The rise of the evolutionary psychology douchebag

[seabeyond]

They believe that certain groups of people are inherently smarter than others. They write books about how rape is a natural part of human evolution. And now, with another scandal rocking the world of evolutionary psychology, we can officially welcome a new breed of mad scientist into the spotlight: evopsych douchebags.

Evolutionary psychology has often been a field whose most prominent practitioners get embroiled in controversy — witness the 2010 case of Harvard professor Marc Hauser, whose graduate students came forward to say he'd been faking evidence for years. Then there was the case of Diederik Stapel, whose social psychology work shared a lot of territory with evopsych. He came forward in late 2011 to admit that most of his data was sheer invention.

*

This is all part of his and many other evopsych researchers' project to prove that humans haven't changed much since we were roaming east Africa 100,000 years ago. Evolutionary biology researchers like Marlene Zuk have explored some the scientific problems with this idea. Most notably, humans have continued to evolve quite a lot over the past ten thousand years, and certainly over 100 thousand. Sure, our biology affects our behavior. But it's unlikely that humans' early evolution is deeply relevant to contemporary psychological questions about dating, or the willpower to complete a dissertation. Even Steven Pinker, one of evopsych's biggest proponents, has said that humans continue to evolve and that our behavior is changing over time.

Miller's work is a more erudite version of a lot of what you see in the pickup artist (PUA) *bah ha ha ha ha ha* and men's rights scenes*lol lol*. In both groups, the common sense belief is that sexuality is based on a very old game that isn't terribly different from clubbing women on the head and dragging them back to an anthropologically inaccurate cave. Other kinds of human relationships aren't much better. I guess you could say that evopsych douchebags are the academic version of pickup artists. They throw you negs on Twitter, but only if you're a potential Ph.D. student.

http://io9.com/the-rise-of-the-evolutionary-psychology-douchebag-757550990

i just noticed this picture from the article.





literally, so biblical, in science form. i say, this is the new religion in the name of science. thought the picture funny in, typical.



i really enjoyed reading the comments. i do not often read comments. i found one, that says it perfectly for me. i could not say it more clear. everything the person says:

"is it really that much of a stretch to say that a lot of our behavior is rooted in evolutionary adaptations?"

Yes. Absent identifying specific mechanisms, it is pretty shitty science to hinge human behaviour - which is a fuzzily defined collection of hugely varied and almost always non-uniform traits - on conjectures about explanatory adaptations. There are massive confounding variables that can not be properly isolated, profoundly culturally driven assumptions about the "universal" human condition and experience that cannot be properly tested, and a lack of rigour necessary to even begin to ask these questions within the field of evo-psych.

Your statement presumes so very, very much but you act as though it is commonsensical. That is the precise stance taken by evo-psych as a whole and it is extremely wrongheaded.

related stories. i have not read these yet. but the articles sound interesting, you think?

Evolutionary psychologist under investigation for shoddy research at Harvard
http://io9.com/5613020/evolutionary-psychologist-under-investigation-for-shoddy-research-at-harvard

Psychologist admits to faking dozens of scientific studies
http://io9.com/5855733/psychologist-admits-to-faking-dozens-of-scientific-studies

i have been calling out the bullshit in evo psych from the moment i started hearing these stories told. three, four years ago. just for the fact of common sense. people are bothered we talk mra. that mra is just a small group of men. open your eyes.

they are in our govt, .... telling us to put an aspirin between our knees, a law sticking a plastic thing up girls and women for a medical procedure ONLY to cause her pain and humiliation. a fuckin' LAW put on our books for the sole purpose to cause girls and women pain. a law.

they are in our criminal system, .... not to report a rape by a football player cause she is going get it by the public if she does, not processing rape kits, downgrading rapes to a less crime.

they are in our judicial system, ..... calif coach rapes unconscious 16 yr old teen, 1 yr. montana 40 something teacher rape 13 yr old, judge says she is sexually mature so he gets no time while she kills herself. twice in alabama a judge allowed an old man to rape a girl with no time. and it goes on and on and on.

they are in our academics,.... rapists, men that threaten to rape remain in the schools, nothing done, with our women living in the same dorm of their rapist. rape is consider a disciplinary action by a board instead of criminal issue. ah.... and this. our academics of evo psych. (ya. just a few of our men. no problems here women. move along).

they are in our military, .... general convicted of raping three, maybe four times and serves no time. and a military board of peers rather than the criminal system.

so. when i am told this is no big deal. women do not discuss on du, or GD anyway, cause.... oh, for a number of reasons. one i heard yesterday is these young men will not vote democratic, cause they do not like hearing our voice.

i disagree.

[Polito Vega]

1. It's problematic

Many of them post research that is not valid or peer-reviewed.

[redqueen]

2. Did you see this?

Kinda makes it obvious that a lot of that stuff is just nonsense.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024830546

[chrisa]

3. I read a piece that said that a lot of bones with human teeth marks on them

also had the marks of other predators' teeth on them, like lions, wolves, etc. It makes sense - scavengers were the smart ones - no injuries, easy food, etc. The whole "strength" argument in Evo-psych is pretty silly. Humans would have been too frail and slow to take on animals face-to-face. Before animal husbandry we were probably ambush predators at best.

Strength hardly mattered for human evolution. We're insanely weak when compared to apes, lions, etc. The "strong alpha dude" is total bull crap by common sense alone. You can tell we evolved to both scavenge and stalk game animals into exhaustion - dull teeth, small mouths, endurance, and intelligence.

[seabeyond]

8. fantastic angle. thank you for posting. i had not thought of it from that angle.

i have when men tell me a gorgeous blonde.... with a specific body, white teeth, ect.... in all her clean of today is desired cause off a 100,000 yrs ago. i gotta say. i do not think hygiene products were available and cleanliness a need at that time.

[Jackpine Radical]

109. Margaret Mead's work answered a lot of this bullshit 60 years ago.

http://www.bnl.gov/bera/activities/globe/mead.htm

The Samoan work, published as Coming of Age in Samoa, became a best seller and has been translated into many languages. This work presented to the public for the first time the idea that the individual experience of developmental stages could be shaped by cultural demands and expectations, so that adolescence might be more or less stormy and sexual development more or less problematic in different cultures. I t was addressed above all to educators, affirming that the "civilized" world had something to learn from the "primitive." The Manus work, published as Growing Up in New Guinea, effectively refuted the notion that "primitive" peoples are "like children." Different developmental stages, and the relationships between them, need to be studied in every culture. Mead was thus the first anthropologist to look at human development in a cross-cultural perspective.

