International Women's Day

[moh]

year of the vita!!

[Krooze L-Roy]

in north-west europe the social justice movement isn't anywhere near as rabidly fanatical as what i've seen of the US branch though. i think north-west europe is a bit more live and let live about these things, where US culture tends towards more of a HEY EVERYONE LISTEN THIS IS MY OPINION AND IF YOU THINK DIFFERENTLY THEN YOU ARE THE ENEMY kinda attitude? (on both sides...)

Political Correctness is an inherently supremacist cultural movement. I've never had a member of any other culture "correct" me on my speech or terminology, but with PC, any willful breach of it's tenets is an "actionable offense." The US has the benefit of the Constitution to act as somewhat of a buffer, whereas in the UK and elsewhere, people are now being jailed for "hatespeech." You're probably right on the sheer vehemence of the American branch though. This country was founded by Puritans who were passionate enough in their convictions to risk their lives coming here. Maybe they passed on some sort of a piousness gene to their descendants.

the stated claim is not supported by the cited source. but even if it were, what difference does it make? mein kampf is a citable source too, you know?

Well, he certainly blew the perspective of his source out of proportion. His real offense, I'd say, was lack of tact. He could have made his point in a way that didn't get him banned, but he probably felt the writing was on the wall, so he went for the gusto. I've never looked into Mein Kampf, but since it was written before Hitler went into full-on Skeletor mode, I tend to doubt any ideas it contains couldn't be paraphrased with a modicum of delicacy. Certainly, there exists such a thing as a dangerous idea, but it's the burden and responsibility of free people to endure them and explain why they are flawed.

[ptoing]

I've never looked into Mein Kampf, but since it was written before Hitler went into full-on Skeletor mode, I tend to doubt any ideas it contains couldn't be paraphrased with a modicum of delicacy.

I have not read the whole thing, it is pretty boring and badly written, but it has all his main ideas of the jewish conspiracy as well as the need to get more "Lebensraum" for Germany, aka invade other countries. So I would say he was already pretty much in full on Skeletor mode by then.

Also, about Replayme, it seems that he took the source and distorted what it said to perhaps fit with how he percieves things, which would be scary. It might be that many women have fantasies of being dominated, "raped" if you will. But that does not mean that they want to engage in something like that with a person they did not consent to doing it in the first place.

[Krooze L-Roy]

I have not read the whole thing, it is pretty boring and badly written, but it has all his main ideas of the jewish conspiracy as well as the need to get more "Lebensraum" for Germany, aka invade other countries. So I would say he was already pretty much in full on Skeletor mode by then.

I suppose I'll have to concede on that then, since continued devils advocacy down that avenue would become uncomfortably literal. Still, Replayme is not Hitler, and even if he was, who in their right mind would pass up the opportunity to debate Hitler and challenge his ideas in a public forum?

[trap15]

You can't debate crazy.

[ptoing]

Indeed, you can try, but in the end it is pretty futile. And I personally had enough of that in my time on the internet. Enough for a lifetime or two.

[Krooze L-Roy]

No, you can't debate crazy, but through debate you have a chance to reveal it for what it is.

Also, page 8 before Godwin's Law. That's not too shabby.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Over here(Czech) no one seems to give a shit about those issues, and if you google feminism in my language the first site you get is satire/trolling. No one gets offended over jokes, no super progressive thought police bloggers, dudes and women stereotype/joke about each other and no one is getting mad or ranting about oppression or rape culture. Even stuff like PUA/MGTOW doesn't exist.

Jonathan Ingram's explanation for stereotypical Czech's indifference would probably be the neo-liberal reforms following the Eastern Bloc's collapse.

[antron]

chemicals rule.

[Blinge]

This country was founded by Puritans who were passionate enough in their convictions to risk their lives coming here.

Hahahah. you mean, were so annoying/subversive they were kicked out of Britain.

You've never been corrected by another culture? Maybe you haven't spent enough time around other cultures, personally i'm not about to go dropping racially insensitive terms around ethnic minority groups. I'm pretty sure some measure of correction would occur.

[Krooze L-Roy]

Hahahah. you mean, were so annoying/subversive they were kicked out of Britain.

Yeah, no.

You've never been corrected by another culture? Maybe you haven't spent enough time around other cultures, personally i'm not about to go dropping racially insensitive terms around ethnic minority groups. I'm pretty sure some measure of correction would occur.

