101: Will Bobba for Furni

[Archon]

Cheeze, any evolutionary scientist will tell you that evolution yields two core genetic drives, from its two types of adaptions: survival and reproduction. Other drives are "secondary". They may seem immediate to the individual of the species, but they are there only for reasons of primary drives.

So, for instance, in The Mating Mind, you can find a detailed discussion of the human drive for art as having evolved from the drive to reproduce. No where does the author claim that artists are consciously creating art to impress the ladies, in fact he specifically disclaims that; but he provides evidence that art in fact evolved to impress the opposite sex, i.e it was adaptive towards reproductive fitness.

Likewise, if I am dying of dehydration and I kill a man to get his canteen of fresh water, no one would call it just "a crime of thirst" and argue that it had naught to do with survival. Even if I were crazed with thirst to the point of insanity, an unthinking thirst-quenching killing machine, I'd still ultimately be acting out of survival instinct, even if I didn't know it consciously.

So in introducing this issue of power, all you've basically done is establish that holding power could be an evolutionarily adaptive strategy towards reproduction (and presumably survival). To which I say: Of course it could. That's where the entire "alpha male" concept evolved from. It's not random, however; alpha males are alpha males because it gives them benefits in reproduction. It's still ultimately about sex.

So I don't disagree with you, but I think you are trying to avoid giving credit to evolutionary biologists where credit is due. And if you think evolutionary biologists make sensationalistic arguments, you are reading the wrong ones. Everything I've read has been nuanced, book-length arguments, backed up by evidence including numerous examples of the exact same behavior showing up in other species for reproductive and survival reasons. Check out The Mating Mind, The Red Queen and The Blank Slate if you haven't already.

 

[Nordstrom]

Cheeze Pavilion, obviously we take different approached to examining this issue. I wrote a short post in an attempt NOT to derail the thread but instead it was just inflammatory. I fail to see why you see a big conflict but it seems clear to me that we're not going to come to agreement on it any time soon. I'm content to let the issue go in the interest of the thread getting more on-topic with the original article. You've written half of the thread and I would be happy to hear from some other voices too.

 

[Nordstrom]

CP, I disagree on several points but I don't take offense with anything you've said. I just don't feel like getting in an extended discussion. That's all.

 

[TomBeraha]

To Cheese and Archon -

I feel that it becomes largely irrelevant to me what motivates / causes / creates a drive of any kind that results in rape. Society at large might benefit from the information if there were a way to actually control the way society at large will continue to grow. Barring that - it would be interesting certainly, but ultimately not that useful. We will continue to punish crimes of all kinds to the severity we think they take.

A far more interesting and (I feel) more valuable question is how new online communities will affect our children and ourselves. Russ is correct to wonder how we will define crimes in this new frontier. I personally haven't got a clue. It's extremely difficult to parent a child correctly, which is part of why I've avoided having one so far. I'd like to set myself up in the best possible position so that I can take the time to do it right. Most children don't have parents who have given the matter a lot of forethought. Really the issue at hand is the larger one of whether or not we can make parents act responsibly. I don't know the solution here. The only idea I have is mandatory sterilization, which doesn't really agree with a lot of people, myself included.

We do need to decide what constitutes a crime in a virtual world, especially as real-world assets are increasingly traded for virtual ones. Russ is also correct that the virtual world will have it's McDonald's lady suing for 4 million dollars because her coffee was hot and she spilled it on herself and gave herself a burn. These are the worlds we live in, we may as well start planning now.

 

[Echolocating]

A far more interesting and (I feel) more valuable question is how new online communities will affect our children and ourselves. Russ is correct to wonder how we will define crimes in this new frontier. I personally haven't got a clue.

I don't know how virtual crimes will be defined either, but I think that will only happen after our governments figure out a way to regulate and tax virtual property. It's no secret that there's very real profit in virtual goods. Once laws are established to protect one's virtual property, we'll start to see laws that protect one's virtual human rights.

 

[Echolocating]

http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html

;-)

 

[TomBeraha]

To Cheese and Archon -

I feel that it becomes largely irrelevant to me what motivates / causes / creates a drive of any kind that results in rape. Society at large might benefit from the information if there were a way to actually control the way society at large will continue to grow. Barring that - it would be interesting certainly, but ultimately not that useful. We will continue to punish crimes of all kinds to the severity we think they take.

I don't know if I'd agree with that--often the motivation or cause or the presence of a drive influences how severely we punish a crime. If I kill you because you provoked me and I was in the heat of passion, I'll only be punished for manslaughter. If I kill you in say, Reno, just to watch you die, I'll be punished for murder.