In subsequent field work, on mainland New Guinea, she demonstrated that gender roles differed from one society to another, depending at least as much on culture as on biology, and in her work in Bali with her third husband, Gregory Bateson, she explored new ways of documenting the connection between childrearing and adult culture, and the way in which these are symbolically interwoven. She and Gregory Bateson had one child, Mary Catherine Bateson.

As an anthropologist, Mead had been trained to think in terms of the interconnection of all aspects of human life. TheMargaret with Paulo production of food cannot be separated from ritual and belief, and politics cannot be separated from childrearing or art. This holistic understanding of human adaptation allowed Mead to speak out on a very wide range of issues. She affirmed the possibility of learning from other groups, above all by applying the knowledge she brought back from the field to issues of modern life. Thus, she insisted that human diversity is a resource, not a handicap, that all human beings have the capacity to learn from and teach each other. Her delight in learning from others showed in the way she was able to address the public with affection and respect.

When World War II cut off field research in the South Pacific, Mead and Benedict pioneered the application of anthropological techniques to the study of contemporary cultures, founding the Institute for Intercultural Studies. Then, in her most sustained post-war field work, Mead returned to Manus in 1953 to study the dramatic changes made in response to exposure to a wider world. Reported in New Lives for Old, this research offered a new basis for her insistence on the possibility of choosing among possible futures. In a society becoming increasingly pessimistic about the human capacity to change, she insisted on the importance of enhancing and supporting that capacity. She believed that cultural patterns of racism, warfare, and environmental exploitation were learned, and that the members of a society could work together to modify their traditions and to construct new institutions. This conviction drew her into discussions of the process of change, expressed in the slogan, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world."

[seabeyond]

111. love it. thank you. and one awesome woman. nt

[mainer]

18. I read a theory that leopards helped us evolve, because they killed and we stole.

Leopards cache their kills in trees, to protect the meat from hyenas and lions. Ancient man would sneak in while the leopards weren't around, and steal that meat. The biologist called the tree caches "the equivalent of fast food" for ancient man. That extra protein came handy.

[seabeyond]

19. "they killed and we stole.""biologist called...equivalent of fast food". i interpret

it.... the rich with worker bees providing/gathering as the rich steal. lol

[rrneck]

36. atlatl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear-thrower
Wooden darts were known at least since the Middle Paleolithic (Schöningen, Torralba, Clacton-on-Sea and Kalambo Falls). While the spearthrower is capable of casting a dart well over 100 meters, it is most accurately used at distances of 20 meters or less. Seven spears were found in the Schöningen 13 II-4 layer, dating from about 400,000 years ago and thought to represent activities of Homo heidelbergensis.[7] The spearthrower is believed to have been in use by Homo sapiens since the Upper Paleolithic (around 30,000 years ago).[8] Most stratified European finds come from the Magdalenian (late upper Palaeolithic). In this period, elaborate pieces, often in the form of animals, are common. The earliest secure data concerning atlatls has come from several caves in France dating to the Upper Paleolithic, about 21,000 to 17,000 years ago. The earliest known example is a 17,500 year-old Solutrean atlatl made of reindeer antler and found at Combe Saunière (Dordogne), France.

We're tool using mammals with opposable thumbs. The development of technology to augment strength and speed has defined our species. When we developed technology we developed the skills to remember, share, and pass along information about it to others socially and generationally.

[Humanist_Activist]

83. Actually due to our ability to sweat, humans are better than most animals at running...

as in marathon running, we can track and follow sprinting gazelles with the best of them, because we don't need to pant, we don't tire as easily, so we can wait for them to tire out, then take them out.

[Ohio Joe]

4. oh noes... You are going to make men vote for repugs...

And if we call out racists crap... We make them vote for repugs.

And if we call out bigoted homophobes... We will make them vote for repugs.

We have to be nice to them so we can win elections...



I shit you not, I was told this here on DU just yesterday.

[seabeyond]

9. hey, if i can convince my father, 76 and never voted dem, to vote obama and my husband,

a card carryin' nra'r, trust fund, repug hubby to vote kerry and obama?

i am a miracle worker.

[Jackpine Radical]

113. Well, they're right. Everyone knows

most Dems are crypto-racists and homophobes just waiting for someone to bruise their feelings and drive them into the arms of the Tea Party.

(Given the way things are going around here these days, I just fuckin' KNOW I'd best add this-------> )

[laundry_queen]

5. I just finished up

an anthropology course in human prehistory (and a sociology course that touched on the same thing). The consensus is that human society was more or less totally egalitarian until agriculture. So, yeah. This other crap - not science.

[seabeyond]

11. and then there is all that. actual facts of the past. and what we can or cannot know. nt

[boston bean]

76. wrong place...

woops..

[yellowcanine]

6. Well crap, murder and violence in general is part of human evolution. But so are social contracts.

Social contracts place limits on when violence is ok and when it is not. When social contracts fail we get antisocial behavior and societies which do not enforce the limits are going to suffer and eventually can break down completely into anarchy.

[seabeyond]

7. wrong place, sorry. nt

[Prophet 451]

10. EvoPsych is, at best, an emerging science

I think you and I might have discussed this before.

The main problem with EvoPsych is that it takes our social and gender roles now and tries to extrapolate them backwards to find evolutionary bases for them. Now, that would be all fine and dandy if human social and gender roles had been in any way static in the last 10k years (which, with a couple of minor exceptions, they haven't) and if human behaviour wasn't able to be consciously modified as we see fit.

Example of the first part: Most of our "traditional" gender constructs used to be the exact opposite. In the classical world, it was women who were believed to be the sexually insatiable sex (actual research says that both sexes are pretty insatiable but that's a different story). Blue used to be a feminine colour and pink was masculine. At one point, women were considered to not be tough enough for nursing or midwifeing. I'm not entirely a social constructivist, I think there are certain inherent differences between men and women but they're few, slight and more what you might call guidelines than actual rules (research data says there is more of a difference between members of teh same gender than there is between the averages of male and female).

Example of what I mean with the second part of that: It may be the case that rape originally came into existence to allow less successful males to spread their genes. That's not an unreasonable supposition because we see that in animals all the time. But A) that would have been back when humans were little more than a slightly less hairy ape and B) neglects that most of human history has been a flight away from nature. In other words, just because our distant ancestors used rape as a reproductive strategy doesn't in any way mean that it's acceptable for modern humans to do likewise.

