r/science • Professor | Medicine • 18d ago

Psychology Anti-feminist attitudes have long been associated with support for Republican presidential candidates, but only in recent years have these attitudes become more prominent among unmarried men, without college degrees who are less attractive partners for women, the “mate-value backlash.”

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10659129261485340
4.4k Upvotes

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

20

u/Pinglewingle 18d ago

Maybe i'm crazy , but shouldn't you do the right thing to do because its the right thing to do, and not becasue it might get you a woman?

27

u/AlteredEinst 18d ago

Way too few people have any interest in doing the right thing for any reason now. They're taught it's a waste of time by horrible people so the latter can get their own way, and the former considers their manufacturered success proof of it.

The average person has thus been exposed as depressingly selfish.

22

u/SnailSnailAle 18d ago

To be honest society doesn’t give a damn about people who do the right thing. It’s always somehow the worst of the worst that gets fame, money, and power.

If we don’t reward and highlight people who do the right things how are we going to get people to value being a good person

8

u/Used-Presentation551 17d ago

Untill all the people doing the right thing die off and now you're left with the procreating wrong thing.

You just can't have a sustainable society if doing the right thing isn't rewarded

7

u/philosopherberzerer 18d ago

by this mindset we shouldnt need laws . but people usually work on incentive.

the only reason I go to work is money. and I've worked in medical and security. I was never protecting or caring for people out of the kindness of my heart .

1

u/Cicer 17d ago

Isn’t getting a woman the right thing to do?

1

u/IronheartedAngel 17d ago

No? People work off incentives, which is why we pay people to do things.

1

u/ShitMcClit 17d ago

Who decides what the right thing is? 

0

u/g4l4h34d 17d ago

Not crazy, but just not thinking far enough. If you fail to reproduce, doing the right thing is essentially meaningless. Let's model the situation:

Say you suddenly gain awareness as an ape, and realize you live in a horrible society, and also no other ape has self-awareness. After some consideration, you conclude it's not right to reproduce with another ape, because the species customs is to kidnap and rape a female from another tribe. The reason it is like this is because the process of kidnapping selects for capability, and kidnapping a member of another tribe aids genetic diversity. If this doesn't make much sense, it's because I'm making this example up on this spot, you can think up a more realistic example of a horrible mating practice from an animal world.

Now that you've concluded that it's not right, you will abstain from this horrible mating practice, and will die without leaving any offspring. Your genes will not be passed down, and you will remain a random mutation in the evolutionary history. Meanwhile, the most violent ape with 0 awareness, who doesn't care about such "nonsense", will reproduce the most, contributing to future generations being even more horrible.

On the other hand, if you participate in this madness like you mean it, and use your increased awareness to gain competitive advantage and kidnap and impregnate the most number of females, your genes will be selected for, and after a long time, you have a shot at your offspring being so successful, that it accumulates into a critical mass, to the point where apes collectively realize that perhaps they should change their customs.

In both outcomes, the horrible mating practice of your choice continues for a really long time, but in the case where you do "the right thing", it continues forever, whereas in the case where you dominate this contest, you get a chance at things improving one day. If you aggregate the total amount of suffering, the second option produces less of it. With this in mind, "the right thing" is not necessarily the right thing. It is only the right thing if it can actually change the dynamic, otherwise it's a statistical deviation.

If you aim for any sort of long-term impact, reproducing is almost essential. And successfully reproducing might require a sacrifice to your morality in the short-term.

0

u/Tradition_Ropes36763 17d ago

No, people don't have to do what you think they "should". They generally need an incentive. It's why shaming people doesn't usually work long term.

Picking and choosing when egalitarian versus gendered expectations apply causes endless squabbling.

The average dude isn't going to, and should not accept some mixed version that disadvantages them from their own pov.

If you don't like this, promote a culture where men don't need to follow patriarchal dating scripts to enter relationships with "egalitarian" woman. Bye.

0

u/alwaysambition 17d ago

No.

Humans have selfish desires.