I agree with you @ellebarka broadly that beauty and childlike appearance has positive effect on selection. But @plinz is convinced that mind-control has a beneficial role to the society or the individual. My argument is to gently nudge him that it is not necessarily the case. :)
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That was not my argument. There is evidence that enlightened rationalism works well for some communities, which gives me hope. But the currently dominant cultures are largely the results of large-scale mind control techniques that co-evolved with us.
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It is a good hypothesis. Humans definitely show strong signs of neoteny. But autonomy is not necessarily hampered. I think the real reason is greater abstraction and generalisability, less adaptation to specific niches.
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I don't see it ; domestication presumably selected something, but if it feeds the kitties and keeps out predators what is childish? Playing, I suppose? But that must be quite recent, until 100ish yrs ago I guess domesticated mostly meant helping on the farm?
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Btw, when Russian researchers bred wild foxes for tameness as an experiment (which took very few generations), cuteness emerged together with the tame, trusting behavior (without being selected for by the researchers).
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Most of people’s non-tacit knowledge and values are not innate, and not autonomously inferred, but assimilated.
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The morphology of neotenous signaling is partially derived from anatomic constraints (skull vs face size, torso/limb ratios, limb geometry), but to an alien species we'd look all equally weird. We evolved to find certain types of chimp beautiful or cute based on evo criteria.
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I once thought that we bred animals and children selectively for looking cute. Now I realize that the signal shape itself is arbitrary, important is that we learn to associate it with loyal, dependent, trusting, playful.
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Neoteny is selected by nature too. Human preferences are not necessary. See e.g Axelotl. I think cuteness is just a biproduct. The functional role is greater adaptability, which was what humans were selecting for in pets. Trust, loyalty etc. also demand adaptability.
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What's selecting for permanent infancy in us?
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A society that pushes you off a cliff if you don’t pay your respects to the great wahoo
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