There's also the uncomfortable fact that much of EvoPsych amounts to a wild ass guess. It makes no predictions that can be tested, just offers possible explanations that maybe could be plausable explanations for some gender roles. If they were consistent. And if we hadn't been changing them for thousands of years.

Thank you for listening to my frustrations from the EvoPsych module I had to do last year.

[seabeyond]

15. it takes our social and gender roles now and tries to extrapolate them backwards

so many people do not understand this. even when reading the words. but for me, that is so very clear, and telling. flags everywhere.

why only 10k? when not when first walking into 100,000k. who decides and why? if we cant figure out 10k to create a science, how the hell can we know squat, besides little pieces at 100k. and if we are just doing little ppieces here and there, and filling in the blank with assumptions, that is a hell of a lot of assumptions. hence, story telling.

Example of the first part: Most of our "traditional" gender constructs used to be the exact opposite. In the classical world, it was women who were believed to be the sexually insatiable sex (actual research says that both sexes are pretty insatiable but that's a different story). Blue used to be a feminine colour and pink was masculine. At one point, women were considered to not be tough enough for nursing or midwifeing. I'm not entirely a social constructivist, I think there are certain inherent differences between men and women but they're few, slight and more what you might call guidelines than actual rules (research data says there is more of a difference between members of teh same gender than there is between the averages of male and female).

and ya. the historical contradictions.... more flags. and i think i am more like you. i read about how we eat so fast, cause of beginning. i eat very slow. but i did it for personal reasons. keeping family at dinner table to chat, socialize, touch base. i cannot eat fast for anything. earlier times, 5 course meals, all about eating for hours, lol.

i do not know if true or not. none of us do. interesting though and something to think about.

Example of what I mean with the second part of that: It may be the case that rape originally came into existence to allow less successful males to spread their genes. That's not an unreasonable supposition because we see that in animals all the time. But A) that would have been back when humans were little more than a slightly less hairy ape and B) neglects that most of human history has been a flight away from nature. In other words, just because our distant ancestors used rape as a reproductive strategy doesn't in any way mean that it's acceptable for modern humans to do likewise.

and here is a very good example of my point. rape? i imagine mating was just that. no different from eating. why would you define as rape? some man was talking about the "rape" of a lionness cause went into territory. adn the video aggressive and animalistic. we give it rape. isnt that as human beings, with conscious, a social structure of sex and gender DEFINING what is happening with these animals. rape? do you really want to give this to animals.

maybe there was no "rape". maybe the lioness was totally accepting, not feeling violated or any of the other stuff us human see as rape.

i do not get it. that men have to say... see this video. we are that. we are animal. we rape.

wtf??? but that is totally putting our today, as the past. with great harm to al of us today, doing so.

how stupid is that.

There's also the uncomfortable fact that much of EvoPsych amounts to a wild ass guess. It makes no predictions that can be tested, just offers possible explanations that maybe could be plausable explanations for some gender roles. If they were consistent. And if we hadn't been changing them for thousands of years.

and conclusion. yes.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

151. yes, it's all post-hoc hypothesizing. nt

[Rex]

12. That picture is wrong on so many fronts, I don't know where to start.

Evidently we had tools and advanced weapons, before we had any clothing! Also, we somehow at one stage were green orc-like looking creatures that loved to chase beavers for fun as kids!

[seabeyond]

16. i know. i swear i can find it in the kid bible with dinos playing around as a pet. nt

[AngryAmish]

13. Why was Dieteich Stapel tossed in there?

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/magazine/diederik-stapels-audacious-academic-fraud.html?pagewanted=all

His "work" if it can be called that was mostly about the priming effect. This is not really in the evo psych field.

Both priming and evo psych seem to me to be a bunch of just so stories people use to confirm their own prejudices.

[Comrade Grumpy]

14. Here is the Wikipedia page on evolutionary psychology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology

In case someone wants some idea of what is being attacked.

[seabeyond]

17. ah. you believe. k. i knew that. nt

[Comrade Grumpy]

20. You are mistaken. I have no clue about evolutionary psychology.

Which is why I looked at the Wiki page.

Reading the OP was like coming in in the middle of a conversation and not knowing what the people were talking about. I provided a link for other thread readers who might like a clue.

[seabeyond]

21. hm. nt

[Comrade Grumpy]

25. You're welcome. n/t

[seabeyond]

26. lol

[LanternWaste]

33. I suppose many biases require one to confuse a critique with an attack.

I suppose many biases require one to confuse a critique with an attack.

[LittleBlue]

22. You cannot discount science just because

you don't like its conclusions.

Reading those links is like reading the creationist and anti-climate change folks.

[seabeyond]

23. it is not science. and per all the info in the OP i am not discounting cause i do not like

conclusion.

talk about creationism dude. your need to believe. i get it.

[chrisa]

34. This is a response to discounting science.

Evo-psych is a real science. However, it does not mean:

- Women are inferior or have a certain "job" in society
- There is a "skeleton key" to picking women up
- Rape is a natural process that stems fromour need to procreate
- Human society is based on a tiered pack structure (Alpha - Omega), which is determined by how much you work out or how domineering/assertive of a personality you have.
- War is a natural process because apes also fight each other.
- preferences, like favorite color or favorite band, are evolutionary.

Let's be honest: these are just stupid.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

24. ...you're using the fact that one evolutionary psychologist may have done something bad to attack

the whole discipline?

This does not create a good impression of your intellectual honesty, I'm afraid.

I'm afraid I suspect your hostility to evolutionary psychology is based more on dislike of the conclusions than on an a fair and open-minded assessment of the methodology.

[LittleBlue]

27. Bingo

And using a blog too.

It's selectively attacking science due to the belief in completely unsupported theories. Sounds like the climate change deniers.

[seabeyond]

29. google. educate yourself. i did not provide the vast documentaion provided on google that

shoots this stuff to shit. i did provide at least for of these academic evo psych dude's "bad"

but. it is very hard for the believer to walk away from a belief that gives them comfort and definition of who they see themselves to be.

so, as i say. i get that.

[LittleBlue]

30. I have google links disproving climate change

You can google any conclusion, really.

The heart of it is that these people have no interest in science.

[seabeyond]

32. this is not a fun game for me. and i have stuff to do. so... believe. i do not care. info is

there. people can read or not. think or not. not my call.

