THE VERY BIG QUESTION OF MORALITY

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Postby Alien4420 » November 10th, 2009, 9:26 pm

stephiebaby wrote:Slavery is one of the most common elements of humanity. It has occurred all over the world, all throughout history. Yes caste systems are one way of doing it, but capturing enemies is another very common way. As is just picking off strays from isolated communities. Addiction has been used, and of course religion is the greatest tool of enslavement as it requires so little work, the slaves enslave themselves and willingly enslave their children, all at no cost. As for India being the most prevalent place for slavery, you might want to look into the situation in Africa, nothing as civilised as a caste system.


AFAIK, slavery became common with the introduction of agriculture. The domestication of human beings, essentially. A novel system of social organization. The fact that it is no longer widely practiced in advanced societies, and that it's under pressure in third-world ones, suggests to me that it will become increasingly less prevalent.

stephiebaby wrote:
"And the productivity of those slaves is for the most part much lower than it is in advanced societies"

And yet slavery still occurs in these advanced societies, why? Because disposable labour is efficient. And many companies outsource to poorer countries where people will work for next to nothing, wages and conditions many in advanced societies would consider slavery. Some companies have even been caught using what amounts to child slavery sweat shops. Also don't forget that the advanced socities you refer to have made slavery illegal, it didn't dissappear through economic competition, it was outlawed.

Because it made inefficient use of human capital. The societies that replaced slavery and serfdom with wage labor became more prosperous. They dominated those that didn't economically and militarily.

stephiebaby wrote:
"The productivity of those workers is extremely low compared to the productivity of workers in comparable fields in modern market economies. "

You've switched from efficiency to productivity, why? Also don't limit yourself to technologically influenced jobs, remember one of the most prevelent slave jobs in advanced socieites, prostitution. Does your productivity argument still work? Also how much more productive would industrial jobs be if the workers didn't get weekends, holidays or breaks, and got a lash of the whip anytime they slackened off? I'm betting people will work harder to save their lives than they will for a pay packet, set hours and a comfy chair, beer and tv to go home to? What do you think?

That Thomas Edison wouldn't have invented much if he had been laboring under the whip. Cf. Thucydides' explanation of the Greek victory in the Persian War. Societies that have attempted modernization through forced labor, e.g., the Soviet Union under Stalin, have seen impressive gains at first, but those gains peter out. Given the number of variables, individual comparisons are difficult, but I can't think of a single case in which a society that relied on forced labor and top-down control has outcompeted one based on market economics and the invisible hand.

stephiebaby wrote:
"You're thinking of the wealth of the business owner. But from an economic perspective, one has to consider the wealth per capita. If it takes 100 slaves and 1 businessman to produce a widget and 3 market employees and 1 businessman to produce a widget, the market economy is more productive by a factor of 25. "

Yes, I'm thinking of effeciency, not producticity or wealth per capita. Straight out efficiency, and more per business or project than as a society, but the principles still apply to the larger scale. Disposable labour is much more efficient than free, paid labour. Especially once you add health benefits, regulated hours, overtime rates. If this wasn't the case, then there would be no slavery.


That's why it was fairly difficult to get rid of. The owner profited. Society as a whole did not, because total output was lower than in a market system. And the two, slavery and wage labor, could not easily coexist.

stephiebaby wrote:

"Sometimes it relies on rape, sometimes not. "

I know sometimes it doesn't involve rape, but quite often it does. In boarding schools and ships the rape can often be disguised as ritual, initiation, an almost caste system of lower ranked individuals having to serve higher ranked ones. But any form of coersion is still rape. Also despite the stereotype that men are uncontrolable sex machines, we do not have to rape any woman who is uncovered, and we don't immediately start having sex with each other if there are no women around. The myth of men needing to have sex with each other in all male environments probably comes from two places. Bi guys who need to give themselves permission to be bi, and bi or gay guys using peer pressure to coerce others into cooperating. You do know that guys and girls can be friends and not have sex don't you? Just another popular sexual stereotype which is also used as an excuse, but for people who want to have affairs.


Basically guys do have sex with one another if no women are around. In Saudi Arabia, for example, young men solicit gay men for penetrative sex because that society's mores deprive them of contact with women. Examples of this abound. The problem in such cases is finding enough men who are willing to be the receptive partner. Hence, at least in part, the use of coercion. I believe we also share with our closest relative, the bonobo, the instinctive use of penetrative sex to establish dominance hierarchies.

stephiebaby wrote:

"Depression isn't an emotion, but rather a mental state that's characterized in part by certain emotions -- hopelessness, sadness, etc. And those are universals."

I would doubt hopelessness is universal. If it was, then depression would be to, they go hand in hand. One could not be hopeless and not depressed. Also anyone who understood hopeless, even deep sadness, would have some concept of depression.


The tale of Pandora's box suggests that hope and hopelessness are very old indeed. In fact, I see both phenomena in dogs: perky, attentive behavior when they think they may get a treat, hang-dog behavior when they see no possibility of it. I think they're instinctive.

stephiebaby wrote:"So do animals. In fact, as far as I know, there are no emotions peculiar to human beings."

Be very careful when talking about emotions and animals. It's very common for people to put a little to much of themselves into the animals they are observing, like cat or dog owners who think their pet is a child. You see it on docos all the time, the presenters personify the animals to try and put human value to certain behaviours. And animals are not all one species, I think you'll find the emotional range and depth to be as varied as the species themselves.


It's easy enough to see emotion in animals, particularly inasmuch as many of the physiological and behavioral signs are the same in them as in us. Handling a laboratory rat, say, and feeling it shake -- you know it's afraid, and exhibiting the same physiological response we would were we picked up by an unfamiliar creature many times our size. No doubt measurements of its blood would detect a similar mix of stress hormones. The specific palette of emotions probably does vary from one species to another, but there's a great deal of commonality as a consequence of shared genes and shared selection pressures -- fear is useful to just about any animal.

stephiebaby wrote:

"Also, people change sexual orientation with the files on this site"

Do they? Or do they just use files on this site to give themselves permission? I would suggest one must be bi to download and listen to those files in the first place. Also you'll find people all over this site saying hypnosis can't make you do anything you don't want to do in the first place, which would support my idea.


I've done it myself and they do change your orientation.

It's often said that hypnosis can't make you do something you don't want to do, but that's at best partially true: you'll reject a suggestion to which you have a strong aversion, but not necessarily a mild one, and there are ways to get around that. Anyway, wanting to be a certain way and being that way are entirely different things. For example, a gay person might feel strong social pressure to become heterosexual. He could want to be heterosexual -- many young gay people do. But as kids are always discovering, wanting to be straight won't make you straight. In at least some cases, though, listening to the files here will do just that, in fact a gay guy was just saying the other day that he listened to Curse Forced Straight and wasn't going to do it again because it made him interested in women and he didn't want to screw up his life.

stephiebaby wrote:"You can, however, say that the human species has two arms and two legs, although some people lose them or are born without."

Those who lost them had them to begin with. Of those who are born without, I wonder how many have no residual bones, joints or muscles which show what was meant to be there and how that information (or lack of) compares to brain structure, emotions and intelligence?


Far beyond my level of expertise, and, I suspect, the limits of our knowledge, since we're only beginning to understand dimly the relationship between the structure and chemistry of the brain and these things. We can't even say yet what it is that makes some people smart, though progress is being made.

stephiebaby wrote:"But the brain mechanisms and instincts that underlie them are in my opinion as much a part of our species as arms and legs."

I wonder if this is your opinion because of your knowledge on the subject, or if it is because this idea is the more comfortable of the two? In this indifferent universe I am always skeptical of ideas which are too comfortable/comforting. It would be much better if really bad people could only be made, because it would mean in an idealic environment there would be no crime, no murder. It would also match the god need, babies being pure and innocentc and only we can turn them bad (praise god, blame ourselves). Obviously this doesn't disprove your idea, it is just a thought about keeping desires seperate from observations.


I'm not really the type to tailor my understanding to my needs or wants, common as that behavior is. And I'm deeply suspicious of nature/nurture arguments, since everything I've observed suggests to me that we're a mixture of both, that we retain many of our animal instincts but that we sublimate and modify them. I agree that some do choose one or the other for reasons that have little to do with objectivity.

stephiebaby wrote:"As I think I mentioned, moral behavior and empathy are observed in lower animals. I don't see any reason to suppose that we've lost all the applicable genes."

Some animals, to some degree. But the most important animal in this discussion is us. No species comes close to us in intellectual capacity, and I've yet to see any that come close to us in emotional capacity. The biological and lifestyle difference are so massive that unique emotional capacities is inevitable.


I see animals as being just as emotional as we are -- it's hard not to, living with a couple of dogs, since dogs are anything but shy about displaying their feelings -- joy, anger, sadness, what have you. And I'm not sure that we have unique emotions. Emotions tend to be localized in primitive brain areas and to control behavior at a very primitive level. And while we're of course smarter than other animals, Koko the gorilla has a tested IQ of 85 -- within the human range. Even dogs are known to learn and understand hundreds of words, and apparently have the intelligence of a 2-1/2 year old human child. Chimps, with whom we share almost all our DNA, laugh, make war, hunt, make tools. Higher animals are now known to have culture. And gorillas and chimps can learn to talk with sign language. I think the evidence says that we aren't as different from other animals as we sometimes like to think, particularly from the other apes.
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Postby stephiebaby » November 11th, 2009, 9:03 pm

"AFAIK, slavery became common with the introduction of agriculture. The domestication of human beings, essentially."

No, slavery has been around since before agriculture. Capturing enemies, trading women.

"The fact that it is no longer widely practiced in advanced societies, and that it's under pressure in third-world ones, suggests to me that it will become increasingly less prevalent. "

The fact is slavery was made illegal in those countries, it did not die out because of economics. The decrease in slavery is because of social evolution, not efficiency. As for the third world socieites, it really depends on their resources, otherwise the rest of the world does not want to know anything about them. Same reason why slave labour works in more advanced societies, people don't want to know, they don't want to ask questions, they just want cheap service.

"it didn't dissappear through economic competition, it was outlawed.

Because it made inefficient use of human capital."

Not even close. Seeing slaves as human had a lot more to do with it than economics.

"The societies that replaced slavery and serfdom with wage labor became more prosperous. They dominated those that didn't economically and militarily."

Really? The British Empire was built on serfdom, conquest and slavery. The US was an offshoot of the British Empire and built on slave labour. Australia was built on slave labour, first with the convicts and then with aborigines on little to no pay (we aren't a superpower but we do ok and I can't exclude us). These societies didn't get rid of slavery and then find prosperity. They only decided slavery was wrong because they were prosperous. Has there ever been a great civilisation whose power was completely free of slavery?

"That Thomas Edison wouldn't have invented much if he had been laboring under the whip."

Perhaps, perhaps not. Wasn't Edison the type of person who would have done much better under some sort of management? OR perhaps Edison would have worked better with slaves? If slavery was in use, not everyone would be a slave.
Anyway that is one exceptional person, try the other 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% of the population.

"Cf. Thucydides' explanation of the Greek victory in the Persian War. "

I'm not sure what you point is here? I really hope for your sake it does not involve the Spartans in any way. They were a culture completely dependant on slaves.

"Societies that have attempted modernization through forced labor, e.g., the Soviet Union under Stalin, have seen impressive gains at first, but those gains peter out."

Well they had many problems. But it took a world wide effort to stop the two who really tried it. Two countries who both embraced slave labour nearly conquered the world, and no two free democratic countries could have stopped them alone. If Hitler and Stalin weren't both complete psychos they would have joined together and Germany, Russia and Japan would have ruled the world. It was not democracy and free labour that won WWII, it was Hitlers treachery and psychosis.That is what turned Stalin to the allies, and that was the deciding military factor.

"but I can't think of a single case in which a society that relied on forced labor and top-down control has outcompeted one based on market economics and the invisible hand."

Well your approach here has been very shortsighted. Basically you are taking rich societies and comparing them to poor ones, and ignoring where the welath came from, and the fact slavery did not die out in those wealthier socieites, it was outlawed and still exists illegally. The whole idea that slavery is inefficient cannot be true while this still occurs.

"That's why it was fairly difficult to get rid of. The owner profitted. Society as a whole did not"

Really? Rome was built on slave labour, and the society profited. The British Empire, America, both socities profitted from slavery. And slavery did not die out in either, it was made illegal.

"because total output was lower than in a market system. And the two, slavery and wage labor, could not easily coexist. "

The change was made because of human rights and social evolution.

"Basically guys do have sex with one another if no women are around."

I hate to burst you bubble, but it does not work that way. Some will, some won't. Some of the ones who will, would whether there were women present or not. So it's not the all male environment for them, it's just the fact they are bi or gay and happy with themselves. The ones who only have sex in all male environments are either unable to face themselves normally and need permission to be with other guys, or they are coerced in some way. And then there are the guys (gay, bi or straight) who would much rather masturbate than have sex with someone they are not attracted to in any way.
The idea that men are so desperate for sex they will have to have sex with each other if no women are around, is no different to the idea that men are so desperate for sex women must be completely covered or they will get raped. It is an excuse for individuals behaviour, not a fact of life. Some level of attraction and bisexuality is required, or coersion, whether there are women around or not.

"In Saudi Arabia, for example, young men solicit gay men for penetrative sex because that society's mores deprive them of contact with women. "

So you are saying every young man in Saudi Aradia solicits gay men for sex. Or are you saying some do?
In Australia many young men solicit gay men for sex, even though premarital sex is extremely common and easy to find. Plenty of contact with women, and still men having sex with men? What could it possibly mean? Maybe some people are just gay or bisexual? Maybe their sexuality determines their partners, not the availability of women?

"Examples of this abound"

Yes they do, and they show bisexuality and homosexuality are quite common and universal across cultures.

"The problem in such cases is finding enough men who are willing to be the receptive partner. Hence, at least in part, the use of coercion."

No, coercion is rape. It's power and forcing ones will on another. It would be no different than any guy forcing himself on a woman and saying "But I just couldn't find a receptive woman". Many people take time to find a receptive partner and are not reduced to rape in the meantime. Availability has nothing to do with rape. In fact many rapists rape their own wives, or lead "normal" lives witha partner they do not rape.
Also if men were as desperate for sex as you make out, then there would never be a problem finding partners.

"I believe we also share with our closest relative, the bonobo, the instinctive use of penetrative sex to establish dominance hierarchies."

So you are suggesting rape is natural? Perhaps for our protohuman ancestors, and even our primitive human ancestors, but not for modern man. You will find rapists are the weak ones in a modern society, the lowest in the dominence hierarchies. Even those who use penetrative sex for dominence in consentual situations do so only because a submissive person allows it, it is play, not social dominance. And many other people simply enjoy many forms of sex, with no need for D/s play, making penetrative sex fun, not value ladden.
We are not bonobos, our behaviours are quite different from theirs. Also while our ancestors have used rape for reproduction, we are a species which uses violence for dominance, not sex. Sex can be used as a tool for this violence, but it is not necessary or even common. Most young men trying to exert their social dominance get into fights with other men, they do not try to penetrate other men. How many times have you seen two guys vying for dominance in a social setting, and then they try to have sex to settle things? Sexual dominance through rape, is usually reserved for women in private, or in situations where women are absent. Our use of violence makes us much more like other chimps than bonobos.

"The tale of Pandora's box suggests that hope and hopelessness are very old indeed."

Pandoras box is not a universal human tale, it is from one culture. We were not discussing age of emotions, especially not just in one culture. And anyone who knows hopelessness know depression. To have no concept of depression one cannot have any concept of hopelessness.

"In fact, I see both phenomena in dogs: perky, attentive behavior when they think they may get a treat, hang-dog behavior when they see no possibility of it."

I'm sure you see many things in dogs, whether those things are really there or not is another matter. Also dogs are pack animals, unless they are mistreated they tend to be perky and attentive as part of being in the pack. Sure they can sit quietly, but a movement or arrival of a pack member should have them perky and attentive. Cats are not pack animals, and their behaviour reflects this.
Of course if you train a dog enough it will become habitualised to treats (or the ringing of a bell) and behave as you have described, but for most dogs being in the pack is the treat.
And dogs are still dogs, their behaviour has very little to do with people.

"It's easy enough to see emotion in animals, particularly inasmuch as many of the physiological and behavioral signs are the same in them as in us. Handling a laboratory rat, say, and feeling it shake -- you know it's afraid, and exhibiting the same physiological response we would were we picked up by an unfamiliar creature many times our size. No doubt measurements of its blood would detect a similar mix of stress hormones. The specific palette of emotions probably does vary from one species to another, but there's a great deal of commonality as a consequence of shared genes and shared selection pressures -- fear is useful to just about any animal."

