Sex

Cognitive Science has had very little to say about sex. Our understanding of our sexual natures is stuck in the middle ages. It is an area in which our individual selves often lead a pained, uneasy existence with our social, collective selves.

For sound biological reasons, most people ever only get to compare their version of their sexual nature with that of a very few other people. This leads to little islands of madness. Marriages, in this respect, are a lot like isolated Siberian towns.

The internet has allowed distant people to compare notes. This will inevitably produce new collective phenomena, and may be radically destabilizing.