People Argue Just to Win, Scholars Assert.

Hugo Mercier is among the researchers now asserting that reason evolved to win arguments, not seek truth. [...]

Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we’ll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena. According to this view, bias, lack of logic and other supposed flaws that pollute the stream of reason are instead social adaptations that enable one group to persuade (and defeat) another. Certitude works, however sharply it may depart from the truth. [...]

“Reasoning doesn’t have this function of helping us to get better beliefs and make better decisions,” said Hugo Mercier, who is a co-author of the journal article, with Dan Sperber. “It was a purely social phenomenon. It evolved to help us convince others and to be careful when others try to convince us.” Truth and accuracy were beside the point.

Indeed, Mr. Sperber, a member of the Jean-Nicod research institute in Paris, first developed a version of the theory in 2000 to explain why evolution did not make the manifold flaws in reasoning go the way of the prehensile tail and the four-legged stride. Looking at a large body of psychological research, Mr. Sperber wanted to figure out why people persisted in picking out evidence that supported their views and ignored the rest — what is known as confirmation bias — leading them to hold on to a belief doggedly in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence.    Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth | NY Times

Relevance for real world issues

Human-Stupidity shares the frustrations of many activists, that logical reasoning and unassailable scientific proof are not enough to convert the believers in issues like men’s rights, race and iq, *evolution, political correctness, and drug war. 

We are awe-struck how manipulative language successfully distorts words like *consent, *child, *rape, distorts facts about prostitution. Feminists and religious zealots thus managed to take over the United Nations and enforce world wide law changes based on voodoo theories  and forged science, like sex trafficking and one in four myths. Harvard President Larry Summers was persecuted for questioning some feminist victimization theories. Human-Stupidity posits that women have evolved especially acute language manipulation skills to make up for their physical and economic disadvantages in the EEA. As a result, peer reviewed sound scientific studies get condemned by both the US senate and the US congress by unanimous vote (Rind Study).

Nobel prize winner James Watson had his reputation ruined for well-meaningly stating scientific truths, the same truth that earned renowned scientist J. Philippe Rushton constant persecution. *Discrimination is the explanation for every gender and race difference. We are awe struck how people in high academic positions can get away with drivel like race does not exist.

Don’t miss Robert Kurzban‘s book on the evolution of hypocrisy and meddling in other people’s sex life. Which explains, partially, why lying about a blow job (Bill Clinton) seems to be a worse transgression then starting a trillion dollar war based on lies about weapons of mass destruction (Bush)..

Original scholarly article

Mercier, Hugo and Sperber, Dan, Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory (June 26, 2010). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 57-74, 2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1698090 

• Full PDF of article and discussion

Excerpts from Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory

4.1.3. Belief perseverance. Motivated reasoning can also
be used to hang on to beliefs even when they have been
proved to be ill-founded. This phenomenon, known as
belief perseverance, is “one of social psychology’s most
reliable phenomena” (Guenther & Alicke 2008, p. 706;
for an early demonstration, see Ross et al. 1975). The
involvement of motivated reasoning in this effect can be
demonstrated by providing participants with evidence
both for and against a favored belief. If belief perseverance
were a simple result of some degree of psychological
inertia, then the first evidence presented should be the
most influential, whether it supports or disconfirms the
favored belief. On the other hand, if evidence can be
used selectively, then only evidence supporting the
favored belief should be retained, regardless of the order
of presentation. G

4.1.4. Violation of moral norms. The results reviewed so
far have shown that motivated reasoning can lead to
poor epistemic outcomes. We will now see that our
ability to “find or make a reason for everything one has a
mind to do” (Franklin 1799) can also allow us to violate
our moral intuitions and behave unfairly. In a recent
experiment, Valdesolo and DeSteno (2008) have demonstrated
the role reasoning can play in maintaining moral
hypocrisy (when we judge someone else’s action by
using tougher moral criteria than we use to judge our
own actions)

All of these experiments demonstrate cognitively
unsound uses of reasoning. There are two ways to explain
these findings. One could argue that these are instances
of a mechanism designed for individual cognition, and in
particular for decision making, that sometimes gets
misused. According to the argumentative theory, however,
the function of reasoning is primarily social: In particular,
it allows people to anticipate the need to justify their
decisions to others. This predicts that the use of reasoning
in decision making should increase the more likely one is
to have to justify oneself. This prediction has been borne
out by experiments showing that people will rely more on
reasons when they know that their decisions will later be
made public (Thompson & Norton 2008) or when they
are giving advice (in which case one has to be able to
justify oneself [see Kray & Gonzalez 1999]). By contrast,
when they are choosing for others rather than for themselves,
they are less prone to these effects because there
is then less need for a utilitarian, justifiable decision (Hamilton
& Thompson 2007). Finally, it should be stressed that
the picture of reasoning painted in these studies may be
overly bleak: Demonstrations that reasoning leads to
errors are much more publishable than reports of its successes
(Christensen-Szalanski & Beach 1984). Indeed, in
most cases, reasoning is likely to drive us towards good
decisions. This, we would suggest, is mostly because
better decisions tend to be easier to justify.

