661. Comparing Disturbed Characters And Chimpanzees

661.  Comparing Disturbed Characters And Chimpanzees

I already mentioned George Simon before (entries 615, 618 and 629).  After having read his book 'In Sheep's Clothing' with unencumbered fascination, I just finished reading another of his books:  George Simon: Disturbed Characters.  

As far as he describes and analyses disturbed characters, it is also an excellent book.   But it seems that between the two books, he has relapsed into the grasp of religion.  He preaches submission under a god as an important ingredient of his suggested alternative to being a disturbed character.  This is annoying.  

I also disagree with his claim, that there is a free will, which gives people an option to either be a disturbed character or not.    

Two other books already mentioned are:
Martha Stout:  The Sociopath Next Door (entry 137)
Robert Hare:  Without Conscience (entry 160).         

All these books implicitly consider socially acceptable, considerate and responsible behavior as the baseline of what can be expected of all sane humans.   They have no answer, why and due to what reasons disturbed characters are deviant from such an baseline.

I doubt, that the qualities constituting this assumed baseline, are sufficiently frequent to justify this assumption.   With a realistic view at the amount of atrocities regularly forced by beings of the species homo sapiens upon suffering human victims, the ability to live by little or not harming others is only found in a minority.   Only they have the privilege of deserving to be called true humans.   Even they are not born like this but get there only after a long process of maturation and socialization. 

My explanation of disturbed characters is derived from looking at the power of instincts and at different levels of the evolution of cognition and rationality.

1. Human evolution as a process.  
 

Phase 1: 
There were early ancestors, who just like animals were automatically and fully driven by instinctive urges, which had evolved for optimizing procreation.  Due to lacking any mental capacities for comprehending the consequences of behavior, instinctive behaviors of animals are not at all impacted by any awareness for harming, hurting and suffering.  

Phase 2: 
The cognition started to evolve.   Rudimentary intelligence became a powerful tool supporting and serving instincts.   But instincts still continued to completely determine the entire behavior, including the overall goal of breeding.  
 

Phase 3:  
The unique human theory of mind evolved.   This capacity of anticipating or evaluating the effects of behavior upon others or upon the own person in the future with the additional help of a memory gives a unique option only to human.    The unique ability to act in defiance of instincts, to override momentary instinctive urges in favor of cognitively preferred alternative behavior is the decisive distinction between humans and animals.    This includes also the unique ability of humans to prefer and decide to not procreate as the result of a cognitive evaluation and perception of the own identity.    Only humans can be childfree by choice.   There are no childfree animals.  


2.  Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees and humans started to evolve separately about 6 million years ago.   Either the common ancestors had at this time already reached the threshold towards phase 2, or chimpanzees continued to evolve at a slower pace in the same direction as humans.   Today's chimpanzees are a good illustration of phase 2.  They show some amazing skills, which nevertheless always serve instinctive goals.  

In entry 648 I presented the chimpanzee Ayumu, who does better than humans on a task requiring fast perception and short term memory, as can be seen in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPiDHXtM0VA
 

While Ayumu's abilities are amazing, they yet are only isolated and not connected to any higher cognitive control.  He only does the task, because he is immediately after every run rewarded with a treat.   He cannot apply his talents for any abstract or generalized goal.  

Solving the elaborated and complex task on the screen is not different from the more simple achievement of other chimpanzees using tools to get food as is shown here. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cp7_In7f88
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaEDeRJKN0s

But chimpanzees also kill and are aggressive.  
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/26/baby-chimpanzee-killed-at_n_1629318.html

They are even cannibals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU1zUzXkTtw

Other amazing skills and behaviors have also been observed in chimpanzees, but they have never reached any ability as found in humans in phase 3.  Ultimately the chimpanzees are completely determined by instincts, and all their amazing capacities only support these instincts.    No cognition has evolved, which would enable them to act in defiance to instincts by consideration or empathy.


3.  The evolutionary level of disturbed characters

I think that the human evolution is in a state of transition.   The evolution of instincts has been established millions of years ago, while the cognitive evolution is still continuing.   I see the determination of the behavior as distributed along a bell curve between phase 2 animals at one end and phase 3 humans at the other.   The majority of people are somewhere in the middle.  They are acting by the combined impact of both subconscious instinctive urges and some cognitive control. 
 

Whenever persons, mostly men, commit atrocities of any kind like murdering, torturing, raping, cannibalism, slavery, they seem puzzling, when compared with what is required and expected from humans.   But if they were instead compared with animals, they would appear as healthy and sane chimpanzees. 

I consider severely character disturbed persons, including those labeled psychopaths and sociopaths, as beings, whose cognitive evolution has relapsed, failed or is delayed and retarded.    In spite of belonging genetically to the species homo sapiens, they are not less animals than are the chimpanzees.   Their cognition only suffices to serve their instincts and to enhance their being a hazard.  But their cognition is insignificant as a determinant of personal goals.    

Chimpanzees use skills to acquire food.  Disturbed characters have a more advanced cognitive knowledge about other human and their behavior, but they use this knowledge also only as a tool.   They succeed to get more than food, they also abuse woman, gain power or pursue other instinctive and selfish goals.   While chimpanzees just lack rationality, these disturbed characters are instead determined not only by instincts but also by irrational beliefs, which serve to excuse and allegedly justify the consequences of instinctive behavior.  

It is a very sad and unfortunate reality, that the survival of the human species depends on the worst and most devastating forces in people, their instincts.   
While the extreme disturbed characters are a hazardous minority, the same instincts are virulent to a lesser degree also in the subconscious mind of the majority of the non or less disturbed people.   This lesser degree of the impact of the same instincts leads to an unfortunate bias towards too much tolerance for and condoning of harming others.  Many damaging behaviors are thus considered as still in the scope of normality, in spite of the extreme suffering of the victims,   Their suffering is not recognized as an outrage, but as unavoidable collateral damage.   


4. Distinguishing animals from humans

It is an unfortunate fallacy, that the distinction between humans and animals has always been only drawn along the genetic borders between species. 

 
In the christian tradition, humans are believed to be special, because a god allegedly created them to be so, and thus, there is a thinking taboo to reconsider and recognize anyone as an animal, no matter how much he behaves as one. 
In recent times, some people are debating, if there is really any decisive distinction at all. 

But to my knowledge, nobody has ever suggested, that the quality of being human, let alone of being more or less human, is an individual trait of the level of the individual cognitive evolution..
   