Well sure, if you directly insult someone they do tend to take offense. You could sit with your best friend and mock passersby all day, but when you shift gears and start mocking your friend instead, it's a slightly different sort of behavior, no? It's the same way with groups.

And there are more cultures than just racial ones. Think about how it was in high school, with punks and preppies and jocks and stoners and whatnot. Really no different in adulthood, just different names, and less strict conformity to group norms (e.g. blue collar, biker, hip-hop, rural, gay, drug-user, military). Granted, there are some within any group who will correct you, but only within the context of political correctness.

[glitch]

when someone corrects someone, isn't that really a matter of voicing one of those "opinion" things, the freedom of which you seem to hold so dear?

(i am completely confused as to what you are trying to defend from what, at this point...)

[Krooze L-Roy]

when someone corrects someone, isn't that really a matter of voicing one of those "opinion" things, the freedom of which you seem to hold so dear?

(i am completely confused as to what you are trying to defend from what, at this point...)

A correction is just a correction until it interferes with free speech. I wouldn't have a problem with political correctness if it's adherents were merely expressing a strong opinion, but increasingly, those opinions are being legally sanctioned to the exclusion of all others. That's something else entirely. If you can be fired or jailed because of opposing the official opinion, you no longer have the right to express that opinion at all.

[glitch]

when someone corrects someone, isn't that really a matter of voicing one of those "opinion" things, the freedom of which you seem to hold so dear?

(i am completely confused as to what you are trying to defend from what, at this point...)

A correction is just a correction until it interferes with free speech. I wouldn't have a problem with political correctness if it's adherents were merely expressing a strong opinion, but increasingly, those opinions are being legally sanctioned to the exclusion of all others. That's something else entirely. If you can be fired or jailed because of opposing the official opinion, you no longer have the right to express that opinion at all.

so if i read this correctly, your answer to my question is that a verbal correction from a proponent of political correctness is a-ok, right?

isn't insisting that someone likes something they don't (and pre-emptively calling them a liar for denying it) dangerously close to interfering with their free speech?

also, more importantly i think, is that even an opinion in the first place?

[Krooze L-Roy]

so if i read this correctly, your answer to my question is that a verbal correction from a proponent of political correctness is a-ok, right?

isn't insisting that someone likes something they don't (and pre-emptively calling them a liar for denying it) dangerously close to interfering with their free speech?

also, more importantly i think, is that even an opinion in the first place?

Wait, what? I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Is this about Replayme and his rape thing? I think you might be overestimating the coherence of my thought pattern, because my last several posts have been about other shit, not some convoluted attempt to defend Replayme. He got booted from my train of thought right around when Hitler got on board. My ranting about political correctness has nothing to do with him. Bananamatic's post got me started on down that route.

[Mischief Maker]

it would help if you'd state your point clearer

Fair enough, I've been away from the computer a couple days and coming back with a fresh perspective, I think I've figured out the disconnect between the two of us.

I am only talking about a dysfunctional social structure. I say the concept of the slut is a fiction. I am not saying that women have the same arousal pattern as men. Of course not. If they did, there'd be F'ing in the streets! I remember once reading an article about an FtM transsexual describing what an eye-opening experience hormone treatments were when he started experiencing the almost overwhelming effect of male levels of testosterone. To crib a line from Dan Savage, gay men don't have lots and lots of sex because they're gay men, they have lots and lots of sex because they're gay men.

In other words, if you don't physically desire to sleep with a particular man on the first date, that's natural. If you do desire to sleep with a man on the first date, but refrain out of fear that he won't commit, or that you'll get a bad reputation, or some other rational basis, that's dysfunctional social influence.

When you said there was an evolutionary basis, I thought you were referring to the social act of slut-shaming, which I do not agree with. I don't agree that women instinctively judge men on their "willingness" to provide. I would agree that women instinctively judge men on their "ability" to provide.

All my arguments since have been various reasons why commodifying sex is unlikely to be an evolutionary strategy in humans.

what with being a scientist and all that, i'd suggest we look at the evidence. and at the math. you think all those female monkeys and birds and spiders and whatnot are all being slut-shamed into putting up with their males' wacky courtship shenanigans?

