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21st May 2018, 06:01 AM | #241 |
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21st May 2018, 09:14 AM | #242 |
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That?
You think making a dramatic public example of, say, Krauss or Shermer or Carrier is going to convince younger men not to behave as they did? No more drunken hookups at conventions? No more polyamorous evangelism? No more arguably unsolicited sexual advances? Skeptical dog is skeptical. |
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23rd May 2018, 08:59 AM | #243 |
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Did anybody at all actually make those claims? How did you come up with these no mores?! I find it interesting that interviews conducted with convicted rapists in India have at least one thing in common with the rapists mentioned in studies in this part of the world referred to in this thread above: denial and lack of empathy for the victims:
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In my opinion, the woman doing the interviews exhibits too much compassion for the rapists. |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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23rd May 2018, 09:31 AM | #244 |
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I think you'll find most people who do horrible things find justifications for their actions and blame some outside force (sometimes the victim).
Generally speaking people even find justifications for their minor faults. |
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23rd May 2018, 09:43 AM | #245 |
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The article you quote does not say anything at all about lack of empathy. I don't think you are understanding what it is really saying.
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Yes, this is such a well-understood facet of human psychology that I wonder how dann can argue so vehemently against it. |
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23rd May 2018, 10:42 AM | #246 |
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No surprise, really. I understand what it's saying, and some of the things it's saying are wrong. That you apparently consider the following things empathic also doesn't surprise me: 1) "these men have the power to make you feel sorry for them." This is something that psychopaths are extremely good at. 2) "In my experience a lot of these men don’t realize that what they've done is rape. They don't understand what consent is." The American study mentioned that convicted rapists also in this part of the world readily admitted to having forced women to have sex. They just balked at the word rape. 3) I've already quoted that many of the convicted rapists denied having raped or blamed the victims. 4) A 49-year-old (apparently one of only three or four who expressed some kind of remorse) had raped a 5-year-old and wanted to make it up to her (and, I guess, her family) in this manner: "‘I would accept her, I will marry her when I come out of jail.’"
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Since your contribution to this thread primarily consists of your claim that rapists are compassionate, I'm not surprised that you find it weird that I disagree with somebody who is much too understanding when it comes to rapists.
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And that is the mistake she makes! Distinguishing between "monsters" (who would come up with an idea like that?) and men who have been turned into rapists by a misogynistic society, which she knows that India is!
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You can roll your eyes as much as you want. That they are misogynistic sociopaths is not disproved by pointing at the circumstances that made them misogynistic sociopaths. I never claimed that it was a question of nature rather than nurture.
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And where exactly did I argue against this "facet of human psychology"?! |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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23rd May 2018, 10:48 AM | #247 |
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Yes, they do. That is what characterizes psychopaths: They do horrible things and blames somebody else, very often the victim.
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Yes, ordinary people also have bad excuses for their minor fault, but they don't go around raping 5-year-olds. The difference is that they usually don't commit the horrible crimes that psychopaths do. (Unless ordered to do so by the state, which usually requires intensive training to remove their reluctance to harm fellow human beings.) One major difference between the ordinary people and psychopaths is that the latter lack remorse. No empathy, no remorse. |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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25th May 2018, 01:03 AM | #248 |
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His argument is from personal incredulity. So despite not being an argument, he is still in charge of making it if he wants to.
Genghis Khan's DNA was, last time I looked, in 16 million people, something like 8% of the population over the land mass that was once the largest land empire on earth. He's the world record rapist. Nobody else even comes close. And he is also the world record replicator. Statistically that's already conclusive, but he's just one example. The king of Swaziland, when I lived with a guy from there, had something like 86 children at the time. So another exampe of the 1:1 correlation with top rapist and top replicator. And so on. Right now in primitive tribes worldwide, the remnants of earlier times for homo sapiens, it is common for the Chief to have five wives and they have no choice in the matter. Droit du seigneur. The tradition goes back as far as the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's just thousands of years, all of written human history. So genetically it's a proven replication "strategy", like #1 in recorded human history. We are complex creatures that, even when we have certain genes, can be either recessive or dominant depending on who our parents mated with. We all have contradictory impulses that are stronger in some, weaker in another. The rapist/serial killer science is fascinating and is pretty conclusive that you have genetic and childhood upbringing both working to produce personality. A psychopath can become a surgeon and his psychopathy turns out to be socially beneficial. You put another psychopath who is raised by a violent drunk grandfather introducing him to rape porn as a child, raising him with his mother as his sister, etc. then you get a Ted Bundy. The rape fantasy is surprisingly high only because it's a taboo subject. It's higher for women, over 50%, than it is for men, under 50%. But hey, that's the data. Likewise the Milgram experiment. Pretty much everyone is going to pull the switch that electrocutes someone if a guy in a lab coat tells us it's okay. The Stanford Prison Experiment. Same thing. What's new about any of this, just look at the history of lynchings. Way more people are prone to what they claim themselves to be ghastly, sadistic behavior. It's pretty straightforward that most of us reason we aren't going to get away with it, so we suppress a pretty powerful genetic impulse until such time we think we can, lol. That's why getting all sanctimonious about it is pretty silly. |
25th May 2018, 02:34 AM | #249 |
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Well for that matter we also don't even agree on what "rape" is when crossing state lines, international lines or even religious lines within a state or nation.