I claim:  To be considered as human requires more than the genes of homo sapiens, it also requires sufficient cognitive control over the instincts.  

This has far reaching implications.  

The concept of a general human dignity and basic human rights can rationally only be valid for humans, it is a fallacy to automatically attribute and assign it to all members of the species homo sapiens.   When someone acts like an animal, he should be treated as one.   An animal with the liberty only suitable for humans is too much of a hazard.    

The home of chimpanzees is in the wild, but in the zoo or lab, they are for good reasons kept in cages.  
http://www.ippl.org/gibbon/a-tragedy-in-eden/

If extremely disturbed characters would be recognized as animals lacking the basic human capacity of cognitive control, then this could lead to realistic methods of dealing with them.  Once disturbed characters have done serious harm, they should be recognized as animals and treated the same as dangerous chimpanzees.   The need to be protected against becoming a victim is independent of the species of the animals, which are dangerous predators.

The innate predisposition for instinctive or cognitive determination is not carved in stone, but malleable by education and social influences.    Socialization can enhance the cognitive control over instincts, when there is something to enhance.   When there is no rationality and cognition as a constituent personality trait, then no upbringing can convert an animal into a human, no matter the genetic species.   

All children start as instinct driven beings, they need socialization to develop the capacity to use cognitive control, when this talent is innate.    
When a chimpanzee is raised like a child, as in the tragic case of Moe, this does not stop him from biting off someone's finger.  
(http://www.theflamingvegan.com/view-post/Chimpanzees-as-Pets-When-Something-Goes-Wrong).  
I doubt, that a completely instinct determined disturbed character could ever become more human than Moe, no matter the quality of education.   Such a child may not bite off fingers, but bully other kids instead, before committing worse atrocities as an adult.    

Any person is entitled to be given the benefit of the doubt to be human, until he behaves like an animal and thus demonstrates, that he is an animal.   Committing atrocities as an animal forfeits the privileges reserved to humans.  Treating and considering an animal nevertheless as if he were human is an unjustifiable slap into the face to his victim(s).  


4.  The brain

Brains scans have shown differences between the brains of psychopaths and those of non-psychopaths.  

"So, once again there’s some convincing evidence that the brains of psychopaths not only work very differently from those of non-psychopathic individuals, but also may even be ‘wired’ differently than most human brains."
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2013/05/06/abnormal-brain-psychopaths/

I wonder, what would be discovered, if the brains of psychopaths were compared with the brains of chimpanzees.

618. What Comes First: Attitude Or Behavior?

618.   What Comes First:  Attitude Or Behavior?

In entry 615 I already mentioned the fascinating web page http://www.manipulative-people.com and work of George Simon.   I spent some hours reading his description of persons who in his words are disturbed characters.  

My writing on this blog is focusing upon my subjective and female preference of what attitudes and behaviors make a man either attractive or repulsive.    While reading Simon's texts, it has become clear to me, that those men, whom I describe as jerks, are a subgroup of Simon's disturbed character.   Jerks are male disturbed characters, whose victims of their disturbed behavior are women.    What I call commodification, objectification, domination, entitlement delusion and more, I found it all mentioned by Simon, in different words and explained in better English.  

Only he has come to a different conclusion concerning what causes, maintains, enables and reinforces the character disturbances.  

"One of the central tenets of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is that there is an inextricable relationship between a person’s core beliefs, the attitudes those beliefs have engendered, and the ways the person’s attitudes prompt him or her to to behave in various situations."

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2008/12/08/disturbed-characters-thinking/

I fully agree with this, because any discrepancy between core values (as I dislike the word belief), attitudes and behaviors causes unpleasant cognitive dissonance.   Getting aware of such a discrepancy motivates towards either changing the attitude or the behavior.   

If I have understood correctly, in Simon's view the attitudes and core beliefs come first and the behavior is the consequence thereof.  
Simon accepts the notion of the free will.   I have not found any explicit statement about this, but implicitly he seems to explain attitudes and core values as mainly or entirely acquired by education, socialization and external influences.  

From my point of view, which is derived from evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, the free will is a myth.   Behaviors are determined by the combination of the force of instinctivity, the avoidance of punishment and of dishomeostasis and the appetency of rewards and stimulation of the brain's pleasure center.   This is facilitated by the knowledge stored in the memory and anticipatory thinking.   

Subconscious instinctive urges are consciously experienced as the inclination towards specific behaviors.   Instinctive urges are mainly the animal instincts for procreation, sexuality, hierarchy, ingroup-outgroup, gregariousness.   

The cognitive and conscious attitudes follow as a justification when giving in to being driven by the urges, attitudes are formed to avoid cognitive dissonance.    These attitudes are influenced and modified by education and social norms either encouraging or repressing instinctive behavior.    

Attitudes and subsequent behaviors differ between individuals in the same society according to differing strength of their instinctivity and also between individuals with the same strength of instinctivity but living in different societies.  
The worst jerks and worst cases of Simon's male disturbed character are men with a high instinctivity, whose abuse of women is additionally enabled and reinforced in a permissive society.   

Accordingly I also disagree about how, if at all, disturbed characters can be changed:

"Changing some aspect of our behavior is always the first step toward having a change of heart. Just as our way of thinking influences our behavior, so our actions and the consequences that stem from them influence how we think about things, the attitudes we harbor, and the beliefs we hold about how to get along in life. Making meaningful changes in the way we typically do things is a prerequisite for changing the kind of person we are."

http://counsellingresource.com/features/2012/04/02/disturbed-characters-can-they-change/

I doubt, that attitudes can be changed, as long as these attitudes are an expression of an implicit identity defined by the acceptance of animal instincts.     A change of attitudes would require the conscious choice of an identity derived from the preference for cognition as superior over instincts.    But before someone is able to consider instincts as obsolete and disturbing evolutionary ballast to be overridden in favor of not harming others, he has first to get aware and recognize, how much he is driven by instincts.  
As long as someone accepts himself as an instinct driven animal and thus allows himself his instinctive urges without experiencing cognitive dissonance, he will continue to behave as a disturbed character. 

569. Differentiating Between Instinctive And Cognitive Transgressions

569.   Differentiating Between Instinctive And Cognitive Transgressions

In entry 568 I pointed out the importance of the liability principle in restraining known hazardous persons from ever harming another victim.   But I am not sure, if I made it sufficiently clear, that the objective of this is the protection of individual victims only.  