[arely staircase]

84. I did some research on it. it isn't without controversy but it is a real field of science

There are real PhDs at real acreditted universities working in the field. I never heard of it until here. So

[seabeyond]

89. and the rest of the scientific community reject them, because of the inadaquacies they take

quesses they put out as fact.

junk science.

[arely staircase]

98. that doesn't seem to be the case

People engaged in junk science and rejected by the scientific community don't work at major Universities using their money to research the field. Like II said I just heard about them here so I don't know enough about them to comment on specific conclusions they have drawn but a quick google search shows it is a real academic field.

[seabeyond]

102. you are wrong. but, you are just starting to read up on it. you can catch up at will

or not

[arely staircase]

108. you are correct in that I have read very little about it.

and like I said they clearly aren't without controversy. That was clear from my cursory research. But just as clear is the fact that the University of California system is paying PhDs to do research in the field right now.

[seabeyond]

112. from my OP. i am aware it is in our universities, criminal system, govt, judical system.

they are in our academics,.... rapists, men that threaten to rape remain in the schools, nothing done, with our women living in the same dorm of their rapist. rape is consider a disciplinary action by a board instead of criminal issue. ah.... and this. our academics of evo psych. (ya. just a few of our men. no problems here women. move along).

[arely staircase]

120. wait, what? nt

[seabeyond]

122. My op already states it is in the universities. Hence, I know universities pay. Nt

[cleanhippie]

115. Don't you get it? Facts be damned, she knows what's up and there's no changing her mind.

And that's that.

[seabeyond]

116. really? what fact did i miss? or false accusation a big thumbs up? nt

[seabeyond]

28. well. firstly there was more than just one "done something bad" so what does that say about your

"intellectual honesty"


illuminating.

well. not really. but that it is becoming so black and white on this thread is fun.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

31. Could you edit this for grammar/clarity, please?

I'm not sure what "and i suspect the believer perfectly fit what we continually here on du." is meant to mean.

[seabeyond]

35. my edit works better.

[bettyellen]

41. It was one psychologust doing one thing? Sounds like you did not read what you are commenting on....

[rrneck]

37. Evolutionary Psycology is some pretty interesting stuff.

I just started looking at it not too long ago so I'm undecided about the particulars, but generally speaking an examination of how biology affects human behavior sounds like a good idea to me.

While I don't think that any particular behavior is determined by biology, certainly our brain chemistry, which is a product of evolution, cannot be discounted in human development individually and collectively.

A good way to look at it might be that our own bodies could be considered a part of our environment and we manage the advantages they confer as well as the liabilities they they may present to our survival objectives. We are now able to replace parts in our bodies as if they were machines and use drugs to change our brain chemistry which literally changes our thoughts. Certainly people with mental health issues frequently feel as if the are at war with their own minds as surely as someone with a degenerative physical ailment fights to make his body do what he wants.

I don't think there is anything in evolutionary psychology that will replace the necessity of ethics in human behavior. It appears to be attempting to examine the development of various mental tools all humans of both genders have at their disposal to insure survival.

[seabeyond]

38. in hteory, yes, ...

"generally speaking an examination of how biology affects human behavior sounds like a good idea to me. "

then agenda and poor theorizing steps in cause the story sounds better than fact.

[rrneck]

39. In science a theory is as good as it gets.

Do you think our brain chemistry is the result of evolutionary processes?

Do you think the development of the human brain brings with it abilities and propensities not conferred to it by our environment after birth?

[bettyellen]

40. actually no. a theory can be ridiculous and discredited. not "as good as it gets", LOL.

[rrneck]

43. ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

Scientific theory
A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method, and repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation.[1][2] As with most (if not all) forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive — that is, they seek to supply strong evidence for but not absolute proof of the truth of the conclusion—and they aim for predictive and explanatory force

Do you think our brain chemistry is the result of evolutionary processes?

Do you think the development of the human brain brings with it abilities and propensities not conferred to it by our environment after birth?

[bettyellen]

44. oooh, a wiki link. How very peer reviewed, LOL!!!

[Vashta Nerada]

45. Clearly you don't understand the scientific process.

You should watch "Cosmos" on Sunday nights.

[bettyellen]

49. evo psych is largely a crock of shit, unlike Hubble peering into the past.....

we can only guess 90% of how human relations were in any single community back in the stone age. Guessing isn't super scientific, and many guesses are downright hilarious.

We know that different cultures have had very different norms for all of recorded history- Evo Psychs ignore all that, because it inconvenient for them.

[rrneck]

54. I've been wondering about

the Axial Age and the implications of Evolutionary Psycology on our understanding of cultural development.

Jaspers, in his Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History), identified a number of key Axial Age thinkers as having had a profound influence on future philosophies and religions, and identified characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged. Jaspers saw in these developments in religion and philosophy a striking parallel without any obvious direct transmission of ideas from one region to the other, having found no recorded proof of any extensive intercommunication between Ancient Greece, the Middle East, India, and China.

I don't think I've seen this example in any of the literature I've read so far.

[bettyellen]

58. well, you have to believe we KNOW there was no communication or tranmission back then, and we do not

why would we assume there was no communication, and why would this communication be "obvious" anyway? it's a huge conclusion to jump to.

[rrneck]

61. Sure.

Of course you can't prove a negative. But it was a long walk between Persia, India, China and the Occident and for those ideas to take root and grow over a fairly short span of time there would have to be substantial cultural contact, not just a few forgotten Marco Polos. Stasis was much more the norm in those days.

I think the necessary substantial communication would show up in the archeological record in the form of artifacts traded between cultures and official documents. And indeed they might. The Silk Road followed close on the heels of the Axial Age, so we might assume the Chinese didn't just decide to build it all in a moment.

[bettyellen]

65. "Stasis was much more the norm in those days" is a supposition that has been frequently disproved.

They are constantly finding out they were wrong about estimated timing of mass migrations, etc.
The Silk Road probably existed a lot earlier than they currently have evidence for.

[rrneck]

71. I agree.

That's why I said China didn't decide to build it all in a moment.

Cultural development has accelerated significantly in the last seven thousand years in a species that is about two hundred thousand years old. That significant acceleration is currently at it's most intense.

[rrneck]

50. Wiki is very handy

for elucidating commonly understood information.

Would you prefer Scientific American?

2. Just a theory?

Climate-change deniers and creationists have deployed the word "theory" to cast doubt on climate change and evolution.

"It's as though it weren't true because it's just a theory," Allain said.

That's despite the fact that an overwhelming amount of evidence supports both human-caused climate change and Darwin's theory of evolution.

