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How evolutionary psychology went viral

thenation.com

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Re: How evolutionary psychology went viral

#31

Post by lamb87 »

daveloyall wrote: post #14

NB I haven't read the article; I try to keep it tech related at work. NB I'm male, white, 31 years old, born poor, raised isolated, computers brought me out of poverty, and people--specifically women--brought me out of isolation. Geeks are my original people, my first clan. I believed that The (dial up, text based) Internet was the great equalizer--that it was a medium which made it impossible to see race or sex or c…

>I gotta ask the people who say that women are different from men: are you trolling? Was there some great internet convention that I missed at which it was agreed by consensus to all act like idiots for a few years for some greater good?

Women and men are different, both physically and psychologically. That might not mean women are less capable or inferior, but saying there are no differences between the genres is just silly and disingenuous.

Re: How evolutionary psychology went viral

#33

Post by arandr »

Is there any reason most evolutionary psychology articles talk about gender? Is there not any other element of human society that has both a biological and a behavioral component to study?

Aside from their hyperfocus on a specific part of what they claim to be their subject of interest, my main problem with evolutionary psychologists is that they keep the "evolutionary" part of their argument (too often) to a vaguely-plausible story that has exactly no biological substance whatsoever. I would be more interested if they even went so far as to use comparisons with other species or actual ethnographic research rather than elaborating about their idea of prehistoric human societies.

I also find strange that it's accepted in psychology to derive conclusions on human nature from a study of a single class of Western freshman psych students that have probably been recruited via spam email. I think even focus groups are more scientific.

Re: How evolutionary psychology went viral

#34

Post by daveloyall »

lamb87 wrote: post #31
daveloyall wrote: post #14

NB I haven't read the article; I try to keep it tech related at work. NB I'm male, white, 31 years old, born poor, raised isolated, computers brought me out of poverty, and people--specifically women--brought me out of isolation. Geeks are my original people, my first clan. I believed that The (dial up, text based) Internet was the great equalizer--that it was a medium which made it impossible to see race or sex or c…

>I gotta ask the people who say that women are different from men: are you trolling? Was there some great internet convention that I missed at which it was agreed by consensus to all act like idiots for a few years for some greater good? Women and men are different, both physically and psychologically. That might not mean women are less capable or inferior, but saying there are no differences between the genres is ju…

But, nothing in the universe is more similar to man than woman.

Both men and women are sentient (self-aware, conscious).

You know, human. :)

Re: How evolutionary psychology went viral

#35

Post by daveloyall »

gweinberg wrote: post #30
daveloyall wrote: post #14

NB I haven't read the article; I try to keep it tech related at work. NB I'm male, white, 31 years old, born poor, raised isolated, computers brought me out of poverty, and people--specifically women--brought me out of isolation. Geeks are my original people, my first clan. I believed that The (dial up, text based) Internet was the great equalizer--that it was a medium which made it impossible to see race or sex or c…

They're not trolling, you are. No one honestly disputes that there are psychological differences between men and women. No one.

I certainly expected controversy, but I did not look forward to it.

My argument is thus: what really makes me a person is some quality which both men and women posses, some quality which nothing else possesses--and that having that quality calls off all other bets.

Re: How evolutionary psychology went viral

#36

Post by kijin »

PavleMiha wrote: post #10

The author makes some really good points about the quackery in EP. But at no point are the merits of some of these theories even mentioned. Take for example the proposition that women are attracted to older men. If it was found that all current human cultures and other mammals exhibited this behavior you could begin to think that this behaviour is grounded in biology. > Evolutionary psychology does draw on empirical…

> If an explanation fit all current observations and predicted future experiments why is it not correct?

In order for anything to count as a "future experiment" with respect to something that takes as long as evolution does, the predicted phenomena would have to occur at least thousands of years from now, and you would have to control for all the socio-economic-cultural-political differences between now and then. Which would begin to sound like an impossible task, even you embarked on a millennia-long research project, because humanity is quickly approaching (and may already have gone beyond) the point where technology overtakes evolution.

Evolution of the regular type at least has billions of years' worth of fossil records to compensate for its lack of predictions for the future. The only thing EP has going for it, on the other hand, is a bunch of surveys, small-N experiments, and beloved-by-Cosmopolitan stereotypes about the contemporary courting behavior of affluent, predominantly white college students. That's like analyzing a tub of ice cream and then making bold claims about the fate of the Antarctic ice cap.

Re: How evolutionary psychology went viral

#37

Post by lamb87 »

daveloyall wrote: post #34
lamb87 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I gotta ask the people who say that women are different from men: are you trolling? Was there some great internet convention that I missed at which it was agreed by consensus to all act like idiots for a few years for some greater good? Women and men are different, both physically and psychologically. That might not mean women are less capable or inferior, but saying there are no differences between the genres is ju…

But, nothing in the universe is more similar to man than woman. Both men and women are sentient (self-aware, conscious). You know, human. :)

I don't think you can find a lot of sane individuals who believe women aren't humans.

Re: How evolutionary psychology went viral

#38

Post by JoeAltmaier »

kijin wrote: post #36
PavleMiha wrote: post #10

The author makes some really good points about the quackery in EP. But at no point are the merits of some of these theories even mentioned. Take for example the proposition that women are attracted to older men. If it was found that all current human cultures and other mammals exhibited this behavior you could begin to think that this behaviour is grounded in biology. > Evolutionary psychology does draw on empirical…

> If an explanation fit all current observations and predicted future experiments why is it not correct? In order for anything to count as a "future experiment" with respect to something that takes as long as evolution does, the predicted phenomena would have to occur at least thousands of years from now, and you would have to control for all the socio-economic-cultural-political differences between now and then. Whi…

With fast-mutating creatures your thousands of generations might only be months...

Re: How evolutionary psychology went viral

#39

Post by kijin »

arandr wrote: post #33

Is there any reason most evolutionary psychology articles talk about gender? Is there not any other element of human society that has both a biological and a behavioral component to study? Aside from their hyperfocus on a specific part of what they claim to be their subject of interest, my main problem with evolutionary psychologists is that they keep the "evolutionary" part of their argument (too often) to a vaguely…

The greatest factors that determine the course of evolution are (1) how likely you are to get laid and (2) how likely your offspring are to get laid.

Since it's already difficult enough to produce falsifiable conjectures about an aspect of human psychology (sex/gender) that is directly related to those factors, it's not surprising that most EP researchers haven't even bothered to branch out into less closely related things.

Re: How evolutionary psychology went viral

#40

Post by kijin »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #38
kijin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If an explanation fit all current observations and predicted future experiments why is it not correct? In order for anything to count as a "future experiment" with respect to something that takes as long as evolution does, the predicted phenomena would have to occur at least thousands of years from now, and you would have to control for all the socio-economic-cultural-political differences between now and then. Whi…

With fast-mutating creatures your thousands of generations might only be months...

Unfortunately, fast-mutating creatures tend not to have much of a psychology.
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