It is important to distinguish between instinctive transgressions and cognitive transgressions.   Under the myth of the free will and the religious bias towards tolerating harm to victims as a god's will, this distinction is omitted in the legal system of many countries.   It is time to acknowledge, that people's excessive instinctivity has to be dealt with to their personal disadvantage and not to that of innocent others.  

Instinctive transgressions are those harming acts to individual persons, which are done by those (predominantly men) lacking sufficient cognitive control over their sexual and aggressive hierarchy and ingroup/outgroup instincts.   They are the dangerous beasts.   

Cognitive transgressions cause material damage to abstract entities or the general welfare of society, which cannot be accepted or tolerated, but which are not directly tragic to individual victims.   
Criminals, who steal or do any kind of financial fraud against companies or the government are acting by a deliberate decision based upon a thinking process.    If punishment results in a change of their behavior, then punishment is a reasonable consequence.   In the worst case of a recidivism, the damage is limited to be material but there are no traumatized, mutilated or dead victims.    Therefore risking their recidivism can be justified.       
The same is true with people, who cause harm by carelessness as is drunk driving, which they would never do deliberately.   They can also learn to change their behavior.   The shock of their guilt is often enough punishment by itself.   

It is known, that prisoners often commit atrocities to each other.  Beasts are dangerous to harm anyone in their reach, no matter if in freedom or in jail.  The distinction between instinctive and cognitive transgressions requires a distinction between types of prison.  
The instinctive beasts should be locked away in prisons apart from those, where the cognitive criminals are supported to improve.   
If a psychopathic murderer kills a brutal rapist, it is good riddance.    If he kills a fraudulent accountant, it is a tragedy.   

568. Rational Feminism, Male Biology, Harm And The Liability Principle - 2

568.   Rational Feminism, Male Biology, Harm And The Liability Principle - 2

This continues entry 566.

The following metaphor is about a cage, a human and a lion.    The human is protected, as long as the bars of the cage separate the lion and the human.    This protection is independent of who of them is inside the cage.    The difference is the freedom of one and the confinement in a limited space of the other.
The metaphorical lion is a person, who by previous harming behavior has already given clear evidence of being dangerous.    He is known as a beast. 

       

The legal system in many societies including Germany is based upon the fallacy, that the lion has the free will to decide to not attack humans, therefore humans and lions are allowed to mingle freely.   After the first attack, the lion is punished by being put into the cage for a limited time under the illusion, that this teaches him the lesson and enables him to derive the insight to not attack humans again.  Only after several more attacks, punished by more sojourns in the cage and more releases will he finally be locked away permanently as dangerous.    

The attacked victims are either told that their suffering is based upon the lion's right to be free or they are even blamed for not having enclosed themselves in the cage.   In the zoo, the dangerous animals are locked into cages, so that the visitors can walk about in safety.   But when a woman walks home in the night after having missed the last bus and gets attacked, nobody asks, why the dangerous male animal was not safely locked away in a cage.  Instead the woman is blamed for not taking a taxi, she is supposed to pay a lot of money for her safety.   

This example shows the unjust distribution of the burden.   The woman is burdened with being responsible to protect herself at her own cost, but men are not held liable for what they do.   
When a man rapes a woman, in many cases the woman is traumatized for the rest of her life.   In Germany, when it is the first conviction, he is released after a few years in jail.   Having merely lost some years of his life in prison, he is better off than his victim, as soon as he is free again.   

If the legal system would be based upon liability, the first attack of the lion would be sufficient to recognize him as too dangerous to be allowed the freedom to harm again and he would have his permanent place in the cage.   The freedom would be given to the innocent, nobody would expect from them to take shelter in a cage for their own safety.  

Liability means the full recognition of who is a hazard and the logical principle of distributing and imposing disadvantages according to nothing except the known probability of more harm. When someone is a known hazard, no explanations of any kind are valid to justify any leniency for his actions as excusable nor to justify the resignation of forcing risks and collateral damage upon others as future victims.   A known hazard requires to reduce the risk by putting restrictions upon the source of the hazard.   

When the lion's instincts are a hazard, whenever he is hungry, then the disadvantages need to be imposed upon him and not upon the victims.   This makes a lot of sense to most people.  Hardly anybody would agree to have lions roam German cities.  But when the lion in this metaphor is replaced by a man, who cannot control his instinctive urges to abuse women, nobody holds him sufficiently liable for immediate and appropriate protection of women.   

Women need to be protected from being harmed by restricting men's possibilities to do harm, no matter how many disadvantages this has for men.  There is no rational justification to allow men all the freedom to do harm, whenever they cannot help it, while women are manipulated and coerced to accept restrictions to assure their protection as a fate.  When men are unable to control their instincts, demanding from them the responsibility to act against their biological inclinations is futile and stupid.  Instead they need to be impeded from being able to do so.    The burden of preventing harm has to be born by those, who are the danger of the harm, not by the innocent potential victims. 

If someone in the zoo opens the cage of a dangerous beast, and the beast harms a visitor, then the beast is liable but not responsible for the harm as it cannot help what it does by instinct.   The person, who opens the cage is the one responsible for the harm, because he has the full cognition and insight of allowing danger.  
It is the same with the rapist.   He is a dangerous beast, who is liable but not responsible for what he cannot help to do driven by his instinct.   But all those people, who make and enforce the laws giving him his freedom back are enabling the rapist to harm more victims.  They are fully responsible for these victims' agony and trauma.

 

A zoo is a safe place while all dangerous animals are inside there cages.  One escaped beast is enough to make it a dangerous place, and every beast more makes it more dangerous.    Experiencing and noticing the limitations of the freedom of women by the peril of male violence does not depend on how many men are dangerous beasts, but only on the uncontrolled freedom of those already known as beasts.   The danger is real, as soon as one beast is loose, and the number of additional beasts adds only more danger.  

For women, the world is like the zoo, where the women are offered the cages to lock themselves in as a protection from an unknown number of free beasts.

I do not mean to be misunderstood.   I neither hate nor fear men in general.    Nor do I imply that the majority of men are dangerous, even though the fact, that men are on average physically stronger than women is a real hazard.     I fear the known beasts, who are free, and I hold those, who allow them the freedom to harm, responsible for what they directly and indirectly do to women.    Every known beast in freedom is one too many.

