[ExI] ep thought experiment

[Keith Henson]

<spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

> I have been thinking overtime on evolutionary psychology and have an idea or question.

> We can get tangled up in the term "instinct" if we wish, but I propose
simplifying it in a way by focusing on a set of behaviors that (as far as I
can tell) are not learned behaviors but rather something we just have.  It's
hard to explain.

I tend to call them psychological traits.  Some of them, like status
seeking, are on all the time, especially in males.  Even if it will
not get you more nookey today, things like posting here are driven by
status seeking.  I was once lambasted from the bench by a Federal
Judge for recognizing that I, like most other guys, was motivated by
status seeking.  (There is no more obvious example of status seeking
than a Federal Judge who usually gives up 2/3 of his income as lawyers
to become judges.)

Those males in our stone age past who did not seek and gain status
seldom got any nookey.  That's clear from the studies that were done
on the few stone age people who were studied in the middle of the last
century.

The ones I find more interesting are the psychological traits that are
activated by external events.   This
https://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Capture-bonding is perhaps the easiest
to understand how it came to be selected.  Captured women bonded to
those that captured them or they were killed.  A million years of that
kind of selection leaves deep marks on the genes.

""The percentage of females in the lowland villages who have been
abducted is significantly higher: 17% compared to 11.7% in the
highland villages." (Napoleon Chagnon quoted at Sexual Polarization in
Warrior Cultures)"

> Picture in your mind the kinds of characteristics that cause what I call the
Maurice reaction (Steve Miller Band, song: The Joker, that guitar slide wolf
whistle right after the line ".some people call me Maurice." (ja that (when
you see a person of your favorite gender with a lot of these
characteristics, that happens in your head (even though you don't say it or
play it on the guitar.))))  Let's call that set the Maurice characteristics,
ja?

> I need not go into detail on what those characteristics are, for we all
know: it is easy enough to see that under stone age conditions, they
generally point toward fertility and ability to enhance your biological
children's chances at living to produce robust offspring.  Those
characteristics cause the Maurice reaction.

> Even if we have no intention of producing biological offspring, the Maurice
set stirs us anyway.  Does it not?

> Even if we are evolutionary psychology hipsters and we completely understand
that conditions have changed, we no longer need the fertility stuff, we
don't need the ability to fight off invading tribe characteristics, we
understand the Maurice characteristics are not only unnecessary in today's
world but are in many ways detrimental. even if all that. we can't really
turn it off.

> If we fully recognize the Maurice reaction is now an evolutionary dead end,
or once had its purpose but now is a detriment. we still cannot switch that
off.  Or if so, I don't know how.

> Thoughts please?

I think you are utterly wrong.  What you are talking about is
sexual/attraction.drive.  It's not obsolete.  The generation that
edits it out would be the last generation.  The people who don't have
it, and I have known quite a few, do not contribute genes to the next
generation.

Keith