Fifty Shades of "Everyone is doing it"

You may or may not have heard of a little book called Fifty Shades of Grey. It's been on top of Amazon's best seller list for three months now. The success of the novel is an interesting story. It is by no means the first erotic fiction to be written; thousands of erotic/romance novels are published every year. This book got popular the way many books do - good luck on word of mouth circuit. But here is the interesting thing about the word of mouth with this book: the word of mouth is not entirely positive. Tons of readers (myself included) have picked up a copy of this book because we're heard that this erotic tale gives its audience the wrong impression of what a BDSM relationship is like. But I know that I am in no place to criticize the content until I've read it. Likewise, I know others who have heard it's just a ridiculous, trashy novel - they just want to read it because everyone is reading it. They want to be part of the conversation.

What many people don't know is that Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan fiction. That doesn't make it inherently bad, but it is done explain a bit of the character development. And now, E. L. James has managed to take her Twilight fan fiction and turn it into something amazing - a book that people want to read even if they think it's pure crap. And that, is kind of amazing.

Evolution and Sexual Selection, Or: Why Men and Women be Actin' Different In Da Club

Paramount to understanding much of human interaction is the theory of evolution, specifically how it relates to sexual selection. This is important because most of what we do (in many domains, not just sex) is not based on well-thought out reasons that we completely understand. In fact, most reasons amount to circular arguments or tautologies (ie: "Because I just want to!") that tell us nothing about what's really going on.

So when your average guy says, "Man, look at the tits on that girl!" - he is indicating his attraction. What he doesn't know is why he should be attracted to protruding mounds of fat on her chest, when the same amount on her stomach would generally indicate disinterest. If you asked Mr. Average Guy, he could not tell you. He might be able to bullshit, but he won't give you a real reason. Here's what's really going on in his head: "Man, the size of that girl's bossom in ratio to her waist indicates that she is healthy and fertile, ready for childbearing, and I wish to procreate with her in order to produce offspring with a high chance of survival so that my genetic components may be passed on."

But he doesn't know that.

Similarly, when a guy wants to bang every girl in the club, it's because it was an adaptive strategy in the environment our brains evolved - around 200,000 years ago. No, there were not clubs 200,000 years ago. But there were plains with plenty of fertile females. Since our genes want to make more copies of themselves, they built bodies that could do this with sexual reproduction. They also built bodies that would enjoy sex so we want to do it. They also built bodies that just wanted to basically fuck all the time so these genes would get like, really spread.

But how come females are generally more selective? I know there are some girls who are down to bang everything (no hate) and guys who are super picky, but I am talking in generalizations here - bear with me. They are selective because of something known as sexual selection. This is because in a world before birth control, if you banged a girl, chances are she was gonna be having a baby. But the investment for making a child is anything but congruent. If there are unlimited, willing females, a male can fuck them all and make many, many children. For any given woman though, there is a 9-month investment, on top of having to raise the child to maturity so it doesn't drown in it's own vomit or something. This is why women are typically the choosers when it comes to sex. So when they see a hot guy, they might be like, "Oh girl, that man I been talking to is fiiiiiine. I might go home with him tonightttt." - but they couldn't tell you why in any way that wouldn't be circular. Here's what's really going on in their head: "Oh girl, that man seems like he is of the right genetic composure to create suitable offspring, and his demeanor indicates that he will stick around for the raising of said offspring, so my genetic components can be passed on."

No one in their right mind thinks like that.

Doesn't mean it isn't true though.

So you want to know why that girl/guy won't bang you? Fucking evolution, man.

The Beginning

I had been thinking for awhile about starting a blog, but for one reason or another, never got around to it. Instead, I collected ideas that I wished to write about.

I have decided to finally give the blogosphere another go with my new blog "On Becoming Sentient" - I'd like to talk a little bit about what the title means.

Sentience is generally defined as the ability to have subjective, conscious, perceptual experience. It is one of (if not the) differentiating factor(s) between human beings and the machines we create. As of yet, our robots are not self-aware. Whether they ever will be is yet to be seen, although science-fiction supplies us with no shortage of thought experiments on what the outcomes might be like. 

Human beings are not robots - or are we? I will argue - in this blog - that we are robots, albeit a very different, special kind of robot. This idea was first borne to me some time ago when reading about Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis:

"You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

We are far-less in control than we think. We did not choose our parents, our birthplace, our genes, or any of the important things that set up who we are today. Instead, we make small choices that affect us in subtle ways. Our sensitivity to these slight changes allows us to devote great amounts of time to what others might call "trivial." The similarities between any two individuals are far more numerous than the differences. This tendency to focus on what is different between ourselves and others hurts our ability to notice how similar we are.

I generalize with the pronoun we because is it something we are all guilty of. But it is important to note that this method of thought is not our fault. It is rather the natural state of things, that can be only be escaped through patience and persistence. This form of escape is what I refer to as becoming sentient.

To become sentient is to acknowledge that the illusion of free will is just that - an illusion. It is to understand that the drives you feel (produced by millions of years of evolution) are no more in your control than the next sentence I type. It is to understand that you are just as insignificant as I am; as any individual is to anyone else in the grand scheme of the cosmos. It is to acknowledge a lack of rules or meaning set out from on-high. It is to understand all this and not feel sad, broken, or terrified. It is to understand insignificance and revel in it. It is to create meaning where the universe has given none.

This process is not easy, and I do not expect anyone to read the above paragraphs and immediately agree with me. In fact, I would be skeptical if anyone took all my claims at face value and felt none worth challenging. This introduction is not meant to convince, but to give the reader an idea of the content to come.

Not every post will relate to this thesis specifically; it should be thought of as a uniting theme running underneath every word. That is to say, the ideas I plan to present will make the most sense in the light of this framework.

Thank you for reading the first of many posts to come.