If you want to extrapolate from an animal model, that's cool. But some animal models are more appropriate than others. Spiders aren't even in the same phylum as humans, I think it's safe to discard them. Birds are better, being warm-blooded chordates, and Krooze L-Roy has already been good enough in this thread to provide a mechanism by which some female birds use promiscuity to increase their reproductive success that isn't maximizing number of offspring. Monkeys are primates, which is great, but I think we can do even better than that. What is our closest living genetic relative, sharing 98.7 percent of our DNA, as well as secondary traits in common like forward-oriented vaginas that facilitate face-to-face "bonding" sex? The Bonobo! Do their females pressure each other to repress their desires in order to ensure the males stick around?

Like I said before, in men, love and lust are separate things. The default system, in the practical sense, only recognizes men's capacity for lust. That's a losing premise for both genders.

[glitch]

so if i read this correctly, your answer to my question is that a verbal correction from a proponent of political correctness is a-ok, right?

isn't insisting that someone likes something they don't (and pre-emptively calling them a liar for denying it) dangerously close to interfering with their free speech?

also, more importantly i think, is that even an opinion in the first place?

Wait, what? I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Is this about Replayme and his rape thing? I think you might be overestimating the coherence of my thought pattern, because my last several posts have been about other shit, not some convoluted attempt to defend Replayme. He got booted from my train of thought right around when Hitler got on board. My ranting about political correctness has nothing to do with him. Bananamatic's post got me started on down that route.

i know. but:
- you defended replayme on the basis of freedom of speech.
- then you attacked the political correctness movement on basis of the idea that it interferes with freedom of speech.
replayme's "debating tactics" to me seem to interfere with freedom of speech, so i wondered how it is that that objection fails to apply to him. he literally forces an opinion (re:rape) onto half the population, attempting to deny them their own.

I am not saying that women have the same arousal pattern as men.

ok, glad we got that out of the way, should help with the following point.

When you said there was an evolutionary basis, I thought you were referring to the social act of slut-shaming, which I do not agree with.

yeah, i was (in my initial evolution post).

what i said is that it can make simple selfish sense to suppress other females' promiscuity, even if there is no cultural slut-shaming mechanism in place. hence a tendency to do so could be an evolutionary advantage, hence i wouldn't be surprised if there are certain innate cognitive biases in place that promote such behaviour. (such biases may in turn explain where the cultural mechanisms came from, and why they're hard to tear down. a similar case can be made for racism.)

how does such behaviour make selfish sense? let's make this plain and economic. we seem to agree that females have something to gain from being selective. hence some degree of "courting effort" is required from males (efforts proving investment and ability). we also seem to agree that males have something to gain from mating a lot. the courting effort imposed by females is an obstacle to that end, and males would rather do without it, but hey, what you gonna do, right? please don't say rape. say we have a population where most females impose a courting effort of 100CE (yes CE is now the unit for courting effort). there may well be competition between the females in trying to be more attractive than others, but they all compete in the same CE range: dudes have 100CE courting to do. now some female comes along that imposes only 50CE. she competes by being "cheap", relative to the 100CE females (maybe that's not at all her intention. maybe she doesn't care so much about courting shenenigans and just wants to get it on. that's all fine; her intentions do not matter here, we're talking economics). from the 100CE females' perspective, miss 50CE is exploiting the 100CE policy. in order to compete with her, they'd have to drop to 50CE too. but a 50CE policy can be exploited by a 25CE individual, etc. etc. you get a race to the bottom. but when that happens, everyone loses: zero CE is disadvantageous for all females. there was a reason it was 100CE in the first place (and on a side note: dropping female selectivity altogether will likely reduce the average fitness of the group's next generation, a group-level disadvantage). how can the 100CE females compete with the 50CE female WITHOUT dropping to 50CE? well, by making life bloody hard on miss 50CE. it's in the 100CE females' collective interest to uphold the 100CE policy, hence slut-shaming.

are you familiar with the prisoner's dilemma?
it seems to me that female repression of female promiscuity is a pretty straightforward instance of it (cooperate = uphold policy, defect = exploit policy). generally, the fittest strategy in such scenarios (as borne out also by evolutionary simulation work) is to uphold the cooperative policy most of the time, cheat when you can, and punish cheaters.

so in short: i don't know whether there is an innate cognitive underpinning for female repression of female promiscuity, but given that it would make evolutionary sense, and seeing how easily we slip into it, i suspect that those nasty cultural mechanisms may be built on some deeply ingrained pre-cultural cognitive bias, just like how racism likely has its roots in bronze-age us-versus-them thinking. i guess you have more faith in humanity's inherent goodness than i do.

