Tonight, on “Fictional People Engaging in Acts With Important Fitness Consequences”
Don’t miss tonight’s thrilling short narrative about fictional people. The scene opens with an event that significantly affects multiple people’s fitness interests, having to do with intentional harm, sexual contact, or theft of valuable property.
A small number of people of very high reproductive value will gather information that is relevant to determining if someone has violated a moral rule. During this process, they will engage in (somewhat) witty repartee, with heavy doses of sexual innuendo. A small number of additional fictional characters will be introduced, most of whom are also of high reproductive value.
The evidence the attractive people gather will be analyzed in various ways, often with tools that allow information to be extracted from small bits of matter. The results of these processes will give rise to the sense that these tools are very sophisticated and the users of them are very smart. The information extracted from the tools, or possibly from conversations with the minor fictional characters, will suggest to the viewer that they put a high Bayesian prior on the possibility that one particular fictional character did, in fact, violate a moral rule and impose fitness costs on others to benefit themselves, their kin, or allies.
Shortly before the end of the dramatic presentation, one of the attractive people gathering information will have an insight which points to a different person in the fictional account having committed the moral violation, which will be surprising. In the closing scene, it will be clear that person will be assigned a punishment, usually in the form of ostracism from the community and a denial of freedom of action.
By the end of “Fictional People Engaging in Acts With Important Fitness Consequences,” viewers will be left with the impression that moral rule violations will result in the imposition of substantial fitness costs.
After the episode, viewers will be told about another dramatic presentation of Fictional People Engaging in Acts With Important Fitness Consequences that will be shown next week.
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