Evolutionary Psychology -- Why Do We Believe In God?

[Geebsee]

Kanazawa himself is a controversial topic, but this particular piece is not. This is, to the best of my knowledge, not Kanazawa's original research though he might've done an article on it. I recall reading something very similar to this in Steven Pinker's book "The Blank Slate" from 2002. One ought to be very careful when looking at evolutionary psychology, but there is nothing inherently wrong in attempting to reverse engineer our cognitive modules.

[bhaugart]

lol, you should change the title to "EMT" or something else... you wasted my 3min 19seconds, just to explain how men and women get lost with each other while they really wanted to sleep with each other... sorry.. but don't like it... :D

[iviewthetube]

@bhaugart

This was the name of the Psychology Today article and this was the example Dr. Kanazawa had given. I do not feel I am at liberty to change the titles of his work.

If you prefer to see some of his other examples then I suggest you read his book "Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters."

[775gary]

stupid cocky bitches -.-

they are all smiling thinking there better than you just because we know more than you people....

well i know psychologist too

[iviewthetube]

@775gary

Re: "well i know psychologists too."

Ha, ha, I'll bet you do.

[775gary]

@iviewthetube yes im studying psychology

i you lear so much from the human brain and behavior :D

[Danube03]

satoshi kanazawa is a caricature of everything wrong with evolutionary psychology

[iviewthetube]

@Danube03 Michael Shermer had an interesting talk about this.  watch?v=b_6-iVz1R0o

[FIGHTFANNERD3]

@Danube03 no he keeps it real

[xSilverPhinx]

So is this where Pascal's Wager falls in?

[iviewthetube]

@xSilverPhinx Ha, ha, I hadn't noticed the striking similarity.

[SmoothPinkWater]

Great video!

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

That's Deep Pac, That's Deepak! Heyyyyyyyy.

[iviewthetube]

@PeeGeeBeeDee, Sorry, I do not understand that language.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

ME Neither.

[luccaskunk]

@iviewthetube he's trying, and failing, to be funny by grasping at straws to make a reference to Deepak Chopra who is basically a scientist and strangely a comic book producer... WHY the guy's referencing him I haven't the faintest clue.

[iviewthetube]

@luccaskunk Thanks for the clarification.

I didn't find any real connection between Kanazawa and Chopra either.

But I did find the "Does God Have a Future" debate between Michael Shermer and Chopra interesting.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

The three paragraphs below (starting with "Men's perceptions..." and ending with "It is imppossible..." should be read from top to bottom. They're from The Evolution of Desire.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

AGAIN, Youtube, look at how out of place and unasethetically pleasing these words are. PLEASE create an EDIT button because the REMOVE and RECREATE option is too much of a hassle.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Men's perception of sexual interest in women combines with women's intentional exploitation of this psychological mechanism to create a potentially volatile mix. These sexual strategies lead to conflict over desired level of sexual intimacy, over men's feelings that women lead them on, and over women's feelings that men are too pushy in the sexual sphere.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

I shouldn't have used the word BEHAVIOR because that connotes childlike juvenility and immaturity (when I'm referring to adult males). The better word would have been MINDSET.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

This book would be perfect for you Natalie, because it describes your sexual strategy and many of your characteristics to a TEE (ask your boyfriend to buy it for you for Christmas).

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

A major psychological source of such conflicts is the fact that men sometimes infer sexual interest on the part of a women when it may or may not exist...When in doubt, men seem to infer sexual interest. Men act on their inferences, occasionally opening up sexual opportunities. IF OVER EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY EVEN A TINY FRACTION OF THESE "MISPERCEPTIONS" LED TO SEX, THEN MEN WOULD HAVE EVOLVED LOWER THRESHOLDS FOR INFERRING WOMEN'S SEXUAL INTEREST.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

It is impossible to state unequivocally that males are misperceiving women's sexual interest, because it is impossible to determine with certainty what someone's interests and intentiona actually are. But we can say with certainty that men have lower thresholds than women for reading in sexual interest.

One this mechanism is in place, it is susceptible to manipulation. Women sometimes use their sexuality as a tactic of manipulation.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

INTENTIONS

ONCE

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

WOMAN

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

SUBSTANTIATES THIS

Evolution of Desire. Buss., p. 145.

[therealallpro]

i need more!

[iviewthetube]

OK, you motivated me to finish up part 2 which I just posted.

[TerielAtmano]

Women miss opportunities for sex if the inference is "no", and the reality "yes" just like men do. So why are men more prone to make type 1 error than women? Shouldn't they make the same errors?

I know the answer, but I'm asking to get the viewers thinking a bit.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Because when men pray to God they ask God to convince women to have SEX with them, thus creating the delsuion (in men's minds) that all women want to have SEX with them.

AGAIN, Child's Play Teriel. Step it on Up, girl.

[TerielAtmano]

Why would men want to pray to God to have sex with women in the first place? Shouldn't women pray just as much, seeing how it's equally evolutionary important for them to have children?

Patroclus?

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Teriel, only ugly women need to pray to God to convince men to have sex with them. The rest of the women in this world are in a position to choose which and how many men they have sex with. In fact, many of them pray toGod that certain men leave them alone.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Many of the women that are in a position to choose, that is.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Which would include all of them (even the ugly ones).

[TerielAtmano]

Well, you're right at that. Still, my question was addressing the causes of men's large appetite for sex, in comparison to women's. How come it's not the other way around, that women are chasing men?