We have pointed out that, in group settings, reasoning
biases can become a positive force and
contribute to a kind of division of cognitive labor. Still,
to excel in such groups, it may be necessary to anticipate
how one’s own arguments might be evaluated by others
and to adjust these arguments accordingly. Showing
one’s ability to anticipate objections may be a valuable
culturally acquired skill, as in medieval disputationes (see
Novaes 2005). By anticipating objections, one may even
be able to recognize flaws in one’s own hypotheses and
go on to revise them. We have suggested that this
depends on a painstakingly acquired ability to exert
some limited control over one’s own biases. Even among
scientists, this ability may be uncommon, but those who
have it may have a great influence on the development
of scientific ideas. It would be a mistake, however, to
treat their highly visible, almost freakish, contributions
as paradigmatic examples of human reasoning. In most
discussions, rather than looking for flaws in our own
arguments, it is easier to let the other person find them and
only then adjust our arguments, if necessary.

Creepy Actor’s Creepy Marriage Should Be Illegal

Here’s the deal — Hutchison is 51 years old, and his new bride Courtney Alexis Stodden is a mere 16 years old!!! That’s right. She’s just a child and yet their "consensual" marriage to one another is as legal as they come apparently, thanks to none other than Courtney’s own mother!

Way to be a pervy creep and ruin a young girl’s life, Hutchison! Way to look out for your daughter, Moms! Is anyone sane in this really freakish situation?

How do people know that a happy marriage with a mature loving men will ruin a girl’s life? Nowadays, Romeo and Juliet would both be arrested, and the "Blue Lagoon" heroes (t least the boy) would be jailed after their return to "civilization".

• Dirty Old Men Marry Jailbait, Sexually Liberated Cougars Marry Young Men
• Michel Temer (70), new Vice-President of Brazil was 63 when he married Marcela Temer at age 20. Borderline Pedophilia or healthy human sexuality?

Her parents should have been arrested for letting a 51 year old PERVERT MOLEST their MINOR CHILD! Because mo matter how "old" she looks, she is just that…a child! For them to marry means that at some time he was putting the "moves" on her, or even dating her! That is ILLEGAL in most states here! GAG! I JUST THREW UP IN MY MOUTH AT THE THOUGHT! YouTube commentator

Evolutionary psychologist explains

Evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban explains the human propensity to meddle in other people’s private lives, to outlaw victimless sex "crimes"

1. FIRST comes an inner moral feeling (which usually serves to increase one’s own reproductive fitness).
2. THEN, after the fact,we find some logical reasoning to justify our moral feelings. We invent victims even if there are none

Kurzban explains how, in a small community, everyone gains reproductive advantage by restricting other people’s sexual liberty.

Finding victims where there are none

In the above YouTube video, we see a happy couple with conservative attitudes about virgin marriage. Cruel, anti-teenage sexuality age-of-consent laws frequently destroy such a love affair with cruelty

Thousands of men, and a few women men have their life destroyed in similar situations. A unholy union of religious conservatives and repressive feminists decide, against Álexis’ will, that she is a poor victim. That adolescent Alexis Stoddenis a child [17] that can not consent* to sex. But in some jurisdiction she magically has maturity to consent to sex with boys of similar age, while in other states 2 adolescents are raping each other when engaging in consensual sex. Systematic language manipulation changes the meamings of words like rape*, consent*, child*, pedophile* etc. Our language has been distorted so much, that: had Doug fondled her, before marriage, with full consent, he might have as well raped her forcibly, it would be the same. The same punishment, and the same press reports ("Actor sentenced for raping child"). Doug Hutchinson was wise enough to avoid this, but thousands of men languish in jail for consensual sex with adolescent "children". The Antifeminist has feminism-is-sexual-trade-union-theory to explain such institutionalized cruel interference in private bedroom affairs.

‘Green Mile’ Actor Doug Hutchison, 51, Marries Aspiring Singer, 16

"We’re aware that our vast age difference is extremely controversial," the couple said in a statement released by their spokesperson. "But we’re very much in love and want to get the message out there that true love can be ageless."
According to the Clark County, Nevada Marriage Bureau, both marriage license applicants must be at least 18 years of age. But minors (below the age of 18) are able to obtain a license with the consent of a parent or legal guardian — reasoning that at least one of Stodden’s parents approves of their daughter’s May-December marriage.
Hutchison’s young wife is a former beauty pageant queen and hopes to become the next big thing out of Nashville. Marrying a much older D-list actor is certainly one way to do it — although the couple insists that their union is based purely on genuine love.

We wish the happy Courtney Alexis Stodden and Doug Hutchinson good luck in their planned reality TV show

YouTube Video

YouTube Video

More condemnation

It is interesting how many people know what is best for Courtney Stodden and want to be Courtney’s substitute mother and decide for her. They can not imprison Courtney, her mother or Dough. But, be aware that thousands of men and boys (and a few women) are  in prison and on live-long sex offender lists for doing almost the same. [1]

And, of course, if Doug or Courtney herself would photograph themselves nude, they would face mandatory minimum 5 year jail sentences. Maybe you don’t see the wisdom of these child porn laws that (allegedly) are for Courtney’s protection.

 Creepy actor, 51, remains creepy by marrying 16 year old girl.

Well, he’s pretty creepy in real life as it turns out. The actor has just married a 16 year old girl. Disgusting. I don’t care how “in love” they are – or how he tries to justify what he’s done – it’s disgusting, and it should be illegal. [...]

Horrible. What’s even more gross – is that it actually IS ILLEGAL… but her parents gave permission for their daughter to marry, making it legal. Great parenting.

One should question why this is illegal. And why thousands of men languish in prison for having done almost the same. Dough Hutchinson would be in prison for "child rape", had he as much as fondled his bride before marriage.

