Enough with the $17,000 watch. How many of those are there again? Less than ten? The way the tech press spins this, you would think that is what an Apple watch actually costs.
No, really, the $17,000 Apple Watch IS all about getting your leg over
There was a certain amount of consumer resistance to my assertion that the Apple Christometer's $17,000 worth of bling was all about sex. But I'm afraid that this really is so. Bling is about getting sex: and it's the women who decide that it is as well. We have a less than reputable source for this: …conspicuous consumption …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 25th March 2015 16:47 GMT Mage
We are doomed
So all our descendants are going to be from a few iThing/iShiny purchasers?
I don't think so. They are so captivated by bling that they have given up intercourse with humans of opposite gender.
Besides they can't afford Apple upgrades and rug rats as well.
Slow news day?
Mine is the one with the "selfish" gene in one pocket and Origin of the species in the other :-)
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Thursday 26th March 2015 08:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: We are doomed - @Mage
My comment wasn't directed at you, I was suggesting that Mr. Worsthall was relying on an understanding of natural selection that is already rather out of date.
Whether I was being downvoted for that, or for suggesting that the gospel according to St. Richard isn't semper, ubique et ad omnibus I don't know.
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Wednesday 25th March 2015 17:02 GMT Salamander
This only works if the girl has the nouse to tell the genuine bling from the fake bling.
As Tim's previous arcticle indicated, there is not $17000 worth of gold in the Gold Apple watch, so a solid gold knock need not cost a lot.
And how many people would be able to tell the diference between the solid gold Rolex and the gold plated knock off?
Depending on which side of the line you are on, this is either a problem or an advantage. A problem if you are a woman trying to determine which bloke to shag. An advantage if you lack real resources as it means that you can fake being rich and get a shag.
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Wednesday 25th March 2015 19:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Salamander
Evolutionary biology knows all about faking it. Harmless insects that look like wasps, toads that inflate themselves to look bigger, there are many examples. It's a game in which the rules are constantly shifting.
The "best" attractants therefore are the ones that can't be faked. A Chinese knockoff Porsche 911 might work in the Chinese backwoods where nobody has ever seen or heard the real thing, but it won't work in London. It's quite difficult to fake an ocean going yacht. Watches, OTOH, are very easy to fake. As the news of this gets around, their value as indicators of the ability to burn £20 notes to warm the pigsty must decline - which is why Rolexes are no longer very special and things that have lots of visible strange little mechanisms are better, as being harder to fake.
I think Apple have chosen the wrong product unless it is aimed mainly at China.
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Wednesday 25th March 2015 21:30 GMT Voland's right hand
Re: @Salamander
Quote: A Chinese knockoff Porsche 911 might work in the Chinese backwoods where nobody has ever seen or heard the real thing, but it won't work in London. It's quite difficult to fake an ocean going yacht
Indeed. Confirmed by the mandatory Despair.com reference:
http://www.despair.com/love.html
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Thursday 26th March 2015 10:17 GMT Bassey
Re: @Salamander
> Evolutionary biology knows all about faking it
I think you missed the point slightly. If the female goes for the male, whether he is faking it or not is irrelevant. The point is that she CHOSE him and therefore the "faking", as you put it, was successful. The point is for her to chose the mate most likely to provide offspring that will go on to have offspring. So, in a sense, there is no "fake". Whoever she chooses is the real deal as defined by HER choice, not his actions.
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Wednesday 25th March 2015 17:52 GMT Voland's right hand
Industrial revolution was too short
Sigh... You need at least several hundred years _AND_ an absense of major conflict or migration to create a proper "genetic narrowing" on wealth accumulation grounds. That is why it is observed during the neolithic period and not after.
With the foundation of first tribal unions sometimes around the bronze age no human civilizaiton in Eurasia saw more than a few hundred years without a major invasion (to mix up the gene pool). Further to this, the periods of peace got progressively shorter and shorter. Thus, an "economic" factor in relation to genetic diversity would have been unable to kick in from sometimes around 2000 bc and onwards till this day.
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Wednesday 25th March 2015 18:30 GMT Mark 85
Of course it's all about sex...
Bling is about money and wealth (and the subset of power). One may have all these and still not get sex but those who see them (and their "stuff") will believe they are getting it on daily if not hourly. Very much like peacock plumage.
I'm wondering why this article even needed to be written unless it's because of our very geekdom that makes us need to be reminded of this basic premise.
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Wednesday 25th March 2015 23:33 GMT dan1980
Re: Of course it's all about sex...
Perhaps, but then I don't think it's really that accurate. At least not anymore and at least not everywhere. One only needs to look at the less-affluent to see that they are just as likely to produce additional humans as the more affluent. Anecdotally, some might suggest they are actually more likely to produce children - and more of them.