Saying that men 'pray to God' to have sex with women simply redescribes the phenomenon, but doesn't touch it's causes.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Well, women have a large appetite for sex as well Atmano. It's just that women do not need to pray to God for assistance in chasing and catching men. They can afford to sit back and let the men pray to God for assistance in chasing and catching them. Why is that you ask? Because God endowed men with limitless sperm and women with a limited number of eggs. So, God chose once sex (m) to invest more in courtship and the other sex (f) to invest more in the trials and tribulations of reproduction.

[TerielAtmano]

Not saying it's not big, just that men's is bigger. At the very least women don't, on average, want sexual encounters with as many partners as men do.

I thought we were using God symbolically here, to illustrate men's desire, and not as a real factor.

The reason why I asked is to give the viewers some food for thought.

Look, I really don't want to clog this video with our comments, nor do I want to give hints to future viewers. If you want, we can move this discussion to our inboxes.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Here it is in a nutshell: the sex that incurs the most costs during reproduction will be the sex that is more choosy. Obviously females, with their 9 month gestation period (and accompanying hormonal and weight changes), is the sex that incurs the higher reproductive cost, so they will tend to be more judicious about when and whom they have sex. The fact that females may not want to have as many sexual partners isn't an indication of a lower sex drive, but of being more discriminatory.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Forgive me, "are the sex."

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

And what are women choosing/selecting for, you might ask? They are choosing/selecting for men with high quality genes and/or a man with high quality resources (a man that is a good provider). Often times high quality genes presuppose he other.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

"high quantity resources " and "the other"

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

A lower female sex drive may be due to lower amounts of testosterone and other hormones that influence sexual behavior.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

In contrast to males.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

It was genetically advantageous for our ancestral males to assume that most females wanted to have sex with them So males who were genetically predisposed to be this way increased their chances of passing down their genes (which would include these genes for type 1 error behavior) and therefore be more reproductively successful than their counterparts who weren't . Consequently, all males have inherited this type 1 error behavior because it increases their chances of reproductive success.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

The sex that has less to lose reproductively (least sex cell limited) will be the sex that is more risky (less sexually discriminatory).

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Play the percentages y'all. You increase your chances of success when make more attempts.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

YES/NO. NO NO NO NO NO, YES. YES YES YES YES YES, NO. It'll even out somewhere down the line. HAHA

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

And the only success that matters is the REPRODUCTIVE kind.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Because all of that other success eventually comes down to reproduction.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Life is a microcosm of war. Take for instance the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Like humans working daily for wealth and resources, Palestinians are fighting daily for land. But why are they (Palestinians) fighting for land? The proximate reason is more land or at least land that they have a historical/religious claim to. But the ultimate reason is that more land means more resources and more resources means better reproductive success of the race (Palestinians).

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

In this respect, human life is no different. We work for the same, ultimate reason.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

And the ultimate reason is our own reproductive success.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Or the ability to create more resources on that land.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Or is war a microcosm of life. Either way, all of us struggle on a daily basis to gain the resources we need to survive and reproduce (even those that have great wealth and an abundance of time).

Most of you are either unaware of or unconcerned with these daily battles/conflicts (however subtle) with family, friends, and foes (the latter consisting of just about everybody outside of our circle of family and friends) for resources and time.

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Excuse me, "comes back to reproduction."

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Excuse me, they inherited it because those that were genetically predisposed to be this way outbred those that weren't genetically predisposed to be this way (the former was more reproductively successful than the latter).

[PeeGeeBeeDee]

Pardon me, "reproductively advantageous."

[intermender]

if infidelity co-opts evolved brain-reward hits that an emerged power elite need to compete for in order to maintain their power and excess resources, being manifest by the most prolific replicator activity (genes/memes/temes (ref susan blackmore)), the elite are most likely to proliferate replicators that bring about fidelity.

The costing, inference and reality aspects of EMT will be skewed to bring about the desired behavior. (c.f. "Prisioner's Dilemma", Nash equilibrium, v=Yqn6MXyJ37c).

[iviewthetube]

I really enjoyed watching Susan Blackmore's lecture; I really think she is on to something.

[intermender]

Me too, and its intresting that it takes a typical no-nonsence english woman to run with something which diminishes the concept of ego (i.e typical male egocentricness) in favour of us being just meme transit stations, in a headless evolutionary way.

Ok, i was joking, not all men are like that ;P

But it is intresting how we being meme transit hosts ties in with what Nassim Haramein has been saying about feedback from the universe as philosopically implied by his recent unified field theory.

[intermender]

yes, very intresting, definently true in my case lol. I thought you were going to refer to Andy Thompson's talk of the same title but i like this intro to Error Management Theory something i think i've seen but not had a title for.

Also i'm wondering if there is now a cultural cost that needs to be factored in, e.g for circumstances with strict infedelity taboos or 'massive embarrassment costs'; although that may more affect the consequent behavior rather than the actual inference result.

[iviewthetube]

Thank you for mentioning Andy Thompson. I would recommend to anyone who is interested in this type of topic to check out his lectures; he really goes into a lot of detail as to why people and societies tend to become religious and tend to believe in G/god/s.

In regards to your other comment, perhaps we could use EMT to establish how both infidelity taboos and the feeling of embarrassment could come about through evolution. Should we sponsor a contest?

[intermender]

About the contest, i'm not really that philanthropic ;)