Douglas Kern has a very interesting essay on sex and stupidity. And freedom.

It is an interesting essay, but lacks general perspective. Anna Nicole Smith was born trailer trash but had a child by one of the alpha males of American society. That's unqualified success by the plain biological definition, which is, ultimately, all that counts (cf. Mark Steyn). It's what her genes programmed her to do and ipso facto her behaviour was perfectly rational. What may look like a tragedy for "Anna Nicole" the conscious mind was a wild success for "Anna Nicole" the genome.

Not surprisingly, the guy also misses the fact that the wild, disruptive effects of sex on ordered society are no accident. Mother Nature didn't goof up there. These disruptive effects prevent the stagnation of the species that spells doom in an unpredictable and changing environment.

We don't "tolerate" Anna Nicole because we're Sensitive (Libertarian) New Age Intellectuals who don't believe in imposing our rules on others, or because we're sweaty apish cavemen who like smashing stuff up while hooting and farting. We dangle the bait that keeps the Anna Nicoles around (the chance of procreative success wildly beyond your station) because the disruptions of the Anna Nicoles guarantee that we don't turn into a tribe of humorless fiber-chewing inflexible Puritans who have zero ability to creatively meet new challenges from the world around us.

I'm not clear what the Anna Nicole "problem" is supposed to be. My take is that if there is a problem, then the disease is the cure.

What may look like a tragedy for "Anna Nicole" the conscious mind was a wild success for "Anna Nicole" the genome.

Except that that son died even before she did, of another one of those behaviors brought on by moral lack.

That was her first son, Paul, by no one in particular. I was speaking of her second child, who stands to inherit umpty million dollars.

However, I'm wrong. Whoever is this child's father, it's not J. Howard Marshall, as a little googling showed me.

The argument is still not without merit, however. Anna Nicole succeeded in marrying J. Howard Marshall, and if he hadn't died quickly, it's possible she could have had her child by him. That is, her genes were on the right track, so to speak, but just didn't have time to complete the coup.

Not trying to play tit for tat, but one could argue that mating with an elderly man who was near death is not a good instinct for survival of the fittest on her part. For instance, consider the flip side for J. Howard Marshall, he made a very good survival instinct by mating with someone younger.

The argument has merit because she still got a lot of money without having to bare a child.

one could argue that mating with an elderly man who was near death is not a good instinct for survival of the fittest on her part.

Uh...why not? Remember, I'm talking about the survival of Anna Nicole's genes, not Anna Nicole herself. Her DNA doesn't give a hoot about her corpus and mind. You've heard the aphorism that a chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg? From this perspective Anna Nicole's pneumatic tits and bubbly do-me-sailor personality were merely tactics employed by her genes to get themselves mixed with the most socially-successful set of male genes around, and then copied into a fresh young body. Almost worked, too.

one could argue that mating with an elderly man who was near death is not a good instinct for survival of the fittest on her part.

Uh...why not? Remember, I'm talking about the survival of Anna Nicole's genes, not Anna Nicole herself... Almost worked, too.

Because it DID NOT work, that's why. By the time George Marshall met Anna Nicole, his chances of producing a viable offspring were very low, and chances of producing more than one essentially zero. From genome's viewpoint, Anna Nicole should have given a pass to the 95-year old billionaire in a wheelchair, and held out for a healthy 60-year old millionaire. But from viewpoint of "have fun while you can" meme, she did exactly right thing.

Well...yes, I agree it didn't work, Ilya, but I don't agree it couldn't work, or that the strategy was fatally flawed.

Remember expected payoff equals probability times payoff. In this case the probability of the old man fathering her child may have been low, but the payoff would be very high. Her genes would have been vaulting over half a dozen generations of social climbing.

Also bear in mind that Anna Nicole's genes are not unique. They exist in other people. So it makes some sense for them to take a wild chance on a big payoff in one of their carriers (Anna Nicole) so long as their strategy in other carriers (Anna Nicole's relatives) is more conservative, as it probably was.

I realize it's weird to think of Anna Nicole as something like a business firm, organized by individuals that collect for the purpose, and, if it doesn't work out, disperse to try something else. But I think that's a pretty fair description from the strictly evolutionary biology point of view.