This is one of the harshest truths to swallow, but unfortunately it does seem likely. We know little about the ancestral environment, but early recorded civilizations are rife with bride-kidnapping (alive as an fake ceremony / playful wedding game even to this day), Sabine women, Greek legends about princess Europa, and so on. Perhaps we could try to argue this is a feature of early civilization and not of the ancestral environment, or we could try to argue Indo-Europeans are unusually aggressive (this, independent from the issue here, seems at least 30-40% likely to me) but the Yanomamö would disagree.
Rollo Tomassi probably takes it way too far when we argues women evolved to actually like this, I find it more likely that the effect on romantic relationships is not as much as a Stockholm-syndrome falling in live with the kidnapper but falling in love with the kind of guy who can be a useful protector against kidnappers. I mean, that predicts polygamy in e.g. Islamic societies just right - nobody really dares to kidnap the emir's wives. The research showing that the most attractive guys are those who are dominant out-tribe but nice, friendly and easy-going in-tribe seems to support this, it fits the kidnapping-protector role better than the kidnapper role. There is something I have also noticed in soccer (team sports are quite good simulations of the ancestral environment IMHO): leadership, alpha-stuff is used to organize defense mostly, offense is more often a lone-hero thing. It takes only a small band to sneak in kidnap a few brides, but it takes a whole tribe to organize defense against it, so the leader-alpha types are more defense than offense oriented IMHO so not that aggressive. This is largely where the RP-sphere goes wrong.
Politics is the mind-killer. Politics IS really the mind-killer. Please meditate on this until politics flows over you like butter on hot teflon, and your neurons stops fibrillating and resume their normal operations.
Preface
I've always found silly that LW, one of the best and most focused group of rationalists on the web isn't able to talk evenly about politics. It's true that we are still human, but can't we just make an effort at being calm and level-headed? I think we can. Does gradual exposure works on group, too? Maybe a little bit of effort combined with a little bit of exposure will work as a vaccine.
And maybe tomorrow a beautiful naked valkyrie will bring me to utopia on her flying unicorn...
Anyway, I want to try. Let's see what happens.
Intro
Two recent events has prompted me to make this post: I'm reading "The rise of the Islamic State" by Patrick Coburn, which I think does a good job in presenting fairly the very recent history surrounding ISIS, and the terrorist attack in Tunis by the same group, which resulted in 18 foreigners killed.
I believe that their presence in the region is now definitive: they control an area that is wider than Great Britain, with a population tallying over six millions, not counting the territories controlled by affiliate group like Boko Haram. Their influence is also expanding, and the attack in Tunis shows that this entity is not going to stay confined between the borders of Syria and Iraq.
It may well be the case that in the next ten years or so, this will be an international entity which will bring ideas and mores predating the Middle Age back on the Mediterranean Sea.
A new kind of existential threat
To a mildly rational person, the conflict fueling the rise of the Islamic State, namely the doctrinal differences between Sunni and Shia Islam, is the worst kind of Blue/Green division. A separation that causes hundreds of billions of dollars (read that again) to be wasted trying kill each other. But here it is, and the world must deal with it.
In comparison, Democrats and Republicans are so close that they could be mistaken for Aumann agreeing.
I fear that ISIS is bringing a new kind of existential threat: one where is not the existence of humankind at risks, but the existence of the idea of rationality.
The funny thing is that while people can be extremely irrational, they can still work on technology to discover new things. Fundamentalism has never stopped a country to achieve technological progress: think about the wonderful skyscrapers and green patches in the desert of the Arab Emirates or the nuclear weapons of Pakistan. So it might well be the case that in the future some scientist will start a seed AI believing that Allah will guide it to evolve in the best way. But it also might be that in the future, African, Asian and maybe European (gasp!) rationalists will be hunted down and killed like rats.
It might be the very meme of rationality to be erased from existence.
Questions
I'll close with a bunch of questions, both strictly and loosely related. Mainly, I'm asking you to refrain from proposing a solution. Let's assess the situation first.