Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on December 2, 2019, 8:32 am

I loved this passage from "The Mating Mind".

Miller first talks about different games used as sexual strategies.
One game, which he calls "Scheherazade", seeks to increase male status with religion, shamanism and generally "made up arguments".
Another game is to seek status through science and the scientific method, thus bringing real benefits to the people around.

In short, men in different societies will use two strategies:

• Seek power through religion, made up stories, and myths (most societies)
• Seek power through science and direct control over the world around (the West)

Of course, the latter provides survival benefits and equips the groups playing a "scientific equilibrium" with more power over other groups playing the Scheherazade equilibrium.

When during the Renaissance the scientific revolution took over in Europe, it equipped Europe with the intellectual foundations to later dominate the world.
And when it combined with the industrial revolution, the West gained the actual power and military prowess to physically take over the world -both militarily and culturally-.

Says Miller:

Wouldn't group competition favor sexual displays concerning falsifiable hypotheses and empirical facts, rather than sexual displays concerning Aladdin and his genie?

The science-displayers would develop useful theories about the world as a side-effect of their sexual status games.

The Scheherazades would not.
The science- displaying groups should have had competitive advantages. Indeed they have, but only in the last five hundred years.

But then adds Miller:

For all of human evolution, we muddled along playing half-fact, half- fantasy games with our language.

Indeed, we are not yet fully out of the Scheherazades game.

And science, the scientific method and true critical-thinking skills must still be reasserted today against the dark forces of priests, shamans, snake oil salesmen, and the masses of superstitious and gullible individuals.