[ExI] for Udend05

[Keith Henson]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 2:21 AM,
<extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Thanks for these references, Keith. Unhappily I am tied up at the moment in several things,
> so I wonder if you'd provide a precis of them.

They both have abstracts and it's really old material on this list.
The first article has been the number one hit on Google for sex drugs
cults since it was published 8 years ago.  If there are enough new
list members who want to discuss it, I can go on at any length.

If you need background on the subject, a good place to start is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Animal  It's 16 years old but
still excellent.

"The book explores many facets of our everyday life through the lens
of evolutionary biology. Wright provides Darwinian explanations for
human behavior and psychology, our social dynamics and structures, as
well as our relationships with lovers, friends, and family."

Of course for that material to make sense, you really need to have
read an even older (1976) book,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfish_gene

There have been long discussions on this list about important books
and Dawkin's famous work always makes the short list.

>I admit I am struggling to see the relevance to my
> topic of the titles you list; perhaps you could illustrate in what ways they have a bearing
> on our discussion.

If you want to mitigate "crippling emotional problems and
psychological issues" it seems to me (as an engineer) that you need to
understand psychology.  Until evolutionary psychology came along (it
cover much of the same ground as sociobiology) there was no unifying
background, the way chemistry underpins biology.

EP make sense of otherwise hard to understand human traits.  For
example, it provides an explanation for hazing, battered wife
syndrome, Stockholm syndrome, the bonding effects of army basic
training, BDSM, etc.  It makes sense of the common features of cult
membership and drug addiction.

EP provides an understanding of human pair bonding, why pairs break
up, and what might be done about it.

There is so much low hanging fruit in this area that someone like me
(without an academic background in psychology) can get published in
the journals.  (There is also a lot of nonsense published that claims
to be EP.   You need to understand it well enough to sort out the BS.)

*Some* of the discussion on this list requires considerable background.

Keith