The Wayward Axolotl

Eric Orwoll responded to Modern Romance . In his response, he compared me to Spock from Star Trek in being “coldly analytical”. I took that as a compliment. Eric, what you call “coldly analytic” I would call “abstract”. In a way, abstractions are alienating. They distance us from embodied experience: from sensation, emotion and action. There is a zen to being and doing. You don’t want to miss the forest for the trees, but you also don’t want to miss the trees for the forest. Abstract thought cannot help you in a moment of action where milliseconds count. However, that doesn’t mean abstract thought is divorced from embodied experience. Abstractions are just more removed from embodied experience. There are more layers of representation and information processing between an abstraction and the experiences it relates to. Abstract thought is emotional. It is just removed from the physical expression of emotion. Emotions are what motivate us: they set us in motion. Without emotio...

Many people believe that we have transcended evolution, due to modern technology and the welfare state. This belief is false. We have not transcended evolution, and we will never transcend evolution. What is evolution? Evolution is a process that operates on a population of organisms, or (more broadly) on reproducing units. Evolution has three basic components: Reproduction: Organisms can create copies of themselves, or split into new copies. Reproduction implies the capacity for exponential increase. Mutation: Occasionally, heritable information is randomly changed, creating variation within the population. Selection: Organisms need resources to survive and reproduce. There are also environmental hazards, including other organisms. Some forms are better at reproducing than others. Forms that are better at reproducing will become more common. Although selection can be positive or negative, we can think of it as a purely negative force: res...

These days, most of us live in cities with millions of other people. We are always surrounded by members of the opposite sex. Yet, it is difficult for many people to find love. Despite the superabundance of mating possibilities, people now spend more time and energy on the mating game than ever before. Adolescence has become an almost permanent condition. Men and women spend years and years going through a cycle of casual affairs and short-term relationships. To understand this situation, you have to understand human sexuality. Let’s start with the simple observation that men and women are different. Men have stronger feelings of attraction. Women have stronger feelings of attachment. That is because men and women have different reproductive strategies. Men can have more children by having sex with multiple partners. Women cannot. Women, on the other hand, need the protection and support of men to survive and raise children. We evolved different emotions that reflect the costs and...

Altruistic morality is the view that people ought to be nice to other people, merely for the sake of being nice, and not for any other reason. The altruistic view of society is that the individual has intrinsic obligations to the collective and vice versa. The individual should contribute to society purely for the sake of doing so, and not for any reward. Likewise, society should help the individual just because the individual needs help, not as a reward for the individual’s contribution to society. That, in a nutshell, is altruistic morality. It is fundamentally incoherent. Here are some of its many problems: How do you know whom to be nice to? How nice should you be? How much should you sacrifice your own interests for the sake of others? How do you know what the interests of other people are? What are your own interests? How do you separate your interests from those of others? Altruistic morality is not a rational approach to decision making. I’m not going to go to the tr...

This essay is about the concept of exploitation, how it is used in political argument, and its relation to philosophical critiques of knowledge and agency. Exploitation is an unfair exchange due to coercion or deception. So what are coercion and deception? Coercion is when an exchange is based on a threat of punishment. A robber putting a gun to your head is coercing you. You willingly exchange your money for your life, so the exchange is voluntary but unfair. Our laws and customs prohibit the use of violence or threats of violence, except when sanctioned by society for the purposes of law enforcement or warfare. A coercive exchange involves trading something good for the absence of something bad, and thus it is not a cooperative exchange. Deception is when an exchange is based on deliberate falsehood. A car dealer who knowingly sells you a car with a cracked engine block, while telling you it is in perfect condition, is deceiving you into making an exchange you would not otherwise...

Am I a traditionalist? Apparently I am. I have been labeled as such. What does this label mean? Well, in my case, it means that I believe in evolutionary theory and its implications for human nature. It means that I believe that human existence depends on men and women having sex and cooperating to raise children. It means that I believe that men and women are different, and that asymmetry in male-female relations is a natural and efficient form of cooperation, not oppression or exploitation of one sex by another. I use the term “sexual contract” to refer to the exchange of production for reproduction between a man and a woman. This contract is encoded in our genes, mediated by our emotions, and reinforced by laws and customs. Men and women are different because we evolved to be different, not so we could fight over who is superior, but so we could fit together into a functional unit and reproduce our genes. It takes a lot to make a human being: 10 minutes of sex, 9 months of...

If you put a caterpillar on the rim of a bowl, it will walk around and around in a circle. The rim of the bowl stimulates its nervous system in the same way that a branch does, so it responds as if it were on a branch, by walking along it until it reaches a leaf to feed on, or another branch. Placed on the sidewalk, the caterpillar will wander aimlessly. Its instincts only generate adaptive behavior when it is in its natural environment. This experiment demonstrates that: Caterpillars are not very smart. Instincts have to match the environment or they don’t work. A behavior that solves small problems might not solve bigger problems. In other words, scale matters. The caterpillar is very good at walking along the rim of the bowl, but it can’t solve the bigger problem of getting somewhere. Humans can find themselves in similar predicaments. For example, consider a heroin addict. Each day he is focused on getting his next fix. Once he gets it, he relaxes and enjo...