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[Reelya]

Well, you may or may not have said anything about fetuses. You could have edited it away as well.

My point was that people are making assumptions about demographic changes here that could be explained by non "murdering your firstborn" means. Since we're basically neglecting an entire potential subfield of relevant research here, then we can't in fact assume anything about why it's happening (or alternatively the scale of things), without proper evidence.

In fact, it's probably explainable by racism that we automatically assume it's because evildoers when it's another race, but when it's our own race we go "well who's to say why it's happening?".

e.g. an extremely wealthy nation such as Lichtenstein is a great barometer here, since it's highly unlikely they're bashing girls to death at birth or secretly aborting 20% of fetuses, when they don't even have abortion clinics there. And their birth ratio is far more skewed than China!

Wait, there it is.

That's clearly got nothing to do with what you said however. I was talking about Chinese social policy / abortions there, not about the developmental theory.

You made a very specific claim about something I said about the development of fetuses which is a point I deny making. The current quote is about abortions, which really doesn't have any connection to the developmental theory.

You're really just goalpost shifting now, nothing else. first it was "you said XYZ about the development of fetuses" now that's devolved to "you mentioned the word fetus (in an entirely different context). GOTCHA!". You're not making any sort of actual point now. I'm not even sure what you're position is because your posts are so content-free.

You could have edited it away as well.

Now this is just being a shit on purpose. I laid out my arguments and haven't edited away the gist of what I'm saying. If you can't respond to what's actually written, it's fucking imbecilic to argue against non-existent points then say i might have edited them away.

[Reelya]

But it is nowhere near 20% actually.
Total amount of live born children in Lichteinstein in 2011 was 395. Lichtenstein is tiny.
In the same year the ration boys/girls was 1.26/1 That means that out of 2.26 children 1.26 were boys and 1 was girl.
1.26/2.26=0,558
1/2.26=0,442
Multiplied by the number of children born:
0.558*395=220
0.442*395=175

Well actually it would be close to 20%. because you're not accounting for the missing girls in the total.

e.g. if things were equal, there should be 1.26 girls to the 1.26 boys. Meaning that out of the 1.26 girls, 0.26 are missing, which is 1/5th of the total theoretical girls who should exist.

And how did I say it originally:

1 in 5 baby girls are aborted in the entire nation

And I'm not even sure how the figures you presented are supposed to be relevant to proving something about the % of abortions that would be needed to skew the gender ratio, even. It seems to have no connection whatsoever to what you're trying to prove.

[Mathel]

Well a quick google brings up this:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0023792

Evolutionary theory posits that resource availability and parental investment ability could signal offspring sex selection, in order to maximize reproductive returns. Non-human studies have provided evidence for this phenomenon, and maternal condition around the time of conception has been identified as most important factor that influence offspring sex selection. However, studies on humans have reported inconsistent results, mostly due to use of disparate measures as indicators of maternal condition. In the present study, the cross-cultural differences in human natal sex ratio were analyzed with respect to indirect measures of condition namely, life expectancy and mortality rate. Multiple regression modeling suggested that mortality rates have distinct predictive power independent of cross-cultural differences in fertility, wealth and latitude that were earlier shown to predict sex ratio at birth. These findings suggest that sex ratio variation in humans may relate to differences in parental and environmental conditions.

Trivers and Willard predicted that, in polygynous mating systems, mothers in good condition could increase reproductive success by biasing investment in sons. Superior quality sons can leave many more offspring than daughters can. Hence, where the fitness gains of offspring quality are sex specific, a female with ability to produce high-quality offspring could be expected to produce more sons and vice-versa. Empirical evidence for biased offspring sex ratios gathered from many taxa support this theory
...
Meta-analysis of non-human studies has suggested that sex ratio adjustments are most likely to occur around the time of conception. This adjustment was strongly correlated with maternal condition around conception, such that mothers in good condition during this period produced more sons. Similar findings have been reported in humans when maternal condition was considered in relation to sex ratio adjustment