531. Trust And Trustworthiness Without The Myth Of The Free Will

531.  Trust And Trustworthiness Without The Myth Of The Free Will

Rational trust depends on the other person's trustworthiness.    Blind trust is irrational and risky.   

Unfortunately, there is a logical problem concerning the assessment of who can be trusted and how much.   Only a person's untrustworthiness can be clearly proven by the evidence of at least one transgression.   One single act of betrayal and breaking the trust is enough to refute the transgressor's claim to be trustworthy and to deserve trust.   

But no such unambiguous evidence of trustworthiness is logically possible.  Trustworthiness cannot be assessed any better than as a probability of expecting trustworthy behavior in the future, whenever an available alternative option to transgress is not chosen.  Experiencing the absence of untrustworthy behavior justifies nothing more than the estimation of a high probability of trustworthiness.  Rational trust only grows according to experience.   

Experiencing no transgressions cannot be attributed with certainty to a personality trait of absolute trustworthiness.   It can equally be attributed to the mere absence of an occasion to transgress.   It is not possible to know, if a man not cheating does this by an innate preference for monogamy or because his animal instincts have not yet been tempted badly enough by any female body triggering him to transgress.  

The assessment of trustworthiness by only extrapolating previous behavior is a retrospective method without a chance to avoid being harmed.   People gamble with their own vulnerability, when due to lacking enough information they trust by trial and error, until they get wise only when hurt by a transgression.  

 

Consciously discarding the myth of the free will includes also discarding the concept of a person's absolute trustworthiness as a trait and being trustworthy by a free decision.   This leads to the alternative concept of the prospective assessment of a person's relative trustworthy behavior in the framework of the specific relationship between two persons.  

This concept does not expect anybody to be equally trustworthy to all people, independent of how much the person benefits from transgressions.   In this concept, the estimation of another person's possible relative trustworthiness is based upon two limitations:

1. Both persons agree on shared definitions of transgressions.  
   
   When two persons have promised monogamy and exclusivity to each other, cheating is clearly a transgression and proof of untrustworthiness.  
   But when two persons like for example Sartre and Beauvoir agree on the commodification of others, then their sleeping around like alley dogs is for both not a transgression.  They were trustworthy to each other but instead they did break the trust of all those, whom they hurt by the denial of exclusivity. 
   
   
2. The choice of preferring non-transgressing behavior over the transgression is ultimately beneficial for both.  This choice is determined (as outlined in more details in entry 512) by factors as these.  

2.1.  Direct impacts by the specific kind and strength of needs for homeostasis and the individual specific sensitivity of the pleasure center.    Nobody has a reason to indulge in a transgression, unless it either reduces dishomeostasis or causes pleasure.  

2.2.  Indirect cognitive impacts by the consideration and anticipation of long-term consequences of the tempting transgression, either by the calculation of comparing the immediate benefits with expected external punishments and rewards or by the awareness of the cognitive consequences of either preventing self-punishment by feeling guilty or enhancing self-rewarding by feeling good due to acting in accordance with the own value system and ideal self.

It is a frequent fallacy to expect another's trustworthiness as a consequence of an alleged free will to act according to the rules of a religion, social norm or other extrinsic motivations.  Relative trustworthiness can most reliably be expected, when the behavior expected by the trusting person is intrinsically motivated as being also most beneficial to the own needs.    

Therefore trial and error with haphazard partners is not a rational method for the goal of finding a trustworthy partner for commitment.  The rational method is choosing carefully a partner, for whom the trustworthy behavior is innately more beneficial than transgressions would be.   

It is many women's foolish mistake to get involved with a man, merely because he is attracted to their body and promises, whatever seems to lead to his homeostasis.  This does not justify women's irrational hope, that he will never again touch another woman.   This is trial and error and more often than not ends with the woman being hurt by a cheating jerk.    

A wise woman chooses the man, who succeeds to convince her, that monogamy and exclusivity are his own innate preference and needs, that being trustworthy to her expectations of commitment is also what is most beneficial for himself.  
Allowing herself to be convinced of a man's trustworthiness is of course also only a question of correctly estimating the probability.   A man afflicted with dishomeostasis may lie, he may be in denial of some of his tendencies, he may overestimate his self-control, he may mistake his ideal-self for his real self and there are more such hazards.   What a main claims as his attitudes, values, resolutions and aspirations towards a woman concerns mainly the cognitive indirect impacts.  But these alone do not suffice as a reliable basis for the assessment of his trustworthiness.    

The soundest assessment is derived from his predispositions concerning the direct impacts.   A man with high instinctive needs for those homeostations and stimulations of the pleasure center, which he can obtain best by transgressions, is a hazard, no matter, how convincing he appears to be otherwise.   
The less a man is determined by his instincts towards the objectification of women's bodies, the more he can be trusted to treat women without abuse and objectification, without hurting their dignity.

While a careful choice of a man, who shares the most benefits by reciprocally fulfilling each other's needs, is no guarantee against transgressions, it is at least a method to reduce the risk.  

525. My Wish For A Jerkoscanner

525.  My Wish For A Jerkoscanner

Along with the myth of the free will, I have given up all illusions, that the difference between drooling over a woman's body and appreciating a woman's personality as a companion were men's conscious free decisions.   This difference is determined by the man's innate needs and instinctive urges and his individual sensitivity to what stimulates the pleasure center of his brain.   

When men drool over women's objectified bodies, their cognition is deactivated and they are not any better than animals, they are just instinct driven robots.   
When men love a woman's personality, they are on an evolutionary level above being animals, because to love a person requires enough cognition to be able to appreciate this person's non-physical qualities.  

As either drooling or appreciating is outside the realm of men's decision, it is even more outside the realm of women's influence.    It is a dangerous illusion, when women hope to gain a drooling man's appreciation as persons by compliance with being used.    

Wise women valuing their dignity reject being objectified by the drooling animals.   Instead they choose those men, by whom they are needed and wanted as companions.   

Unfortunately for these women, it is often difficult or impossible to distinguish by his observable behavior between a man's true level of what attracts him.  Mistaking men's animal drooling for love and commitment is one of the biggest hazards for women.  

There are good news:  While the behavior may be misleading, the brain tells the truth.  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120620101011.htm

"Love and sexual desire activate different areas of the striatum. The area activated by sexual desire is usually activated by things that are inherently pleasurable, such as sex or food. The area activated by love is involved in the process of conditioning by which things paired with reward or pleasure are given inherent value. That is, as feelings of sexual desire develop into love, they are processed in a different place in the striatum."

