What you quote is poorly stated. Maybe your response is correct for the quote but both miss the problem. Some inequality is natural and no effort should of be made to eliminate it but some inequality results from having less opportunity, outright discrimination, and other undesirable hindrances. Maybe some unfair advantages too. This is surely less than in the past but plenty more to fix even if activist goals of perfectly equal outcomes is as bad as the problem.
Alas, we get in real trouble when we try to fix the results of natural inequality because we tell ourselves that they are actually the results of "having less opportunity, outright discrimination, and other undesirable hindrances."
So, since we refuse to accept that there are major differences in people's smarts, conscientiousness, and tolerance/desire for academics, we force all young people into years and years of schooling, with everyone required to take the same basic curriculum, and passing students along because we can't bear to fail them even if they haven't learned much.
I think you've mixed apples and oranges, and beer (something totally different)
Yes, many people have an unexplainable believe that ALL differences come from what you quote. That is a related but distinctly different issue from some of it being from those causes.
We pass students along because it is the path of least resistance.
We put everyone on the academic track because we have virtually no ability to determine who belongs on what track. (And we have a history of gross discrimination in who we put on the "lower" tracks.)
I have a friend who "did shop" in high school and worked random blue collar jobs for ~10 years. Somehow he got into UC Berkeley and did a BS and MS in civil engineering. A few years ago he was recognized as "engineer of the year" in Georgia. Another friend worked construction until he broke his back on the job. By coincidence he also went to UC Berkeley and became a professor at a top five engineering research university where he started three major centers of expertise, including two outside his own department, before an early death about fifteen years after becoming a professor.
I find the suggestion we need to put more on the vocational track repugnant. The best we can do is offer choices. Some have more/better choices than others but there are many reasons more do not chose alternatives to the academic route. Like inequality, that is something we only have limited ability to "fix." Most high school kids have no idea what they want to do for a career. Almost as many college students don't. I've retired "successful" and wealthy and I still don't know.
The county I live in has an extensive program in vocational training at the local 2-yr colllege. It's available and rather inexpensive.
The county I grew up in had/has an extensive program for vocational training in mostly or all blue collar fields.
Sending lots of young people to college is indeed grossly inefficient but so is capitalism. I'd argue in both cases, despite the inefficiencies, we more than get our money's worth. Given his views on other topics I am perplexed that AK sees this differently. Same for you I suppose.
"He says that females tend to form groups and males tend to form teams. A group values solidarity. Make sure members feel welcome. Exclude someone whose behavior disturbs the feeling of togetherness. A team values accomplishment. Make sure that members each do their separate tasks. Get rid of someone who cannot perform."
The old saying goes, "To a boy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Having read Joyce Benenson, everything is starting to look like "Warriors and Worriers".
Evolutionary psychology of male violence is upstream to this issue.
See Michael Huemer's summary of Steven Pinker's explanation of evolutionary psychology of male violence:
"So here’s the theory about primitive tribes. In them, it’s common for the men to go attack a neighboring tribe in order to kill the men and kidnap the women, who would then become coerced wives of the victorious men. Nice, liberal people don’t want to believe this because it’s horrible. But the world is in fact a horrible place – and it used to be much worse than it is now.
Of course, starting such a conflict entails a large risk of getting killed. To see how this could be “worth it” from the evolutionary standpoint, consider a simple model in which there are two out comes, each equally likely: you have a 50% probability of getting killed, and a 50% probability of surviving and capturing a new wife from the neighboring tribe.
Suppose you presently have no wife (which was common in primitive tribes, since most practiced polygyny). Then if you die in the conflict, your reproductive success goes to zero – but it was going to be zero anyway if you didn’t find a wife. If you succeed, you get some reproductive success. So you can see how going on this attack could increase your expected reproductive success.
Even if you already have a wife, going to war still isn’t so bad: if you lose the fight, your reproductive success goes to zero, but if you win, your reproductive success about doubles (as you go from one wife to two). So it’s a toss-up.
