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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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If the questions specifies that they're in the woods, this presents a situation where the male in question can reasonably expect not to be observed.

That is a fair point but I will still have to disagree with you that greater than 20% of men when given the opportunity will have a near 100% chance of committing rape/assault on a lone woman.

I'm not quite willing to say 20% of men would not, purely on the evolutionary argument that assault and rape were a common element of our ancestral environment.

On the evolution argument, the child has to survive to pass on their offspring. Babies and pregnant women are extremely vulnerable. The genes that foster safety in groups and willingness to cooperate will outpace the genes that might make a man rape/assault someone. There could be an argument for tribes taking women as a prize after some kind of war/battle, but that's distinct from just an early caveman just raping/assaulting any woman.

The genes that foster safety in groups and willingness to cooperate will outpace the genes that might make a man rape/assault someone.

Right, but in this situation, as stated in the question, there are no groups to cooperate with or intervene, the male's behavior is based solely on whatever he himself chooses to do in the absence of any observers, and thus no immediate social consequences.

I am going to argue that in the ancestral environment, if a random male happens across a random female, both complete strangers to the other, in the middle of the woods, nobody else around, rape WAS probably a common outcome. And this would eventually lead to general norms that women shouldn't travel anywhere alone.

I have seen decent evidence that many males of certain cultures are willing to engage in violence against females even in the full view of other people. Can't say what that percentage is with precision, but I'd have to assume a higher percentage would willingly engage in violence if there were no observers.

I think I will stipulate that the number has to be <50%, but 3% is probably the absolute lower bound.

But we built society to heavily punish males who do such things. Therefore there was evolutionary pressure against “randomly rape women”