Julie and Mark II: It's just wrong to have sex with a chicken.

[archerships]

Some of you must think I'm not getting a whole lot of "action" right now.

You may be thinking "Hey, crasch posts so much, I bet that of the 8 or 9 women he's attempted to verbally seduce on the Onion Personals, _not one_ has responded."

But that's not true. "Don't email me again, weirdo." is a response.

However, despite the insinuations of some of you sickos, my Julie and Mark post was _not_ a sublimated desire for a little brother-sister action. That's just wrong.

Now, of course, a little [not my] sister-on-sister action is a perfectly healthy expression of human sexuality. And [not my] sister-on-me-on-sister action would be Heaven. Men blow up trade centers for that kind of action.

No, the Julie-on-Mark scenario was a lead-in to a discussion of a whole different question. That is:

Why doesn't everyone immediately agree with me?



I mean, I'm smart, I'm well-read--I know what's going on in the world. Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Highlights for Children--yeah, I've read those. Given my indisputable brilliance, there's only one conclusion:

Everyone who disagrees with me is a friggin' dunderhead. Or quite possibly, evil.

Science suggests that I'm not the only one to arrive at this conclusion. And you can test it out for youself. For example, the next time you get into an argument with some crazed lunatic who thinks that the public schools should be shut down, thereby dooming poor orphans to a life sewing Nikes in a South Central sweatshop, stop for a moment and ask yourself: "What am I thinking?!?" Do you think:

a. Perhaps this person has well-reasoned arguments based on solid evidence. I should pay attention and perhaps revise my beliefs in light of the sensible arguments he's presenting.

b. What a friggin' dunderhead. Gimme a minute and I'll think up the reasons why.

c. Man, I bet he looks damn sexy in a Speedo.

If you consistently answer a), you're a remarkable human being. Maybe not even a human at all, you skin-job. If you answer b), you're human. If you answer c) and most of your cells carry two X chromosomes, you wanna have coffee sometime?

You see, the whole "Julie and Mark" scenario is but one of many questions used by social psychologist Jon Haidt to study moral reasoning. In particular, he was probing the question: "Do people arrive at their beliefs via a process of logical reasoning? Or do they intuitively 'know' what they think, and only think up reasons post-hoc to justify what they already believe?" As the high percentage of you who answered "No, but I can give no rational reason for my belief" in response to the "OK-ness" of Julie and Mark getting it on, you can guess what Haidt's answer to that question would be. (Although it's more nuanced than I've suggested here; people are more open to new evidence and logic when the issue is one about which they don't already have a strong opinion.)

I think I've pimped for Haidt's work before, but a recent post by papertygre prompts me to pimp it again: "The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment." (PDF)

The "Julie and Mark" scenario comes from the opening paragraph. The paper itself reviews a bunch of the literature relevant to the question of how we make moral decisions. I'd love to have been a cockroach on the ceiling during some of Haidt's research interviews:

"....Haidt, Koller, and Dias (1993) found evidence for such an intuitionist interpretation. They examined American and Brazilian responses to actions that were offensive yet harmless, such as eating one's dead dog, cleaning one's toilet with the national flag, or eating a chicken carcass one has just used for masturbation. The stories were carefully constructed so that no plausible harm could be found, and most participants stated that nobody was hurt by the actions in question, yet participants still usually said the actions were wrong, and universally wrong. They frequently made statements such as, "It's just wrong to have sex with a chicken." Furthermore, their affective reactions to the stories (statements that it would bother them to witness the action) were better predictors of their moral judgments than were their claims about harmful consequences...."

Aside from amusing those of us with a 12-year-old's sense of humor, such research has important implications. Namely, you shouldn't waste time arguing with fanatics on the internet. Also, if you're a dogmatic Communist, an anarcho-capitalist, or a strong believer in any particular "ism" you should probably direct the greatest scrutiny at those beliefs about which you feel the greatest moral certainty. If Haidt's research is any guide, you're less likely to attempt to correct errors in those beliefs.

I suggest especially careful scrutiny of any moral beliefs against hot women making sweet love with quality assurance engineers. I mean, those are just wrong.

Comments

[faustin.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, and I never for a second thought you were getting anything less than a professional cheerleading squad per month. I mean, that's common knowledge.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah. Who needs those dumb Onion ads, anyway. I've got all the women I can handle anyway.

* crickets chirping *

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Yes, I rock! Back and forth, back and forth. I also humm tunelessly and periodically slap myself in the forehead.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I wonder if some of this is due to people conflating two things: "I'm Not Comfortable With That" and "That's Wrong". I suspect this is where some victimless-crime laws come from.