What may have been true in a smaller, simpler society does not necessarily have to be true in the huge and rather more complex society we live in today. Especially not where social welfare is available.
After all, the difference between a 'rich' male and a 'poor' one may have been more likely to make a noticeable difference to the likelihood of grandchildren in neolithic agricultural times than it is today.
The problem is not that the poorer people in our society are not able to have children, but that their children are more likely to be poorer as well, creating a cycle of poverty in the offspring, but not necessarily reducing the chance or number of those offspring.
What wealth does allow a male to do is to mate with more desirable females. Desirable in this society generally being synonymous with 'attractive'. Which, can mean that the offspring of a richer male may be more attractive, as they will have an attractive mother.
And of course, those children, being more likely to be attractive (and more likely to be rich as well), are more likely to be able to secure a more desirable match, thus concentrating both wealth and attractiveness.
So, being a wealthy male means you are more likely to have attractive children and being an attractive woman means you are more likely to have wealthy children, but does not mean you are more likely to actually have children or that you will have more of them or that they are more likely to reach maturity and reproduce, yielding grandchildren.
At least not in a 'modern' society or one where there is a relatively equal number of males and females.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 02:21 GMT dan1980
Re: Of course it's all about sex...
Distilled, I suppose what I am saying is that money allows less attractive* males to have sex with more attractive females - people who would normally be 'out of their league'.
In Australia, for example, it is unlikely that Geoffrey Edelsten could entertain his penchant for well-endowed women several decades his junior if he did not have the wallet for it. He doesn't have children, but of course that doesn't change the argument because the sex-drive exists to further procreation regardless of whether one actually procreates.
Look anywhere and you will see rich men with younger, more attractive wives. Not everyone of course, but you will see it everywhere.
* - However that attractiveness is defined.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 11:19 GMT LucreLout
Re: Of course it's all about sex...
One only needs to look at the less-affluent to see that they are just as likely to produce additional humans as the more affluent. Anecdotally, some might suggest they are actually more likely to produce children - and more of them.
Agreed, but it only works because of the welfare state. As society runs out of money to fund its continual expansion as a share of GDP, it will have to be trimmed, capped, or abndoned, depending on your politics. That will reduce the quantity of the breeding of the less affluent, if not the possibility of it.
The rich will simply continue their lives unimpeded, free as they are to select any other country of residence, and having much of their wealth spread across jurisdications and domiciles. Absent being globally uber rich, however, the rich will always have fewer children than the poor for they understand that wealth divided loses its power; inheritance across a growing number of children, makes all heirs less rich with each successive birth. The poor, having nothing to split, are unimpeded by such concerns and in the modern world have no worries about how to feed, cloth or house their brood, the tab for such being picked up by the state in part or in full.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 18:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Of course it's all about sex...
@LucreLout
I would argue that the highest birthrate is among the poor in countries with little or no access to state supported welfare. When you have no state sponsored safety net your only viable retirement plan is to have lots of children and hope some of them survive long enough and are successful enough to support you in old age. Children also make for cheap farm labour for food production.
Countries with strong social safety nets generally have low birth rates.
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Wednesday 25th March 2015 18:50 GMT SVV
In this week's lecture....
We learn that airheaded golddiggers are attracted by expensive shiny shiny. Who knew!
However extensive field research by me and my friends has come to the amazing discovery that you can also get laid if you're a normal decent human being with a sense of fun and humour however much money you have or don't have.
Is this another example of "read all the theory, little practical experience", or one of the more feeble attempts to crowbar free maket theory into any subject, no matter how relevant? Whatever the case, using these articles as the basis for any conversation on a date, or even idly mentioning them within a relationship will surely lead to a great implementation of the Singleton pattern (sorry, for that gag, have a bit of a design patterns related bet on at the moment...)
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Thursday 26th March 2015 11:23 GMT LucreLout
Re: How about this?
I won't write over-simplistic posts about economics if Worsthall stops writing over-simplistic articles about evolution?
It's almost painful to say it, but Worstall is rather better known in his feild than perhaps you are in yours - certainly once your pseudonym is applied.
If you'd care to write an indepth rebuttal of his points along evolutionary lines, I can certainly promise to read it, even if I can't guarantee comprehension.
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Wednesday 25th March 2015 19:08 GMT Stevie
Bah!
The owners of these 1970-aesthetics watches are welcome to the super-chavs they'll attract. I'll stick to my trusty PAG240. Tells the time. Looks foxy (hint: thin isn't automatically better in a watch unless you are Steve Jobs - all those spreads* in Playgirl can't be wrong). Solar powered so it goes for more than three hours without me frantically looking around for a wall socket ("Is that a wall-wart charger in your pocket or etc etc"). Has a barometer with a memory so I can see if the evening's ents are going to be rained off *without* an internet connection.
And it has a compass and altimeter in it so I can always tell how high I am and which way I'm pointed.