Average national sex ratio at birth (SRB) in humans is slightly male biased (105 males per 100 males), with remarkable deviation for some countries. Systematic deviations from this ratio occurs in conditions such as economic and natural catastrophes, war, chronic stress, etc. Demographic factors like ethnicity, parental age, mother's weight, birth-order, smoking, certain disease conditions, certain professions, exposure to environmental toxins, seasonality of birth, etc are also linked to sex ratio adjustments. These studies have shown that higher birth-order, older parental age, low or high maternal weight, exposure to toxins and stressful events lower the chances of male births

So basically, things seen as "unhealthy" e.g. the mother being old or too fat or too thin, or malnourished or stressed or sick from toxins, all reduce the chance of a male birth. The interesting part here is that all the observed "negative" things about the mother's condition seem to reduce the chance of having a boy: not one of them increases the chance.

The possibility that the human natal sex ratio may relate to variation of life-expectancy and mortality rates has received surprisingly little attention from researchers. Indeed, only one study has investigated the relation between life-expectancy and natal sex ratio in a small sample of contemporary British women, finding that women who believed they had longer to live were more likely to have a male birth than women who thought they would live shorter

I'll make the suggestion that this field of research has had "surprisingly little attention" from researchers because it's not politically correct to suggest that people would have more male children if you improve their standard of living, regardless of how scientifically accurate it is. We have no issue however observing gender variation in animals, so this has in fact been observed in dozens of other species.

However this also opens up some interesting perspectives on deliberate sex selection in impoverished nations. If the theory is correct, then impoverished people have more girls, but the problem is that we enforce monogamy, not polygyny, which is what innate sex-selection is geared for. Hence, impoverished nations would have excess girls by that measure, and would need some boy-baby bias just to maintain equal sex ratios. However, when standards of living then rise, that cultural sex-selectivity is now out of whack with the sex ratios, leading to excess male births.

That's exactly what we see in India and China - excess male population is blamed on generations of sex-selectivity. However, India and China didn't have a "girl shortage" until very recently, but the practices of pro-male sex-selection go back centuries. The data on poverty and innate gender selection can explain this issue.

EDIT: Note that the nation with the most skewed birth ratio in favor of boys is Lichtenstein, with 1.26 boys born per 1.0 girls. Some people are claiming that Lichtenstein people are seriously aborting the "missing" girls. However ... abortions aren't even legal in Lichtenstein, and it's hard to believe that literally 1 in 5 baby girls are aborted in the entire nation in the world's richest nation per capita, when you'd have to either do a backyard abortion or travel to another nation to get it done, and yet nobody is noticing this happening. Note that Lichtenstein has the highest GDP per capita of any nation in the world, along with an extreme level of income equality, so it might be an outlier of what happens when you have a large group of people who all have good nutrition and standard of living etc. A very low ratio of female births.

It is possible that I misread it, or you edited your reference away.
Assuming that when editing you did not remove it, so that you could prove me wrong, I was in fact arguing with myself.

But I still maintain that Lichtenstein is a terrible place to use for reference, because it has so few people and births.

State of Reelya's post at the time of this post:

Well, you may or may not have said anything about fetuses. You could have edited it away as well.

My point was that people are making assumptions about demographic changes here that could be explained by non "murdering your firstborn" means. Since we're basically neglecting an entire potential subfield of relevant research here, then we can't in fact assume anything about why it's happening (or alternatively the scale of things), without proper evidence.

In fact, it's probably explainable by racism that we automatically assume it's because evildoers when it's another race, but when it's our own race we go "well who's to say why it's happening?".

e.g. an extremely wealthy nation such as Lichtenstein is a great barometer here, since it's highly unlikely they're bashing girls to death at birth or secretly aborting 20% of fetuses, when they don't even have abortion clinics there. And their birth ratio is far more skewed than China!

Wait, there it is.

That's clearly got nothing to do with what you said however. I was talking about Chinese social policy / abortions there, not about the theory.

You made a very specific claim about something I said about the development of fetuses which is a point I deny making. The current quote is about abortions, which really doesn't have any connection to the developmental theory.

You're really just goalpost shifting now, nothing else. first it was "you said XYZ which involved fetuses" now that's devolved to "you mentioned the word fetus, in an entirely different context". you're not making any sort of actual point now.

[Mathel]

Well, you may or may not have said anything about fetuses. You could have edited it away as well.