The depth and range are widely varied among different species, different environments and lifestyles makes this inevitable. Also is any perceived commonality from shared genes, or simply the shared experience of survival? A basic fight or flight response which has no real emotional content, just a survival instinct?
Also fear is not useful to any animal. Thompsons Gazelles would be extinct if their young were fearful. Their survival statedgy is no fear in the young, so they will remain still no matter what. They share this lack of fear with other prey species. They develop fear, but it is counterproductive in their young.

"I've done it myself and they do change your orientation.

It's often said that hypnosis can't make you do something you don't want to do, but that's at best partially true: you'll reject a suggestion to which you have a strong aversion, but not necessarily a mild one, and there are ways to get around that."

Yes, there are ways to give yourself permission to be who you really are, I mean to get around things. I would suggest that your mild aversion was not internal, but socially imposed. That you did not change your orientation, but allowed yourself to find your orientation.

"Anyway, wanting to be a certain way and being that way are entirely different things. For example, a gay person might feel strong social pressure to become heterosexual. He could want to be heterosexual -- many young gay people do."

Yes, wanting to be a certain way and being that way are different, that is why so many people need some reason to allow themselves to be bi or gay. They already are that way, they just can't live that way because of social pressures.
I think most gay guys who pretend to be straight don't want to be straight, they want to fit in, they want to be accepted. If you asked them would they like to be straight or live in a world where they were accepted as gay, most would choose the latter. The ones who would want to be straight, you would need to look at their upbringing, most of them would be brainwashed members of a religion, desperately trying to fit into that group.

"In at least some cases, though, listening to the files here will do just that, in fact a gay guy was just saying the other day that he listened to Curse Forced Straight and wasn't going to do it again because it made him interested in women and he didn't want to screw up his life."

Religious groups make the same claims, with little to no success. If any hypno file could really turn gay people straight the homophobic religious nuts would have been all over it years ago. Religious brainwashing on willing subjects has not worked, I doubt any of these files could be more successful.

"Far beyond my level of expertise, and, I suspect, the limits of our knowledge, since we're only beginning to understand dimly the relationship between the structure and chemistry of the brain and these things. We can't even say yet what it is that makes some people smart, though progress is being made. "

Yep, the whole two arms two legs idea wasn't a good one. When looking at emotional range you would be much better off comparing it to IQ. Both are determined by the brain, both appear to have a wide range across the species with most of the species falling in the middle. The sociopath is the same as the genius, someone at the far end of the scale, a low percentage of the population, but still a natural part of the population.

"And I'm deeply suspicious of nature/nurture arguments, since everything I've observed suggests to me that we're a mixture of both,"

This works generally speaking, but it does not cover all situations. We already know sociopaths can be made, that a combination of nature and nurture are not needed. But we also know that the abuse some sociopaths survived was not as extreme as many non sociopaths, or at the level needed to create a sociopath from any individual. So even though we can make sociopaths, there is obviously something more going on, some natural influence. With this natural influence there is no reason to think it cannot work independant of environmental influences. And there have been sociopaths who seem to support this.

"I see animals as being just as emotional as we are -- it's hard not to, living with a couple of dogs"

Yes, people do tend to personify their pets. If you were a cat perosn you'd be telling me how emotional cats are, that they are more emotional than dogs or even people because they hide it so well, that their reserved nature shows emotional maturity (I've had this discussion many times, and it's really fun when you have a dog lover and a cat lover trying to prove their favourite is more intelligent/emotional, very similar to religious discussions). I've lived with dogs, cats, horses, cattle, sheep and a wide variety of wild animals and I see unique species behaving as their lifestyle and environemnt determines, with a very limited emotional range. I've also seen many people, docos and stories where people have tried to show an animal as being intelligent, and yet the animals shows as much "intelligence" as any well trained dog or horse. Oh yeah, besides very simple tool use, no one uses wild animals to show animal intelligence, they all use animals which have been trained over many years.

"Emotions tend to be localized in primitive brain areas and to control behavior at a very primitive level."

Well there you go, we have unique brain structures. Our intelligence is also formed from our brain structure, and no animals comes close to us in that department either.

"And while we're of course smarter than other animals, Koko the gorilla has a tested IQ of 85 -- within the human range. Even dogs are known to learn and understand hundreds of words, and apparently have the intelligence of a 2-1/2 year old human child. Chimps, with whom we share almost all our DNA, laugh, make war, hunt, make tools. Higher animals are now known to have culture. And gorillas and chimps can learn to talk with sign language. I think the evidence says that we aren't as different from other animals as we sometimes like to think, particularly from the other apes."

Yes, many animals have been trained to "communicate" with people. Now we have people doing with apes and dolphins what people have been doing for centuries with dogs and horses, with very little improvement on results. What this shows is not animal intelligence, but human intelligence. We have trained animals to understand what we want them to do when promted. As Carl Sagan said, "It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese."

As for chimps, they are further from us than protohumans. While we are desperate to find another creature to communicate with, chimps are not even close. In fact the most advanced tool maker besides humans is a crow, not an ape.
As for culture, isn't that basically just mimicry? I've seen people refer to chimp culture because one group of chimps uses stones to do something, and another group uses sticks. Is this passed down culture, or the same mimicry used by all species who raise their young? There is no refinment of the basic tool, no experimentation with different materials, no intergroup communication to trade methods. Were there better examples of culture? The tool thing is just the one used extensively on docos.

And as always, we do not have to agree.
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Postby Alien4420 » November 12th, 2009, 1:21 pm

"No, slavery has been around since before agriculture. Capturing enemies, trading women."

But was it common? AFAIK, enemies who were captured were killed, e.g., Native Americans tortured them to death. Trading women was I think a different institution altogether. Women are not free in traditional societies, but a wife isn't a slave.

"The fact is slavery was made illegal in those countries, it did not die out because of economics. The decrease in slavery is because of social evolution, not efficiency. As for the third world socieites, it really depends on their resources, otherwise the rest of the world does not want to know anything about them. Same reason why slave labour works in more advanced societies, people don't want to know, they don't want to ask questions, they just want cheap service."

I think the social evolution and the efficiency go hand-in-hand. Less efficient societies fall to more advanced ones, or adopt their methods. Forex, virtually the entire world fell under the control of capitalist Europe. Europe then attempted to ban slavery in those societies as well as its own, even going so far as to interdict slave ships (the British).

"Not even close. Seeing slaves as human had a lot more to do with it than economics."

There are plenty of examples of compassion for slaves even from the ancient world. Sure, there are always people who oppose something as a matter of principle. But for their principles to be adopted, they have to be adopted by those who are in power, as well. Forex In the South, where slaveholders held economic power, the principles were ignored. In the North, where capitalists did, they were adopted. And it also has to be remember that there has to be an alternative.

It's worth noting in this context that even imperial Rome appears to have lessened its dependence on slavery after the servile revolts, substituting serfdom. Conversely, Thomas Jefferson didn't free his slaves because he couldn't afford to, and Washington freed his only upon his death. Most people react first to practical considerations.

"Really? The British Empire was built on serfdom, conquest and slavery. The US was an offshoot of the British Empire and built on slave labour. Australia was built on slave labour, first with the convicts and then with aborigines on little to no pay (we aren't a superpower but we do ok and I can't exclude us). These societies didn't get rid of slavery and then find prosperity. They only decided slavery was wrong because they were prosperous. Has there ever been a great civilisation whose power was completely free of slavery?"

The British Empire actually began abolishing slavery in the early 19th century, as did the United States. And neither power was built on slavery. The majority of Americans, for example, were free farmers. (By way of contrast, the older Spanish Empire was based on slavery.)

"Perhaps, perhaps not. Wasn't Edison the type of person who would have done much better under some sort of management? OR perhaps Edison would have worked better with slaves? If slavery was in use, not everyone would be a slave.
Anyway that is one exceptional person, try the other 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% of the population."

Per Adam Smith, people are most productive in highly specialized occupations and when they're free to choose the endeavor that best suits their skills. This is why capitalism has gradually supplanted slavery, serfdom, caste and class systems. In a way, the economic advantage of capitalism over slavery is akin to the advantage of capitalism over Communism, with its top-down control and the alienation of the worker from the fruits of his labor (since the harder worker or the worker who chooses a more challenging course isn't rewarded).

"I'm not sure what you point is here? I really hope for your sake it does not involve the Spartans in any way. They were a culture completely dependant on slaves."

Thucydides famously asked why a handful of Greeks were able to defeat the far more numerous Persians, and concluded that it was because the Persians marched under the whip, while the Greeks fought as free men.

"Well they had many problems. But it took a world wide effort to stop the two who really tried it. Two countries who both embraced slave labour nearly conquered the world, and no two free democratic countries could have stopped them alone. If Hitler and Stalin weren't both complete psychos they would have joined together and Germany, Russia and Japan would have ruled the world. It was not democracy and free labour that won WWII, it was Hitlers treachery and psychosis.That is what turned Stalin to the allies, and that was the deciding military factor."

Hitler used slave labor, but his Germany was mostly capitalist. Had he not used slave labor, he probably would have done better, given that it's economically less efficient to put a half-starved Jewish engineer to work digging ditches than it is to let him design aircraft for pay.

The Soviet Union fell because it couldn't compete economically with the west. Men like Gorbachev recognized that, and so, crucially, did Soviet generals, who lent him their support.

" 'but I can't think of a single case in which a society that relied on forced labor and top-down control has outcompeted one based on market economics and the invisible hand.'

Well your approach here has been very shortsighted. Basically you are taking rich societies and comparing them to poor ones, and ignoring where the welath came from, and the fact slavery did not die out in those wealthier socieites, it was outlawed and still exists illegally. The whole idea that slavery is inefficient cannot be true while this still occurs."

But that's the very point. The societies became rich because they adopted market economies and reshaped their societies to create a more educated, productive workforce. An Indian kid chained to a carpet loom is never going to become a doctor or an entrepreneur.

"The change was made because of human rights and social evolution."

Human rights as we understand them are basically the handmaiden of capitalism. The bourgeoisie acquires economic power, and uses it to take power from the aristocracy and create institutions that serve the middle class, e.g., liberal democracy.

"Basically guys do have sex with one another if no women are around."

"I hate to burst you bubble, but it does not work that way. Some will, some won't. Some of the ones who will, would whether there were women present or not. So it's not the all male environment for them, it's just the fact they are bi or gay and happy with themselves. The ones who only have sex in all male environments are either unable to face themselves normally and need permission to be with other guys, or they are coerced in some way. And then there are the guys (gay, bi or straight) who would much rather masturbate than have sex with someone they are not attracted to in any way. "

The evidence doesn't back you up. In Saudi Arabia, for example, most of the guys that have sex with men drop it the moment they can get married and can have sex with women. Or in Mexico, guys have penetrative sex with gay guys when they don't have a girlfriend but go back to their girlfriends when they can. Most guys just happen to be straighter than gay. But the sex drive is a strong one, and absent the opposite sex, many straight men will choose penetrative sex with other men over masturbation. Men in prison sometimes go to great lengths to pretend that the "punk" is a woman, even having him wear makeup, shave his body hair, wear female clothing, etc.

"The idea that men are so desperate for sex they will have to have sex with each other if no women are around, is no different to the idea that men are so desperate for sex women must be completely covered or they will get raped. It is an excuse for individuals behaviour, not a fact of life. Some level of attraction and bisexuality is required, or coersion, whether there are women around or not."

"Have to" and "choose to" are two different things. Many guys would rather undergo the stigma of penetrative homosexuality (where it exists, as it does in our society) than spend years masturbating. And those who initially aren't often find their opinions change rapidly in prison.

"So you are saying every young man in Saudi Aradia solicits gay men for sex. Or are you saying some do?
In Australia many young men solicit gay men for sex, even though premarital sex is extremely common and easy to find. Plenty of contact with women, and still men having sex with men? What could it possibly mean? Maybe some people are just gay or bisexual? Maybe their sexuality determines their partners, not the availability of women?"

Not all, many. And that isn't true in Australia. It's a well-known institution in Saudi Arabia -- do a web search, it's considered a gay man's paradise for that reason, even though homosexuality is punishable by death, amputation, and other dire punishments.

"No, coercion is rape. It's power and forcing ones will on another. It would be no different than any guy forcing himself on a woman and saying "But I just couldn't find a receptive woman". Many people take time to find a receptive partner and are not reduced to rape in the meantime. Availability has nothing to do with rape. In fact many rapists rape their own wives, or lead "normal" lives witha partner they do not rape. Also if men were as desperate for sex as you make out, then there would never be a problem finding partners."

If it were just a matter of power, homosexual rape would occur as often outside of prison as it does in it. It doesn't, not by a long shot.

" 'I believe we also share with our closest relative, the bonobo, the instinctive use of penetrative sex to establish dominance hierarchies.'

So you are suggesting rape is natural? Perhaps for our protohuman ancestors, and even our primitive human ancestors, but not for modern man. You will find rapists are the weak ones in a modern society, the lowest in the dominence hierarchies. Even those who use penetrative sex for dominence in consentual situations do so only because a submissive person allows it, it is play, not social dominance. And many other people simply enjoy many forms of sex, with no need for D/s play, making penetrative sex fun, not value ladden."

Yes, it's natural, it comes out in our language, people don't even connect the dots, e.g., "fuck you" is one of our worst curses, and then there's "I've been screwed" or "I've been fucked," etc. Sure, only the most debased people practice it in our society, but that's because the rest of us are better able to restrain our instincts, and are socially influenced to do so.

Rape is very much socially determined, see the rape of the Sabine women, or the rape of German women by Soviet troops, or the rape of women in Bosnia, or in war-torn areas of Africa where women are taken as sex slaves and used by the warring factions.

"We are not bonobos, our behaviours are quite different from theirs."

Are they? I'd say they share most of our sexual instincts, in fact, year-round estrus and the use of sex as social glue and for the establishment of social hierarchies is as far as I know unique to the human/bonobo clade. By way of contrast chimpanzees, and by cladistics the common ancestor of the chimp/human/bonobo clade, use grooming and fighting to accomplish those things. I'd say we're half way between chimps and bonobos in that regard, aggressive and patriarchal like chimpanzees but also using sex for glue and to establish hierarchical dominance like the bonobo.

"Most young men trying to exert their social dominance get into fights with other men, they do not try to penetrate other men."

No, they just scream "fuck you, you asshole!"

The instinct is there, it's just been repressed, along with much of our sexuality, as we've become "civilized" and some aspects of our sexuality proved inconvenient. In prison and boy's schools, things are less polite, and then the more primitive dominance behavior occurs, alongside the fights. It is hard to see how a low status bonobo that offers sexual favors to a higher status one in return for protection is different from a low status prisoner who does the same. You will not see this behavior in any species outside the human/bonobo clade. In other species, sex is used purely for reproduction, and occurs when the male reacts to olfactory, visual, and behavioral cues exhibited by the female at the time of ovulation.

"Pandoras box is not a universal human tale, it is from one culture. We were not discussing age of emotions, especially not just in one culture. And anyone who knows hopelessness know depression. To have no concept of depression one cannot have any concept of hopelessness."

As I understand it, depression occurs in every society, under various names and with varying explanations. It seems to be functional and adaptive, e.g., people are apt to become depressed during winter, after surgery, after childbirth, when they feel abandoned -- precisely when there's selection value in reduced activity.

" 'In fact, I see both phenomena in dogs: perky, attentive behavior when they think they may get a treat, hang-dog behavior when they see no possibility of it.'

I'm sure you see many things in dogs, whether those things are really there or not is another matter."

Sorry, but you'd have to be blind not to see this behavior in dogs. We aren't exactly talking subtle -- the damn things run up to you and wag their tails and even dance in circles when it's dinner time.

"The depth and range are widely varied among different species, different environments and lifestyles makes this inevitable. Also is any perceived commonality from shared genes, or simply the shared experience of survival? A basic fight or flight response which has no real emotional content, just a survival instinct?

Also fear is not useful to any animal. Thompsons Gazelles would be extinct if their young were fearful. Their survival statedgy is no fear in the young, so they will remain still no matter what. They share this lack of fear with other prey species. They develop fear, but it is counterproductive in their young."

The fight or flight response is connected with powerful emotions in us, indeed, it forms a large part of what we perceive those emotions to be. There is no reason to suppose that it's different for animals, since much the same physiological changes occur and much the same brain regions light up, which happen, BTW, to be primitive brain regions that we share in common with lower animals, e.g., the limbic system.

