I'm not saying that no one should think about it, I'm saying we should have a better filter that immediately separates garbage science from good science. It takes about 10 minutes of reading and a few paragraphs to realize that this is absolute garbage and doesn't need to be voted up.
-- but doing our best to keep in mind that they are not proven theories.
Now that I think about it, what really irks me here is that I know people are actually reading stuff like this (which throws around enough scientific terminology and academic quotes to sound reasonable) and then some of those people go on believing that really is the answer to the hypothesis presented.
That is what has happened to a lot of science these days. There's so much semi-believable trash and conjecture like this tossed out in so many different fields of study that I just wish people would get a better sense of what even has a remotely logical basis for validity. It pains me to know that even one person is reading this trash and coming away thinking that "Gee, science has solved another one!" when in fact it has not.
We're a long way from being able to tell why animals developed the traits they did through evolution. We're a really long way from being able to empirically prove it. That doesn't mean speculation isn't fun in the meantime.
Maybe you're not understanding me, and maybe this is partially because you're new to the community...
But when I visit HN, I don't want to be presented with the 99.99% of speculative trash that fills the internet. I can go to Digg or Reddit for this sort of junk science that gets us intellectually nowhere. I (and everyone else) want to see that quality .01% that presents legitimate scientific inquiry, regardless of whether we agree with it or not.
Besides, initially you said this was about HN, and now it's about saving the average person on the street from their own stupidity? Because surely, people on HN are aware that this is not a theory. If that's your problem, I think this would be the least of your worries -- half the people out there still think "because the Bible said so" is a logical basis for validity.
Does it? Could you point out a few things that make it out to be obvious garbage then?
In general it sets off the crackpot alarm for me which means that I take anything else said therein with a grain of salt. One so large, as it were, that it wasn't even worth continuing to read after a certain point.
Anyway, I don't want to defend it as science - it's an article on the internet. But the flaws in the reasoning definitely are not obvious to me, as they seem to the first commentator. Would be interested to hear more details.
Edit: OK, I counted the "sexy" occurrences, too. Did not bother me much - it is clearly written in "popular science" tone, not "hard science" tone.
That's where I stopped. There's just no rigor in there.
This point did not bother me much, because it seems unlikely to me that there are actually such cultures (where men don't find breasts sexy). Would be interested to learn more about one such culture. For all I know, there might even be cultures where women don't have breasts? I also just remembered those women that put rings around their neck to elongate them - clearly there are a lot of subtle points to consider...
I also don't take issue if people decide they are not interested in that particular subject. However, I take issue with people claiming evolution theory is nonsense, as the original commentator did.
Well, he's using the word "sexy" to mean what it means. That is, marked by or tending to arouse sexual desire or interest. I found it rather refreshing that someone was using sexy to mean "sexy", rather than to mean popular, or cool, or useful, or profitable.
How does the article "purport to be scientific"? I read it as interesting speculation. It doesn't claim to be based on rigorous empirical evidence; it just claims to be interesting. And clearly a bunch of HN readers agreed.
Isn't that true for all science? Still at one point we have to take the one or other theory and work with it, because it is the best we have. People built the Eiffel tower before Einstein came along and relativized physics (I think - did not look up the dates).
Not that I disagree with you, but I think "remember they are not proven theories" is still a bit of a cop out. Would you say that Evolution is not a proven theory? I think it is more accurate to assume we have not yet gotten every nano detail right, but the big picture seems very, very likely. (Of course the article in question, as you say, is just an article on a web site, not a peer reviewed thing).
Let me begin with the caveat that I agree that it is more speculation than science, and it is unfortunate that the author presents it as if it were a scientific paper rather than a blog post. But note that it hasn't been published anywhere, so it is not as if the scientific community is accepting it as science.
You seem to have the opinion that anything that is not science is at best not worth doing, and at worst evil. I urge you to re-examine that assumption.
Now, if there were a scientific way of answering the question that the article considers, that would be a very different situation. In the absence of one, it is ridiculous to suggest that no one should think about it. And if people think about it, they will present their attempted answers to the world. Hopefully, their arguments will rest on logic, even if not empirically verifiable. This is an expression of human curiosity, and I think it is natural and wonderful.
I say we should continue to discuss articles like this, but doing our best to keep in mind that they are not proven theories. As our experimental abilities improve, it might turn out that today's speculation is fertile ground for tomorrow's experimentation as a bed of hypothesis to test and accept or discard.
Finally, even if one's sole concern is the dissemination of scientific knowledge, I contend that the article is still useful if it makes people think and learn more about the fascinating, fascinating phenomenon of Fischerian runaway (to give just one example).