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Notes -
Scott Aaronson describes a feeling (that I too experienced):
I was not as bad as Aaronson, but I held a completely unquestioned conviction that no girl must ever know how much I desired her, and that no one must know I had any sexual thoughts at all. I have no idea where it came from, but it seemed as evidently true to me as the fact that the sky is blue.
So, reading this story, I wonder if this innate impulse is actually adaptive for spergs. If you don't understand the social landscape of romance and dating, then indeed your best bet is to opt out and hide. If you try to play without understanding the rules, you end up ostracized or worse.
Hmm. I mean. The sperg that never finds a partner contributes more to his family's genetics (by helping his siblings) than he would if he got killed by a rival or something, but less than if he had a family himself. However, I think it's genuinely a good thing if our hero gets ostracized. Or even beaten, maimed, or killed: it was not in vain and those that did him wrong may run afoul of the law.
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It wasn't as nearly as bad for me either, but I had a great deal of shame about my attraction to women in my early teens and I know where it came from. I was constantly teased about girls when I was a kid and I got a very clear message that liking girls was wrong. I remember being shocked at 11 years old when a friend openly admitted liking girls. I hadn't even admitted to myself that I liked them yet. I remember being 13 when I decided that if a girl I really liked asked me out, I would have the guts to day yes. I was 15 before I seriously considered asking a girl out but I chickened out. The first time I asked a girl out was at 23 and it took me a year to get the courage.
The fact is that I probably was ostracized for my mistakes with women at 28, and looking back, I had no idea how little I understood back then.
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I feel like something like there's some component of the opposite of this though. That is, perhaps socially adept people have evolved to shame awkward men into hiding because if they agree to hide then there are fewer men in the dating pool and the remaining men have a lower male to female density and thus more market value. This only works with awkward and weak men as targets because they are unlikely to retaliate, and are more likely to drop out instead of saying "fuck you" and continuing to ask girls out.
We might consider this a form of artificial selection: humans are nudging the fitness landscape in a way that makes being shy and kind less adaptive than it already was, because they are less likely to find a mate, while more aggressive behavior (shamers, and people who ignore negative feedback) becomes more adaptive.
If this is the case, then the correct response is actually the opposite: you should ignore them and in fact become more proactive about pursuing women because you and people like you are being suppressed by a psy-op from a different phenotype of males, which primarily functions by deceiving you and wins if and only if you believe it.
IMHO it's just a special case of desexualization; otherwise-neurotypical Wheelchair Wally gets the same kind of shit even if he's in a wheelchair because a drunk driver T-boned the family car when his mom was picking him up from second grade.
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https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/how-i-overcame-anxiety
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It makes me wonder if it’s adaptive for the species: to keep people with light autism from generating people with heavy autism by reproducing autism genes.
My personal distinction is that us people with autism tend to create new and adaptive tools and interfaces for their people, while people with heavy autism tend to soak up extra resources and be a burden on the tribe.
Evolution works much much more strongly on individual fitness than it does on group or species fitness. So it doesn't have to be adaptive for the species to be selected for, it has to be adaptive for the individuals engaging in the behavior. Socially adept males who shame male autists and cause them to drop out, especially within their own social circles will reduce competition and increase their own sexual market value. This is advantageous for them regardless of the value of autists to society. The only way it wouldn't be advantageous is if the target of shame retaliates (either physically or socially) in a way that costs the shamer more than their expected gain. Which is likely the reason why they don't try to shame non awkward people.
Females who shame male autists don't gain from this source. So it probably lines up with your theory better, but with the caveat that probably most of the value is from the individual female herself not reproducing with the individual after she has shamed him and caused him to drop out.
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