Fear has enormous survival value, which is why so many animals exhibit it. There is a strong selection disadvantage in walking up to a lion and peeking in its mouth. Freezing up and staying still is a consequence of fear, we do it ourselves when we're startled. It makes us less obvious to a potential predator. The precise behaviors do vary from species to species, but there's a great deal of commonality. The freeze response probably goes back hundreds of millions of years, birds do it as well.

" 'I've done it myself and they do change your orientation.

It's often said that hypnosis can't make you do something you don't want to do, but that's at best partially true: you'll reject a suggestion to which you have a strong aversion, but not necessarily a mild one, and there are ways to get around that.'

Yes, there are ways to give yourself permission to be who you really are, I mean to get around things. I would suggest that your mild aversion was not internal, but socially imposed. That you did not change your orientation, but allowed yourself to find your orientation."

But you'd be wrong. My aversion wasn't mild and it was accompanied by complete lack of sexual interest. Forced Gay flipped that in a couple of months, as it has for many others. Check out the many threads on forced gay, forced straight, and the like. These files change orientation quickly and easily. As someone else said in another thread (this objection comes up frequently), you have to listen to these files to understand what they do. You can quite literally feel the switches flipping in your subconscious.

"Yes, wanting to be a certain way and being that way are different, that is why so many people need some reason to allow themselves to be bi or gay. They already are that way, they just can't live that way because of social pressures."

Some bi guys listen to Forced Gay for just that reason.

" 'In at least some cases, though, listening to the files here will do just that, in fact a gay guy was just saying the other day that he listened to Curse Forced Straight and wasn't going to do it again because it made him interested in women and he didn't want to screw up his life'."

Religious groups make the same claims, with little to no success. If any hypno file could really turn gay people straight the homophobic religious nuts would have been all over it years ago. Religious brainwashing on willing subjects has not worked, I doubt any of these files could be more successful."

That is one of my concerns with these files. They can and do flip orientation. I wouldn't want the religious nuts to get their hands on them, because they'd use them as a means of bullying and social control.

I should add that I don't believe that all gay people would be flipped by these files. First of all, one has to be reasonably suggestible. Secondly, one has to be reasonably willing -- as with any direct suggestion, if you're dead set against doing it, you'll just throw off the trance (it happened to one guy who listened to forced gay a few weeks back). Finally, I believe that some gay guys are born that way, that they have essentially female sexual responses. Unlike the male sexual response, the female sexual response is bisexual, but it isn't for the most part penetrative. If this is in fact true, naturally effeminate guys who don't like penetrative sex would be poor candidates.

"This works generally speaking, but it does not cover all situations. We already know sociopaths can be made, that a combination of nature and nurture are not needed. But we also know that the abuse some sociopaths survived was not as extreme as many non sociopaths, or at the level needed to create a sociopath from any individual. So even though we can make sociopaths, there is obviously something more going on, some natural influence. With this natural influence there is no reason to think it cannot work independant of environmental influences. And there have been sociopaths who seem to support this."

Yes, I think that third way scenario probably does occur in many cases. Indeed, Freud speculated 100 years ago that some people were more susceptible to neurosis than others for physiological reasons. But it's harder to study than the others. They're making a beginning, but we're still pretty far from having enough data.

" 'I see animals as being just as emotional as we are -- it's hard not to, living with a couple of dogs'

Yes, people do tend to personify their pets. If you were a cat perosn you'd be telling me how emotional cats are, that they are more emotional than dogs or even people because they hide it so well, that their reserved nature shows emotional maturity (I've had this discussion many times, and it's really fun when you have a dog lover and a cat lover trying to prove their favourite is more intelligent/emotional, very similar to religious discussions). I've lived with dogs, cats, horses, cattle, sheep and a wide variety of wild animals and I see unique species behaving as their lifestyle and environemnt determines, with a very limited emotional range. I've also seen many people, docos and stories where people have tried to show an animal as being intelligent, and yet the animals shows as much "intelligence" as any well trained dog or horse. Oh yeah, besides very simple tool use, no one uses wild animals to show animal intelligence, they all use animals which have been trained over many years."

Conversely, some people seem to have a need to draw unrealistic lines between man and beast. Those arguments always fail, whether it's fish can't feel pain or dogs can't think, because they're based on emotionality rather than thought. In fact, we share 99.5% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and are separated by only six million years, not much more than the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. Research inevitably shows that we share more rather than less. Among the shibboleths that have been disproved within my own lifetime:

- Man is the only animal who laughs
- Man is the only animal that uses tools
- Man is the only animal that uses culture
- Man is the only animal that thinks and can use language

" 'Emotions tend to be localized in primitive brain areas and to control behavior at a very primitive level.'

Well there you go, we have unique brain structures. Our intelligence is also formed from our brain structure, and no animals comes close to us in that department either."

The changes to our brain have occurred mostly in the more recently evolved areas, e.g., the cerebral cortex. Functions that evolved earlier have remained localized in more primitive areas, e.g., emotions are seated in the limbic system, which dates all the way back to tetrapod fish..

" 'And while we're of course smarter than other animals, Koko the gorilla has a tested IQ of 85 -- within the human range. Even dogs are known to learn and understand hundreds of words, and apparently have the intelligence of a 2-1/2 year old human child. Chimps, with whom we share almost all our DNA, laugh, make war, hunt, make tools. Higher animals are now known to have culture. And gorillas and chimps can learn to talk with sign language. I think the evidence says that we aren't as different from other animals as we sometimes like to think, particularly from the other apes.'

Yes, many animals have been trained to "communicate" with people. Now we have people doing with apes and dolphins what people have been doing for centuries with dogs and horses, with very little improvement on results. What this shows is not animal intelligence, but human intelligence. We have trained animals to understand what we want them to do when promted. As Carl Sagan said, "It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese"."

Intelligence is intelligence. You can't train a shark to understand words. You can train a dog, or a human child. Actually, the dogs learn words themselves, they understand far more words than they're taught. How could they not? They have a neural network, same as us.

"As for chimps, they are further from us than protohumans. While we are desperate to find another creature to communicate with, chimps are not even close. In fact the most advanced tool maker besides humans is a crow, not an ape.

As for culture, isn't that basically just mimicry? I've seen people refer to chimp culture because one group of chimps uses stones to do something, and another group uses sticks. Is this passed down culture, or the same mimicry used by all species who raise their young? There is no refinment of the basic tool, no experimentation with different materials, no intergroup communication to trade methods. Were there better examples of culture? The tool thing is just the one used extensively on docos."

The animals discover these things on their own, and their children observe them closely. So it differs from human culture only in that language isn't involved. Animals have in fact been observed making discoveries and then learning from one another, e.g., when a bird (forget which kind) discovered that it could break milk bottles by dropping a stone on them, the other birds in the area learned that behavior, and the birds began breaking milk bottles all over the place.

Our own ancestors seem to have refined tools very slowly, using them for hundreds of thosuands of years before moving on to the next stage. Of course we're smarter than they were and better able to make refinements, but it's an illustration I think that the creation of culture antedates our species and has grown progressively more sophisticated.
Alien4420
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Postby stephiebaby » November 15th, 2009, 3:51 am

""No, slavery has been around since before agriculture. Capturing enemies, trading women."

But was it common?"

Yes, worldwide.

"AFAIK, enemies who were captured were killed, e.g., Native Americans tortured them to death."

I think you'll find a wide variety of North American cultures and practices, including slavery.

"Trading women was I think a different institution altogether. Women are not free in traditional societies, but a wife isn't a slave. "

Depends if your the wife or not. The fact they were "traded", owned from father to husband seems a lot like slavery to me? Being owned based on gender is not different to being owned based on skin colour or ancestory.

"I think the social evolution and the efficiency go hand-in-hand."

Then why was slavery outlawed? If your theory was true it would have died out through economic competition. But it was not efficiency that caused societies to outlaw slavery, it was social evolution. It was the decision that slavery was wrong, not that it was inefficient.

"Conversely, Thomas Jefferson didn't free his slaves because he couldn't afford to, and Washington freed his only upon his death. Most people react first to practical considerations. "

So it was not more efficient for them to free their slaves?

"The British Empire actually began abolishing slavery in the early 19th century, as did the United States. And neither power was built on slavery."

England has a long, long history of slavery, in one form or another. England built America, and America did ok from slavery, and from inequality. Did the civil war end slavery in America, or the civil rights movement?

"Per Adam Smith, people are most productive in highly specialized occupations and when they're free to choose the endeavor that best suits their skills. This is why capitalism has gradually supplanted slavery, serfdom, caste and class systems"

You first need a critical mass of population for this specialization to occur. You also need a society which allows it to occur, in other words you need to abolish slavery, caste systems, gender inequality etc. before this can occur.

""I'm not sure what you point is here? I really hope for your sake it does not involve the Spartans in any way. They were a culture completely dependant on slaves."

Thucydides famously asked why a handful of Greeks were able to defeat the far more numerous Persians, and concluded that it was because the Persians marched under the whip, while the Greeks fought as free men."

The Spartans were free men, their society was completely dependant on slaves though. It's always funny when one watches movies like "300" where they portray Spartans as defenders of democracy.

"Hitler used slave labor, but his Germany was mostly capitalist. Had he not used slave labor, he probably would have done better, given that it's economically less efficient to put a half-starved Jewish engineer to work digging ditches than it is to let him design aircraft for pay. "

He used slave labour and slaughter opposition, his Germany resembled communist Russia more than the capitalist societies. Also for Hitler it was much more efficient to have Jews digging ditches while starving. They could not fight back from that position and they used less resources while straving. Hitler would have done better if he could have hidden his intentions from Stalin.

"But that's the very point. The societies became rich because they adopted market economies and reshaped their societies to create a more educated, productive workforce. "

It's funny that you quoted me, yet I still have to repeat myself. The societies you are referring to did not get rich after they got rid of slavery, they got rid of slavery while in a position of power. This and other social changes led to increased population *critical mass), choice of education and occupation, and the modern societies which are blinding you.

""The change was made because of human rights and social evolution."

Human rights as we understand them are basically the handmaiden of capitalism."

Really? Which came first in America, capitalism or civil rights?

"The bourgeoisie acquires economic power, and uses it to take power from the aristocracy and create institutions that serve the middle class, e.g., liberal democracy. "

OK, in American history you just won the War of Independence. You have the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement to go.

"The evidence doesn't back you up. "

So you have interviewed guys from a wide variety of cultures and every single one has sex with other men in an all male environment? Even if they find the other males repulsive? I think you need to do much more research. I'm guessing you also believe the myth that a guy will have sex with any female who offers? It's the exact same thinking as the myth you are promoting, and just as wrong.

"In Saudi Arabia, for example, most of the guys that have sex with men drop it the moment they can get married and can have sex with women."

Most will drop it, not all. So obviously some are bi and don't deny it. The culture may have a lot to do with those who stop, the same as American and Australian culture makes a lot of gay (and bi) men get married and act for a living. And does every Saudi guy do this, or do some simply not have sex until they are married? Your example seems intentionally vague.

"Or in Mexico, guys have penetrative sex with gay guys when they don't have a girlfriend but go back to their girlfriends when they can. "

Again, is this every guy in Mexico, or does it just occur there like it does everywhere? You are describing bisexuality, and it is very common, but not universal.

"Most guys just happen to be straighter than gay. But the sex drive is a strong one, and absent the opposite sex, many straight men will choose penetrative sex with other men over masturbation"

No, many bi men will choose that. Most, if not all, straight men will choose to masturbate with a pic of a woman or their imagination. Lots of bi guys will tell you they are straight, they just have sex with other guys. But that is about their own insecurities and social pressure, it has nothing to do with sexuality. They are bi, no matter what they try and tell themselves, or others.

"Men in prison sometimes go to great lengths to pretend that the "punk" is a woman, even having him wear makeup, shave his body hair, wear female clothing"

Sometimes this is taste, sometimes it is dominance, and sometimes it is giving oneself permission. And many guys in prison do not do this, and many do not have sex while in prison. Though the restrictive nature of prison and accompanying depression would make this the most likely environment for a truly straight guy to seek male companionship.

""The idea that men are so desperate for sex they will have to have sex with each other if no women are around, is no different to the idea that men are so desperate for sex women must be completely covered or they will get raped. It is an excuse for individuals behaviour, not a fact of life. Some level of attraction and bisexuality is required, or coersion, whether there are women around or not."

"Have to" and "choose to" are two different things. Many guys would rather undergo the stigma of penetrative homosexuality (where it exists, as it does in our society) than spend years masturbating. "

That makes no sense. People would rather undego the stigma of homosexuality than masturbate? There is no stigma to masturbation, any guy who denies doing it is considered a liar. Why would any straight guy choose the stigma of homosexuality over the expectation of masturbation? Are you bi or gay? Have you ever experienced prejudice of any kind? You sound completely clueless, and you are once again parroting the homophobic religious nuts. They also say people choose to undergo the stigma of homosexuality. The stigma actually stops bi/gay guys from exploring their sexuality, and causes gay guys to marry women, but you think straight guys would embrace this stigma rather than masturbate?

"And those who initially aren't often find their opinions change rapidly in prison."

Yes, self preservation is an amazing motivator. As is depression, though it's not usually asociated with rapid.

"Not all, many."

So your whole arguement just fell apart. Your shining example was an example of ommission.

"Saudi Arabia -- do a web search, it's considered a gay man's paradise for that reason, even though homosexuality is punishable by death, amputation, and other dire punishments. "

Some paradise? So does that mean Amsterdam is not the drug users paradise, it's some country with death penalties for drug use instead? I always thought Mardi Gras in Sydney was considered a gay man's paradise, plenty of opportunities and no amputation or death penalty.

"If it were just a matter of power, homosexual rape would occur as often outside of prison as it does in it. It doesn't, not by a long shot."

In prison the violence of society is concentrated, and the target for violence is reduced. One would expect a higher incidence of homosexual rape in prison. Though most homosexual rape outside of prison is not reported, so we really have no idea on the numbers. Some is even expected because of this myth that men must have sex with each other in an all male environment.

"Yes, it's natural, it comes out in our language"

Language is cultural.

"and then there's "I've been screwed" or "I've been fucked," etc"

This is the stigma of homosexuality. These sayings come from straight men and suggest being violated. It does support your penetration as dominance idea, but it does not support your idea that men will seek out this violation when there are no women around.

"Sure, only the most debased people practice it in our society, but that's because the rest of us are better able to restrain our instincts, and are socially influenced to do so."

I feel sorry for you that it requires any restraint at all. I can't imagine what that would be like. While rape is very common, much more common than just being committed by the most debased, I doubt it remains instinctual. And the instictual rape would be reproduction based sexual dominance, not the covering of inadequecies, displays of power, and straight out psychosis we see in modern day rapists.

"Rape is very much socially determined, see the rape of the Sabine women, or the rape of German women by Soviet troops, or the rape of women in Bosnia, or in war-torn areas of Africa where women are taken as sex slaves and used by the warring factions"

As I said earlier, captured enemies are a very common source of slavery. And this kind of wartime behaviour does provide a power exchange through degredation. But this is about power, degredation and death, not a social hierarchy.

""We are not bonobos, our behaviours are quite different from theirs."

Are they? I'd say they share most of our sexual instincts"

Yes. Just because they have sex at the drop of a hat does not make them people. They do it for very different reasons. If you are looking for an animal to compare us to, try the violent chimps. They reflect our behaviour much better than the bonobos, and yet they are still further from us than our ancient ancestors.

"in fact, year-round estrus and the use of sex as social glue and for the establishment of social hierarchies is as far as I know unique to the human/bonobo clade."

Humans do not use sex as social glue, we use it for reproduction and pleasure. Orgies are not common in human societies, espeically not christian ones. Sex outside marriage is frowned upon. Sex is most certainly not the social glue. Sex is also not used to establish hierarchies among humans. Strength, intellect, ancestory are all used, not sex. Superficially we might resemble bonobos because we do have sex for other reasons than reproduction, but our reasons are not the same as the bonobos.

"use grooming and fighting to accomplish those things. I'd say we're half way between chimps and bonobos in that regard, aggressive and patriarchal like chimpanzees but also using sex for glue and to establish hierarchical dominance like the bonobo."

You can say that, but saying it doesn't make it true. We do not use sex as social glue, in fact we have taboos which prevent this (and not just christian cultures). We also do not use sex to establish hierarchical dominance. We establish hierarchical dominance through violence, intellect, money and prestige.