A Creepy Actor + A Good Christian Girl = An Unfit Mother

We can think he’s a pig, and she is a little skanky, but I think the person to be questioned about how this even happened is Krista Stodden, who is Courtney’s mom. She signed a legal consent for her underage daughter to get married and says, “They are very much in love and we are so supportive of this.” I think this woman should be ashamed of herself.

What can these two possibly have to talk about and how can her mother not think it is disgusting. I don’t know these people, but my initial response to this story was one of horror. This poor child has been sold to an old man by her fame whore mother in an attempt to fast track her daughter’s career. It’s wrong and I blame the mother for allowing such a thing to happen.

I am curious about how they met, how long they have known each other, and how long they have been having sex. Hugh Hefner is famous for being with much younger women, but they are not children. This guy is gross, this girl is on her way to a porn career, and this mother should have her head checked. Stopping this train wreck will require more than keeping the faith.

What’s The Deal With Doug Hutchison’s Child Bride, Courtney Alexis Stodden?

I’ve been saying WTF since this story dropped. I’m not convinced the details of this union are as they’re being told. She’s a virgin, she’s a good Christian girl, she loves her new old man (who is four years older than her father, BTW), blah, blah, blah. I can’t fathom why a teenager would marry a man who is a little over a decade away from claiming social security or why her parents would agree to let their underage daughter get married in the first place. The only way I can make sense of this is to believe there must have been a payoff somewhere along the way. Conspiracy theory, I know, but do you have a better explanation? And don’t say it’s love because love at 16 is often unfulfilling and hardly sustaining. Someone should have grounded this kid, made her wash her face and banned her from wearing makeup, heels and push-up bras for at least a month.

I’m pretty sure the jokes on us and we’ll all soon learn that Courtney is actually a 32-year-old ex-stripper/divorcee from East Backwoods, Who Cares who went along with this charade for a large sum of money that she plans on using to get Air Jordans for her kids and breast implants for her herself. Until the real story comes out and the truth prevails (as it always seems to do) here’s a gallery of Courtney Alexis Stodden Hutchison. Eww. Prepare to be stupefied by the photos and appalled by her latest music video, “Car Candy.”

Related content:

• ‘Lost’ actor on teen bride: ’51 plus 16 equals love’
• ‘Lost’ actor dishes on marriage to 16-year-old
• ‘Green Mile,’ ‘Lost’ actor, 51, weds pop singer, 16
• Teenage Sexuality (48)  Teenage and Underage Sexuality, “the modern witch hunt” said a leading academic researcher.

First come our preconceived moral judgments. Then we find justifications and victims.

In deciding what other people shouldn’t do, people don’t necessarily start with some principle and go from there. It could have been that moral reasoning was not unlike mathematics-start with a few axioms, and see what follows from them. If people did that, then their moral reasoning would be consistent. Everything follows from the assumptions. But they don’t, or at least, not always.2 

All quotes from:
Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind * (Robert Kurzban)
(p. 188 ff | Kindle Loc. 2322-64)

1. first comes a moral judgment, like "promiscuity is bad", "creeps who possess child porn photos need to be punished", "having sex with adolescents is disgusting" (or "smoking marijuana is bad"). Some of these judgments stem from evolutionary mental modules hard-wired into our minds. Or course, our culture plays a role here too, especially in how we justify our moralistic feelings
2. After the fact, after we already decided that sex with nubile adolescent women is heinous, our mental "press secretary" has to come up with socially acceptable justifications  for punishing people for apparently victimless crime.  So our mind is made in ways that it finds justifications for our moral judgments. It comes up with logical reasons. It invents victims that need to be protected

Tiger Woods, hypocrisy, moral condemnation of promiscuity: where are the victims of a billionaire’s secret dalliances? Tiger Woods: why can’t he have open marriage and have fun?

For things like sex-which many people want to do-people are very happy to apply moral principles. They think that decisions about what is right and what is wrong, what should be permitted and what should be banned and punished, should derive from principles. In this case, the principle is freedom or liberty: People ought to be allowed to do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt others.

[...] But that’s not the way people make all moral judgments, and by moral judgments here I don’t mean how people decide what they themselves should do-what their conscience tells them. I mean how people decide what other people ought not to do, what other people should be punished for.1 [...]

People seem to judge acts first, and search for justifications and victims afterwards, which strongly suggests that one coherent set of principles isn’t driving moral judgments.

Human-Stupidity suspects that our modern manipulative language distortion stems from such attempts to justify moralistic interference.

Who are you calling a victim?

One way you can tell people make their moral judgments based on nonconscious intuitions is that they can’t explain their own moral judgments, as we’ve seen with Jon Haidt’s work on "moral dumbfounding." People will say that incest is wrong without being able to give any justification for it. Incest is just wrong.

Kurzban is a scientist. He will not argue if incest is right or wrong, He is analyzing the functioning  of the human mind.  He notices that people are totally convinced of the immorality of incestual relationships and can not explain why it is immoral. Even the incestual couple is adult and infertile, it still is wrong.

Many modules seem to cause people to find certain things wrong and to work to prevent others from doing them.Often, people can’t actually tell you the real reason behind those judgments, any more than they can tell you why they think they’re among the best drivers in the country.

Our moral convictions make us find logical explanations and victims at all cost.

We’ve been studying moral intuitions in my lab as well. Peter DeScioli, Skye Gilbert, and I have done some work looking not at moral justifications, but rather intuitions about victimhood. You might think that when people make moral judgments, they first determine if there’s anyone who is a victim-anyone made worse off by the act in question-and use that when they’re making their moral judgment. But we think that for at least some offenses, it’s the other way around.

