Confession stand: Why do you like vore?

[Zinou]

Well, for one I can say I'm different from a great many of you in that I don't have/play/enjoy a fursona-of-myself as the thing responsible for voring or being vored. I like 'watching' more than I like participating...

That said, for me it's the predator-dominating-prey aspect, really. Probably a bit sadistic but I like the thought of the prey suffering and being terrified -- and the pred feeling contented by it. It's just a fascinating contrast. I also like hard vore, which I notice is something of a rarity.

I've had an interest in vore for as long as I've been drawing -- since I was 3. Used to draw dogs eating cats, a lot. Had the standard fascination with cartoons/stories -- most notably I remember reading that 'Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly' story in 2nd grade ... and that scene in Pagemaster with the dragon.

*shrugs*

[Karbo]

I have also troubles to say what I like in vore...

It's not the domination aspect, that's for sure.
I think it's something a bit morbid. I lik to see the prey struggle to avoid its fatal fate. This is this inexorable aspect that I find most important in vore.

Some of the best vore scenes for me are those where the situation underline this "inexorable thing" :
It can be a surface that is slowly titling back and when the angle become too great, the prey slide right into the maw of the pred. It can be a thread tied to the prey's ankle that the pred slowly slurp like a spaghetti, it can be certain teasing dialogues.. etc
Actually I think that it is why I am so fascinated by the act of swallowing itself... What better example of an inexorable process ? The throat squeezing the prey and slowly but irresistibly bringing it to its final destination.. ^^

This is also the reason why a willing prey kills absolutely all interest for me in vore.

[Silky]

I'm not sure exactly why it appeals to me, but it has since I was 8 or so.

One thing that has remained constant for me through the decades is that it is always furry vore and the consumer is almost always female (I've only done one story with a male doing the vore). The feeling of dominance also never enters the picture because I find that a turn off. I don't want to be dominated. If there's going to be vore, its going to be accidental or at least somewhat consentual.

Most of my writing deals with either curiously willing participants (those in a situation where they have a willing vore partner to experiment with the swallowing part) or shrunken furs who are swallowed accidentally. Struggling on the way down is good. Girls that enjoy the wiggling on the way down is even better. The situation of being tiny and trapped in something like a pie that is being eaten by your girlfriend and she has no idea you're inside it is one that I find wondrously fascinating, as is telling the tale from the preys' point of view as he's unwittingly digested. I also like the idea of having the victim go through the entire digestive process through absorbtion, although skipping the painful aspect as well as explicitly detailed descriptions of what happens at the end.

Just a thought: Maybe giving yourself willingly (or sometimes unwittingly) to the female completes in my mind a deep seated, age-old need: to feed the one that continues the survival of the species. Perhaps by giving ourselves up as food, we trade our life energy for the possibility that she will continue beyond us....completing the cycle.

[Houyo]

I like it for alot of reasons.

I can't really describe it though. Why? Because I hate describing emotions with words. There's just so many more emotions than we have words for.

[Tervicz]

I like stories, reading and writing them. Especially stories with a dark touch, which is what vore is. To me vore is like a confrontation with my darker human side. With my fear and with images that cannot tolerate light. Doesn't anyone here ever have a kind of a sorry feeling when seeing a critter's demise here in a story or picture or rp? Something like "Poor sod. What have you done to deserve this?" I sometimes have difficulties with it, but then I have to remember it's all fantasy and nothing more.

[Duamutef]

While I've already given my answer as "I dunno," I do have my ideas. Rather than the usual one-dimensional explainations--desire for domination, intimacy, or some sort of bizarre sexual experience--I consider it a sort of subconscious "best-fit."

I'm going to take this from the perspective of the technocrat that I basically am, which means I'll go off of biology, evolution and it's relationship to cognizance.

I'll warn you also that this is really damned long.

From a comprehensive perspective--or even a simplified one--the idea of any cognitive event being because of a single thing, whether it be a single experience, desire, or even a single gene is foolish. This is true of almost everything when it comes right down to it. You can say that you are frightened because someone pulled a gun on you, and while that is basically true, it is also very misleading. You aren't afraid simply because they pulled the gun. If you were blind and deaf, they could pull the gun and you would not be afraid. So you need to percieve the gun. But what if you've never seen a gun before? Then, even if you percieve it, you won't necessarily be afraid. Or what if it's a friend who has just said "I'm going to clean my gun now" before pulling it out?

To be afraid, you must recognize the gun as a symbol of danger. Then a number of mechanisms kick in; adrenaline and it's attendant physiological arousal, which are not consciously controlled but lead to the sensation of fear. In a literal sense, the feeling of fear is caused by these chemicals, not the gun.

So to truly understand what's going on, you need to understand the behavior and interaction of many different systems; so many that the very concept of there being a single cause of any event seems nonsensical.

This is the way I think about cause and effect in general, and I imagine it's why some people just don't like to talk to me.

There are many strange and hidden forms I can percieve in my mind; outlines and urges that seem so vague as to be indefinable, yet certain things--certain perceptions, certain concepts, certain thoughts--activate them. They can bring with them pain or pleasure, but when I press, I never seem to know just why they are doing it.

From my experience with self-arranging intelligence (which the theory of evolution suggests we are an example of), such ambiguity should not be unusual and would, in fact, be highly likely. Natural selection is an exercise in savage practicality--it doesn't matter why it works or how it works, just that it works. That is as true about cognizance and behavior as it is claws and oxygen metabolism.

Put simply, if something helps us survive, we will think it.

So all we should ever think about is straight sex, right?

Well...no. Evolution is constrained by circumstance. People sometimes mistake evolution as being a pure force with a means and a goal, whereas in reality, it's a side-effect of combining random change with non-random replication. Things arrange themselves into functional systems and non-functional systems, both completely at random; the difference is, the functional ones are the only ones we see because they're the only ones that last.

The human brain is a self-arranging system; perceptions come in, bounce around the neural network, and potentially come back out as actions. So too can neural events be self-perpetuating or stimulated from within the brain rather than by a signal from a sensory organ.

There are an infinite number of ways in which this self-organizing system could be stilted. By using predefined patterns of stimulus->behavior it loses it's ability to adapt to changing survival needs, but if you don't define some sort of pattern, it's behavior will be random and it won't survive in any environment.

Simply put, to achieve high survivability, a species must behave in a way that maximizes it. For a sea sponge their survivability is already high enough simply by sitting on a rock, so it's behavioral needs are minimal. For a mammal, that is not the case. The behaviors that facilitate a mammal's survival are not only highly complex but also constantly changing. Nibbling on apples is an excellent survival behavior, IF there are apples to nibble. Avoiding apples according to their taste or color is good behavior if some apples are poisonous. But what if there's more than just apples? Surely you won't survive as well only eating red apples that taste a certain way, as opposed to if you ate all non-poisonous fruit--but for that behavior to manifest, the creature's brain must have a way to identify healthy fruit and induce the behavior of eating it.

Since the system is self-organizing, it tends to go off of whatever works. What works, as it turns out, is a sort of aggregate. First off, the animal is attracted to bright, solid colors, as most fruits have this characteristic. (This has the side effect of attracting the animal to, say, painted walls and maybe even flowers.) Second, the animal has an instinct to generally nibble on things, particularly things that interest them due to another stimulus. (Which is why a lot of animals nibble on strange things, and each other.) When what they're nibbling on contains certain chemicals (as determined by it's tongue) it will induce the desire to actually eat the object, whatever it may be--likewise, if it has certain other chemicals, it will cease nibbling on the object. These combined rules, while distinct and a far cry from the intellectual abstraction of "Eat fruit," nonetheless produces the desired behavior--the animal will eat most kinds of fruit, and as an added bonus has a chance to eat anything else that is chemically similar (and since the chemicals are what it needs to survive, it doesn't necessarily matter whether they're actually fruit or not). To a sentient being, these urges would seem very strange. If they said "Why do we like fruit?" they could say "Because it's colorful." They could also say "Because it tastes good." They could even say "Because we need it to live." All of these are fairly accurate, but none of them are complete by themselves, and all of them would raise questions; "Why do I only like red fruit?" "Why do I like bananas but not oranges?" "Flowers are colorful, so why don't I like flowers?"