""Most young men trying to exert their social dominance get into fights with other men, they do not try to penetrate other men."

No, they just scream "fuck you, you asshole!""

Verbal sparring as a prelude to physical action, no penetrative sex anywhere. They could just say "You're an arsehole" or any number of phrases. You are placing far to much emphasis on two words, and completing ignoring the actual actions which take place.

"The instinct is there, it's just been repressed, along with much of our sexuality, as we've become "civilized" and some aspects of our sexuality proved inconvenient. In prison and boy's schools, things are less polite"

Interesting that you compare boys schools to prisons, I'm sure many victims agree with the connection. But this kind of rape has nothing to do with ancestoral sexuality, or sex at all. It is all about power, not establishing social hierarchy or glueing a society together. Even with our ancestors rape was the reproductive rights of the dominant male as with Lions or cattle. The dominant male did not become dominant through penetrating his rivals, but through beating them or outperforming them.
You might want to have a look at some victim support sites so you can learn the difference between rape and sex?

"It is hard to see how a low status bonobo that offers sexual favors to a higher status one in return for protection is different from a low status prisoner who does the same."

First of all you are talking about two different species, in completely different circumstances. Also you have restricted the human species to prisoners, not the whole population. And you have swapped from glueing a society together and social hierarchy, to paying for protection. Are you really claiming you cannot see the difference? And if so, why are you wasting your time discussing when you should be reading?

"You will not see this behavior in any species outside the human/bonobo clade. In other species, sex is used purely for reproduction"

First of all you are looking at the superficial action of sex, without understanding the underlying reasons. Yes bonobos and humans have sex for reasons other than reproduction, but they do have the same reasons. Second, your knowledge of species is extremely limited.

"As I understand it, depression occurs in every society, under various names and with varying explanations"

Well we have a different understanding of this topic. I have no idea where yours comes from, just as you have no idea where mine comes from. But I know where my understanding comes from, and it has proved most reliable so far, and without evidence to change it, I will have to continue to use it as is.

"" 'In fact, I see both phenomena in dogs: perky, attentive behavior when they think they may get a treat, hang-dog behavior when they see no possibility of it.'

I'm sure you see many things in dogs, whether those things are really there or not is another matter."

Sorry, but you'd have to be blind not to see this behavior in dogs. "

If you had extended the quote you would see I not only observe this behaviour, but explain it for you.

"the damn things run up to you and wag their tails and even dance in circles when it's dinner time. "

That is not the behaviour you described. You described knowledge of wanted and wanted behaviour and the reward/punishment which goes with it. Dinnertime is habitual.

"The fight or flight response is connected with powerful emotions in us"

It's a threat response for biological survival, nothing more.

"There is no reason to suppose that it's different for animals, since much the same physiological changes occur and much the same brain regions light up, which happen, BTW, to be primitive brain regions that we share in common with lower animals, e.g., the limbic system. "

Different species, different lifestyles, different situations, different brain structures, different emotion requirements and abilities. What's the likelihood of all this evolutionary diversity developing a very limited and similar emotional range?

"Fear has enormous survival value, which is why so many animals exhibit it. There is a strong selection disadvantage in walking up to a lion and peeking in its mouth. Freezing up and staying still is a consequence of fear, we do it ourselves when we're startled. It makes us less obvious to a potential predator. The precise behaviors do vary from species to species, but there's a great deal of commonality. The freeze response probably goes back hundreds of millions of years, birds do it as well."

Fight or flight (of which freezing can be a part or a malfunction) is common, and it's also instinctual, and if it was emotional, it would be a faction of a humans emotional range, and the majority of any other animals emotional range.

"But you'd be wrong. My aversion wasn't mild and it was accompanied by complete lack of sexual interest. Forced Gay flipped that in a couple of months, as it has for many others."

Do you mean complete lack of sexual interest, or no interest in sex with women? Also without knowing you a lot better it would be impossible for me to take your word that your aversion was internal not social. Especially if your answer to the previous question is women and not everybody.

"Check out the many threads on forced gay, forced straight, and the like. These files change orientation quickly and easily."

All files have successes and failures. None have 100% success rate, and most only get a comment from a tiny percentage of those who downloaded it.
Check out the homophobic religious groups and their massive failure rate. If these files were successful, they'd be used to help pray away the gay.

"As someone else said in another thread (this objection comes up frequently), you have to listen to these files to understand what they do. You can quite literally feel the switches flipping in your subconscious."

What makes you think I have not listened to them, and many more? And since you are using peoples comments, be sure to stop ignoring the ones which say hypnosis cannot make you do anything you don't want to do.

""Yes, wanting to be a certain way and being that way are different, that is why so many people need some reason to allow themselves to be bi or gay. They already are that way, they just can't live that way because of social pressures."

Some bi guys listen to Forced Gay for just that reason."

Yes, being bi was the first step to becoming gay. Plenty of gay guys have gone down that road. Or they are still bi, but are more on the gay end of the scale, and wish to stay there for whatever reason. A bi guy in a monogomous relationship with another guy is also "forced" gay.

"That is one of my concerns with these files. They can and do flip orientation. I wouldn't want the religious nuts to get their hands on them, because they'd use them as a means of bullying and social control. "

The religious nuts are crazy, but they aren't stupid. Well not all of them anyway. They know many brainwashing techniques, and they do not work.

"I should add that I don't believe that all gay people would be flipped by these files."

Of course not, they would have to be bi but predominately homosexual. Or willing to engage in heterosexual activities for other reasons.

"Finally, I believe that some gay guys are born that way, that they have essentially female sexual responses. Unlike the male sexual response, the female sexual response is bisexual, but it isn't for the most part penetrative."

Gay guys are not all like the ones allowed on tv for everyone to laugh at. Gay guys are like other people, a wide variety. The over the top hypereffeminate ones are the most obvious, and the rest are fine with them grabbing the attention. Some gay guys are stereotypically macho, meathead, straight acting, but have absolutely no sexual interest in women. Also you'll find that men and women are bisexual, and society determines the value of behaviours.

"Conversely, some people seem to have a need to draw unrealistic lines between man and beast. Those arguments always fail, whether it's fish can't feel pain or dogs can't think"

True, and inbetween you have realists who observe species and determine the motivations for their behaviours based on the species being observed, not the one doing the observing.

"because they're based on emotionality rather than thought. In fact, we share 99.5% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and are separated by only six million years, not much more than the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. Research inevitably shows that we share more rather than less."

We share a lot of our DNA with many species. Also we are not 99.5% percent the same as chimps in any practical way. Obviously it's the last .5% that makes the biggest difference.
Also research does not show we share more rather than less, although people assumed this was the inevitable outcome because they look so much like as. But the fact is the second most advanced tool maker on the planet is not an ape, it is a crow.

"The changes to our brain have occurred mostly in the more recently evolved areas, e.g., the cerebral cortex. Functions that evolved earlier have remained localized in more primitive areas, e.g., emotions are seated in the limbic system, which dates all the way back to tetrapod fish.. "

Our brains are a little more complex than lego, it all tends to interact with itself. Even with the same basic foundation, different brain structures will produce a wide variety of behaviours, intelligence, and yes, emotional range. Disprove evolution and you've got a shot at convincing me, but evolutionary pressures alone would ensure emotional variation.

"Yes, many animals have been trained to "communicate" with people. Now we have people doing with apes and dolphins what people have been doing for centuries with dogs and horses, with very little improvement on results. What this shows is not animal intelligence, but human intelligence. We have trained animals to understand what we want them to do when promted. As Carl Sagan said, "It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese"."

Intelligence is intelligence. "

Yes, and intelligent humans training animals to behave a certain way is human intelligence, not animal intelligence.

"You can't train a shark to understand words. You can train a dog, or a human child. Actually, the dogs learn words themselves, they understand far more words than they're taught. How could they not? They have a neural network, same as us. "

Actually we have very little idea what we could train a shark to do, as there has been so little research done in that area. Sharks aren't mammals, and people like you thought it was inevitable that research would show mammals were more intelligent. Also sharks eat us. As for dogs, we have been training them for thousands of years and breeding them to be more trainable. Dogs do not understand words at all, they recognise sounds and a learnt response to that sound, just like Pavlov and the bell. If you want to test this, yell the words "good dog, come here" angily at a dog and watch it's response. Then gently say "Get away or I'll rip your head off" and again observe the response. The dog will completely ignore your words and respond to your tone, unless it has been specifically trained to act differently.

"The animals discover these things on their own, and their children observe them closely. So it differs from human culture only in that language isn't involved."

Actually it differs from human culture because it stagnates. There is no refinement, there is no experimentation with different tools, there is no trading of ideas. The chimps merely copy their parents exactly. Only one chimp in a group discovered the practice, the rest copied it. In human culture this would happen, but there would also be experimentation with different materials, expanding and refining the idea.

"Animals have in fact been observed making discoveries and then learning from one another, e.g., when a bird (forget which kind) discovered that it could break milk bottles by dropping a stone on them, the other birds in the area learned that behavior, and the birds began breaking milk bottles all over the place."

Like with the chimps, this is just copying. Most species that raise their young rely on this inbuilt mimicry, but is it culture? With the birds (probably crows) was that the extent of their tool use? Did they use the same idea on other containers? Did they try other ammunition besides stones?
Have a look at the wide range of behaviour and tool use among crows, and you will never be impressed by a chimp or dolphin again.

"Our own ancestors seem to have refined tools very slowly, using them for hundreds of thosuands of years before moving on to the next stage. Of course we're smarter than they were and better able to make refinements, but it's an illustration I think that the creation of culture antedates our species and has grown progressively more sophisticated."

And at which point did our ancestors develop culture? Was it with very basic tool use like chimps? Was it with more advanced tool use like crows? Was it with language and painting, meaningful communication? What "culture" any animals have is very primitive, and as desperate as we are, it's not really anything like us.
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Postby Alien4420 » November 27th, 2009, 3:19 pm

"Depends if your the wife or not. The fact they were 'traded', owned from father to husband seems a lot like slavery to me? Being owned based on gender is not different to being owned based on skin colour or ancestry."

My personal inclination is to draw a tighter distinction. A draftee is required to serve in the military: his service isn't voluntary, but he isn't considered a slave. And contemporary societies in which married women don't have freedom -- Saudi Arabia, for example, in which a woman can't even leave the house without written permission from a male relative -- make a not-very-subtle distinction between marriage and slavery.

"Then why was slavery outlawed? If your theory was true it would have died out through economic competition. But it was not efficiency that caused societies to outlaw slavery, it was social evolution. It was the decision that slavery was wrong, not that it was inefficient."

At the risk of repeating myself, I'd argue that society's decision that slavery was wrong was a consequence of technical and economic factors, not the other other way around. Society shapes its notions of morality to circumstance and the stronger society imposes its morality on the weaker. Nineteenth-century capitalism was arguably just as cruel as slavery.

A contemporary example: arguably, from a golden rule perspective, socialism is more moral than capitalism, in which one man has vast resources while another goes hungry. But the relative inefficiency of socialist economies meant that they were out-competed by capitalist economies. So the moral value system which was less moral from the perspective of the golden rule or categorical imperative became the predominant one.

" 'Conversely, Thomas Jefferson didn't free his slaves because he couldn't afford to, and Washington freed his only upon his death. Most people react first to practical considerations.'

"So it was not more efficient for them to free their slaves?"

It was very much more efficient from the perspective of society as a whole, which included not just the plantations of the south but the burgeoning industry of the north. And slavery and specialization just don't coexist very well. In the modern world, they exist mostly because less efficient slave-holding societies like India haven't yet complete the transformation to more modern capitalist ones.

"England has a long, long history of slavery, in one form or another. England built America, and America did ok from slavery, and from inequality. Did the civil war end slavery in America, or the civil rights movement?"

Everyone has a long history of slavery. Anyway, I'd argue that neither the Civil War nor the civil rights movement ended slavery. Adam Smith ended slavery by concocting an economic system more efficient than mercantilism. Or discovering it when the fruit was ripe for the picking.

"You first need a critical mass of population for this specialization to occur. You also need a society which allows it to occur, in other words you need to abolish slavery, caste systems, gender inequality etc. before this can occur."

But it occurred at a time when all of those things were present. Slavery was practiced in both the North and the South, women were unequal, and the class system was still in place. What one did have I think was the development first of a merchant class during the renaissance, and then the industrial revolution, which set the stage for the evolution of mercantilism into modern capitalism. As capitalism took hold and the middle class grew, the caste systems began to weaken as the middle class attained economic power and education and then wanted political power. And during that period we have two parallel trends: the capitalism of Adam Smith, and the attacks on the prerogatives of birth -- that is, the beginning of representative democracy, in which power is ceded to the middle class. Slavery and aristocracy, the two poles of the aristocratic system, fell pretty much simultaneously. Gender inequality started to fall not long after, along with remaining prejudices; the process is still ongoing.

It all becomes clear when one sees that the outcome of the process is an ideal market system in which each citizen is allowed to become the most efficient producer possible as determined by the differential rewards of the labor market. The actual results are not always conducive to human happiness, e.g., I read about a study that found that women today aren't as happy on average as women were 50 years ago. But I believe it's the inevitable course of things, given that a market system is the most efficient one at our current stage of technological development.

"He used slave labour and slaughter opposition, his Germany resembled communist Russia more than the capitalist societies. Also for Hitler it was much more efficient to have Jews digging ditches while starving. They could not fight back from that position and they used less resources while straving. Hitler would have done better if he could have hidden his intentions from Stalin."

Hitler's use of Jews as slave laborers was anything but efficient. Then as now, Jews were disproportionately educated professionals and had an economically important role in trade, engineering, medicine, and so forth. The use of an aeronautical engineer to dig ditches is nothing if not stupid from an economic perspective. Furthermore, Hitler slaughtered or worked to death at great expense millions of economically productive citizens at a time when Germany faced labor shortages and lacked soldiers.

"It's funny that you quoted me, yet I still have to repeat myself. The societies you are referring to did not get rich after they got rid of slavery, they got rid of slavery while in a position of power. This and other social changes led to increased population *critical mass), choice of education and occupation, and the modern societies which are blinding you."

That isn't really true. The US, for example, was anything but an economic power at the time slavery was abolished in the North -- it was still largely agrarian, exporting raw materials to Europe and importing manufactured wares. And arguably even the societies that were already powerful, e.g., the British Empire, already had a dual system -- little slavery at home, but slavery in the culturally more primitive imperial possessions that supplied raw materials under the mercantile system.

"OK, in American history you just won the War of Independence. You have the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement to go."

Begin with the Reformation, and the rise of puritanism and the puritan revolution in England. Then, in the late 18th century, one has capitalism, the American and French Revolutions, the industrial revolution. That segues into the abolition of slavery, then the beginnings of women's lib in the late 19th century ("And the woman novelist/They'd none of them be missed" -- W. S. Gilbert)/ Then the end of Jim Crow, more women's lib, religious equality. Now gay liberation, etc. It's a single process with I believe one unconscious goal: the efficient use of labor in a specialized market economy. People take part in the changes but don't see the overall pattern, don't understand why these moral changes are occurring. Which is interesting in and of itself. I think you could write a book on the unconscious contributions people make to social evolution.

And -- I find this most interesting -- you mentioned slavery. We claim to abhor it and it is practiced in our country only illegally. And yet we're more than willing to buy products that are made in other countries, sometimes even in our own by slaves. Where is the moral indignation? Surely if we abhorred slavery on a moral basis as we claim, we would refuse to trade with countries like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia that practice it? Or at least buy where we could products that are made in America, or other countries that discourage slavery. For the most part, we do what's economically advantageous, that is, if the cheapest carpet is made in India by kids chained to looms we buy that, if the cheapest carpet is made in an automated factory we buy that instead.

"So you have interviewed guys from a wide variety of cultures and every single one has sex with other men in an all male environment? Even if they find the other males repulsive?"

That isn't what I said. Merely that it's a commonplace behavior.

" 'In Saudi Arabia, for example, most of the guys that have sex with men drop it the moment they can get married and can have sex with women.'

"Most will drop it, not all. So obviously some are bi and don't deny it. The culture may have a lot to do with those who stop, the same as American and Australian culture makes a lot of gay (and bi) men get married and act for a living. And does every Saudi guy do this, or do some simply not have sex until they are married? Your example seems intentionally vague."

