My concern is that if we sexually neuter all EA groups, meetings, and interactions, and sever the deep human motivational links between our mating effort and our intellectual and moral work, we’ll be taking the wind out of EA’s sails. We’ll end up as lonely, dispirited incels rowing our little boats around in circles, afraid to reach out, afraid to fall in love.
These are some pretty strong claims that don’t seem particularly well substantiated.
Is trying to be romantically attractive the “wrong reason” for doing excellent intellectual work, displaying genuine moral virtues, and being friendly at meetings?
I also feel a bit confused about this. I think if someone is taking a particular action, or “investing in difficult, challenging behaviors to attract mates”, it does seem clear there are contexts where the added intention of “to attract mates” changes how the interaction feels to me, and contexts where that added intention makes the interaction feel inappropriate. For example, if I’m at work and I think someone is friendly at the meeting because they primarily want to attract a mate vs if they are following professional norms vs if they’re a kind person who cares about fostering a welcoming space for discussion, I do consider some reasons better than others.
While I don’t think it’s wrong to try to attract mates at a general level, I think this can happen in ways that are deceitful, and ways that leverage power dynamics in a way that’s unfair and unpleasant (or worse) for the receiving party. In a similar vein, I particularly appreciated Dustin’s tweet here.
I do think International Women’s Day is a timely prompt for EA folks to celebrate and acknowledge the women in EA who are drawn to EA because they want to help find the best ways to help others, or to put them into practice. I appreciate (and am happy for you & Diana!) that there will be folks who benefit from finding like-minded mates in EA. I also agree that often there are overt actions that come with obvious social costs, and “going too far” in the other direction seems bad by definition. But I also want to recognise that sometimes there are likely actions that are not “overtly” costly, or may even be beneficial for those who are primarily motivated to attract mates, but may be costly in expectation for those who are primarily interested in EA as a professional space, or as a place where they can collaborate with people who also care about tackling some of the most important issues we face today. And I think this is a tradeoff that’s important to consider—ultimately the EA I want to see and be part of is one that optimises for doing good, and while that’s not mutually exclusive to trying to attract mates within EA, I’d be surprised if doing so as the primary goal also happened to be the best approach for doing good.
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.
These are some pretty strong claims that don’t seem particularly well substantiated.
I also feel a bit confused about this. I think if someone is taking a particular action, or “investing in difficult, challenging behaviors to attract mates”, it does seem clear there are contexts where the added intention of “to attract mates” changes how the interaction feels to me, and contexts where that added intention makes the interaction feel inappropriate. For example, if I’m at work and I think someone is friendly at the meeting because they primarily want to attract a mate vs if they are following professional norms vs if they’re a kind person who cares about fostering a welcoming space for discussion, I do consider some reasons better than others.
While I don’t think it’s wrong to try to attract mates at a general level, I think this can happen in ways that are deceitful, and ways that leverage power dynamics in a way that’s unfair and unpleasant (or worse) for the receiving party. In a similar vein, I particularly appreciated Dustin’s tweet here.
I do think International Women’s Day is a timely prompt for EA folks to celebrate and acknowledge the women in EA who are drawn to EA because they want to help find the best ways to help others, or to put them into practice. I appreciate (and am happy for you & Diana!) that there will be folks who benefit from finding like-minded mates in EA. I also agree that often there are overt actions that come with obvious social costs, and “going too far” in the other direction seems bad by definition. But I also want to recognise that sometimes there are likely actions that are not “overtly” costly, or may even be beneficial for those who are primarily motivated to attract mates, but may be costly in expectation for those who are primarily interested in EA as a professional space, or as a place where they can collaborate with people who also care about tackling some of the most important issues we face today. And I think this is a tradeoff that’s important to consider—ultimately the EA I want to see and be part of is one that optimises for doing good, and while that’s not mutually exclusive to trying to attract mates within EA, I’d be surprised if doing so as the primary goal also happened to be the best approach for doing good.
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.