Part of the problem is that the word "theory" means something very different in lay language than it does in science: A scientific theory is an explanation of some aspect of the natural world that has been substantiated through repeated experiments or testing. But to the average Jane or Joe, a theory is just an idea that lives in someone's head, rather than an explanation rooted in experiment and testing.

It's always interesting to see the "just a theory argument" appear since it usually does so in conjunction with fundamentalist religion.

[opiate69]

51. Another thing that's also interesting is...

Having a gander at the types of people who usually refer to some sciences as "religion" ...

[seabeyond]

56. other than evo psych, tell me what other science is called a new religion in the NAME of science.

gander away

[opiate69]

59. Entirely too easy.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab2/is-evolution-a-religion

http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=2299

http://creation.mobi/michael-ruse-evolution-is-a-religion

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/bang.php

Just for funsies.

[seabeyond]

66. too interesting. i figured you were going to show me creationism, being a science. hm...

theory of evolution is not evo psych. that is very very clear in the scientific field.

[opiate69]

69. ...

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v5/n1/evolutionary-psychology

[Chathamization]

153. Are you claiming that evo psych is a scientific theory or just blurring the lines between

how theory is commonly used and how it's used scientifically? I mean, your own link is showing that the problem with creationist is that they do the latter, and I've seen no evidence of the former.

[rrneck]

157. I don't think it's a theory yet.

But I've only read a few books on the subject, and the discipline appears to be in it's arrested infancy. It looks like it got a bad rap in the seventies when Edward O. Wilson published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, which is part of his thinking about consillence and the unity of knowledge. At the time sociobioligy was accused of being something akin to social darwinism, although I don't think that's the case. I think he ran into trouble with a political zeitgeist that asserted that the bulk of human behavior is defined by nurture.

Since then I think the science of human behavior has predictably found it's way back to Darwin just like every other study of biology. Just as Darwin was dubious about discussing evolution in regards to human development because of ideological agnst, so Wilson ran afoul of ideology as well.

The confusion about how the term "theory" is used reflects the tension between what we know and what we want to believe. Both are important, and each impacts the other.

[seabeyond]

46. in theory was to your comment. not scienctific theory.

"generally speaking an examination of how biology affects human behavior sounds like a good idea to me. " in theory it sounds good. factually, it is not playing out

[rrneck]

53. "factually, it is not playing out"

Why?

[seabeyond]

55. "Why?" you might start by reading the OP. lol. bah hahah. geez

[rrneck]

60. I was asking for any reference you may have to the facts or lacd thereof

related to the research done by evolutionary psychologists. I read Moral Minds and found the implications of what he had to say interesting but that was about it.

I would like for you to comment on some specific claims made by evolutionary psychologists. Can you do that?

[seabeyond]

64. here are a few, cause not like i havent put this out before, in the past.

Does evolutionary psychology have any problems?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024508721

Yes. Here are what I see as a few of the major problems currently faced by evolutionary psychology:

1. Evolutionary psychology is attempting to elucidate the functional organization of the brain even though researchers currently cannot, with very few exceptions, directly study complex neural circuits. This is like attempting to discover the functions of the lungs, heart, etc., without being able to conduct dissections. Although psychological evidence indisputably reveals that cognition has structure, it is less clear that it does so with sufficient resolution to provide convincing evidence of functional design. Can the current state of the art in cognitive psychology successfully cleave human nature at its joints? Maybe, maybe not. Despite these reservations, it is worth noting that virtually every research university in the world has a psychology department. Grounding psychology in an explicit framework of evolved function cannot help but improve attempts to unveil the workings of the brain. It is far easier to find something if you have some idea of what it is you are looking for.

2. The domains of cognition proposed by evolutionary psychologists are often pretty ad hoc. Traditionally, cognitive psychologists have assumed that cognitive abilities are relatively abstract: categorization, signal detection, recognition, memory, logic, inference, etc. Evolutionary psychology proposes a radically orthogonal set of 'ecologically valid' domains and reasoning abilities: predator detection, toxin avoidance, incest avoidance, mate selection, mating strategies, social exchange, and so on. These latter domains and abilities are derived largely from behavioral ecology. Although mate selection surely involves computations that are fundamentally different from predator detection, it is not so clear that the organization of the brain just happens to match the theoretical divisions of behavioral ecology. The concept of 'object' is obviously quite abstract, yet it is equally obvious that it is an essential concept for reasoning about mates, predators, kin, etc. The same goes for other 'abstract' abilities like categorization and signal detection. Ecologically valid reasoning about domains such as kinship may require cognitive abilities organized at higher levels of abstraction like 'recognition.' On the other hand, numerous experiments show that reasoning can be greatly facilitated when problems are stated in ecologically valid terms. Negating if-p-then-q statements becomes transparently easy when the content of such statements involves social exchange, for example. The theoretical integration of more abstract, informationally valid domains with less abstract, ecologically valid domains remains a central problem for evolutionary psychology.

3. Evolutionary psychology (and adaptationism in general) has devoted considerable theoretical attention to the issue of design, the first link in the causal chain leading from phenotype structure to reproductive outcome, but has lumped every other link into the category 'reproductive problem.' This failure to theorize about successive links can lead to spectacular failures of the 'design' approach. Three examples: 1) evidence of design clearly identifies bipedalism as an adaptation, but what 'problem' it solved is not at all obvious, nor does the 'evidence of design' philosophy provide much guidance (though more detailed functional analyses of bipedalism are further constraining the set of possible solutions). 2) Language shows clear evidence of design, and there are several plausible reproductive advantages to having language, so why don't many other animals have language? 3) It can be very difficult to determine whether simple traits are adaptations simply because there is insufficient evidence of design. Menopause may be an adaptation, but it has too few 'features' to say based on evidence of design alone (some 'features' of menopause, like bone loss, seem to indicate that it is not an adaptation). Very simple traits will not always yield to a 'design analysis,' simply because there isn't enough to grab onto.