My example is vague because it's based on an anecdotal account rather than a formal study which, I suspect, would be impossible to conduct, given that in Saudi Arabia homosexuality is punishable by death or amputation. Here's where one of the articles I read:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200705/gay-saudi-arabia

I've read too that in Mexico, homosexual penetration isn't considered gay and gay men are expected to service straight guys who don't have girlfriends. That distinction between penetrative and receptive sex, the second considered gay and the former not, seems to be fairly common, e.g., it was the rule in Ancient Greece and AFAIK remains so in societies that still practice Hellenistic pederasty, e.g., the Pashtun in Afghanistan. It's also the rule in prison here. I tend to suspect that it's the norm, rather than the all-encompassing taboo against homosexuality in modern Christian society.

"No, many bi men will choose that. Most, if not all, straight men will choose to masturbate with a pic of a woman or their imagination."

That isn't what happens in prison, etc. Or most guys are bi, in which case the argument is moot. IIRC, Kinsey found that a minority were bi, but that could be socially determined, see for example Meade's work on Samoa, or the aforementioned societies that practice pederasty.

"Sometimes this is taste, sometimes it is dominance, and sometimes it is giving oneself permission. And many guys in prison do not do this, and many do not have sex while in prison. Though the restrictive nature of prison and accompanying depression would make this the most likely environment for a truly straight guy to seek male companionship."

I don't believe there is such a thing as a truly straight guy in that sense. If you close your eyes, you can have sex with anything that doesn't bite. And guys in prison do that, or, as I said, try to make the punk as female as possible -- choose a young, long-haired, slim person with feminine features, shave his body hair, make him cross dress, etc.

Interestingly enough, women in prison form families, with a father, mother, and children. Instinct runs deep.

"That makes no sense. People would rather undego the stigma of homosexuality than masturbate?"

Dude, you aren't doing 20 years to life. That's a long time to content yourself with centerfolds. Also, keep in mind that in prison (or in boy's boarding school, etc.), there's no stigma attached to penetrative homosexuality. The attitude in prison is "You do what you have to do": the stigma is accorded purely to the receptive partner, the punk or the fag. This is apparently true in many street gangs as well, in which a gay member offers himself to the other boys for anal intercourse, though in that case there's another adaptation, which is that the boy isn't considered gay, but rather someone who is just making himself available to be a good guy.

"Are you bi or gay? Have you ever experienced prejudice of any kind? You sound completely clueless, and you are once again parroting the homophobic religious nuts."

As I have never read anything written by the homophobic religious nuts, I can't be accused of parroting them. But, in general, ideology holds little interest for me. Ideologues often try to shape reality to fit their desired goals and belief system. I prefer to base my conclusions on observation, and if that kills some sacred cows, so be it. I'd say that my current understanding of homosexuality would please neither side: the religious nuts want to believe that it's just a matter of choice, and gay activists want to believe that everyone is born that way and can't be changed. Neither position agrees very well with reality. So while I agree with the overall social goals of the gay liberation movement rather than the goals of the religious nut movement, I'm not going to allow my support of gay rights to distort my understanding.

" 'Not all, many.'

"So your whole arguement just fell apart. Your shining example was an example of ommission."

If everyone had to engage in a behavior for it to exist, then heterosexuality arguably wouldn't exist because some people are gay

". . . it does not support your idea that men will seek out this violation when there are no women around."

That's hardly my idea -- it's a commonplace observation.

“Don’t talk to me of naval tradition. It’s all rum, sodomy and the lash!”
- Winston Churchill

British warships employed a "peg boy" who sat on a peg to dilate his anus so the sailors could use him for penetrative sex.

"I feel sorry for you that it requires any restraint at all. I can't imagine what that would be like. While rape is very common, much more common than just being committed by the most debased, I doubt it remains instinctual. And the instictual rape would be reproduction based sexual dominance, not the covering of inadequecies, displays of power, and straight out psychosis we see in modern day rapists."

Not at all true. Bonobos use penetrative sex to establish dominance and cement relationships not just with females, but with other males and juveniles. And rape fantasies are apparently commonplace. However, you seem to be missing the fact that when we desire to have intercourse with a woman (or man), and do not because that person isn't willing, we are exercising the restraint to which I referred. Which I believe means that just about any man with a sex drive is restraining himself from rape, just as, when he walks through a store without buying something, he is restraining himself from theft.

"As I said earlier, captured enemies are a very common source of slavery. And this kind of wartime behaviour does provide a power exchange through degredation. But this is about power, degredation and death, not a social hierarchy."

I'm not sure I see the distinction. Power and the offering of favors to the powerful are at the root of social hierarchies, in animals and people both.

"Yes. Just because [bonobos] have sex at the drop of a hat does not make them people. They do it for very different reasons. If you are looking for an animal to compare us to, try the violent chimps. They reflect our behaviour much better than the bonobos, and yet they are still further from us than our ancient ancestors."

We are more closely related to bonobos than chimps. Like bonobos, we use sex as social glue (chimps use grooming) and to establish dominance hierarchies, but like chimps, we are also aggressive and patriarchal. So our behavior is mid-way between the two; cladistics suggests that its closer to the founder species that gave rise to the human-bonobo clade. The bonobo then continued to evolve in the sex-as-social-glue direction.

"Humans do not use sex as social glue, we use it for reproduction and pleasure. Orgies are not common in human societies, espeically not christian ones. Sex outside marriage is frowned upon. Sex is most certainly not the social glue. Sex is also not used to establish hierarchies among humans. Strength, intellect, ancestory are all used, not sex. Superficially we might resemble bonobos because we do have sex for other reasons than reproduction, but our reasons are not the same as the bonobos."

It's long been known that humans use sex for social glue. That is why our females are always receptive. In mammals not part of the human-bonobo clade, females are not. They become receptive only as necessary for procreation, when they ovulate, and the males engage in sex only at that time. Sex binds human males to human females and, arguably, in our prehistory and sometimes today, to one another.

" 'No, they just scream "fuck you, you asshole!'

"Verbal sparring as a prelude to physical action, no penetrative sex anywhere. They could just say "You're an arsehole" or any number of phrases. You are placing far to much emphasis on two words, and completing ignoring the actual actions which take place."

You aren't asking where the choice of words comes from. The words are an expression of instinct. After all, what is intrinsically wrong with fucking, or being fucked? Nothing, it's how we make babies, and it's generally considered a pleasurable activity.

But, you say, the stigma of homsexuality has something to do with this. -- OK, but then, why doesn't a guy who's angry at another guy scream "Kiss you"? The subconscious here speaks of deeper instincts, instincts which as I have said are readily apparent in the actions of the more debased members of our society, instincts which are also readily apparent in the interesting and commonplace phenomenon of sadomasochism -- in which, improbably, our procreative instincts are linked with instincts of dominance and submission. Improbably unless one observes the behavior of our closest relatives, the bonobos, who have no veneer of civilization to interfere with the expression of instinct.

So -- we have social taboos against rape and against saying "fuck you," but the social taboos against rape are significantly stronger, as are the punishments, so it occurs less often and we're more likely to hear the verbal threat. Also, in dominance contests in general, we and our animal relatives threaten more often than we fight.

"Even with our ancestors rape was the reproductive rights of the dominant male as with Lions or cattle. The dominant male did not become dominant through penetrating his rivals, but through beating them or outperforming them."

In our ancestors up to and including the chimp-bonobo-human precursor. After the chimp lineage split off from the human-bonobo lineage, the human-bonobo ancestor changed and started using sex for something else entirely. I should add that the observation of the role of sex as social glue in human society isn't mine, it was proposed and earned general acceptance maybe 40 years ago. Understanding of bonobos is more recent, and, again, conclusions about the role of sex in bonobo society aren't mine, but that of the scientists who have studied them. I've drawn the link between human and bonobos, and added some interpretation re behavior in prison, our use of language, sadomasochism, etc., but I'm sure my observations there aren't unique, they follow on naturally from the observations above.

" 'It is hard to see how a low status bonobo that offers sexual favors to a higher status one in return for protection is different from a low status prisoner who does the same.'

"First of all you are talking about two different species, in completely different circumstances. Also you have restricted the human species to prisoners, not the whole population. And you have swapped from glueing a society together and social hierarchy, to paying for protection. Are you really claiming you cannot see the difference? And if so, why are you wasting your time discussing when you should be reading?"

Two very closely related species: one might as well be discussing the behavior of tigers and lions. In circumstances that are far from completely different. However, I would argue that many of the differences we see between the two groups do have to do with society. Our instinctive behaviors are closer to the bonobos. Society constrains those behaviors. We have repressed many elements of our sexuality in order to create our modern behavior, indeed, arguably, we go out of our way to repress it by hiding the genitals and breasts, removing facial hair, washing off our pheromones. Society then provides artificial substitutes that don't trigger the deeper instincts, e.g., perfume and characteristically male or female dress and hairstyles (short vs. long). Arguably, the repression of these instincts has been a necessary part of the evolution of modern society and even part of the sexual response itself (as in fetishes).

If you don't see the relationship between paying for protection and social hierarchy I'm not the one who needs to do some reading. In both people and other animals, the more dominant animal takes resources from the less dominant one. It may then share some of those resources back with its friends, mates, and the animals that are submissive to it. The behavior of hunting chimpanzees seems strikingly human, e.g., some young chimps might go on a hunt and kill a monkey, only to have it taken away from them by a dominant animal which then shares it with its friends and mate, keeping of course the lion's share for itself. This would seem to be a pretty good description of human behavior as well, whether it's the serf paying rent to his lord or the worker yielding some of his productivity to the owners, the executives, and the board of directors.

Sorry if this interferes with your apparently strong desire to maintain a strong separation between human and animal, but, really, we're a branch on the tree, an ape that specializes in a big brain and speech just as your crows specialize in toolmaking, bees in social behavior and communication, parrots in speech (their auditory centers are apparently as capable as ours), etc.

"That is not the behaviour you described. You described knowledge of wanted and wanted behaviour and the reward/punishment which goes with it. Dinnertime is habitual."

It's precisely the behavior I described. We were talking about hope and hopefulness, and depression, were we not? Depression may be observed in laboratory animals -- see the experiments on learned helplessness. And hope is observable every time our dog comes up to me hoping for a treat, as is dejection, when he doesn't get one. These emotions evolved because they are important to survival.

" 'The fight or flight response is connected with powerful emotions in us'

"It's a threat response for biological survival, nothing more."

Of course it is. But what do you think emotions are? They're generalized motivational states that have a role in biological survival, originating in a primitive part of the brain, the limbic system, and mediated by the release of specialized neurotransmitters/hormones that effect synaptic transmission and other elements of our physiological state. This is why our emotional state can be altered through the use of drugs. Even affection and love appear to be mediated by a hormone.

"Different species, different lifestyles, different situations, different brain structures, different emotion requirements and abilities. What's the likelihood of all this evolutionary diversity developing a very limited and similar emotional range?"

Much higher than the probability of it's being different. That's because evolution occurs without the guiding hand of intelligence, it's a painstaking process of random mutation, of trial and error. So evolution is extremely conservative, e.g., the bones of our inner ear can be traced to bones in the jaws of ancient reptiles. Evolution modifies what's present, and often modifies by adding on to existing structures because of the way in which the embryo develops, with specialization occurring progressively.

But quite beyond that, our emotions are very basic and serve the same needs in animals. The fight or flight response, forex, can be found in fish. They have to flee from predators and fight rivals just as we do. So why invent a new mechanism when one already exists? Instead, the mechanism gets modified to fit a new niche -- a predator, for example, is probably going to be more aggressive and less likely to flee than a herbivore, but the herbivore can still charge a matador and the lion can still turn tail and run from a bigger lion.

" 'But you'd be wrong. My aversion wasn't mild and it was accompanied by complete lack of sexual interest. Forced Gay flipped that in a couple of months, as it has for many others.'

"Do you mean complete lack of sexual interest, or no interest in sex with women? Also without knowing you a lot better it would be impossible for me to take your word that your aversion was internal not social. Especially if your answer to the previous question is women and not everybody."

I meant complete lack of sexual interest in men. In fact, the thought of it grossed me out, as it does many guys (and I understand that at least some gay guys feel that way about sex with women). When I don't listen to the file and it starts to wear off, that revulsion starts to return.

I have no idea what you mean by the revulsion being internal and not social. How can revulsion not be internal? My sense of this is that at a minimum it's the revulsion of reaction formation, as described by Freud, and that it may also have an instinctive component, a more primitive biologically-determined reaction to secondary sexual characteristics and pheromones that however can be overridden with hypnosis and perhaps by whatever processes lead to the formation of sexual object choice during childhood.

"All files have successes and failures. None have 100% success rate, and most only get a comment from a tiny percentage of those who downloaded it.
Check out the homophobic religious groups and their massive failure rate. If these files were successful, they'd be used to help pray away the gay."

I have seen evidence of only one failure on forced gay, someone who popped out of trance as one does when one is completely unwilling to accept a suggestion. If failure were common, I'd expect to see some mentions in the threads and reviews. Of course, someone who can't go into trance at all is never going to get far enough.

I'm not familiar with the methodology of the religious groups. But I wouldn't count on those kooks to get things right, they aren't bright enough. If one looks at the responsible psychological literature, however, one finds plenty of examples of changes in orientation, beginning with Sigmund Freud, who "stated that homosexuality could sometimes be removed through hypnotic suggestion." Anna Freud later said, “...nowadays we can cure many more homosexuals than was thought possible in the beginning." The gist of it seems to be that in the case of homosexuality, orientation can sometimes be changed, and that this has been known for 100 years now. Heterosexual to homosexual transformations obviously aren't something psychologists would toy with, but I suspect that the situation may not be symmetrical, in that it may be easier to make a straight man gay than a gay man straight. This is based on my belief that homosexuality can be at least in part biologically determined.

"What makes you think I have not listened to them, and many more? And since you are using peoples comments, be sure to stop ignoring the ones which say hypnosis cannot make you do anything you don't want to do."

That last is merely an opinion, one of those annoying oft-repeated beliefs that don't correspond very well to fact -- "man is the only animal that laughs," "man uses only 10% of his brain," etc. A person can and will reject a suggestion if he has a strong aversion to it. And suggestions can be weakened by circumstance and internal mental processes. But hypnotists have techniques to circumvent the former and, to some extent, the latter. And this is true only of strong aversion. A subject will accept a suggestion to do something one doesn't want to do if the aversion isn't that strong. Like a post-hypnotic suggestion to pour a jug of water over one's head, as opposed to killing one's grandfather.

"The religious nuts are crazy, but they aren't stupid. Well not all of them anyway. They know many brainwashing techniques, and they do not work."

I can't really remark on that because I'm not familiar with them or what they do. But even if they aren't stupid, I suspect that circumstances aren't conducive to success. They're dealing with people who are and want to be gay but are pressured by society, and trying to bludgeon the gayness out of them with talk of Jesus and hellfire and damnation. Such people are I think going to be much more resistant than someone who merely wants to experiment with his sexuality, broaden his horizons, indulge in a hypnofetish, what have you.

Also, I've found that in general the curse files are far more effective than other files, and I gather I'm alone in that -- I've seen people say "I've been trying files on this site and nothing happened until I listened to Curse Love Potatoes," that sort of thing. I suspect that the effectiveness of the file is an important contributing factor.

"Of course not, they would have to be bi but predominately homosexual. Or willing to engage in heterosexual activities for other reasons."

No, not true, the limited anecdote we have here suggests that it affects really gay guys. I know of three accounts now.

"We share a lot of our DNA with many species. Also we are not 99.5% percent the same as chimps in any practical way. Obviously it's the last .5% that makes the biggest difference.

Also research does not show we share more rather than less, although people assumed this was the inevitable outcome because they look so much like as. But the fact is the second most advanced tool maker on the planet is not an ape, it is a crow."

By definition, it's the last .5% that makes all of the difference. But I disagree that we aren't like chimps in a practical way. We're mostly like chimps. Most of evolution hasn't been directed at distinguishing us from chimps -- that's that 99.5%, more, actually, since some the mutations will be random or secondary (a change in immune functioning, say, rather than something specific to our defining characteristics). Basically, our brains bulked up. We got smarter and developed the physiological modifications that allowed us to articulate complex sounds and get a big head through the birth canal, as well as some secondary characteristics, e.g., a new means of cooling the brain. From an evolutionary perspective, it's window dressing, changes in relatively few genes. The effect has been immense, a "singularity" as they put it akin in importance to nursing one's young or flight, or even the development of multicellulates or euykaryotes. But from an evolutionary perspective, even in the case of our defining characteristic, a big brain -- a dog has billions of neurons and the intelligence of a 2-1/2 year old. That's a lot farther from the 100-neuron brain of a flatworm than we are from the dog. You'd have to use scientific notation to express the ratio. So most of the heavy lifting had already been done. You're beginning with billions of neurons and then, from chimp to man, increasing the volume of the brain by a factor of four. So the brain increased in size by hundreds of millions or billions from that flatworm and by four times between chimp and man, and developed some specialized architectures, such as those that confer on us the ability to use sophisticated speech.