My point was that people are making assumptions about demographic changes here that could be explained by non "murdering your firstborn" means. Since we're basically neglecting an entire potential subfield of relevant research here, then we can't in fact assume anything about why it's happening (or alternatively the scale of things), without proper evidence.

In fact, it's probably explainable by racism that we automatically assume it's because evildoers when it's another race, but when it's our own race we go "well who's to say why it's happening?".

e.g. an extremely wealthy nation such as Lichtenstein is a great barometer here, since it's highly unlikely they're bashing girls to death at birth or secretly aborting 20% of fetuses, when they don't even have abortion clinics there. And their birth ratio is far more skewed than China!

Wait, there it is.

That's clearly got nothing to do with what you said however. I was talking about Chinese social policy / abortions there, not about the developmental theory.

You made a very specific claim about something I said about the development of fetuses which is a point I deny making. The current quote is about abortions, which really doesn't have any connection to the developmental theory.

You're really just goalpost shifting now, nothing else. first it was "you said XYZ about the development of fetuses" now that's devolved to "you mentioned the word fetus (in an entirely different context). GOTCHA!". You're not making any sort of actual point now. I'm not even sure what you're position is because your posts are so content-free.

You could have edited it away as well.

Now this is just being a shit on purpose. I laid out my arguments and haven't edited away the gist of what I'm saying. If you can't respond to what's actually written, it's fucking imbecilic to argue against non-existent points then say i might have edited them away.

You ignore the fact that it often takes me over 10 minutes to answer to your posts, and while you edit your posts, I do not get to see them.

That is why I do not trust you. You edit your posts and then it looks like I was not answering you properly.

[Mathel]

My point was that people are making assumptions about demographic changes here that could be explained by non "murdering your firstborn" means. Since we're basically neglecting an entire potential subfield of relevant research here, then we can't in fact assume anything about why it's happening (or alternatively the scale of things), without proper evidence.

In fact, it's probably explainable by racism that we automatically assume it's because evildoers when it's another race, but when it's our own race we go "well who's to say why it's happening?".

e.g. an extremely wealthy nation such as Lichtenstein is a great barometer here, since it's highly unlikely they're bashing girls to death at birth or secretly aborting 20% of fetuses, when they don't even have abortion clinics there. And their birth ratio is far more skewed than China!

And this does in fact call into doubt our dominant narratives about why China's birth ratios are so skewed. Like I said, they could have originally had a skew to girls, because of biology and centuries of poverty - hell, they had the sex-selection thing going for 2000 years and never had a "girl shortage" before. But now that incomes are rising, the sex ratios (biological speaking) have stabilized, yet culture still has the "baby boy bias" that used to be adaptive, but is now maladaptive. Unfortunately, since sex ratio at birth is in fact reactive to maternal health, it's not possible to quantify the amount that this is happening, just from the birth records, as many sources are trying to do. So the reported estimates of infanticide are probably over-estimates since they're not taking into account that rising nutrition means more baby boys, biologically.

Well, you may or may not have said anything about fetuses. You could have edited it away as well.

My point was that people are making assumptions about demographic changes here that could be explained by non "murdering your firstborn" means. Since we're basically neglecting an entire potential subfield of relevant research here, then we can't in fact assume anything about why it's happening (or alternatively the scale of things), without proper evidence.

In fact, it's probably explainable by racism that we automatically assume it's because evildoers when it's another race, but when it's our own race we go "well who's to say why it's happening?".

e.g. an extremely wealthy nation such as Lichtenstein is a great barometer here, since it's highly unlikely they're bashing girls to death at birth or secretly aborting 20% of fetuses, when they don't even have abortion clinics there. And their birth ratio is far more skewed than China!

Wait, there it is.

Well a quick google brings up this:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0023792

Evolutionary theory posits that resource availability and parental investment ability could signal offspring sex selection, in order to maximize reproductive returns. Non-human studies have provided evidence for this phenomenon, and maternal condition around the time of conception has been identified as most important factor that influence offspring sex selection. However, studies on humans have reported inconsistent results, mostly due to use of disparate measures as indicators of maternal condition. In the present study, the cross-cultural differences in human natal sex ratio were analyzed with respect to indirect measures of condition namely, life expectancy and mortality rate. Multiple regression modeling suggested that mortality rates have distinct predictive power independent of cross-cultural differences in fertility, wealth and latitude that were earlier shown to predict sex ratio at birth. These findings suggest that sex ratio variation in humans may relate to differences in parental and environmental conditions.

