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That was a thoroughly satisfying read. Thanks. My wife, an Asian, was extremely light-skinned when we first married and her skin color has since gradually darkened with age. Looking at old photos of her re-elicits in me exactly the male attitude(s) you describe, however.

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This is going to diverge, and I hope it's not tasteless and I will certainly understand if you do not respond further.

I'm a male Caucasian and am married (40 years!) to a woman of Japanese descent. I'm going to assume that you, too, are Caucasian.

First, immediate attraction was very strong, mutually. We have talked about this and it's not readily explicable, nor do I care enough to explore--it was just a happy chance in my life and I'll leave it at that.

But as we were getting to know each other, we both made well-intentioned racial/ethnic jokes, and one of them, that she initiated, was that Asians tend to look "alike". This was only true briefly, for me. (BTW, a related joke is that Caucasians talk too much...)

When first introduced to her large family in Hawaii, I did indeed have real troubles differentiating them by name and appearance. I might confuse Uncle Charlie, with Uncle Sam or Uncle David, e.g. It was perhaps even more pronounced for female relatives.

But within about a week, all this went away, and I came to realize that one's eye became accustomed to looking for different, less prominent, cues. So for all my life before, among Caucasians in the US, there were lots and lots of obvious visual differentiaters: hair color, eye color, hair texture, to a lesser degree body type, etc. But with Asian folk, it is much different and maybe even more facially oriented.

Does this resonate with your experiences?

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Yes, to some degree. Living in Quebec, I became attuned to slight differences in accent, and slight differences in the way people talked and behaved. I could tell whether someone came from Montreal or from the east of the province. I also became more sensitive to the differences in physical appearance between French Canadians and English Canadians.

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"I also became more sensitive to the differences in physical appearance between French Canadians and English Canadians."

It's an interesting angle I had gradually noticed, but had not thought much about prior to your mention: that after adapting to recognizing the smaller differences in appearance among E. Asians, I gradually noted more ethnic or sub-race (sorry about the poor knowledge of correct terminology!) differences among Europeans.

I now think that here in the US--and perhaps this is true in Canada, as well--there has been a real churning and mixing/re-mixing of phenotypes that perhaps in more isolated areas of Europe, like the Balkans and eastern Europe, these differences are more pronounced and hence more recognizable.

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Same initial experience, but I think it is just a difference that derives from the limitations of my original (Caucasian) training set. I didn't have much experience at all with Asians before I met her. I think the additional perceptual training with her and getting to know her relatives is transferable, however, inasmuch as I find it easier now to distinguish among not only different Asian people, but the same goes for all other non-Caucasians I meet. Ditto in reading their faces and face-broadcast thoughts and intentions. As an aside -- does your wife jut out her lower jaw when she's mad about something you or the rest of the family did that she disapproves of?

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Hah, hah!

She never gets mad at me!

Seriously, there *are* cultural characteristic responses--e.g., very slow and thoughtful response to pretty straightforward and simple questions.

We have basically yin-yanged our strengths/weaknesses. She curbs my excessive impatience and potential impulsivity and confrontational. nature, while I provide impetus in domestic financial planning and opportunity seeking.

Hah! One of the biggest influences that went counter to my collegiate Caucasian sensibilities (I came out of the 60s) was her entire family's, and by extension probably most of the east Asians I've met/worked with, is that western notions of what's termed "racism" are not present. A sort of stoic recognition of races and their observable differences as just being a fact of reality, of life. They're there, no biggie, so what?

This same stoicism seems to inform their notion of death, also.

It has worked well. Basically I'm the better for it, and I like to think that I helped her (and out daughter), too.

I hope I have not bored you...

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Yes, same very slow and thoughtful responses. I can sometimes twiddle my thumbs and go get a snack while waiting for a response. Ditto on the rest, too, but the curbing of the male impulsivity by female and provision of impetus to family by male I think are more global male-female things.

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Yes, I agree, and I feel that they are broadly associated with surviving cultures but they are really gender roles and roles are under fire in the west, including this one.

In retrospect I am from a very paternalistic SE European culture, and in it it seems that there's a great deal of comfort in having clear--though interchangeable, if required--domestic roles. It is like comfortable defaults, with a degree of flexibility.

She too is from this sort of culture, but it's from the other side of the world.

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I'm curious about the role of vitamin D? (ie fitness selection rather than sexual selection).

I gather animal studies have suggested a link between low vD status during gestation and poor (cognitive) outcomes for their offspring. This seems a feasible mechanism for selection of relatively pale human females.

Perplexity.ai pointed me to an open access 2024 review paper in Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41387-024-00296-0) that recommends vD supplements for pregnant women due to adverse birth (ie noncognitive) outcomes of vD deficiency. The studies reviewed looked at a combined total of 250,569 gestating women.

So, shout this recommendation from the rooftops?