(incidentally, i think that making people aware of their cognitive biases is pretty important for reducing discrimination, repression, and superstition in the world...)

what with being a scientist and all that, i'd suggest we look at the evidence. and at the math. you think all those female monkeys and birds and spiders and whatnot are all being slut-shamed into putting up with their males' wacky courtship shenanigans?

If you want to extrapolate from an animal model, that's cool. But some animal models are more appropriate than others. Spiders aren't even in the same phylum as humans, I think it's safe to discard them.

i was illustrating how wide-spread the phenomenon of female pickiness is, hence the inclusion of far-fetched species.

Like I said before, in men, love and lust are separate things. The default system, in the practical sense, only recognizes men's capacity for lust. That's a losing premise for both genders.

with you on that, yeah.

[Krooze L-Roy]

i know. but:
- you defended replayme on the basis of freedom of speech.
- then you attacked the political correctness movement on basis of the idea that it interferes with freedom of speech.
replayme's "debating tactics" to me seem to interfere with freedom of speech, so i wondered how it is that that objection fails to apply to him. he literally forces an opinion (re:rape) onto half the population, attempting to deny them their own.

I guess the part I don't get is how you feel he's forced an opinion on anyone. His words haven't prevented you from speaking your mind, and I feel pretty safe in assuming that your opinion on the matter hasn't changed. If he were the head of some political advocacy group promoting the legalization of rape, or a really masterful sophist making disturbingly persuasive arguments, or I felt like the Zeitgeist were in a dark enough place to be receptive to pro-rape sentiments, maybe I'd take him seriously enough to oppose, but as it is he's just some dude spouting off online.

Really though, if I'm being honest, my defense has less to do with freedom of speech, and more to do with me getting a kick out of watching everyone's pissed off reactions. Basically, the show ended before I could finish my popcorn, so I wanted an encore.

[spadgy]

Wow! I've been almost entirely away from the forum for about a week-and-a-half due to rather sudden work commitments (naughty mod!) and lots has clearly happened here. I will catch up over the weekend. There was me thinking this thread was quietening back down. EDIT: That was back at page six! I really have some catching up to do!

[BryanM]

does it not also maybe have a lot to do with how vocal and over the top part of the american religious conservative right is?

: (

Rush's week-long diatribe where he called a woman a "slut" for talking about her friend's defective ovaries and what losing the ovary medication coverage did to her... that was pretty much a "alright. time for you to go away" moment for a lot of us I think.

I personally don't want to live in a world where someone can become a billionaire solely by saying "I hate _____" in the most nonsensical, profane manner possible, over and over. At some threshold, it's become apparent pretending that the world doesn't exist isn't very effective in achieving that lofty, impossible ideal.

An instance where slacktivism is actually somewhat effective: you can't stop genocides with e-mails, but you can certainly cut into a blowhard's revenue stream.

[spadgy]

Right. I've had a read through. In the interest of openness, I'll say I was effectively away from the forum in my modding capacity for a few days when the decision was made to ban replayme, so I wasn't there as the decision was made or to see the appearance of the rape comment, but was there as discussions about how to deal with the situation arose. But I can tell you we received numerous complaints and reports from members about replayme. I’d love a forum where nobody ever needed banning, and I tried in this very thread to make him consider how his tone and some words used when joining this debate were likely to be offensive to our members based on their gender.

But in short, it was the volume of complaints and severity of the comment on rape that prompted the ban. If anybody has a serious issue with the terms of this or any ban, you can always PM a member of the modding team.

[BulletMagnet]

Rush's week-long diatribe where he called a woman a "slut" for talking about her friend's defective ovaries and what losing the ovary medication coverage did to her... that was pretty much a "alright. time for you to go away" moment for a lot of us I think.

If it took that long for someone to realize what a blight on humanity Limbaugh (and any like him) is, they weren't paying much attention.

[Mischief Maker]

This reply is very late. Sue me.

- then you attacked the political correctness movement on basis of the idea that it interferes with freedom of speech.
replayme's "debating tactics" to me seem to interfere with freedom of speech, so i wondered how it is that that objection fails to apply to him. he literally forces an opinion (re:rape) onto half the population, attempting to deny them their own.

I'd say replayme got exactly the victory he wanted. He wasn't winning the debate, so he made an intentionally incendiary statement with the express intention of being banned, and succeeded. Whether or not he was losing the debate is now moot. Now he's the martyr and we're the bullies and that's all that matters.

