The Sexual Life of Savages (2006) | Hacker News Reader

The Sexual Life of Savages (2006)

aaronsw.com

54 pointsmonort25 comments

It's very hard to believe that generation after generation after generation, they didn't connect intercourse with pregnancy. I understand the explanations; it still seems unlikely that no circumstances, human it otherwise, would have ever convincingly demonstrated it. Like eating and defecating.

The associate theorized they were stupid. I sincerely don't know what to think.

Sounds to me like there's too much cultural inertia. They're not stupid, but admitting that sex causes pregnancy means admitting that Bob's wife cheated on him; it means some poor desperate soul really did shag Ugly Betty; it means accepting responsibility for life-changing events that it's much more convenient to write off as "acts of god".

The clincher is the fact that they've been informed of the link now, and still won't accept it. That's not stupidity, it's denial.

That sounds plausible. Some people might believe the correlation, but not enough to disagree with sun-revolves-around-the-earth prevailing wisdom.

I actually don't fault them at all for believing this. The only way to know that A causes B, is if you consistently observe the absence of A, paired together with the absence of B. Ie, you need a control group of women in their teens/20s/30s who are not having sex.

In societies that frown upon premarital sex, this control group is easily found. But in a society that practices free love, this control group doesn't exist at all. Even worse, the people who you think are in the control group (the wife of the guy who went on expedition, and the "truly hideous" women), are actually having sex secretly, and thus further misleading everyone else.

I wonder how many such "obvious truths" we ourselves are missing out on, simply because we haven't done any structured experiments relating to their absence.

One reason I think everyone should go to college is to gain exposure to cultures completely different from theirs and lose their sheltered and ethnocentric mindset. (the best place to start is on the Nacirema [0]) It's no surprise that the most homogenous and least educated populations are more prevalently racist. (I'm not saying the educated elite are above it though and it was often the most educated who thought they knew best with beliefs like eugenics)

One interesting culture [1] we studied in one of my classes practiced ritual cannibalism of their dead. It was highly formalized regarding which relatives eat and had rules for the method of eating. (the meat is cooked so disease isn't much of an issue) After the Brazilian government's FUNAI [2] stopped the practice, one woman described feeling haunted by her deceased kin and not knowing whether their spirit was put to rest. The ritual held huge spiritual significance to the people and provided catharsis after death, yet the government stopped it because it was against their own moral code. This has parallels in how Christian Americans impose their own views on women and others (Manifest Destiny anyone?) who should have autonomy.

Another group we studied was male sex workers in (I think) the Dominican Republic. Western men would go there to receive sex from them. The interesting thing is that the workers did not view themselves as homosexual, despite living in such a macho culture, as long as they were the ones not being penetrated. This is contrary to the Western view where any sexual attraction with men means you are gay, while in reality sexuality isn't so binary and clear-cut.

Lastly we learned about a Bedouin [3] tribe in which speech is highly restrictive, yet women were afforded more free expression through the medium of poetry. Their culture of modesty actually empowered their women and the narrative is in contrast to that of Western nations which view Middle Eastern women as oppressed and in need of rescuing. (the author, Lila Abu-Lughod, actually has another book titled "Do Muslim Women Need Saving?")

The point I'm trying to make with these three groups isn't that their perspectives are the right ones or that we should completely ignore what other groups do in order to let them preserve their culture (many immigrants still believe in beating their children and spouses for example), but rather that we should question our assumptions and preconceived notions and we cannot do that if we stay safely in our own bubbles and hold stubbornly to our believes because "that's the way it always was" or that "it's our heritage".

[0]: http://www.ohio.edu/people/thompsoc/Body.html

[1]: https://pib.socioambiental.org/en/povo/wari/865

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funda%C3%A7%C3%A3o_Nacional_do...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin

Many good points there. I'd just like to point out that eugenics is demonized partly because it was taken to an extreme by the Nazis which are demonized. It's not necessarily bad. We do it in a broader form when we choose partners - who wants to pick the disabled or mentally ill person to have children with? All else being equal, we usually prefer a partner without genetic "defects" according to whatever the popular idea of a "defect" is.

Between two people, it's just called sexual selection. When I think eugenics, I think of it happening on a more systematic scale like the sterilization of the poor. (http://www.salon.com/2016/01/29/americas_secret_history_of_f...)

I do too. Does it make much difference though if it's a centralized or distributed decision? The end result is the same but people are selected for different traits.

It is hugely different. How decisions are made is different. What decisions are made is different. The only similarity is that they both involve decisions.

Both are systemic and consistently skew the population of people who reproduce. Both also discriminate against people that the system decides aren't worthy of reproducing. Either poor people, ugly people, diseased people, etc.

>One reason I think everyone should go to college is to gain exposure to cultures completely different from theirs and lose their sheltered and ethnocentric mindset.

This doesn't happen in college but through actually living away from home in another culture. The worst bigots and racists I've met have university degrees.

Let's be real though, those who need it the most won't go live in another culture exactly because they're so attached to their own. Education is a cheaper way to get the necessary exposure. Regarding your second point, I did make a disclaimer that educated people aren't above this, but in my experience at least higher education encourages more independent thinking, reasoned inquiry, and study than is done in high school or by the uneducated. Opposing opinions are encouraged and healthy debate is pretty common, even with the professor.

I don't know what college you went to but mine was very much in-the-box thinking.

Opposing opinions are never welcome within any social group or system such as the academy, and discussion is always kept between narrow bounds.

>but in my experience at least higher education encourages more independent thinking, reasoned inquiry, and study than is done in high school or by the uneducated.

Case in point: bigot with a degree.

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