Women don’t go on such raids, because for a woman, capturing another husband does not increase one’s reproductive success (you can still only have one offspring per 9 months).
This explains why evolution would have men engage in this highly risky, aggressive behavior."
—Michael Huemer, "Why humans fight," Fake Noûs (20 March 2021):
Of course romance novels have always turned on such fantasies, though apart from the light titillation on offer it may have as much to do with the frumpy female reader enjoying imagining herself in the heroine’s place as *too* irresistible. How much of “love”/romance is the wish to be admired, even to obsession?
Since women control the purse strings on such things, I nominate 3 exemplars of an alternate feminine ideal, connected to three of the most successful properties of the 20th century: Rhett Butler, Rick from Casablanca (does he even have/need a last name), and - overlooked I think - Atticus Finch.
The clear suggestion is that all three have just exactly that reservoir of strength/masculine skill amounting to successful violence over other men if required, but they choose not to deploy it until pressed. They are the opposite of the mindlessly, or eagerly, violent man. Atticus is recalled as the best shot in town, though his child has never seen him fire a gun; and the only man who can keep the vigilantes at bay. But he presents otherwise, of course, not out of modesty but essentially, in Lee’s mind, because he’s a higher order of man.
Rhett goes to war only when the cause is lost. Only when the sort of thing he never cared to see or participate in or contribute to - has already happened. He rapes Scarlett, once, and no doubt this thrilled lady readers; but equally thrilling was his grief, how much more he suffered from it, than did Scarlett.
Rick is the man who can get it done - anything, the near-impossible - with deadly efficiency. But he chooses his moment carefully, with regard only to his own conscience, not from a predilection for violence.
I don’t know what men feel about these protagonists - finding them ridiculous, perhaps. But women obviously ate them up. Possibly there may be attractions more complicated than “rough man passes on DNA”. At least, we now know that humans have in the past, changed in novel ways in remarkably short periods of time.
While I am not going to venture into psychology of fascination with violent males, irrefutably borne out with bestselling books such as Fifty Shades of Grey, which I personally can't help but be perplexed by and find abhorrent, I am reminded of a Cormac McCarthy quote from his novel The Crossing that puts it in a more sympathetic light: “… if women were drawn to rash men it was only that in their secret hearts they knew that a man who would not kill for them was of no use at all."
Having grown up in a rural area at a time when young men were expected to fight (some of them at least), I think the young women there were more attracted to young men who were willing to fight, but for whatever reason preferred not to, until pushed by circumstances, at which point they fought without restraint.
I think they liked the self-control displayed.
The most attractive (in more than just the physical sense) young females seemed to end up with the "self-restraint" guys while the more unrestrained violent type of males ended up with the least (mostly) desirable females. But that is just my experience.
The quality of the writing is very bad, no doubt about it. And most of the plot is absurd or ridiculous without any apparent felt need to even try to make it make any sense in terms of realism (this doesn't bother most women).
Nevertheless, those things are pretty typical in the genre, such as it is.
FSOG is actually much less violent and much more "moral" (depending how you define it) than most of its competition. The BDSM content is quite mild and all done strictly according to rules and voluntarism (more or less). Anastasia is 18 and single, neither a statutory minor nor married with children having an affair (and, per the rule in the genre, getting away with it in the sense of still living sexually happily ever after, see, e.g., "Babygirl".)
Mostly it's a fool's errand to try and make any kind of moral or ethical sense out of any of this stuff in terms of a defensible intellectual position, set of principles, or coherent ideology, as one of the core prerogatives of the impulses regarding female sexual autonomy is an option for time-inconsistent judgments, which is not compatible with conventional ethical reasoning based on principles instead of persons.
That is, things liked and wanted and "agreed-to" at the time must still be condemnable and punishable later, and things "wrong" at the time (for example sexual violations) must be redeemable later in the manner of "nunc pro tunc". If one expands one's space of "moral" to include asymmetric / inegalitarian systems in which "X is always right, should always get what X wants" for some person or group, then this is easier to grasp.