In an ideal world, a woman could send a man to get a brain scan before she allows him to touch her.    This way he could prove to her, that he deserves her by dignified love, in contrast to being merely an unworthy animal attempting to abuse her objectified body.   

But we do not live in an ideal world, but in one, where women too often only find out, that a man is unworthy of her, when it is too late, when she already has made the mistake of getting involved, due to confounding his objectification of her body with apparent but lacking commitment. 

Sending a man to get a brain scan is theoretically and technically possible.   But if I were to have a science fiction fantasy about the perfect world, a woman would invent an instrument called the 'Jerkoscanner'.  This would be a portable and affordable brain scanner, which women could use on men's heads before getting involved.   

The Jerkoscanner would warn her, if a man's apparent interest in her person is nothing better than his strategy of manipulation and seduction caused by his drooling for the body.     

517. Realistic Expectations After Having Discarded The Myth Of The Free Will

517.   Realistic Expectations After Having Discarded The Myth Of The Free Will

This is the reply to a comment on entry 515.   

I am fully aware, that I can only expect good behavior from people, whose reasons for treating me well are beneficial for themselves according to any of the varieties described in entry 512.    As long as there is no such reason or as long as I am ignorant of them having such reasons, I consider people as a possible hazard for being hurt or harmed.   I am reluctant to trust and rely upon anybody, unless I know, what benefits they get or expect from me in return.

This is important for the choice of a mindmate, whom I need to be reliable and trustworthy enough to make a relationship a safe haven.    

I can realistically expect to be treated with behavior determined by care, consideration and responsibility only under at least the following conditions:
1.  The partner knows, what I subjectively experience as such behavior and what is required from him to provide me with this experience.   
2.  The partner derives benefits from being with me and is fully aware of them.  He appreciates the benefits without taking them for granted or feeling entitled to have them.

2.1.  He either evaluates the benefits as sufficient to justify to himself all the necessary disadvantages to earn them.  
2.2.  Or the benefits happen to be simultaneously beneficial for him and for me.  
3.  The partner bases his behavior consistently upon the expectation and anticipation of maintaining long term benefits and upon the realistic knowledge of the consequences for himself if behaving otherwise.

This of course has to be reciprocal.   I can only earn a safe haven for myself, if what I can offer is also perceived as sufficiently beneficial by the partner.  

I am realistic.   If someone is selfish, has entitlement delusions, takes one sided advantages for granted, then there is nothing to be done except to protect myself by keeping at a safe distance from such a jerk.     An entitlement delusion to perceive a woman as a utility is not a decision of a free will to change.  It is a predisposition of a jerk's brain, which makes being with him a hazard.   
As long as someone feels good about himself and about his own behavior, he will not change, no matter what I do or say.    Jerks cannot be changed, only avoided.

516. Apparent Altruism Without The Myth Of The Free Will

516.   Apparent Altruism Without The Myth Of The Free Will

When discarding the myth of the free will, I explained that all apparently moral behaviors is caused by some beneficial motivation, either by serving to reduce dishomeostasis or to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, either immediately or by anticipation.   While I mainly focused on the motivation for the most basic moral behavior of avoiding to harm others, this does not exclude proactive altruistic behaviors like helping others.  

The following source compares the diifferent motivation to help of religious with that of non-religious people.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120430140035.htm

"But new research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the highly religious are less motivated by compassion when helping a stranger than are atheists, agnostics and less religious people.

For highly religious people, however, compassion was largely unrelated to how generous they were,
 

The results challenge a widespread assumption that acts of generosity and charity are largely driven by feelings of empathy and compassion, researchers said. In the study, the link between compassion and generosity was found to be stronger for those who identified as being non-religious or less religious."

Helping behavior is triggered, when the motivation is strong above a threshold.   The motivation of the same subjective strength can consist of very different reasons.   When there are two identical cases of a person in noticeable distress, and the religious and the non-religious person engage in the same helping behaviors, this can be both explained very differently, each without a free will.

1.  A religious person's motivation can be strongly influenced by religious rules and norms concerning whom to help and how. 
A religious person can feel compassion without helping, if the observed suffering is considered as the god's will not to be interfered with.    When the religious person helps, this can be caused by the anticipation of a reward after death and/or by feeling dishomeostasis due to the fear of hell in the case of not helping.     

2.  When another person's suffering triggers a non-religious person's mirror neurons, this causes the compassion by empathy.  This means, that the other's suffering is experienced as a state of dishomeostasis, which can be reduced by homeostation.    

515. Responsibility And Liability Without The Myth Of The Free Will

515.  Responsibility And Liability Without The Myth Of The Free Will

Discarding the concept of the free will does not imply to accept, condone or excuse harmful behavior.   It only means a different approach how to protect people from being harmed.    Not harming others is a moral issue, no matter if there is a free will or not.  It requires to redefine the moral quality of behavior from the perception and experience of the target, recipient or victim.   The harm suffered by a victim does not depend on the ability of the transgressor to control his behavior or not.   The need to be protected from harm is independent from how this is done.

People's possibilities to harm others are drastically restricted by legal systems, and subtly also by social norms.     The myth of the free will limits the success of these protective methods for the innocent.   Without the myth of the free will, a person's inability to act responsibly is not a suitable and rational justification to release this person from all liability resulting from his actions.


Responsibility is the cognitive ability to behave deliberately without harming others.   The myth of the free will considers the ability to act responsibly as a part of human sanity.   Harming is legally punished for the purpose to enable the transgressor to learn how to apply his free will for not repeating the harm in the future.  
Only those declared as insane are not punished, as they are considered to have no free will to learn and to control themselves.  

As a consequence of this paradigm, the suffering of victims is considered the unavoidable collateral damage of the learning process of those, who are supposed as having merely strayed but have a free will to decide to change.    The focus is on the transgressors, the victims are considered the objects of their learning.  

The free will myth leading to dealing with a person lacking the ability to act morally by first allowing them to do harm and then punishing them is an inappropriate and cruel mistake.    It burdens too much suffering upon too many innocent victims by being too lenient with the transgressors.    Any person, who for the first time commits a crime causing serious physical or traumatic injuries to the victim, no matter if it is assault, robbery, rape, gets free after a few years.   Only when he has repeated harming innocent victims several times, is he considered as dangerous enough to be locked away for good.   