[halleyscomet.livejournal.com]

Good point. I've known a number of people who confused their own "comfort" levels with what should and should not be considered universally right and wrong.

For example, in one college class a number of "Pro-Life" activists admitted that they felt abortion should be illegal because they could never have one themselves.

My reply "I could never perform surgery on a child, does that mean we should make it illegal to do so?"

I've gotten similar arguments from those claiming that homosexuality was wrong. Because the guy with the opinion thought having sex with men was disgusting, then same sex sex should be illegal.

Personally, I think the bulk of the "Victim less Crime" laws should be tossed out the window, as they cause more problems than they solve.

Of course, I'm guilty of similar thinking in my own way. I want the freedom to do what I want with consenting adults, so I believe the same rights should be extended to others, even when they would choose to do things I would not.

I also agree with the famous line "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to say it."

I'm uncomfortable with restricting people when they are not causing any harm to others, therefore I believe that it is wrong to put such restrictions in place.

That's Just Wrong

[sofaking-par.livejournal.com]

So what you are saying is that we feel the wrongness, then rationalize it?

Couldn't it as well be possible that there is wrongness, but the perceiver isn't conscious of the decision making factors in making that determination, or able to articulate why? For instance, infants can subitize (count if you will, well before language formation), or have you ever noticed something was different about somebody, then guess only to find it was something else entirely? You still knew there was something different.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

Perhaps immoral decisions are simply evolutionarily incorrect decisions. Evolutionary opinions, if you will. And humans have a tendency to elevate our opinions to moral imperatives, when we get the chance.

Having sex with a chicken is incorrect; to procreate, most of us know instinctively that we have sex with a member of the opposite sex. Having sex with a member of the same sex is deemed incorrect for the same reason, from the perspective of heterosexuals.

Having sex with a close blood relative is incorrect; to maintain genetic diversity, we have to select someone who's a little different, maybe even exotic.

Eating one's dead dog, like cannibalism, is wrong because civilization demands loyalty to, and empathy with, one's friends and family. The Aztecs didn't eat Aztecs; they ate sacrifices provided by their provinces. But in this age, we're encouraged to treat every human being as a potential friend, rather than a competitor for resources, so cannibalism is right out.

As for the national flag, Americans are indoctrinated with empathy for the flag. When I was growing up, we were taught the rules about not letting it touch the ground, and a few other rituals I've forgotten. We were made to pledge allegiance to it every morning. And later in life, we heard that very important old people want to make it illegal to burn the flag. And when we ask what the big deal is, someone tells us about how many people died for that flag.

Of course, since the post-WTC flag-o-rama, I think the flag may have transformed for some of us. Those of us who were a little detached have come to think of it like some celebrity or catch phrase that's been overexposed, while others have gained even more empathy. If I were a sociologist, I would so be writing a paper about what's going to happen with this issue. And I'd be sure to tie it in with the guy who had sex with a chicken carcass.

Actually, the chicken sex thing isn't harmless, is it? I mean, can't you catch salmonella that way?

[chilimania.livejournal.com]

No - chirpies. ;^)

Evolutionarily Incorrect Decisions

[bhv.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps immoral decisions are simply evolutionarily incorrect decisions. Evolutionary opinions, if you will."

That is very well said. Perhaps we could extend it and make it more general by saying: "Decisions a society considers to be immoral will be evolutionary incorrect decisions and those that can be made to look like evolutionary incorrect decisions."

For example, love for your family and defense of your family is a very good evolutionary decision, so nation states invariably pretend to be our families. In Russia it's the motherland, in Germany the fatherland, and in France a national war song calls for defense of "our mother".

So remember if you don't go to war for your country when called, well that would be just wrong! [smile]

[radiantsun.livejournal.com]

I read or heard on article that in sum said we rationalize after we act.

Here is an interesting test.
http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu/

[zapevaj.livejournal.com]

I'm just digging on the fact that serious research was done in the areas of eating one's dead pet, hygienic use of a national flag, or auto-erotic dining.

[tinymammoth.livejournal.com]

You know so many interesting things about psychology. Where do you learn all this stuff? Do you have a journal or a weblog or something you like?

[crasch.livejournal.com]

I don't regularly follow any weblogs devoted specifically to psychology. Most of what I know came indirectly from my search for the answers to these three questions:

1. How can increase my lifespan?
2. How can I best make use of the time I do have?
3. How can I get laid?

Cryonics seems the best answer I've found so far to questions 1, which in turn led to the question: How can I improve the probability that cryonics will work? The answer to that question seems to be more money, manpower, and social status which led to "Why don't more people sign up to be frozen?", which leads to "Why are so many people hostile or indifferent to cryonics?" and "Why do people believe as they do?" and "How can you get people to change deeply seated beliefs." I think it was in search of the answer to that last question that I found Haidt's work.

