Talk:Koinophilia

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Assessment comments The following comments were left by the assessors: (edit · refresh) Grading Koinophilia: grade as sub-B, in fact I think it deserves deletetion, see reasoning at here. Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

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Article Grading: The following comments were left by the quality and importance raters: (edit · history · refresh · how to use this template) Grading Koinophilia: grade as sub-B, in fact I think it deserves deletetion, see reasoning at here. Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:02, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

This article may be too technical for a general audience. Please help improve this article by providing more context and better explanations of technical details to make it more accessible, without removing technical details.

Contents 1 Article complexity 2 ??? 3 Koinophilia section 4 Article revision 5 merge from Averageness proposal 6 Notability

[edit] Article complexity

Wow...how humbling....I'm a scientist and I don't understand this page - the vocab is way over my head. Please could it be rewritten in lay speak by someone who understands it? Lystrablue 08:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree, I stuck the "technical" tag above. Specifically The evolutionary problem is quite dense. --zandperl 14:41, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree: I found the article clear and illuminating. Its use of technical jargon seems limited to those concepts of biology and evolution theory that it is necessary to know in order to be able to understand the topic of the article. Thus, nothing would be gained by expunging technical terms, and accuracy would be loss. Instead, what might be helpful would be to make more words into links, so that a reader who does not recognize the word "phenotype" would be able to click it and learn about both the vocable and the concept.

In support of my position, I can say that I don't even have a degree of any sort, and thus should be a much better model of a layman than our scientist friend Lystrablue. 213.45.150.183 00:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually it's a stupid rant in the part where bi-sex and asex is justified on koinophilia... But I guess that since koinophilia explains that people are attracted more to the average more arseholes breed together and consequently there's more chance new generations are arseholes themselves... So probability is that some arsehole got his hands in this and screwed.

[edit] ???

This topic got me thinking about something...

Seems like an attraction to features that are more common in younger individuals would have fitness value inasmuch as the difference between generations might be the result of some fitness value of those features (either for natural selection or sexual selection). The greater the fitness value of the feature, the greater you would expect to find the difference in prevalence with age, right?

OK so far? Let's pretend for a moment that we actually do have genes that cause us to be attracted to features that are more prevalent in younger individuals. Now let's say that I'm a high-school student and for the novelty of it some of the more avant-garde kids get nose-rings. No adults I know have nose rings, but some kids I know do. Might such a gene kick in to amplify the coolness factor of nose-rings? And to the extent that my (and others') attraction to nose-rings is increased, more of us will want to sport them. And the more young people that get them, the greater the difference between generations. And the greater the difference between generations, the more attractive I think it is. Voilà -- a positive feedback loop.

And then what happens if nose-rings get popular enough that lots of people I think of as distinctly older than me start to have them, too? The gene starts to turns off, because the difference in prevalence of the feature with age is decreasing.

Clearly there are other forces at work as well -- for example, getting away with rebellious behavior is a way of acquiring status, and kids look for ways to differentiate themselves. I'm just wondering whether such a gene might exist and could play a role in the steep rise and fall of fads.

AmigoNico 03:29, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Koinophilia section

Why is there a section titled Koinophilia within the article titled Koinophilia? This is redundant. --zandperl 14:39, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article revision

This article has been completely revised to make it understandable, and easy to read even for a person with only a minimal biological background. Technical jargon has been reduced to a minimum, and where it is unavoidable, it has been defined, with cross-references to the appropriate other Wikipedia entries. All of the above objections and comments have been addressed. 146.232.75.208 12:39, 23 October 2007 (UTC)jkoeslag

[edit] merge from Averageness proposal

Against proposed merge from averageness, at least in the current state. Both articles could do with work, but averageness is a reasonably good article in need of expansion, whereas the Koinophilia needs some pretty drastic trimming of WP:SYN and contains some eyebrow raising statements. (E.g. the uncritical citing of V. C. Wynne-Edwards in the statement "V.C Wynne-Edwards[22] [23] have suggested, the ceremonial challenging of territory ownership[27] might serve to control population size" ought to ring very loud alarm bells for anyone paying attention to the topic since the late 1960's). I hope to tag and edit this a bit in the coming weeks. Pete.Hurd (talk) 04:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought it odd that I worked for so long in the area of sexual selection and had not heard the term "Koinophilia" before, so I entered searched for it as "topic" in the ISI WoS and got a measly 8 hits, all papers by JH Koeslag (citations:2,2,3,5,6,7,5,13). Looks like a neologism to me. Note also that some claims, like that the theory was "was tested in humans by Judith Langlois" makes it sound like "Koinophilia" is a term in use by other researchers. The Langlois & Roggman paper does not mention the word "Koinophilia", or cite any of Koeslag's work. Elsewhere references are thrown in with little rationale, for instance the sentences "Koinophilia, because it discriminates against all rare, unusual and aberrant forms of behavior, is capable of evolutionarily stabilizing all of the very many forms of group activities that occur in nature. In addition to cooperation, this includes, amongst others, social conventions, ritualistic behavior, expressions of the emotions, [31] and other forms of communication between individuals." why reference 31 (Krebs & Dawkins's Mind "reading & manipulation" chapter in the 2nd Behavioural Ecology) belongs there is a total stumper, similarly bizzare linking and referencing goes on throughout.