Researchers got rid of all potential victims from scenarios. If there absolutely can not be a victim, we find a victim anyway

We presented people with a set of "victimless" offenses-things like urinating on a tombstone, burning a flag, cloning a human being, and so on-and asked our subjects if the act was wrong or not. After that, we asked if anyone was harmed by the action. What we found was that almost anyone who said an act was wrong also indicated a victim. But the victims included entities like "humanity," "society," "the American people," "friends of the deceased," "the clone," and so on.

Now, of course it’s possible to argue that somehow these entities really are worse off as a result of the actions. So in a follow-up, we changed the scenarios to get rid of these potential victims. We had a story in which someone urinated on the tombstone of someone with no living family or friends, or a scientist cloned a human being, but the clone was never alive, so couldn’t ever have suffered, felt pain, or worried that she was a clone.
Doesn’t seem to matter. People still judged the acts wrong, and, when they did, they searched for a victim. If the clone wasn’t ever alive, fine, the clone wasn’t the victim: the scientist (somehow) was. If the dead person had no family or friends, "society" was worse off.
People seem to judge acts first, and search for justifications and victims afterwards, which strongly suggests that one coherent set of principles isn’t driving moral judgments.

Here is the explanation for the amazing theories of victimization with child porn, about consensual sex with adolescents being exactly the same as violently raping the same adolescent. These theories actually have become law and terrorize men with long jail sentences.  

OBS: Dr. Kurzban is not responsible for conclusions Human-Stupidity draws from his work.

Immoral judgments aren’t driven by a set of consciously accessible general principles that are applied to particular cases.

Evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban explains
how we gain reproductive advantage by moral condemnation of promiscuity and interfering in other people’s sex life

• Repressive sex laws in the "Land of the Free". Polygyny in birds & human meddling in other people’s sexuality

explains reproductive advantages people can gain from moralistic mental modules with propensity to interfere in other people’s private sex life.

• Older women gain from eliminating their mate’s access to younger nubile women with moralistic rules (against prostitution, limiting age of consent, ….). This is the same as the "sexual trade union" theory of the antifeminist
• average men gain from preventing the alpha top dogs from philandering and monopolizing all available women
• even the alpha male can gain by keeping the competition away from the girls. He can then, hypocritically, violate his own rules (like Eliot Spitzer and so many more). Before the advent of modern courts and the press, powerful men would rarely suffer punishment.

One mental module can happily espouse repressive laws that interfere in other people’s bedroom, and at the same time another module in the same brain, with honest conviction, can defend libertarian ideals of constitutional freedom from government interference in private lives. The theory of the modular mind can conciliate such inner contradictions and self deception.

Inventing victims where there are none.

We have always been baffled about "victimization". The teenage sexuality, child porn, irrational drug prohibition witch hunts are based on victimization theories. These victimization theories are so outlandish, they make the medieval "theory that witches cause hail storm" look like sound science.

Examples

• An adult man victimizes himself by merely possessing a video of himself masturbating when he was 12. Or when he was 12 he victimized himself when he was shooting the video, and thus as an adult he needs to be jailed for his own protection.  The only victim I see is a man being victimized by ludicrous laws.
• You certainly are aware that "Watching child porn victimizes the child". The Voodoo science of child pornography laws": a loner in the US, on a porn search, inadvertently downloads non nude, provocative photo, taken decades ago, in Russia. The moment he downloads or watches the depictions, the model gets victimized, no matter if she is already 50 years old or if she died 15 years ago. Even if it were "real" porn of "real" children, we fail to understand the scientific physical mechanism how the person depicted can be victimized.
• We have trouble finding which victim gets protected by this cruel legal persecution: Mandatory 15 years jail for photos of legal girl friend: You Can Have Sex With Them; Just Don’t Photograph Them.

Outlandish theories find "poor victims" that don’t consider themselves victims, who obviously were not victimized by anyone. 

• Actively consenting adolescent sex partners are victims of the partners they chose.  No matter if the don’t consider themselves as victims: A 15 year old girl initiated a sexual relationship with an older man, intent to marry him. Together with her father, she begs the judge to spare the father of her child and her provider, but to no avail. To protect the poor victim girl, the man goes to jail for a few years.  And even parental rights are over-ridden.
• Sex laws traumatize 14 year old school boy who was happy to have affair with 26 year old woman. He did not think he was a victim of his adult lover.
• We were shocked when we found out that United Nations confesses political manipulation of "child" definition. Thus a billion of additional victims were created: adolescents that were "protected" as if they were children.

Together with the tendency for overcriminalization, our sex obsession, focuses on sexual "crimes" disproportionally, We criminalize formerly normal behaviors: 6-year-old charged with sexual assault for consensual doctor play

Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind (More quotes)

Activities that, for some reason, people want to prevent other people from doing.

Recall the story about consensual incest in chapter 4. People are quite happy to condemn things as morally wrong independently of being able to give any justification for it, let alone a principled justification.

In this chapter, we’ll visit a number of activities that, for some reason, people want to prevent other people from doing. For these issues, my point is going to be very simple. People won’t always be able to say what the reasons are for their judgments and opinions because of the nature of the mind. Just like split-brained patients, and just like all the examples we’ve seen in which the press secretary of the mind doesn’t know what’s going on elsewhere in the brain, people are not always going to know the reason why they morally condemn certain acts.3

Many modules seem to cause people to find certain things wrong and to work to prevent others from doing them.Often, people can’t actually tell you the real reason behind those judgments, any more than they can tell you why they think they’re among the best drivers in the country.

