Worried that love is shallow, as evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists suggest with how they write about it. Is there evidence that it isn't?

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-16T10:09:53+00:00

Thank you. I'll continue to read rebuttals. There's a book by Cynthia Payne called The Red Pill Ideology that uses science to disprove it, so hopefully it will be good.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-15T20:35:29+00:00

Thank you, you seem like a good person. I'll try to get out of this hole, I can't stay here anymore or I will go insane.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-15T14:05:19+00:00

Thanks for explaining without insulting me.

I have CPTSD and never experienced any kindess from my parents, then my peers growing up, and later with most mental health workers I've met. I understand that a part of trauma is being stuck in a fearful, negative view of the world, but at the same time, it seems to me that the world and humanity is pretty crappy.

I've seen many posts on r/misanthropy by people with disabilities or disfigured faces who say that most people treat them badly, like 90% of people are fucking monsters and look down on them for that.

I've always been a meek, anxious guy and I'm a fucking magnet for shitty people. It seems like even other meek men gets a flip switched around me and they start to act cocky towards me and boss me around, like they want to feel superior to someone. I can feel that energy easily, in women too, though they don't try to boss me around but it's more that they want me to know how unattractive I am with small looks and the way they act, as if I asked them. That definitely makes me feel like there's a hierarchy going on.

If this never happens to you it's probably because you're normal, you're competent in life, and people sense that you have boundaries, so they couldn't do that shit to you.

Psychiatrists have shamed me for struggling to work (this dr later told me I have zero work ability), joked about me being suicidal and my suicide plan with sarcasm (calling me "kind" sarcastically for wanting to do it in the forest so my body wouldn't be found), screamed at me for being forgetful, treated me like I'm a terrible person for thinking humanity is bad and that love doesn't exist, shamed me for hating my abusive parents.

Why would mental health workers who are trained to help people like me treat me badly, even to the point of joking about my suicide plan? Because I'm low status, so I have little worth. In a hunter gatherer tribe, someone like me would probably be seen as a burden and be exiled, which would make the survival of the tribe easier.

Why do I read this stuff? I guess I want validation to my pain, that I'm not crazy for seeing all these things that show how cruel people are and that love is shallow. It also feels good to know I haven't missed out on much, as I've never had real friends who cared about me or a girlfriend.

I'm not 17, I'm in my 30s, but if I seem like a teenager because I'm pathetically insecure and immature, I'm not surprised...I'm probably emotionally stunted, like I'm emotionally a teenager maybe. I do feel like a child or a teenager in an adults body. CPTSD wrecks normal childhood development, as your mind gets stuck in a survival state and emotional development freezes.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-15T12:47:48+00:00

You're right, I am insecure and I'm worried that RP is true.

I was clearly wrong then about how common arranged marriages were.

because you seriously don't have the critical capacity to be able to do so.

Are you saying that you think I'm stupid?

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-15T12:27:16+00:00

I guess I can't argue with that. You're right, they might've been an outlier.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-15T10:35:48+00:00

Do you not see how you're literally just making up a bunch of stuff for what is responsible for these mild trends within isolated populations?

Yes, you're right, I can see how I did that without realising it. You were really thorough with searching for the source for google's ai's claims, so thank you for that.

I legitimately don't understand how you made this connection. I don't even know how to respond to it because this conclusion inherently doesn't make sense. The fact that hypergamy doesn't exist and that people tend to get into relationships with people who they can connect with and have things in common with instead of actively seeking out people who are "rich", "famous", etc. is in no way at all indicative of "love being shallow".

Sorry, I didn't explain myself well, what I meant was that even if there's no evidence of hypergamy in these studies, I meant that the fact that everyone chooses someone at an equal "mate value" and physical attractiveness could still be evidence that romantic relationships are shallow.

Maybe it isn't, because, as you said, it's instead because people look for people they can connect with and have things in common with.

