I have seen the error of my ways.

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It was XFiles Geek that suggested alpha males would have negative impact on the population. I was happy to point out that in developed countries (where feminism has warped gender dynamics) the birth rate was declining - many are below replacement rate. But I also said that the decline was probably not due to alphas monopolising women during the prime child bearing years.

That would be fine and good if it were only a pocket of men complaining. My standard for there being a 'problem' is when you have considerable swaths of both men and women single who by all intentes and purposes should be catches and both sides are saying the same thing - that they just aren't liking anything they see or can't find anyone who will give them the time of day. That's not them failing, its society failing. Additionally wanting to be in a relationship is far from being a throw-away thing. This part may get downplayed for the sake of busting pity-parties but, in reality, for most people its the most important decision they'll make in their lives as well as being something that makes a substantial enough difference in who they end up being to say that its quite hard to call it an unimportant issue.


The problem with alpha/beta male/female is that its routed in something that's very real but, like anyting ceased by pop-culture, it gets chewed up and regurgitated for the average to dull mind and ends up being something more like a strawman of the original idea. The idea is that, generally speaking, most men - if they could have their way, only want a small portion of the women (call it 80/20), and most women only want a small portion of the men (again, call it 80/20). The one anomaly to this - studies have been done to find out how attractiveness factors in and it was found that not only did the most attractive tend to pair off quickly but so would the most unattractive, it was the middle that had the most jockeying for position.

I think what this concept really highlights is that you can sort of gauge or thermometer our culture in terms of how 'human' or how animalistic we're being by things like this. Typically the more pro-human the culture the more people are understanding of each other and perfection isn't needed. In a more loose/promisquous culture you see much more of an approximation toward what happens in the wild. I'm not suggesting either that we should try to return culture back to pre 1950's conservatism, if anything in my opinion it shows that we haven't been doing well at communicating and emphasizing the humanity of both genders and that our culture has likely been fostering in a lot of ways this sort of return to what's really a very self-centered point of reference.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 09 Sep 2011, 7:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

World population growth hasnt stopped but there has been a significant decline in the number of children per family over the past 50 years. Fewer families need or want 5-8 kids. The lecturer in that video believes that world population may stop growing around mid century. Today most of the growth is coming from the poorest countries who have yet to make the transition to family planning and better health care.

Regardless of your original point our friend is now trying to blame women and feminism for declining birth rates. But birth rates have declined in the arab world as well. Only in places like Yemen is it still high because women have few rights and are still treated as breeding stock. Lilypadfad's utopia.



I'm aware of that. XFilesGeek raised it as a throw away point and you turned it into an opportunity to attack feminism. But the evidence shows a decline even in conservative nations where feminism doesnt get far.

Another short video here with a more contemporary incident, if you watched the previous ones then you can skip to 2:55 as it is repeated in this one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rkl_oLSKQc[/youtube]

Hehe. No.

....which is a claim I see often repeated, but never supported by anything substantial. Are there actual statistics demonstrating that there is a legion of sexless, dateless people wandering about? Is there any scientific, peer-reviewed evidence that this "Legion of the Lonely" is failing at love due to external circumstances rather than individual deficits? How do we know that the keening wail of these perpetual complainers is an accurate reflection of objective reality?

Thus far, I haven't see squat except assertions piled on assertions. The fact that there are groups of people who take their whining and attempt to mold it into a "social problem," sans evidence, doesn't impress me.



Highly debatable. Is it society's responsibility to provide people with compatible mates?



I'm perfectly aware that most people want sex and romance. I'm perfectly aware that most people want sex and romance A LOT and become very unhappy when they do not obtain it. However, an individual's unhappiness does not translate into an "obligation" on the part of other individuals, or on the part of society.

If having no money makes me dreadfully unhappy, and I approach a random stranger on the street and demand he gives me all of the money in his wallet because it would alleviate my unhappiness, does he have an obligation to obey me? If he refuses, does it mean I'm being "oppressed" by society, even if I want his money A LOT?

No matter how you slice it, sex and romance are not entitlements. Personally, I do not see the logic of being angry over people not giving you that to which you are not entitled. I can understand sadness and disappointment, but not anger, accusations, hate, and blame. Nor can I comprehend the notion that "datelessness" is a social issue as society is not obligated to provide "happiness."




