bruce—I appreciate the respectful and constructive reply.
For now, I just want to clarify that when we evolutionary psychologists talk about ‘mating effort’, we’re not usually referring to a conscious, self-aware goal of seducing particular people.
Rather, we’re usually referring to an unconscious, evolved motivational state that often nudges people towards public displays of excellence, creativity, and morality, and that is sensitive to contextual & environmental cues of whether such displays are likely to be successful in attracting mates (e.g. tracking local sexual norms, sex ratios, etc). This motivation state evolved because it tends to promote successful reproduction in prehistory—even if we’re not usually making any conscious connection in the modern world between ‘giving an excellent, inspiring talk at an EA Global meeting’ and ‘maximizing genetic self-replication through attracting mates’.
Mating effort is often unconscious by evolutionary design, because people benefit from having plausible deniability about whether they’re really trying to attract mates (e.g. to minimize interference from sexual rivals, to save face after sexual rejections, & to keep any current mates from being jealous). This leads to ‘adaptive self-deception’ about what they’re really doing, and why. But we can still empirically study the effects of mating effort by seeing how it’s influenced by the contextual/environmental factors (e.g. it tends to be lower when local sexual norms inhibit courtship).
So what I’m really trying to argue here is that if EA’s sexual norms over-correct for sexual harassment issues by going in an extremely sex-negative direction, without any understanding or acceptance of how mating effort drives a lot of human intellectual, moral, and social life, then we will (1) reduce the formation of happy romantic relationships within EA (which is a significant cost in terms of sentient well-being), and (2) take some of the (unconscious) motivation for excellence and morality out of EA work and social networking.
bruce—I appreciate the respectful and constructive reply.
For now, I just want to clarify that when we evolutionary psychologists talk about ‘mating effort’, we’re not usually referring to a conscious, self-aware goal of seducing particular people.
Rather, we’re usually referring to an unconscious, evolved motivational state that often nudges people towards public displays of excellence, creativity, and morality, and that is sensitive to contextual & environmental cues of whether such displays are likely to be successful in attracting mates (e.g. tracking local sexual norms, sex ratios, etc). This motivation state evolved because it tends to promote successful reproduction in prehistory—even if we’re not usually making any conscious connection in the modern world between ‘giving an excellent, inspiring talk at an EA Global meeting’ and ‘maximizing genetic self-replication through attracting mates’.
Mating effort is often unconscious by evolutionary design, because people benefit from having plausible deniability about whether they’re really trying to attract mates (e.g. to minimize interference from sexual rivals, to save face after sexual rejections, & to keep any current mates from being jealous). This leads to ‘adaptive self-deception’ about what they’re really doing, and why. But we can still empirically study the effects of mating effort by seeing how it’s influenced by the contextual/environmental factors (e.g. it tends to be lower when local sexual norms inhibit courtship).
So what I’m really trying to argue here is that if EA’s sexual norms over-correct for sexual harassment issues by going in an extremely sex-negative direction, without any understanding or acceptance of how mating effort drives a lot of human intellectual, moral, and social life, then we will (1) reduce the formation of happy romantic relationships within EA (which is a significant cost in terms of sentient well-being), and (2) take some of the (unconscious) motivation for excellence and morality out of EA work and social networking.