If I follow the logic of the following paragraphs:

"Koinophilia, because it discriminates against all rare, unusual and aberrant forms of behavior, is capable of evolutionarily stabilizing all of the very many forms of group activities that occur in nature. In addition to cooperation, this includes, amongst others, social conventions, ritualistic behavior, expressions of the emotions, [31] and other forms of communication between individuals. Any individual who behaves abnormally (as a result of a mutation, or through immigration) will not easily find a mate, and will thus not be able to transmit that mutation to the next generation. In a cooperative group or species, koinophilia therefore has the effect of, not only canceling, but, in fact, reversing the advantage of selfishness in a cooperative environment.[5][6] Koinophilia therefore evolutionarily stabilizes all forms of cooperative and social behavior against selfishness, and antisocial behavior, regardless of the game theory details of the encounters and interactions. Thus, whether it is a matter of joining the hunting pack, respecting the rules governing contests over territories, [27] or gannets adhering to a convention which permits breeding on only one of two adjacent cliffs,[22] [23] koinophilia vigorously defends all of these practices against extinction at the hands of selfish, antisocial or nonconformist mutants."

then the idea is, cooperation is a hot topic in evolutionary theory, since apparent benefits exist for selfish, antisocial or nonconformist mutants that evolution ought to reward them... But koinophilia says/assumes that all rare mutants will be unfavoured as mates, therefore they cannot evolve to the over the population. ta-da problem solved. It's possible that references 5 & 6 actually say something more clever than this, but this seems to be what the paragraphs say (and references 5 & 6 have each been cited but once by an author other than Koeslag in a peer reviewed biology journal, and exceptionally parenthetically at that). Pete.Hurd (talk) 07:00, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

So what is your suggested solution to the problem of having two articles on very similar subjects that have little or no linkage between them? Th reason I suggested the merge in this direction was that "averageness" as a title is completely ineffective at conveying the sense that it's about appearance-based sexual selection; it could be a title from pure mathematics. But it sounds like you're unhappy with the Koinophilia article, or at least its title: would it work better to do a merge in the other direction? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:30, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this article ought to be deleted. A better merge for averageness would be to combine with Symmetry (physical attractiveness) and Youthfulness into one comprehensive article, something like Facial attractiveness maybe. The problem there is that many of these articles apply to much more than just human faces (e.g. I think Fluctuating asymmetry ought to have it's own article, rather than redirecting to Symmetry (physical attractiveness) since it's origins, and much of the literature, are outside the area of sexual selection). There's lots here that needs fixing, and many articles on mate choice criteria from the sexual selection area that need writing, but I think the Koinophilia article isn't where the effort ought to go. Pete.Hurd (talk) 16:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I am fascinated by Pete.Hurd's comments on this article and the concept of koinophilia. I have read and re-read his arguments but can discover not a single sentence or proposition which debates the merits and demerits of koinophilia, or discusses where it might be fundamentally flawed or illogical. He trashes the idea simply on the grounds that he had never heard of "koinophilia" before, that it is a neologism, and that it leads to, not illogical, but to not widely acknowledged conclusions. Thus, his main criticism is that anyone claiming to have finally discovered a solution (and a blinding obvious and simple one at that) to Wynne-Edwards' dilemma is, by definition, a crackpot scientist. If those are the criteria on which to reject or accept new ideas in science, then where would the advances proposed by Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Mendel, Einstein or Watson and Crick be today? At least when Galileo discussed his heliocentric theory of the solar system with Pope Urban VIII, the Pope countered Galileo's argument that the heliocentric theory provided a very much simpler and obvious explanation of the planets' movements than any of the current theories by remarking that God was not bound by mathematical simplicity - He could make the planets move in whatever manner he liked, very simply or incomprehensibly complexly. At least that was a clear, intelligent and logical argument, which even Galileo must have found difficult to counter. Pete.Hurd might examine the exchanges between Pope Urban VIII and Galileo to discover what real scientific debate is about (before the Pope delivered Galileo to the Inquisition). Johan Koeslag, 21 December 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.41.100.10 (talk) 20:27, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Right, I'm not debating it's merits or demerits. I've never been sent one of your papers to referee, and so I don't really plan to get into the merits. My point here is that there's no strong evidence that anyone other than you has ever discussed the merits and demerits of this subject. That raises questions about whether the topic can be considered to be encyclopedic; whether it passes Wikipedia's criterion of notability. Pete.Hurd (talk) 07:14, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notability

