No dude, you really don’t understand.
I’m giving you an example of a half hour of my life…
It gets MUCH crazier than that!!
I could seriously add 50,000 words to the human language (just for hell terms) … but since you have no experience with these things, it’s as fruitful as defining the color green to a blind person.
Green is the smell of new mow grass or algae on a pond. It feels like the buds of a tree in spring. It is the damp coolness between your barefoot toes on a fall morning. It is warmer then cool and cooler then warm. It has a texture that feels like summer. It breaths sunshine, and whispers growth. It lives between the dawn of a sunrise and the dusk of sunsets.
But the real question is, of what use to a blind man is any description of a color?
A long time ago when I was in the commercial art field I had the opportunity to work with a blind monk who ran a bindery machine. It was quite something to watch as his fingers moved the book bellow the throbbing needle. I also had the occasion to work with a blind darkroom technician who was responsible for correcting color on printing plates. He did all the color correction by the numbers. It was if he could see a color and the result of the change he made to the light exposure on the film.
Green is also my polar fleece when I was 16.
Self evident? Same thing:
Look, I get it. You have invested an enormous amount of time and effort in concocting a philosophical assessment of “self”. It has become a fundamental building block in the construction of your own rendition of the “real me” in sync with “reality”.
Clearly, with so much at stake, it is unlikely that you will allow anyone to put a dent in it.
So, in that context, who really cares about the gap between what you think you know about the self existentially and all that can be known about it ontologically.
That’s just a trivial pursuit, right?
Well then you have found an anchor to hold your ship fast when the wind starts to howl and the waves begin to build.
Iambiguous, you define your fractured self in two ways:
1.) your dream world - this is false because there’s a reason why people wake up and call them DREAMS!!
Because that’s what they are!!
2.) you’re not changing more towards facts as you age!! Which you nefariously define as never ending !!
No iambiguous! There are hard facts in life which once reached, never change, never ever ever.
This axiom of yours is not true, even morally, that there isn’t immutability here, EVER.
I gave you the answer to abortion in the broad stroke…
Which you yourself stated is impossible … so you were wrong there!!
I stated that if you want to treat fetuses as consensual beings, poll the population of adults and ask them if they love their parents enough that if their parents could travel back in time and abort them that they’d be ok with either decision. And I went even further and stated, who do we need more of, people who hate their parents and this world ;who are selfish fucks looking to get born no matter who it hurts or how much) or people who love them?
Iambiguous, you’re a fraud.
Same thing:
You’re in the same boat here with all the rest of us. It’s just that as an objectivist you have managed to think yourself out of the boat by assuming this gap is not applicable to you. And, sure enough, so long as this remains the case “in your head” you are safe from anyone who refuses to think exactly as you do about consent, self and fraud.
That’s what makes you just another run of the mill objectivist to me. It’s that you believe what you believe more than whatever it is that you do believe.
If only in the is/ought world. Though one suspects that you don’t stop there. Everything is always as you say it is.
But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
… and James Taylor.
Iambiguous,
You’re not rational.
Consent is well defined and is self evident for all beings (for themselves).
All a being has to do in reality to figure out if it’s perfect or not, is ask themselves if their consent is being violated. If it is, they know that it’s not perfect.
You cannot steal that test from everyone by making it a “contraption”
All contraption means to you is: “how dare you use definitions on me!!??”
Iambiguous, you’re absurd. You’re not a serious thinker.
Many people on these boards think that you’re a troll
Now here’s a fine example of exactly what we were all told not to bandy about, to not bandy about deeming others a troll… just because they either don’t agree with us, or we fail to understand their complexity-induced responses, or both.
The only ones that call others a troll, are the trolls.
Same thing:
Sure, if you assume your own definition of all the words you use in all the threads you post on reflects the self-evident truth, then who am I to deny that this is what you believe? I don’t doubt at all that it is as objective as you have fiercely convinced yourself you need to be in order to establish it as true. Whether it goes back to a comprehensive understanding of existence or not.
And, further, if you believe those who disagree with your definitions are frauds [or trolls], then this too need not be in sync with a comprehensive understanding of existence. That you believe it is true will have to do.
A just-so story is unverifiable.
You can verify that reproduction is physiologically directly more costly to female humans than to male humans, and it is logical that natural selection would select those that behave as though it were true over those who behave as though it were not true.
For nature to select those who behave as though this weren’t true, as much as those who behave as though it was true, there would have to be no reproductive consequences for incurring more cost from reproducing, which requires a transcendence of nature that we’re only part way done with achieving.
At the very least, females are born with finite eggs and pregnancy takes a longer amount of time and uses up more resources than a male has to deal with. At the most basic quantifiable level, it would be on average far more possible for a male to reproduce many more times over than the female. This objectively makes an r-species strategy far more viable for a male than a female. Obviously this doesn’t mean that r-species strategies are always best for males (or even females), as evidenced by the variety of strategies that occur in nature and even that you rightly point out occur amongst humans. By your own logic, I don’t think it’s reasonable to force all the alternative strategies that humans adopt into the k-species model. There are plenty of species that fit far more into the pair-bonding model, with low sexual dimorphism, than humans - and plenty that fit far more into the tournament species model, with high sexual dimorphism. Humans on average probably tend more towards the k-species extreme than the r-species, but they are in between - and as you say adopt either, and sometimes phase from one to another over the course of their lifetime.