In the Nature review paper discussion it seems to say Low vD status appears to have adverse outcomes for mother and child (during pregnancy and birth) based on weak 'observational' data but with stronger 'RCT' data for a benefit from vD supplements, though the level of benefit is unclear (ie not a strong selective pressure?).

Also, Perplexity.ai pointed me to what seems a pretty good 2017 study from Southern India which found no association between ~400 pregnant mother's vD status (measured once at <30 weeks) and the subsequent child's cognitive performance (at preschool and early adolescence). (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5965666/).

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Dark-skinned humans seem to use vitamin D more sparingly and more efficiently. This is having unforeseen consequences in places like India, for instance, where vitamin D supplements are having adverse effects.

I wrote a paper on that subject:

"Vitamin D metabolism differs among human populations because our species has adapted to different natural and cultural environments. Two environments are particularly difficult for the production of vitamin D by the skin: the Arctic, where the skin receives little solar UVB over the year; and the Tropics, where the skin is highly melanized and blocks UVB. In both cases, natural selection has favored the survival of those individuals who use vitamin D more efficiently or have some kind of workaround that ensures sufficient uptake of calcium and other essential minerals from food passing through the intestines. Vitamin D scarcity has either cultural or genetic solutions. Cultural solutions include consumption of meat in a raw or boiled state and extended breastfeeding of children. Genetic solutions include higher uptake of calcium from the intestines, higher rate of conversion of vitamin D to its most active form, stronger binding of vitamin D to carrier proteins in the bloodstream, and greater use of alternative metabolic pathways for calcium uptake. Because their bodies use vitamin D more sparingly, indigenous Arctic and Tropical peoples can be misdiagnosed with vitamin D deficiency and wrongly prescribed dietary supplements that may push their vitamin D level over the threshold of toxicity."

Frost P. (2022) The Problem of Vitamin D Scarcity: Cultural and Genetic Solutions by Indigenous Arctic and Tropical Peoples. Nutrients 14(19):4071. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14194071

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From skimming it, yours is a very interesting paper. It makes a lot of sense that dark skinned people in the tropics have been selected to function with lower levels of vD compared to white Europeans.

I don't know much about the impact of both low and excess levels of vD, though I did go to school (in the '60s in NZ) with a kid with rickets.

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Excellent article, full stop.

What I was expecting to read was also apivationod Vitamin-D / Folate hypothesis and evolution of melanin depletion with migration out of Africa northwards.

If there is a disparate fertility effect from melanin blocked reduction of Vitamin-D reduction in northern climes between men and women we would expect to see the sex with the higher impact to evolve to be paler the further north you go. That would be a very strong selection pressure because it impacts the ability to reproduce.

Similarly, if there is a differential melanin-protected fertility impact between men and women from folate degradation, you might expect higher melanin concentration in the sex with higher impacts with very strong selection.

I wonder what the concentration / depletion difference is between men and women graphed against latitude .

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It's generally subcutaneous fat content being higher, combined with male vascularity, if I recall correctly. Women have higher fat stores in general as well, this is good for a variety of reasons, chief among them survivability over periods of low calories and extra pounds to put into offspring

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Interesting article. You did a good job tying together lots of disparate areas of study, and I learned a lot.

I don't know that you have to invoke anything about sexual selection at all, though, and that doing so weakens your overall point by forcing you to spin a speculative just-so story about how attracting longer-term mates was facilitated by females being paler, somehow, even though males find ruddier females more attractive.

You don't need a sexual selection explanation when you already have a biological pathways one:

Why are males ruddier than females? Because males don't live on the edge of anemia once they're past puberty, and until very recent history, almost all females do. If I look like I have less hemoglobin under my skin, maybe it's because I slough my endometrium every month that I'm not busy providing all the iron for brand-new humans to make all their hemoglobin as they develop in my body. I note that women's skin is ruddier past menopause, and while one could conjure up a story about how that's because they don't need to be sexy anymore, the simpler explanation is that postmenopausal women are also anemic at the same rates as men.

Once you have the flat fact that females are less ruddy than males, pallor will be associated with femininity and become a pretty trait for women to have. But I don't think the causal chain goes: pale is pretty --> sexual selection because loyal guys dig it --> paler females than males. The simpler and thus more likely chain goes: relative pallor is an unavoidable consequence of women's fertility, the end.

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The answer is quite obvious. Light and dark are synonymous with positivity and negativity, respectively. Women are clearly the positive (and more valuable) sex, both in a practical and an abstract sense. Feminine traits include empathy, friendliness and agreeableness, which seem to be inherently positive. Male traits include intimidation, aggression, dominance and conquest. Strength is the only male trait that is inherently positive; aggression only has value as a response to other aggression. Considering this, is it any wonder that the colour-coded dichotomy of positive/negative found a physiological expression? Much like masculine angles and feminine curves, it is a phenotypical manifestation of our psychological profiles.