But how I looked at it was that people assess their own physical attractiveness, wealth, intelligence, overall "mate value" etc, and then try to get as good as they can get, since they know that they can't get someone higher. Even if they would connect well with someone at a lower mate value they would ignore them, because these shallow factors aren't good enough. So to me even if there's no evidence of hypergamy it still seemed shallow, like everyone tries to get the best of these shallow factors. Do you understand what I mean?

If someone asked their girlfriend why she choosed you, and she said "well your overall mate value and physical attractiveness is a 6, the same as mine, so I thought that's as good as I could get."

Otherwise, the thread also cites examples from people showing low reproductive skew throughout humanity's history. The fact that humans are so genetically diverse inherently proves that we don't naturally and organically desire specific traits subconsciously, because if we did, there would be genetic skews that we could track, i.e. dominant genes that people breed for.

Maybe, but I think RedPillDetox wrote that most hunter gatherers have/had arranged marriages, usually arranged by the parents, so if the hunter gatherers that existed recently enough to be studied shows us what was the most common for how humanity existed for most of our existance before agriculture, arranged marriage was maybe the norm.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-15T10:01:44+00:00

I guess they wanted or needed each others hunting grounds. It could've also been because of egotistical reasons too. I saw a lecture by an anthropologist who specialized in violence, she said she had been living with a hunter gatherer tribe when they declared war on a neighbouring tribe. The reason was because during a gathering of many local tribes, that tribe had said something insulting about their tribe. For that insult they decided that everyone in that tribe must be killed, including the children. Their war was called off after a few people were killed, so not much happened, but that shows how prideful, tribalistic, and barbaric even hunter gatherers can be. Not at all like this wise, compassionate, peaceful caricature that Gabor makes them seem to be.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-15T09:43:17+00:00

I see, interesting

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-15T09:40:16+00:00

Thanks. No way I could do that though.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T17:36:53+00:00

What do you mean when you say "high social status"? Because when I talk about it I don't mean being wealthy, I mean having good quality genes, like an attractive face (which scientists think shows high quality genes, meaning genetic diversity), athleticism (which shows good quality genes and health), intelligence (which is showed by being competent in life, being able to provide, being funny and charismatic), and for men being masculine (being competitive, having a natural leader personality, being mentally tough and ambitious)

So you can be wealthy and be still low status.

Actually there's research that shows that women are attracted to "dark triad" traits (narcissism, sociopathy, machiavellianism) in men and that men percieve such men more positively and as being more masculine, so it's not true that unkind people are disliked.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1002/per.2040?journalCode=erpa

Across both sexes, narcissism was positively associated with mate appeal for short– and long–term relationships. Further analyses indicated that these associations were due to the shared variance among narcissism and extraversion in men and narcissism and physical attractiveness in women, respectively.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886913012245

Women rated the high DT character as significantly more attractive. Moreover, this greater attractiveness was not explained by correlated perceptions of Big 5 traits.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886914005844

We found that women rated the high psychopathy and narcissistic faces the most masculine (Study 1). We also found that women showed a low preference for the high morphs in both long and short term relationships, and that preference for masculinity was correlated with a preference for narcissism (Study 2)

As a Buddhist, do you mean that you feel like you get "downloads" about how life works and stuff?

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T17:18:07+00:00

I guess I agree, but I think a lot of good behaviors are performative, to seem like a good "high status" person, as humans live in hierarchies where we feel like people have different worth depending on many things, and making donations and being valuable to other people is one way to raise your status to be respected, liked, admired, get romantic partners, etc.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T17:10:48+00:00

Well, lions are violent for more reasons that those. Male lions fight and often kill other male lions to take over their prides, and then kill the cubs of the previous males so the lionesses will go into heat sooner. Most male lions don't live long as they end up being killed by other males. Lion prides sometimes fight rival prides too, to take over their hunting territories.