I hope we're not going to compare rape to murder in an act for survival too- If you rape someone because they "provoked" you and you were in the heat of passion. You had better be punished for rape. That you will be punished for manslaughter in your event is in my opinion a failure of our system, Being stupid doesn't excuse an action. Acting in self defense does. In your situation if someone pulled a gun on you, and you disarmed them and shot them with it, I would hold no issue with your actions. If someone started insulting you, and you got heated, and then you charged them and beat them to death, you still deserve the punishments for murder.

Interesting point on the McDonalds lady, I was mostly using it for it's cultural connotation for a frivolous lawsuit. I still don't thikn she should be awarded 20,000 in damages for 11,000 in medical bills that were caused by HER SPILLING HER OWN COFFEE.

If we need another example - Two carpet layers in Akron, Ohio, Gordon Falker and Gregory Roach, were severely burned when a container of carpet adhesive exploded into a ball of flame. The three and a half gallon container ignited when the hot water heater it was sitting on kicked on, and because of their injuries the men filed suit against Para-Chem, the manufacturers of the adhesive. Both men thought the warning label on the back of the can had been insufficient to prevent their injuries. Apparently words like "flammable" and "keep away from heat" were not strident enough to let them know that an explosion would happen if they set the container on top of a water heater. A jury obviously agreed with Falker and Roach, because they awarded the two $8 million for their injuries at the hands of the negligent manufacturer.

I'm quoting the above text directly - It seems to be copied numerous times on a few sites almost verbatim. The court case can be found in the Akron, Ohio court system if you do a search for Falkner's name. I am unable to verify the judgment amount through my little 5 minute research. But it's still there.

 

[Archon]

"The reader may also be surprised to find that, contrary to media reports, we do not argue that rapists are driven by an urge to reproduce. As is explained in detail in our book's Chapter 1, this assertion confuses the motivations that form the immediate (what evolutionists call "proximate") causes of a behavior, with the evolutionary (what evolutionists call "ultimate") effects of a behavior during countless past generations of evolutionary history."

Cheeze, from your reasoning, you logically have to insist that sex isn't evolutionarily driven by reproduction either, because the proximate cause of sex for people isn't a conscious drive for reproduction, it's lust or passion.

If you insist that only proximate causes are relevant, then you ignore most of what we can learn about the origin of behavior from evolution. Yes, people act from "proximate" causes of behavior (what I called "secondary"), but what causes those causes? Evolution, which is driven by survival and reproduction. And much of the most interesting discussion in evolution is determining whether particular traits are in fact "naturally selected" (i.e. adapting traits for survival) or "sexually selected" (fitness indicators, reproductively adapative behaviors). Rape wasn't something that benefited survival during the evolutionary adaptive period. It almost certainly was something that benefited reproduction.

Look, I grok the political agendas at work here. If rape isn't ultimately an evolutionary trait stemming from reproduction, then instead rape becomes evidence that our culture has been twisted by evil forces that transform the act of sex into a weapon to oppress women, and gives leverage for making changes to that culture. If rape is a pan-cultural phenomenon, stemming from our evolution a hundred millenia ago, that is likely to always occur in certain contexts, regardless of the culture -- well, that is a much messier diagnosis. It isn't neat, it isn't pretty, and it suggests we don't know as much as we'd like to pretend we know about how to change human nature. In some circles, even the suggestion that there is such a thing as "human nature" are fighting words.

And I'm not claiming the theorists know everything - indeed virtually every sociobiologist admits a broad place for environmental factors. It's the other side that wants it to be all-or-nothing.

All I've been suggesting - if you go back to my very first post - is that even in the real word, the causes of rape are hotly debated and without agreement on that, determining what causes or constitutes virtual rape is a tough challenge. What's ultimately driving it? Why do people do it? Really hard to say. It's tougher than just putting it into a box as being about "power".

Since then I've been asking you to stop being dismissive of that debate by suggesting that the evolutionary biologists who disagree are "disingenuous" or "sensationalist". Neither is the case... You are normally a results-oriented debater, so I'm not quite sure why you want to draw a line in the sand and spill blood there endlessly over what seems like a fairly modest claim, unless it's because you just enjoy arguing with me (like Joe Blancato does).

 

[Archon]

Cheeze, I think sociobiologists aren't looking for a "drive to power" because the "drive to sex" is simpler. Given that the crime is one of forceful intercourse on a member of the opposite sex, mirroring behavior in the animal kingdom that is a known strategy for reproduction, they are going to start with the simplest possible explanation and see if it fits the known facts. It seems to. Why would they look for another explanation when sex explains it?

They say: Rape is about sex, and men developed certain traits (attraction to fertile females, willingness to assert themselves on an unwilling partner under certain circumstances) that lead them to rape because those traits led to reproductive success in the evolutionary adaptive period. They have other traits that prevent rape (empathy, self-preservation, incest taboos) because those traits also led to reproductive success. Seems very straightforward.