These questions hint at the potential complexities of even this simplified system. Evolution is random enough that anything that doesn't significantly diminish the creature's survivability may take place and be perpetuated in the gene pool, causing even more strangeness. For example, one animal's brain may arrange itself so it likes large patches of red much better than other colors. This would help it survive if most of the fruit in their environment is red. But even if most of the fruit is green, it wouldn't necessarily *harm* their survivability, so long as they still ate the green fruit. Then the animal would have no idea why it liked the color red so much; there was no "logical" explaination. They can no longer say "I like red because fruit is red."

Traits are typically perpetuated if they are beneficial, and removed if they are harmful. If they don't make a meaningful impact either way, they come and go at random, and if the effect is statistically ambivalent (it helps some but harms others) it's propagation will likewise be ambivalent.

Human behavior, I'm guessing, is an extension of this concept. We have a great deal of reliance on our cognition; the associative engine and stimulus-simulator that gives us the mother of all evolutionary advantages (at least out of what we've seen). Nonetheless, cognition alone is not a survival advantage; it must be turned towards behaviors that increase the creature's survivability and ability to reproduce.

So, we have urges; certain stimuli in combination produce a favorable result (or in more technical terms, they reinforce the neural patterns formed by that stimulus, making them more likely to reoccur). Because of the complexities of our brains, not all of these stimuli would necessarily be externally induced.

However, these urges are gestalts, not single events. A sexual urge may be composed of hundreds of forces acting together to maximize the odds that the behavior induced is the one it "wants." The problem is, each of these urges must ultimately be mechanical; how do you tell a neuron what "boobies" are? Your racial survivability does not go up if you stick your wang into anything that will fit, but how do you build a system that can recognize a vagina and put a wang into it? Well, like everything in evolution, you play the odds and make rules that will just happen to add up to what you want. For example, you might set up the brain to stimulate sexual behavior when these circumstances are met:

1. When the skin senses a soft object within a certain range of temperatures
2. When what is being touched is moist, particularly in conjunction with #1
3. When certain pheromone signals are present
4. When certain other neural signals or patterns are active (so if there are other patterns or chemicals that tend to be activated by the presence of members of the opposite sex, this will increase the impetus for reproductive behavior, thus increasing the odds that you stick your wang in something useful)
5. When the light detected by the eye fits certain visual criteria (which could be anything from a certain hue to a certain gradient of contrast to a certain pattern of light vs. dark, or even a combination of all of these)
6. When certain patterns are detected by the skin nerves (i.e. smooth with little strokey patches, such as on skin with whispy human hair)
7. When the signals from the penis meet a certain range of criteria (temperature, tactile features, moistness etc.)

While none of these things can intrinsically say "That's a woman, fuck her," when taken in combination, they could provide a reasonable (or at least much higher) incidence of productive sex. Each one, of course, has side effects as well. #6 means masturbation or other sensory "fakes" will produce stimulation even though they don't enhance reproduction. #4 means that non-sexual interaction with others could promote sexual feelings. #1 and #2 mean you could have a fetish for warm mud. Take out #5 and #6 and your species is going to drill every animal it can find. But take them all at once, weighted in an optimal fashion, and with little else you've got a creature that is very likely to successfully screw the opposite sex and thus reproduce.

But--and here's the important part--the brain is not consciously aware of these rules. In truth, it is not aware of any rules. In time, the associative powers of the brain may construct a predictable and coherent model of reward behaviors and, with sufficient power, even give them names. If it has a lot of experience with sex and it's attendant urges, it will call it sex. But if you ask the creature "Why do you like sex?" it won't answer "Because my brain is conditioned to reinforce neural pathways that lead to sexual behavior in response to a certain range of sensory criteria." They'll say "Because it feels good." What they percieve is the result of the mechanism, not the mechanism itself.

When you ask another creature "Why do you jerk off to pictures of venetian blinds?" it might say "I just love how they're so smooth and vertical." But it may well be that their #5 criteria is especially strong and is wired such that the visual pattern caused by venetian blinds activates a neurological sexual response.

Things get even messier when you introduce the full power of the rest of the brain. Suddenly anything can be neurally linked with anything. The neural pathways that form concepts and ideas in our mind are not distinct from these pre-wired criteria, yet they are still dependant on them for information and reinforcement. Which patterns are reinforced is dependant not on what the creature is doing, but on whatever mechanical method activates the reinforcement.

Once again, we're left with the odds. Because the highest amount of reinforcement is likely to occur when all of the reinforcement triggers (the theoretical stimuli listed above) are present, the most likely association to be formed in the rest of the brain is that sexual stimulation corresponds with sex. Because the interactions in a neural network often go both ways, and certain stimuli can be created by behavior, this means that, potentially, thoughts of sex could create a sexual response all by themselves and, thus, reinforce themselves as well. This reinforcement would not be as strong as if all the stimuli were present, but then, that's why sex is more stimulating than imagining sex.

But that's only the most *likely* outcome. (If that.) It is dependant on many factors, the most glaring of which is a set of circumstances which would form that association.

Suppose you aren't around many girls, and instead you start jerking off to venetian blinds. At first, it's only because of the way they look. The visual pattern activates a few of the sex pathways; not many, but then, you're hyper-sensitized to them because they've basically got a straight shot into your brain. Being your first sexual stimulus, it has a greater effect than it normally would. It may only be enough to shoot you a stiffy. But then you touch the stiffy. Now you've activated a second stimulus--something is touching your tonker. (Remember, your brain-meat is playing the odds using simple rules. You may know that it's not a woman who's touching your tonker, but your tonker doesn't know that.) Because you've activated one of the bigger stimuli--the brain places a high priority on human skin touching the tonker, because it's got high odds of being reproductively valuable--your response increases, thus strengthening the impetus for the desired behavior. So you start furiously jerking it. By the time you're done, your brain is awash in chemicals and new pathways have been formed. The associative part of your brain, the one that learns, now collects all of the stimuli it just recieved--the venetian blinds, being alone in your room, the color of the wallpaper--and puts it in a box labelled "stuff what made me come." It doesn't know what sex is, or even that there is such a thing--it's job is to figure out the world it's in, which it can only do by watching and learning, seeing which stimuli tend to happen at the same time, and what effect it's actions (i.e. it's neurological outputs) have on the stream of incoming stimuli. Ten years from now it may have learned enough to understand words like "sex" and "venetian blind fetish," but for right now, all it knows is it saw certain things, did certain things and felt certain things and that it really liked it.

So, the behavior of masturbating to venetian blinds has occurred once already. That doesn't mean it will ever happen again, but it is likely to; if the person lives in the same room, the same stimuli will occur, and now they're peripherally associated with sexual stimulation. So on the off chance that our creature decides to start wanking to venetian blinds again, the association will become that much stronger. The brain might start looking for other signs of statistically useful activity, such as a soft texture or warmth; this could prompt the person to reach out with his hands and touch the blinds. This may provide a negative response--they're cold and hard--thus diminishing his sexual response. On the other hand, if they're soft and fuzzy, that will increase it. If they happen to be pink as well as soft and fuzzy, and are warm from sitting in the sun, then he's well on his way to having a full-fledged fetish.

What happens ten years later when he knows all about sex and meets a real girl? Well, it depends. All kinds of things could happen; it depends on how his brain configured itself.

If his conscious associations were reinforced enough times by enough things--if he found other forms of reinforcement, such as by finding a community of venetian-blinds fetishists that provided him with rewarding social stimuli, or if he consciously discovered that putting the fuzzy covers in the microwave first made him cum harder--then he may well find that the venetian blinds provide equal or even greater stimulation than the real thing. On the other hand, sex has all the criteria whereas venetian blinds have only a few, so if he's open minded (meaning if his neurological pathways are configured such that the stimulation can still make meaningful alterations to his behavior) he may well make the switch and leave venetian blinds in the dust.

On the other hand, if he's had negative reinforcement associated with venetian blinds and his passion thereof--if his mother walked in on him beating off next to the window when he was 14 and screamed at him, causing significant distress (and thus de-prioritization and degradation of the neural pathways that led to that behavior) it may diminish or eliminate the fetish. On the other hand, it may merely cause him to form negative associations with the stimuli associated with his mother. Or both. Since neural systems are more or less random, it could go an infinite number of different ways and will likely depend on the sorts of structures that are already there.