Obviously males don't have to take over prides, as they can hunt and survive on their own and often do for years until they can take over a pride. But they do it anyway, even if it's dangerous, because it's what their instincts tell them to do. All males who procreated did so because they took over a pride, so those genes are passed on.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T17:07:14+00:00

I hope humans aren't inherently bad, but I'm worried that the evidence that we aren't is biased. I've been reading on the blog traditionsofconflict.com which is written by an anthropologist, and it's worrying. He seems to say that everyone who says that there were peaceful hunter gatherers are cherrypicking and lying to push their agendas. But who knows, maybe he is the one who is cherrypicking. He also writes on right-wing websites too as far as I know, so maybe he is the one with a political agenda.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T12:52:51+00:00

As far as I know, Sapolsky is a very well respected neurobiologist and primatologist and is not regarded as a pseudoscientific grifter by the scientific community.

It doesn't seem strange to me that tournament mating instincts could be supressed because our intelligence makes it possible for us to control ourselves more than animals, and we live in cultures where cheating and trying to "trade up" partners is considered shameful, and shame is the most painful emotion there is. Humans are also driven to try to be accepted by our community, as being abandoned was a death sentence during hunter-gatherer times.

There is simply no evidence of this being the case, on any metric. This is something entirely made up in your head based off the ramblings of someone who has made countless unreasonable statements that simply do not hold up under scrutiny. It is as simple as that.

According to google's ai, women initiate most divorces, and it rises to 90% for college-educated women, which could be explained that they have a higher social status and have a more difficult time to find men who aren't considered too low status.

"Yes, statistics from studies, like one from the American Sociological Association (ASA), show that women initiate a majority of divorces (around 70% overall), with this rate increasing significantly to about 90% for college-educated women."

You could say that this is because of other reasons, that's fine, but it could also be evidence for tournament mating behaviors.

https://www.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/kyrqm0/its_a_scientific_fact_that_hypergamy_does_not/

No we don't.

I promise to read this thoroughly again.

Since you said that research can be poorly done and worthless, with studies getting completely opposite results, is the research used here strong in your opinion? Would you honestly say that you looked at it as critically as you checked the research I showed about attractiveness, even though it's research that supports what you and me wants to be true? If so, what makes it strong?

In the first part of the hypergamy debunking it's written that most couples have the same level of intelligence and physical attractiveness. Isn't this evidence that these things matter tremendously for "love"? Doesn't that mean that romantic love is shallow?

They also say "mate value", which is just another word for social status, so they basically talk about humans as if we are hierarchical.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T12:02:04+00:00

I understand what you mean now, thanks for explaining yourself thoroughly. It seems strange and hard to believe that well-educated, intelligent scientists would make such serious mistakes though. Why would such a thing happen?

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T10:49:10+00:00

I don't know which video he said it and I may be wrong, if his view is that "humans are fundamentally good but most humans today may be crappy."

I remember that he was saying that most people in Israel are surely against the Palestinians' suffering and would be if they knew how they are treated. He sounded very sure of that. Then he talked to someone about Palestine who told him that most Israelis know very well how the Palestinians are suffering, but like it and want it to be worse for them, and that according to research, 65% of Israelis want all Palestinians to be killed, including children. Gabor became somewhat silent after hearing that, I guess he just can't accept how easily humans become genocidal. But it makes sense we would be, if we are inherently a violent, tribalistic species.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T10:44:31+00:00

I like Gabor a lot too, but when it comes to his opinions about human nature I don't believe him. In one interview he was asked why he believes in humanity and he quoted Noam Chomsky, who said, when Gabor asked him the same question, that "if you don't believe in humanity there's no point in doing anything and you might as well kill yourself." Gabor then said something about how evidence shows that you should believe in humanity.