One of the problems I have with moderated forums is that not only do you silence the antagonist directly, you indirectly silence the people who were getting ready to respond. Is trolling really that scary? I hope his ban was temporary.

we seem to agree that females have something to gain from being selective. hence some degree of "courting effort" is required from males (efforts proving investment and ability).

What's good for a woman's genes are not necessarily good for her as an individual. It's good for a salmon's genes that it swims itself to death upstream in order to mate in safer waters, but the individual salmon dies in the process. "Selfish genes" has a deeper meaning than most people think.

For example, an ovulating woman would have a genetic advantage to gain from having sex with a man who isn't part of her tribe because he'd be more distantly related than a tribe member, and genetic variety equals greater chances of evolutionary success. Nevertheless, since this man isn't part of her tribe, he wouldn't be "rewarding" her sex by providing, it would be a temporary fling.

When I said women are attracted to men with the "ability" to provide, I meant things like he's got a large and muscular frame, like he displays the confidence of a man who isn't worried about when he'll be able to eat next, like he demonstrates his intelligence by telling great stories or singing great songs. Signs that his genes will create fitter offspring. Not signs that the individual woman will get payment.

it seems to me that female repression of female promiscuity is a pretty straightforward instance of it (cooperate = uphold policy, defect = exploit policy). generally, the fittest strategy in such scenarios (as borne out also by evolutionary simulation work) is to uphold the cooperative policy most of the time, cheat when you can, and punish cheaters.

Once again, my responses in brief:

1. This model assumes that sex is the only thing causing men to provide for women (in a hunter-gatherer context). In other words: men don't love, we only lust.

2. The human diet requires a variety of food sources for proper nutrition, meat alone won't do. Assuming no argument that men are genetically inclined to be hunters, this makes men reliant on women to provide vitamin-rich plants to supplement their protein-rich meat. Men would have an evolutionary interest in reciprocal providing.

3. Male lust for an individual woman has a half-life. If sex was the only thing making a man provide, no man would still be around to even start providing for the children by the end of 9 months.

4. There are many physiological signs in both male and female anatomy and sexual response that indicate sexual competition happens at the microscopic level (sperm wars) rather than the macroscopic.

5. The average man takes 3 minutes to orgasm from basic intercourse, then instantly loses interest in sex. The average woman takes 15 minutes. 3x=15. Which gender is naturally inclined to multiple sex partners?

6. If there is an evolutionary need for a behavior, chances are it's already covered instinctively. Friendships, an evolutionarily valuable social behavior, form naturally without social ceremony or enforcement. In fact, the only time making friends is awkward is when it's being forced for a social purpose (like business networking).

7. Our closest genetic relative, the Bonobo, has a social structure built on promiscuity, and their sex is the most human-like in the animal kingdom (gazing into each other's eyes, tongue-kissing, face-to-face "missionary" sex, etc.) The males don't abandon the females despite all the abundant sex.

so in short: i don't know whether there is an innate cognitive underpinning for female repression of female promiscuity, but given that it would make evolutionary sense, and seeing how easily we slip into it, i suspect that those nasty cultural mechanisms may be built on some deeply ingrained pre-cultural cognitive bias, just like how racism likely has its roots in bronze-age us-versus-them thinking. i guess you have more faith in humanity's inherent goodness than i do.

Not faith, optimism.

The other night I heard a talk by a woman who said something very profound. "Love and Hate can't coexist." The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Love and hate are basic passion passed through either a positive or negative mental filter. This is why once-loving marriages can turn so ugly in divorce. All the passion between the two switches from a positive to a negative filter. It's much harder for someone brokenhearted to say, "psh, whatever!" than to scream and rant.

Pessimism is no better informed than optimism, and should be avoided because it's a negative filter. If you're in a negative filter, any passion you build with a new person turns to hate. replayme was in a very negative filter, so even when people tried to back him up he turned on them.

The default system is very pessimistic for both genders. Men are dogs out to steal your honor without giving back, women are whores after your money. If you go out looking for love in a negative filter, you're not going to find it.

If you're invested in the default system and don't want to be a pessimist, you might take on the disney approach that love is magical and you should just dive in with your eyes closed and trust that everything will be alright. That's faith! Unless you're very, very lucky with your choices, chances are you're going to get hurt badly, because the world is full of people with pretty faces and ugly hearts who won't hesitate to take advantage.

