Homophobia Explained 4/8
327 views · Published 4 July 2008 · 9:11 · Indexed 28 October 2026
Channel: Jackies1979 · 2008 · Education
I use ) for greater than and ( for smaller than... The specific payoffs u(ci; si) and the conditional probabilities p(si/ci) are also given in the matrix: The profit of an undisturbed heterosexual life in the homophobic environment is worth Y [utility units], while the highest preference of the agent is to have a family larger-than-average, i.e. in this case, one with the "gay" gene, an outcome worth X [utility units], where X ) Y. The latter assumption is the only bit of arbitrariness in the model; however, to take some survival risks and suffer hardships in order to increase the number of offspring sharing at least a part of one's genes seems a familiar, adaptive, uncontroversial presupposition, and it would only surprise if Y )= X held true. We may thus calculate the expected utility values of c1 and c2: EV(c1) = Y (1 - r) + (X + Y) r, EV(c2) = q X, which allows us to infer that EV(c2) ) EV(c1) if, and only if, X ) Y / (q - r). p(s2/c1) = r (between 0, 1), too, will remain unknown until the hypothesized genetic factors predisposing females to be overly fecund and males to mate with males are identified at the genetic level or at least until the percentage of those individuals among heterosexual males with overly fecund maternal female relatives giving birth to overly many male homosexuals is revealed; Camperio Ciani's evidence is, however, incompatible with r )= q, so that r ( q can be presupposed. This empirical constraint guarantees that, if X ) Y / (q - r), then X ) Y, as the agent's preferential payoff hierarchy requires. In conclusion: On the one hand, if we assume that X ) Y / (q- r), the maximum expected utility principle of game theory will clearly recommend the agent to become homosexual, i.e., to choose c2. On the other hand, becoming heterosexual (c1) is clearly the dominant strategy because, for all i, it holds that u(c1; si) ) u(c2; si) (cf. Tab.1); and, where choices are causally independent of whether or not certain relevant states of affairs obtain, it is often recommended to follow the dominance principle rather than that of maximum expected utility: the agent should become heterosexual, i.e., choose c1. The two game-theoretic principles lead to different, contradictory recommendations quite analogous to those in Fisher's well-known smoking paradox. This, at first sight, purely decision-theoretic, anthropically psychological dilemma reflects the substantial sociobiological problem of insufficient information about the exact causal relation between female fecundity and male homosexuality. To whatever degree human action may be free or indeterministic, the formulation of such mind-bending dilemmas should not leave unstirred issues that can, in principle, be settled through empirical methods. The dilemmatic problem is not merely psychological in nature but emerges from and concerns the incompleteness of hard biological facts in Camperio Ciani (2004) (e.g., the unknown exact location and identification of the "gay" gene). The only way in which, given this incompleteness, the dilemma does not arise at all is that the truth of X ) Y / (q - r) can somehow be ruled out, but then at least this impossibility remains to be shown or supported.
