[ExI] crush on stein

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 10:25 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

snip

> And yet it's Hillary who's crooked not Trump, it's Hillary
> who has something to hide not Trump. Oh and by the way, Trump is quite
> obviously crazy but never mind that little detail, let's see if we can think
> of more bad things to say about Hillary.
>
> I said a few months ago that I just didn't get it, and I still don't.

Irrational is not an easy strategy to understand.  However, it's a
strategy which worked for human genes _in some circumstances_ for the
last few million years.  I have expounded on the topic for a long time
on this mailing list, apparently with little or no influence on the
local meme set.

Those circumstances, a bleak outlook on the future, are presently the
way a substantial fraction of the US population sees things.  That
makes that fraction of the population a fertile media for xenophobic
memes.  Also, mapped from the stone age, that fraction is attracted to
an irrational leader.  I don't think people, not even here, understand
how hardwired they are in such circumstances.  But we are talking a
long and strong genetic selection for mental mechanisms here.  It may
be that humans are even blocked by their evolved mental mechanisms
from thinking "Whoa, WTF am I about to do?"

> I don't get the magnitude of the hatred aimed at Hillary that dwarfs that of
> any other candidate, even a crazy one.

I don't think it has that much to do with Hillary, other than that she
is not the crazy one.  It's the fact that following irrational
leaders, under similar circumstances, has been the right thing to do
for your genes ever since human ancestors started fending off the big
cats.  Without the big cats to control human numbers, we had to do it
ourselves with wars.

Written into your genes is this strategy:  "When things get bleak,
demonize some inside or outside group and follow an irrational
leader."  Win or loose, it always got the population back in balance
with the ecosystem that fed them.  And because the young girls of the
defeated were booty, on average the genes did better when you follow
this rule than otherwise.

So this is the meta level of what's going on with the local (US) politics.

The meta-meta level is why people, even those who understand
evolution, don't get this?

Memes do wax and wane.  It's fairly well accepted today, but 20 years
ago I was lambasted from the bench by a Federal judge about
recognizing status seeking (in myself) as a primary human motivation.
Of course, Federal Judges are a first class example of status seeking.
They give up a lot of income as lawyers to become judges.

> It's as if you were drowning and
> somebody tosses you a life preserver but you refuse to grab it because you
> don't like the color.

"It doesn't go with the color of my eyes."  :-)

Keith

>  John K Clark
>
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