So when someone waxes freudian and says "It was because of a formative sexual experience in childhood," they're sort of right but mostly not. Those subjective formative sexual experiences have roots in instinctual responses which are not subjective. So while masturbating to venetian blinds might get you all excited about venetian blinds when you get older, the fact is, you wouldn't have shot the stiffy in the first place had the venetian blinds not already held some cursory level of sexual stimulation for you.

And it goes beyond even that. Sexual experiences are not the only kind that reinforce neural pathways (and thus lead to certain patterns of thought and behavior). The fact that certain patterns of light and dark increase your statistical odds of stuffing a vagina is not the only thing that influences your feelings on venetian blinds. Any other neural activator can become a factor.

Say that a million years ago your species lived as gatherers in a snowy region, where their main competition were other gathering species. A useful survival behavior in this circumstance would be to gather fruits and bury them in the snow. Now, this is a hard behavior to encourage because it's pretty complex; how do you even tell if something is snow, much less tell the animal to bury food in it, but not spend all their time randomly burying other shit as well?

Well, first, you use your existing patterns. You already have ways to recognize food; it's colorful, tastes good, etc. So you make a new set of criteria:

1. If the neural pattern inputs for food are active or have been activated within the last X period of time
2. If a large amount of white is visible to the eyes
3. If chemical signals from the stomach indicate satiation

...Then initiate the behavior of digging in the white stuff and putting things that are associated with the "food" response in it until you can't see those things anymore. (Since you still can't rely on a definition for fruit, you simply bury anything that activates the neural patterns for fruit, and since the purpose is to hide it, you reward behavior that removes those same stimuli)

This gives a useful behavior. It also gives some odd side effects; if a person eats a cow, they might get an urge to bury a flower in a saltpile afterwards. (Cow = satiation and food circuits activated, salt=white, flower=has some criteria for fruit, like smell and color) If it's a white cow, you may bury the flower IN the cow. In an intelligent species, this may well end up becoming a social or religious convention; when you eat a cow, you place a flower inside it's corpse, because it just feels right. You may find a conscious excuse ("It protects the cow's spirit") but you're really doing it because evolution is a sloppy programmer.

Skip ahead to a million years later where our venetian blinds fetishist is. He doesn't even know he has an urge to bury shit in the snow; it's been a million years and his race lives in cities now. But since the urge didn't reduce his race's survivability, it never completely went away. Now say he's bored one day and is eating strawberry ice cream next to the venetian blinds. He hears his dad coming, and since he's not supposed to be eating ice cream in his room, he quickly stashes it in the window sill beneath the snowy-white blinds. Though he doesn't realize it, that action was at least in part because of his vestigial instinct; it would have been a lot smarter to put the ice cream in his desk drawer. But his brain reinforces the behavior nonetheless, because it fits the criteria. Thus, he likes it. He starts putting his icecream there any time he's not eating it, ostensibly so it will be hidden but really because he has an unknown instinct that's reinforcing it. And because that instinct is being triggered, it is gaining influence in his mind--it's transmitters are primed and it's rewards dispense themselves more readily.

So when one day he tentatively decides to hide his wang behind the blinds, thus graduating from venetian blind fetishist to outright window-fucker, it turns out it feels right. It's not only sexually stimulating but there's something comforting about it, too. And it's all because a million years ago some arctic gopher was stealing his grapes. So now he gets in the habit of letting the blinds rest on his pelvis while he jerks his rod underneath, and it is awesome.

Let's say one day our creature gets on the internet. He's a mature adult by now and knows that the whole blinds thing is pretty messed up--he assumes he must have just had a wierd childhood or some crossed wires or is a mutant or has demons living in his penis or some such thing. He's pretty damned certain he's the only one in the world, because, come on. *Venetian blinds.* What are the odds.

The thing is, as it turns out, all the other members of his species have similar drives. Evolutionary behavior plays the odds, but it still has to roll the dice. Somewhere, somebody else has found that something about the way a nice pair of venetian blinds look, when the light hits them just so, is incredibly erotic. And somewhere there's a guy who's been into venetian blinds since he was a kid. And now there's a fourth guy, married with three kids, who is too terrified to admit that it's the real reason he owns a furniture store. They don't know why, but something about venetian blinds just gets them off. And half of them like to rest the blinds on their pelvises when they're jerking off. What are the odds.

It turns out they've got a newsgroup. And a webpage. And a paysite where women lactate all over venetian blinds. (Which our hero isn't into, but he doesn't figure he has any room to complain.)

Our hero expected to be the only one, but wasn't, and he's more surprised by that than anything. Eventually, they start discussing how or why they have their fetish. Some of them say it's the shape. Others say it's the way they slide between the fingers. Of course, they're all lying. The real reason is because one or more of the sensory stimuli of venetian blinds fit the criteria the brain evolved to promote sexual behavior.

Which also explains why some of the "Blinders" on the forum say it's not something sexual to them, because it may well not be. Maybe they just really, really liked hiding things behind the blinds as a kid. But since that's a much weaker reinforcer and thus much less likely to influence behavior, they are vastly in the minority--and very confused as to why.

So now, after that very long exposition, we come back to our corner of the internet, and vore.

I expect vore is something like this. We have a huge number of interacting forces that determine our behavior and thoughts. With IRL humans it goes way beyond Hiding Food + Sexual Stimuli, but the basic idea is the same. All kinds of things are visibly wired into our brain at some level; things that create behaviors of love, sex, eating, dieting, building houses, learning to speak french, working on cars, writing long dissertations on theories of fetishism on the internet, and so on. Many of these have, at their core, a simple combination key--when a certain set of stimuli are recieved under the right conditions (whether it be a certain sequence, in association with a certain behavior, or even just having them all arrive at once), the neural pathways that are currently most active are reinforced and expanded. The behavior or sensation that cuased it might be what we would think of as "right" or it might not, but the fact is that by the time we can consciously tell, it has already happened. Matters of fantasy are especially complicated, because humans have the ability to simulate stimuli in our own minds, meaning it doesn't even have to happen for us to react to it and thus have our minds changed. (That's part of why humans are so goddamn smart. It's also why our imaginations can make us do retarded, biologically detrimental things like drop firebombs on each other.)

What might it be about vore that is appealling? For some it could be domination, as giving yourself over to someone else's will is reproductively valuable and thus the sensations associated with it may well be stimulating all by themselves. (If the woman struggles there is less overall chance of reproduction, and though that trait may only be biologically useful for women, it wouldn't necessarily be differentiated unless it proved a significant reproductive hindrance for men--meaning men may well want to be dominated too.) After all, is it not the feeling of being pinned down, of being physically bound and dominated part of what makes it appealling? Siezing you with their larger body and having their way with you? And the triggers for interpreting something as domination explains why it is so broad; it may include fear, pressure on the wrists or other parts of the body, perception of a larger creature, feelings of surrender or defeat, etc. Subsuming your will to another increases the odds of both of you surviving and reproducing (both because of capitulation during sex, but also because working together is valuable). But, since such a relationship requires a dominator, there are also people who are naturally dominating and are attracted to acts of domination.

For others it would be intimacy. Closeness is valuable for many biological reasons, and altruism--giving oneself over to another--aids the survival of the species in ways that go beyond reproduction. An urge to protect and nurture other members of one's species has obvious effects on their survivability, meaning those behavioral traits are likely to be propagated. Though it does not benefit an individual to help others, it does benefit an individual to belong to a species in which others help him. This is only likely if one's genes include a proclivity for helping others, and that proclivity comes--in part--from positive feelings and reinforcement associated with those others. And since the flipside is that the most valuable person to you is the one who is propagating your personal genes, we closely associate sex with this as well. (Which is why love and sex often overlap, and why pedophilia and incest are such problems for our species--people can't always tell one kind of love from another) Insofar as stimuli, the brain's interpretation of intimacy is likely to be those physical signs we associate with it--closeness and touch, soft voices, positive feelings that take place when interacting with a person (whatever they may be). I don't know about you guys, but most of my intimate fantasies heavily involve such sensory elements.