"Our brains are a little more complex than lego, it all tends to interact with itself. Even with the same basic foundation, different brain structures will produce a wide variety of behaviours, intelligence, and yes, emotional range. Disprove evolution and you've got a shot at convincing me, but evolutionary pressures alone would ensure emotional variation."

Emotional variation, yes, but it doesn't have to go very far and in fact can't, for reasons I mentioned, fight or flight serves fish and it serves us, sexual attraction serves fish and it serves us. That isn't to say that changes don't occur, for example, I think we clearly have some recently developed genes that give us an affection for tool use -- chimps obviously have some of these, but look at the phenomenon of Asperger's, which in the best theory I've seen consists of too many sex-linked tool making genes -- a sign that some of those genes have evolved very recently.

"Yes, and intelligent humans training animals to behave a certain way is human intelligence, not animal intelligence."

To some extent. But we aren't talking about training, and it doesn't alter my assertion that intelligence is intelligence. It's what a neural net does, whether it's in a flatworm or an Einstein. Einstein's brain is merely bigger and somewhat more sophisticated in its organization. But still mostly like Lego, because genes can't code the connections between hundreds of billions of neurons, most of this has to be done through some kind of generalized architecture that is mostly capable of making its own connections -- neurons, glial cells, neural net. Just as a microprocessor is made up of repeated element and a 64-bit microprocessor is basically a four-bit microprocessor with bigger registers, wider data paths, maybe a slightly more complicated instruction set.

"Actually we have very little idea what we could train a shark to do, as there has been so little research done in that area. Sharks aren't mammals, and people like you thought it was inevitable that research would show mammals were more intelligent."

Don't tell me what I do or don't consider inevitable.

"Also sharks eat us. As for dogs, we have been training them for thousands of years and breeding them to be more trainable. Dogs do not understand words at all, they recognise sounds and a learnt response to that sound, just like Pavlov and the bell. If you want to test this, yell the words "good dog, come here" angily at a dog and watch it's response. Then gently say "Get away or I'll rip your head off" and again observe the response. The dog will completely ignore your words and respond to your tone, unless it has been specifically trained to act differently."

Actually, studies have shown that dogs know hundreds of words, the dumber breeds something like 800, the smarter breeds something like 1200. As to tone of voice, try screaming "I love you!" at your wife and see how she responds. Or, conversely, coo "I want to rip your head off." Like dogs, we accord priority to primitive vocal inflections, which are indicative of emotion. The only difference I see in this case is that being smarter, we're more sophisticated in our understanding of the significance of contradictions between meaning and intonation.

"Actually it differs from human culture because it stagnates. There is no refinement, there is no experimentation with different tools, there is no trading of ideas. The chimps merely copy their parents exactly. Only one chimp in a group discovered the practice, the rest copied it. In human culture this would happen, but there would also be experimentation with different materials, expanding and refining the idea."

Only in the modern era. The tools of our ancestors remained static for vast lengths of time, so much so that they characteristize eras. Arguably, the rapid progress we now make was a consequence partly of the increased brain capacity of Homo sapiens, but also of agriculture and the development of modern society with its emphasis on research and innovation. In any case, no one is asserting that humans don't have some special gifts, merely that they aren't as unique as once believed -- back in the man is the only animal who makes tools, man is the only animal who has culture, man is the only animal who makes war, man is the only animal who murders days. Jane Goodall and the chimpanzee signing experiments did a lot to change our view of things. Other observations continue to narrow the claims of human uniqueness, as well as illustrating the ways in which we are unique, e.g., in the recently-discovered modifications to a crucial speech gene that appears to have played an important role in human evolution.

"Animals have in fact been observed making discoveries and then learning from one another, e.g., when a bird (forget which kind) discovered that it could break milk bottles by dropping a stone on them, the other birds in the area learned that behavior, and the birds began breaking milk bottles all over the place."

"Like with the chimps, this is just copying. Most species that raise their young rely on this inbuilt mimicry, but is it culture?"

Biologists consider it part of culture because it varies from region to region and is passed from parent to child. So that one group of chimpanzees will use one set of tools, while another will use another group of tools. And tool use is only part of culture. Diets vary, behaviors vary, knowledge varies. An elderly baboon knows where the water holes are, and in its migrations, passes that knowledge on to the young.

It was once believed that birds and mammals placed in their natural environment would thrive owing to instinct, but in fact, in many species, if you just plop an animal down in an environment it won't survive. A snake or toad will, but for many higher animals, instinct isn't enough: it has to be trained by its parents to survive in the wild. These animals. when raised in captivity have to be trained by humans to survive in the wild, and even then it's a chancy process. These are the animals that have developed culture.

"And at which point did our ancestors develop culture? Was it with very basic tool use like chimps? Was it with more advanced tool use like crows? Was it with language and painting, meaningful communication? What "culture" any animals have is very primitive, and as desperate as we are, it's not really anything like us."

I think it would be most accurate to say that our ancestors already had culture, e.g., that the chimp-human progenitor had culture, and that the culture became more sophisticated over the next six million years. One can see human artifacts, artifacts of culture, becoming increasingly elaborate as the human neocortex enlarges and develops. Of course, we still don't know many of the specifics, we can only look at the artifacts that have survived such as stone tools and cave paintings, or Neanderthal burial sites.
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Postby Manturkey » November 29th, 2009, 9:12 pm

first, i think it is both hilarious/awesome that a site like this has a philosophy/religion/politics forum.

Now getting down to buisness, morality is certainly a vast and fascinating subject. I could write pages and pages about it, but i'll narrow it down to something small that i found particularly interesting, and that might spark further discussion.

Morality has been argued to be subjective and objective by many philosophers throughout time. Some say if you believe in God, morality MUST be objective, but i beg to differ. it is a difficult argument to put forth, and i'm sure some part of the philosophy community will laugh at me, but, if God gives us our morality, (10 commandents, blah, blah), does that truly make morality objective? What if God said, instead of thou shall not kill, he said thou shall kill? Would that make killing write? Now, the first answer that comes to my head is yes, because he is God, and assuming he's the all powerful space daddy that the three main monotheistic religions talk about, whatever he says is true.

However, when you look at how far religion has come at accepting different beliefs, values, cultures, and sexual orientations, you wonder if the word of God can be interpreted differently, or even pushed aside. There are many christians, muslims etc. that think that homosexuality is fine, yet their holy books specifically say it is not. Now this can easily be explained by claiming that the holy books aren't the word of God, (this makes the most sense to me) and that they are simply the word of man with his own subjective moral standpoints.

So, in conclusion, if God said that killing was moral, would it be moral, or would we choose to push aside that commandment as bunk? I know this is just random rambling, but please, cut me some slack. ( i'm 15 years old, though that shouldn't really be an excuse)
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Postby stephiebaby » November 30th, 2009, 10:00 pm

"My personal inclination is to draw a tighter distinction. A draftee is required to serve in the military: his service isn't voluntary, but he isn't considered a slave."

Required to serve, depending on many conditions. Also the draftees are voters, as are their families, which means they are not comparable to slaves in any way.

"And contemporary societies in which married women don't have freedom -- Saudi Arabia, for example, in which a woman can't even leave the house without written permission from a male relative -- make a not-very-subtle distinction between marriage and slavery. "

As I said before, this is only not slavery if you are not the wife.

"At the risk of repeating myself, I'd argue that society's decision that slavery was wrong was a consequence of technical and economic factors, not the other other way around."

Repetition does not improve an idea or change history. The fact is slavery was outlawed, it did not die out due to technical or economic factors. People were forced to abandon it, they did not switch to another system based on economic factors or efficency.

"A contemporary example: arguably, from a golden rule perspective, socialism is more moral than capitalism"

I would argue that morality requires knowledge and wisdom, and that a doomed system which ignores the reality of human nature cannot be more moral. The golden rule is a nice ideal, but it does not match reality either and is enforced with antidiscrimination laws.

"" 'Conversely, Thomas Jefferson didn't free his slaves because he couldn't afford to, and Washington freed his only upon his death. Most people react first to practical considerations.'

"So it was not more efficient for them to free their slaves?"

It was very much more efficient from the perspective of society as a whole"

The examples are of individuals, not societies. From both examples it would appear it was not more efficient for these people to free their slaves.

"And slavery and specialization just don't coexist very well. In the modern world, they exist mostly because less efficient slave-holding societies like India haven't yet complete the transformation to more modern capitalist ones."

Capitalist America has slavery. Sex slaves, cheap "slave" labour and of course the slaves in the illegal drug industry.

"Everyone has a long history of slavery."

That was my point, since you tried to argue that America was not built on slavery.

"Anyway, I'd argue that neither the Civil War nor the civil rights movement ended slavery. Adam Smith ended slavery "

Adam Smith is a quite common name, which Adam Smith are you referring to? Obviously not the one that died in 1790.

""Per Adam Smith, people are most productive in highly specialized occupations and when they're free to choose the endeavor that best suits their skills. This is why capitalism has gradually supplanted slavery, serfdom, caste and class systems"

You first need a critical mass of population for this specialization to occur. You also need a society which allows it to occur, in other words you need to abolish slavery, caste systems, gender inequality etc. before this can occur."

But it occurred at a time when all of those things were present."

Your assertion is impossible. While caste systems, slavery, gender inequality etc. are present, then by definition people are not free to choose. It is impossible to have freedom of choice under a system which does not allow freedom of choice.

"Hitler's use of Jews as slave laborers was anything but efficient. Then as now, Jews were disproportionately educated professionals and had an economically important role in trade, engineering, medicine, and so forth. The use of an aeronautical engineer to dig ditches is nothing if not stupid from an economic perspective. Furthermore, Hitler slaughtered or worked to death at great expense millions of economically productive citizens at a time when Germany faced labor shortages and lacked soldiers."

You are missing the point, and treating a madman like a modern business. You're not doing an economics degree are you? For Hitler it was much more efficient to have Jews digging ditches while starving. They could not fight back from that position and they used less resources while starving. Remember, we are talking about HITLER, not you or me, and not some modern business.

"The use of an aeronautical engineer to dig ditches is nothing if not stupid from an economic perspective."

Unless part of ones economic plan includes genocide.

"The societies you are referring to did not get rich after they got rid of slavery, they got rid of slavery while in a position of power. This and other social changes led to increased population *critical mass), choice of education and occupation, and the modern societies which are blinding you."

That isn't really true. The US, for example, was anything but an economic power at the time slavery was abolished in the North"

The U.S. become a power when they threw the English out. If they were not a power, they would have lost. England was not looking for an excuse to leave a worthless country, or one they had picked clean. The U.S.'s power grew from there, until they became a superpower through WWII. After WWII the civil rights movement and feminist movement provided the freedom of choice you have referred to. While slavery ended earlier, the true freedom of choice did not occur until after WWII.

"And arguably even the societies that were already powerful, e.g., the British Empire, already had a dual system -- little slavery at home, but slavery in the culturally more primitive imperial possessions that supplied raw materials under the mercantile system."

I have no idea what you are arguing here, as slavery is slavery, and the whole point of slavery is to get others to do the dirty work. This "dual system" you refer to, is slavery plain and simple.

"The bourgeoisie acquires economic power, and uses it to take power from the aristocracy and create institutions that serve the middle class, e.g., liberal democracy. "

"OK, in American history you just won the War of Independence. You have the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement to go."

Begin with the Reformation, and the rise of puritanism and the puritan revolution in England."

When talking about the American perspective, as we predominately are, taking power from the aristocracy and giving it to the middle class was the war of independence. The British were the aristocracy, and the colonists were the lower class.

" It's a single process with I believe one unconscious goal: the efficient use of labor in a specialized market economy."

That kind of goal would require conscious effort, no human has that as an unconscious goal. You are confusing cause and effect, and not for the first time. You see modern society, and you assume it was planned to end up as it is. Are you a supporter of "intelligent design"? You seem to using the same kind of thinking? You will find that social reforms were made for conscious social and humanitarian reasons, not unconscious economic ones.

"And -- I find this most interesting -- you mentioned slavery. We claim to abhor it and it is practiced in our country only illegally. And yet we're more than willing to buy products that are made in other countries, sometimes even in our own by slaves."

Yes, I mentioned this earlier as an example of slavery being more efficient, and ending slavery is a social choice, not an economic one. Thank you for finally catching on. While companies make economic decisions to use cheap (or slave) labour, individuals choose which products they buy, and the media makes money exposing sweatshops to the public so they can change their buying preferences. This has happened to several large companies over recent years.

""So you have interviewed guys from a wide variety of cultures and every single one has sex with other men in an all male environment? Even if they find the other males repulsive?"

That isn't what I said."

I know this isn't what you said, this is what is required for your beliefs to have any value. You are making broad generalizations based on anecdotal evidence of small portions of the population. You are picking individual behaviour and applying it to the species.

"Merely that it's a commonplace behavior."

Yes, bisexuality is commonplace, but it is not universal.

"My example is vague because it's based on an anecdotal account "

Yes, that is the most obvious reason for your vagueness, and the biggest flaw in the erroneous conclusions you are drawing. However it would appear that you are being intentionally vague, purposefully picking and choosing just to keep your beliefs intact?

"I've read too that in Mexico, homosexual penetration isn't considered gay "

People all around the world make excuses for behaviours they wish to participate in. A bi guy needing to justify his actions, is still a bi guy. China is the only country where your idea would make sense, as their one child policy has given them a predominately male population. Even now there are not enough wives to go around. Everywhere else in the world women are not hard to come by. Also in places where men dominate, you will find men want their women to themselves, they want virgin brides. History is full of examples where brides must be virgins, where women who have had sex are worthless (the bible instructs to kill these women along with the men, and only take the virgins as slave wives when conquering), and where women who are raped are punished for not protecting their virginity. With this kind of thinking, who cares if men are virgins or have sex with other men? Saudi would certainly have this kind of culture, I'm not sure about Mexico but the stereotype of "latina" men does fit this mentality.

"That distinction between penetrative and receptive sex, the second considered gay and the former not, seems to be fairly common"

Yes, but only among gay or bi men who are in denial. Among straight men and gay or bi men who are comfortable with who they are, this kind of thinking is a joke.

"It's also the rule in prison here."

Prison is not a good example. It concentrates violence and restricts victims. It also has specific power dynamics, which have a lot to do with who is penetrated. The idea of what is gay and what is not is determined by rape/power, by image/power, and by the same social values governing the wider society.

"No, many bi men will choose that. Most, if not all, straight men will choose to masturbate with a pic of a woman or their imagination."

That isn't what happens in prison, etc."

Really? So you think every guy will have sex with other guys in any all male environment, regardless of sexuality or attraction (revulsion)? You have a very low opinion of men, and unfortunately, a very common one. You have the "honour" of sharing thoughts with those people who claim women must be covered at all times because men can't control themselves and will rape any uncovered woman. Your belief is based on stereotypes at best.
A significant portion of the population is bisexual, though due to a variety of factors many are not comfortable with this. Some will make excuses to allow certain types of sex, and those who don't need the excuses will be happy to accomodate them. Some who make excuses will also force the issue if they can't find a willing partner. There are also people who wish to exert their power and their actions have nothing to do with sex or pleasure. And there are also people who have no attraction to other men and the only way they would ever participate, giving or receiving, is by force. Straight guys do exist, but they are an uninteresting story. Rape in prison is a horror story. A straight guy not having sex for a few years is abstinence or chastity, a boring story.

"I don't believe there is such a thing as a truly straight guy in that sense."

That is your belief and you are free to have it. Perhaps all the straight guys are bi or gay and just can't allow themselves to be themselves. While this is possible, it does not seem likely. It seems much more likely that some people are completely gay, some are completely straight, and some (perhaps most) are bi.
Just out of curiousity, do you also believe there is no such thing as a gay guy? (never mind, you answer this later)

"If you close your eyes, you can have sex with anything that doesn't bite."

Really? Perhaps you should have used the word "I" instead of "you"? I do understand the concept you are describing, but I would say you need to go one step further. Closing the eyes is not enough. Being blindfolded thinking one person is with you, would allow another person to switch places without you knowing. In this way many people could have sex with anyone, but without their consent this would be rape.