Only if you don't really "get" animal nature. I'm not interested in comparing humans to moose, ducks, or sheep. If we're attempting to find common ground in the animal kingdom, our best bet is to look at chimps. With bonobo chimps, everyone gets lots of sex. With common chimps, "beta males" can, and frequently do, get sex. They just do it clandestinely. There are also "beta females."

If we insist on going beyond primates, animals have a variety of ways to address breeding, not just "alpha males hog all the females." Nature is wonderfully diverse. Moreover, while "human nature" exists, humans are unique animals; there are generalized behaviors we can guess at, but you can't just extrapolate non-human animal behavior to humans. It's lazy and it doesn't work. Humans, while still driven by instinct, have a deal more choice over our actions.

IMHO, the claim Western males and females are currently "acting like animals" with "alpha/beta behavior" is unsupported, lazy, and a cop-out.

It wouldn't surprise me if there is some type of peer reviewed study on this or maybe a few that constructively put it together albeit unrelatedly, to be honest I really don't feel like looking for them and possibly even then having to haggle about their merits. We might be doing great in the world of quantum physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, etc. but our public sphere level of intelligence or sophistication on human psychology is still - for whatever reason - comparatively in the stone age. Maybe in another two hundred years our understanding of human psychology will be sufficiently evolved that personal observation and inference will be rendered obsolete but we've got a long way to go before that happens and a lot of politics that will likely have to be long gone.

I'll tell you what - come up with a counter argument, what it is you really think I'm seeing, and bring in some peer-reviewed journals to back up your claims. If you'll do that I'll be glad to start paper-diving and citing sources.


Likely the strangest thing I found in the blurb above:


Somehow I missed the memo that I was only supposed to count the whiners. Most of the people I can think of rarely talk about it at all or they just don't, you notice by knowing them, not seeing a ring, and not hearing them ever talk about a significant other. Are the nonwhiners just different? Asexual? Just still in the closet about same-sex preference? It could be a few but for everything they say I still see people who give more indication that they either have watched how other people treat each other in relationships and aren't up for the BS, or possibly the same thing - they aren't meeting anyone that impresses them. True, the ball may be in their court on that matter but, I give them at least this much credit - they've been them for at least 25 or 30 years, they know who they can open up and be their best selves around, they know who they can't. From everything else about how these people live their lives I have a real problem writing it off as having an attitude problem and needing an adjustment, I mean I could but it would feel like a cop-out. It could 'partially' be them but, its far from being all them.


No, society is completely nonsentient and noncorporate. Hence we can't take anything from it, we can give things to it though which help it operate more efficiently. Its a good reason to argue that better understanding of both men and women should be out there and island agendas really need to be ignored. It would be a problem if big lies and oppression were needed to correct what's going on right now but, I see no evidence that its the case. As far as I can tell when you educate people things get better not worse.


I'm trying to follow your argument here and having no luck. No one should force anyone to do anything, the idea's patently absurd. Aside from declaring the obvious was there anything I missed?


Yes, and they practically do everything we do when we're not trying and when we're going on instinct. I know I don't have any articles or 'peer reviewed journals' handy on this, it looks like you didn't offer any with your 'this is how it is' of the animal kingdom either so I think we're even. I keep finding out from talking to different people that the more promiscuous the society the more eugenic it gets. It doesn't surpise me at all. Animals don't practice human compassion, they simply do what they're gut tells them to, if its love of child or family - great, if its kill the other clan, great, if its kill the infirmed or crippled - great (we used to leave sickly babies to the wolves or throw infirmed adults from rocks, somewhere that tradition stopped albeit what we did with the mentally ill up until the last few centuries was probably less cordial than how we housed our livestock). On so many angles you can watch how kids treat each other, before they really have their impulses in check, or even when adults sort of 'loose it' or stop holding up the facade to see all the commonalities you need. Sexual behavior, social behavior, anything, we have instincts (well - for aspies their not always complete hence our dilemma) and there are things that society has done to make things more egalitarian and there are things that - when you pull them back, lead full circle right back toward natural state.


You do believe in free will? That's probably another thing we could debate for a while. As for human uniqueness here's the trouble with that - we're still structurally vanilla and still have the same vulnerabilites that shape every other animal's behavior. Do we have 46 faulty genes that through mutation either break down or mutate up? Check. Do we have a really molato mix of them out there in terms of quality? Check. Do we need food, air, water, and shelter? Check.

