I tgink I heard of that. Didn't the "scientist" just like self isolate, angry that they didn't fight eachother, while the other passengers became lifelong friends and had a great time?

this "experiment" is SO much funnier than this post implies, the idea of the experiment is that in nature if you put males and females together they will either turn to 100% hate or 100% lust.

When the people were just having fun on the boat away from society he was upset that they weren't fucking he would act like an asshole to them.

When they inevitably got sick of his ass and yelled at him he wrote in his notes something along the lines of "I think my experiment is leaning twords pure rage side"

there's so much more to it that I'm forgetting but this video is 100% a watch https://youtu.be/BHXw3E1VqK4

In 1973, Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés set out to test a hypothesis. He had been struck by the connection between violence and sexuality in monkeys. “Most conflicts,” he noted, “are about sexual access to ovulating females.”

But would this apply to humans, too? To find out, Genovés asked a British boat builder to make a 12x7 metre raft called the Acali on which he planned to sail with 10 sexually attractive young people across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to Mexico.

To spur conflict onboard, Genovés minimised opportunities for privacy.

The boat would have no engines and would sail towards the Caribbean, just in time for hurricane season. Genovés knew that the Acali was sailing into danger but thought science justified the risk. “I believe that in a dangerous situation people will act on their instincts and I will be able to study them.”

wild

He put women in charge, in part to reflect what he thought was growing gender equality. The raft was captained by Maria Björnstam and Edna Reves was ship doctor; men were given menial tasks. “I wonder if having women in power will lead to less violence or more,” mused Genovés. “Maybe men will become more frustrated when women are in charge, and try to take over power.”

Not that Genovés’ raft was an antidote to the patriarchy. With a Caribbean hurricane brewing, Maria, the experienced ship’s captain, recommended they pull into a port to sit out the storm. Genovés, fearing the ruin of his experiment if they did so, mutinied and took control of the raft.

oh the irony

But Genovés was symbolically castrated later, on the Atlantic crossing. A huge container ship bore down on the little raft and he panicked. Only Maria kept a cool head and organised flares to ward off the looming ship. After that, the guinea pigs turned on the scientist: Maria became captain again.

Overthrown, Genovés retreated below deck and collapsed into depression, made worse by news on the radio that his university wanted to be dissociated from the scandalous Sex Raft headlines. While lying there he started to cry for the first time since childhood and had an existential epiphany, writing: “Only one has shown any kind of aggression and that is me, a man trying to control everyone else, including himself.”

Was the Peace Project a failure? Fé argues it was a great success, even though the anthropologist couldn’t see it: “He was so focused on the violence and conflict, but he had it right in his hands. We started out as them and us and we became us.”

For Lindeen, it’s poignant that Fé praises the experiment. “If only [Genovés] had listened to why people were on the raft – Mary escaping an abusive husband, the racism Fé had suffered – he would have learned about the consequences of violence and how sometimes we can overcome it by overcoming our differences.”

yeah i guess genoves was so focused on the science, he forgot to look at the humans involved.

Brb, setting up an instance on https://sex.raft/

See you all at the floating orgy!

They had the sex but forgot to write it down, so they were just screwing ~~around.~~

By his actions to stir up drama, I can probably say with confidence that he did not get laid on that journey.

If you televised that it would get 23 seasons on Hulu.

So, hear me out here, there is a huge reproduction crisis out there. In theory, you could try to replicate this study without the researcher being an asshole and see if it still works out and this would be a valuable line of research that could technically get funded.

I'm going to need a decent ship, some volunteers, and a 101 day supply of daiquiris.

Edit: (For clarity - this is scientific reproduction, not human reproduction)

The dollop did an episode on this and it’s absolutely bonkers.

I seem to remember a similar experiment called Big Brother?

Sounds like a bit of Mark Twain…

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansaw; a Bhuddist from China; a Brahmin from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh—not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

It was the seventies.