Really weird thing this, I would assume you start at the beginning,
with ‘does a thin layer of hair prevent damage’. Going from that to ‘it
is for punching’ and not going past ‘stops you from day to day damage by
flora/fauna’ is a huge leap.
I mean, on the one hand, this shouldn’t pass the sniff test enough to
be seriously considered as a hypothesis.
On the other hand, even a very good psychologist wouldn’t be trained
to do the calculations to see whether a thick enough beard would
actually provide any cushioning from a face punch, any more than any
average person would. The “I’m a scientist, I can do all the science”
stuff from media is a bunch of bullocks.
Very true. I just find it funny to contrast the rigor required to determine if facial hair reduces punch impact with the ‘rigor’ required to pontificate about the evolutionary advantage of said impact reduction.
But the question really seems up Miller’s alley, so I think he should hunt down the truth at any cost.
The fun part I enjoyed when I was taking the piss out of this paper on twitter is the probably correct hypothesis that none of the authors have ever been in a boxing ring
Sniff tests aside, anyone that’s even been in a sparring match will probably be aware that there isn’t any beard on Earth that’s going to take the force out of a left hook made in earnest
I think the funniest thing is their experimental design (what was it like dropping some heavy object on a pile of sheep wool or something like that?) in a rather ridiculous imitation of actual physics.
There’s something to be said for the idea that certain hypotheses aren’t worth testing, but taking this seriously? Well you’re just showing your arse that you’ve never been in a fight.
Fair play to Geoffrey and the authors, being a guy who’s never been in a fight is a good thing. But when your whole academic career is based on the sort of shit he says - toxic masculinity good; feminism bad - and all that kind of shit it’s pretty revealing when you take seriously the idea a beard is gonna be any kind of real protection in the ring.
> I think the funniest thing is their experimental design (what was it like dropping some heavy object on a pile of sheep wool or something like that?) in a rather ridiculous imitation of actual physics.
I'll be honest, I've overseen undergraduate projects with better approaches to impact testing than this (and I'm not a mech eng). Nothing they described is wrong, it's just not the appropriate testing conditions. It's like someone who used the machine once in a class exercise described how it worked, and they just rolled with it. B- at best, with grade inflation.
Seriously. The lack of fighting experience this shows is fucking hilarious coming from him.
And my god, he has a truly abysmal understanding of physics. The experiment literally just demonstrates that hair can absorb energy...like that wasn’t something we knew already? The fact that he thinks this supports their broader claim is kind of a perfect encapsulation of the problems with this field.
Better idea: we constructed massive face pillows for boxers, and the boxers with the bigger face pillows were able to withstand bigger blows! Guys, does this mean beards evolved as punching protection??
And, of course, even if beards do allow fighters to withstand stronger blows, that doesn’t support the causal inference. But it’s evopsych, so that‘s a given.
I’d really like to build an evo psych hypothesis generator, that takes any human behavior and any presumed fact about early human life, and generates an explanation of why the 2nd caused the 1st.
The USA.
And there's a difference between taking Physics 101 in college and being able to do the type of math we're talking about decades after you graduated.
If someone wanted to do an actual investigation, face-slapping
champion Vasily Kamotskiy
would be a great person to help acquire experimental data.
Or you could take the Mythbusters route and build a mechanical
slapping arm to deliver a consistent hit, then measure the impact force
on ballistic gel busts with and without beards.
But I don’t think males were beardless like females, then evolved
beards because dudes kept punching each other. That don’t make no
sense.
My response paper: when fighters are allowed to tug on each other’s hair, hairless fighters’ performance improves. Possible reason for hair loss in Homo Sapiens?
lol Adam Rutherford, myself, and several others already had some fun
ripping the shit out of this one, two, days ago? (I literally have lost
track of time the same way as in the jokes people keep making)
Inevitably it gets a headline and Geoffrey jumps on the bandwagon
the processes you've tried to describe are inconsistent with a gradual mechanism; they're functionally indistinguishable from intelligent design theories.
