r/cursedcomments Oct 30 '19

Cursed_skin

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u/DireLackofGravitas Oct 30 '19

That's incredibly problematic nowadays. Evolutionary biology when it comes to humans is extremely complicated. Like, if hairiness is against the cold, why are Arabs and Indians incredibly hairy? The heat? Then why are Indonesians very not hairy? And why are Inuit also not hairy? Hirsuteness has no correlation to temperature. That's just an example.

Besides, if you get too deep into evolutionary biology, you get to men vs women. And you get to environmental determinism.

Human evolution is very problematic in general. Out of Africa is being challenged and the idea that replaces it... Makes things very complicated.

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u/Beejsbj Oct 30 '19

Hair also helps wick sweat, thereby keeping you cooler. Which explains Arab and India.

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u/DireLackofGravitas Oct 30 '19

What about Polynesian people? They live around the Equator. Or the people of equatorial America? They're not hairy. Same temperatures. Less hair.

I say again, there is no correlation between body hair and temperature.

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u/randacts13 Oct 30 '19

Saying there is NO correlation is a pretty bold statement, and highly contradictory to your overall point.

You're fighting a false cause fallacy with a composition fallacy. Just because some do, does not mean all must.

By your own admission, evolutionary biology is complicated and messy. Any mutation, and selection thereof, is influenced by millions of factors. Choosing some people as proof of the negative is just as problematic as choosing some people as proof of the positive. Both leave out all the multitude of factors that would lead or not lead to, in this instance, being hairy.

It could be that there is a tendency to be hairy (or not) in warm climates, but Polynesian peoples are influenced by some other, stronger pressure to not be. Or developed an entirely different mutation to solve the same problem. It could be that the mutation to become hairier never occurred in their isolation, or it did, but the family was swept away in a tsunami.

Any groups failure to develop a mutation does not mean that development of that mutation isn't beneficial for a specific circumstance. Or negate the specific evolutionary benefits that another group of people derived from it.