Quote: (01-16-2015 11:34 PM)Suits Wrote:
Quote: (01-16-2015 05:17 PM)Caveman Wrote:
Quote: (01-15-2015 11:12 PM)Suits Wrote:
The book addresses this. It argues that in pre-agricultural societies, everything is a group commodity, especially food and sex.
It was typical in these societies to shame anyone who withheld anything that another person desired, whether it be food or sex.
So, basically, there was never any reason for sexual tension and there was no "I have a headache."
Men had a pretty much guaranteed access to sex from any woman of reproductive age.
That author is completely disconnected from reality. Why would a good looking woman in her fertile years when her body is in greatest demand, why would she give it out to any and every loser she isn't attracted to???
I'm pretty sure that in caveman times men were not equal in resources and ability to provide, just like they are not equal in it today.
If there ever was a time in human evolution when woman could give out free sex to everyone, that time is TODAY when an elaborate welfare state does almost all the providing for her.
Yet today there's more imbalance of sexual access for men than there ever was in recorded history.
Quote: (01-15-2015 11:12 PM)Suits Wrote:
Based on the chapters I've read so far, I'm going to tentatively suggest that this books should be required red-pill reading for all.
I suggest you read a basic lesson on supply and demand, how that applies to all spheres in life, not just economics, and then if you really want a bitter red pill read "The Rational Male" by Rollo Tomassi.
Thanks for your response.
Your thoughts are clearly limited by mainstream modern day thinking. So far, the book has addressed all of your points.
I don't know how a basic lesson on supply and demand would apply to pre-agricultural societies that had
(1) no monetary system to act as a score card for achievement
(2) few possessions
(3) no permanent housing
(4) no private property
and where survival demands on the group, not the individuals basic achievements.
I suggest you read a basic lesson on game theory so that you can understand why individuals may be driven to co-operate for mutual benefit.
Suffice to say, the authors point to contemporary hunter-gatherer societies where sex is a community good and the alpha-beta dichotomy is a non-issue.
However, I don't think it's fair for me to strongly advocate for a book that I've only read a third of.
At present, it's raised some very good points and made some compelling arguments that I think justify a discussion at minimum.
I'll finish up reading it, and start a new thread where we can discuss it in more detail.
If there's something to be learned, we'd all be served better by exploring it.
If the book is bullocks, we'd best have our ducks in a row to shoot down its suggestions because lies are dangerous.
If you're serious about this discussion, I hope you'll consider putting the time into reading the book fully. If it's full of bad science, there's nothing I'd like more than for you to tear it apart.
At present, and at no fault of your own, as I've only posted a few notes about the book on the forum here, your comments don't satisfactorily contradict the arguments of the book, which goes to great depth to unearth the mainstream bad science that has painted the arguably incorrect view of the natural human state, a potentially incorrect view that you are currently arguing for.
Ok since you like to be as scientifically correct as possible, let's do it that way.
Quote: (01-16-2015 11:34 PM)Suits Wrote:
If you're serious about this discussion, I hope you'll consider putting the time into reading the book fully. If it's full of bad science, there's nothing I'd like more than for you to tear it apart.
There are a zillion books to read out there, most of them are crap, so I must have some kind of a filter to limit my input. The simplest and most effective filter is to reject data which contradicts what we can already see and confirm with our own eyes.
In this specific case the main contradiction here is that we see daily how selective women are when it comes to sex, their selection might not be very smart (i.e. falling for tatted criminals or starving artists), but still they are as selective as they can be.
Quote: (01-16-2015 11:34 PM)Suits Wrote:
Your thoughts are clearly limited by mainstream modern day thinking. So far, the book has addressed all of your points.
I don't know how a basic lesson on supply and demand would apply to pre-agricultural societies that had
(1) no monetary system to act as a score card for achievement
(2) few possessions
(3) no permanent housing
(4) no private property
and where survival demands on the group, not the individuals basic achievements.
I'd say your thought are limited if you think that you need a monetary system or private property to see how supply and demand dictate behaviour. How about this case:
A young and pretty woman is the most desired sexual object by all men in the tribe. Even all young women are usually not equally attractive, so some will be more in demand than others. However women get pregnant from having sex, especially pretty ones, good looks usually indicate good health (also meaning higher fertility), and men are more inclined to deliberately squirt their load inside if having sex with a prettier woman.
So the prettiest woman in the tribe is the most likely to get pregnant. But what about provisioning for the child?
So we come to the next major contradiction in the book: Male jealousy. If a man considers a certain woman his own, he won't let anyone touch her, period. Otherwise she'll be raising the child herself.
So it's normal that the sexual object in greatest demand will in return demand the man with best ability to provide. This is at an instinctual level and I can't conceive how those tribal people would override this very basic instinct. Not to mention that it is exactly this instinct which ensures that species survive and evolve, the best want to pair only with the best, no one wants to share his fortunes with losers, this applies to animals as well, not just people.
Also I can't conceive how all the food is equally shared in the tribe. From the little I've read about tribal life the best hunters are the most respected in their tribe and I'm pretty sure this is not purely out of gratitude, there must be some politicking with the food sharing as well as with everything else in life.
Quote: (01-16-2015 11:34 PM)Suits Wrote:
I suggest you read a basic lesson on game theory so that you can understand why individuals may be driven to co-operate for mutual benefit.
I wonder which model of game theory are you applying to this situation? If it's the most basic case (cooperation vs conflict), then you're clearly oversimplifying the whole system and leaving out critical features from analysis.
A much more useful way to understand it would be through an evolutionary analysis, if you haven't studied anything I recommend you first read about genetic selection, "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins is a great start.
Then if you're into programming you can write simulations of evolving populations. One very important condition necessary for evolution you'll discover (for many of us it's actually obvious) is that there must be an individual reward for having positive genetic traits, and this reward can only be more procreation, because for evolution nothing else matters. If you give the reward to all members of the population, then no evolution happens (and with biological organisms you get DEvoluiton, but I don't want to elaborate that now).
You might be tempted to explain evolution on a group vs group level, but that is a painfully slow evolution, if that were the case then other species would've driven us to extinction long time ago, and it still doesn't explain many of the mating instincts we can see in human with our own eyes today, and all these instincts point to everyone desiring an
individual evolutionary reward.
I can rant a lot more on this, but see no point in it, I've already dismissed the book completely...