This is an outrage to the innocent second and further victims of known transgressors.   No punishment can ever undo and heal the damage to the victims.    Punishment may even impede those with lacking morals from changing their behavior.    They experience their time in prison as paying for the benefits of the crime.   Having paid is their reason to feel not or less guilty.  


Without the free will, the concept of universal responsibility has to be replaced by the concept of unrestricted liability.    Liability focuses upon the harm done by someone independent of the reasons for, causes and triggers of any behavior.   The focus is upon protecting the innocent from becoming victims, no matter, how this is accomplished and no matter the consequences for those, who are not able to refrain from harming.  

Responsibility does not require a free will, as it can be motivated by a cognitive calculation of preventing dishomeostasis and of expecting future stimulation of the pleasure center.    Responsible behavior can be the best behavior for the own long-term needs as already explained in entry 514.  

Under the liability paradigm of protecting the innocent, those able to act responsibly are the lucky ones, whose brain allows them to live without being externally restricted.    The others are less lucky, they need to be externally restricted from becoming the cause of harm. 

The ability to behave morally as experienced by the targets, to live without harming is a talent and a disposition, that people are either lucky enough to have wired in their brain or they are unfortunate enough to lack it. 

It is not in any way different from intelligence.    Logically, it should also not be dealt with differently.  
Most people take the benefits of intelligence for granted without even wondering about any injustice, when an intelligent person receives a lot of expensive formal education and reaches high positions of power in a factory.  He earns a lot more for a rewarding job than does the person lacking intelligence, who is given no choice but to do a dull repetitive job at the assembly line.  

Less intelligence is usually accepted as a justification for less quality of life, even though those with less intelligence are only detrimental to themselves.   But the lack of the ability to behave morally is even more detrimental, because suffering is imposed upon innocent victims, and the transgressors often get away with it.   It is time to accept the fact, that the inability to act morally is at least as much a justification if not much more than is intelligence for limiting and restricting the quality of life.   

Intelligence can be at least roughly measured and noticed by limited achievements, thus mistakes by wrong decision can be often prevented.  
Morals are more difficult to assess.  Unfortunately for the victims of first crimes, it is impossible or very difficult to predict the first occurrence of someone seriously harming another.  The first victim cannot be protected.   But after the first crime has been proven beyond doubt, the danger is known.   The second victim of the same criminal is not only a victim of him, but also a victim of a society, which fails to protect the innocent. 

I am not defending or justifying the inequality of chances.   Only when two needs are in conflict, then the needs of the innocent should have priority over the needs of the person known already as a potential danger.    The need to remain unharmed should have priority over the need to have a freedom, which includes the freedom to harm at the next occasion.   

514. Morals And Ethics Without The Myth Of The Free Will - 2

514.  Morals And Ethics Without The Myth Of The Free Will - 2

The myth of the free will (discarded in entry (512) is perpetuated as a result of the subjective experience of other people's behavior as moral.   This experience is often independent of the person's real motives.   Whenever another's personal benefits from choosing a specific behavior are not obvious, people are prone to ascribe the behavior to the expression of an apparent free will. 
   
Morals and ethics can instead be explained by the intrinsic and extrinsic cost and benefit calculation for deciding to choose a behavior. 
This calculation is not only using the perception of immediate and present dishomeostasis and the immediate attraction of present stimuli for expected pleasure.  Both can at least partially be visible and recognizable to others including to the target of the behavior.  
This calculation also includes the evaluation, consideration and expectation of emotional, social and legal direct and long-term consequences derived from experiences stored in the memory.   This cognitive part is invisible and mostly unknown to those exposed to the behavior, which is thus not or not fully explicable and comprehensible.  

Not harming others unless there is a morally justified reason to make an exception can be seen as a basic principle of all morals.    As outlined in entry 513, persons with the particles' identity value the species higher than the individuals.  They accept the justification of harm, when it is collateral damage in favor of the survival of the human species.  
For the individualistic identity, there is no justification for harming others.   

Therefore refraining from harming behaviors is at least an important ingredient in what is subjectively experienced as an expression of morals, if it is not the core of it.

Evaluating the morality of behavior implies the interaction between two or more persons.  There are two perspectives.  One focuses upon the target of possible behaviors, the other one upon the acting person's motivation and reasons.
 
The target can judge from direct subjective experience and according to the own concept of morality, if a specific behavior is either moral or not.  The motivation for the behavior is hidden, and can only be assessed as a guess.    The behaving person can either act morally by ethical principles or as the haphazard reaction to a singular situation.   

A monster is not less a monster, when once in a while a possible victim is lucky enough to remain unharmed in spite of being exposed to the hazard.   The non-victim in an ephemeral exposure can remain unaware of having been exposed to a monster and is unable to know, if the apparently moral behavior was only exceptionally and accidentally identical with what the target considers moral.     

There are four varieties of interactions, which are experienced as moral by the target.  None needs the free will as an explanation:  

1. Moral behavior in the absence of conflicting needs.
   
   1.1.   The acting person lacks any opportunity, occasion, method, means, tools or weapons to indulge in harmful behavior.
   
   1.2.   The acting person happens either temporarily or principally not to experience any need, urge or reason to do anything, that would be experienced by the target as harming.
   
2. Moral behavior by self-control as a result of expected consequences.
   
   The acting person anticipates external consequences following the choice of behavior, there is awareness of the pending punishment for harming and/or pending reward for not harming.   This includes acquiring correct knowledge of what is harmful to every individual target as a part of choosing, how to behave.
   Consequences can for example be legal punishment, harmful reactions of the victim or social damage as is the loss of a position of power and influence.   It also includes delusional rewards and punishments by an imaginary deity.  
   
3. Consistent moral behavior of apparently ethical persons.
   
   The acting person anticipates internal consequences following the choice of behavior.   This can be emotional dishomeostasis and/or emotional joy of the pleasure center.
   In a generalized anticipation of these internal consequences, some people follow rules and thus behave consistently in a way, that is experienced by the targets as not only moral but as the apparent expression of an ethical personality.  
   
   3.1.    Dishomeostasis can be triggered by 
   
   • suffering as a result of spontaneous empathy with the target
   • experiencing harming others as damaging the self-esteem and self worth.  This is the result of being influenced by social norms and/or a religion, when specific harming behaviors have been associated with despised traits like being weak, foolish, coward, guilty, ashamed.   
   
