The Mating Mind - Geoffrey Miller
Start off with the fact that no matter where we begin-like you, or humanity, or life, universes, etc.--it's always one damn thing after another and even more than that, it's one damn thing caused by another damn thing caused by another caused by another damn thing. I'm not stupid, and I think you'd have to be pretty damn stupid to ignore that fact. Some people are so smart that they use really fancy phrasing to deny it, like somehow with all of the evidence, things aren't the way they are. But that is the way things are, and they didn't necessarily have to be this way, but after things got begun they couldn't really help but go to where they are. It's like reality got on this train, and it couldn't stop it or change directions or build new tracks from the inside, and that's it. So, the really juicy point is that not only how it works with all it's intertwined super complex systems, amazingly complex, humblingly complex (I always think I'm too much!) but that it works, or what it is or whatever.
I'm the new age covered in warrior paint doing a mating dance. I've had it up to here (my hand is parallel to my right eyelid, I'm fucking drowning in it) with this thing that we aren't allowed to look at what's wrong as well as what's right. That my choice is between saying my mother was a saint or satan. That my choice is between unenthusiastic acknowledgement that things happen for a reason and utter awe that they do.
T h e wastefulness of courtship is what makes it romantic. The wasteful dancing, the wasteful gift-giving, the wasteful conversation, the wasteful laughter, t he wasteful foreplay, t he wasteful adventur e s. From t he viewpoint of "survival of t he fittest," the waste looks mad and pointless and maladaptive. Human courtship even looks wasteful from the viewpoint of sexual selection for non-genetic benefits, because, as we shall see, the acts of love considered most romantic are often those that cost the giver the most, but that bring the smallest material benefits to the receiver. However, from the viewpoint of fitness indicator theory, this waste is the most efficient and reliable way to discover someone 's fitness. Where you see conspicuous waste in nature, sexual choice has often been at work.
Suppose that the level of fascination, happiness, and good humor that our ancestors felt in another individual's company was a cue that they used to assess the individual's mind and character. If an individual made you laugh, sparked your interest, told good stories, and made you feel well car ed for, then you might have been more disposed to mate. Your pleasure in his or her presence would have been a pretty good indicator of his or her intelligence, kindness, creativity, and humor. Now consider what happens in modern courtship. We take our dates to restaurants where we pay professional chefs to cook them great food, or to dance clubs where professional musicians excite their auditory systems, or to films where professional actors entertain them with vicarious adventures. T he chefs, musicians, and actors do not actually get to have sex with our dates. T hey just get paid. We get the sex if the date goes well. Of course, we still have to talk in modern courtship, and we still have to look reasonably good. But the market economy shifts much of the courtship effort from us to professionals. To pay the professionals, we have to make money, which means getting a job. The better our education, the better our job, the more money we can make, and the better the vicarious courtship we can afford. Consumerism turns the tables on ancestral patterns of human courtship. It makes courtship a commodity that c an be bought and sold
Some male scientists, such as Stephen Jay Gould and Donald Symons, have viewed the female clitoral orgasm as an evolutionary side-effect of t he male capacity for penile orgasm. T hey suggested that clitoral orgasm cannot be an adaptation because it is too hard to achieve. Sigmund Freud suggested that clitoral orgasm was a sign of mental disorder, and counseled his
female clients to learn how to have purely vaginal orgasms. Other male scientists such as Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfelt and Desmond Morris have viewed female orgasm as a reinforcement mechanism for
promoting long - term pair bonding that keeps a female faithful to her mate. They also wondered why clitorises have such trouble provoking orgasm. They assumed that if clitorises worked properly like penises, they should just do their job of promoting marital satisfaction without so much copulatory effort.
Verbal courtship is less fun to think about, perhaps because it may remind us of failed attempts at selfintroduction, disastrous first dates, ardent self-revelations that met with cold, pitying stares, broken promises of fidelity, and relationship-terminating arguments. From the viewpoint of any normal living individual, all of one 's past survival attemp ts have succeeded, whereas most of one's past courtship attempts have failed. (If most of your courtship attempts have succeeded, you must be a very attractive and charming person w ho has been aiming too low.) This, I think, is a useful clue: it is easier to live with language than to court with language.
Despots throughout history have often used a form of social proteanism to maintain power. They have unpredictable rages that terrify subordinates. Caligula, Hitler, and J o an Crawford were all alleged to have increased their power over underlings through this "mad dog strategy," which keeps subordinates in line by imposing stressful levels of uncertainty on them. Imagine a despot who had a fixed threshold for getting angry.
Subordinates could quickly learn that threshold and do anything just below the anger threshold with impunity. If King Arthur only got upset by knights actually having sex with Queen Guinevere,
the knights could still court her, kiss her, and plot with her. But if Arthur's anger-threshold was a random variable that changed every day, subordinates could never be sure what they could get away with. Maybe he was happy for them to carry her flag at the joust yesterday, but maybe he will chop off their heads for even looking at her today.
Against the mad dog strategy, any insult, however slight, risks retaliation. But mad dog despots don't incur the time and energy costs of having a fixed low anger threshold - t he uncertainty does most of the work of intimidating subordinates. Despotism is the power of arbitrary life and death over subordinates. If a despot can't kill people at random, he isn't a real despot. And if he doesn't kill people at random, he probably can't retain his despotic status. Social proteanism lies at the root of despotic power.