If someone wants to theorize that rape is about power, it seems to me that such a theory should be able to explain the following:
1. Why does rape involve an act of sex rather than other acts by which one can demonstrate power?
2. Why are the victims of rape usually members of the sex the rapist is sexually attracted to?
3. Why are the victims of rape usually of reproductive age?
4. Why do rapists speak of sexual fantasies involving rape?
5. Why does erotica frequently include rape scenes?
6. Why does chemical castration (of the sex hormones) significantly reduce the incidence of rape and the chemically castrated person?s sex drive and sexual fantasies at the same time?

Evolutionary biology provides a cohesive and succinct explanation for all of the above by tying it into reproduction. I've talked a lot about sociobiological theories; what's the counter-theory?

For the record, I have not read nearly as extensively on social sciences as I have on evolutionary biology, so my questioning is genuine. Please do share the (or your) theory / explanation. And just as I have recommended books and offered links to relevant texts that go into more detail, I would welcome any such detail.

And with regards to the rape in cyberspace, it should be obvious by now, but my personal position is that it wasn't a rape at all. It was harassment, bullying, virtual sociopathy - although my opinion might change if it was demonstrated that the perp got off on it.

 

[Russ Pitts]

Interesting sidebar to this: I just noticed via Kotaku [http://kotaku.com/gaming/list-it/top-10-mmos-269160.php] that Habbo Hotel is currently the #2 MMOG (guess who's #1) with 7.5 million subscribers. This raises the stakes a bit I'd think.

 

[Nordstrom]

It sounds spectacular to write about avatar rape and I believe that people can be emotionally damaged by it. However, I have a hard time imagining text-based avatar rape to be anything nearing the severity of actual rape. Next, are people going to be raped by mail? Are people going to be punished for tea-bagging in Halo? Can people go to prison for words that they write in an online world?

This has a lot to do with freedom of speech. I think it's good for people to have a place where they can write what they want. And, I think that it's good for people in whatever venue to have control over how they are portrayed, such that their avatars aren't forced to do things beyond their consent. And, I think that it's good for kids and other safety oriented people to be protected against sexually inappropriate material. The real debate should be about how these things are mediated and controlled.

How do we ensure that potentially harmful sites are not easily accessed by kids? Should companies be held responsible to have protective measures? Should companies be forced to be responsible by the government? Is that even possible? As much as I want companies to be morally responsible, I'm not interested in a highly legislated web.

How, in a world with nearly free access to an online "world", do we help our kids explore without wandering down dark alleys online? I believe that it's the parent's responsibility to encourage and teach web "street smarts", but parents don't have full control. There's no such thing as simultaneous freedom and safety. Kids need a chance to grow and explore safely. As they grow, they need to take appropriate risks without being thrown in the deep end. As a parent, I feel the impulse to protect and micromanage my kids but I don't believe that's the best approach. Given that my kids seem to be pretty smart and that they like to learn, I expect (hope) that they will be fine. We have fairly open channels of communication. That said, there are no guarantees. Life involves real risks and there aren't easy answers to these questions.

 

[TomBeraha]

Cheese-

I think my stance is defensible, I don't agree with many of the judgements of our society, I still accept that I am part of it, and will stand by those decisions in terms of respecting laws I don't think should apply and so on. As to bacteria ridden food, the reason they recall it is because they haven't done their job right, and are liable. It's not like when a little bit slips through, or grows on it after the fact. They aren't recalling it to protect other people from their stupidity, they're correcting a mistake they made. The coffee she was served wasn't served in a broken cup, wasn't poured on her, wasn't brewed at 300 degrees, It was the same coffee numerous other people had enjoyed that same morning.

I think Nordstrom has the right of it, I don't think that there is a way to write a hard and fast law that will cover the exceptions to the rule if we say that "Molesting someone verbally / literally etc is going to carry consequences just like physical molestation." Defining what constitutes a violation would go word by word, and try to encompass every possible conceivable method, and while in a strange way that would be amusing, it would also be a little too big brother for me. I'd much rather we try the carrot and do our best to educate every one, parent or not, on the complexity of the issue so that the people closest to an event can make intelligent judgments.

I am already upset that announcing you're going to bomb a school is somehow equal to calling said school and issuing a bomb threat. It's not the same, and situations are impossible to make allowances for in the word of a law, Laws will either be too strict or not strict enough in every case, and I personally prefer to err on the side of freedom. I don't like that a young man was not so long ago EXPELLED from his school for making a map of it in counter-strike. I know I certainly started out map making with buildings I was familiar with.

The best weapon we as a society have against this is the methodical and continuing hunt to purge ignorance and to expand education.