I liked my PAG40's display better but I broke it when I took it apart to change the batteries.
* - Ahahahahaha
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Thursday 26th March 2015 08:21 GMT Dan 55
Re: Getting your leg over
So if the watch is only about getting your leg over, exactly how many times would it help you get your leg over? Looking at the numbers, if it's less than 17 times then you might as well cut out the middle-man (Cook) and spend $1000 each on 17 of those ladies who charge extra for scrubbing up well.
Or maybe it's not just only about getting your leg over.
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Wednesday 25th March 2015 23:16 GMT Doctor Syntax
Not sure
Now el Reg has sorted out the links so we can actually get through to the report Tim was quoting (all these comments & nobody noticed the links were screwed?) I'm not sure what was actually being said. The report isn't the actual paper. It isn't even a review of the original paper. It's a write-up of what's best described as publisher's blurb for the original paper from the University.
The researchers seem to have taken a geographically wide-spread series of samples. What's not clear is whether all the geographic areas show the same restriction which would seem unlikely; there would be little gene flow from the Western European neo to contemporary Oceania, for instance.
Maybe they said that restriction took place separately in each culture at the time that it developed agriculture but if so this doesn't come through clearly in the report.
The mechanism of the restriction must also be open to doubt. It could well be linked to the way in which agriculture spread. If the knowledge & skills were largely passed down from father to son then the spread of agriculture from an area in which it had developed would be the work of a relatively small number of male lines originating in that area. Because agriculture allowed cultures using it to support larger populations those male lines would proliferate faster than those of the hunter-gatherers into whose territory agriculture was spreading.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 08:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Not sure
I'm glad somebody has taken the trouble to comment on the original paper.
It could in fact imply exactly the opposite of what Mr. Worsthall is suggesting - that the successful males were the equivalent of geeks, people with the intellect to understand agriculture and be successful at growing plants. In a primitive rural society, the man who could predict the best time for planting, organise irrigation, choose the best seeds to plant, and perhaps even do simply cross breeding experiments, would be an extremely valuable resource. He would be protected from the neighbours, and he would be expected to produce plenty of children.
The alternative view could be the other way round; that it was the women who developed agriculture (matriarchal societies) and that they were highly selective about the men they allowed to impregnate them. In which case the men might be selected for skill as hunters, for physical strength, or perhaps for being safe around the women. We don't know. But in neither case need Veblen goods come into it.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 05:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
um...no
The guy with two goats instead of one demonstrated wealth that had practical survival value. The pathetic geek wearing overpriced bling that made Apple execs the wealthy ones demonstrates the exact opposite. Any female with enough functioning brain cells to mind her own offsprings' future should be able to discern the difference between these.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 07:11 GMT YetAnotherLocksmith
True. Things have moved on though
Things have moved on.
So while this article is correct about what happened, it is no longer correct about what is happening.
The Pill and safe abortions changed (indeed, uncoupled) the relationship between sex and reproduction. Before that one would pretty much lead to the other. Not any more.
Money and displays of conspicuous consummation/consumption are of course still related.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 08:02 GMT werdsmith
Re: True. Things Just Happen
I ended up getting married and the children came along and it all just happened as life goes on. There was never any need to go looking for any of that, it all came to me without me putting in any effort.
I suspect if I had gone about it strategically and brought the same circumstances about using artificial image-enhancing crap then it might not have felt so 'right'.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 08:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: True. Things Just Happen
In the real world, nice people get laid. When you look at the people who go in for bling - let's not unfairly target ethnic minorities with childish generalisations like "Essex" - the first thought tends to be that they are not very nice people. Kindness, sensitivity, and the desire to do good in the world tend not to associate with hanging gold chains round your neck.
Perhaps, then, bling is just a compensatory mechanism to offset the natural selection disadvantage of being a dick.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 10:14 GMT Adam Inistrator
women decide
the article is predicated on the concept that women decided. that is unnecessary I think. just as possible that MEN decided to give their daughters to men with bling. half-based on their wives nagging maybe ... but we can drop the feminist fantasies and imagine it was some kind of clan decision in the past. it still is in India largely today for example.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 15:24 GMT Dan Paul
If "Bling" is the deciding factor
in your relationship, then the affected partner you have chosen is only a hollow caricature of a human being. Maybe it meant something in mans prehistory but should be much less important now.
This race to be the one with the most toys has resulted in the propegation of leagues of soulless gold diggers that conspicuosly consume resources but provide no other benefit to humanity.
You only have to look at the moral wasteland that is broadcast and reality TV for the type of bad examples that the world would be better off without. The more visible those celebutards are, the more greedy and specious the people become.