Question 2 in turn leads to "How do you define 'the good life'?" which in turn leads to "What is happiness?", "How do you know if you're happy?", "Should amount of happiness be the measure of the good life?" It also leads to questions like "How does one decide how to allocate resources among competing priorities?", "How does freedom affect happiness?", "How do you measure happiness?", "Does money buy happiness?", "How happy are the rich compared to the poor?", "What does it mean to be rich?", "What are the common characteristics of people who are happy?", "What can you do to increase your happiness?", "How much money would I need to feel happy?", "What if the search for truth conflicts with happiness?", "How does having a mate/children/friends/a satisfying job affect contentment?"

Question 3 leads to questions like "What makes men attractive to women?", "Will I be happier with multiple partners? Or a single long term mate?", "How does wealth and status effect attractiveness?", "What characterizes long term happy relationships?", "Why do people break up?", "How do you know when you've met someone with whom to settle down?", "How do you best elicit interest from women?", "Where can I find women likely to like me?", "What characteristics should I be willing to tolerate, and which are 'deal-breakers'?", "What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? How can I emphasize my strengths and minimize my weaknesses?"

Frequently, if I find an article that references an interesting author, I'll search for the author via google, which in turn leads to other references to additional articles and books, and so on and so forth. Those that I find on the web that are likely to be interesting to others, I post to my blog.

[tinymammoth.livejournal.com]

What a fascinating insight into the mind of crasch. Thanks for writing all that.

I am surprised, though, that you settled on cryonics rather than on keeping us from dying in the first place. I follow longevity research pretty closely and I think we'll probably be able to stop aging within thirty years, most likely soon enough for me and you. Did you see this?
http://www.speculist.com/archives/000056.html

My doctor, who has written a book on aging, has said that he thinks most people can probably live to 120 with current technology with sufficiently aggressive lifestyle modification. Here's his book:
http://www.renewalresearch.com/indexbook.htm

I haven't researched every last thing it, and he himself has backed away from advocating a vegan diet for everyone since the book was written, but those things I have gone and looked up in Medline have completely validated the extent of his research.

In any case I take a lot of supplements and I am convinced they have a significant health impact. I'm surprised you never mention this; do you take anything, or are you a skeptic? I would suggest if you can afford it at least look into acetyl-l-carnitine.

I've been really pleased with the results of smart drugs as well, although in my case I have a disease that causes serious cognitive impairment, so the results are very dramatic in a way they wouldn't be for a healthy person.

I think it would be great if advances are made in cryo, but I'm not nearly as hopeful about it. Certainly there's a lot more excitement and focus on longevity now in the scientific community. I did see that advances had been made to avoid rupturing the cell walls during freezing, so that was as I understood it the holy grail for sometime. Are you actually signed up with Alcor? I would do it if I had somewhat more cash to throw around, if for no other reason than to support th research, but as it is I feel supplements are a better investment.

[ex0teric.livejournal.com]

Funny, I've just been doing a bit of that - and have come to the conclusion that, conceivably, even a raise in taxes (though I'd prefer that existing taxes were simply diverted from whatever crap they're being spent on now, and going back to the people) could increase the net liberty of everyone in the U.S.A.
One of these days I'll get everything written down about this, and worked out better than it is - right now it's just something I was thinking about waiting for the bus.

what's the matter

[joe-tofu.livejournal.com]

Hey crasch man, how come I'm blocked from viewing the Julie + Mark post? I remember that I replied to it, but now I cannot see the results. Am I not your friend anymore? That just feels wrong, though I cannot rationalize why.

Understanding is all I need...

[joeanthony.livejournal.com]

Crasch... Got to dumb this down on me... cause I'm not sure what the point exactly is, I'm naturally slow w/ all this information thrown at me.

1. Did I agree w/ you or not? Didn't realize that was an option in the original post.

2. My answer to the question "No, (Brother & Sister)" From their research; What can they conclude from that answer? How bout you... what do you think I would state if I was to furthur explain it?

3. In the "PDF" - "... Even though the story makes it clear no harm befell them" - My question "Did it really?"

4. Can any reply really be justified from the information given or not given in that little story/test? Or would the best answer be "Not enough info?"

5. In their test... the majority was actually minority in your poll. What would you believe they would have wrote if that was the case?

Help me understand... so maybe this higher than my IQ PDF might make some sense; & your own points to become a tad bit clear.

JA...