[ExI] Understanding EP was no subject

[Keith Henson]

<spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

> On Behalf Of Keith Henson via extropy-chat

On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 12:40 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

snip

>>> Keith talks about evolutionary psychology...the puzzling instructions of
our own feelings, somehow genetically encoded by evolution.

>>...From capture-bonding, the easy to understand, nearly universal evolved
human psychological trait.

>...Being captured by neighboring tribes ...fraternity bonding by hazing,
and sex practices such as sadism/masochism or bondage/discipline."

> People who don't have those instincts

Just about all of us have the psychological mechanisms for
capture-bonding.  Subject 10% of the women to this selection pressure
over thousands of generations and the traits become fixed.

> find it so puzzling why some women
stay with abusive partners (I know he's bad to me, she wailed, but I looove
him...)

The non sexes term is battered person syndrome and yes there are men
in relationships who are beaten up regularly by women.  How many is
hard to tell since men are reluctant to report it.

> When I looked into EP it sure makes a lotta sense, and explains why efforts
to educate the victims out of those situations so often fail.

I ran into EP just as I was getting mixed up in the cult.  My question
was why people were acting in ways that were clearly not in their
interest.  EP and Kennita Watson's help allowed me to understand that
the cull's "training" caused the release of dopamine and endorphins
and to duplicate Tooby's work on capture-bonding.

> Unless the
training somehow understands the genetic basis of the behavior, it is
destined to fail in a way analogous to local owners of malamute.

I once explained the genetic basis of the attraction of cults to
someone who was out, but massively concerned about his experience.  He
was relieved to understand that there was a logical reason he and his
family had been sucked into the cult.

Never tried this on a battered person.  It would be interesting to see
if an intellectual understanding could help people break out.

The capture-bonding cases such as Patty Hearst and Elizabeth Smart
needed outside intervention to get them out of the situation.  I don't
think either one of them understood what had happened to them at the
time.

snip

> Training away self-destructive
feelings is also hard in modern humans who have the instinct to stay with
abusive mates.  They get too beat up.  So... we kinda deal with it by having
simulated recreational cruelty I suppose.

I don't think so.  At least I don't think that battered persons are
very likely to get into SM and related.  I think it is true that full
capture-bonding and some of its partial invocations is pleasurable.
Makes total sense for evolution to have done that.

> Modern porno shops have all those
mysterious things under the counter that one would hesitate to even have
explained, not so much out of embarrassment (I am immune to that emotion)
but that it is one of those things that people without that instinct would
really rather not know.

Virtually everyone has the psychological traits.  It just gets turned
on fully rarely in the modern world.

Keith