For still others, it is tactile. We are turned on by soft, warm, wet things, because those things are more likely to be reproductively valuable than hard, cold or spikey things. Since we can imagine soft, warm and wet things, we don't need to actually encounter them for stimulation and reinforcement to occur; because of this, our first experience with something that meets those criteria may well be when we imagine being swallowed alive by something or someone. Our brain responds to this imaginary stimulus with very real sexual stimulation, association and neural reinforcement, and before we know it, we're voraphiles.

These things are all the stronger because they can overlap. There may be some element of dominance or submission that enhances the stimulation for a primarily tactile vore, because they have the same circuits that produce those responses, or you may end up with a submissive who wants to give him-or-herself to someone as an act of love and intimacy. When it comes right down to it, since the situation is based on a gestalt of stimuli that the brain responds to, there really isn't any single kind of voraphile, since technically the instincts that activate voraphilia also activate conventional sexuality (in all it's permutations). There may be differences in the response the brain gives to certain combinations or certain single stimuli, but these alone are unlikely to account wholesale for a person becoming a voraphile.

Anyways. I suspect that's how voraphilia works and why it's so hard to nail down. The experience of being a voraphile--or human in general--is much different than the clinical description of the neural events, which makes it even harder to understand or verify, but it's an explaination--at least on a conceptual level--that seems to me to fit the facts we have, even though those facts seem to contradict themselves.

[ress_q_puma]

I like it cause it gets me horny and makes normal people scream and run away. There, short and sweet like a chocolate dipped pixie.

[blank]

i agree with the above, also i like the idea of being able to snuggle with someone from the inside, volintary or not. i also love big bellies.
and as i already stated by agreeing with ress_q_puma, yea it gets me horny.

[rv]

Duam, you copied me, maybe not. You did give a nice explanation though, feels like there are some gaps, but that's like announcing I can make stuff better than an arts and crafts seller yet not trying. I must be into it since I like to haunt around here, but I seriously draw a blank on to why, or it is because of my highly indesisive nature. I see too many pathes to go on, or am I trying to segment up an endless plane so my little brain could possibly comprehend it?:) Hope there was no offence there, that's just my attempt at it.

[Humbug]

If you get the time, read Duamutef's huge post. Really, we don't need to continue this discussion because he explained why we're all vorarephiles and why we have such different tastes in the same fetish group.

All kinds of things are visibly wired into our brain at some level; things that create behaviors of love, sex, eating, dieting, building houses, learning to speak french, working on cars, writing long dissertations on theories of fetishism on the internet, and so on.

No kidding. Have you considered submitting this as a doctoral thesis in chemistry or biology? I suppose the words "Fuck" and "Wang" probably wouldn't be too terribly well-received by the scholarly, but given some transformation into political-correctness, you'd have a nice little document there.

[ADDITION TO ORIGINAL POST]
If you believe in any metaphysical (not of this world, spiritual, etc.) form of the soul or in free will and want to continue believing them, avoid Duamutef's post...unless you can somehow refute the points made in it. If you don't care about a rational refutation of what you've believed most of your life, it's well worth reading.

[FatJaguar]

Duamutef: That was so very far beyond excellent, there are no sufficient words in the human language to describe it. So I shall settle for a prolonged blank gape.........*Gape*......... I am positively dumbfounded.

Me no have smart thing to say. Brain fry after long long words.

[Sashima7]

I like vore because without it we would never be able to survive.

poeple say we're weird because we worship this concept, but it's they who will perish the day that the god/s come from the heavens, and consume all those who worship this concept thus saving them

[Karbo]

Wow Duamautef
*Bow before the master*

Very nice analysis... Venitian blind fetish.. lol XD

[Deathworks]

Hi!

First of all, I want to recommend Duamutef on his extensive analysis. I have to admit that I skipped large parts of it, but I think I got the overall message.

The question as to why and what has been something I have been considering for quite a while, especially since my extremely gentle vore seems to be a relatively rare thing.

I have been a voraphile for all time I can remember. Even before I became sexually aware, there were hints of his tendency.

Despite this, it is not unlikely that its development was in my case related to early childhood experiences or mental developments.

Anyhow, please allow me to describe my vore and what it means to me:

The first and most important aspect is innocence. The predator has to be absolutely pure and innocent, preferably to a level unattainable by real human beings. The prey - which is the side I identify with - may be less innocent.

The meaning of this innocence is quite obviously a counterposition to the way I perceive the real world: A filthy and corrupted place based on destruction. "Deathworks" is just my word for "humans": "Works" of art created by "Death". All human life is dependant on killing other life, be it plants or animals, but humans have also perfected the art of killing: We have "meat factories" where hundreds of animals are kept and slaughtered in amazing time. And we wage war on our own race, spilling blood for God, for money, for glory. And finally, we in the first world still prosper by draining the ressources of the third world, even now that the last colonies are gone. I am not absolutely sure when I came to understand this, but I think I developed this pen name when I was between 10 and 13 years of age.

By that time, I also had come to understand that all human behavior is based on selfishness. Most people nowadays center on getting monetary and material goods. Then there are those who strongly believe in some kind of god or other supernatural stuff. They do their "good deeds" (it's hard not to laugh at the thought) only so they can cash in heavenly rewards, either during their lifetime or in a promised afterlife. Besides these, there are also psychological aspects, like being appreciated, being loved, being cared for. These are all benefits we are constantly hunting down, each centered on their own best profit. And whilst I may find this disgusting and despicable, it is also part of my own nature, too deeply rooted in what I am to be rid of it.

Thus, down in my heart, I tend to view the world I am part of with hate and disdain. And thus, my ideal partner, my loveliest vision has traits that no human being can ever achieve, ideals that are nowhere to be found.

Keeping this in mind, it becomes obvious what vore means for me: refuge. The beloved ideal becomes my refuge, shielding me, albeit temporarily, from the filthy outside world.

This way, all aspects of my fetish fall into place:

I am into all kinds of gentle vore, unbirthing, other ways to enter the female character's body: Residing inside her stomach is as good as residing inside her bladder, her blood stream, her ear, her womb, her lung, or whatever location there is. As long as I am protected by her.

I have become over time fixated on rorikon manga/anime characters. This is clearly based on their impossible innocence.

I prefer macrophile interaction, scale 100 and more extreme and I don't like bulging bellies: This is also linked to the taint aspect. Bulging bellies would seem distorted to me, the beauty of the character diminished. Since she is to be an ideal, that is no good. The one exception that has developed recently in my mind are hybrids like nagas, where the swelling of the animal part has a certain naturality to it. In addition, scale 100 makes entering the body possible without causing any harm or distress to any of the parties involved.

My predators usually fall into three thought patterns: playful, unaware, and submissive. Playful has to be taken literally as innocently playful. Swallowing others is just a game to them and no harm is intended. Unawares just don't know the prey is there. And submissive ones are obeying the commands of the prey in the act. All these patterns clearly underscore the innocence aspect. There is no guilt or anything for the predator.

I don't really go for absorption or digestion. Killing is something real humans do and my voraphile predators are an ideal different from that. Becoming one is also no option since the prey is more or less my avatar and thus usually not as pure as the host. Therefore, becoming one would taint the innocent and thus destroy paradise.

I guess this sums up the most important points.

Deathworks

[elrae70]

I fully agree with Deathworks, I like the exact same type of vore, and couldn't have more perfectly described it!

[Duamutef]

Duam, you copied me, maybe not. You did give a nice explanation though, feels like there are some gaps, but that's like announcing I can make stuff better than an arts and crafts seller yet not trying.

Gaps, definately. In fact there's more unknowns than there are real information; at best what I've got is a working theory as to the theme, the mode of operation that explains fetishism (and other quirky human behavior) in a general sense.

If you could call that huge thing "general."

If you get the time, read Duamutef's huge post. Really, we don't need to continue this discussion because he explained why we're all vorarephiles and why we have such different tastes in the same fetish group.

No kidding. Have you considered submitting this as a doctoral thesis in chemistry or biology? I suppose the words "Fuck" and "Wang" probably wouldn't be too terribly well-received by the scholarly, but given some transformation into political-correctness, you'd have a nice little document there.

It took me until this part to be sure you weren't being sarcastic. "Oop, Duamutef figured it out, I guess we can all go home now..."