Trivers and Willard predicted that, in polygynous mating systems, mothers in good condition could increase reproductive success by biasing investment in sons. Superior quality sons can leave many more offspring than daughters can. Hence, where the fitness gains of offspring quality are sex specific, a female with ability to produce high-quality offspring could be expected to produce more sons and vice-versa. Empirical evidence for biased offspring sex ratios gathered from many taxa support this theory
...
Meta-analysis of non-human studies has suggested that sex ratio adjustments are most likely to occur around the time of conception. This adjustment was strongly correlated with maternal condition around conception, such that mothers in good condition during this period produced more sons. Similar findings have been reported in humans when maternal condition was considered in relation to sex ratio adjustment

Average national sex ratio at birth (SRB) in humans is slightly male biased (105 males per 100 males), with remarkable deviation for some countries. Systematic deviations from this ratio occurs in conditions such as economic and natural catastrophes, war, chronic stress, etc. Demographic factors like ethnicity, parental age, mother's weight, birth-order, smoking, certain disease conditions, certain professions, exposure to environmental toxins, seasonality of birth, etc are also linked to sex ratio adjustments. These studies have shown that higher birth-order, older parental age, low or high maternal weight, exposure to toxins and stressful events lower the chances of male births

So basically, things seen as "unhealthy" e.g. the mother being old or too fat or too thin, or malnourished or stressed or sick from toxins, all reduce the chance of a male birth. The interesting part here is that all the observed "negative" things about the mother's condition seem to reduce the chance of having a boy: not one of them increases the chance.

The possibility that the human natal sex ratio may relate to variation of life-expectancy and mortality rates has received surprisingly little attention from researchers. Indeed, only one study has investigated the relation between life-expectancy and natal sex ratio in a small sample of contemporary British women, finding that women who believed they had longer to live were more likely to have a male birth than women who thought they would live shorter

I'll make the suggestion that this field of research has had "surprisingly little attention" from researchers because it's not politically correct to suggest that people would have more male children if you improve their standard of living, regardless of how scientifically accurate it is. We have no issue however observing gender variation in animals, so this has in fact been observed in dozens of other species.

However this also opens up some interesting perspectives on deliberate sex selection in impoverished nations. If the theory is correct, then impoverished people have more girls, but the problem is that we enforce monogamy, not polygyny, which is what innate sex-selection is geared for. Hence, impoverished nations would have excess girls by that measure, and would need some boy-baby bias just to maintain equal sex ratios. However, when standards of living then rise, that cultural sex-selectivity is now out of whack with the sex ratios, leading to excess male births.

That's exactly what we see in India and China - excess male population is blamed on generations of sex-selectivity. However, India and China didn't have a "girl shortage" until very recently, but the practices of pro-male sex-selection go back centuries. The data on poverty and innate gender selection can explain this issue.

EDIT: Note that the nation with the most skewed birth ratio in favor of boys is Lichtenstein, with 1.26 boys born per 1.0 girls. Some people are claiming that Lichtenstein people are seriously aborting the "missing" girls. However ... abortions aren't even legal in Lichtenstein, and it's hard to believe that literally 1 in 5 baby girls are aborted in the entire nation in the world's richest nation per capita, when you'd have to either do a backyard abortion or travel to another nation to get it done, and yet nobody is noticing this happening. Note that Lichtenstein has the highest GDP per capita of any nation in the world, along with an extreme level of income equality, so it might be an outlier of what happens when you have a large group of people who all have good nutrition and standard of living etc. A very low ratio of female births.

But it is nowhere near 20% actually.
Total amount of live born children in Lichteinstein in 2011 was 395. Lichtenstein is tiny.
In the same year the ration boys/girls was 1.26/1 That means that out of 2.26 children 1.26 were boys and 1 was girl.
1.26/2.26=0,558
1/2.26=0,442
Multiplied by the number of children born:
0.558*395=220
0.442*395=175

So, the difference between girls and boys was only 45 children.
If girls were added to have equal amount, total children would be 395+45=440
45/440=0,102
Only about 10% of fetuses would have to be aborted without a clinic. 20% of girl ones though.