I advocate a 3rd option for both genders: optimism. Be honest with each other about your intentions, and be prepared to move on if those intentions don't match up. Expect the best out of your potential lovers, so if there is passion it will filter into love, until they prove otherwise.

[spadgy]

One of the problems I have with moderated forums is that not only do you silence the antagonist directly, you indirectly silence the people who were getting ready to respond. Is trolling really that scary? I hope his ban was temporary.

I see your point, and it's terribly hard to balance freedom of speech and freedom to reply with modding responsibilities, but this forums rules and modding approach are as they are; a condition of signing up to the free service of using the forum. There's other places out there for more loose tongued talk, but here we like to engender a place where, when debate is on the table, it's healthy, as pleasant as possible, and productive; not a place for trolls or troll feeding (of course, I'm not saying we are always 100 per cent successful, but you've gotta have goals!).

Wishing to respond to trolls (if replayme was a troll) is fair enough, but hopefully the option of continuing the same debate without reduced chance of troll derailment is a better option. If not, the rest of the internet is all of our oyster for engaging in such conversations.

[glitch]

I'd say replayme got exactly the victory he wanted. He wasn't winning the debate, so he made an intentionally incendiary statement with the express intention of being banned, and succeeded. Whether or not he was losing the debate is now moot. Now he's the martyr and we're the bullies and that's all that matters.

if getting banned was the victory he wanted, then i think we got us a win-win situation.

For example, an ovulating woman would have a genetic advantage to gain from having sex with a man who isn't part of her tribe because he'd be more distantly related than a tribe member, and genetic variety equals greater chances of evolutionary success.

genetic variety equals greater chances of evolutionary success? that's true, but not in the way you seem to think it is.
genetic variety is important for survival on the species level. species with low genetic variety have low adaptive potential so higher risk of extinction when environmental change occurs. this does not apply to individuals.
or you mean increased heterozygosity within the offspring? cause that benefit 1) won't even outweigh the cost of parental protection and provision and 2) is generally accommodated for by societal structure (naturally in fission-fusion societies of those chimps of yours, or via social mobility between tribes), so no need to incur that cost in the first place.

it seems to me that female repression of female promiscuity is a pretty straightforward instance of it (cooperate = uphold policy, defect = exploit policy). generally, the fittest strategy in such scenarios (as borne out also by evolutionary simulation work) is to uphold the cooperative policy most of the time, cheat when you can, and punish cheaters.

Once again, my responses in brief:

i see a bunch of points ranging from tangentially related to non sequitur. i don't see you undermining, or even directly addressing, the argument i made. guess it didn't get across. pity.

1. This model assumes that sex is the only thing causing men to provide for women (in a hunter-gatherer context). In other words: men don't love, we only lust.

the scenario i sketched never touched on anyone's motivations.

2. The human diet requires a variety of food sources for proper nutrition, meat alone won't do. Assuming no argument that men are genetically inclined to be hunters, this makes men reliant on women to provide vitamin-rich plants to supplement their protein-rich meat. Men would have an evolutionary interest in reciprocal providing.

no idea what this has to do with anything.

3. Male lust for an individual woman has a half-life. If sex was the only thing making a man provide, no man would still be around to even start providing for the children by the end of 9 months.

see (1).

4. There are many physiological signs in both male and female anatomy and sexual response that indicate sexual competition happens at the microscopic level (sperm wars) rather than the macroscopic.

vapid claim.
there are many physiological signs in both male and female anatomy and sexual response that indicate sexual competition happens at the microscopic level. there are also many physiological signs in both male and female anatomy and sexual response that indicate sexual competition happens at the macroscopic level. signs at neither level tell us the relative importance of these levels, and moreover such signs, at both levels, may well persist long after the species has moved on to a different living style.

what, you wanna deny macroscopic sexual competition?

5. The average man takes 3 minutes to orgasm from basic intercourse, then instantly loses interest in sex. The average woman takes 15 minutes. 3x=15. Which gender is naturally inclined to multiple sex partners?

did you get this joke from a middle school playground or from B-grade stand-up comedy?
cause it's so dumb that bringing it up over and over just makes it harder and harder to take you serious.
problem #1: that's a very orgasm-centric view of sex. are you male or something?
problem #2: a very large proportion of women do not orgasm from basic intercourse. at all. you can't compute an average over a set of numbers when half the numbers are infinities. your numbers are bullshit.
problem #3: evolutionary relevance of female sexual gratification is controversial, but, if just for the sake of argument roll with those nonsensical numbers of yours for a moment, we could just as well read them as meaning that the female gender is "naturally inclined" to partners that give more than just a plain fuck. whether a partner cares about your satisfaction could be a decent proxy for whether they'll provide, actually.

but really, the rhetoric move of throwing up some bullshit numbers and then forcing one of god knows how many possible explanations is something you should avoid in any argument, and especially in an argument with a scientist.