FSOB deserved its day in the sun for being a perfect distillation and collection of so many of the elements of sexual excitement and attractiveness translated into the context of the modern woman, but without getting -too- (that is, realistically) dark about it, which made it possible for women to share their enjoyment of it with one another, which allowed its readership and popularity to explode. If the truth revealed by FSOB (and the lyrics of literally hundreds of female-authored top-pop songs) is hard to accept or stomach, well, "Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality."
"'Nunc pro tunc is' a Latin phrase that means "now for then" and is used in legal contexts to describe a court action that corrects an earlier ruling or changes records retroactively."
Retroactive, yes, but more than just "changing records". More like "changing interpretations".
An old, classic example of "now-for-then" involves voluntary sexual intercourse with a minor that *would* have been legal had the lovers been married at the time (a marriage the law would have allowed), but absent a marriage, satisfied the elements of the crime of statutory rape. The question is, if the young lovers get married, with the full assent of their parents, is the groom still guilty of the crime of statutory rape for the intercourse that occurred prior to the marriage?
Well, per the letter of the law, certainly. Nunc Pro Tunc in such a case operates as what I suppose one could call a "canon of reconstruction" and allows judges to make an "all's well that ends well" exception in very special circumstances. That is, in deciding whether or not a statutory rape occurred in the past, the judge has the discretion to implement a legal fiction and take the status of marriage from the present and apply it to cover the period for those past behaviors. So, in reality, they were not actually married, but for the purposes of this legal determination, the 'now' of their marriage extends back in time to 'then'.
Now, imagine an ethical system which also permitted such time-inconsistency in retroactive flipping of judgments, both promotions and demotions (and sometimes back again), regarding moral culpability, not because "new evidence come to light", but because of what the latest balance of status, incentives, and interests of the judge happen to be. "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong."
Regarding the appeal of violence, I have noticed a broad attraction to violence in the form of, say explosions or car chase scenes or light saber duels. You might call it bloodless violence. The bloodier the violence, the more narrow the appeal. At the extreme end, the subgenre of “body horror” seems to be quite niche.
Even young children seem to be fascinated by bloodless violence, especially young boys. This is especially true if the violence is framed as adventurous or heroic. For me personally, I found the violence in Band of Brothers far more tolerable than in The Deer Hunter.
I went to see the Dylan movie the other day, and I had to sit through 20 minutes of previews, all extremely violent. It makes me wish I lived on a planet with different people.
We call it "The Magic That Brings Together The Adult Children Of Violent Alcoholics". Somehow, these folks find each other because patterns were instilled in their youth brains before they were even aware that there were such things as patterns. Patterns are recognized, and because they're used to those patterns, they find comfort in them.
Lots of violent people out there. Everyone gets to figure out why there's violence on their own. I have no idea. I do know that offspring of violent people somehow gravitate to folks with similar experiences.
We definitely gravitate towards what we know. I think it was just yesterday that someone commented a girl living with mom and grandma didn't understand why an adult male lived with his family next door.
Another problem with psychological testing: participants often come disproportionately from the student body of whatever college is conducting the test.
Well, no one's obligated to agree, but you're gonna get my pet theory anyway: I suspect part of the draw is just good ol' fashioned quantity over quality. If being a serial rapist was a successful male reproductive strategy in the ancestral environment, then on some level it's rational for a woman to want to have her own little rapist offspring because 50% of her genetic heritage will get passed along to each of his victims. As a male, his potential reproductive capacity is a lot higher (sperm is cheap and abundant, womb space is not), too, so the potential payoff is high in terms of number of grand children. Not pretty, but the logic is there.
I don't think there's any evidence rape was at all an advantageous mating strategy WITHIN social groups, as it would only cause division and disunity which weakens the larger group. But a regular part of raids/conquests of OUTSIDE groups after their males were killed/subjugated . .yes that was very common throughout human/hominid history.
Except that communities, particularly larger than Dunbar number, include differing social classes and rape of those in lower classes was typical. So not just raids and conquests.
