Poignant short story about truth-seeking that I just found. Quote:
"No," interjected an internal voice. "You need to prove that your dad will appear by a direct argument from the length of your nails, one that does not invoke your subsisting in a dream state as an intermediate step."
"Nonsense," retorted another voice. "That we find ourselves in a dream state was never assumed; rather, it follows so straightforwardly from the long-nail counterfactual that the derivation could be done, I think, even in an extremely weak system of inference."
The full thing reads like a flash tour of OB/LW, except it was written in 2001.
I'm skeptical of Roissy's claim, but I'm not sure your examples are as obvious or convincing as you seem to think.
Unless I'm extremely atypical (which is possible), it is incorrect to say that superstimulant foods and masturbation bring happiness. They bring contentment, which is different and less satisfying. To the extent that this is a definitional dispute, the happiness they bring is far weaker and far more evanescent compared to e.g. feeling like part of a group, feeling like you've "made a difference", etc.
Next, regarding forced reproduction, if it had to be forced, it was a kind of reproduction that the victim's evolved architecture did not judge to be genetically optimal.
Rape is a bit trickier, for a number of reasons, but it's clear why it would have questionable, not stricktly good impact on genes. As cousin_it mentioned, someone who rapes you is unlikely to stick around to provide resources for the kids. And like with forced reproduction, the fact that it had to be forced is evidence your body doesn't regard it as furthering your genes.
Now, to play devil's advocate, there is the Sexy Son Hypothesis, WHICH I DON'T ENDORSE, which says that the actual father's willingness to commit is irrelevant because you can just rook a productive male into thinking the baby's his. So being raped means you get a son (if a boy) who can successfully rape other women, who then rook another man into raising that son, etc. But again, against the clear disadvantages of being raped, this at best proves, under Roissy's theory, why the woman would feel conflicted, not happy.
My response is to the Roissy quote specifically, which says, "direct result of actions taken that further your genes' goals" NOT "would have furthered your genes' goals in the ancestral environment." Thus, in the case of forced reproduction, if you were locked in a small room and given just enough food to survive, but then given the opportunity to reproduce with a fertile partner every single time that you were capable of causing conception, you would (I'd hope) not be happy, even though you would produce many, many more times the survi... (read more)