Further, because these judgments are made by different subroutines, there is an inordinate amount of inconsistency. With no one principle, or even set of principles, guiding moral condemnation, moral judgments don’t necessarily cohere in any meaningful way.4

So, the reasons you give about what you think is wrong, or should be illegal, aren’t very often the causes of your moral judgment. That’s not to say that your moral judgments aren’t reasonable ones. It’s just that the reasons you give for them aren’t the real ones. Your press secretary modules don’t really know what your moralistic modules are up to.

All quotes from:
Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind * (Robert Kurzban) (p. 188 ff | Kindle Loc. 2322-64)

Moral Trolley dilemma

Another way you can tell moral condemnation isn’t based on a principled   analysis is that people often give reasons for their moral judgments that  just can’t be right. For example, Marc Hauser of Harvard University and colleagues   presented subjects with a number of variations of moral dilemmas,  including the famous trolley problem (discussed in chapter 5) in which a  runaway trolley is going to kill five people unless it is diverted or stopped.

In  these scenarios, diverting or stopping the trolley will cause the death of one  person who otherwise would not be harmed. For example, in one scenario,  the only way to stop the trolley is to pull a lever that drops someone onto  the track, slowing the moving trolley. In another, pulling the lever diverts the  trolley to another track … with someone on it.
It’s possible to determine what people think is morally relevant by comparing   scenarios like these. Can people explain these judgments? In one set  of studies, subjects were given two different variants of the trolley problems  and, in cases in which they gave different answers-saying it’s OK to kill one to save five in one case but not OK in another-they were asked to provide   a justification for why. The researchers used a very loose criterion: They  counted a justification as "sufficient" if subjects were simply able to indicate  a fact that differed between the two scenarios and were able to imply that  this difference accounted for the differences in their judgment. Even with  this loose standard, for some pairs of scenarios for which people gave different   judgments, less than a third of participants were able to meet it.5

To read more,  buy the book Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind *by  (Robert Kurzban)

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature is a best-selling 2002 book by Steven Pinker arguing against tabula rasa models of the social sciences. Pinker argues that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations. The book was nominated for the 2003 Aventis Prizes and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. (wikipedia)

This tabula-rasa/blank-slate theory is responsible for most serious mistakes in social theories and public policies of the last century in fields like education, discrimination, gender relations. It also is related to rejection of inheritance based evolutionary theory. All this is very central to Human-Stupidity: how can a ridiculously false theory dogmatically dominate science and public policy for decades.

One simple example of always repeated conventional wisdom:

• “Children that are beaten by violent parents become violent adults”. There usually is no test for the alternative  hypothesis that this has nothing to do with genetics, but that these children could have genetically inherited violent traits from their parents.

Steven Pinker: Chalking it up to the blank slate

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

See also real important readings Evolutionary Psychology Primer & Reading List Leda Cosmides & John Tooby Evolutionary Psychology: Evolutionary Theory, Paleoanthropology, Adaptationism Evolutionary Psychology Primer & Reading List | Human-Stupidity. The Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television

Some more entertainment

Steven Pinker – The Language of Swearing (1/2)

In this Video, the great Steven Pinker how and why we convey innuendos instead of overt clear language.  Why do we use veiled hidden messages behind our words. The topic is  clarified with nice enlightening drawings by rsa-animate. Must see!

I leave it to the watcher, what this has to do with our favorite topics like dishonesty, unconsciousness,hypocrisy …

Why do we feel a compulsion to meddle in other peoples freedom to form whatever form of marriage or sexual relationship they might want to engage in?

Many women would rather be the second (or fifth) wife of an attractive, rich, powerful man like  Tiger Woods or Brad Pitt, then the first  and only wife of boring, fat, jobless, broke alcoholic Joe Bloke in a Detroit ghetto.  Even just being Tiger’s mistress is much more exciting then Joe Bloke. Why does our law restrict the liberty of these women, and of Tiger Woods?

Repression of other people’s sexuality is in the reproductive interest  of older married women, of unattractive men. Even vor the successful alpha male it is advantagous to repress sexuality in others,  while hypocritically pursuing his own promiscuous sexuality (remember Eliot Spitzer?). 

In this post we show that evolutionary theory suggests evolution has created mental modules in our brains to repress sexuality in others,  The gut feelings caused by these modules get rationalized into theories that give rise to repressive legislation.

Polygyny in birds

When good males are scarce, a female bird may prefer to become the second mate of a higher quality male with a bigger territory.

Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind by Robert Kurzban $27.95 0691146748 (all quotes are from Kurzban’s book. This book is a must-read to really understand this topic here)

mating pattern of certain bird species illustrates what’s known as the "polygyny threshold model," which has to do with how female birds choose a mate in certain complex environments. [...] Is it better to be the only mate of a poorer male or share a better one? I [a female bird]  can either nest with one of the remaining single – but lower quality- males, or I can nest with a [better high quality] male who is already paired, becoming the second female on his [bigger and better] patch. [...] When the payoff to being the second female on a patch is greater then the payoff to being the only mate of an inferior male, there will be polygyny. (Kurzban, pg. 208)

Morality for the birds?