What does separate us from the wild? Three things - better linguistic communication, superior managagement of basic staples, thousands of years of scientific development and culture that have added to a body of knowledge. These at least help to alleviate our need to behave barbarically but, these aside nothing 'magic' has happened to us. We're lucky to have the nervous systems we have but aside from that, unless you're particularly religious, we are in the fullest sense any other animal. The only way that will ever change is if we either are able to somehow eliminate ourselves from being a genetic species (upload ourselves into hardware?) or get good enough with gene targeting drugs or repair that we bend our own building blocks completely to our will. The problem with the later even, we still won't be over our impulses, albeit the games may be even higher level, that's it.


In other words nothing has changed since the sexual revolution. No changes in divorce rates, no changes in single-parent homes, no changes in male or female dating preference, no changes in how men and women dress, no changes in how advertisers pitch to them or how fashion designers are able to lead their competitors. That speaks volumes.

If you make a claim, it's your responsibility to support it. I've made no claims pertaining to your observations in regards to their truth or falsehood, I'm merely not swayed by your interpretations of personal anecdotes, especially not when you attempt to generalized your limited "observations" to a principle that applies to the entire population.

My point is that there's no cause to be making definitive claims about what's "really" going on when there's absolutely no objective evidence. The "alpha/beta male dating hypothesis" is an unsupported supposition. It has about as much validity as the the claim of a white guy who asserts all blacks are inferior and lazy on the basis he's worked with lazy black people.



I'm still not clear on what precisely it is you want people to be doing to correct the "dateless epidemic." If the guy in the apartment above mine can't get a date, what SPECIFICALLY am I supposed to be doing about it?



Nothing. I was stating my perspective that I don't understand being bitter and angry, or even claiming "oppression," on account of not getting something from other individuals that you were never entitled to in the first place.



Not really. I'm more than happy to point you towards the works of Jane Goodall. Or the illuminating book, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes by Frances De Waal.

If you're going to wax philosophical about sociobiology, I find it's most useful to compare us to chimpanzees. If we're going to compare ourselves to chimpanzees, it's helpful to understand how chimpanzees ACTUALLY behave. The "alpha/beta male date hypothesis" is, at best, a gross oversimplification, and, at worse, anthropomorphized and distorted. The reality is that both common and bonobo chimpanzees exist in a highly complex social system, and no, the biggest, strongest, meanest male isn't necessary always the absolute winner, nor does he "hog all the sex." Females are successfully courted by beta males, and the power of the alphas comes not just from physical ability, but through cultivating alliances with other males (alpha and beta) AND females (who actively participate in the mating process).

And there are numerous examples of female primates NOT flocking to the "strongest" male.



My actual point: humans are a separate species and we've followed our own evolutionary path. We are best compared to other primates, but, as a species, we still have individual characteristics. Not everything that is true for chimps is true for us. For one, our social systems are vastly more complex. Furthermore, not all of the millions of animal species have identical mating habits and sex roles. What happens in lion prides is not a direct analog for humans.

And sociobiology is not a "settled" issue. The extent to which our instincts guide us verses the effects of culture and upbringing is still in debate. It is not "proven" that certain human behaviors are definitely guided by any specific instinct. And any researcher worth their salt is cautions about applying "meaning" to observed animal behaviors and must be careful to avoid biased interpretations.

Personally, I have no trouble believing humans operate based on a biological template; it's determining exactly what that "template" consists of is the rub. There's a great deal of subjectivity to be had when interpreting nature.



Non sequitur. The existence of these changes in society does not demonstrate the "alpha/beta dating hypothesis" is true.

Looking through yahoo and google so far is thin gruel:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/liv ... phenomenon
http://www.divorceguide.com/usa/divorce ... erica.html

I don't know where there are any chronological graphs from census data on singlehood through the 20th century, it would be wonderfully convenient to have but so far I'm mostly just finding articles that claim singlehood is on the rise without actually giving good comparative data.


Which point, that singlehood is increasing or that we start forgoing our better traits when we act on impulse?