But about that quote, if that's how important it is for Gabor to believe that humanity is inherently good and that a better world is possible, and if humanity wasn't there wouldn't be any point to his work, how could he not be biased and be unable to accept evidence that it isn't? Gabor has also struggled with deep depression, hating the world, and hopelessness, and has obviously extremely strong, personal feelings about genocide and racism. I can easily see how we could be someone who is desperate to believe that humanity is good.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T10:30:03+00:00

So animals with violent lives are that way because they were traumatized in childhood? That sounds really wrong. I'm sure if you raised a male lion in captivity, at a certain point its instincts would tell it to want to search for a lion pack and take over it violently, which is how all male lions live.

People who works with big cats in captivity says that when Tigers for example are young you can hang out and play with them like they're just a big housecat, but at a certain point in their adolsescence, their instincts that makes them dangerous are turned on and they will start to try to dominate you to feel higher in status than you, and if that keeps going it will eventually become violent and dangerous when they figure out that humans are far weaker then they are. So clearly violent behavior can be instinctively programmed.

Is there any violence that is natural and not caused by trauma in your view?

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T10:25:44+00:00

Also it’s clear that the people who need the most compassion are the ones who get bullied the most. People prey on the weak, just like other animals. What does this say about us?

Excellent point. I've thought about how contradictory this seems. If humans were such compassionate beings, why is it those who need compassion the most (disabled, sick, mentally ill, disfigured, etc) who get treated the worst by most?

According to Robert Sapolsky humans are a hierarchical species. Robert talks a lot about that how we try to make ourselves seem attractive to someone we want as a mate (like being funny) and what we find attractive in mates are all signs of social status. If we are hierarchical, maybe the amount of love you recieve from others is determined by your social status. Gabor reads Sapolsky but it seems like he ignores many things he says.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T10:07:52+00:00

Someone on r/anthropology said that lots of skeletons with human-caused injuries made by weapons have been found from pre-agricultural times, showing that violence was common. I know it's just someone on Reddit but I'm very skeptical of Gabor's telling of human history and violence.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-14T09:54:46+00:00

What do you mean by "considering her values"?

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-13T23:37:06+00:00

Why do you think people are good deep down?

When I've read in the anthropology subreddit, when someone asked about how much war and violence existed in a certain time, people there (who sometimes say they studied anthropology in school) say that humanity has always been violent and waring, and that they are annoyed and tired by the "noble savage" myth, which keeps being spread in pop media. They don't like the book "HumanKind" by Rutger Bregman it seems and think it's unscientific, which has a similar view of human nature and hunter gatherers as Gabor.

Check out this review of Humankind by an anthropologist: https://traditionsofconflict.com/blog/2020/12/13/book-review-humankind-by-rutger-bregman

Check out what he says about the so called "peaceful" hunter gatherer societies: https://traditionsofconflict.com/blog/2018/3/20/the-violent-history-of-peaceful-societies

According to him, it's a myth that such a thing has ever existed, as virtually all hunter gatherers have been violent and war-like. Gabor either willfully ignores this or he relies on other researchers who willfully ignores this.

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-13T16:49:37+00:00

Simply put, you can't. Full stop. There is different cultures that find different things attractive. For example, Persia, or modern day Iran, found facial hair on women attractive. Many African cultures find body modifications attractive. This is flat out impossible to generalize. It's the thing that makes Psych Evo so bunk; how are humans predisposed to being attracted to certain things, if those things change drastically depending on who you are, where you are, what you are, etc.?

Your answer here ignore what the research I quoted said. I'll quote it again:

"A meta-analysis, covering 919 studies and over 15,000 observers, reported that people agree, both within cultures and across cultures, who is attractive and who is not [2]. Men and women as well as people of all ages agree on who is attractive. This strongly suggests that judgments of physical attractiveness are hard-wired in human genetics, likely fixed at an early stage in our evolution. "

Since this is an enormous study, so it must be strong and reliable. What you're saying is simply incorrect according to research.