In my wife's country, Philippines, you have Sharia law operating alongside "Christian" law, or at least non-Sharia. So you have arranged marriages, multiple wives, huge difference in rape definitions in the very same city all over the country depending on whether you claim to be a muslim or not. You can marry a 9 year old against her will, no problem from what I understand. Even in Europe in the immigration virtue-signalling disaster zones you are seeing rape ignored or forgiven in significant part because the rapists culture looks at it differently. When you teach men it's okay to rape an unescorted girl without a hajib, what do you expect to happen? She deserves it. That's what they are taught to believe. When you hop across a border and the age of consent drops from 18 to 13 or even less, you go from calling someone sick to someone normal for the very same act. I was at an airport in Chile, and there was this guy about 35 making out with a girl who couldn't have been more than 12, really french kissing furiously. I thought wow, that's pretty crazy, looking around to see if anyone else was taking notice. Nope. That relationship would have gotten the guy life without parole in my own state. Some of the founding fathers owned slaves. Wow, again that is potentially a life without parole offense if you did it now. Were they sociopaths? Not by the standards of their time and place. Their wives too, so genteel and proper at the lynchings. Don't give women a free pass on this sort of thing. |
25th May 2018, 01:35 PM | #250 |
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So rape, harems, women having "no choice in the matter", are all part of a proud tradition and "a proven replication "strategy""; more than 50% of women have "rape fantasies", "But hey, that's the data."
No, it's not the data. Welcome to the 21st century!
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"Likewise the Milgram experiment." Likewise! Welcome to the 21st century: Social psychology textbooks ignore all modern criticisms of Milgram’s ”obedience experiments” (The British Psychological Society, Research Digest, Oct. 13, 2013) And anyway, if people "are taught to believe something," they're really not to blame, in particular if they were founding fathers. Then even slavery becomes acceptable, at least "by the standards of their time and place." So who are the only ones left to blame, then? The women, of course! "Their wives too, so genteel and proper at the lynchings. Don't give women a free pass on this sort of thing." Even though I'm pretty sure that they also exhibited nothing but totally acceptable behaviour "by the standards of their time and place" ... |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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26th May 2018, 01:24 PM | #251 |
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What makes some people want to have sex with unwilling 'partners'?
The fact that they're very very bad people. |
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26th May 2018, 08:00 PM | #252 |
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27th May 2018, 02:09 AM | #253 |
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Then let's say that they have very bad urges, but that still doesn't explain why they have them.
In principle, you're right, of course: If we imagine that somebody has the urge to do something bad, fantasizes about doing it, but doesn't, then ... well, no harm done. Except, maybe, the harm that's been done to the individual with these urges, but I'll get back to that. That is kind of what's portrayed in the movie The Woodsman (2004) where Kevin Bacon plays a convicted pedophile who is on the way to some kind of recovery: He sexually molested very young girls, but now he has realized that it was wrong, he fights his urges and helps catch a 'practicing' sexual predator. But it doesn't make his urges easier to understand (and the movie doesn't try to do so), and the guys (see a few posts above) who seem to think that rape is the natural order of things because it results in offspring (unfortunately!), can't claim the same 'justification' for sexual abuse of pre-adolescents: They can't get pregnant, so the social-darwinists will have to come up with another way of making sense of that crime and those urges. In the case of pedophilia, I'm not sure, but I think it's more than an individual problem, some random perversion. It may be a question of the whole culture. Take a look at Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It's not exactly a pedophile novel, but it has been described like this:
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And that idea seems to be prevalent in much of today's society:
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In the case of sexual coercion, and also in the case of 'merely' fantasizing about sexual coercion, I think that the prevalent misogyny in almost all societies plays a bigger role than the default explanation of the social-darwinists: the genes make us do it! Take a phenomenon like slut-shaming, for instance. It's almost like a repetition of the Fall-of-Man story: A man want to have sex with her, and she wants to have sex with him, so she's a slut! (And how do sluts deserved to be treated?) She makes me horny, so she must be bad ... and deserve to be treated accordingly. Of course, this entails the whole attitude to sex: 'Sexual desire is bad, so [i]I'm[/] bad for feeling like this, so I find somebody else to blame, the dirty whore!' I think that sexual coercion (and fantasies of sexual coercion) is a way of fighting the shame, the embarrassment of having sexual urges - whether you fantasize about forcing or being forced. Se the quotation in post 250. And then we've almost come full circle to pedophilia and the idealization of the innocence of children ... |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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27th May 2018, 10:10 AM | #254 |
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You are misusing the term "social darwinist". I think you mean "sociobiologists" or "evolutionary psychologists". Social Darwinism is a completely different thing.