I thought about paring out the personally indicting parts (i.e. the vore) and giving a copy to my Human Sexuality teacher for kicks and giggles, but that's about as far as I'd thought about going with it.

I imagine most neurobiologists probably already have a theory that works something like this one--I based a lot of it off of what they already know. I just filled in some spots with my own ideas, which actually came from my experience in artificial intelligence programming.

Which is why it's sad that the Cartovore 2 AI is dumb as a bag of hair...but then, I don't want it to take ten minutes to process a turn.

The crazy hacker kid in me almost wants to try giving it a neural AI that theoretically could not only play better than a human, but could build it's own decks as well.

The project manager in me recognizes that it's totally impractical, since the fun of the game would probably be degraded since it would be so slow, and while building and training a good neural AI might be fun for me (and definately a learning experience), it would also take a fairly long time.

Then again, maybe if I set up the AI so that instead of making each decision on the fly, it instead compiles it's own pre-set reactions to certain circumstances and then re-evaluates them after the games...or maybe if I pull enough bizarre memory wrangling I can set up the neural network so that instead of a verbose function it functions as a mechanical side-effect of a blit or somesuch (rather like real-life neural nets do)...that'd be hilarious. Because it may actually be new. And I can think of a few ways I may even be able to pull it off...using the actual bits as neurons, merging them together in a layered fashion, using some as nerves, others as firing thresholds...

Actually, I may even be able to come up with something that doesn't need to model nerves at all...tying bits together in a way that is native to the nature of computers, yet produces the same properties of self-organization by positive and negative reinforcement of patterns...and if the end result is fast, I could train it against itself using replication of the victors, using the game itself as the randomization factor that leads to mutation...

My brain has got such a boner.

However, I digress.

[ADDITION TO ORIGINAL POST]
If you believe in any metaphysical (not of this world, spiritual, etc.) form of the soul or in free will and want to continue believing them, avoid Duamutef's post...unless you can somehow refute the points made in it. If you don't care about a rational refutation of what you've believed most of your life, it's well worth reading.

The odd thing is this same pattern of logic I use also suggests the existance of a soul. My modus operandi is highly scientific, not in the clinical sense but in the essential sense--I form my beliefs/theories/whatever on observation, experimentation, aggregation of all the data at my disposal and by using whatever means I have to ferret out misleading information. I am different from a true scientist in that I am also a strategist of sorts, using the strongest aspects of each methodology I have to maximum effect while minimizing the weaknesses in a way that's more pragmatic than methodical. I play the maximization game rather than the methodical game, optimizing which methodology I apply in each situation to maximize the odds of catching indiscrepancies. So while I will fudge in some ways that could potentially allow flaws to remain undetected, it does produce what I consider to be a high ratio of practical insight vs. time and effort spent. Basically, I place more emphasis on the spirit of science than the laws.

Knowing when you can fudge and when you can't is a skill; one that will directly affect the value of this strategy. So, it is logical to maximize that skill. The way you do that is by maximizing your understanding of the factors involved; knowing how your own brain works allows you to recognize it's weaknesses, which in turn gives you a way to determine when you cannot fudge. That's one of the biggest reasons I know so much about brain meat, both structurally and in terms of how to use it; it is knowledge that is useful in a great many ways, which has led me to study it.

One result of my strategies is a knack for reverse engineering by behavior. When you have analyzed and built enough systems of a certain type, you learn to recognize systems of that type simply by noting certain aspects of their behavior. A modern human, for example, could see a device that was shaking slightly, making noise and expelling gas from a hose and immediately infer that there is a combustion engine inside. We cannot see the engine, but we know the effects of one. Likewise, we know other things that can allow us to confirm or deny whether we are correct; it is much less likely to be a combustion engine if, for example, you can confirm that there is no air intake or if you can determine that the gases coming out of the exhaust are not byproducts of combustion. But even then, you know there is an engine of some sort inside.

So I am with all things, inferring their nature by their functions. I see how it behaves, attempt to build a model in my mind that would produce that behavior, then test the predictions and requirements of that model against the object itself. If I believe it to be a gasoline engine, it must aspirate. Therefore, if it is airtight, it is not a gasoline engine. I don't know what it is, but I know it's not a gasoline engine.

So it is with the soul. I am reasonably certain we are not simply byproducts of physics, because the predictions that model do not match the evidence.

While the soul is extremely difficult to measure, there are a few verifiable facts we do know about it (these are not independantly verifiable in the traditional sense--each of us knows them only by personal experience):

1. They produce awareness of the sort we know; "Life," as it were. Sentience, cognizance, the experience of being alive, as opposed to the mere mechanical events we associate with life.

2. Each soul's experiences correllate with events that take place inside a single human brain.

3. All cogitation appears to be dependant on said brain, as are functions such as memory. There is also evidence that awareness itself is dependant on the brain, as awareness is lost during certain periods that correllate with changes in brain activity (i.e. non-REM stages of sleep).

These facts, taken alone, seem to support the theory that the brain is what creates awareness, i.e. there is no "soul." But these facts are not all there is. We must test the theory against the rest of the data we have on the system to see what the theory predicts the system will create.

Supposition: The brain creates awareness.

Predictive model: Reality.

So we take reality. Reality isn't just brains, it's every atom, electron, space-time blotch and neutrino we've ever measured, and then some. As scientists, we must theorize a mechanism by which these energies could produce awareness. There's a few different mechanisms I've heard put forth, but they all boil down to some variation of this one:

Hypothesis: Awareness is created by certain patterns of energy or interaction of energy. (i.e. the patterns in your brain are what make you alive.)

Inference: Awareness is a property facilitated by energy or energy interaction.

Prediction from model: As the pattern creates the awareness, all instances of any pattern that fit certain criteria would produce awareness. As energy interactions facilitate awareness, the nature of awareness would be dependant on the pattern formed but would also exist on multiple levels (within each pattern is a smaller pattern, and outside of each pattern is a larger pattern).

Minimum observational requirement: The brain must qualify for all pattern criteria at all times except during "unconscious" periods. The brain must NOT fit the pattern criteria during unconscious periods.

This hypothesis seems to almost immediately fail, mostly because of the observational requirement. It contradicts the existing evidence. Our experience with our awareness is that it is neither scalar nor does it encompass all patterns that fit the supposed criteria (which, at very least, must include every human brain). The fact that you aren't aware of what I am thinking means there is a force differentiating my thoughts from yours. The model does not predict such a force, nor can it logically facilitate that phenomena--there is no observed or predicted force, behavior or even pattern that can be correllated with this effect. The specific particles that make up our brains are constantly changing as they are fed new matter by the blood, so it can't just be that we are aware of certain particles. The patterns in our brains are constantly changing, and we are aware across such a broad range of these patterns that the model would predict that a huge number of other patterns could potentially be aware--the molecular and interactive patterns of a baby's brain are not so different in it's pattern from a colony of bacteria, and their mechanical pattern is not so different from a shoal of sand. The model thus predicts that a colony of bacteria is likely to be self-aware; while we cannot measure this, we can measure the fact that WE are not aware of the colony, again ensuring the need for some differential mechanism which the theory does not predict.

But it gets worse. Awareness blips out when the brain sleeps, but most of the previous patterns remain in operation--far more than are present in a baby's brain, despite the fact that babies are sentient. If the theory is that the pattern creates the awareness, then if the pattern stays and the awareness does not (or vice-versa), you have effectively disproven the hypothesis in it's current form. We have examples of both; the pattern remains in sleep yet awareness vanishes, whereas the patterns are not present in a baby yet awareness exists.

In short, the predictions of the model fall drastically short of matching even our very limited observational data.

So while we don't know what creates awareness, we do know that it isn't just patterns of observable energy.

So, ironically, the idea that there is no soul is unscientific. Any theory we propose to explain awareness must account for the data, and the data is that people are aware not as patterns but as consistant individuals who's experiences correllate with a paradoxically broad and narrow range of phenomena. We experience any number of things according to what's happening in our billions of neurons, but we don't experience anything at all from the neurons outside our brain. Thus, any successful hypothesis must predict this.

But if you can effectively disprove that observable reality creates awareness, doesn't that only leave one possibility? That some sort of interaction is taking place outside the realm of spacetime as we know it? Well, whatever that interaction is and whatever is facilitating it is "the soul." Our limited data can't make many inferences as to what it might be, but any theory that could match the observed data would require that it exist.