Social classes akin to any sort of modern framework of them wouldn't have arisen until well into the advent of agriculture; rather late in the larger hominid storyline. I also don't think it was particularly common, although it certainly did happen.
Perhaps the reason supply and demand "work" is because both are underpinned by what I call the Fundamental Hypothesis of Economics, which states this: individuals choose those actions they believe will yield themselves the greatest net value. If this hypothesis is true, then the models of demand and supply follow logically and do not require empirical confirmation or refutation; they just are correct in the same way that 2+2=4 is correct.
Despite all attempts to make economics an experimental science, we Austrians think otherwise. Macroeconomics is a disaster because it is not founded on the FHE; instead, it is postulated on one or another proposed epiphenomenon. Econometrics, the presumed handmaiden of macroeconomics is a disaster because there are no constants to be estimated in human behavior, not even on average.
I totally agree. The critical words are "those actions they believe." People are rational to the extent they act in what they PERCEIVE to be their best interest. But they are often wrong.
Definitely. The work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky explains much about why the perceptions of people are frequently misleading, if not outright wrong.
And Darwin showed what can happen when they are wrong. But it's also worth noting that when independent individuals guess the number of jelly beans or the weight of a cow, their average tends towards the right answer.
We don't have to know the best answer, or even better answers, for it to often work the same way. But we can't ignore exceptions such as Tversky and Kahnemann have described.
On the reading - listening - watching observation.
I find my greatest limitation to be attention time. I only have so much time. And I have found that listening to somebody talk / watching somebody talk has a very low data rate in general. I can read fast and I can skim. So I don't listen to podcasts, in general I don't watch short videos - particularily of talking heads. I read. My preferred format is a hierarchial presentation deck so that I can dive in on points of interest, but I will read longform far more willingly than I will listen, let alone watch talking heads. Frankly, one of my relaxations is reading astrophysics papers from the preprint archives.
Mastroianni is poorly informed (or inarticulate) about the issue whether answering questions holding a pen in one's mouth different ways affects one's feelings/responses. The issue is actually interesting. From AI: "Holding a pen in your mouth, specifically between your teeth, is often associated with feeling more positive or amused because it physically forces your facial muscles into a smiling expression, which can trigger a feeling of happiness due to the 'facial feedback hypothesis' in psychology; essentially, your facial expression can influence your emotions."
The non-real sciences don't seem to "see" reality. Viewing young women's attraction to the "bad boys" as an attraction to violence isn't compatible with slightly older women's attraction to men with wealth and power. The "bad boys" of the high school era appear to be at the top of the social status when the nerds were getting their asses kicked, but with age, when the nerds are running their own companies, their social status changes as the "bad boys" who don't understand compound interest are underwater to CC companies.
I'm terrible remembering even better known movies but I immediately knew (guessed correctly) which one that is and I remember much of the plot. Still, I would have never guessed it came from that one.
"I think we are a long way from understanding female attraction to males who are violent in general, and especially to males who are violent to females in particular."
Yes
Your theory is a good one.
Kurt mentioned doing what one knows. "Inheriting" it from family is a strong component.
I'd add that in the past the more violent tended to have more success beyond just with females and this was an attraction.
There's no reason all of these and others can't be all true.
“that make inequality so hard to fix.”
Nothing to fix. An unchangeable fact of life. Get over it, people!
Harsh sounding comment but on reflection.......true.
What you quote is poorly stated. Maybe your response is correct for the quote but both miss the problem. Some inequality is natural and no effort should of be made to eliminate it but some inequality results from having less opportunity, outright discrimination, and other undesirable hindrances. Maybe some unfair advantages too. This is surely less than in the past but plenty more to fix even if activist goals of perfectly equal outcomes is as bad as the problem.
Alas, we get in real trouble when we try to fix the results of natural inequality because we tell ourselves that they are actually the results of "having less opportunity, outright discrimination, and other undesirable hindrances."