There are people who are attractive to the opposite sex, people who aren't, and then plenty of people who technically are but aren't marrying more due to cultural friction (ie. they'd like to but can't find anyone that it works with). Maybe I should clarify - alpha/beta male/female really isn't what I'm talking about - it can be seen as part of the dynamic but its not exclusive to that, nor is there or has there ever been two types of people - alpha or beta. I would agree that its a gross oversimplification rendered for the purposes of explaining 'something' without bringing the laundry list of caveats that come with human interaction. Realistically though alpha/beta is an oversimplification of the notion that we have genetic variety and that environmental factors will in and of themselves decide whether genes are favorable or unfavorable; environment includes our own culture which is itself largely governed by input abundances or stresses. As long as there are set traits that people have and that there are environmental dynamics qualifying and disqualifying them I don't know how one can argue that natural selection doesn't happen.


Nothing. You personally don't owe him anything. It's not about getting someone's spot scratched. What I can say here - I would assume that you'd have no argument with this, that the better people understand one another and the less adversity we have wired in to our society the less abuse people go through, the more emotionally available and less rigid people will tend to be. We have internal needs and we can plan better solutions and outcomes if we have better understandings of each other.


I'd never claim that being angry or bitter solves anything (its cathartic but worse than useless in terms of its outward effect), I also think looking at it in terms of oppression is a waste. I'm not claiming that anyone has entitlement either. Just that any situation like this gets better as people get more practical. A lot of what we're doing culturally with male stereotypes isn't helping men or women. I will agree with certain authors that men need to have a better internal dialog on this, that we really subject ourselves to this kind of thing by not setting many standards of what we will and won't stand for when it comes to popular depiction and things of that nature (again, this is the culture part - not the 'sex' part).


I could tell you that its that messy, that its not all separated into ultra-neat stacks where there's a line in the sand between one classification and another. My argument was that natural selection still happens for the same reasons and that the less compassionate we are as a culture the more we'll really fall back on the preference to look at each other on genetic face value much more quickly. That makes for a toxic dating and relationship environment and you will have more people opting out of that.


You'd still be talking about exceptions and you'd still be talking about things that mathematically work in an environmental sense. I'd never suggest that there is all-purpose all-terrain alpha but I would suggest that there are general trends, traits that will outperform others more often, etc.


No claim of that either really. I will admit fault here - I oversimplified by saying that all animals are the same and that we are exactly the same as well outside of the three points that I highlighted; the caveat being different animals have different social and gender roles. Where we are all the same - the environmental stresses and the stress of genetic quality as well as translation. That in and of itself has a profound effect on what we're fundamentally dealing with and its the same thing that frames animal behavior as much as ours.


Certain things amplify as we reflect off of one another. Some of these ambient effects, pettiness probably being the best example, shows every sign of coming from natural selection and genetic problem. Its not proven, we are still at a very primitive level on self-examination but certain things seem very straight forward. With or without a study you see it in such bulk following such a tight rhythm that, like a force of nature, you can predict it pretty well; the who, how, why, etc..


To speak of it in terms of a 'gene pool' though is to reference 6 billion people interacting with one another, not all with all but cultures tend to reflect the strengths and limitations of their own members. My own theory is that much of a person's identity is governed by their own inherent limitations and from that point valuation and meaning of certain traits is defined by the broader culture to be either good or bad. In that sense I do think most people who either excel or go up in smoke do so for reasons that are beyond their control. If that is way out of line with the science as you know it feel free to say something to the contrary.


A lot of factors feed in to increases in singlehood and divorce, many of those are environmental. What I was arguing is again the more reciprocal bit that when we fall back on our instincts or immediate impulses we start going toward more eugenic behavior. That does kick a lot of people out but it also kicks out a lot of people who aren't up for thinking on that level. Better the quality of culture, via better information and better communication, expand culture in healthy ways (ie. push bars/clubs even further down the list of domain), and you end up with a society that works more to what we want as humans than what our animal instincts inherently want.

I guess that might be the crux of my argument here and you're free to agree or disagree - that our complex behaviors can encompass longterm thought and these behaviors won't always be in line with what our limbic or more animal selves want. To go more the way of the animal comes at the expense of the human, to go more human can come at the expense of the animal but then again that's where really analyzing it to find a happy medium and find ways to bring our humanity out as best we can while aiming to avoid dissonance with our core. To this day though I can't think of any examples where an increase in human self-awareness has made the world distinctly worse. As of right now we've had several decades where analysis and understanding of women as well as female identity has been big. I'm simply suggesting that the male counterpart to that which has been up and coming is a healthy dynamic and that I do think it will aid in tying up some of the loose ends that have been out there for the past 20 or 30 years.

