Superstimuli are typically not found in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (or else the executions that latched on to them inappropriately would tend to decrease in frequency through the population). Although humans have spread to habitats outside Africa, the largest changes since then have been ones humans have made—i.e. “artificial”.
That is a reasonable explanation. (I don’t know why you were downvoted, and voted you back up to 0.)
But theoretically, it’s possible to have a superstimulus for cuteness that existed in our EEA, if the maladaptive behavior that would be triggered by it is more easily prevented by a cultural norm or another adaptation, instead of by tuning down our cuteness sense for it.
Oh, it’s absolutely possible—this I why couched the phrasing in terms of “typically” and “tend to”.
And, well, votes are noisy.
If I had to ascribe a reason, it would be definitional—superstimulus could be used to just mean “trigger the adaptation more than what the adaptation was for”, which need not imply any significant harm, or it could be used to mean “will trigger the adaptation to such a strong extent, that it does cause harm, either by inappropriate behavior to the stimulus, or disrupting appropriate behavior to the stimulus it was adapted for.”
I think the latter definition is more useful, though I admit that the examples I’ve tried to find for excluding based on it (finding patterns in randomness, finding faces in car grills) also didn’t trigger more than the usual stimulus, so would have been excluded from the first definition as well.
Where do you get this—“Superstimuli are typically artificial”?
Superstimuli are typically not found in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (or else the executions that latched on to them inappropriately would tend to decrease in frequency through the population). Although humans have spread to habitats outside Africa, the largest changes since then have been ones humans have made—i.e. “artificial”.
That is a reasonable explanation. (I don’t know why you were downvoted, and voted you back up to 0.)
But theoretically, it’s possible to have a superstimulus for cuteness that existed in our EEA, if the maladaptive behavior that would be triggered by it is more easily prevented by a cultural norm or another adaptation, instead of by tuning down our cuteness sense for it.
Oh, it’s absolutely possible—this I why couched the phrasing in terms of “typically” and “tend to”.
And, well, votes are noisy.
If I had to ascribe a reason, it would be definitional—superstimulus could be used to just mean “trigger the adaptation more than what the adaptation was for”, which need not imply any significant harm, or it could be used to mean “will trigger the adaptation to such a strong extent, that it does cause harm, either by inappropriate behavior to the stimulus, or disrupting appropriate behavior to the stimulus it was adapted for.”
I think the latter definition is more useful, though I admit that the examples I’ve tried to find for excluding based on it (finding patterns in randomness, finding faces in car grills) also didn’t trigger more than the usual stimulus, so would have been excluded from the first definition as well.
Seconded. Why should this be the case?
As a counterexample, some people find rabbits cuter than babies.
Were you begging the question for humor’s sake?
Yes, and of all the places not to get that...
It wasn’t funny.