So, since we refuse to accept that there are major differences in people's smarts, conscientiousness, and tolerance/desire for academics, we force all young people into years and years of schooling, with everyone required to take the same basic curriculum, and passing students along because we can't bear to fail them even if they haven't learned much.
I think you've mixed apples and oranges, and beer (something totally different)
Yes, many people have an unexplainable believe that ALL differences come from what you quote. That is a related but distinctly different issue from some of it being from those causes.
We pass students along because it is the path of least resistance.
We put everyone on the academic track because we have virtually no ability to determine who belongs on what track. (And we have a history of gross discrimination in who we put on the "lower" tracks.)
I have a friend who "did shop" in high school and worked random blue collar jobs for ~10 years. Somehow he got into UC Berkeley and did a BS and MS in civil engineering. A few years ago he was recognized as "engineer of the year" in Georgia. Another friend worked construction until he broke his back on the job. By coincidence he also went to UC Berkeley and became a professor at a top five engineering research university where he started three major centers of expertise, including two outside his own department, before an early death about fifteen years after becoming a professor.
I find the suggestion we need to put more on the vocational track repugnant. The best we can do is offer choices. Some have more/better choices than others but there are many reasons more do not chose alternatives to the academic route. Like inequality, that is something we only have limited ability to "fix." Most high school kids have no idea what they want to do for a career. Almost as many college students don't. I've retired "successful" and wealthy and I still don't know.
The county I live in has an extensive program in vocational training at the local 2-yr colllege. It's available and rather inexpensive.
The county I grew up in had/has an extensive program for vocational training in mostly or all blue collar fields.
https://wcpsmd.com/schools/high-schools/boyd-j-michael-iii-technical-high
This one came up on my search so my county seems not the only one.
https://www.wcbek12.org/domain/39
Sending lots of young people to college is indeed grossly inefficient but so is capitalism. I'd argue in both cases, despite the inefficiencies, we more than get our money's worth. Given his views on other topics I am perplexed that AK sees this differently. Same for you I suppose.
Inequality is not a problem to fix. Fix discrimination and other injustices, but don’t talk about fixing something that’s inevitable.
That's what I said.
"He says that females tend to form groups and males tend to form teams. A group values solidarity. Make sure members feel welcome. Exclude someone whose behavior disturbs the feeling of togetherness. A team values accomplishment. Make sure that members each do their separate tasks. Get rid of someone who cannot perform."
The old saying goes, "To a boy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Having read Joyce Benenson, everything is starting to look like "Warriors and Worriers".
Re: the (putative) appeal of violent males.
Evolutionary psychology of male violence is upstream to this issue.
See Michael Huemer's summary of Steven Pinker's explanation of evolutionary psychology of male violence:
"So here’s the theory about primitive tribes. In them, it’s common for the men to go attack a neighboring tribe in order to kill the men and kidnap the women, who would then become coerced wives of the victorious men. Nice, liberal people don’t want to believe this because it’s horrible. But the world is in fact a horrible place – and it used to be much worse than it is now.
Of course, starting such a conflict entails a large risk of getting killed. To see how this could be “worth it” from the evolutionary standpoint, consider a simple model in which there are two out comes, each equally likely: you have a 50% probability of getting killed, and a 50% probability of surviving and capturing a new wife from the neighboring tribe.
Suppose you presently have no wife (which was common in primitive tribes, since most practiced polygyny). Then if you die in the conflict, your reproductive success goes to zero – but it was going to be zero anyway if you didn’t find a wife. If you succeed, you get some reproductive success. So you can see how going on this attack could increase your expected reproductive success.
Even if you already have a wife, going to war still isn’t so bad: if you lose the fight, your reproductive success goes to zero, but if you win, your reproductive success about doubles (as you go from one wife to two). So it’s a toss-up.
Women don’t go on such raids, because for a woman, capturing another husband does not increase one’s reproductive success (you can still only have one offspring per 9 months).
This explains why evolution would have men engage in this highly risky, aggressive behavior."