Thank you. Very interesting. The links you provided give information on divorce rates and "singlehood;" however, neither of those two conditions translate into "datelessness" or "sexlessness." Moreover, observing a trend is a far cry from explaining said trend, and it's even further from deciding if that trend is "good" or "bad."

It could be that people are remaining single because they have the freedom to do so in post-modern industrialized nations. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.



I'm not. But how can we know what traits are being selected for?

The complexity of human society demands an even more diverse range of talents and attributes for us to be successful. Personally, I don't find it makes evolutionary sense within the context our species for men and women to be hopelessly attracted to a narrow range of specific traits, even when our modern world leaves us to our own devices.



The problem is, there's no such thing as "superior" or "inferior" genes in nature. Nor is there any objective measure for what constitutes "strength." The only traits that matter are the ones that enable us to survive in whatever environment we happen to be in at any given moment.

The fact that a physically strong male passes on his genes more often may be merely accidental, just like high fertility causes certain physical traits to manifests in women. Neither of these things indicates "superiority." Genetic diversity is the most "useful" thing from an evolutionary standpoint.

Human society reflects this. It doesn't make evolutionary sense that all women, or even most women, are irresistibly attracted to only one kind of male (and visa-versa).



That's not quite true when dealing with chimps.

While strength can play an important role, a male who does not have adequate social support will likely not rise to the position of "alpha," regardless of physical prowess. Furthermore, male chimps and male humans are unique in that they are very cooperative as well as competitive. In most other species, males have very little friendly contact with one another. Chimps and humans are not like moose where one alpha male monopolizes all of the females.

Lastly, in the wild, female chimps are often physically coerced into accepting a dominant male. It's not always "ladies choice," so its hard to judge if they truly find such males "attractive."



That's getting into the realm of philosophy, and that's not my subject.

However, in the context of our discussion, I agree that whether an individual's specific traits are "valuable" is something that is largely determined by their "environment." With modern humans, this can be the surrounding culture more so than the "natural" environment.

But then we wandering off into the realm of speculation again as to what those "valuable traits" might be, and especially when attempting to guess at what is considered innately attractive and how much it influences our choices.



Again, it's not exactly proven what "animals want," or even what is and is not "innately attractive."



In other words, think with your head, not your crotch. I am in %100 agreement. Bravo!

Yes, it depends on whether they want it but, also how much of it is literally them not wanting to be in a relationship at all verses whether they'd rather be if they could find the right person/people. The later is fully their choice, should be anyone's, but I still think its a sign of something not connecting.





I really don't buy the notion that we're so complex that the general scheme of things is utterly recondit to anyone less than a Ivy League Phd biologist.

For a look at humans though, my own observations:
*People with disability or mental illness or physical handicap are still seen as inferior, in a logistical sense it can be hard to argue albeit very few are really fit to throw a stone at anyone.
*Even without disability, people are treated radically different over what they look like, with women its often attractiveness and men its that and who he visually looks like he should be.
* Whether your a guy or a girl being a good person will stop you from getting your arse beat and deserving it but not a whole lot else.
*For my years in the restaurant industry I got to see that bad attitude and narcissism aren't what your parents told you they are, they're actually you're social ladder hook and grapple. I go to the corporate world and it still seems like adults will play the same games they did as kids - just more subtly. Really the 'grown up' is an exceedingly rare if not near-mythical creature.
*You will be judged on not only how you dress but also what brand it is and how much it costs (the less it is the worse off you are)
*Two people can say the same thing at the same time and get different reception on appearance.
*Basicity is strength, complexity/elegance more often is treated as weakness.
*Certain people are more prone to be cut-off constantly or talked over when they speak, its also given that status in a group is a measure of social potency and yes - ability in the world as it stands.
*If a person seems slightly 'off', even if they're a great person, no one needs to talk around ahead of time - the world seems to universally agree on them.
*People have a clear cut aversion to intelligence or geekiness displayed as such, no matter who your around the name of the game is tone it down, minimize it, its generally not acceptable.
* Gender role is still quite alive and well and shows little sign of leaving us. Possibly by the nature of the world, or the price of guns, guys are still largely sized up for protector and provider capacity, women for nurturing capacity.
* Conformity is God, or pretty close to it, in terms of how well you will be allowed into the standard template of life or success.
*To err is human, as long as its a 'normal' mistake, if it shows divergent wiring - regardless of how innocuous - it's a much bigger problem.
*The more promiscuous the culture the more the love of facade takes front and center
*External signs of your breeding will matter more than how much you do or achieve in your life, arguably the better off - like the attractive - will have more thrown at them and those who show the ultra-subtle minutia that they were outcast as kids (people's awareness of that seems to evolve as such people grow older) will have to really fight very hard for whatever scraps they can get no matter how good they look on paper or how well they have themselves together.
*Certain birds in the wild will deliberatly swoop in front of hawks to show that they can outspeed a predator for the sake of worthiness, much in the same way I have friends who - feeling a bit pressed perhaps - would take the highways at 190 mph on sportbikes. It seems like, in a sense, guys not able to fit a bread & butter societal mold are often in a way forced to that end.