T he mad dog strategy is just the most dramatic example of how unpredictaility can bring social benefits. T he advantages of an unpredictable punishment threshold also apply to sexual jealousy, group warfare, and moralistic aggression to punish antisocial behavior. Fickleness, moodiness, inconstancy, and whimsy maybe other manifestations of social proteanism. However, we need more research on human and a perscapacity for adaptively unpredictable social behavior. Given the importance of mixed strategies in game theory, and the fact that many social interactions can be interpreted as games, it would be surprising if randomized behaviors did not play a large role in human social interaction.
I'm the new age covered in warrior paint doing a mating dance. I've had it up to here (my hand is parallel to my right eyelid, I'm fucking drowning in it) with this thing that we aren't allowed to look at what's wrong as well as what's right. That my choice is between saying my mother was a saint or satan. That my choice is between unenthusiastic acknowledgement that things happen for a reason and utter awe that they do.
T h e wastefulness of courtship is what makes it romantic. The wasteful dancing, the wasteful gift-giving, the wasteful conversation, the wasteful laughter, t he wasteful foreplay, t he wasteful adventur e s. From t he viewpoint of "survival of t he fittest," the waste looks mad and pointless and maladaptive. Human courtship even looks wasteful from the viewpoint of sexual selection for non-genetic benefits, because, as we shall see, the acts of love considered most romantic are often those that cost the giver the most, but that bring the smallest material benefits to the receiver. However, from the viewpoint of fitness indicator theory, this waste is the most efficient and reliable way to discover someone 's fitness. Where you see conspicuous waste in nature, sexual choice has often been at work.
Suppose that the level of fascination, happiness, and good humor that our ancestors felt in another individual's company was a cue that they used to assess the individual's mind and character. If an individual made you laugh, sparked your interest, told good stories, and made you feel well car ed for, then you might have been more disposed to mate. Your pleasure in his or her presence would have been a pretty good indicator of his or her intelligence, kindness, creativity, and humor. Now consider what happens in modern courtship. We take our dates to restaurants where we pay professional chefs to cook them great food, or to dance clubs where professional musicians excite their auditory systems, or to films where professional actors entertain them with vicarious adventures. T he chefs, musicians, and actors do not actually get to have sex with our dates. T hey just get paid. We get the sex if the date goes well. Of course, we still have to talk in modern courtship, and we still have to look reasonably good. But the market economy shifts much of the courtship effort from us to professionals. To pay the professionals, we have to make money, which means getting a job. The better our education, the better our job, the more money we can make, and the better the vicarious courtship we can afford. Consumerism turns the tables on ancestral patterns of human courtship. It makes courtship a commodity that c an be bought and sold
Some male scientists, such as Stephen Jay Gould and Donald Symons, have viewed the female clitoral orgasm as an evolutionary side-effect of t he male capacity for penile orgasm. T hey suggested that clitoral orgasm cannot be an adaptation because it is too hard to achieve. Sigmund Freud suggested that clitoral orgasm was a sign of mental disorder, and counseled his
female clients to learn how to have purely vaginal orgasms. Other male scientists such as Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfelt and Desmond Morris have viewed female orgasm as a reinforcement mechanism for
promoting long - term pair bonding that keeps a female faithful to her mate. They also wondered why clitorises have such trouble provoking orgasm. They assumed that if clitorises worked properly like penises, they should just do their job of promoting marital satisfaction without so much copulatory effort.
Verbal courtship is less fun to think about, perhaps because it may remind us of failed attempts at selfintroduction, disastrous first dates, ardent self-revelations that met with cold, pitying stares, broken promises of fidelity, and relationship-terminating arguments. From the viewpoint of any normal living individual, all of one 's past survival attemp ts have succeeded, whereas most of one's past courtship attempts have failed. (If most of your courtship attempts have succeeded, you must be a very attractive and charming person w ho has been aiming too low.) This, I think, is a useful clue: it is easier to live with language than to court with language.
Despots throughout history have often used a form of social proteanism to maintain power. They have unpredictable rages that terrify subordinates. Caligula, Hitler, and J o an Crawford were all alleged to have increased their power over underlings through this "mad dog strategy," which keeps subordinates in line by imposing stressful levels of uncertainty on them. Imagine a despot who had a fixed threshold for getting angry.
Subordinates could quickly learn that threshold and do anything just below the anger threshold with impunity. If King Arthur only got upset by knights actually having sex with Queen Guinevere,
the knights could still court her, kiss her, and plot with her. But if Arthur's anger-threshold was a random variable that changed every day, subordinates could never be sure what they could get away with. Maybe he was happy for them to carry her flag at the joust yesterday, but maybe he will chop off their heads for even looking at her today.
Against the mad dog strategy, any insult, however slight, risks retaliation. But mad dog despots don't incur the time and energy costs of having a fixed low anger threshold - t he uncertainty does most of the work of intimidating subordinates. Despotism is the power of arbitrary life and death over subordinates. If a despot can't kill people at random, he isn't a real despot. And if he doesn't kill people at random, he probably can't retain his despotic status. Social proteanism lies at the root of despotic power.
T he mad dog strategy is just the most dramatic example of how unpredictaility can bring social benefits. T he advantages of an unpredictable punishment threshold also apply to sexual jealousy, group warfare, and moralistic aggression to punish antisocial behavior. Fickleness, moodiness, inconstancy, and whimsy maybe other manifestations of social proteanism. However, we need more research on human and a perscapacity for adaptively unpredictable social behavior. Given the importance of mixed strategies in game theory, and the fact that many social interactions can be interpreted as games, it would be surprising if randomized behaviors did not play a large role in human social interaction.