—Michael Huemer, "Why humans fight," Fake Noûs (20 March 2021):
https://fakenous.substack.com/p/why-humans-fight
Of course romance novels have always turned on such fantasies, though apart from the light titillation on offer it may have as much to do with the frumpy female reader enjoying imagining herself in the heroine’s place as *too* irresistible. How much of “love”/romance is the wish to be admired, even to obsession?
Since women control the purse strings on such things, I nominate 3 exemplars of an alternate feminine ideal, connected to three of the most successful properties of the 20th century: Rhett Butler, Rick from Casablanca (does he even have/need a last name), and - overlooked I think - Atticus Finch.
The clear suggestion is that all three have just exactly that reservoir of strength/masculine skill amounting to successful violence over other men if required, but they choose not to deploy it until pressed. They are the opposite of the mindlessly, or eagerly, violent man. Atticus is recalled as the best shot in town, though his child has never seen him fire a gun; and the only man who can keep the vigilantes at bay. But he presents otherwise, of course, not out of modesty but essentially, in Lee’s mind, because he’s a higher order of man.
Rhett goes to war only when the cause is lost. Only when the sort of thing he never cared to see or participate in or contribute to - has already happened. He rapes Scarlett, once, and no doubt this thrilled lady readers; but equally thrilling was his grief, how much more he suffered from it, than did Scarlett.
Rick is the man who can get it done - anything, the near-impossible - with deadly efficiency. But he chooses his moment carefully, with regard only to his own conscience, not from a predilection for violence.
I don’t know what men feel about these protagonists - finding them ridiculous, perhaps. But women obviously ate them up. Possibly there may be attractions more complicated than “rough man passes on DNA”. At least, we now know that humans have in the past, changed in novel ways in remarkably short periods of time.
Rick's last name is Blaine, though everyone seems to call him just "Rick".
All good examples that don't invalidate any of the other explanations.
While I am not going to venture into psychology of fascination with violent males, irrefutably borne out with bestselling books such as Fifty Shades of Grey, which I personally can't help but be perplexed by and find abhorrent, I am reminded of a Cormac McCarthy quote from his novel The Crossing that puts it in a more sympathetic light: “… if women were drawn to rash men it was only that in their secret hearts they knew that a man who would not kill for them was of no use at all."
Having grown up in a rural area at a time when young men were expected to fight (some of them at least), I think the young women there were more attracted to young men who were willing to fight, but for whatever reason preferred not to, until pushed by circumstances, at which point they fought without restraint.
I think they liked the self-control displayed.
The most attractive (in more than just the physical sense) young females seemed to end up with the "self-restraint" guys while the more unrestrained violent type of males ended up with the least (mostly) desirable females. But that is just my experience.
That makes sense. You want someone who will fight for you, not against you.
IDK if you are right to find FSOG abhorrent but your quote is excellent.
I find it immoral, but I get that this is subjective. Perhaps more objectively, the writing is atrocious and sophomoric.
The quality of the writing is very bad, no doubt about it. And most of the plot is absurd or ridiculous without any apparent felt need to even try to make it make any sense in terms of realism (this doesn't bother most women).
Nevertheless, those things are pretty typical in the genre, such as it is.
FSOG is actually much less violent and much more "moral" (depending how you define it) than most of its competition. The BDSM content is quite mild and all done strictly according to rules and voluntarism (more or less). Anastasia is 18 and single, neither a statutory minor nor married with children having an affair (and, per the rule in the genre, getting away with it in the sense of still living sexually happily ever after, see, e.g., "Babygirl".)
Mostly it's a fool's errand to try and make any kind of moral or ethical sense out of any of this stuff in terms of a defensible intellectual position, set of principles, or coherent ideology, as one of the core prerogatives of the impulses regarding female sexual autonomy is an option for time-inconsistent judgments, which is not compatible with conventional ethical reasoning based on principles instead of persons.