*

6. Finally, even the best work in evolutionary psychology remains incomplete. Two examples: 1) evolutionary psychologists have made several predictions about mate preferences, and these predictions have been verified in a broad range of cross-cultural contexts. However, the empirical data have not been subjected to many alternative interpretations. It is possible that they can be accounted for by other theories, and it will be difficult to be fully convinced that the evolutionary interpretation is correct until it withstands challenges from competing paradigms. The record on this account, however, is quite good so far. Competing theories such as the "social role", "structural powerlessness" and "economic inequality of the sexes" hypotheses have been tested in a number of studies and have received little, if any, support. 2) The cheater detection hypothesis, on the other hand, has withstood a blizzard of competing hypotheses, but it has been confirmed in only a very limited number of cross-cultural contexts: Europe, and one Amazonian group. Adaptations must be universal, and the variation seen in even the limited cross-cultural cheater detection studies suggests that further studies are warranted.


http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/epfaq/problems.html

Were Prehistoric Statues Pornographic?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024508681

JI: You take issue with this interpretation. Who is responsible for spreading it, journalists or scientists?

AN: People are fascinated by prehistory, and the media wants to write stories that attract readers—to use a cliché, sex sells. But when a New York Times headline reads "A Precursor to Playboy: Graphic Images in Rock," and Discover magazine asserts that man's obsession with pornography dates back to "Cro-Magnon days" based on "the famous 26,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf statuette ... GG-cup breasts and a hippopotamal butt," I think a line is crossed. To be fair, archaeologists are partially responsible—we need to choose our words carefully.

JI: Having studied Upper Paleolithic figurines closely, what did you find?

AN: They are incredibly varied beyond the few figurines seen over and over again: the Venus of Hohle Fels, the Venus of Willendorf, and the Venus of Dolní Věstonice. Some are male, some are female; some are human, some are animals or fantastical creatures; some wear items of clothing, others do not. A recent study by my doctoral student Allison Tripp and her colleague Naomi Schmidt demonstrated that the body shapes of female figurines from around 25,000 years ago correspond to women at many different stages of life; they're a variety of shapes and sizes. All of this suggests that there are multiple interpretations.

JI: Aren't other interpretations of paleo art just as speculative as calling them pornographic?

AN: Yes, but when we interpret Paleolithic art more broadly, we talk about "hunting magic" or "religion" or "fertility magic." I don't think these interpretations have the same social ramifications as pornography. When respected journals—Nature for example—use terms such as "Prehistoric pin-up" and "35,000-year-old sex object," and a German museum proclaims that a figurine is either an "earth mother or pin-up girl" (as if no other roles for women could have existed in prehistory), they carry weight and authority. This allows journalists and researchers, evolutionary psychologists in particular, to legitimize and naturalize contemporary western values and behaviors by tracing them back to the "mist of prehistory."

JI: Will we ever understand what ancient art really means?

AN: The French, in particular, are doing incredible work analyzing paint recipes and tracing the movement of the ancient artists as they painted. We may never have the knowledge to say, "This painting of a bison meant this," but I am confident that a detailed study of the corpus of Ice Age imagery, including the figurines, will give us a window on to the "lived life" in the Paleolithic.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2012/11/prehistoric_pornographic_art_venus_statues_and_other_cave_art_weren_t_paleolithic.html

Deepening the History of Masculinity and the Sexes
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12558815

McElvaine bases his understanding of modern American masculinity on "deep history"—sociobiologist E. O. Wilson's term for the evolution of the human species. 2 Under this view, contemporary cross-cultural masculine and feminine traits are part of a universal human cognitive structure shaped by the two million years spent as Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. Evolution of psychological design is a slow process. The 10,000 years since the scattered appearance of agriculture is a very small stretch in evolutionary terms, about 1 percent of human history. Therefore, as the argument goes, it is improbable that the species evolved complex cognitive adaptations to agriculture, let alone to industrial or post-industrial society. With this periodization in place, evolutionary psychology—the vanguard of sociobiological thought and scholarship central to McElvaine's book—examines the recurring environmental demands faced by male hunters as opposed to female gatherers, which leads to the explanation of late-twentieth-century violent hypermasculinity, for instance, as a trace of what heretofore would have been called "pre-historic" thought. 3 What this boils down to is finding gender difference in human nature, a concept McElvaine in no way shies away from. Eve's Seed speaks routinely of the human "biogram"—another sociobiological term—which includes, according to McElvaine, a "propensity" for both war and love.

In addressing his study's central question of why "the subordination of women to men is something approaching a cross-cultural universal," McElvaine argues that throughout history men have excluded and taken power from women in overcompensating for their primordial envy of female capacity to carry, bear, and nourish a child (p. 1). This "non-menstrual syndrome" or "notawoman" definition of manhood, as McElvaine calls it alternately in his penchant for label-making, stems from the psychoanalyst Karen Horney's 1926 essay "The Flight from Womanhood" and the anthropologist Ashley Montague's book The Natural Superiority of Women (1953). 4 In support of this thesis, McElvaine turns to anthropological findings of such hunter-gatherer practices of a husband simulating childbirth while his wife is in labor and tribal elders making boys perform fellatio, including the ingestion of "masculine milk," as a rite of passage. The "womb envy" concept organizes the better part of McElvaine's book, including the last chapters on twentieth-century American manhood. U.S. presidents' propensity for womanizing and war making and the whole "macho man" complex, McElvaine reasons, can be explained by deep-seated trans-historical male anxiety exaggeratedly manifest in particularly insecure individual men.

The middle chapters of Eve's Seed survey some 94 centuries of human history, stretching from 8,000 B.C.E. and the invention of agriculture through the Middle Ages. Vitally important to early economic and political history (bringing such changes as the creation of substantial material surplus and the rise of large states and war), agriculture—what McElvaine describes as the first of two "megarevolutions"—also sparked a massive male "backlash," as the female invention of planting crops and animal husbandry undermined the male role as hunter. Among the masculinist responses, men took over agriculture and invented war, as women became relegated to increasing the population needed for the new social order. At the same time that men started to dominate agriculture, the "conception misconception" arose: the belief that men held all procreative power, with women being considered as simply the fertile field for the male seed. In addition to developing the association of women with inert matter and nature, the conception misconception "led," McElvaine writes, "to the assumption that The Creative Force—God—must be male" (p. 135). But within his synthesis, Christianity also exemplified feminine virtues such as love and charity, which worked against such Roman values as controlled violence and the concentrated power of the state. To be sure, just as they had done with agriculture, men came to control the Church, although McElvaine underlines the mediating feminine influences in Christianity such as the twelfth-century veneration of the Virgin Mary.