In this case what you're doing isn't even evo-psych, or evolutionary biology at all, it's just spandrel hunting. The question isn't "what benefits can we convince ourselves that beards granted early humans, if we ignore certain obvious facts?," it's "what selection mechanisms might conceivably turn facial hair growth into a sexually dimorphic trait?" You claim to be answering the former, useless version of the question. The second version, which is the one that actually matters, is unassailable by your methods.
> Any dimorphism which exists in an environment that allows higher reproductive success for an extended period of time is consistent with a gradual mechanism.
I don't think you understand the issue here. You mentioned, for example, the idea that beards are good for fighting because they obscure the jawline. This is obviously nonsense (if fistfighting were an effective selection pressure in early humans, we'd see important adaptations beyond just increased growth of facial hair in males, come on,) but it's also only even conceivably true once you've got a massive beard going, so it can't exert any selection pressure. Evolution doesn't, and indeed can't, plan. This is the fundamental fact that you seem to miss, and the reason that I say your ideas are indistinguishable from intelligent design.
EDIT: It's worth pointing out that you've gone from
> I instinctively hate causal attributions, but
to
> not once made claims to causation.
Would be nice if you could make up your mind here.
Further to what /u/SailOfIgnorance points out, there’s plenty of downsides to wearing a beard even in the purely speculative imaginary that we’re discussing here. Wearing a full-length beard in a fight, for example...well, have you ever been punched with your jaw open? Not fun (and more often than with other bones it’ll actually break your jaw), and although you’re not allowed to do this in the ring a beard is the ideal thing your opponent needs to grab onto to make sure you can’t dodge that.
> but getting punched in the face with a beard is far better than getting punched in the face without
This is very unlikely. Ignoring the obscuring effects, very few top-tier boxers grow their beards to the maximum length allowed. (h/t /u/noactuallyitspoptart ) You'd think highly competitive athletes would take every advantage they could, especially if it was "far better". Clearly, it's nominal compared to its downsides.
I don’t even know where they’re getting this idea
Also the bit about getting punch with vs without a shirt
I’ve been in the ring both shirtless and wearing a shirt and never noticed a difference
Generally an even minimally experienced fighter has already learned to roll with body blows and worry about primarily protecting their head wherever there’s a trade-off between the two
Like obviously you don’t want to get punched in the gut either but like I said it’s a trade-off, and that’s not just in boxing
I feel like in the sort of Uber-masculine Hobbesian “war of all against all” picture of Early Man everybody is clearly imagining here guys would have a handle on how to fight a cut or three above your average guy who works at Tesco in 2020 so there’s good reason to keep in mind what modern fighters get up to as well
A maverick, independent researcher would run a controlled self-experiment. Only way to be sure.
Really weird thing this, I would assume you start at the beginning, with ‘does a thin layer of hair prevent damage’. Going from that to ‘it is for punching’ and not going past ‘stops you from day to day damage by flora/fauna’ is a huge leap.
I mean, on the one hand, this shouldn’t pass the sniff test enough to be seriously considered as a hypothesis.
On the other hand, even a very good psychologist wouldn’t be trained to do the calculations to see whether a thick enough beard would actually provide any cushioning from a face punch, any more than any average person would. The “I’m a scientist, I can do all the science” stuff from media is a bunch of bullocks.
If someone wanted to do an actual investigation, face-slapping champion Vasily Kamotskiy would be a great person to help acquire experimental data.
Or you could take the Mythbusters route and build a mechanical slapping arm to deliver a consistent hit, then measure the impact force on ballistic gel busts with and without beards.
But I don’t think males were beardless like females, then evolved beards because dudes kept punching each other. That don’t make no sense.
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lol Adam Rutherford, myself, and several others already had some fun ripping the shit out of this one, two, days ago? (I literally have lost track of time the same way as in the jokes people keep making)
Inevitably it gets a headline and Geoffrey jumps on the bandwagon
The phrase “may have” is sure doing a lot of work in that headline, huh.
I wrote this one a few years ago, perhaps it can be updated.
That’s not even the correct use of the word dubious.
I have heard the suggestion that hair on top of the head is protective. The beard thing is not a stupid hypothesis. It’s worth testing.
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