
SnowJade |

Andrew Turner wrote:Looks like some kind of pie to me. I guess I'm in the 84% not affected.Thanks! Now I know how to make 16% of the world population stay away from my pies.
Looks a bit like a cherimoya, which is my favorite fruit. The seeds don't bother me.
As for making people stay away from your pies, I'd recommend the Stargazy Pie, which is a specialty of Cornwall. I really don't want to find that looking back at me when I sit down at the dinner table.

Hitdice |

I'm curious about how Cole (oops, the article's author actually, only the first sentence of that paragraph is a quote) describes feeling revulsion at such patterns as a evolutionary advantage, while only 16% of the population feels that revulsion. Doesn't that mean that 84% of us have ancestors who managed to survive to add to the gene pool without evolving said phobia? I'm curious about sample size and whatnot.

![]() |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm not convinced. To a large degree we have a whole lot of evolutionary baggage that doesn't help or hurt us. That's why it's still around.
Without actually reading the whole study and talking to the author, I'm curious if there's an element of wishful thinking since the author suffers from the phobia.
"I have this weird phobia, but if it's genetic and serves an evolutionary purpose I'm not insane."
* Shrug.

![]() |

Besides, you have to postulate a set of defense mechanism signals common to an octopus native to the seas around Australia/NZ (I think), a spider from SAmerica, an Asian snake, and a bunch of other critters, whose most recent common ancestor is probably Precambrian, or you have to postulate that those organisms--from a whole lot of places around the world--somehow drove human selection. No, I think this is like the vast majority of EvoPsych--faintly plausible excrement that falls apart when you look at it closely. (That is, when it's not being used to justify racism and sexism.)

thejeff |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Besides, you have to postulate a set of defense mechanism signals common to an octopus native to the seas around Australia/NZ (I think), a spider from SAmerica, an Asian snake, and a bunch of other critters, whose most recent common ancestor is probably Precambrian, or you have to postulate that those organisms--from a whole lot of places around the world--somehow drove human selection. No, I think this is like the vast majority of EvoPsych--faintly plausible excrement that falls apart when you look at it closely. (That is, when it's not being used to justify racism and sexism.)
This is probably too specific, but there is a real trend of unrelated creatures using bright colors and odd patterns to signal "I'm poisonous! Don't eat me!" Many, but not all, of which are actually poisonous.

thejeff |
Isn't a phobia, by definition, supposed to be irrational? By rationalizing it, it ceases to be a phobia.
Also, honeycombs aren't irregular. That's a pattern, as are the markings on that shell.
Well, it's possible to know the origin and trigger for the phobia and for there to be a reason for it, but still react irrationally to things that fit the pattern, but aren't actually dangerous.
Snake phobias, for example.

thejeff |
Right, but usually the origin is an event, not the genetic baggage you're carrying around from birth.
I'm not up current research, but there do seem to be things we're far more likely to be phobic of than others and not really linked to the chance of related events.
Again, a phobia of snakes is fairly common, far more so than we can link to traumatic snake attacks.

Hitdice |

Well, given the commonality of poisonous snakes on every fricken single continent, getting spooked by a snake slithering towards you is actually fairly appropriate, evolutionarily speaking.
The question is, are patterns terrifying like poisonous snakes? I don't think so. I think patterns look like a tiled floor and a pile of wood to burn inside it all winter long.

Shadowborn |

Well, given the commonality of poisonous snakes on every fricken single continent, getting spooked by a snake slithering towards you is actually fairly appropriate, evolutionarily speaking.
The question is, are patterns terrifying like poisonous snakes? I don't think so. I think patterns look like a tiled floor and a pile of wood to burn inside it all winter long.
Well, there is chromophobia, which is a fear of bright colors. If we're linking phobias to genetics, that seems more likely to be a case of an inherited instinct going into overdrive than a fear of irregular holes.

Threeshades |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

Hitdice wrote:Well, there is chromophobia, which is a fear of bright colors. If we're linking phobias to genetics, that seems more likely to be a case of an inherited instinct going into overdrive than a fear of irregular holes.Well, given the commonality of poisonous snakes on every fricken single continent, getting spooked by a snake slithering towards you is actually fairly appropriate, evolutionarily speaking.
The question is, are patterns terrifying like poisonous snakes? I don't think so. I think patterns look like a tiled floor and a pile of wood to burn inside it all winter long.
Phobias don't by definition have a certain origin. All it is, is an irrational fear of something. Where it originates from is an entirely different matter. Arachnophobia and Ophiphobia are generally thought to have an origin in the human genepool, because our species comes from a place that had plenty of very poisonous examples of these creatures. Other phobias such as coulrophobia (fear of clowns) are the expression of a genetic fear in a new context. In this case the uncanny valley syndrome. And again other phobias can stem from either traumatic experiences or a new genetic trait (mutation) that just happens to make you afraid of something there is no logical or biologically historical reason to be afraid of. The last variation should be expected to be extremely rare but is entirely possible. Being born with a fear that the parent generation does not have is what started phobias like arachnophobia after all, which persisted because it happened to be an advantage to survival because of the very real threat of poisonous spiders that early humanity had to deal with (as well as modern humanity in a lot of places still does)

Hitdice |

Those are good points, Three. When I said I was curious about sample size and what not, my (badly phrased) point was that if the 16% of the population come from populations indigenous to environments with venomous animals like the ones pictured in the article, then yes, it's an evolutionary advantage as surely as lactose tolerance is in the northern european gene pool. If, on the other hand, it's a completely random distribution across the entire world's population, it's probably just some weird quirk that doesn't do enough harm to get bred out of the gene pool, like Krensky talked about.

Ambrosia Slaad |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

I don't seem to suffer from trypophobia; actually, I find many of the holes-in-flesh/body horror images oddly fascinating in a hard-to-look-away fashion. However, this may be due to my crosswired brain's photic sneeze reflex.
I have also had a lot of pet cats, so my lack of trypophobia may just be another symptom of toxoplasmosis.