It is unclear if this topic is an area of general research or just a single researcher's neologism. Can anybody provide any review articles that discuss Koinophilia and place this research in context? Tim Vickers (talk) 18:57, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

On the subject of "notability" maybe the following should be borne in mind. At least two articles ^[1][2] have appeared in Nature, both with editorial comment, ^[3][4] on the "averageness hypothesis" and human facial beauty. Illustrative material from the 1998 article made it to the front cover of that issue of Nature. The term "koinophilia" is not used in either article, but "averageness", which is synonymous with "koinophilia", is used throughout both articles and in the editorial commentaries, as are the evolutionary reasons why "averageness" is a determinant of sexual attractiveness, as described this Wikipedia article, and by Koeslag^[5] in the scientific literature. The term "koinophilia" gained considerable popularity amongst the general public during the early 1990's, sparking, for instance, this poem by Richard Fein on the internet entitled "Koinophilia" speculating on whether Helen of Troy's face really launched 1000 ships or whether her face was simply a composite of 1000 women's faces giving her her legendary beauty. There has been a program entitled "Koinophilia" on the Discovery TV channel with Nancy Etcoff (from Harvard University) as guest celebrity. (I believe both Langlois and Koeslag were invited to contribute to the program, but circumstances prevented either attending the interviews.) The preferred term today seems to be "Averageness", which continues to be discussed widely on the internet (including in the many articles on physical attraction and beauty in Wikipedia), generating a great many repetitions of Judith Langlois' work (on composite faces and entire bodies) in the Psychology Journals (and on the internet), and, under the heading of "koinophilia", in the plastic surgery journals. A lack of notability does not seem to characterize this topic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jkoeslag (talk • contribs) 10:32, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

But the article, and the references to this work in articles such as Co-operation (evolution), implied much more to the concept of "Koinophilia" than simply a neologism for what otherwise goes by (I don't like the term either) "Averageness". I don't buy the idea that things like Enquist & Ghirlanda (1998) are endorsements of the notability of "koinophilia" because they don't endorse either the term, or the expanded claims made beyond the concept of Averageness. Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

If "averageness" is the preferred term, shouldn't we merge this page into the page on averageness? Tim Vickers (talk) 17:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

If only the material common to both topics is kept... I'm ok with that, but I don't know how much from here would be new that that wouldn't, well, see my reluctance in the (see Talk:Koinophilia#merge_from_Averageness_proposal secition above) Pete.Hurd (talk) 18:31, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Lesson 1 of Evolutionary Biology 1 emphasises that fitness is not fleetness of foot, sharpness of vision, acuteness of hearing, highly effective camouflage, a glossy coat, or a wet nose. It is, pure, simply, and uncomplicatedly the propensity to produce offspring and grand-offspring. This is the full, complete, final and, indeed, only determinant of fitness. Thus fit features become increasingly more common over the generations, while unfit features become increasingly rare. It means that, at the end of the day, fit features are announced by their profusion, and unfit features by their scarcity in the community. This is the fundamental truth at the very foundation of our understanding of biology. Fleetness in a cheetah, because it characterises nearly all cheetahs, can therefore, unequivocally, be considered a fit feature in this species, but, because it is non-existent in sloths, is a maladaptive feature in these animals. Stated as tersely as this, however, this statement can be somewhat misleading, as it is always possible to breed cheetahs that can run faster than any of their wild ancestors. This extra potential speed is therefore maladaptive, either because it takes its fitness toll in other aspects of a cheetah's life, or the extra speed itself becomes hazardous and counterproductive. It is therefore the common range of speeds of cheetahs that is presumably favoured by natural selection, and may thus be termed a "fit feature" in this species. This should be known as the First Law of (Evolutionary) Biology, on a par with the First Law of Thermodynamics. It is the basis of all Biology, without which biology makes no sense: it, in fact, degenerates into a hotch-spotch of disconnected and disjointed facts, totally lacking cohesion or predictive value.