In science, such anomolies are called "unknown forces." It is typical to quantify their effects, then attempt to explain them and build a model of their nature and behavior so that they are no longer unknown. This process is what brought us the theory of dark matter, for example. An example of a force that is still unknown is the force that is causing the expansion of the universe to accellerate, which contradicts the predictions of our current understanding of physics. They measure it's effects and attempt to revise our model to one that would match it, but to my knowledge it is still not understood well enough to classify it.

The soul is in a realm even beyond that. With universal accelleration, we have reams of existing data we can use to figure out what it is. While we don't know what's accellerating the expansion, we do know what kinds of things to look for. We know enough of the themes of reality in general to readily come up with ideas that we can look into. Not so with the soul. We have no established data, no concrete measurements or even formalized terminology; when I say "Sentience" half of the people I talk to assume I'm talking about the mechanical behaviors of humans; when I say "Awareness" they assume I'm talking about photons hitting the eye.

Nonetheless, I see the soul as no different from quantum mechanics. The fact that we have very little information doesn't mean we have none at all, and it definately doesn't mean we can't infer more. We don't see electron waveforms; we inferred their existance because of other effects that we could measure, and those measurements were based on our understanding of effects further above. So it shall be with the soul. We don't know what it is, but we know a bit about what reality is. That alone lets us rule out most of the theories and give us a set of rules as to what a successful theory would need to account for. These rules in turn will give us an idea of what sort of mechanisms would need to be present. And these mechanisms, like all interactions, would have measurable side-effects. We can't go out and measure the soul with a tape measure, but then, we can't do that with neutrons either. We know for certain that the brain influences the soul, and our reality says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction and that all energy goes somewhere. There will be signs of the soul not just wherever it has an effect, but also wherever it has been affected by something else.

Insofar as free will is concerned, that also is a tricky question, but my theory is "yes and no." Modern atomic physics teaches us that true predetermination is impossible, because determination itself is a fallacy. How can an electron dictate how your future is going to unfold when it doesn't even have a position, but rather is expressed as a spectrum of possible positions which are not determined until the last possible instant? Many of the prevailing theories state that the entire universe is a simultaneous manifestation of every possibility, constantly expanding into the kind of infinity that makes your head explode. How the hell do you explain "predestination" in the face of that?

And, again, this contradicts what we percieve. We percieve life as a line of events spanning one specific set of circumstances; while the evidence says reality is every possible event across every direction of time in a box the size of God, our awareness is of one timeline, one person, and one set of outcomes plucked from an infinite number. We do not percieve reality as it really is in any sense, so something else is at work. Since we percieve selectively across time and space in a way that is apparently unnatural, that suggests that the soul operates outside of the bounds of spacetime. Time itself is something that physics tells us should not exist--at least, the way we percieve it. What physics tells us time is is very different from the way our souls percieve it. You can't argue with the body of data that backs up our non-linear theory of spacetime, but you also can't argue with the immediately observable truth that we experience time as an ongoing stream of moments. Thus, there is reason to believe they are the results of entirely different systems interacting with one another. While it's not quite as strong of evidence, it further supports the already strong evidence against "reality" being the only component.

By that time, I also had come to understand that all human behavior is based on selfishness. Most people nowadays center on getting monetary and material goods. Then there are those who strongly believe in some kind of god or other supernatural stuff. They do their "good deeds" (it's hard not to laugh at the thought) only so they can cash in heavenly rewards, either during their lifetime or in a promised afterlife. Besides these, there are also psychological aspects, like being appreciated, being loved, being cared for. These are all benefits we are constantly hunting down, each centered on their own best profit. And whilst I may find this disgusting and despicable, it is also part of my own nature, too deeply rooted in what I am to be rid of it.

Thus, down in my heart, I tend to view the world I am part of with hate and disdain. And thus, my ideal partner, my loveliest vision has traits that no human being can ever achieve, ideals that are nowhere to be found.

I know exactly how you feel, and it sort of underlines my own ambivalence towards this world.

When I analyze and come to understand the complex mechanisms that create the world we know--physics, biology, design philosophy--and integrate it all together, I am simultaneously awestruck and horrified. Awestruck by the power, elegance and sheer potential of it all (and, guilty truth be told, by my own ability to even comprehend it) but horrified by it's results. Essentially, I am humbled by the beauty of the mechanisms of life, but horrified by life itself. Which I think is the opposite of what most people think is supposed to happen.

I am enthralled with neurobiology/physics, the soul and the endless possible experiences the two can create together, but horrified at the fact that in practice we're trapped in bodies that have evolved to survive, using torment of the mind (and thus the soul) to do so, and that it could have been (or could still be) even worse. Learning the body's remarkable powers of adaptation just underlines the inescapability of it's thoughtless will.

I am simultaneously comforted and horrified by my belief that neither conventional physics (which believes energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and that time and possibility are infinite) nor nonconventional physics (the soul, God, etc.) can logically support the concept of permanent death. It means I will always live again, even if I don't have any idea what form it will take. It also means that if this life is an accurate statistical sample, it means suffering may well follow me though eternity, as will happiness, and that the distribution thereof may well be effectively random.

And, of course, I am simultaneously comforted and horrified by the behavior of humans. We are the Deathworks, but we are also everything we believe God to be. Every concept of nobility and kindness springs from the same parts of us that create chaos and mayhem. Hatred is a valuable survival tool. So is love. So we have both.

That's why I don't believe that there is a God who is orchestrating events on Earth. Ours is a perfect example of a system left to it's own devices. There are no rules except physics. Both evil and good prosper, as does neutrality, and when you move to analyze them, you find they either don't exist or are the same thing. When our conscious mind decides to kill someone who poses a threat to those we care about, is that evil? When we succumb to our animal urge to love our children, is that good? If we throw out the reasons and base our morals on the end result, what measure do we use? Our sense of good and evil are based just as much on our animal nature as our urges are. We think feeding a starving child is good because it's good for the species. We don't think killing it is good even though it ends it's suffering. We think murdering animals for our own prosperity is bad, even though we are the most successful and adaptable species on the planet and thus the most likely to perpetuate life as a whole, and by tying our survival to their own, we ensure their continued prosperity as a species.

Things just feel right or feel wrong, based on what our million-year history has taught our collective body. But our urges are based primarily on their effect on genetic survivability; all else is effectively random. That's why it's a problem. We as a species are awakening to a world that has always been asleep. We are questioning why we do the things we do on a deeper level than "because I was hungry." We are questioning why the hunger exists, why some of us save while others kill, and finding that we are unimpressed with the answers; they are so simple and clinical that our spirits feel cheapened. Yet it is those same animal neurons that enable us to feel cheapened in the first place.

For all my fear that the future may be a one-way trip to endless torment, I also have one hidden hope; one that is probably an affront to many and frightening to many others.

Evolution created us, that much we can be certain of. If there is a God, we weren't on his list, or at best he crafted this spacetime wad and set us loose on it, come what may. Evolution is a force of nature, mindless, random, inexhorable, and utterly neutral to good and evil; it's only concern is propagation. But the fact that there was no creator does not mean there can be no creator.

We as a species now have all the tools we need to become our own creators. We can become the "Intelligent Designer" our souls sorely wish for. Evolution, for all it has given us, has been proven unfit to survive. It has given us the keys to create a better way. When we understand the body and the soul, we can erase the flaws that a million years of randomness has given them, even as we learn from their triumphs and amplify them a hundredfold.

God will not take away our suffering. He will not remake the world into one where goodness brings happiness or that everyone prospers and none live for want. What we see around us betrays his motivation; whatever it is, forging a utopia as a gift for his children is obviously not it.

But that does not mean our suffering need be eternal. It does not mean the world cannot be better. Understanding the functions of our universe has taught me that the sheer number of ways it could be arranged is stupefyingly large; any number of Utopias could be envisioned and carried out. But the key is that we must change the rules.

Humans will always be selfish, loving, cowardly, vengeful, noble, ambivalent and all the things that we are...so long as we are still human. One of the first things we'll need to do is understand ourselves well enough to change. Willpower and a perfect society won't be enough; it never has been. External technology won't be enough; people have an uncanny knack for being miserable no matter how prosperous they are. For us to truly change as a species, I believe we need to, as My Blue Heaven said, "change from the outside in."