McElvaine's second megarevolution began in the sixteenth century with the acceleration of geographic and social mobility and the rise of the marketplace, developments which produced a close equation between manhood and individualism and which culminated in the nineteenth-century United States. As in the other sections of Eve's Seed, this part draws from a good amount of earlier scholarship in making a clear and provocative argument. The highly mobile, possessive individual American man depended upon what McElvaine labels "the sexual bi-polar disorder," the radical separation of the masculine sphere of business and politics from feminine domesticity (p. 240). In one of his better examples of applying biohistory, McElvaine points out that since Hobbes, solitude and self-reliance have been considered man's natural state, but individualism is inconsistent with the masculine propensity toward association and cooperation formed during the sex's long preoccupation with hunting in groups. The last six chapters of the book concentrate on the twentieth-century United States and increasingly desperate attempts to express "real manhood" amidst feminine consumerism, corporate conformity, and feminist equality. While McElvaine's brief consideration of body building, the cult of John Wayne, and Rambo movies offers nothing new, his treatment of the mid-twentieth-century white middle-class embrace of African-American hypermasculine sexuality exhibits an uncommonly deft touch in extracting historical meaning from popular culture. In one interpretive flourish he examines bluesman Muddy Water's song "I Can't Be Satisfied" (1948) and the subsequent Rolling Stones' youth culture anthem "Satisfaction" (1965) as recent commentary on male insatiability, an age-old complex of unattainable sexual satisfaction magnified by an out-of-control consumer culture.

http://home.millsaps.edu/mcelvrs/RAH_Eves_Seed_3_03.htm

Does Manosphere Blogger Vox Day Really Support the Murder and Mutilation of Women?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12556077

Vox starts out by arguing that depriving women of education makes solid evolutionary sense:

Educating women is strongly correlated with reducing their disposition and ability to reproduce themselves. Educating them tends to make them evolutionary dead ends. … 40% of German women with college degrees are childless. Does PZ seriously wish to claim that not reproducing is intrinsically beneficial to women?

Instead of being educated, Vox goes on to argue, girls should be married off young so they can start popping out babies:

R]aising girls with the expectation that their purpose in life is to bear children allows them to pursue marriage at the age of their peak fertility, increase the wage rates of their prospective marital partners, and live in stable, low-crime, homogenous societies that are not demographically dying. It also grants them privileged status, as they alone are able to ensure the continued survival of the society and the species alike. Women are not needed in any profession or occupation except that of child-bearer and child-rearer, and even in the case of the latter, they are only superior, they are not absolutely required.

Next, he defends the practice of throwing acid in the face of “independent” women:

emale independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability. If PZ has turned against utilitarianism or the concept of the collective welfare trumping the interests of the individual, I should be fascinated to hear it.

He offers a similar rationale for female genital mutilation, before launching into this bizarre racist attack on abortion rights:

F]ar more women are aborted than die as a result of their pregnancies going awry. The very idea that letting a few women die is worse than killing literally millions of unborn women shows that PZ not only isn’t thinking like a scientist, he’s quite clearly not thinking rationally at all. If PZ is going to be intellectually consistent here, then he should be quite willing to support the abortion of all black fetuses, since blacks disproportionately commit murder and 17x more people could be saved by aborting black fetuses than permitting the use of abortion to save the life of a mother. 466 American women die in pregnancy every year whereas 8,012 people died at the hands of black murderers in 2010.

http://manboobz.com/2012/06/06/does-manosphere-blogger-vox-day-really-support-the-murder-and-mutilation-of-women/#comments

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/125531

A brilliantly researched and wickedly funny rebuttal of the pseudo-scientific claim that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

It’s the twenty-first century, and although we tried to rear unisex children—boys who play with dolls and girls who like trucks—we failed. Even though the glass ceiling is cracked, most women stay comfortably beneath it. And everywhere we hear about vitally important “hardwired” differences between male and female brains. The neuroscience that we read about in magazines, newspaper articles, books, and sometimes even scientific journals increasingly tells a tale of two brains, and the result is more often than not a validation of the status quo. Women, it seems, are just too intuitive for math; men too focused for housework.

Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men’s and women’s brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men’s brains aren’t wired for empathy and women’s brains aren’t made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men’s and women’s behavior. Instead of a “male brain” and a “female brain,” Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender.

Passionately argued and unfailingly astute, Delusions of Gender provides us with a much-needed corrective to the belief that men’s and women’s brains are intrinsically different—a belief that, as Fine shows with insight and humor, all too often works to the detriment of ourselves and our society.

Why Are Men So Violent?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12551994

It will not have gone unnoticed that men are more violent than women. Men perpetrate about 90 percent of the world's homicides and start all of the wars. But why? A recent article in a prominent science journal contends that evolution has shaped men to be warriors. More specifically, the authors claim that men are biologically programmed to form coalitions that aggress against neighbors, and they do so in order to get women, either through force or by procuring resources that would make them more desirable. The male warrior hypothesis is alluring because it makes sense of male violence, but it is based on a dubious interpretation of the science. In my new book, I point out that such evolutionary explanations of behavior are often worse than competing historical explanations. The same is true in this case. There are simpler historical explanations of male violence, and understanding these is important for coping with the problem.

A historical explanation of male violence does not eschew biological factors, but it minimizes them and assumes that men and woman are psychologically similar. Consider the biological fact that men have more upper-body strength than women, and assume that both men and women want to obtain as many desirable resources as they can. In hunter-gatherer societies, this strength differential doesn't allow men to fully dominate women, because they depend on the food that women gather. But things change with the advent of intensive agriculture and herding. Strength gives men an advantage over women once heavy ploughs and large animals become central aspects of food production. With this, men become the sole providers, and women start to depend on men economically. The economic dependency allows men to mistreat women, to philander, and to take over labor markets and political institutions. Once men have absolute power, they are reluctant to give it up. It took two world wars and a post-industrial economy for women to obtain basic opportunities and rights. This historical story can help to explain why men are more violent than women. The men who hold power will fight to keep it, and men who find themselves without economic resources feel entitled to acquire things by force if they see no other way. With these assumptions, we can dispense with the male warrior hypothesis, which is advanced by Melissa McDonald, Carlos Navarrete, and Mark Van Vugt, in the latest issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. These three psychologists imply that male violence is natural and inevitable, but all the evidence they offer can be explained by the simpler assumption that farming technologies allowed men co-opt power over the course of human history.