" And guys in prison do that, or, as I said, try to make the punk as female as possible -- choose a young, long-haired, slim person with feminine features, shave his body hair, make him cross dress,"

The young are selected for the same reason they are selected in all predatory situations, they are easy targets. Also CD's and TG's do exist, so there is no reason to think they would be absent from the prison population. The people you think are being forced to dress or act feminine for their partners benefit may just be naturally CD's or TG's and have a boyfriend in prison as they would outside prison. Prison may even give them an excuse to explore their fem side?
And because of the nature of prison (limits on supplies) and the nature of rapists (opportunity and power don't require window dressing) and the facts of bisexuality (whether excuses are needed or not) you will find that most male/male sex in prisons is between men who dress and act like men.
As for those who just close their eyes and think of something they like, it's called disassociation and quite common for rape victims.

"Interestingly enough, women in prison form families, with a father, mother, and children. Instinct runs deep. "

They form "families", not families. They basically form gangs and used family labels to denote rank. And they use violence and rape as tools of power, just like the men.

""That makes no sense. People would rather undego the stigma of homosexuality than masturbate?"

Dude, you aren't doing 20 years to life. That's a long time to content yourself with centerfolds. Also, keep in mind that in prison (or in boy's boarding school, etc.), there's no stigma attached to penetrative homosexuality."

20 to life covers one group of prisoners, not all of them. It also does not cover the military or boarding schools. You need to be specific, you said all male environments, not permanently all male environments. And I did say that the nature of prison made it the most likely place for a straight guy to seek male companionship, I just wasn't ignoring all the other prisoners to make a point. You are good at digging out something to support you, but you inevitably ignore large portions of the population while you do it.
As for the stigma attached to homosexuality, it does occur in both prison and boys schools. That is one reason why rape is used for dominance, and why the rapes are not reported. Also unless one is serving life, prison and boys schools do not exist in a vacuum. The people in those situations come from the wider society, and have to return there. They carry all the baggage in, and out.

"The attitude in prison is "You do what you have to do": "

Yes, you submit to rape rather than being beaten or stabbed.
In terms of sexual relief, doing what one has to can mean masturbating instead of having sex, as one has to masturbate because there are no women around. It's funny that you can accept straight guys doing what they have to if it means going against who they are and having sex with other men, but you can't accept straight guys doing what they have to if it means continuing their normal non prison behaviour of masturbating? Why is this?

"the stigma is accorded purely to the receptive partner, the punk or the fag."

LOL, only to the person telling themselves this. Everyone else would see both people as bi or gay.

"This is apparently true in many street gangs as well, in which a gay member offers himself to the other boys for anal intercourse, though in that case there's another adaptation, which is that the boy isn't considered gay, but rather someone who is just making himself available to be a good guy. "

This sounds like fantasy, or a gay gang. I could see it as an initiation, or domination, but not as sexual relief.

"As I have never read anything written by the homophobic religious nuts, I can't be accused of parroting them."

If you have never read anything written by homophobic religious nuts then you must be living under a rock, on the dark side of the moon. Even with antidiscrimination laws and freely available knowledge they are quite vocal, especially in the U.S. You may not purposefully seek them out, but it would be impossible for you to have avoided exposure, and quite naive to claim such a thing.
As for parroting, think about the concept being conveyed instead of getting caught up on one word. Even if you had never been exposed to views of homophobic religious nuts, you are using similar concepts and phrases. The term "parroting" was meant to indicate the similarity, not to describe being taught to repeat a phrase on command through conditioning. Sorry for overestimating your ability to understand.

" But, in general, ideology holds little interest for me. Ideologues often try to shape reality to fit their desired goals and belief system. I prefer to base my conclusions on observation,"

Then you might want to closely observe this discussion, and the society you live in. Your input in this conversation has had little to do with observable reality on several occassions, and some of the concepts and phrases you use do show a remarkable similarity to religious nuts.

"I'd say that my current understanding of homosexuality would please neither side: the religious nuts want to believe that it's just a matter of choice, and gay activists want to believe that everyone is born that way and can't be changed. Neither position agrees very well with reality. "

Actually the religious view matches several comments made by you. And when you refer to reality, you mean your beliefs, not observable reality. Your beliefs are made of very selected views of populations, and ignoring most of the population. Stereotypes and anecdotes seem to have much more value for you than observable reality.

"So while I agree with the overall social goals of the gay liberation movement rather than the goals of the religious nut movement"

I'm not sure this is true. You belief that sexuality is a choice and can be changed with something as simple as the files on this site is completely in line with the religious nuts.

" 'Not all, many.'

"So your whole arguement just fell apart. Your shining example was an example of ommission."

If everyone had to engage in a behavior for it to exist,"

LOL, you have things backwards here. You made the claim that men would have sex with other men in an all male environment, regardless of sexuality or even basic attraction/revulsion. For your belief to be fact it must include all men. Otherwise you should have just said some guys are bi, some are straight and some are gay.

"". . . it does not support your idea that men will seek out this violation when there are no women around."

That's hardly my idea -- it's a commonplace observation."

Your beliefs are not commonplace observations just because they are your beliefs. And you've used vague, selective anecdotes to support your beliefs, which has only succeeded in your mind.

"Not at all true. Bonobos use penetrative sex to establish dominance and cement relationships not just with females, but with other males and juveniles. And rape fantasies are apparently commonplace. "

So much for sticking with observable reality. Bonobos are not people, even you should be able to observe this. You should (unless I am overestimating your abilities again) also be able to observe that bonobos use sex very differently to people. You can even observe where I have taken the time to explain these differences for you.
As for rape fantasies, you do understand there is a massive difference between fantasies and reality don't you? And that many "rape" fantasies do not actually include rape at all, but instead revolve around consentually giving up control, usually to someone who is trusted to only do what the "victim" desires.

"However, you seem to be missing the fact that when we desire to have intercourse with a woman (or man), and do not because that person isn't willing, we are exercising the restraint to which I referred."

No, you seem to missing the point, no restraint is required. I have to restrain myself from lighting a cigarette in a non smoking area. I do not have to restrain myself from raping everyone I see.

"Which I believe means that just about any man with a sex drive is restraining himself from rape, just as, when he walks through a store without buying something, he is restraining himself from theft. "

I really do pity you, I cannot imagine this kind of existence. I do not restrain myself from stealing when I walk into a shop, there is simply no desire to steal. And I certainly have no desire to rape. You are now "parroting" Islamic extremists/fundamentalists who claim women must be covered at all times because otherwise men will have no choice but to rape them.

""As I said earlier, captured enemies are a very common source of slavery. And this kind of wartime behaviour does provide a power exchange through degredation. But this is about power, degredation and death, not a social hierarchy."

I'm not sure I see the distinction. Power and the offering of favors to the powerful are at the root of social hierarchies, in animals and people both."

Take more time to think about it, even look to other sources. If you really can't see the distinction then it is a waste of time for you to have this discussion. Also it is funny, in a disturbing kind of way, that you use the phrase "offering of favours" when talking about rape? Where is the offer? Also you fail to recognise that in war there are opposing sides, not one society. Crimes one group commits against it's enemies has nothing to do with the social hierarchy within the group, except perhaps to bond the group together against their enemy, but the enemy is a sacrifice to group bonding, it is not part of the group.

"We are more closely related to bonobos than chimps. Like bonobos, we use sex as social glue"

Completely ignoring me and repeating yourself is not productive. I have addressed this erroneous claim previously. We do not use sex as social glue, and you've shown nothing to suggest we do. In fact most human socities have taboos on incest and promiscuity.

"So our behavior is mid-way between the two;"

No, it's not. Our behaviour is beyond both of them, not comparable to either because despite our relative genetic closeness, we are distinctly different species. Though if we had to choose one to compare ourselves to, it would be the violent, "ganglike" chimps, not the bonobos. The bonobos appeal to our desires, but the chimps reflect (in a very limited capacity) our behaviour and some of our worst behaviour at that. That is why people like yourself are desperate to compare us to the bonobos instead of chimps.

""Humans do not use sex as social glue, we use it for reproduction and pleasure. Orgies are not common in human societies, espeically not christian ones. Sex outside marriage is frowned upon. Sex is most certainly not the social glue. Sex is also not used to establish hierarchies among humans. Strength, intellect, ancestory are all used, not sex. Superficially we might resemble bonobos because we do have sex for other reasons than reproduction, but our reasons are not the same as the bonobos."

It's long been known that humans use sex for social glue. That is why our females are always receptive."

Bonobo style orgies are extremely rare among humans. If your belief was true we would be having ories in the streets on a regular basis. Incest is more common than we would like, but most human societies have taboos against it. If your beliefs were true incest would be the norm and encouraged across cultures. Our reproductive cycle does not have anything to do with our behaviour, and it certainly doesn't change reality to suit your belief. The day we actually start exhibiting sexual behaviour like bonobos you have a chance of convincing me, but until then I'll stick with observable reality, not your superficial documentary/porn inspired view of the world.

"They become receptive only as necessary for procreation, when they ovulate, and the males engage in sex only at that time. "

If you are going to keep ignoring me and repeating yourself there is no point to this activity. Your belief that humans and bonobos are the only species which engage in sexual activity outside of reproduction is incorrect. Either update, or expand your field of reference.

"Sex binds human males to human females and, arguably, in our prehistory and sometimes today, to one another. "

Sex binds human males to human females, it does not bind the society together. In fact social sex is a hinderence to the male female bonding, the exception being modern societies where women have rights and the rare odd example from history. Throughout most of human existence males want untounched females only, and they want to keep those females to themselves. This is a direct contradiction to your belief that sex is a bonoboesque social glue.

"" 'No, they just scream "fuck you, you asshole!'

"Verbal sparring as a prelude to physical action, no penetrative sex anywhere. They could just say "You're an arsehole" or any number of phrases. You are placing far to much emphasis on two words, and completing ignoring the actual actions which take place."

You aren't asking where the choice of words comes from."

Actually I am not limiting myself to two words which make or break the arguement. I am including the entire language, and all the options people have for verbal sparring as a prelude to physical action.

"The words are an expression of instinct. After all, what is intrinsically wrong with fucking, or being fucked? "

Actually the words are often an expression of frustration and lack of education. As for what is wrong with fucking, the word fuck is usually considered a vulgar, expletive. It is also used in phrases such as the oxymoron "fucking ugly". Unfuckably ugly makes more sense, as does fucking beautiful. So your word play arguement falls apart as, if not more, easily than your other belief based arguements.

"But, you say, the stigma of homsexuality has something to do with this. -- OK, but then, why doesn't a guy who's angry at another guy scream "Kiss you"?"

Because kiss is not a "swear word", it has no impact.

"instincts which are also readily apparent in the interesting and commonplace phenomenon of sadomasochism"

S&M is not exactly commonplace. Light (to medium) B&D is fairly commonplace, S&M is not.

"our procreative instincts are linked with instincts of dominance and submission."

Our early ancestors would have used rape as sex, in that they would have been the dominant male and had reproductive "rights" with the females, who would have accepted the dominant male, so it would only be rape from our perspective. Perhaps some leftover of this behaviour is why people such as yourself feel they are restraining themselves from commiting rape? (though you really should get a psychological assessment done, you may just be a closet rapist?). But they would not have used sex to get to that position of dominance, they would have used violence against their rivals. And this is where we are quite different from bonobos, and much more like other chimps.

"So -- we have social taboos against rape and against saying "fuck you," but the social taboos against rape are significantly stronger, as are the punishments, so it occurs less often and we're more likely to hear the verbal threat."

The verbal sparring is a prelude to physical violence, it is a threat of fighting, not a threat of rape or sex. For some inexplicable reason you seem to think if someone angrily says "Fuck You!", they are actually warning you that they are planning to hold you down and rape you? How you ever came up with that idea only you can explain, but it does not come from observing people, especially while arguing and fighting.

"In our ancestors up to and including the chimp-bonobo-human precursor. After the chimp lineage split off from the human-bonobo lineage"

You are making up history, biology and observable reality, all to suit your beliefs. Chimps and bonobos are much more closely related to each other than we are to either of them. In terms of comparing us to them, our behaviour more closely resembles that of chimps, not bonobos. Like chimps our males fight for dominance, both within the group, and between groups.

"I should add that the observation of the role of sex as social glue in human society isn't mine, it was proposed and earned general acceptance maybe 40 years ago."

That actually explains alot, especially why so many of your ideas seem so out of date. Time to upgrade and get with the times. Start with sexual behaviour among animals. Then the bonobos won't seem so unusual for you. Then you really need to catch up on the other chimps, as they are used as a model for tribal gang behaviour among humans in urban environments.

"Understanding of bonobos is more recent, and, again, conclusions about the role of sex in bonobo society aren't mine, but that of the scientists who have studied them."

Your beliefs may match some scientists beliefs, but they certainly don't match all. And I think I previously mentioned how many people get overexcited and focused on the one animal they are studying.

" I've drawn the link between human and bonobos, and added some interpretation re behavior in prison, our use of language, sadomasochism, etc., "

You've invented a link which doesn't exist between humans and bonobos based on a superficitial comparrison of one tiny aspect of both species behaviours, an aspect which has completely different reasons in each species. You've added your personal interpretations to try and support your beliefs, but since you are doing things backwards, it doesn't work.

"but I'm sure my observations there aren't unique, they follow on naturally from the observations above. "

A lot of points you've made are not unique, but nothing I have said is unique either. The question is are you similar to ignorant people, like the religious nuts who share some of your beliefs, or are you simialr to observable reality, something which is noticably absent from many of your points?

"Two very closely related species: one might as well be discussing the behavior of tigers and lions. "

While these two are both big cats, they are entirely different species with no real comparison besides being cats. First lions are pack animals like dogs, tigers are traditional cats, solitary. Lions share feeding young, tigers do not. Lions hunt cooperatively, tigers do not. Lions generally do not like water, tigers embrace it. A tiger is more comparable to a domestic cat than to a lion, and a lion is more comparable to a dog than to a tiger. Superficially that seem like big cats, but when we observe them they are very different species.

"Our instinctive behaviors are closer to the bonobos. Society constrains those behaviors. "

Yes, you've stated this belief many times, but besides the superficial sexual comparison there is nothing to support this position. However other chimps use violence within and between groups, much the same way people do, with or without the contraints of society.

"We have repressed many elements of our sexuality in order to create our modern behavior, indeed, arguably, we go out of our way to repress it by hiding the genitals and breasts, removing facial hair, washing off our pheromones."

You need to look at more societies. You'll find less of the repression you are referring to, but no increase in similarity to bonobos. In fact you cannot find a single human society which does resemble bonobo behaviour. You can pick and choose bits and pieces and try to make them fit, but that is trying to sqeeze reality into your beliefs, it is not observing reality and then forming an opinion based on those observations.

"If you don't see the relationship between paying for protection and social hierarchy I'm not the one who needs to do some reading. "

LOL, I see that comparison you are trying to make, and it is very superficial and intentionally so, to support your position. Social hierarchy is a lot deeper than mere protection, especially once you move away from other animals and onto people.

"Sorry if this interferes with your apparently strong desire to maintain a strong separation between human and animal"

Nothing you have stated interfers with my knowledge or observable reality. And knowledge and observable reality have nothing to do with my desires. There is a massive seperation between humans and every other species on the planet, that is observable. However throughout human history we have struggled with this isolation and as a species we have desperately tried to find something close to us. This desire has led to gods, it has led to people treating pets like children, and it has led to people trying to make animals like us based on superficial comparisons. You have not proven any close connection, and people a lot smarter have wasted lifetimes achieving the same result.

"but, really, we're a branch on the tree, an ape that specializes in a big brain and speech just as your crows specialize in toolmaking, bees in social behavior and communication, parrots in speech (their auditory centers are apparently as capable as ours), etc."

Crows are comparible to our early ancestors, protohumans, not us. The tree analogy is just another superficial example designed to make us feel connected. But since a tree is the same species and organism throughout, the comparrison doesn't really work.
We do share common ancestors with chimps, bonobos and every other species on the planet, but that just means we come from the same planet, it does not rob each species of it's uniqueness, and it does not reduce us to just another animal.

"That is not the behaviour you described. You described knowledge of wanted and wanted behaviour and the reward/punishment which goes with it. Dinnertime is habitual."

It's precisely the behavior I described. We were talking about hope and hopefulness, and depression, were we not? Depression may be observed in laboratory animals"

Who knows what we are talking about, you chop and change each time you encounter a wall. Here you've gone from habitual conditioning in pets and dinnertime, to lab animals. Right now you are like the guy describing a dragon in his garage, you change your dragon depending on how you get caught out (Carl Sagan A Demon Haunted World).

