Comment by underlipton
19 hours ago
>You don't find better nutrition and sexual selection for height satisfactory?
A few centuries aren't long enough for such marked selective pressure on a polygenic trait.
>Value is not relative. It is objective, ontological, and teleological.
I am conflating objective measurements (value) with subjective situational qualifications of the relevance of those measurements (also "value", kinda) because most people understand that I mean the latter. I acknowledge your pedantic correction of this conflation; please feel good about yourself and move on with your day.
"A few centuries aren't long enough for such marked selective pressure on a polygenic trait."
Are you sure? In extremis, if blue-eyed people (a polygenic trait) are considered absolutely unfuckable, I would expect them to disappear from the population in 10-15 generations, or at least become very, very rare.
Given the wide variety in personal taste, there are almost no people that are completely unfuckable.
In a society that gives you a lot of personal freedom, yes. But that is a very recent thing.
Most historic societies regulated relations between men and women tightly. Imagine that this was a caste-like prohibition. We know that caste prohibitions worked in India; until today, Indian population can be divided into many genetically distinct subpopulations determined by caste.
Same with medieval Europe and, say, sex and marriage between Christians and Jews. Close to unthinkable, regardless of whether you fancied beautiful Sara.
Non-free societies have a lot of clout when enforcing taboos against personal taste.