The ability of (multicellular) sexual creatures to reproduce, and, therefore, to express their fitness, is critically dependent on their choice of a mate. Fitness in these creatures has no meaning except in the context of a mate. A bad pairing can reduce fitness to zero, whereas a wise (or lucky) pairing can enhance fitness. The First Law of Evolutionary Biology states that there is not a single phenotypic feature (other than the propensity to reproduce) which is a universal or even near-universal indicator of fitness. The fitness of all sexual creatures, however, critically depends on their ability to choose the right mate. They will therefore all share at least one feature that is directly indicative of fitness regardless of the species. Thus, regardless of what types of pairings promote the greatest number of offspring and grand-offspring, the fittest pairings will, according to the First Law of Evolutionary Biology, ultimately become the commonest pairings. The descendants of these successful pairings will inherit the stimuli and responses which brought the parents (and grandparents etc.) together, with the result that these stimuli and responses will now also be the norm in that evolutionarily successful group. To choose an exceptional, unusual or rare mate under these circumstances, therefore spells evolutionary suicide. It therefore behoves sexual creatures to bear this in mind when choosing a mate. This is the Second Law of Evolutionary Biology. It flows ineluctably from the First Law.

The Second Law makes several important falsifiable predictions. Firstly it predicts that sexual creatures will avoid mating with mutants. This is a generally accepted biological fact, but it is never explained how the mutants are recognised as such. Humans do not need to study medicine to recognise mutants. They can all do it, even children, who remorselessly torment fellow children with club feet, withered arms, asymmetrical ears, or even the swot who asks all the questions, and knows all the answers in class. Children readily identify unusualness, and do not like it. The Second Law also predicts that humans will find averaged faces and bodies more attractive than their alternatives, despite the common assertion that beauty is special and out of the ordinary. (In all fairness, absolute averageness is, in fact, a mathematical rarity - out of a group of 100 persons, for instance, none has exactly the mathematically average height! - so there is a modicum of truth in the observation that exceptional beauty is exceptional, despite being average - very few individuals are totally and utterly average in every respect.) The Second Law further predicts that sexual creatures will tend to coalesce into groups consisting of individuals who all look incredibly alike (e.g. starlings, impala, deer, bears etc), with prominent phenotypic gaps between the separate groups (e.g. lions, leopards, cheetahs). The First Law explains diversification and evolutionary gradualism, the Second Law predicts that, in sexual creatures, this results in speciation.

To deny or ignore the Second law of Evolutionary Biology is to denounce the First Law of Evolutionary Biology. Persons who can mindlessly recite the First Law, but are intellectually unable use the this valuable tool to derive, or appreciate, its implications should leave Evolutionary Biology and switch to tending roses, teaching creationism or inventing perpetual motion machines. Note that those who wish to expunge of the term "koinophilia" from biology in general and Wikipedia in particular are in fact doing so, at their own insistence, for koinophilic reasons. They need the comfort and safety of commonness before they dare express an opinion of their own (other than fright and alarm at any apparent novelty). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jkoeslag (talk • contribs) 16:32, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Your explanation of stabilizing selection is a very colorful one. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia, like all encyclopedias, has the purpose of documenting things or ideas as they exist in the real world. If an idea has no life or existence outside of wikipedia, then it does not belong in wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a forum for advancing ideas it is a place to document ideas that have a significant, notable impact, which can be verified through reliable secondary sources, which are independent of the subject, this cannot be said of the neologisms: "koinophilia", "the First law of Evolutionary Biology", or "the Second law of Evolutionary Biology. Pete.Hurd (talk) 18:46, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Is it just me, or is all this first and second law of thermodynamics evolutionary biology reminding anyone else of the Sadi Carnot human thermodynamics walled garden kerfuffle? —David Eppstein (talk) 19:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I would like to make several points here. Firstly I did not place "Koinophilia" in Wikipedia. I was approached for any material I had on the subject, because the person, whom I presumed was an editor of Wikipedia, felt it important that there should be an article on Koinophilia in Wikipedia. I had no popular rendering of my work, so I simply submitted copies of my scientific papers on the topic. The author was not a biologist and quickly ran into trouble, inviting, amongst others, those initial comments: "Wow...how humbling....I'm a scientist and I don't understand this page - the vocab is way over my head. Please could it be rewritten in lay speak by someone who understands it? Lystrablue 08:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)" and "I agree, I stuck the "technical" tag above. Specifically The evolutionary problem is quite dense. --zandperl 14:41, 31 March 2007 (UTC)". It was at this point that I was asked to try to sort the article out in order to explain koinophilia in simple terms, which is what I did. The "lack of neutrality" and "conflict of interest" flags were slapped on the article post hoc, only after I identified myself in response to Pete Hurd's attack on the article in December 2007. I reject those epithets, as I believe that Pete Hurd originally had no reason to suspect that I, JH Koeslag, had written the article. I doubt whether a neutral reader would suspect it either. It was written purely to explain what koinophilia is, and what its implications are, in the clearest and simplest terms for anyone to understand. There are cross references to all the main entries that are relevant to material being discussed, and there is no difficulty in obtaining a full picture of all the different points of view, relating to anything discussed in this article.