To better understand how evolution could have formed modules for anti-polygyny morality, Kurzban analyzes a hypothetical bird population where moral rules prohibit polygyny.  He asks

Which birds stand to gain reproductive advantage when polygyny is prohibited?

1. "Clearly, female birds already paired with the best male mates will do better. Their mates won’t be able to acquire secondary females whose offspring would compete for the man’s resources." (Kurzban, p 209). Women married with good males have reasons to be feminists. Hillary Clinton only loses if hubby Bill gets entangled with interns. In contrast, Monica Lewinsky probably would have fared very well as Bill Clinton’s second or even fifth wife.
2. "There’s a natural alliance between monogamously mated females and low quality males because they both gain by enforced monogamy". "low-quality males benefit, since they now might get mates who would otherwise wind up as secondary mates of high-quality males" (Kurzban, p.) In a polygynous animal, primate, or human societies, many low-quality get no wives and no offspring at all. "Low quality males would have a deep, abiding, even crucial interest in rules that force everyone into monogamy" (Kurzban, p 213). Remember, evolution selected for mental modules that gave us reproductive advantage in the EEA, in small groups of hunter-gatherers. It seems that for low quality males, monogamy is the only chance to get a wife, rear  offspring and thus have reproductive success!  Low quality males that successfully prevent the high quality males from monopolizing multiple females would have considerably more offspring then tolerant open minded men who would remain empty handed while the high quality males would get all the females.
3. Almost all males "benefit from all other males being monogamous, even if they themselves are not [monogamous]? [...] "it’s best to constrain others’ sexual behavior. We’re all in favor of moral rule that prevent others from doing things that harm our own interests, but it is to our advantage to not obey our own rule. 
4. High quality alpha males can profit from imposing monogamy  on other males.  Powerful males have a better chance to remain unpunished if they violate these rules (at least in birds with no feminist dominated court system)
5. The losers of polygyny prohibition are un-paired females who have to settle for a lower quality male (‘a loser’)  because they are deprived of the freedom to choose to be wife #2 of a high quality male (with better genes, bigger territory, and more resources). 
6. The other losers  of enforced monogamy are the "cads" the sexy good looking promiscuous players. They are attractive to women for having good genes, but they can’t win the battle over who brings the most worms. "Without promiscuity, sexy males can’t make the most of what they’ve got." (Kurzban, p. 211). 
7. "Dads, however, win if the sexy males can’t be promiscuous. (They also benefit from keeping their females at home, rather than searching for the good-gene cads)"  (p 211) "Dads" are mated male birds that invest in their family and bring home worms for their kids.

We have an "interfere in other people’s private sex life" mental module.

"Humans are extremely social, and our survival and reproduction are determined in large part by how well we navigate the social world. Given this, it’s reasonable to expect that our minds are designed to compete fiercely-if not subtly- for the benefits in the social world: the best mates, the best friends, membership in the best groups, and so on. The outcomes of these competitions would have had massive effects on reproductive success over the course of human evolution."

So birds, mammals, and humans that increase their reproductive success by restricting other people’s sexual access will out-compete the democratic, personal-liberty-respecting tolerant liberal individuals.

We will post more about Kurzban’s theory of the modular mind, and the evolutionary advantages of internal inconsistency, self-deception, hypocrisy to explain this further. But to get a deep understanding one probably needs to read evolutionary literature

• Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind by Robert Kurzban $27.95 0691146748 |Amazon paperback or kindle version 

Modern birth control, social support, DNA tests render old moralistic modules unnecessary

Of course, nowadays Bill Clinton, Tiger Woods, even attorney general Spitzer can easily afford 4 wives with 15 kids. Neither Elin nor Hillary even noticed the infidelity, much less suffered any serious disadvantages.  But, our brain modules, formed in the EEA to condemn other people’s private behavior, behavior that victimizes nobody, remain strong. Even the most powerful man on earth (the US president) is being prevented by strong moral rules to have a second wife or concubines.

Additionally, the availability of birth control, abortion, and DNA paternity tests, and government handouts to the poor, make most old sex laws unnecessary. Virginity is no more the only way to make sure that the offspring is really the husband’s.

Surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of the online encyclopedia’s hundreds of thousands of contributors are female. [...]

Sue Gardner, the executive director of the foundation, has set a goal to raise the share of female contributors to 25 percent by 2015, but she is running up against the traditions of the computer world and an obsessive fact-loving realm that is dominated by men and, some say, uncomfortable for women.

Her effort is not diversity for diversity’s sake, she says. “This is about wanting to ensure that the encyclopedia is as good as it could be,”  

Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia’s Contributor List

Is Wikipedia creating a glass ceiling, actively blocking women from participating? Well, or maybe women are different. Or maybe men really are the gender that creates knowledge, wealth, public services, etc?

I would imagine that if less than 15% of the contributors are women, then much less than 15% of the work is done by women.

Considering that almost nobody gets paid for Wikipedia, the most obvious thing that can be said about its existence from a gender point of view is that the human race owes a debt of gratitude to the male sex.

[... men see the point] n working for free to expand access to information for people they don’t know. But blaming any problem, even one as exiguous as women not contributing much unpaid labor to Wikipedia, on women is a no-no, so the fault must lie with “misogynists.”

Guys Create Wikipedia For Free: That’s A Problem

The modular mind

“The human mind consists of many, many mental processes – think of them as little programming subroutines, or maybe individual iPhone applications – each operating by its own logic, designed by the inexorable process of natural selection”

“the mind consists of many different parts. These parts often “believe” different, mutually inconsistent things. Sometimes this is obvious, as illustrated in case of brain damage and optical illusions. Other cases are less obvious, but no less interesting.”

