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This is something that's always bothered me, and that's people's tendency to shoot the messenger, or bearer of bad (or rather, unwanted, even if good) news.
When you start seriously studying human nature, you come to the conclusion that most of our behaviours are genetically programmed, specially our social behaviours. Every little twitch, hesitation, emotion, judgement, attraction, repulsion, and decision is, somewhere or the other, built on a very solid evolutionary substratum - that of genetic advantage (or, in the case of culture, of memetic advantage, but that's much more controversial, so I'll leave that aside for now).
I've noticed that whenever I point out that a given way of behaving which is associated, in "popular culture" or "popular perception", with some BS value like "love", or the like, and show how it has evolved genetically, or how most of our emotions and judgements - such as our ability to appreciate art, music, literature, sculpture, or a good pair of breasts - are the result of genetic selection, and have no intrinsic value whatsoever, people get resentful.
I don't know what exactly it is that they're resentful of, just that most people almost violently oppose any attempt to reduce the more "sacred" "values" of popular perception to their genetic justification, or even an attempt to try to find out what those genetic justifications may have been.
It's almost as if it's some sort of religious taboo, as if scientists are being told, "Thou shalt NOT try to touch the realm of human emotion or what was till now called 'subjective' experience."
When I point out, for instance, that
1) the courtship utility of a diamond ring lies precisely in the fact that it is completely without any survival utility whatsoever, and that it is prohibitively expensive, therefore making it a good indicator of a number of desirable genetic traits, or
2) that men and women have an in-built "cheating" circuit which makes us prone to cheating in relationships (because that's what's genetically most advantageous - a woman's best interest, for example, lies in having a monogamous relationship with a good provider, and then cheating on him with a fitter male, so that she has the advantage of both, good from one male, and the ministrations of another foolish enough to take care of them), or
3) that men have an in-built tendency for coalitionary violence against other groups of men (it goes back a long way, all the way back to chimps and gorillas)
whenever topics relating to these things come up (say, when discussion relationships, or some war somewhere), people suddenly become very, very defensive of their beliefs. Now this is usually when my opinion is sought, or when I'm part of a group which is talking about this.
Well, fine, so you disagree. I'm fine with that. But why the hell do you have to start resenting me for stating what I consider obvious, specially when you asked for it in the first place? I don't have any problem in letting you wallow in your delusions of "true love forever" or whatnot (humans aren't naturally suited to lifelong monogamy, we're most probably built for serial monogamy, with each bond lasting long enough to secure the future of the children enough that the man's investment in courtship and other mating expenses is recouped by the increased probability of his genes' survival in the form of better survival chances for the children), I'll let you state it to your heart's content, hell, I'll even withdraw from the discussion when I realise that it'd be trivial for me to completely cream you because I have facts, logic, and empirical evidence on my side.
Then WHY, for the love of GOD, do you start to resent ME when it was YOU who asked for my opinion in the FIRST DAMN PLACE?! Why do you have to mouth platitudes like "you can't reduce emotions to science", or "emotions are beyond science", or whatever bullcrap your head has been filled with, in defence of whatever it is you believe, when I'm not even attacking it to begin with? You asked for it, now it turns our you can't deal with it, how the hell is that my fault?
It's a bit like that problem of telling children that Santa Claus doesn't exist, or of atheists telling religious people that Sky Daddy doesn't exist. If either of them believed it in the primal way that, say, a tribal believed in the existence of his deity who demanded a goat sacrifice, or we believe in the existence of Mount Everest, then a doubter wouldn't be a problem - they'd treat him the same way we'd treat someone who doubted the existence of Mount Everest - as a total loony. But I suspect that it's precisely that they don't really believe in what they're saying, and that I'm making this deception plain, that there is this resentment.
When you start seriously studying human nature, you come to the conclusion that most of our behaviours are genetically programmed, specially our social behaviours. Every little twitch, hesitation, emotion, judgement, attraction, repulsion, and decision is, somewhere or the other, built on a very solid evolutionary substratum - that of genetic advantage (or, in the case of culture, of memetic advantage, but that's much more controversial, so I'll leave that aside for now).
I've noticed that whenever I point out that a given way of behaving which is associated, in "popular culture" or "popular perception", with some BS value like "love", or the like, and show how it has evolved genetically, or how most of our emotions and judgements - such as our ability to appreciate art, music, literature, sculpture, or a good pair of breasts - are the result of genetic selection, and have no intrinsic value whatsoever, people get resentful.
I don't know what exactly it is that they're resentful of, just that most people almost violently oppose any attempt to reduce the more "sacred" "values" of popular perception to their genetic justification, or even an attempt to try to find out what those genetic justifications may have been.
It's almost as if it's some sort of religious taboo, as if scientists are being told, "Thou shalt NOT try to touch the realm of human emotion or what was till now called 'subjective' experience."
When I point out, for instance, that
1) the courtship utility of a diamond ring lies precisely in the fact that it is completely without any survival utility whatsoever, and that it is prohibitively expensive, therefore making it a good indicator of a number of desirable genetic traits, or
2) that men and women have an in-built "cheating" circuit which makes us prone to cheating in relationships (because that's what's genetically most advantageous - a woman's best interest, for example, lies in having a monogamous relationship with a good provider, and then cheating on him with a fitter male, so that she has the advantage of both, good from one male, and the ministrations of another foolish enough to take care of them), or
3) that men have an in-built tendency for coalitionary violence against other groups of men (it goes back a long way, all the way back to chimps and gorillas)
whenever topics relating to these things come up (say, when discussion relationships, or some war somewhere), people suddenly become very, very defensive of their beliefs. Now this is usually when my opinion is sought, or when I'm part of a group which is talking about this.
Well, fine, so you disagree. I'm fine with that. But why the hell do you have to start resenting me for stating what I consider obvious, specially when you asked for it in the first place? I don't have any problem in letting you wallow in your delusions of "true love forever" or whatnot (humans aren't naturally suited to lifelong monogamy, we're most probably built for serial monogamy, with each bond lasting long enough to secure the future of the children enough that the man's investment in courtship and other mating expenses is recouped by the increased probability of his genes' survival in the form of better survival chances for the children), I'll let you state it to your heart's content, hell, I'll even withdraw from the discussion when I realise that it'd be trivial for me to completely cream you because I have facts, logic, and empirical evidence on my side.
Then WHY, for the love of GOD, do you start to resent ME when it was YOU who asked for my opinion in the FIRST DAMN PLACE?! Why do you have to mouth platitudes like "you can't reduce emotions to science", or "emotions are beyond science", or whatever bullcrap your head has been filled with, in defence of whatever it is you believe, when I'm not even attacking it to begin with? You asked for it, now it turns our you can't deal with it, how the hell is that my fault?
It's a bit like that problem of telling children that Santa Claus doesn't exist, or of atheists telling religious people that Sky Daddy doesn't exist. If either of them believed it in the primal way that, say, a tribal believed in the existence of his deity who demanded a goat sacrifice, or we believe in the existence of Mount Everest, then a doubter wouldn't be a problem - they'd treat him the same way we'd treat someone who doubted the existence of Mount Everest - as a total loony. But I suspect that it's precisely that they don't really believe in what they're saying, and that I'm making this deception plain, that there is this resentment.
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