older brothers who have responsibilities, are expected to sacrifice and care for the well being of the youngest child, and so on. If r-selected psychology is a culmination of the genetic predisposition and dopamine exposure (we’ll ignore epigenetics here), then the youngest child would have the most r-selected environmental stimulus to elicit maximal dopamine activity – which is the environmental variable triggering the adoption of an r-strategy.
– tops vs bottoms
I’m guessing this means the man in the relationship or the woman. How they sort that one, I have no idea. But it is men preferring masculine qualities in mates, so the rest does seem to comport with what we know, and explain the conundrum of how a trait which stifles reproduction could have an aspect to it which would keep it alive in the species regardless.
There ARE tons of gay rabbits. Rabbits are well known in husbandry for being entirely indiscriminate as to which sex (or even species) they attempt to mate with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDMb12TWCFI
I was unaware of that – thank you. Probably to be thorough, we should differentiate between early pre-fame-Tom-Arnold-style-mating which might see a fat man accidentally thrown into a very diverse mix of mate choices, and the more discriminate same-sex attraction of homosexuality, where there is an actual preference for something in particular. I’d throw the r-selected rabbit “spreading-bet” genetically, more in the former, and the overshoot of an r/K swing producing a deliberate discrimination into the latter.
But very interesting.
Was searching for toxoplasma posts here and thought I’d add this:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/05/12/report-boston-trolley-driver-was-hired-with-transgender-minority-status.html
I had been thinking about how toxoplasma influence and core manic symptoms overlap with the rabbit spectrum. Urge to travel, openness to strangers, promiscuity, spending without care, peacocking, unearned euphoria, risky driving, lowered fear of danger…
And then was thinking about how that set of tendencies has been celebrated in pop culture as the epitome of rebellious cool since the Beats and the dawn of rock and roll. One thing few now recall about the Beats, particularly Kerouac and Cassidy, is that in their own time, the K-ified late 40’s, they were mostly scorned as deadbeats by those who actually had to depend on them in real life.
Our society has been reshaped over 70 years to more and more reflect the interests of rabbits/manics/toxoplasma.