That is, things liked and wanted and "agreed-to" at the time must still be condemnable and punishable later, and things "wrong" at the time (for example sexual violations) must be redeemable later in the manner of "nunc pro tunc". If one expands one's space of "moral" to include asymmetric / inegalitarian systems in which "X is always right, should always get what X wants" for some person or group, then this is easier to grasp.
FSOB deserved its day in the sun for being a perfect distillation and collection of so many of the elements of sexual excitement and attractiveness translated into the context of the modern woman, but without getting -too- (that is, realistically) dark about it, which made it possible for women to share their enjoyment of it with one another, which allowed its readership and popularity to explode. If the truth revealed by FSOB (and the lyrics of literally hundreds of female-authored top-pop songs) is hard to accept or stomach, well, "Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality."
"'Nunc pro tunc is' a Latin phrase that means "now for then" and is used in legal contexts to describe a court action that corrects an earlier ruling or changes records retroactively."
Retroactive, yes, but more than just "changing records". More like "changing interpretations".
An old, classic example of "now-for-then" involves voluntary sexual intercourse with a minor that *would* have been legal had the lovers been married at the time (a marriage the law would have allowed), but absent a marriage, satisfied the elements of the crime of statutory rape. The question is, if the young lovers get married, with the full assent of their parents, is the groom still guilty of the crime of statutory rape for the intercourse that occurred prior to the marriage?
Well, per the letter of the law, certainly. Nunc Pro Tunc in such a case operates as what I suppose one could call a "canon of reconstruction" and allows judges to make an "all's well that ends well" exception in very special circumstances. That is, in deciding whether or not a statutory rape occurred in the past, the judge has the discretion to implement a legal fiction and take the status of marriage from the present and apply it to cover the period for those past behaviors. So, in reality, they were not actually married, but for the purposes of this legal determination, the 'now' of their marriage extends back in time to 'then'.
Now, imagine an ethical system which also permitted such time-inconsistency in retroactive flipping of judgments, both promotions and demotions (and sometimes back again), regarding moral culpability, not because "new evidence come to light", but because of what the latest balance of status, incentives, and interests of the judge happen to be. "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong."
Another set of thought-provoking comments. (That's high praise.)
I thought the Sawyer essay was particularly insightful.
Regarding the appeal of violence, I have noticed a broad attraction to violence in the form of, say explosions or car chase scenes or light saber duels. You might call it bloodless violence. The bloodier the violence, the more narrow the appeal. At the extreme end, the subgenre of “body horror” seems to be quite niche.
Even young children seem to be fascinated by bloodless violence, especially young boys. This is especially true if the violence is framed as adventurous or heroic. For me personally, I found the violence in Band of Brothers far more tolerable than in The Deer Hunter.
I went to see the Dylan movie the other day, and I had to sit through 20 minutes of previews, all extremely violent. It makes me wish I lived on a planet with different people.
We call it "The Magic That Brings Together The Adult Children Of Violent Alcoholics". Somehow, these folks find each other because patterns were instilled in their youth brains before they were even aware that there were such things as patterns. Patterns are recognized, and because they're used to those patterns, they find comfort in them.
Lots of violent people out there. Everyone gets to figure out why there's violence on their own. I have no idea. I do know that offspring of violent people somehow gravitate to folks with similar experiences.
We definitely gravitate towards what we know. I think it was just yesterday that someone commented a girl living with mom and grandma didn't understand why an adult male lived with his family next door.
Another problem with psychological testing: participants often come disproportionately from the student body of whatever college is conducting the test.
Well, no one's obligated to agree, but you're gonna get my pet theory anyway: I suspect part of the draw is just good ol' fashioned quantity over quality. If being a serial rapist was a successful male reproductive strategy in the ancestral environment, then on some level it's rational for a woman to want to have her own little rapist offspring because 50% of her genetic heritage will get passed along to each of his victims. As a male, his potential reproductive capacity is a lot higher (sperm is cheap and abundant, womb space is not), too, so the potential payoff is high in terms of number of grand children. Not pretty, but the logic is there.