“the different bits of our brain have functions. Just as some of our mind’s subroutines are for seeing, some for processing language, and some for controlling muscles, […] choosing mates, […] making friends, and – one subject I currently study – some with morally condemning others for doing things.”

With the concept of the modular mind, human irrationality, ignorance and self deception cease to be a confusing riddle.

“This book is about contradictions. […] It’s about how you can, and one at the same time, want the government to leave people alone as long as they’re not hurting anyone and also very much want the government to interfere with people’s lives even when they’re not hurting anyone.”

Evolutionary Psychology Primer & Reading List

The usefulness of being wrong and ignorant

We evolved play many different kinds of strategic games with others, and our brains are built to exploit the fact that being knowledgeable, right, and morally consistent is not always to our advantage. Because humans are such social creatures, while being right is still really important, it’s very far from everything. In fact, being ignorant, wrong, irrational, and hypocritical can make you much better off than being knowledgeable, correct, reasonable, inconsistent. As long as your’e ignorant, wrong, irrational and hypocritical in the right ways.

Against predators or forces of nature, ignorance will not help.

you’re playing a game against other people. Here, the rules are very different. Ignorance and stupidity can help.

But, while crossing the street in Philadelphia, facing rude car drivers, feigning ignorance is bliss.

Cross the street looking a little lost or confused; try to “walk like a tourist.” [...] Appear completely – blissfully – unaware.
The goal is to appear conspicuously ignorant. [... The driver'will] slow down.

Who am I?

“You” – that part of your brain that experiences the world and feels like you’re in “control”– is better thought off as a Press Secretary and as the president. This view helps explain certain puzzling things about human psychology. In chapter 5, I discuss why certain modules might not be designed to seek out the truth, and what the advantages are of ignorance. In chapter 6 and seven, I go beyond the value of ignorance and discuss how certain modules function better if they’re not just ignorant, but actually wrong. Chapters 8 and nine show how inconsistencies in the modular mind give rise to interesting phenomena surrounding “self control” and, finally, hypocrisy. […]
Even though it might feel like there’s one “you”, and that “you” are in charge, in fact, just as Whitman said, you contain multitudes. The multitudes are designed to work together, but nonetheless contradict one another with some frequencies.
In this lies the origins of human inconsistency, and the explanation for why everyone in the world except you is a hypocrite.

Human-Stupidity.com Analysis

This book is central to our blog. It deals with stupidity as a strategy, hypocrisy, self-deception.

It endeavours to explain why someone in New York was an implacable persecutor of prostitution, but was client #1 of a luxury prostitution ring. And why a famous politician is against sex education and against pre-marital sex, but got her unwed daughter followed human instincts, had sex, got pregnant and got a grand child out of wedlock.

It can probably shed some light on the nature of witch hunts, on the adaptiveness of joining in on the witch hunt.  On the dangers of opposing the dogma of the time and seeing what nobody else wants to see.

We will post more about Kurzban’s book.

In ethology, the study of animal behavior, causation can be considered in terms of these two mechanisms.

• Proximate causation: Explanation of an animal’s behavior based on trigger stimuli and internal mechanisms.
• Ultimate causation: Explanation of an animal’s behavior based on the principles of evolution. The ultimate causation requires that the behavioral and physical traits are genetically heritable, and explains behavior by correlating behavioral traits to mechanisms that favor evolutionary development, such as natural selection.

Why are men more unfaithful and promiscuous then women?

• ultimate explanation: A woman can only have one offspring every few years. No matter with how many men she has sex. So she can only influence the genetic quality of her offspring, and try to find a good father, a good caretaker. A promiscuous man can have an unlimited number of offspring, the world record being many hundreds. So more partners gets more offspring for men. And thus the genes for promiscuity in men spread faster then the genes for faithfulness.
• proximate explanation: testosterone, culture, ….

Literature on Evolution

1. Evolutionary Psychology Primer by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby
2. Evolutionary Psychology and the Emotions
3. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture
4. Human Behavior and Evolution Society
5. Evolution and Human Behavior
6. Human Behavior Research in Vienna
7. The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

Richard Dawkins lecture on natural selection and evolutionary psychology Part 1/2

Richard Dawkins lecture on natural selection and evolutionary psychology Part 2/2

Richard Dawkins talking to Steven Pinker about Evolution and the Mind

Why Richard Dawkins Doesn’t Debate Creationists

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design	The Adapted Mind, Evolutionary Psychology &the Generation of Culture – 1995 publication
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (P.S.)	Adaptation and Natural  Selection

• Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J. 1992. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary psychology and the
  generation of culture. NY: Oxford University Press.
• Dawkins, R. 1986. The blind watchmaker. NY: Norton.
• Pinker, S. 1994. The language instinct. NY: Morrow.
• Williams, G. 1966. Adaptation and natural selection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

.

Feminism: Women want equal Rights (Suffrage)

Compare: Germany plans mandatory female quotas in top management

some women systematically looked up at the top of society and saw men everywhere: most world rulers, presidents, prime ministers, most members of Congress and parliaments, most CEOs of major corporations, and so forth — these are mostly men.
The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too. Who’s in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Who’s homeless? Again, mostly men. Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? US Department of Labor statistics report that 93% of the people killed on the job are men. Likewise, who gets killed in battle? Even in today’s American army, which has made much of integrating the sexes and putting women into combat, the risks aren’t equal. This year we passed the milestone of 3,000 deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938 were men, 62 were women.