Tallness empirically emerges cross-culturally as a signal of male sexual desirability. This is far more than Ecmandu’s other two “objectifications” of money and large penis, which are more concerns of insecurity than fact. Penis size isn’t a sexual signal as it’s not part of the sexual displays before the act has already begun - at most it might have some effect on preventing female promiscuity after the initial act. Money is also limited in its effect on perceived sexual desirability in males, as its more of a symptom of what’s desirable rather than desirable in itself. Women don’t just want money from a male, they want good genetics to pass onto their offspring and a reliable signal that money now will still be money later. Tallness appears to be a far more reliable signal to this end, but whether or not this is part of why tallness is cross-culturally sexually desirable in males, the fact remains that women want a male who is at least taller than them: the definition of sexual dimorphism, even if other species are more extreme in this sense. It’s still true that sexual dimorphism in humans isn’t that pronounced, but it’s definitely there.
I didn’t mean to imply that this means there’s only the one narrow strategy that this most simplistically leads to for males and females respectively, only that the mean tends towards what Ecmandu was saying about his “Three Abuses”.
There is variation of course, especially in a socially and intellectually advanced species such as humans.
r-species strategies are still tended towards more in males, more in less developed countries and more in younger humans. k-species strategies are more socially acceptable and more clearly displayed, though probably still more common than r-species overall.
You will notice that the role of sex here isn’t to have many offspring, but for any given pregnancy to manipulate the maximum nurturing investment to make up for the greater physiological cost of reproduction to the female.
This fits in perfectly with what I’m saying.
The males here are being tricked and prevented from acting out more of an r-species strategy if they wanted to. They aren’t preferring to invest in the woman’s offspring in the case that its another man’s offspring. They might even want to pair-bond exclusively, but are likely being being prevented from that too - over their own offspring at least. There is also evidence of competition between opposite sexes at work here - either benefitting from tricking the other in the best way that they can get away with. This is in addition to competition between members of the same sex to mate with particular members of the opposite sex. The example you gave is in favour of the most physiologically costly female role in reproduction as I explained.
Viable but not necessarily optimal. Pair-bonding benefits the female more than the male - restricting the male to concentrating on just one female’s offspring instead of any others that he could do at negligible physiological cost from the reproductive act, which makes state monopoly over violence an inherently matriarchal institution, much to the benefit of less physically dominant males as well. But the opportunity cost of this strategy is lower than the more “barbaric” tournament species model at the current point in human history. The comparative advantage of higher numbers of less competitive male genes is higher for us than for lower numbers of only the more competitive male genes. For cultures that allow harems, this isn’t so much the case, and the fact that this more tournament strategy of harems still featuring in human behaviour nicely exemplifies how humans don’t cleanly fall into the k-species classification. These practices are more patriarchal, as more dominant males get to spread their genetics further and more reliably, and females get less individual attention from their offspring’s father than they would if the father was only investing in their offspring exclusively.
I don’t mean to oversimplify all variations to a crude homogenous allegiance to only the explicit core of all these variations, there are complications and overlapping distributions indeed - but they all play around the difference in physiological cost to males and females in reproduction, and they do form trends. They have to, or they will fall by the wayside in the face of natural selection. Natural selection only cares about what works, and is verifiably constrained by physiology in doing so. That’s not a Just-So story, it’s a risk/cost/benefit calculation.
The noise in this thread is deafening loud. It would surprise me a bit that any one can hear themselves think.
You can hear the crowd roar.
Ear plugs. You’re all on foes. Carleas, Ecmandu (when my perception is one of honesty), Meno_(When my perception is not mired in style), Pedro (when you don’t bitch so much) and ET (when you dream) are the exceptions. And I can actually add a bitter pill.
Setting the props in place and the fat lady singing out of key, are the difference between stage hand and actor. That’s a drama metaphor in case there was question.
One good indicator of a just-so story is that it inadvertently explains phenomena that don’t match observation. For example, you explain the cross-cultural preference for taller men by reference to height as a proxy for health. But from what I can find (see pages 7-10), there isn’t a strong cross-cultural preference for great male height: it’s preferred in western countries, but not universally. There’s evidence that height makes men worse hunters, and women in those societies prefer men of equal height.
It’s true that height preference is found in wealthy cultures, but it’s absence in other cultures suggests that it’s somewhat arbitrary; culture might have instead focused around large ears as their preferred costly signal. And the common preference across wealthy cultures may be due only to the monoculture across wealthy cultures.