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27th May 2018, 11:46 AM | #255 |
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No, not really, but feel free to include the socio-biologists and the evolutionary psychologists. They tend to overlap.
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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27th May 2018, 12:49 PM | #256 |
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I don't see how you think that link supplies any support to what you are saying.
Herbert Spencer outlined the ideas of what's come to be known as Social Darwinism in 1851, 8 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sp...l-statics-1851 And, no, there's no overlap between Evolutionary Psychology and Social Darwinism. |
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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27th May 2018, 08:38 PM | #257 |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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27th May 2018, 09:08 PM | #258 |
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Statistically??! What statistics? The last time I looked, Gengis Khan's body, and thus his DNA, still hadn't been found. And Douglas Adams has a very different take on the story of Gengis.
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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28th May 2018, 12:05 AM | #259 |
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So your contention is that because the term "survival of the fittest" didn't appear in that book, that it therefore doesn't contain some of ideas which have come to be known as Social Darwinism?
I don't think that follows. You might be right of course, I haven't read the book, I'm going by what I read in other sources, but your logic doesn't follow. What I do know is that Social Darwinism is very different from evolutionary psychology. One is an attempt to understand as much of human psychology biologically, using the same principles that we can apply to any animal. The other is a psuedo-scientific ideology which is more about politics and economics than anything else. |
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28th May 2018, 12:18 AM | #260 |
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It's also worth noting the there's an odd fact about ancestry that if you go back far enough and take an individual, that individual will be either the ancestor of all living humans or none. And if you take smaller populations the same will be true, but you don't have to go as far back for that to be true.
DNA spreads through the gene pool, so the idea that any individual becomes the ancestor of millions of people over time isn't surprising and doesn't actually require any crazy reproductive success on that individual's part. S/he could have 2 kids (or 1) and still end up with millions, or billions, of descendants given enough time. I mean, Ghenghis Khan was born in 1162 and his first son was born either in 1185 or 1187. That's 830 year ago, which, at 20 years/generation, is 41 generations. 241 is 2 trillion. So there's been plenty of time for his genes to spread through the gene pool, even if only an average of 2 kids survive and reproduce in each generation. So if he really only has 16 million descendants now, I'm not very impressed. |
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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28th May 2018, 12:31 AM | #261 |
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Your contention is nonsense.
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Then maybe you should read the book and correct your sources:
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I never said that they weren't one and the same thing. What I said was: "feel free to include the socio-biologists and the evolutionary psychologists. They tend to overlap." |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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28th May 2018, 12:36 AM | #262 |
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How do you know? The logic you used to dismiss it is simply wrong.
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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28th May 2018, 02:37 AM | #263 |
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Your claim was that: However:
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Spencer appears to have been inspired by Malthus rather than Darwin, at least at first, but his ideas resembling "Social Darwinism" were expressed later, not in 1851, 8 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species.
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AlaskaBushPilot seems to think that jumbling a couple of anecdotes together with references to a couple of misunderstood psychologists or social psychologists constitutes an argument, so you have to consider what his point is in the context of the text, and it seems to be that rape is the natural order of things because (some) rapists appear to have produced a lot of offspring. His (false) claim that more than 50% of women fantasize of being raped seems to go in the same direction: rape is the natural order of things. This allegedly "proven replication "strategy"" being "like #1 in recorded human history" actually makes it difficult to explain why rape isn't a well-respected strategy of reproduction in modern societies since it's "pretty powerful genetic impulse" that we just don't act on ... until we do at "such time we think we can, lol." Disagree all you want. Spencer doesn't support you. |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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28th May 2018, 02:48 AM | #264 |
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What makes some people want to have sex with unwilling 'partners'?