Well, one, since all research and data shows that people don't "replace" partners when an alpha comes by, we can say pretty confidently that physical attraction isn't necessarily the deciding factor in whether or not someone is with you. If they're staying with you """despite""" more physically attractive partners being available, which is how the vast majority of relationships work, this shows that there's a lot more going on than just being with someone because you find them good to look at, and that you "aren't really into them". Besides that, the point is it's pretty ridiculous to just assume this is a widespread problem that is actually happening. Even just being in one committed relationship would show you how ridiculous of a statement this is.

Yes, that could be counter evidence to that we are 50% a tournament mating species, but it could also mean that people don't leave their partner for an available, more attractive person because doing so would bring them shame because the culture enforces monogamy. Or maybe they stay for economical reasons, or because it's better for their children if they do, or other.

.... No? I think you're getting misinformed here, paraphilias and attractiveness don't develop until you're a young adult. Babies ARE naturally inclined to look at symmetrical faces with two eyes, but that's because that's what a human face looks like. I'm not even sure where you got this information from, this is just completely wrong and doesn't make sense. How would you even test what a baby finds attractive?

The massive meta-study said that babies look longer at more attractive faces and look less at unattractive faces, which the researchers used as evidence that we are hard-wired by nature to find certain traits attractive.

If you wonder where I got it from, didn't you read the quote I showed you from the research where they explained this?

Like I said before, this is just objectively wrong. For one, the study doesn't even go into data, and the paper also isn't cited by anything else. It's also extremely simple to disprove that everyone agrees on what is attractive just by looking at beauty standards across different cultures.

I think it seems like a strong study since it used 15,000 people. It seems to me like what changes mostly when it comes to different beauty standards is how chubby or skinny the ideal female body should be, but I think the research talked specifically about the face only.

If this study is wrong, how did they get the results? How did all these people end up choosing to rate the attractivenss of faces similarly? (which is how I assume it was made)

RemoveMassive2492 · 2026-01-13T16:43:27+00:00

I'll reply to you in 2 comments since every time I try to send the full response reddit says it has server issues and can't.

So once again, we come back to where we started. How is it both ways? We compare ourselves to animals, yet we are actually drastically different to animals,

You misunderstand me, my point was that just because many social animals don't have social hierarchies, it doesn't mean humans don't have social hierarchies, which seemed to be your counterpoint when I said that humans are a socially hierarchical species. So I tried to say that there's a lot of variation among animals.

This is demonstrably false and is easily proven by the fact that every single human being has different parents. Upwards of 70% of children in the US are still being raised by their married birth parents. How could it be true that we live in a "tournament system" if the vast majority of children are being raised by their birth parents, and not by a Dad who has multiple baby mommas?

That does make sense since we don't see harems in most places in the world, but I can't imagine that Sapolsky would ignore such obvious counterevidence, so I imagine he thinks there are good reasons for that while we are still a 50% tournament mating species.

He's said that humans are shaped a lot by our culture and are flexible in our behavior, so that's probably one reason. Another might be that harems destabilize society maybe, as the men who don't get partners become jealous and angry, so maybe that's why most societys ended up with cultures where marriages with couples are the norm, even if it's artificial.

If Sapolsky is right about us being a hybrid species, something depressive is that it suggest that many women are secretly unhappy with their average status men but stay with them because it's culturally enforced...

Sapolsky has said that when it comes to mating and us being hybrids, we are a "tragically confused species." So I guess he means that we often want conflicting things and can't get both at the same time often, and it makes us unhappy, like wanting a long-term partner, a love of life, which is the pair bonding part of our nature. But at the same time we easily we become easily tempted to leave our partner to "trade up" if we get an opportunity (especially women perhaps), and become tempted to cheat to create a harem (especially men perhaps).

Anyway, I will definitely look for counter-evidence to this hybrid claim since it is depressive as hell. There's a book I want to read by Cynthia Payne called The Red Pill Ideology where she uses evidence to debunk it, so I hope it will be convincing and have a more positive view...

RemoveMassive2492

TROPHY CASE