It is a method by which we can become grandparents, but only if our children use it to become parents.
Hallowed Be
Part of the Worstall daily mental warm ups turning things on their head. Ok i’ll have a go. So masturbation is praying for more ancestors?
MC
Seems unlikely; I think all of my grandparents were dead by the time I had sex for the first time.
NDReader
The grandparents business is fairly near the central thesis of Dawkins’ book “The Selfish Gene” – i.e. producing children is all very well, but they need to survive and mate and rear children too before you have passed the only test that matters.
John B
Primarily, sex is the method by which we produce parents.
Producing grandparents is a byproduct; they are parents first.
Maritime Barbarian
A chicken is just a complicated way for an egg to make more eggs.
Quoted by Dawkins, I think. Someone may know. Or was it Huxley?
Theophrastus
“the purpose of sex is to produce grandparents”
That’s absurdly reductionist and absurdly teleological. Sex has several functions but no purpose. Its basic function is the reproduction of the species. But, given humans create and require culture, the human animal requires more levels of explanation than the mere biological. So human sexuality has many functions and explanations — psychological, sociological, economic, theological, AI etc — depending on the level of explanation chosen. Higher levels of such explanation draw on the lower levels, but they aren’t reducible to the lower levels.
john maplas
isn’t sex a way of making even feminists attractive
It is a method by which we can become grandparents, but only if our children use it to become parents.
Part of the Worstall daily mental warm ups turning things on their head. Ok i’ll have a go. So masturbation is praying for more ancestors?
Seems unlikely; I think all of my grandparents were dead by the time I had sex for the first time.
The grandparents business is fairly near the central thesis of Dawkins’ book “The Selfish Gene” – i.e. producing children is all very well, but they need to survive and mate and rear children too before you have passed the only test that matters.
Primarily, sex is the method by which we produce parents.
Producing grandparents is a byproduct; they are parents first.
A chicken is just a complicated way for an egg to make more eggs.
Quoted by Dawkins, I think. Someone may know. Or was it Huxley?
“the purpose of sex is to produce grandparents”
That’s absurdly reductionist and absurdly teleological. Sex has several functions but no purpose. Its basic function is the reproduction of the species. But, given humans create and require culture, the human animal requires more levels of explanation than the mere biological. So human sexuality has many functions and explanations — psychological, sociological, economic, theological, AI etc — depending on the level of explanation chosen. Higher levels of such explanation draw on the lower levels, but they aren’t reducible to the lower levels.
isn’t sex a way of making even feminists attractive
@John Maplas. No. Only a paper bag will do that.