Marriage, they normally seem to be quite willing up to that point.
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28th May 2018, 05:06 AM | #265 |
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Not exactly. First, the dating of that haplotype has recently been called into question. Second, it is not physically possible to spread your genes that persistently merely through mass rape. It requires your descendants to be quite a bit fitter than average as well. Instead, the argument for it being Chinggis Khan is that claiming descent, especially patrilineal descent, from the Great Khan was a way to bolster your social status among steppe tribes that persists to this day; this would have provided an advantage to his male descendants, even otherwise peripheral ones, and increased their odds of passing along their genes. Thus, it is more about the social impact and structure of steppe society (concubinage, etc) than Chinggis Khan being some kind of rape prodigy.
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28th May 2018, 06:43 AM | #266 |
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28th May 2018, 06:50 AM | #267 |
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28th May 2018, 08:04 AM | #268 |
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I'm willing to concede that I may have been misled about the content of the 1851 book. However, it's still clear to me that Spencer's ideas were very different from Darwin's, as you also acknowledge.
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I think his evidence for that statement is rather weak, which is where I disagree with him, but I don't think he's trying to make an argument that rape is good because it's natural.
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I actually don't think that rape as a reproductive strategy was specifically selected for. But, one more time, that hypothesis has nothing to do with social darwinism.
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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28th May 2018, 08:12 AM | #269 |
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I don't know why this thread, i.e. my question, bothers Ron_Tomkins to the extent it seems to do. The closest he got to a serious answer was "adrenaline rush", which is like saying that we enjoy the things that we enjoy because we enjoy them (which is always the problem with that 'explanation'). After that, xjx388 more or less took over from there insisting on his idea of “compassionate rapists” (my words) overcome by “situational callousness” (xjx388’s). |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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28th May 2018, 08:18 AM | #270 |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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28th May 2018, 08:26 AM | #271 |
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I do appreciate this thread. There is certainly something hard to understand about things like rape. But I also think there's some real insight in the quote:
But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being And I think pathologising evil is very dangerous. If evil is pathological, it's something that those people do, it's restricted to psychopaths and other instances of mental illness, not something that every individual is capable of if we don't guard against it. There's certainly some sort of spectrum of empathy based on brain chemistry. But I think a lot of what we consider to be evil is simply a combination of human weakness with selfishness, and a little bit of addiction thrown in. My hypotheis for the latter acts in the following way: some small selfish act hurts others but leads to a pleasurable outcome. The person might feel initial guilt but the desire for that pleasure hit leads them to do it again, and this can be combined with rationalisation to lower those guilt feelings further. Over time the feelings of guilt become less and less whereas the action that leads to the same amount of pleasure requires something more and more. |
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28th May 2018, 08:31 AM | #272 |
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Both the contention that Social Darwinism and evolutionary psychology overlap, and that anyone in this thread is promoting social darwinism.
Maybe I misunderstood your earlier posts and you haven't made the latter contention, in which case I apologise. For the former, I did read your linked wikipedia page and I'm not seeing any mention of evolutionary psychology there. Yes, social darwinists will tend to use evolutionary arguments (which is what I'm seeing is supported in your link), but A is B doesn't equal B is A. Just because social darwinists use evolutionary arguments doesn't mean those who use evolutionary arguments are social darwinists. |
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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28th May 2018, 09:03 AM | #273 |
Penultimate Amazing
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The articles at the Danish version of wikipedia are blissfully (in this context) short:
Evolutionær psykologi er relateret til andre områder af videnskab som sociobiologi, socialpsykologi og antropologi. (Wikipedia: evolutionær psykologi): ”Evolutionary psychology is related to other areas of science like sociobiology, social psychology and anthropology.” Kritikere mener også, at der er paralleller mellem sociobiologi og sociale darwinistiske og racehygiejne bevægelser i begyndelsen af det tidligere 20. århundrede. (Wikipedia, sociobiologi): "Critics also think that there are parallels between socio-biology and social-darwinist and eugenics movements in the early 20th century." |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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28th May 2018, 10:07 AM | #274 |
Penultimate Amazing
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This is where we agree 100%, I think, and I don't understand why so many just seem to take it for granted as if there's nothing that needs to be explained or understood.