   3.2.   Stimulation of the pleasure center can be caused by an innate predisposition of the cognition.
   This innate predisposition is the prevalence of rationality over instinctivity.   Rationality determines a specific choice of an ethical principle.    When focusing decisions not only on self-interest, the interaction with individuals nor on the preference for any ingroup, but on looking at the big picture of the overall balance between giving and taking, then justice, fairness and equal chances are the most logical principle.  
   On this level, the generalized benefits of the golden rule and of tit-for-tat strategies are ethical, because they are logical.    Unjust, unfair and asymmetrical behavior and inequality are unethical, because they are irrational.  
   Rationality causes the pleasure of self-esteem, self-worth and self-confidence, while irrationality causes dishomeostasis.
   People with this predisposition are ethical, because they are rational.  

513. Morals And Ethics Without The Myth Of The Free Will - 1

513.  Morals And Ethics Without The Myth Of The Free Will - 1

In entry 512 I discarded the myth of the free will.   This has many implication.   

Some aspects of moral behaviors are not universally logical, but they depend upon the extent of how different instincts determine the brain differently and what needs are predominantly experienced by the subjective perception of homeostasis.   

People suffer physical and emotional pain as a consequence of being harmed and hurt.  Suffering is a form of dishomeostasis, and not to suffer is a basic human need.    This need can be in conflict with another person's different needs.   Morals and rules are attempts to solve the conflict of needs.  

Unfortunately, there is no absolute basis for a general moral principle.  There are two competing principles, depending on the view of human beings as either individuals or particles (defined in entry 74).   Both moral principles include a very disparate approach to suffering, which logically leads to an equally disparate approach to the justification of harming others or protecting others from being harmed.  

1.  By the particles' principle, the species is more valuable than the individual.   Thus suffering can be justified whenever it is required for the survival of the species.   Morals serve not only to minimize individual sufferings, but also to force individuals to suffer.

2.  By the individualistic principle, individuals are in conflict with each other for their wellbeing.   The logical method to minimize suffering and maximize the quality of life applies the comparison of the impacts of all behaviors upon others.   Morals are based upon the acceptance of the basic human right of not being harmed. 

The preference for one of the two principles is not an independent choice by a free will.  It is determined by the wiring of a person's brain in combination with modifications by external influences.  This determination is expressed by the the person's subjective identity as either more a particle or more an individual.    What appears naturally and logically as moral is very different for particles from what it is for individuals.    Especially the individually different magnitudes of the procreation instinct, of the ingroup-outgroup instinct and of the gregarious instinct have a decisive impact upon the identity.  


An example:   In the case of a shipwreck, the general rule is to save women and children first.   This is clearly an implicit choice for the survival of the species without considering individual sufferings.

Assuming 240 persons to be rescued, 80 families of a couple with one child each, while there are only 120 places in the life boats.   Theoretically, by weighing the suffering, there are alternatives to the general rule of women and children first.  
Drowning is an agony for every of the 120 persons, no matter who they are.   But when considering also the individual suffering of the survivors, there are huge differences, depending on their selection.    

Option 1 is saving 60 women, each with her child.   The consequence are 60 women suffering for a very long time not only the loss of their partner, but they are also burdened by the necessity of raising the child alone, which is additionally a severe obstacle towards finding a new partner.   
Option 2 is saving 40 families and leaving 40 families behind.  

The choice between option 1 and 2 is the choice between the two moral principles of either the priority of the individual or of the species.    It is a choice between minimizing individual suffering and minimizing the reproductive loss.  
Option 1 causes extreme emotional suffering but biologically it is the least possible loss of reproductive potential.   No children are lost, and 20 wombs.   The saved women can be made pregnant again by any man.  Biologically seen, the husbands left behind are not needed to prevent a loss of reproduction.
Option 2 avoids the emotional suffering of directly bereaved survivors, but to the species, there is the biological loss of 40 children and of 40 wombs.  

By implicit calculation, the moral of society prescribes forcing the agony of losing the beloved partner plus the dreary life as a single mother upon 60 women.   This is implicitly considered to be an acceptable price for preventing the loss of 40 children and 20 wombs.

There is no free will, when instinct driven particles force the priority of the species upon individuals.   The procreation instinct is a determining force, which is stronger than rationality for all those driven by it.  The afflicted persons sacrifice their individual wellbeing in favor of the survival of the genes and this sacrifice is their justification to force sacrifices also upon others.  

Another example:  The woman, who is compelled to change stinking diapers instead of reading a book, does this to restore homeostasis.  By submitting to all the detrimental consequences of the procreation instinct, she is a victim of her biology.   The man, whom she tricks with lies to become the payer of child support is also a victim of instincts.   

512. Discarding The Myth Of The Free Will

512.   Discarding The Myth Of The Free Will

While learning about evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, I got more and more aware of how much people are determined by subconscious instinctive urges and impulses. As a side effect, already for a long time I have been implicitly and slowly discarding the myth of the free will, but postponing to consciously think this through.   
Implicitly this entire blog is based upon the concept of finding a partner, whose fulfilling my own relationship needs is not a decision by an alleged free will of his.  Instead I am looking for someone sharing with me the same innate inclinations towards the same behaviors and activities, thus enabling both of us to simultaneously fulfill the own and the partner's needs.

But as often, someone else has expressed my implicit idea already much better than I can.   There is an excellent video, in which Sam Harris discards very convincingly the myth of the free will:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pCofmZlC72g#!

Human behavior is very complex.   It is too complex to be sufficiently logically explained during social interaction.  The mere observable behavior of any human does not reveal all or enough of what contributes to determine it.   This makes the attribution of any behavior to a free will a very tempting fallacy.   But the mere inability to fully understand the complexity is no justification to accept the myth of the free will as a substitute for the lacking full explanations.  

  
Discarding a tempting fallacy is not enough without some rudimentary alternative.   By extreme simplification, all behavior can ultimately and theoretically be explained as serving to either reduce subjectively experienced dishomeostasis or to stimulate the pleasure center of the brain by what is subjectively believed to be appropriate methods. 

The limitations of this simplification are due to the complexity of many variables and influences.   

The following are some, but certainly not all:

1.  Physical Or Cognitive.

Dishomeostasis and stimulated pleasure can either be triggered physically and materially or caused and enabled by faculties of the human cognition.  

