The truth about how love and attraction really work

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That explains your denial, you believe in old school made up psychology, not modern neuroscience, should have said that from the very beginning to spare me waste of time.

Nope, I don't believe in old school psychology, and I also don't believe in "new school" defect-thinking and "we can fix everything with pills". As for the state of neuroscience research, it's not even close to be able to answer questions about behavior.

I put forward my theory of autism and related conditions in 2001 http://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm. At this point, there is a lot of empirical evidence for it, and particularly the differences in the courtship area don't have any alternative explanations. No other theory is able to explain the complete spectrum either.

I'm still awaiting your references for how you know all of this "commonality" in behavior in mammals, but I suspect you will not deliver any of it, and that it builds on neuroscience that doesn't yet understand this at all.

I am familiar with this line of reasoning that you are taking and do not dismiss it.

I collect free digital paintings from the past and have noticed what you say: that rich, titled women were depicted often as, shall we say, pleasingly plump? It is a status symbol, cool, fashionable, because it showed they got sufficient high-calorie food. Sometimes these paintings seem even erotic in nature--Rubens always had fat women, exclusively. Then there is Venus De Milo - fat.

So, you may have something there, I don't know! I just know what I like, and I think I would like it even if you put me in a time machine and send me back a thousand years as an experiment.

Hopefully you will time-travel some gold along with me so I won't starve.

Fitness is what is attractive to me. That does not mean 0% body fat. I do not like skeletal, anorexic, or heroin chic!

A fit lady enjoys her food. She is an omnivore but just avoids drinking, and things that contain sugar, like donuts, sweet drinks, things like that. She could even lose 5 - 25 pounds and not miss it. That is attractive. A little extra, yeah, that's ok, perfectly! Ahem, I, err, expect a bit of that extra weight around the, um, chest region, and also, the hips.

A fit woman is likely to be happy, healthy, and keep up with me when I go for walks. She has the same lifestyle, working out, staying active. ...Does not sit around boozing, smoking, despairing about life, criticizing her man, criticizing her life, cursing God... No, she likes the outdoors, and sunshine. As for sex, loves it, can't get enough. That is what I call a fit woman.

Just so we are clear on semantics. Because so often on these forums people debate endlessly due to misunderstanding the meaning of each other's words.

"we can fix everything with pills" has nothing to do with neuroscience, this is one of fundamental flaws is western healthcare. It doesn't mean there is a reason to dismiss neuroscience and biochemistry.



Like I said several times already, underlying mechanisms like major histocompatibility complex are shared, not exact signals or behavior. How many times I have to repeat myself?

I'm not going to continue this discussion. You are just defending your pre-existing belief.

So ... how is that relationship of yours working out?

The MHC is mostly involved in the immune system, and not in how love & dating work: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK27156/

There is no doubt that many behaviors are part of all mammals, particularly since they can evolve rather quickly in various distant lineages. However, this has no relevance for love & dating in autism. That's not about neuroscience or biochemistry, but about how autistics and NTs have different preferences in the area, and different signals. The fact that NT behaviors might very well be part of the genome of all mammals is not relevant since it is only turned on in NTs, and so these behaviors are only pleasurable for NTs.

Besides, I just got an article for peer-review that concludes that IQ is not a good predictor of social competence in ASD. This speaks against the idea that social competence is just a skill needed to be learnt, as if this was the case, higher IQ would mean more success. I already knew this, and it is both based on dislike for NT social behavior in some autistics and the lack of explicit rules since NTs actually don't know why they behave like they do themselves.

Facial expressions are similar. Many high-functioning autistics have cracked the code of how to interpret facial expressions, but they still have issues with conflicting signals and doing their manual decoding in a dynamic social context.

NTs don't learn this at all, but have it more or less innate. They only need to adjust some small parameters based on cultural variation.

There is a ton of research on MHC-dependent mate selection.

You keep talking about behaviors but I'm tired to repeat this is not what I'm talking about. Our behavior deeply influenced by biochemistry and deeper mechanisms of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, our overall physiology. You "don't believe" in current neuroscience and biochemistry theories and defend your preexisting beliefs based on speculation and thought experiments, keep changing subject. There is nothing to discuss.

I wouldn't say there is a ton of research on this, and particularly not in humans. However, I found one study on the subject:

https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/ ... en.1000184

They conclude that African Americans show no tendency to select mates based on similar or dissimilar MHC. Thus, since Africans are claimed to be the origin population of humans, they actually proved that it doesn't work this way in humans. However, for European descent, which represent a hybrid population, there is a a tendency for dissimilarity in the MHC, probably to favor dissimilar immune systems in offspring. Of course, European descent have accumulated Neanderthal MHC, and so have a larger variation and thus can use this to optimize immune systems in offspring.