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Thursday 26th March 2015 16:36 GMT martinusher
Its just the mating ritual
When my daughter met her husband-to-be he was the owner of a absurdly high performance and unaffordable motorcycle. After the courtship was over and the contract sealed the bike was sold, changed for a somewhat more pragmatic (and a whole lot cheaper) machine. As she told it to me, she told him that he didn't need the bright yellow mating display any more, he'd got his female.
The Apple watch may fall into the same category, its bling, but its also bling that appeals to females rather than males. (Check out the customized iPhones -- guys don't normally go for the diamond studded look.) I still think its a misstep because it puts them in a market segment where they're not a player; the Tag Heuer tie up with Android wear is probably a better example of how to play that market (so Apple should be making movements, not watches.....and it also opens the door for endless upgrades which is closer to Apple's business model).
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Thursday 26th March 2015 22:29 GMT Adrian Tawse
Interesting
Interesting theory, but may I suggest another. I think it is probably wrong that the farming life was preferable to the nomadic hunter gatherer. Certainly the life of a medieval peasant farmer was truly dire. The problem with the hunter gatherer lifestyle is that it requires a great deal of land. I propose that it was the shortage of land that led to the demise of that lifestyle. Imagine an area of mixed farmers and hunter gatherers. The latter would see no reason why they should not hunt the farmers cattle and gather his crops. Much warfare and killing would follow. Warfare is a predominantly male activity, for good reason, one baby to one woman in more than one year. One baby to one man per night, men are disposable, they matter less (some would argue that that has been the male fear behind much subjugation of women). Even after this period it is no coincidence that fort building started in the bronze age. Bronze is highly nick-able and has to be defended. I don't think our ancestors built Maiden Castle just for the fun of it or for the cracking view (it is truly cracking, come and see). Defending the shared wealth was a serious business involving warfare and male deaths (OK, so Maiden Castle was built mainly during the Iron Age). Maiden Castle was a shared effort from the whole community, not the chief with the most bling. The Iron Age brought more efficient killing tools, which required yet more fort building, warfare and more male deaths. I don't thing even stone age women were so stupid as to think that the man with the bigger stone axe would be so much better a hunter as to be able to support multiple children rather the hunter with only one. The statistic is mainly due to warfare and male death rate.
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Friday 27th March 2015 19:58 GMT Lucky2BHere
Re: Interesting
If you go back far enough, farming actually *created* the urban structure. As populations increased, the discovery - by a woman who experimented on her own, from what can be discerned - that "systematized" mono-crops could produce more food than the grower could use, gave way (after discovering the best way to store grain) to specialization and the advantages/messes we have today.
There was plenty of arable land, people only moving for two reasons: 1) climate change, and 2) they effed it up by over-farming - or both.
The hunter-gather life was a hand-in-glove development that came out of necessity. Even the physical differences between men and women were a result of what was needed to survive. If either of the two mating partners was needed - evolutionarily - to spend days on the prairies or in the forests, and then had to - literally - fight their food into submission, they would necessary have to be physically stronger and be predisposed to focus on one thing for hours at a time. Females would then pick up the requirements to keep the young alive and find ways to manage what was brought back in.
Rest assured, as in all other mammals and other living things, the strong were selected for procreation. To demonstrate one's strength, coming back with more food or being in charge of a successful hunting party was not to be taken lightly.
While that's not bling, in the sense it's been tossed around here, it is a manifestation and indicator of an ability to survive.
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Friday 27th March 2015 05:44 GMT croc
"A result of this is that the usual estimate is that 80 per cent of the women who have ever lived had children while only 40 per cent of the men did. We see echoes of this in even modern populations when they're put under stress: the ratio of boys born to girls falls. In famine, for example, a child is likely to be undersized as a result: but it's going to be easier for an undersized woman to have those desired grandchildren than a runt of a boy."
I think that the author and I live in different universes... In MY universe, the number of (human) males that have ever conceived children is something Very Close to 0%, where in the author's universe it seems to be about 40%. And in MY universe that percentage does not vary much, if at all, even if the foetus is under-sized... Males conceiving and carrying even runts to full term is still Pretty Close to 0%.
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Friday 27th March 2015 18:49 GMT Lucky2BHere
Of course!
Couldn't agree more.
For those stuck in the watch and not looking at his position on "why", it has always been about tribal survival and always will be. As long as we are corporeal and have to compete for resources, *any* indication of longer-term stability will trump all other reasons for hooking up.
If it's not some frivolous bauble like this "watch", it could be, simply, "...he's (or, she's) got a job and I don't."
We don't exist in some superior living-thing vacuum. We're all part of a very big system that has already set the rules for getting on. In that aspect, we're not different than a tree or an ant. Perpetuation of the species is imperative - for every single species.
Quite literally, *everything* we do is in the name of grandchildren. Everything; from art to our choice of bath soap. All the bad, all the good, all the frivolous and all the important (as is defined by *only* us).