I haven’t seen much evidence supporting the idea that it doesn’t pay out.
The evidence for the adaptiveness of female orgasms may be relatively weak—but it seems much better than the evidence for the hypothesis that they are near-neutral—or exist by force of homology.
It’s evidence that female orgasm is doing something adaptive (and distinct from what it does in men), even if we don’t know what. While it’s good to be skeptical of particular ev-psych stories and to acknowledge the cases where we don’t yet know the mechanism of causality (e.g. humans’ musical sense), the presumption ought to be that complex adaptations rarely arise for no reason.
If it doesn’t pay out in increased chances of reproduction (and that hasn’t been proven), then it’s not enough for a sound argument.
I haven’t seen much evidence supporting the idea that it doesn’t pay out.
The evidence for the adaptiveness of female orgasms may be relatively weak—but it seems much better than the evidence for the hypothesis that they are near-neutral—or exist by force of homology.
It’s evidence that female orgasm is doing something adaptive (and distinct from what it does in men), even if we don’t know what. While it’s good to be skeptical of particular ev-psych stories and to acknowledge the cases where we don’t yet know the mechanism of causality (e.g. humans’ musical sense), the presumption ought to be that complex adaptations rarely arise for no reason.
Part of the hypothesis is that variations which give a significant advantage should be close to universal.