 What do you think of the claim of evolutionary psychology that people are determined to focus on the negative more than the positive, because pre-civilization humans face constant survival threats? You know, I think this is the point, a broader point, about evolutionary psychology. And again, I'm speculating here because I'm certainly not an expert in this, and actually I've been intending to bring somebody who I think is an expert in this. I need to, I need to contact him and see if he'll come on the show. But this is what I think about evolutionary psychology. I think that if you take, so Inran had this, Inran had this brilliant article and I recommend it. It's called the missing link. And to understand what Inran is talking about, the missing link, the missing link are human beings, people out there who don't engage their conceptual faculty, who don't think, who don't pursue reason, who are not rational, who are therefore secondhand, second-handed, they let other people do the thinking for them, and they're fundamentally perceptual. So every human being has the capacity to engage in reason, a capacity to think, to be rational, but not everybody chooses to engage that capacity. Indeed, one could argue them, particularly in a world in which we live where the motivation to think is pretty low, that they're not incentivized to engage that capacity. So that many, many of them don't. So that a significant part of society does not think, and therefore are at the perceptual level. Now what is a perceptual mentality? A perceptual mentality can only see things, understand the things that they observe. They cannot think for themselves and therefore depend on other people, providing them explanations for the world that they see, because percepts don't give explanations. But think about it in this sense. A perceptual mentality sees me paying a thousand dollars for the iPhone. It sees me getting the iPhone, Apple getting a thousand dollars. They conclude from that that, you know, the iPhone was worth a thousand dollars to me and a thousand dollars to Apple. Nobody won. It was a zero sum transaction. And they see all trade as zero sum. There's no gains from trade. Gains from trade is an abstraction. Gains from trade requires you to abstract, you know, to understand what is actually going on, to understand values, to understand what values represent, and to understand that different people have different values in different ways. But there is more than just trade in everything. All they see is what's actually literally had meaning for them. They can't see anything more abstract because they don't think. So let's take this issue of seeing, focusing on the negative. If you're at the perceptual level, then the world is not understandable to you. You don't really know what's going on. And by the way, many people can be conceptual at work and perceptual in everything else that they do. They just don't engage their mind beyond the problem they have to solve at work. So I know a lot of very smart people who in much of their lives are basically at the perceptual level. Now, when you are at the perceptual level, the world is, you just don't understand it. It's therefore, what happens when you encounter something you don't understand. It's all around you and there's stuff going on and you have no idea what's going on and why it's happening. What is the emotion that evokes rationally? That emotion is fear. So I think most people out there, a lot of people out there, live with a sudden sense of dread, constant dread, constant fear, constant dread and constant fear. And they're constantly looking for reinforcement for that fear and dread. They constantly are looking to justify the fear and dread. It's why, by the way, we get caught up in the world is going to end because of climate change, because of Y2K, because of fill in the blank, because of the Chinese now. It's why a campaign like Donald Trump's in 2016, which was so negative, so fear-mongering was so successful because it reinforced that element within all these people who can't really comprehend, understand, they're fearful, they have this, oh, yes, it is, it's all true. I should be afraid. It justifies it for them. So fear is the emotion people live with when they cannot, when they do not engage their rational faculty, when they don't engage their conceptual faculty, when they don't think for themselves. And when you live in fear, you're constantly looking to reinforce the negatives. And that's what evolutionist psychologists are noticing. See, the problem is that evolutionist psychologists, like everybody else, they look out there and they notice a certain phenomena. They notice people behaving in a particular way. They don't ask the question, which philosophers should. Is it rational? Is it right? Can people be better? No. They don't ask that question. Instead, what they do is they try to explain and they come up with evolutionary explanations for a given phenomenon. So if a vast number of people in our culture are irrational, then evolutionary psychologists are going to come up with an evolutionary explanation for why they're irrational. But the explanation is simple, irrational, because that's what they chose to do. And you could argue that evolution has given us that option to the extent that free will is a revolutionary product, is a consequence of evolution. But it's still a choice. And as such, you can choose differently. And then what will they do? Evolutionist psychologists will then explain the new behavior of people based on some other evolutionary thing, rather than on the obvious answer, which is choice. I always find it funny. I remember the example, it's not the case anymore, because I think it's not politically correct anymore. But 20 years ago, every single beer commercial was the same. It had beautiful women in bikinis running around drinking Coors light or Budweiser or whatever on a boat with lots of attractive young men around them. And the association was be a beautiful women. And I always thought this is the dumbest thing possible, because what's the connection? I don't get it. I don't understand this commercial. While I find the women attractive, it doesn't cause me any kind of association with the beer. But it obviously does to some people. Because otherwise, the advertisers wouldn't be doing this. So for some people, it works. Now who are these people? Well, it has to be people who don't think. It has to be people who don't consider, do I like beer? What kind of beer? Should I taste a few and figure out what's nice? No, it's people that have basically made their cognitive faculties impotent and respond to stimuli and accept the connection between bikini, clad, girl, and beer. Can't get the girl might as well take the beer, I guess. So I think evolutionary psychology is telling stories about behavior that is observed without judging that behavior as being right or wrong. We as objectivists, as people oriented by a philosophy, we make judgments. That beer commercial is stupid. The fact that it works suggests that there are a lot of people out there who are not thinking. If they thought it wouldn't work, and that's the world in which I want to live. I want a world, live in a world in which beer commercials don't have babes and bikinis. Now, you know, if the idea is that babes and bikinis get male attention, true. But why would that cause me to want Budweiser over Coors? It still doesn't make the connection. It's assuming you're perceptual, that you become then geared on associating beer with babes. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. 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