This frightens people, because there's a lot of problems we think it could cause if we're stupid about it. Like anything, the means determines the result. Eugenics is a stupid way; it will sour people on the whole concept by creating prejudice and other real-world problems. Commercial gene therapy may work but it would have it's problems, some of which could be alleviated by predicting them beforehand and setting up ways to minimize them (such as by making a person's genetic heritage protected information). Socialized gene therapy has that stigma of the word socialist, and the presumed incompetence of governments...but again, could still work and would be better than nothing. Sporadic progress is better than none at all. So long as we're careful, I think spending the next few decades making a conscious effort to improve ourselves--our knowledge, our societies, our cultures, our genes--will pay off, and will be quite necessary. If we screw up bad enough we might nuke ourselves right off the planet, which is why not succumbing to irrational fear is so important. But succumbing to irrational fear eventually is nigh-inevitable, because we're built to, which is why we also need to change the way we're built. If it were easier for people to be logical, if it were easier for people to be smart or even just happy, then that would solve a lot of problems all by itself, and open the door to a lot of new possibilities.

So while I love Joss Wheadon, I must disagree with Serenity on one key point. I do believe we can make people better. (Just not with Pax.) And I also think we'll need to if we're going to survive. If we keep being miserable while still increasing our technological affluence, eventually somebody is going to make a planetary death-plague or a black-hole-bomb in their basement and sit on top of it while they push the button.

It's time for our souls to truly take responsibility for our bodies. And truly taking control means not just controlling what it does, but controlling what it is.

Anyway. That's my take. We can't do it right this second anyway (at least, not in a way that would be smart) but in the next ten to fifty years, at least some level of genetic enhancement is going to become practical, and then everything we believe is all going to come out at once, for better or for worse. Some gentech company is going to be on the cover of TIME with a mouse that can solve Calculus problems with food pellets and then it's all going to hit the fan.

So take heart. Things are really screwed up now, but we're just getting to where we might be able to fix it...maybe even for real this time.

*looks up* My God, I'm verbose.

[Francois]

Or perhaps fruits have bright solid colors because many animals are attracted to them. Boom, coevolution, angiosperms, arthropods! It's actually even a couple magnitudes more complex than even what that "D" guy said, he left it quite simplely. DNA doesn't code for behavior. In fact, most of it doesn't code of anything specific, the majority of it mearly is a bunch of sequences that help it fold up, or provide sites where promoters, inhibitors, transcription factors, etc., and many of the genes only code for proteins that just regulate. How do a bunch of linear instructions with some additional linear instructions for the usage of this instruction result in a cognative being that is really only a very large matrix of chemical reactions? I don't know, but if you find out, let me know. That's one of those instant Nobel Prize things. Besides, Venician blinds are horizontal.

[Francois]

The project manager in me recognizes that it's totally impractical, since the fun of the game would probably be degraded since it would be so slow, and while building and training a good neural AI might be fun for me (and definately a learning experience), it would also take a fairly long time.

Then again, maybe if I set up the AI so that instead of making each decision on the fly, it instead compiles it's own pre-set reactions to certain circumstances and then re-evaluates them after the games...or maybe if I pull enough bizarre memory wrangling I can set up the neural network so that instead of a verbose function it functions as a mechanical side-effect of a blit or somesuch (rather like real-life neural nets do)...that'd be hilarious. Because it may actually be new. And I can think of a few ways I may even be able to pull it off...using the actual bits as neurons, merging them together in a layered fashion, using some as nerves, others as firing thresholds...

...

Anyway. That's my take. We can't do it right this second anyway (at least, not in a way that would be smart) but in the next ten to fifty years, at least some level of genetic enhancement is going to become practical, and then everything we believe is all going to come out at once, for better or for worse. Some gentech company is going to be on the cover of TIME with a mouse that can solve Calculus problems with food pellets and then it's all going to hit the fan.

If you can pull that off, let me know how. This is a slightly more realistic Nobel prize winning scheme.

***

Progress is actually kinda slow in that area. It's hard to say what could happen in the next 50 years, but maybe in about 30 years we may be able to map the majority of the transduction pathways involved in the mouse brain. Cybernetics may work, though there isn't much money driving that kind of research, and I don't even know of the exisance of any government funded labs that I can think of, at least not where I work, they probably have some in Sweeden or something. You could use the mouse as an input device, identify a location where that signal can be picked up (probalby the hardest part), have it go through a computer that does the work, and then use binary to output the answer using right (0) and left (1) paw jerks stimulated with an impuls (The last part is definatly possible.)


Off topic for the win!

[Duamutef]

Or perhaps fruits have bright solid colors because many animals are attracted to them. Boom, coevolution, angiosperms, arthropods! It's actually even a couple magnitudes more complex than even what that "D" guy said, he left it quite simplely. DNA doesn't code for behavior. In fact, most of it doesn't code of anything specific, the majority of it mearly is a bunch of sequences that help it fold up, or provide sites where promoters, inhibitors, transcription factors, etc., and many of the genes only code for proteins that just regulate. How do a bunch of linear instructions with some additional linear instructions for the usage of this instruction result in a cognative being that is really only a very large matrix of chemical reactions? I don't know, but if you find out, let me know. That's one of those instant Nobel Prize things. Besides, Venician blinds are horizontal.

It's the same concept, just taken in the other direction. DNA doesn't code for behavior, but it does code for chemicals. Chemicals are what cause the physical mechanism that we call reinforcement. We use the term to describe the fact that neurons only fire when exposed to certain chemicals at certain levels, and that they adjust these thresholds according to the presence of other ambient or transmitted chemicals. But when you get right down to it it's all just chemistry. This thing touches that thing (neurotransmitter > synapse) which makes it go POP which flings junk at this other thing (neural activation) that makes this long line of stuff go POP (axon transmitting signal to other neurons). This is all just chemical, but the practical result is that there are only certain conditions under which they fire; they fire when the chemicals are present in the right amounts, and those amounts change according to other factors. The DNA determines the shape the neurons build themselves into and what chemicals are produced in what amounts. So when you add in the fact that DNA is changed at random (both by replication error and external mutagenic effects) the shapes and chemical ratios will also be random. Add non-random propagation of the system to it (i.e. the whole thing crashes down in one circumstance but successfully replicates in another) and eventually you will be left with systems that will only ever create the successful circumstance. If the successful circumstance is that the neurons fire when they recieve signals from the wang (or whatever), then the DNA that randomly ends up encouraging that behavior (whether by producing more activating chemicals or by having a lower threshold, either of which can be the result of a mutation) will be the more likely DNA to propagate.

Now if you take this to an extreme--say, you do it for ten million years--a whole grundle of random variations will have been tried, each one building on (or in some cases regressing from) the last. The system of neurons and chemicals randomly changes; beneficial changes are statistically more likely to be passed on whereas detrimental changes are less likely. So if one creature randomly mutates his woody-neuron so that it's more likely to activate when it's warm and not cold, he's slightly more likely to reproduce and thus pass on that trait. On the other hand, when his cousin mutates so that his woody neuron only activates when something bites his eyeball, that gene doesn't get passed on, because he can't get it up without getting mauled.

Then the first critter's great great grandson, who already has the Temperature Signal = Woody neural connection, mutates so that an axon from his olfactory nerve is going up into his woody center. Doesn't have an effect on his survival either way, so it stays. But then one of his descendants has another mutation that makes his olfactory nerve unusually sensitive to the smell of a chemical given off by other members of his species. This gives him several advantages, so that mutation propagates. But by now that first Axon into the Woody Center mutates a bunch of times, causing that axon to connect itself to and from different neurons in the olfactory nerve cluster. Since it's random, the woody neuron will be connected to a random "smell" each time.

So one of them gets a boner when he smells flowers. That gene dies because it's owner spends all of it's time humping rose bushes instead of procreating. Another gets a boner when it smells the urine of a predator. So it just dies. The last one gets a mutation that gives him a boner when he smells his own species. That one is going to be propagated; he's raring to go at just the right time.

