Based Camp: The (s*x) Slave Race Hypothesis

Join us as we dive deep into a riveting discussion with Diana Fleischman, a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, as well as the author of the upcoming book "How to Train Your Boyfriend". In this episode, we explore a variety of intriguing theories, most notably the concept that humans have evolved to be a "slave race", especially under the lens of evolutionary psychology. Diana brings fascinating insights about status hierarchies, gender dynamics, and the potential evolutionary roots of certain behaviors and preferences. This conversation will definitely get you thinking about humanity's social and evolutionary history in new ways.

An AI written transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. I am super excited. We're gonna be speaking with one of our favorite people today, Diana Fleischman, who in addition to being a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, is the author of the Not Yet published but upcoming book called How to Train Your Boyfriend. And she's written a ton of other fascinating stuff that you must go down that rabbit hole.

Simone: Trust us, you'll be very, very entertained. We're going to speak with Diana about a wide range of things. We also want her to, and she starts to be the uh,

Malcolm: aria podcast. Yes. Host

Simone: Appia podcast. I furiously. Yes. And we, we honestly want her to start by stress testing one of our weird theories but we also wanna hear all sorts of other things from her.

Simone: So, Diana, welcome first and foremost. Thank you.

Malcolm: So the theory I really want to go over with you is one from our book, the Pragmatist Guide de Sexuality, which is that we are a slave race, and I'll explain what I mean by this.

Malcolm: [00:01:00] Specifically the, the majority of the evolutionary pressure put on human to human social interactions was put on humans who were low within local status hierarchies. First. Most humans, historically were basically near the bottom of a, a social status hierarchy. Very few humans were near the top of the central status hierarchy, and while men in that position definitely had more surviving offspring even when they were in that position.

Malcolm: There was less pressure on them. To behave in certain ways. Like a leader who failed isn't gonna get his genes erased as quickly as a a, a servant or slave who fails, which means that the average human mind is much more optimized around servitude. And this has a few interesting takeaways. One Ayla mutual friend of of, of both of ours this would explain why even in men around 40% prefer to take on sub submissive positions in, sexuality.

Malcolm: But it also may explain the way we relate to [00:02:00] things like deity or society writ large. How like a president will say, well, I'm the servant of the people. Even though the president is technically the highest level position in society, or the head of a company might say, well, I'm the servant of the board.

Malcolm: We really have few concepts of non servitude in our society. So I wanna get your take on this as an evolutionary psychologist.

Diana: So one idea that's very interesting is, Potentially hunter-gatherer societies were less hierarchical than current societies that have very large hierarchies. I've been reading a lot about male and female dynamics, so men tend to be more forgiving of their friends and they also have more stable status hierarchies than women do.

Diana: Mm. Because their status hierarchies are based on more stable characteristics such as strength and prestige over time. So it does make sense for men. To, you know, and I was listening to an interesting conversation with Beau, we guard and Jonathan Palon about, you know, why would a man gain status [00:03:00] by carving beautiful sculptures of a man from history who's high in status?

Diana: You know, these kinds of ideas. So it's possible. Yeah, I do see what you're saying. That yeah, the average man is actually subservient. The average man is monogamous or, or worse. What I'll riff on this with is what I think is even more interesting, I have an idea, is I was talking to Louise Perry and we were talking about like, how evolutionarily novel is prostitution.

Diana: And she said That it was unlikely for women to have been passed around and have sex with multiple men, but it was probably very common in evolutionary history, ancestral history for women to be sex slaves to a specific person. Ah, right. Oh, and so she talks about kind of Stockholm syndrome and women being uniquely impressed upon by Stockholm Syndrome because it is the adaptive thing to do, not just, you know, because of.

Diana: Patro locality. So women would've been taken away. Mm-hmm. On average from their families and given to a, a strange man's family. For her to adapt to his [00:04:00] culture and his language and to his customs would've made sense. But the only way you and your kids are gonna survive if you're taken over by a hostile group is through a, a kind of.

Diana: Pleasant submissiveness. I'll say accommodation.

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. So there's a few riffs I want to take on the, on the thing that you've said here. One thing that was really interesting is male status hierarchies being more static than female status hierarchies. To add to that, one study that's really interesting is males sort themselves into status hierarchies much faster than women do, because the majority of the way that men sort themselves into status hierarchies is by.

Malcolm: Immediate physical traits like height that they can determine the moment they walk into the room. And the reason for that is because the top man historically was typically the man that could beat up the other men. And that's something that you can quickly observe. Yeah. Which would be partially why the male status hierarchy would be more static.

Malcolm: Another thing that you mentioned was wars of conquest and taking women, one really interesting study here that I, [00:05:00] we talk about in our sexuality book shows that when you have a competition, like a game or, or something like that, that's, I think it's like violent adjacent games, you know, like physical, physical games and it looks like your side is losing males bond more like they feel closer bonds with the people on their team, whereas women begin to bond less with the people on their team when it looks like their team is losing.

Malcolm: Which shows sort of the behavior you're talking about, where it would've really been evolutionarily advantageous if we assume that all the males in a tribe were killed when the tribe was taken over. The final part I wanna riff on, sorry if I'm riffing on too many things here. You just, I taking notes while you're talking.

Malcolm: Some really cool ideas is one of our theories on sexuality, we call the polymorphic human female. So for users, you're familiar with polymorphism, but for users, what it is, is when you have a single genetic code that can be expressed in two behavioral and, and physical phenotypes. So a locus is the classic example here.

Malcolm: [00:06:00] Where when they get above certain population numbers, they change their physiology and behavior patterns. You know, normally they're a grasshopper, but if you rub like their hind leg with a Q-tip, they'll transform into a locus. But even when like baboons, you see polymorphic behavior patterns above certain PO population sizes.

Malcolm: So what we would ar. Argue here is that human females the more sexual partners