"" 'The fight or flight response is connected with powerful emotions in us'

"It's a threat response for biological survival, nothing more."

Of course it is. But what do you think emotions are?"

For starters, much deeper and broader than mere fight or flight. But since we are talking about survival, consider the wide range of lifestyles and environments. How likely is it that this variation would lead to a similar emotional depth and range across all species? From the moment we had weapons and fire our emotional state would have to change, or to be more accurate, our emotional state would have the opportunity to develop. Too wide an emotional range would be counterproductive to survival.

""Different species, different lifestyles, different situations, different brain structures, different emotion requirements and abilities. What's the likelihood of all this evolutionary diversity developing a very limited and similar emotional range?"

Much higher than the probability of it's being different. That's because evolution occurs without the guiding hand of intelligence, it's a painstaking process of random mutation, of trial and error. "

LOL, you really think all that diversity, through random mutations, trial and error, and fitting ecological niches would develop sameness? You do realise this is the opposite of evolution don't you? The whole basis of evolution is that random mutations, environmental influences and trial and error lead to diversity, not sameness.

"So evolution is extremely conservative"

You really need to learn about the variety of life in the present, and the past. Conservative is not a term you will find many evolutionary biologists using. Outrageous or expansive would be much more common. Also your conservative idea contradicts the idea of random mutations, and even the idea of trial and error. Conservative is the status quo, not trial and error or random change.

"e.g., the bones of our inner ear can be traced to bones in the jaws of ancient reptiles. Evolution modifies what's present, and often modifies by adding on to existing structures because of the way in which the embryo develops, with specialization occurring progressively. "

As I said, evolution produces diversity, not sameness.

"our emotions are very basic and serve the same needs in animals. The fight or flight response, forex, can be found in fish."

Fight or flight is found in all animals. Human emotional range is not. Different modifications and add ons for different species, determined by both random mutations and environmental influences. Diversity is inevitable, no matter how much we desire a deeper connection.

"So why invent a new mechanism when one already exists? Instead, the mechanism gets modified to fit a new niche"

Well there is no intelligence behind it all, so there need not be a reason for a random mutation. But no one mentioned inventing anything, until you just now. My point has always been on evolutionary processes and the inevitable differences that produces.

"I meant complete lack of sexual interest in men."

I thought so. But regardless, without knowing you a lot better there is no way I could put any value on your anecdote. And if I'm right, then you wouldn't be the first, or last, gay man who diverts his sexuality towards women and needs something to give himself permission to be himself. If this was the case, then you would be lucky as many others need to use drugs or alcohol to achieve the same result.
Just like discussions on religion or super powers, personal examples are worthless and only cause more problems. From an intellectual point of view I hope you understand why your story is worthless to this discussion? Non personal examples where we can check and analyse are more helpful.

"I have no idea what you mean by the revulsion being internal and not social. How can revulsion not be internal?"

Are you serious? Have you never heard of gay men who suppress their feeling and live their lives as married straight men, only to break down in one form or another, or to live a gay double life? Have you not heard of the gay men so screwed up by religion and society that the only way they can be themselves is through self medication of various drugs? Those are just two examples of people lving with a revulsion imposed upon them by society. Society, and religions, make them hate themselves and everything they are. Quite a few of those who attack homosexuals fit into this group, they attack anything that reminds them of what they hate about themselves.

"I have seen evidence of only one failure on forced gay"

Well first of all I would say the only people who will listen to the file are those who want to try homosexual activities, either because they are bi/gay or because they want to show their submission to someone else. Either way it limits the ability to test the files effectiveness. On top of that, everyone who listened to the files has not left information, and people who are most likely to leave comments are those who had a positive experience. That seems to be the case with most files on this site. So there is very little evidence for you to see, either for success or failure of the file. If we take a much bigger, and much more dedicated group than just the people on this site, we see the massive failure rate of christian groups with willing subjects. We also have every professional hypnotist in the world stating that hypnosis cannot make you do anything you don't want to do. You may not have seen much evidence of the failure rate of this one file on this one website, but it's a much bigger world than that.

"If failure were common, I'd expect to see some mentions in the threads and reviews."

Really? I'd expect most people to be aware of the restrictions of hypnosis and to mainly comment on files which were effective, or ones which were difficult to listen to for technical/production reasons, and to simply leave the ones which weren't effective for them, knowing they may work for others?

"I'm not familiar with the methodology of the religious groups. But I wouldn't count on those kooks to get things right, they aren't bright enough."

I'm not sure of all their methods either, though I have no doubt hypnosis has been used. As for their intelligence, they would need to be brain dead to have not heard of hypnosis and wondered if it might work where everything else had failed. Hypnosis is also not very complicated, it doesn't take a genius. And you might not want to underestimate the enemy so much, as a group they are morons, but some are smart just half blind by their childhood indoctrination, and some don't believe the religion at all, they just use it for power.

"If one looks at the responsible psychological literature, however, one finds plenty of examples of changes in orientation, beginning with Sigmund Freud, who "stated that homosexuality could sometimes be removed through hypnotic suggestion." Anna Freud later said, “...nowadays we can cure many more homosexuals than was thought possible in the beginning." "

Responsibility goes both ways, the reader needs it too. You will find this belief comes from societal values, that homosexuality was either a curse, disease or choice, and from lack of follow up research to see if the change was temporary or not.

"The gist of it seems to be that in the case of homosexuality, orientation can sometimes be changed, and that this has been known for 100 years now."

No, the gist of it is that people got all excited at acheiving the results they set out to acheive, and limited further investigation (since they knew they were successful there is no need to check results) and that over the last hundred years this belief has been proven to be false repeatedly.
You could always put your money where your mouth is. Offer double money back guarantees for a cure to homosexuality. You'll be so far in debt within a month you'll envy third world countries.

"but I suspect that the situation may not be symmetrical, in that it may be easier to make a straight man gay than a gay man straight. This is based on my belief that homosexuality can be at least in part biologically determined. "

Do you see the flaw in your theory? Homosexuality can be at least in part biologically determined, but heterosexuality can't? If there is a biological effect on one, then the lack of that biological effect will influence the occurence of the other.
Do you have any reason for this impossible belief?

""What makes you think I have not listened to them, and many more? And since you are using peoples comments, be sure to stop ignoring the ones which say hypnosis cannot make you do anything you don't want to do."

That last is merely an opinion, one of those annoying oft-repeated beliefs that don't correspond very well to fact "

LOL, picking and choosing again. So we can trust people who looked for and listened to a forced gay file that they were completely straight and the file worked, but we can't trust hypnotists here or those who work professionally when they explain the limits of hypnosis? Interest system you have for applying value to information. But don't worry, I understand why you have no choice but to think this way. Talking with you really is like discussing religion with a believer.

""man is the only animal that laughs," "man uses only 10% of his brain," etc"

Your examples are flawed. These are "common knowledge" (information the common, average IQ, person believes but which may not have any basis in reality) not industry based assessments, or scientificaly gathered information.

"A person can and will reject a suggestion if he has a strong aversion to it. "
"A subject will accept a suggestion to do something one doesn't want to do if the aversion isn't that strong. Like a post-hypnotic suggestion to pour a jug of water over one's head, as opposed to killing one's grandfather. "

Which translates to; hypnosis can't make you do anything you don't want to do. And except for people with severe phobias, there really is no aversion whatsoever to pouring water over ones head. The need to dry onesself off is the only negative of that action, $5 bucks would get many people to do that. Here summertime is all it takes.

""The religious nuts are crazy, but they aren't stupid. Well not all of them anyway. They know many brainwashing techniques, and they do not work."

I can't really remark on that because I'm not familiar with them or what they do. But even if they aren't stupid, I suspect that circumstances aren't conducive to success. They're dealing with people who are and want to be gay but are pressured by society, and trying to bludgeon the gayness out of them with talk of Jesus and hellfire and damnation. Such people are I think going to be much more resistant than someone who merely wants to experiment with his sexuality, broaden his horizons, indulge in a hypnofetish, what have you. "

Circumstances aren't condusive to success because they are gay and bisexual people who are trying to make themsleves straight. As for being resistent, some of these people believe with every fibre of their being that homosexuality is a sin, and that God can cure them. They are the most willing subjects you could ever find, but it just doesn't work. It's no different than having an amputation and trying to use hypnosis to grow a new limb, willingness and belief just aren't going to have any impact on success.

"No, not true, the limited anecdote we have here suggests that it affects really gay guys."

The limited anecdotes we have here. Those 6 words sum it up. You are dealing with anecdotes from people who desire the change they claim the file forced, you have no way to check their claim of the file or their previous orientation, and it's just this website.

"But I disagree that we aren't like chimps in a practical way. We're mostly like chimps."

That is a big difference between the two of us. You are looking for something to compare us to, and for something to connect to. I am not, I am merely observing. We are not 99.5% like chimps in any practical way. Yes we are more like chimps than vultures, but that doesn't make us like chimps, just less like vultures. And while we looked at monkeys, apes and marine mammals to find "intelligent" animals, it is a bird, not a mammal, which is closest to us in term of intelligence. But even the crow is nothing like us, it is merely the second most advanced tool maker alive today.

""Yes, and intelligent humans training animals to behave a certain way is human intelligence, not animal intelligence."

To some extent. But we aren't talking about training, and it doesn't alter my assertion that intelligence is intelligence."

Not to some extent, that is the full extent. And we are talking about training, we are talking about the various species people have spent decades training to show their intelligence, the fact it is only the trained animals who are capable of exhibiting this "intelligence", and the fact that short term observation of wild crows outcompeted the decades dedicated to apes, dolphins, dogs, horses, pigs, parrots and other creatures we liked. The measured intelligence is of the people doing the training, not the animals.

"Actually we have very little idea what we could train a shark to do, as there has been so little research done in that area. Sharks aren't mammals, and people like you thought it was inevitable that research would show mammals were more intelligent."

Don't tell me what I do or don't consider inevitable."

I didn't, you told me throughout this discussion by making the same errors.

"Actually, studies have shown that dogs know hundreds of words, the dumber breeds something like 800, the smarter breeds something like 1200. As to tone of voice, try screaming "I love you!" at your wife and see how she responds. Or, conversely, coo "I want to rip your head off.""

Show me a dog that is meant to understand language, and I'll prove it does not. As for the comparison to a wife, I would expect the wife to ask why was I yelling, not to take flight. And for the other example I'd expect her to run in fear, or at least to look very worried that I may have lost my mind. She would understand the language and all the possibilities associated with it, the dog would react solely to the feel of the words, not the words themselves.
I've seen videos of apes and dolphins who were meant to understand language, and they appeared to understand body language much better than the words being used.

"In human culture this would happen, but there would also be experimentation with different materials, expanding and refining the idea."

Only in the modern era."

What do you count as the modern era? Several thousands of years? Centuries? Decades? I'm expecting a low number, but I wouldn't agree with it.

"The tools of our ancestors remained static for vast lengths of time, so much so that they characteristize eras. "

You might want to look into those eras, and see the variation. You are way to superficial, you see big broad obvious things, but the details are completely lost on you.

"In any case, no one is asserting that humans don't have some special gifts, merely that they aren't as unique as once believed -- back in the man is the only animal who makes tools, man is the only animal who has culture, man is the only animal who makes war, man is the only animal who murders days. Jane Goodall and the chimpanzee signing experiments did a lot to change our view of things. Other observations continue to narrow the claims of human uniqueness, as well as illustrating the ways in which we are unique"

Well we aren't as unique as once believed, we aren't special playthings of gods. But we are much more special than just another animal, or even just another ape. Other observations have shown that while we got all excited about apes and others, they aren't as close to us as we so desperately hoped they would be. We are seeing apes as less special, and ourselves as more special.

"Biologists consider it part of culture because it varies from region to region and is passed from parent to child. So that one group of chimpanzees will use one set of tools, while another will use another group of tools. And tool use is only part of culture."

Yes I've seen this arguement, but it doesn't impress me. If this is all that culture is, then we need a new term for human culture. While some groups use a rock, and some use a branch, they are all doing the exact same thing. Using a heavy object to get at food. And they only use the method they learnt from their parents, despite the availability of different materials. To me this is no more culture than any other form of mimicry. From our use of the term culture for people, this basic mimicry seems to fall short.

"It was once believed that birds and mammals placed in their natural environment would thrive owing to instinct, but in fact, in many species, if you just plop an animal down in an environment it won't survive. A snake or toad will, but for many higher animals, instinct isn't enough: it has to be trained by its parents to survive in the wild. These animals. when raised in captivity have to be trained by humans to survive in the wild, and even then it's a chancy process. These are the animals that have developed culture."

Is this evidence of culture, or the absence of mimicry?

"I think it would be most accurate to say that our ancestors already had culture, e.g., that the chimp-human progenitor had culture, and that the culture became more sophisticated over the next six million years"

Then clearly I, and most people I've encountered, have been misusing the word culture. What's the word for specifically human culture of which the animal "culture" is merely a distant, empty echo?

This has been interesting, but we are going to have to agree to disagree. I don't claim to know everything, but I do know there are several glaring gaps in your knowledge base which are dominating the discussion, and you are relying on dubious information, while ignoring information from the same source. I think we've taken this as far as it will productively (and I use the word loosely) go. Obviously feel free to respond to this post, I wouldn't try to hog the last word, but don't be surprised if this is the last post. Also don't be surprised if boredom gets the better of me at some point, lol.






"first, i think it is both hilarious/awesome that a site like this has a philosophy/religion/politics forum"

Are there sites where people discuss topics without such a section?

"but, if God gives us our morality, (10 commandents, blah, blah), does that truly make morality objective? What if God said, instead of thou shall not kill, he said thou shall kill? Would that make killing write?"

Yes, as a god whatever it decided was right would be right. And of course the christian god does say thou shall kill, and thou shall rape, and thou shall have slaves, and thou shall make war. It's a religion, which makes it inherently xenophobic, so the killing is fine as long as it is done to people not like the believers.

"However, when you look at how far religion has come at accepting different beliefs, values, cultures, and sexual orientations, you wonder if the word of God can be interpreted differently, or even pushed aside."

Religions die or adapt. Christianity is a recent religion, and a multi sourced contradictory conglomeration. This makes it ideally suited to interpretation and adaptation. Though it has met it's match in evolution. Despite the religious nuts desperation at trying to "prove" religion and evolution can coexist, they can't. Religions make people special, evolution shows people are just another species. The only religions that can survive evolution in the long term, and the ones which promote an unknowable, indifferent, non interferring god.

"So, in conclusion, if God said that killing was moral, would it be moral, or would we choose to push aside that commandment as bunk?"

People have already killed in the name of their god and felt morally justified. The bible has instructions on who can and can't be killed. Many cultures sacrificed people or animals to their gods. Wars have been fought over gods. Most of the bible is ignored by the majority of modern christians, and many modern christians would have been stoned to death by their counterparts of two thousand years ago. And the people doing the stoning would have felt completely morally justified.
If a new section of the bible was found which said "kill them all and let god sort them out", our modern morality would discount it. The faithful would claim Satan must have influenced that author, but there would still be extremists who already thought that was the message in the bible and would feel even more justified.
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Postby phryne » October 17th, 2010, 3:21 am

to paraphrase Hitchens:
'Can you name one moral statement or act that can not be made by a non-believer?
Can you name immoral acts which are exclusive to theists.'

I'm a big fan of Sam Harris' argument for objective morality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww
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Postby sarnoga » October 17th, 2010, 5:09 am

phryne wrote:to paraphrase Hitchens:
'Can you name one moral statement or act that can not be made by a non-believer?
Can you name immoral acts which are exclusive to theists.'

I'm a big fan of Sam Harris' argument for objective morality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww


Interesting choice of words. Isn't the word "fan" in that context derived from the word fanatic?

And so far as I have read, stephiebaby gets the prize for the worlds longest post. At least it came complete with paragraphs.
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Postby BiffWallop » October 28th, 2010, 9:30 am

I think morality (one's personal morality) is all about self definition. You steal something and you are a thief. You kill somebody and you become a killer. It's all about who you want to be when nobody else is around. The rest is just what people think about it.
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Postby Plaat » January 5th, 2011, 12:42 am

This thread is 5 years old but for new readers, an advance from 2010, oughts do in fact come from the is, as the is, and our knowledge of it come from oughts. Ex, we ought to look at the world, we ought to test what we observe, science, the is, is based on oughts, and thus one can derive oughts from is's. We ought not steal, because stealing is wrong. My neighbor is capable of stealing from me so I ought not steal. No Boo's necessary
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