Also in the same post you said that there does not seem to be anything increasing the chance of boy being born and that it is increased by something in Lichtenstein.

But The Principality of Lichtenstein is so small, that most of statistics there are not representative.

But it is nowhere near 20% actually.
Total amount of live born children in Lichteinstein in 2011 was 395. Lichtenstein is tiny.
In the same year the ration boys/girls was 1.26/1 That means that out of 2.26 children 1.26 were boys and 1 was girl.
1.26/2.26=0,558
1/2.26=0,442
Multiplied by the number of children born:
0.558*395=220
0.442*395=175

Well actually it would be close to 20%. because you're not accounting for the missing girls in the total.

e.g. if things were equal, there should be 1.26 girls to the 1.26 boys. Meaning that out of the 1.26 girls, 0.26 are missing, which is 1/5th of the total theoretical girls who should exist.

And how did I say it originally:

1 in 5 baby girls are aborted in the entire nation

Which is exactly what the statistics suggest.

You said 20% of fetuses, not 20% of female fetuses. 1/5 girls is correct. 20% of girls is correct. 20% of fetuses is wrong.

And you totaly ignored the part of my post, where I wrote that.

[Reelya]

Um, read it bro

it's hard to believe that literally 1 in 5 baby girls are aborted

I said, "1 in 5 baby girls" not "20% of fetuses". You're just misquoting me now. I already explained how the 20% figure is a perfectly accurate figure, and now in response you're nitpicking another thing that I didn't actually write.

[Mathel]

My point was that people are making assumptions about demographic changes here that could be explained by non "murdering your firstborn" means. Since we're basically neglecting an entire potential subfield of relevant research here, then we can't in fact assume anything about why it's happening (or alternatively the scale of things), without proper evidence.

In fact, it's probably explainable by racism that we automatically assume it's because evildoers when it's another race, but when it's our own race we go "well who's to say why it's happening?".

e.g. an extremely wealthy nation such as Lichtenstein is a great barometer here, since it's highly unlikely they're bashing girls to death at birth or secretly aborting 20% of fetuses, when they don't even have abortion clinics there. And their birth ratio is far more skewed than China!

And this does in fact call into doubt our dominant narratives about why China's birth ratios are so skewed. Like I said, they could have originally had a skew to girls, because of biology and centuries of poverty - hell, they had the sex-selection thing going for 2000 years and never had a "girl shortage" before. But now that incomes are rising, the sex ratios (biological speaking) have stabilized, yet culture still has the "baby boy bias" that used to be adaptive, but is now maladaptive. Unfortunately, since sex ratio at birth is in fact reactive to maternal health, it's not possible to quantify the amount that this is happening, just from the birth records, as many sources are trying to do. So the reported estimates of infanticide are probably over-estimates since they're not taking into account that rising nutrition means more baby boys, biologically.

This is the post, in which you wrote 20% of fetuses.

[Reelya]

What's the point of your argument? Clearly because I wrote 1 in 5 girls later, that's what I meant. You're not really arguing against anything now, just nitpicking semantics of the posts.

The only impression it gives is that you don't have an actual point to make. At least not one that's relevant to the subject matter.

[Tiruin]

Somehow stumbled on how Zimbardo's prison experiment isn't really as factual as the general info I've come across (what comes off as a really stereotyping and superficial 'power corrupts' biased result--the prison experiment where uninformed people took roles of prisoners and guards) by passing through many links until stumbling upon something such as that. Reminded me of the importance of checking context, especially in pilot studies or otherwise that broach a new idea.

One problem for me is I've no idea how to even read the comments there, though. ._.

[Mathel]

What's the point of your argument? Clearly because I wrote 1 in 5 girls later, that's what I meant. You're not really arguing against anything now, just nitpicking semantics of the posts.

The only impression it gives is that you don't have an actual point to make. At least not one that's relevant to the subject matter.

My first point was from having misread your post, about there being a different way of gender selection than miscarrige. As that was from having misread it, it was useless.