Equal rights, equal duty. Did feminists fight for conscription for women?

One can imagine an ancient battle in which the enemy was driven off and the city saved, and the returning soldiers are showered with gold coins. An early feminist might protest that hey, all those men are getting gold coins, half of those coins should go to women. In principle, I agree. But remember, while the men you see are getting gold coins, there are other men you don’t see, who are still bleeding to death on the battlefield from spear wounds.
Is There Anything Good About Men? by Roy F. Baumeister

Men outnumber women both among the losers and among the biggest winners

Men take high risks. They reap high rewards, and pay with death, injury, abysmal failures. Feminists are envious of the winners, and oblivious of the losers. They want to get the gold coins without risking their lives in the fight.

Evolution built this higher risk, higher variance even into genetics of male physical features:  There are more men that are extremely tall, extremely intelligent, etc and there are more men then women at the bottom, with the lowest IQ, shortest height, etc.

Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.

Over half the males but very few females were reproductive failures

Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. [ . . ] Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago [2005].

I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.

In evolutionary times, in the “EEA” 100 000 years ago, only very few women failed to reproduce, but about 60% of the men were total evolutionary failures. They are the end of their genetic line.  Every man or women know that some guys are girl magnets, while others barely stand a chance: Nerds, socially inept, shy, ugly, handicapped. And even nowadays, with legally enforced monogamy, there still is serial monogamy after divorce, and affairs, both practiced mainly by successful men.

In terms of the biological competition to produce offspring, then, men outnumbered women both among the losers and among the biggest winners. [ . . . ]  Experts estimate Genghis Khan had several hundred and perhaps more than a thousand children. [...] For him, the big risks led to huge payoffs in offspring. My point is that no woman, even if she conquered twice as much territory as Genghis Khan, could have had a thousand children.

And thousand’s of wanna-be Genghis Khan’s died before they had a chance to reproduce. And others were snubbed by women.

Feminists look for equal rights without equal risk & equal losses.

Most cultures have tended to use men for these high-risk, high-payoff slots much more than women. I shall propose there are important pragmatic reasons for this. The result is that some men reap big rewards while others have their lives ruined or even cut short. Most cultures shield their women from the risk and therefore also don’t give them the big rewards

Men outnumber women both among the losers and among the biggest winners

The danger of having no children is only one side of the male coin. Every child has a biological mother and father, and so if there were only half as many fathers as mothers among our ancestors, then some of those fathers had lots of children.

Look at it this way. Most women have only a few children, and hardly any have more than a dozen — but many fathers have had more than a few, and some men have actually had several dozen, even hundreds of kids.

In terms of the biological competition to produce offspring, then, men outnumbered women both among the losers and among the biggest winners.

Workaholics are mostly men.

Likewise, I mentioned the salary difference, but it may have less to do with ability than motivation. High salaries come from working super-long hours. Workaholics are mostly men. (There are some women, just not as many as men.) One study counted that over 80% of the people who work 50-hour weeks are men.
That means that if we want to achieve our ideal of equal salaries for men and women, we may need to legislate the principle of equal pay for less work.

Men are more extreme. In almost all qualities, men are over-represented at the top. And feminists don’t notice: men are over-represented at the bottom. How come feminists are not asking for 50% quotas in jail inmates, 50% female quotas on death row? 50% women quotas in workplace deaths and in war deaths!?

To maximize reproduction, a culture needs all the wombs, and only few penises.

To maximize reproduction, a culture needs all the wombs it can get, but a few penises can do the job. There is usually a penile surplus. If a group loses half its men, the next generation can still be full-sized. But if it loses half its women, the size of the next generation will be severely curtailed. Hence most cultures keep their women out of harm’s way while using men for risky jobs.

No equal rights and gender neutral quotas for life-boat seats on the Titanic!

On the Titanic, the richest men had a lower survival rate (34%) than the poorest women (46%)

Women want equal rights, but less work, less risk, and special privileges. And modern man got fooled. He overlooked the dark side of the disadvantaged male.

Men take risks, women play safe

why was it so rare for a hundred women to get together and build a ship and sail off to explore unknown regions, whereas men have fairly regularly done such things? [...]
For women, the optimal thing to do is go along with the crowd, be nice, play it safe. The odds are good that men will come along and offer sex and you’ll be able to have babies. All that matters is choosing the best offer. We’re descended from women who played it safe.

For men, the outlook was radically different. If you go along with the crowd and play it safe, the odds are you won’t have children. Most men who ever lived did not have descendants who are alive today. Their lines were dead ends. Hence it was necessary to take chances, try new things, be creative, explore other possibilities. Sailing off into the unknown may be risky, and you might drown or be killed or whatever, but then again if you stay home you won’t reproduce anyway. We’re most descended from the type of men who made the risky voyage and managed to come back rich. In that case he would finally get a good chance to pass on his genes. We’re descended from men who took chances (and were lucky).

All quotes from the excellent paper by eminent Psychologist Roy F. Baumeister: Is There Anything Good About Men?

Related articles

• “Do Men Work More Hours Than Women?” and related posts (villainouscompany.com)

• tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/#comment-25205
• tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/#comment-25232
• dir.salon.com/story/sex/feature/2003/10/08/virgin/index1.html
• theamericanvirgin.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-was-middle-aged-virgin.html