You also offer explanations for men’s r-species strategy, but across cultures monogamy is the norm. It’s true men tend to be more promiscuous, but the reproductive strategy of most humans, male and female, involves significant parental investment. That’s even true in societies where polygyny is practiced; a few wealthy men may have multiple wives, but most will be functionally monogamous. Men’s strategies are more r-species like than women’s strategies, but moth men’s and women’s strategies are predominantly k-species.
That’s true. That’s true in a lot of human cultures, and in some non-human primates. Doesn’t that make sexual choices somewhat detached from reproductive considerations?
I think this is inappropriately value-laden; neither the men nor women in these cultures know why they have the culture they have, they have prescientific myths to support their practices. The men who participate, to the extent their behavior is genetically influenced, must also benefit, or else their genes would not have been passed down. If this cultural practice persisted over a long time (which I believe it did), it must be a stable equilibrium in evolutionary strategy for both the men and the women who participate in it.
Similarly here. The goal for both is to get their genes into the next generation, pair-bonding is an equilibrium strategy that balances the interests of both parents. And since roughly half of any person’s relatives and descendants are male and half female, over time we should expect the strategies to be neutral, because women are hurt in evolutionary terms when their male descendants are hurt. The fact that monogamy is the predominant form of human sexual relationship suggests that it may actually be an optimal strategy (though this is a bit in tension with my arguments above about height; it may likewise be that this is a cultural artifact of a globalized monoculture [EDIT: thinking more about this, I think it would still have to be neutral, but not necessarily optimal. Please check my math on that]).
I asked Ecmandu this and got no reply, so I’ll try on you:
I’d hypothesize that monogamy makes for stronger groups, and thus groups that practice it tend to dominate, benefiting all their members, even if the practice is suboptimal for individuals (and again I concede a similar argument might be made for height).
Carleas,
This may sound strange to you, but you can call me mr. Natural …
What I mean by this is that “gamy” of course means marriage. I much prefer the term “amoury”.
I ALWAYS tell people that marriage is the conspicuous consumption of relationship proper.
I know many posters have been “around the block” many times like me. If they’re honest, no matter what a person SWEARS to do has no bearing on what they actually do.
Marriage is a sham to this regard.
“So that diverse human strategies work in groups” carleas?
Here’s the deal.
In a self recursive sex dimorphic species, like our own… there are laws. Because of sex dimorphism, male sexual signaling causes much more relative fear than other species. If all women have sex with, is the triggering that relative fear, and AFTER that, women consent, it causes massive psychological problems in a self recursive species that’s sex dimorphic.
Women are basically begging for their consent to be violated.
Mowk asked me what I was doing to reduce our carbon footprint … this is a joke, the least of our problems right now. The biggest problem is poisoning our food and water systems.
That’s not adaptive. It is also the definition of male ornamentation - destroying the ecosystem to pump one more ejactulation into women.
People talk a lot about about survival strategies and evolution - this is bullshit.
Silhouette saw through it. Carleas, do you actually think you’re making the world better for your offspring or your offsprings offspring etc…
Well having a freedom of speech board is a good start.
I think you are using most of these terms in an idiosyncratic way, so that it includes what would in normal parlance be called ‘dating’ and ‘love’ and ‘mutually enjoyable sex’, things that people are open to or actively seeking out (here styled “begging for”).
But you should realize how this reads. Using words that are normally reserved for deeply traumatic things to refer to things that aren’t normally considered deeply traumatic is confusing and counterproductive.
Are you familiar with the motte and bailey fallacy? That seems to be part of what’s going on, where everyone agrees that consent-as-usually-intended is very important, and you use an idiosyncratic version of consent that makes everything nonconsentual, but you still want the moral intuitions attached to consent-as-usually-intended to attached to your idiosyncratic meaning.
No, I don’t. I’m making their lives better, but I am not making the world better. I’m hoping to change that, but right now I’m failing.
Carleas, it’s not a fallacy, I couldn’t live with myself if I did these things.
In a sex dimorphic species that has self recursion, there are laws.
That is not an argument against it being a fallacy. It remains the case that the words you’re using usually have a different meaning, and the moral considerations that attach to the normal meanings don’t clearly attach to your idiosyncratic meanings.
Are my meanings idiosyncratic???
If you in judgement of bad, have to regret you’re memories, than what is it really??
I realize now that I could have said to “whatever”, that I could have been a different type of articulation instead of the r word and defined as memories you’ll have to regret, that perhaps we could have started off in a different foot.
Here’s the deal carleas, men say only the assholes get laid. Thus doesn’t come out of a vacuum. They may not know why they keep saying that, but I do.
I explicate it.
Now, the problem here is that they’re projecting onto others what they do themselves.
They are the asshole they hate. “Good guys”, right?
Not even close.
My beef with this is not the brainwashed humans, but with the deities.
The brainwashed humans are a foregone conclusion.
I’ll ask you this: of a being could go back in time and train the humans on how to be a sex dimorphic species with self recursion… none of us would have been born, and this world would be a better place … which implies that nobody in the last 10,000 years would have been born. Would you make that sacrifice?
Strangely enough to me, a lot of people wouldn’t.