You probably knew all this natural selection stuff already, but right here we've shown how mutation can lead to basic behavioral "rules." The critter has a specific neuron that, when it fires, will cause the chemical chain reaction that we describe as a woody. But that neuron only fires in response to other nerve signals. So if it's on the back-end of an olfactory nerve, it will trigger when the nose smells something. When it's on the back-end of a sensory nerve from the wang, it will trigger when something touches the wang. But because the timing of the woody impacts the propagation of the gene, useless connections are statistically weeded out while useful ones come to the fore.

Do this for long enough and you'll have all kinds of wonky rules. You'll have nerves from the pecker, eyes, nose, ears, skin, nipples and all kinds of places all wired up to the woody neuron, which fires according to how many signals it's getting and from where. So eventually you have a critter that might get a woody if you stroke it's shaft, but will also get a woody if you stick your tongue in it's ear or lick it's balls or whisper Barry Manilow to it. (Not that I'm advocating trying this.) It might even be discerning enough to activate a woody if it's nipples are licked but not if they're bitten, since one is beneficial and the other isn't, meaning one will increase propagation and the other won't.

Then he gets another random mutation--his axons start branching out. Now one neurons can transmit to multiple others. This will, in all likelyhood, make him schizophrenic and insane and die a horrible death. But if there are ten million members of his species now, and it's a simple mutation, then ten thousand of them may get a variation of that mutation. If one out of those ten thousand manages to turn it to their advantage--because, for example, only the axons in the motor cortex were affected, allowing a greater range of movement without interfering with autonomic functions--then that one good gene out of ten thousand defects will propagate.

Take that through ten thousand more generations in which neurons could potentially have multiple connections. Only mutations that tend to produce beneficial cross-connections will tend to propagate. Eventually you'll have a selective mechanism of some sort--certain connections will always be the same (heartbeat, lungs etc) whereas others can be connected any number of ways. Eventually you'll have neurons forming loops and doubling back on one another.

Then one of them mutates so that the configurations of the protiens on the surface of his axons change slightly when they fire. They eventually move back to their original position and the effect is merely cosmetic except for one thing--during this brief period, the shape of the protien is such that now the hormones released by his pain nerves can react to them, eroding the axon sheathe and eventually destroyin the axon. Thankfully, a previous mutation has given his neurons the ability to sense the destruction of their axons and grow new ones...problem being, they won't be connected to the same neurons as they were before.

So what do you have now? A second tier of natural selection--one that takes place within the lifespan of the creature. Instead of propagation of genes, you have propagation of neural connections, and instead of reproduction being the pressure, you have pain. When the creature feels pain, all connections that were recently used have a chance of being degraded, and if it happens enough times, they will be destroyed. Thus, any connection that increases the likelihood of pain hormones being released increases the likelihood of it's own destruction. Thus, all other things being equal, patterns that lead to pain-causing behavior get destroyed whereas the rest survive.

That's the basis of neural reinforcement, though in this case it acts by destroying bad connections rather than reinforcing good ones. But then all you need is another mutation that lowers the firing threshold for active neurons when pleasure hormones are present and you've got positive reinforcement as well; connections and pathways that lead to pleasurable behavior increase their own likelihood of firing again.

Now there is natural selection going on in the creature's own head. Since connections can be made all over the place, all kinds of random things can happen at first; the creature might throw up when it sees the color blue, it might go into a lust frenzy when it sees a beehive. But when it throws up, it suffers, so whatever connection caused the blue > vomit association gets destroyed. When it humps the beehive, the beehive > lust connection gets destroyed. On the other hand, when it humps a member of it's own species, it feels pleasure, causing whatever neural connections that caused that behavior to become more likely to fire again, thus causing the same behavior to take place again.

So now you have the evolutionary basis of associative intelligence. Anything can be connected with anything, but only beneficial connections stay. Complex behaviors can now be learned completely at random through simple experimentation. Though the animal is probably still pretty damned stupid, it can now learn from it's mistakes and it's successes, as measured by which behaviors it repeats and which ones it avoids.

Then when a creature mutates so that certain connections are already there from birth, normal selection steps in; if it's beneficial, the critter propagates, if it's detrimental, the critter dies. Eventually you have a hybrid system where some connections--those which are almost always beneficial--are innate, whereas others are learned. Thus, you end up with both instincts and learned behaviors, and since the instinctual connections still follow the same rules, enough pain or pleasure could derail them, allowing the creature to act in defiance of it's instincts; one of the things we consider a hallmark of intelligent life.

Take this to a much higher level of complexity, where instead of two hormones (pain and pleasure) you have dozens or hundreds, and instead of random connections being crudely snipped and grown you have a brain that has evolved to be especially good at finding useful behaviors, going so far as to have the ability to recreate previous sensory data in addition to creating it's own, new sensory data, and you have humans. With the ability to recreate previous inputs, you have memory. With the ability to create new sensory inputs, you have imagination. Pair off imagination with memory and you have the potential for understanding; for knowing how something is going to react before you even see it, because a symbolized version of it lives inside your mind as a pattern of neural connections who's outputs have been modelled after the inputs you recieved regarding it.

Understanding is, perhaps, one of the penultimate survival advantages. Knowing to stay away from a snake is one thing, and it will help you propagate your genes because you avoid them. Knowing that small green snakes are not poisonous may help you further because you can eat them.

Knowing that snakes are reptiles who inject vasoconstricting venom through their fangs to hunt or in self-defense places you a step above this. Understanding them is more useful than any specific survival behavior.

You know the snake can't bite you if you cut it's head off, and you know you can eat the snake either way because the poison is only in it's fangs--that means that you have a food source that other species would run from or die trying to get. You know that a vaso-dialator will counteract it's venom, so even if one attacks your child, it will not die, ensuring your genes survive whereas those of another creature would not. You know that you can spook them into attacking a false target if you can frighten them enough, and that they won't attack you unless they are frightened, reducing the chances of an attack. You know you can bait them using mice. You know you can extract their poison and use it against other creatures or even as a pharmaceutical.

So, when humans evolved our hyper-complicated brain that sucks up 40% of our calories, it propagated the hell out of itself. So starting from the basic chemical processes of DNA, you end up with human intelligence without ever having coded for it. Intelligence is the most grand of side-effects; a complex cacaphony of chemical circumstances that just happen to add up to a certain result, which in our case was a sentient being.

That's how DNA "codes for intelligence." The linear instructions are the instincts, linear only in that certain aspects of their activation do not change (they are still cross-linked with many other neurons). The human brain is fundamentally non-linear, but that's not what makes it so successful. In the end, what made it so successful was natural selection's single-minded pressure for human behavior to optimize it's owner's survival. You can only get so far with instructions, so your survival chances are increased when your brain can reconfigure itself to perform useful behaviors that aren't definable by a consistant set of perceptions, or even a consistant set of circumstances. Once behavior became a significant survival factor--as it would be with an animal who is physically very versatile but has no claws--it became part of human evolutionary pressure. The better your brain was, the more likely you were to survive. So the mutations that made the brain faster, more efficient, and generally better at what it did were propagated, just as other species thrived because they had bigger claws or ran faster. Eventually that left us with what we have today; a brain with just enough rules to keep us from killing ourselves with our vast learning power. A system that organizes itself always needs one thing--a selective pressure. Our instincts determine when those pressures--in this case, the chemicals that encourage or degrade the formation of neural connections--are applied, and to what. The conscious mind knows that sex leads to procreation and that we need to eat to live, but not at first, and knowing wouldn't necessarily make us do it. And without the conscious mind the body has no way to know what food or sex are except with rules.

So, it plays the odds with us. We form our own associations and behaviors, but by controlling the rewards and punishments that go with them, the body maximizes the odds that our neural structure--and the behavior it causes--will correspond with what we need to survive. Thus, we configure ourselves around our body's needs.

Which was the whole idea in the first place.

And venetian blinds can technically be either way. At least, that's what Wikipedia said when I looked it up to make sure I wasn't making a tard out of myself.

[Mentus]

Duamutef you are an incredibly intelligent person I have been watching this site for a long time now and your posts have called me to finally post for the first time (membership hmmm?) I just wanted to compliment you on your incredible analysis of the vore fetish and how any other fetish is formed. Conggratulations again u really need to be a professor.