My second point is that using 1 year's worth of childbirths in Lichtenstein as reference is useless.

My third point is really not relevant to genders of newborns.
It is, that editing what you said while someone else is answering you will make them look bad, but it is cheating. While the page warns you about new posts, it does not warn you about edits to old ones.

[Reelya]

It is, that editing what you said while someone else is answering you will make them look bad, but it is cheating. While the page warns you about new posts, it does not warn you about edits to old ones.

I'm not sure how this is even relevant however. Repeating this point just seems like you're accusing me of doing this. The original post with almost all the information in it, which is the one you've mainly cited was last edited at 7:44:50 pm. You started making remarks at around 9:15 pm. So any suggestion that I retroactively edited my main original post to make you look bad is ... not very rational.

In fact you were the one who brought up variable fetus survival rates before I ever mentioned it:

While I would believe that "girl" fetuses have higher survival rate than "boy" fetuses when the mother is not healthy, I do not get how that would skewer the demographic in the other direction in the other direction when the mother is healthy.

So that was your point at 9:15, a good 90 minutes after I last edited the previous post. So, it's just what I said, you introduced the idea of "variable survival of male vs female fetuses" as a concept into the discussion, then a bit later ... you mischaracterized my whole argument as being that, and used a fairly dismissive tone towards it. When it was in fact a construct that you'd created.

[Mathel]

It is, that editing what you said while someone else is answering you will make them look bad, but it is cheating. While the page warns you about new posts, it does not warn you about edits to old ones.

I'm not sure how this is even relevant however. Repeating this point just seems like you're accusing me of doing this. The original post with almost all the information in it, which is the one you've mainly cited was last edited at 7:44:50 pm. You started making remarks at around 9:15 pm. So any suggestion that I retroactively edited my main original post to make you look bad is ... not very rational.

In fact you were the one who brought up variable fetus survival rates before I ever mentioned it:

While I would believe that "girl" fetuses have higher survival rate than "boy" fetuses when the mother is not healthy, I do not get how that would skewer the demographic in the other direction in the other direction when the mother is healthy.

So that was your point at 9:15, a good 90 minutes after I last edited the previous post. So, it's just what I said, you introduced the idea of "variable survival of male vs female fetuses" as a concept into the discussion, then a bit later ... you mischaracterized my whole argument as being that, and used a fairly dismissive tone towards it. When it was in fact a construct that you'd created.

Well, I am 3 hours east of you, but yes. I was wrong at that accusation and you did not edit that post later than I responded to it.
So yes. After I read the times of posts and edits, I am certain that the thing with girl fetuses was caused by my misreading, not editing afterwards.

On the other hand, there were many cases, where I wrote a response to you, clicked post and there was an entire paragraph edited in.
You probably did not do it intentionaly, but it did make me quite angry.

[Reelya]

Let's put that aside

While I would believe that "girl" fetuses have higher survival rate than "boy" fetuses when the mother is not healthy, I do not get how that would skewer the demographic in the other direction in the other direction when the mother is healthy.

The main argument against this point is the one I researched later on. Which is that at conception things are very close to 50:50, and then things skew either male or female. Here's some more research:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3071849

Parents in higher socioeconomic classes are more likely to have sons, but the effect is largely due to the excess male mortality during most of the gestational period.

This is from 1988, and they also cite the difference as merely being the higher male mortality in the womb. However ... more recent data collected on conception rates doesn't show any excess of original male embryos that would be needed for this factor to be relevant. So it does seem to really skew either one way or the other, not just one way.

The thing is, we can't ever say for sure whether this phenomena is adaptive or just coincidence. However, does it make a whole lot of difference? e.g. we can argue about why the sky is blue, but the various arguments don't nullify the statement "the sky is blue".

If more boys are born in good times, to wealthy families, to strong mothers etc etc ... that has real social and demographic implications, and those implications exist irrespective of why the phenomena exists.

[hector13]

Right lads, maybe take it to PMs?

[Greiger]

Found out yesterday at work that Twinkie Ice Cream is a thing.

That is either absolutely amazing awesomesauce or one of the worst things ever.  There can not possibly be an in between.