I could probably think of more but I think you can see a picture forming here of what pettiness is and what it seems to be about.


In other words we could liken their situation to forced marriages in our world or, even in a more libertarian society, girls being surrounded by friends, or parents, and coaxed away from a decision that they agree is bad.


I see the drift here in the direction that if a body of professional knowledge doesn't have an answered then there's not enough peer-reviewed proof to afford an opinion. Most people have to and in a sense do get buy without that, they'd be washed down the pipes as nonadaptive if they didn't have the ability to weave good guesswork of uncertainty on their own and without absolute validation (and you probably do this reasonably well yourself when you allow it).


I guess the question is this, have we been able to decipher our more basal emotions from our more complex or human/societal? Alison Armstrong seems to think she has these nailed at least, not sure who else.

Also, pettiness seems to be incredibly informative - ie. its essentially, in abstract, the gene pool creaking, groaning, wanting to heal its wounds and in a sense we end up behaving in a lot of ways like a much larger system made from billions of minds and bodies. Mind you, there's no such thing thing in any sentient sense but, its a bit like the 'unseen hand' of rational self interest in economics, its kind of a pivot point that's just there.


Lol, believe it or not I personally often get criticized the other way by friends and adults alike - that I don't think from waist level enough. Its probably more a matter though of 'knowing my place'.

First, being "single" is not the same as never being in a relationship at all. It generally implies one is not in an LTR or married. Secondly, no relationship is ever completely someone's choice.



That wasn't my point. My point is that there's really no such thing as "superior" or "inferior" genetics. And I'm not claiming that human socialization is so "mind-numbingly complex," just that it's not quite as "simple" as some would have us believe. "Biggest, strongest male = best" may seem intuitively correct, but our closest relatives demonstrate that interpretation is not entirely accurate.



You can choose to interpret humanity however you wish, but, as to my own observations, I see nothing in the above that points to hardwired genetic predispositions. They could be genetic predispositions, but they could also be genetics acting with environment, or just simply environment.

BTW, I have no problem with "speculation," per se, my beef is with people who assert their speculations and extrapolations are absolute fact, especially when they don't bother to present any valid research to bolster their points. Hence, my dismissal of the recent PUA garbage that's been slinking about L&D recently.



Yes, and we need to figure out what our base instincts are in the first place.



My wild speculation is that some of the less savory bits of humanity are the results of slapping a large pre-frontal cortex on an ape's brain, and then allowing that ape to domesticate itself.



When I tell people that, they assume I'm being elitist and arrogant. Welcome to the club for the unfairly maligned.

Two things:
1) Never being in a relationship at all is pretty rare and those people, I hate to say it, will likely be SOL no matter what.
2) Nothing is really 'choice' if we get down to it - we're all inseparably intertwined to a chain reaction where there is really no such thing as 'us'; we still have a drive to spin our wheels for whatever reason and pursuit of happiness seems to be one of those forces exerted on us for the sake of natural efficiency.


The trouble is, the genetic condition is part of what you would have to call 'environment' in that case. Its one of those things where, until we have the medical know-how to dominate the negatives of genetics we will be stuck playing by certain rules laid out by the frailty of genes themselves which are then weighed out against societal demands.


Lets parse the issue then. Many of their claims have validity in what they see, we can argue whether its genes or environment, in a sense to the layman it might be a meaningless distinction in the sense that its immutable aspects of the environment that are causing this and hence the genes are reacting as they're built to. My suggestion is that when you have a well-honed guess and a working theory, when the science comes in it will typically only be so far off. At worst it will either be only part of the truth but not the whole truth or it will be a different cause rendering the same effect; either or the observations typically still stand correct.