Secondly, koinophilia is hardly a neologism as it has been in existence for at least 18 years, and very quickly became widely known. A Google search would throw up scores of (independent) references to, and discussions of, koinophilia, including the poem "Koinophilia", which still appears 3rd on the list when one types "koinophilia" into Google today. I took the liberty of contacting the author of this poem for his impressions of koinophilia and how he had come across the word. This is his reply: "I read about koinophilia in a popular psychology magazine in the U.S. called Psychology Today. But that was years ago and I no longer have the issue or recall the issue#. ..... There are googles of sites referring to the term. There is resistance to the theory of koinophilia because of “political correctness.” But that doesn’t invalidate the term itself. There are religious fanatics who oppose evolution, but not even the most fanatical would deny that the term evolution exists. What is ironic is that the Google search engine itself is a kind of koinophilia. It computes the number of inquiries about specific words and ranks them according to popularity. It might be that this editor is opposed to the theory and is using a semantic objection to obscure his/her real reasons. I think that this is the real issue behind his/her objections."

The fact that the Discovery TV Channel ran a full programme entitled "koinophilia" also says that it was a word that was in common usage, and sufficiently fascinating to justify a popular rendering of it on this popular commercial international TV channel.

I find Pete Hurd's brushing aside of the 2 Letters to Nature by Perrett et al. curious in the extreme. Sure, Perrett does not use the word "koinophilia" but "averageness hypothesis" instead. But he could not have explained the central thesis of koinophilia better in those articles if he had tried. In these articles he repeats Judith Langlois' work and tries to show that the most attractive face is not the average face (which is far more in line with current biological thinking than the disappointingly unexciting notion that attractive faces are only average). Both his attempts at refuting koinophilia were graced by editorial commentaries. Nature could not have acknowledged the importance of the koinophilia theory in clearer and more vivid terms. (Who amongst the commentators in these Talk columns has had an idea of theirs acknowledged in this manner by Nature?) Although Perrett concludes that people are attracted to something other than the average face, the face that turned out to be the most beautiful is almost indistinguishable from the average face (i.e. it is clearly still a modal face). It is very definitely not a fringe face from one of the extremes of the spectrum, as lay intuition and biological dogma currently believe it ought to be. The face that turned out to be marginally (though statistically significantly) more popular than the averaged face simply looks younger than the face that was averaged from women aged between 22 and 46 years. (Faces change with age!)

Thirdly, the article does not describe original research that has never been published before. Nor does it contain original research, as scurrilously claimed by one of the tags. Everything described in this Wikipedia article has been published in high impact, well respected, peer reviewed, international journals over the course of one and half decades. The fact that only the human beauty prediction of the koinophilia theory has been tested and commented on repeatedly, and has caught both the public and the scientific communities' imagination, does not mean that koinophilia does not make other falsifiable predictions. There are chat groups on the internet that give the impression that saltatory evolution is fully and satisfactorily explained by koinophilia. (The reservations about saltatory evolution on the grounds that there is no mechanism to explain it, are therefore considered to have fallen away.) A Wikipedia entry on "averageness" or "koinophilia" has to acknowledge that these further unavoidable, and inescapable implications exist. Otherwise it would be the same as writing about evolution but insisting that humans were specially and separately created, and did not descend from "monkeys". Evolutionary theory, rightly or wrongly, maintains that humans are the product of evolutionary mechanisms that are no different from those that created the dog, bat, whale or amoeba. Hiding, ignoring or insisting that human evolution may not be discussed in Wikipedia means that the "Evolution" article is incomplete and misleading. Jkoeslag 22 January 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jkoeslag (talk • contribs) 14:12, 22 January 2008 (UTC)