 
Examples:

• Physical dishomeostasis. 
  Hunger
• Physical pleasure. 
  Bubble bath
  
• Intellectual dishomeostasis: 
  Boredom; the curiosity to know something.  
• Intellectual pleasure: 
  Flow experienced during a creative activity; enjoying an art exhibition.  
• Emotional dishomeostasis. 
  Feeling lonely in need of a mate; feeling betrayed in need of justice. 
• Emotional pleasure. 
  Feeling happy with a partner or by an achievement.   

2.  Intrinsic Or Extrinsic

Dishomeostasis and stimulated pleasure can be either intrinsically triggered by innate needs originating in the person's brain or extrinsically by influences and impact from the environment.  

Examples:

• Intrinsic dishomeostasis: 
  Hunger.
• Extrinsic dishomeostasis: 
  Fear as a reaction to a situation of real danger.
• Intrinsic source of pleasure stimulation:  
  The joy of finding the solution to a problem or puzzle.
• Extrinsic sources of pleasure stimulation:  
  The fragrance of a flower; listening to music.
  

3.  Innate Or Acquired

Dishomeostasis and stimulated pleasure can be either experienced by basic human faculties or only experienced by applying learned skills or previously gathered information. 

Examples:

• Spontaneous dishomeostasis: 
  Hunger
• Learned dishomeostasis:  
  Worries about a predicted real hazard, like a flood or a storm.
• Spontaneous pleasure:  
  Listening to the birds; enjoying the warmth of the sun.
• Learned pleasure:   
  Reading, swimming.

4.  Immediate, Anticipated Or Delayed

Behavior can be either an immediate homeostation or an immediate reaction to noticing a source of pleasure, or there can be a delay, anticipation and preparation.  This is enabled by the human memory for past experiences and by the cognitive ability to anticipate future experiences.   

Examples:

• Immediate homeostation: 
  Eating as soon as hunger is felt.
• Delayed homeostation:  
  Distributing the consumption of limited supplies over a long time in an emergency situation.
• Anticipated homeostation:  
  Carrying provision on a hike.
• Immediate pleasure:  
  Entering a cinema at the moment, when the announced movie stimulates the wish to see it.
• Delayed pleasure:  
  Rewarding oneself only after having finished a task.
• Anticipated pleasure:  
  Buying a ticket for a theater play in advance.

5.   Reality Or Delusion

Dishomeostasis, anticipation of dishomeostasis, pleasure and anticipation of pleasure are subjective experiences.  The perception and expectation of its magnitude is independent of objective evidence of the existence of its cause or the probability of its occurrence.
The subjective belief is enough to determine people's behavior, even when there is no real source or cause at all.  

The religious delusion of the existence of deities supplies good examples:

• Delusional dishomeostasis:  
  Feeling guilt of breaking a religious rule, even though nobody is harmed, like a catholic eating meat on Friday.  
• Delusional anticipation of dishomeostasis: 
  The belief in the purgatory and in hell.
• Delusional pleasure: 
  Religious experiences.
• Delusional anticipation of pleasure: 
  The belief in a heaven, where all suffering is allegedly rewarded with pleasure.   

6.   Reality Or Manipulation

Anticipation of improbable dishomeostasis and of slight pleasure can be enhanced and magnified by manipulation to appear significant.  Dishomeostasis of fear, anxiety and worries can be artificially induced to create markets for profit.

Examples: 

• Artificial dishomeostasis:
  Selling safety equipment.
• Artificial anticipation of dishomeostasis:
  Selling insurances
• Artificial anticipation of pleasure:
  Selling products for consumption.

7.   Simultaneous And Competing Triggers

Dishomeostasis from more than one deficit can simultaneously exist and several stimuli can compete to have the strongest impact upon the pleasure center.    

7.1.  When there is full conscious perception of all options, the human cognition allows to choose on a long term basis between possible behaviors as the reaction to the competing urges and the available stimuli.

Examples.  

• The self-control during a diet, when the phyisical dishomoestasis of being hungry is competing with the mental dishomeostasis of being discontent with being obese.  
• The self-control of decisions to spend money or to save it for a purpose.  The marshmallow test is a good example.  

7.2.  Strong dishomeostasis can sometimes hide weaker dishomeostasis temporarily from being noticed. 

   
Example:

• A hungry person with limited money buys food and not a book.   The dishomeostasis of being bored only reaches the awareness after having eaten. 

8.   Attribution Of Causes
 

People often do not understand the real cause of dishomeostasis.  Therefore they fail in their attempt to cope with it. 

8.1.   Own dishomeostasis
Diffuse feelings of dishomeostasis are not understood or attributed to false causes.   Sometimes the attempts to cope replace one dishomeostasis with another.  

Examples:

• Overeating, physical addiction to drugs and emotional addiction to gambling are two examples of mislead attempts to cope with some other dishomeostasis like stress or unrecognized relationship problems.

8.2.  Other's dishomeostasis
People are often not aware of innate differences.   They project, that what is good for them is also good for others.   They are oblivious, that what stimulates their own pleasure center sometimes causes others' dishomeostasis.

Examples:  

• People getting pleasure from eating garlic or fish are unaware, that even the smell can cause nausea to others.    
• People playing their favorite music are unaware, that it can be annoying noise to others.  

8.3.  General expectation of dishomeostasis
External influences like social norms and desensitization modify or destroy the general perception, awareness for and recognition of the real and genuine innate dishomeostasis.   This distorts the expectations about how others are impacted by the own behavior and of how to best deal with the own dishomeostasis.   
 

Examples: 

• The desensitization by being exposed to too much sex and violence in the media has destroyed the dishomeostasis of feeling empathy and guilt as a deterrent to hurt and abuse others.
• The dishomeostasis of lonely nice guys in need of finding a companion is modified by the social norm of promiscuity.  They are manipulated to feel instead the artificial dishomeostasis of wanting to be oversexed studs.

As a consequence of discarding the free will, I do not expect anything from anybody, unless I get it either in return or as a side effect of an interaction, during which my behavior contributes to either the other's homeostation or to the stimulation of his pleasure center.  With strangers, this is trial and error based upon the tit-for-tat strategy.   

In a relationship, communication revealing the partner's most urgent dishomeostasis and special susceptibility of his pleasure center is very important.   Know this reciprocally is an important part of knowing the partner and of making a relationship last.