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Men and women, and males and females of sexually-reproducing species, are not the same but have equal value. In some species, fewer males than females are required to breed new specimens, but other species require about equal numbers of males a females. The way humans normally reproduce, about equal numbers are required; and both genders must nurture and guide juveniles as well as take care of adult parents, grandparents, and even unrelated members of their communities. However, radical feminist and radical lesbian ideologies regard knowing these things as violating morally required belief.

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Men clearly have the most value between the sexes what nonsense are you on about? Intelligence for one thing, courage, leadership. I think your iq must be in the double digits to come out with that nonsense.

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Sperm is infinite and cheap, eggs are expensive and finite. Need I say more?

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Nobility, art, philosophy, exploration. All these things came from men. The masculine is associated with the sky / sun / divinity whereas the femine is earth / mother etc. This is not to say the femine is not valuable but your earlier statement, red pill talking points, misses the mark.

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But that's all cultural stuff, which is a luxury. On a purely biological level, females hold the most value.

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Cultural stuff? I can garentee you biologically men hodl the most value? Females have value to whom? Men. They don't have value to tigers or elephants. They are essentially reproduction vextors for the main charecters who are always men. Your autism is off the charts on this one I'm afraid.

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I just explained to you that sperm is infinite and eggs are finite. Do you not understand English, or are you just dense?

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This is a very interesting essay and includes insights, but it is important to be careful about citing works published in social psychology, for papers published in professional psychology and sociology journals are hindered by use of inferential statistics as a substitute for sound judgment on substantive significance.

I'm going to use Yang et 2022 as an example. It is a fine piece of work as social psychology goes and is excellent by standards of publications in sociology and psychology that prevail today. It is cited to evince that humans typically have more sympathy for whiter-skinned people than for darker-skinned people.

The twenty-four experimental subjects were not selected to represent a defined population. Hence we cannot consider the probability that the results is are accidents of sampling to represent a defined population. Therefore, all tests of statistical significance (random sampling error) in the study are meaningless.

Inferential statistics are not a substitute for sound judgement of substantive significance anyway. If the study were done on a representative sample, substantive significance would have to take precedence over possible random sampling error.

The study does consider substantive significance. The experimental subjects were asked to mark pain intensity ratings 1-9, with 1 being no sensation & 9 unbearable pain. They rated images of human faces which gave little or nothing in the way of facial expressions as clues. But if you pay people to perform a harmless but irrational task, you can get them to do it. It you pay them enough, you can get them to eat live worms.

Let us turn to the report of results. Table 1 shows F-statistics, which have no substantive meaning, along with the inappropriate estimates of sampling error.

Figure 3 shows that mean differences across skin color categories are generally less than one point out of 8 possible (9 minus 1). Not only are the differences not large in the scale, but the scale has no known relation to human behavior other than making the experimental ratings.

Thus, Figure 3 might suggest that the hypothesis is refuted.

But there is another consideration regarding substantive evaluation: saying a person is in pain does not necessarily imply feeling sorry for that person. In that article, the use of "empathy" is questionable, but we can proceed by assuming the authors meant "sympathy". But clearly, the authors failed to consider empathy in the form of projection or negative prejudice. In other words, Person A might think Person B is suffering horrible subjective pain because Person B is a pathetic wimp.

We can skip further details. The researchers worked very intelligently and assiduously on the study, but there remains the failure to make decisions regarding substantive significance, which is customary in the profession.

The custom goes back at least ninety years (to about 1935), so by now we can say it is a deeply-ingrained tradition. The journal Educational and Psychological Measurement published an article about this (written by Raymond Hubbard and Partricia Ryan) in its October 2000 issue. A study of the development of statistical significance (probability of random sampling error) was also published in the journal Social Forces in its September 2005 issue (volume 84, #1, pages 1-24). The author was Erin Leahey. Many others have also been published in various disciplines but to little effect.

Hence, criticism of the tradition threatens many careers and apparent achievements, including much published work in at least two academic disciplines. Therefore, perhaps someone is going to get mad at me and insist that the professional customs in psychology and sociology are all wonderful and that I'm an idiot to insist on judgements of substantive significance.

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I am almost willing to stipulate that in general, women have lighter colored skin than men based on my personal observations of racially purebred northern couples with children.

However, the articles cited to that effect in the first paragraph are hidden behind paywalls with only their abstracts showing. From their abstracts, it appears that they do not support the contention; instead they assume the contention is true, perhaps based on some other scientific study elsewhere.

However, my personal direct experience with numerous naked bodies is that racially purebred northern European individuals of both genders have the same color of skin in areas of skin that are untanned. My observation of naked bodies on the TV show Naked and Afraid is that racially purebred northern European bodies' skins of both genders tend to be ruddier than skins of both genders of persons not genetically capable of having alabaster skin.

Therefore, it appears that the general differences in skin color (if extant) would more likely result from men and boys being outdoors & out of shade more and women and girls being indoors or in shade more.

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