Your reasoning is completely random and illogical. If you had read the link about the MHC I gave you, you would have noticed that the MHC region is highly polymorphic. You claimed it was the same in all mammals, which would mean it would be highly conserved with little to no variation. Thus, the article actually proved you were wrong, but you apparently didn't want to read it or you don't understand genetics.

I still have no idea what your hypothesis about love and attraction in autism actually is. You have rambled about being fit in other threads, so maybe your hyopthesis is that if you go to the gym & eat healthy food, all the relationship problems would be solved. I think there are enough examples here to prove that is wrong.

No, it proves fundamental mechanisms are the same in all humans.





My reasoning is completely logical, you fundamentally don't understand how genetics work. You don't see the forest for the trees.

You obviously failed to read the study properly. They proved that MHC similarity was NOT a factor in African Americans, only in Caucasians. And the quote you did from the paper above refers to studies on Caucasians.

Also from the study:


In other words, the issue is not settled at all like you claim it is.



Still no hypothesis, just broad generalizations and you didn't answer my question (as usual). I'm starting to agree with you that this is not a meaningful discussion since you cannot even describe your ideas properly and reference them in the scientific literature.

I said many times, don't care about specific signals, MHC similarity or dissimilarity. It's up to future research to figure out why there is no congruence between studies and whether they are looking for wrong patterns, what they take and don't take into account.

What is consistent in majority of these studies:


You just focus on specifics, can't see the forest for the trees.



I described my ideas properly. You refuse to accept my simple "inner chimp" explanation but at the same time don't have a grasp on this subject to understand it from point of view of neuroscience, biochemistry and genetics.

So, you are hoping that in the distant future neuroscience and biochemical research will be able to confirm your "inner chimp" idea? I'd say that is more like wishful thinking than anything relevant to autistics today.

I've been in the autistic community for two decades, and my Neanderthal theory was introduced 20 years ago. I have seen little to no progress in autism research during this time. Something I like to attribute to using a faulty model of autism in the first place. A position I assign to your beliefs too, but we will see if two more decades of neuroscience research will make any progress in the area, which I doubt unless they revise their working hypothesizes.



I give you right in one aspect though: Autistics tends to be too much attracted to dissimilar people (NTs). However, this is more like the problem itself rather than a solution. It causes lots of suffering when these incompatible neurotypes cannot communicate & get along properly.



You cannot propose a scientific hypothesis without defining the problem (which requires empirical research on details since this is lacking in the autism literature) and then relating your hypothesis to this empirical evidence.



My position is that neuroscience cannot solve this issue, and so I see no reason why I would take interest in it. I base this on the very primitive stage neuroscience is at today.

This is not my idea. This is part of current scientific consensus.


This is your personal opinion, belief or whatever, just stop pretending it has anything to do with science.

What consensus? We just concluded that there is no consensus about if and how MHC relates to human mating. As for the position of chimp in human evolution, it's disputed, and I anticipate we will see revisions in this area in the future. That we are a hybrid species was not the consensus when I came to the autistic community, but right now it is the accepted consensus. There is particularly consensus that we got immune system genes from Neanderthals, the very genes that are part of MHC.



I find ethology (the science of animal behavior), and particularly human ethology the most interesting research area when studying human mating. Ethology has a long tradition in investigating animal behavior, and it seems to be the proper tool to understand mating in both humans and animals. Most importantly, it's based on proper scientific principles and not wishful thinking about future break-through in neuroscience.

Actually, I can see that neuroscience and ethology could complement each other, but at this point, neuroscience doesn't have the proper tools or knowledge to be able to explain anything related to behavior. This is why you use sweeping generalizations like "inner chimp". You simply have nothing to back your claims up with.

I 100% agree with you OP, this is how attraction usually works for many people. A person's physical appearance gets them the opportunity in the first place, while their personality/mental attributes ultimately decides whether or not we consider them 'fit' to be a boyfriend/girlfriend. If we consider someone ugly, then it doesn't matter how nice someone is or how compatible they are, we simply don't give them a chance.

BUT this isn't the way attraction works for all people.

I believe this is why some people are disagreeing with you because for them, their attraction to someone works a little differently. Maybe for some people, looks truly don't matter or they're willing to date someone they find "ugly" if they like their personality (or their wallet)


I think the truth is that everyone has different ways of determining a future romantic partner and while I believe that your method is certainly the majority, this isn't the case for everyone.

Funny.

It seems that the "experts" on love and attraction have no relationships of their own.

It is just like when the "experts" on how I should raise my kids never had kids of their own, or the "experts" on how I should go about remodeling my home all live in apartments.