6. If there is an evolutionary need for a behavior, chances are it's already covered instinctively. Friendships, an evolutionarily valuable social behavior, form naturally without social ceremony or enforcement. In fact, the only time making friends is awkward is when it's being forced for a social purpose (like business networking).

what's an evolutionary need? tool use aids our survival, yet we have to learn it. tool use has been aiding our survival over the ages. hence we long evolved in an environment where proficient tool users had an evolutionary advantage, and hence a proclivity for quick acquisition of tool skills evolved its way into our cognitive makeup. same for language. same for countless other social behaviours.

7. Our closest genetic relative, the Bonobo, has a social structure built on promiscuity, and their sex is the most human-like in the animal kingdom (gazing into each other's eyes, tongue-kissing, face-to-face "missionary" sex, etc.) The males don't abandon the females despite all the abundant sex.

they also have gigantic clits compared to humans, seem to all be bisexual, and pretty much use sex like we use a handshake. wanna tell me that if it weren't for the evils of human culture, you'd be rubbing genitals with your male friends the moment they enter your field of view? chimps also mostly talk in grunts and shrieks, while we sit here putting letters on screens. they might be genetically close, but a lot happened in between.

one big difference particularly relevant to the issue at hand: investment required to get one unit of offspring up and running. humans are born in a uniquely incompetent state, compared to other species, and take forever to reach some degree of independence. hence, being picky is extra important in our species. and most of that happened after our common ancestor with them funky bonobos. bonobos are super interesting and can tell us a lot about our evolutionary history, but they pose no counterargument to what i argued about a possible cognitive bias under female repression of female promiscuity.


how come your points 1, 2 and 3 seem to argue towards male investment and bonding and providing, while points 4, 5 and 7 argue towards females being promiscuous as all hell? i really have no idea what you're shooting for. maybe we can just agree that human socio-sexual behaviour is highly complicated and that neither gender is innately set to behave 100% promiscuously or 100% monogamously, and that our sexual behaviour, much like our digestive system, shows the traces of a long and arduous evolutionary journey across various different lifestyles, while we nod at one another with one hand on our chins and difficult frowns on our faces?

so in short: i don't know whether there is an innate cognitive underpinning for female repression of female promiscuity, but given that it would make evolutionary sense, and seeing how easily we slip into it, i suspect that those nasty cultural mechanisms may be built on some deeply ingrained pre-cultural cognitive bias, just like how racism likely has its roots in bronze-age us-versus-them thinking. i guess you have more faith in humanity's inherent goodness than i do.

Not faith, optimism.

The other night I heard a talk by a woman who said something very profound. "Love and Hate can't coexist." The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Love and hate are basic passion passed through either a positive or negative mental filter. This is why once-loving marriages can turn so ugly in divorce. All the passion between the two switches from a positive to a negative filter. It's much harder for someone brokenhearted to say, "psh, whatever!" than to scream and rant.

Pessimism is no better informed than optimism, and should be avoided because it's a negative filter. If you're in a negative filter, any passion you build with a new person turns to hate. replayme was in a very negative filter, so even when people tried to back him up he turned on them.

The default system is very pessimistic for both genders. Men are dogs out to steal your honor without giving back, women are whores after your money. If you go out looking for love in a negative filter, you're not going to find it.

If you're invested in the default system and don't want to be a pessimist, you might take on the disney approach that love is magical and you should just dive in with your eyes closed and trust that everything will be alright. That's faith! Unless you're very, very lucky with your choices, chances are you're going to get hurt badly, because the world is full of people with pretty faces and ugly hearts who won't hesitate to take advantage.

I advocate a 3rd option for both genders: optimism. Be honest with each other about your intentions, and be prepared to move on if those intentions don't match up. Expect the best out of your potential lovers, so if there is passion it will filter into love, until they prove otherwise.

this really doesn't have anything to do with the quote you put it under, does it?
i'm neither pessimistic nor invested in a default system, in case you misperceived me as such.