I found Alison Armstrong's list of basal, her take: fear, scarcity, competition, glee (not happiness, more of an "I got mine" or gloating type of thing)

Albeit she's more of a psychologist/anthropologist than biologist but I think she does a good way of separating basal from cerebral.


Lol, we're nothing more than a lot of shifting dominoes. To say that we're like ape minds with an offboard deck and bedroom shoddily added on is to indicate that there is a dichotomy. We didn't necessarily raise ourselves either, our environment raised us. That happens for better or worse with or without grays or something more sentient/evolved to parent or enslave us in that process.

IMO either they're crazy or maybe there's just that much of a social stigma difference between men and women on this. It seems like neither extreme is something to be proud of, my own experience is lots of jokes about pre-puberty as well as crayons and coloring books - ie. not particularly glamorous.

There's nothing saying that people were "happier" when the norm was the majority got married for 50+ years. If people are no longer as interested in LTRs and "marriage," it could be strictly a cultural thing, but it could also be that humans are not naturally wired for monogamy. If anything, modern humans seem inclined for "serial monogamy."

People bouncing from person to person is our current environmental reality. Some could argue that it's not the way people are "supposed" to behave," or people are/were "happier" in previous eras when LTRs were standard,, but there is no "way things are supposed to be." There is only how things are. As for "happiness," I'm typically very skeptical of attempts to accurately measure the internal emotional states of large swaths of the population. Hence, one of the reasons why I still do not accept that individual unhappiness qualifies as a social problem.



And the problem with that is there is no way to objectively determine what constitutes a "genetic negative."

As previously stated, there is no "way things are supposed to be." I'm not on board with attempts at "genetic engineering" any more than I am with "social engineering." Pertaining to the latter, education is the only forms of intervention I'm willing to grant. Tell people the facts, suggest they be nice to each other, and then let the chips fall where they may. I'm of the belief individual freedoms should be maximized, even if that means "civilization" goes down in flames; to do otherwise is to make individuals slaves to a particular ideology, and slavery is something I cannot abide.



It's Critical Thinking 101. Anecdotes are anecdotes, and one cannot generalize from one or two incidents. Furthermore, for data to have any significance, it needs to be systematically collected and peer-reviewed. Laymen are more than welcome to their observations and speculations, but their suppositions do not have any greater merit beyond personal opinion. That is the entire point behind the scientific method.

Additionally, it is one thing to OBSERVE, but it is a different matter to INTERPRET. Ethnologists collect quantitative data on behavior patterns, but they run into the same problems of personal bias when attempting to assign meaning and motivation to animal behavior. Psychologists encounter the same issue with humans. External observations and subsequent interpretations of behaviors can only go so far, even within the scientific community As for human sexuality, I can log on to Amazon and point you to many books containing many different theories on the origins and operation of the human sex drive. It's very far from a "settled issue," even among trained scientists, so I don't see why I should accept the PUAs interpretation of human behavior as gospel. All they have to offer are opinions piled on opinions (which are usually tainted with anti-women prejudice).

Besides, I've already pointed out the flaws in the PUAs understanding of basic animal behavior. Human and chimp societies have unique characteristics. Human and chimp societies are marked by greater complexity and nuance than seen in most other societies in the animal kingdom, and, if they're not willing to address it, or they only want to sweep it under the rug and ignore it, they're not "getting it." True, the drive to pass one's genes may be a primitive instinct inherent to all animals, but the methods by which they do so are quite varied. And there are no such things as "superior genes."



Never heard of her, but I'll give her a read. But I'm not sure there's a separation between the "basal" and the "cerebral."

Chimpanzees have been observed to have "wars," practice cannibalism, form hunting parties, make tools, kill chimp infants (in a few notable cases, with seemingly no reason for doing so), mourn their dead, exhibit altruistic behaviors.....ect.

My point is that chimps display high intelligence and so-called "moral behaviors," and, at the same time, exhibit a level of deliberate viciousness equal to that of humans. If primitive animals like chimps can exhibit both "high" and "low" behaviors, I'm skeptical that there's some bold distinction between "cerebral" and "base" drives.



I'm asexual/aromantic, so, when I state my views, people view it as elitist snobbery. I think they think I'm talking down to them.