I don't think there's any evidence rape was at all an advantageous mating strategy WITHIN social groups, as it would only cause division and disunity which weakens the larger group. But a regular part of raids/conquests of OUTSIDE groups after their males were killed/subjugated . .yes that was very common throughout human/hominid history.
Fair.
Except that communities, particularly larger than Dunbar number, include differing social classes and rape of those in lower classes was typical. So not just raids and conquests.
Social classes akin to any sort of modern framework of them wouldn't have arisen until well into the advent of agriculture; rather late in the larger hominid storyline. I also don't think it was particularly common, although it certainly did happen.
Perhaps the reason supply and demand "work" is because both are underpinned by what I call the Fundamental Hypothesis of Economics, which states this: individuals choose those actions they believe will yield themselves the greatest net value. If this hypothesis is true, then the models of demand and supply follow logically and do not require empirical confirmation or refutation; they just are correct in the same way that 2+2=4 is correct.
Despite all attempts to make economics an experimental science, we Austrians think otherwise. Macroeconomics is a disaster because it is not founded on the FHE; instead, it is postulated on one or another proposed epiphenomenon. Econometrics, the presumed handmaiden of macroeconomics is a disaster because there are no constants to be estimated in human behavior, not even on average.
I totally agree. The critical words are "those actions they believe." People are rational to the extent they act in what they PERCEIVE to be their best interest. But they are often wrong.
Definitely. The work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky explains much about why the perceptions of people are frequently misleading, if not outright wrong.
And Darwin showed what can happen when they are wrong. But it's also worth noting that when independent individuals guess the number of jelly beans or the weight of a cow, their average tends towards the right answer.
That's because there is a right answer. If there is no right answer, then what?
We don't have to know the best answer, or even better answers, for it to often work the same way. But we can't ignore exceptions such as Tversky and Kahnemann have described.
On the reading - listening - watching observation.
I find my greatest limitation to be attention time. I only have so much time. And I have found that listening to somebody talk / watching somebody talk has a very low data rate in general. I can read fast and I can skim. So I don't listen to podcasts, in general I don't watch short videos - particularily of talking heads. I read. My preferred format is a hierarchial presentation deck so that I can dive in on points of interest, but I will read longform far more willingly than I will listen, let alone watch talking heads. Frankly, one of my relaxations is reading astrophysics papers from the preprint archives.
Mastroianni is poorly informed (or inarticulate) about the issue whether answering questions holding a pen in one's mouth different ways affects one's feelings/responses. The issue is actually interesting. From AI: "Holding a pen in your mouth, specifically between your teeth, is often associated with feeling more positive or amused because it physically forces your facial muscles into a smiling expression, which can trigger a feeling of happiness due to the 'facial feedback hypothesis' in psychology; essentially, your facial expression can influence your emotions."
The non-real sciences don't seem to "see" reality. Viewing young women's attraction to the "bad boys" as an attraction to violence isn't compatible with slightly older women's attraction to men with wealth and power. The "bad boys" of the high school era appear to be at the top of the social status when the nerds were getting their asses kicked, but with age, when the nerds are running their own companies, their social status changes as the "bad boys" who don't understand compound interest are underwater to CC companies.
If nudges, or "Baby Steps" won't work, perhaps more drastic measures, such as "Death Therapy" certainly will. (I hope someone gets the reference)
The quote isn't entirely familiar but it sounds like it could come from "Soylent Green." Or maybe 1984. A bit of a different topic though.
Even more lowbrow, "What About Bob" starring Bill Murray.
I'm terrible remembering even better known movies but I immediately knew (guessed correctly) which one that is and I remember much of the plot. Still, I would have never guessed it came from that one.
"I think we are a long way from understanding female attraction to males who are violent in general, and especially to males who are violent to females in particular."
Yes
Your theory is a good one.
Kurt mentioned doing what one knows. "Inheriting" it from family is a strong component.
I'd add that in the past the more violent tended to have more success beyond just with females and this was an attraction.
There's no reason all of these and others can't be all true.