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And this is a point where we disagree. People have different interests, and in a competitive society, the competition becomes the enemy: 'You are in my way, so your intentions are evil.' (Even when, or maybe especially when, our interests are almost identical.) This is the point where people with empathy recognize what is happening and try to come up with solutions that both parties can live with. Psychopaths, on the other hand, simply insist on their own right to use and abuse their opponents, which they deserve because they are either bad or weak. (A certain president comes to mind at this point.)
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I have had the unpleasant experience of psychopaths who seemed to use alcohol to get even more in touch with their psychopathic side, but in general I think that the rest of us are much too preoccupied about not being too selfish. There's nothing wrong with wanting a good life for yourself and the people you love, but in a society that isn't geared to enable most people to get that, the ideal that people have, the American Dream, for instance, clashes with reality. And when some people realize that they get nowhere by being nice, they blame the others for their own lack of success even more: Not society with its rules and regulations prevents me (and an awful lot of others!) from 'living the dream.' And since I know that I'm a good person, the others must be to blame because they're not good, they didn't abide by the rules, so they deserve whatever I choose to do to them. This way of thinking is described in great detail in the book Psychology of the Private Individual: Critique of Bourgeois Consciousness.
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To me it sounds too much like the ordinary 'guilty pleasures' that people have no reason to feel guilty about: the bar of chocolate you shouldn't eat, the bottle of whisky you shouldn't drink, or even the line of cocaine you shouldn't snort. You (may) harm yourself - in particular in the long run - but nobody else. And since this thread is about sexual coercion: I think that the particular role that fantasies play in this field need to be considered. In other areas people may daydream: of the Lamborghini or the mansion, whatever. They may also imagine (more or less realistic) ways of getting there: working, winning, buying, stealing, but unlike masturbatory fantasies they don't have a similar kind of 'happy ending'. When we're talking about sex, however, people have usually had a fantasy sex life years before they have one in reality. And I think that this is where a lot of things go wrong for a lot of people. I think that the sexual coercer has dreamed of coercion a long time before he (she) actually hurts somebody in real life for the first time. I don't think that it starts with your scenario: "some small selfish act hurts others but leads to a pleasurable outcome." I think that the only thing that gets hurt, at first, is the mind of the (future) coercer. And it may be because it was harmed before this process began. |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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4th July 2018, 06:00 AM | #275 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
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Male and Female Sexual Coercers
There are fewer female than male sexual coercers, but it is not an extremely rare phenomenon:
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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5th July 2018, 06:39 AM | #276 |
Satan's Helper
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So, have we yet figured what is the internal cerebral mechanism that makes someone want to have sex with unwilling partners, and that would allow Dann to finally understand/accept that it is possible for other people to want to have sex with unwilling partners, so that he can finally get some sleep and peace of mind?
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"I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan" Carl Sagan |
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5th July 2018, 07:00 AM | #277 |
Penultimate Amazing
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"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." Isaac Asimov |
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5th July 2018, 08:20 AM | #278 |
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It was obvious from the very beginning that my question bothered (not only) Ron Tompkins' peace of mind immensely but that of many others too, which is why I specifically asked people to avoid the strawman that he now finds it necessary to repeat: "... would allow Dann to finally understand/accept that it is possible for other people to want to have sex with unwilling partners." So Ron, could you at least attempt to make it probable that I don't understand or accept the possibility of people wanting to have sex with unwilling partners? (That it's not only a possbility but an actual fact that some people not only want to have sex with unwilling partners but insist on having it was the starting point of this thread!) |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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5th July 2018, 08:34 AM | #279 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Feb 2004
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No, not really. I consider it the default mode. But maybe Ron Tompkins can explain what is so awesome about coerced sex since he seems to simply take the predilection for granted, thus making the explanation superfluous.
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I think that this is the point where xjx388 usually suggests situational callousness as the answer. |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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5th July 2018, 08:54 AM | #280 |
Penultimate Amazing
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I have found a case story that seems to imply that at least one guy raped in a situation where he felt out of control. Unfortunately, it's in Danish - and most of it is behind a pay wall: Kan flinke fyre begå overgreb? (Can nice guys be sexually coercive?) (Politiken) |
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/dann "Stupidity renders itself invisible by assuming very large proportions. Completely unreasonable claims are irrefutable. Ni-en-leh pointed out that a philosopher might get into trouble by claiming that two times two makes five, but he does not risk much by claiming that two times two makes shoe polish." B. Brecht "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions." K. Marx |
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