*

The male warrior hypothesis makes many predictions that don't pan out. There is no evidence that men prefer foreign women--the Western ideal is Barbie--and women often like effeminate men: David Bowie would not be sexier with an enormous beard. On the male warrior hypothesis, women should fear foreigners as much as men do, because foreign men are hardwired to attack them, but women are actually more sympathetic to foreigners. This may stem from their firsthand knowledge of discrimination. Women are also more cooperative than men, which makes little sense if men are innate coalition builders. There are dubious presuppositions as well. The warrior hypothesis assumes there was constant warfare in our evolutionary past, but some anthropologists argue that ancestral populations were too sparse for frequent contact. It also presupposes that warfare increases male fertility, when it may actually reduce fertility for all. Fertility is probably maximized when men are non-violent and share in childcare, but in many societies men beat their wives, neglect their children, and practice sex-selective infanticide against girls. The authors perpetuate the myth that evolution prefers men to be polygamous and females to be monogamous, but we see every variation in other species. In chimpanzees, both sexes seek multiple partners.

*

Violence is a complex problem, which no simple biological approach can diagnose or remedy. Factors such as political instability, population density, and income inequality are associated with massive differences in violence across cultures, and these differences are observed while gender ratios remain constant. Of course, men still hold most of the power in the world, and it is no surprise, then, that they perpetrate most of the violence. But that too is a historical fact, not a biological given. If we focus on biology instead of economic and historical variables, we will miss out on opportunities for progress.


http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/experiments-in-philosophy/201202/why-are-men-so-violent

[rrneck]

75. Ah.

The Gish Gallop gambit. Can you summarize what you posted, or just giggle at your evasion?

[seabeyond]

78. really? i give you an OP that explains the problems. you want a more scientific approach to the

problem of evo psych. so i provide many different scientific explanations. now you want me to explain it to you?

read the first four paragraphs of the very first OP that i linked in that posts. there are 6 reasons scientists have an issue with the study of evo psych. just a paragraph each. a mere four paragraph to read. surely, four paragraphs is reasonable to see why scientists across the board have an issue with evo psych.

done rrneck.

[rrneck]

86. You have posted rebuttals written by others

rather than research by the people whom you criticize. That's a tried and true tactic of creationists as well. You haven't looked at evolutionary psychology at all, have you? You've just seized on what somebody else said because they sounded good, didn't you?

[seabeyond]

91. seriously? now are you asking me to get the bunk studies of evo psych and them being discredited?

wtf dude.

this is why i really do not take anything you and a handful of others ask for on du.

this is bullshit. i do not respect this even a little. whatever. i know the believers need to have their evo psych, cause it defines them as a man, and all the other stuff went to the wayside.

so done.

totally pathetic.

[opiate69]

92. ..

[seabeyond]

154. what opiate? continually asking for more info is just a game? no surprise there. gotta be games.

[opiate69]

47. Not so with science...

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method, and repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation.[1][2] As with most (if not all) forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive — that is, they seek to supply strong evidence for but not absolute proof of the truth of the conclusion—and they aim for predictive and explanatory force.[3][4]
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

[seabeyond]

48. geez guys. everyone knows what scientific theory is and knows the use of theory as a word

is not always scientific theory. there are other forms of usage with the word theory.

but... cool that you are all sittin', waitin', to find SOMETHING to jump in on.

this one was lame.

hold off and see if you can get a better "gotcha"

[seabeyond]

42. the actual handling is the issue. why would we embrace a falsehood as a truth, when we know it is

storytelling.

[LittleBlue]

62. +1

Evolutionary psychology deniers don't accept that even chemicals have an effect on us.

My first foray on DU into this nonsense was pointing out the effects of testosterone, and I had some numpty arguing that it has no psychological effect. There was no link between aggression and testosterone, according to her.

This place sometimes gets as anti-science as anything you'll see from the climate change deniers.

[rrneck]

63. Yep. It happens when ideology trumps evidence.

It's interesting to watch. Partisans for any cause seem to turn from using ideology as a tool to defending it as a thing in itself. That might be how seemingly liberal positions can become almost indistinguishable from conservative attitudes about change.

[seabeyond]

68. that is not true. what do you mean, yup. where did ANYONE state chemicals do not effect brain. ONE

person.

really. i do not get you and others that are willing to just make a flat out false statement as if it is true. ONE person.

[LittleBlue]

88. I'm searching for it now.

The search function on this site is a bit screwy. It should have a search for "title" and "user" rather than a ham-handed google search.

I'm just curious as to what you believe. Do you think testosterone causes aggression?

[seabeyond]

93. studies are coming out all on its own, no. and someone challenging that is a long way

from saying chemicals does not effect us. so unless you have someoen saying chemicals does not effect us, you made a false statement.

[seabeyond]

74. ONE person that says chemicals in our brain do not effect us. ONE.

i am really tired of your right to put out false info as fact.

ONE.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

72. the brain stuff is not really the domain of evolutionary psychologists, its more the domain of neuro

science people.

[rrneck]

77. Maybe.

We have to deal with out brain chemistry as much as we have to deal with cholesterol, and the decisions we make would be psychological in nature.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

81. right, but brain chemistry is not exactly what evolutionary psychologists are trained to do. nt

[rrneck]

96. As I understand it they are studying the relationship between mental function and chemistry.

Evolutionary psychology (EP) is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective.

Do you think that brain chemistry, as a product of the evolutionary process, has an impact on our understanding of ourselves and our relationships with others?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

99. again, they do not examine brain chemistry.

yes, i believe we developed endorphins (as an example) for a reason but i also understand what various psych disciplines do and are trained to do. evo psychs are not the 'brain chemistry' people

[rrneck]

103. That's true.

And physical therapists are not physicists.

[seabeyond]

82. evolutionary biologist, i think is what the more basic scientific approach is. this field is respect

from what i understand

[rrneck]

90. So

how do you think our behavior might be affected by our biology?

[seabeyond]

94. what the hell does it matter and why should i waste my time. you have made it clear you are not

interested in fact.

[rrneck]

97. I've asked you for facts at least three times.

You have yet to produce any. I am not surprised.

All you have produced is some stuff you snatched from a Google search. I'm trying to have a conversation with you and you aren't cooperating.

Lets narrow it down to one. What one specific claim by evolutionary psychologists is, in your opinion, wrong?

[seabeyond]

101. women like pink cause way back when, they picked berries

I want you to know that I love evolutionary psychologists, because the ideas, like “girls prefer pink because they need to be better at hunting berries” are so much fun. Sure there are problems, like, we don’t know a lot about life in the pleistocene period through which humans evolved; their claims sound a bit like “just so” stories, relying on their own internal, circular logic; the existing evidence for genetic influence on behaviour, emotion, and cognition, is coarse; they only pick the behaviours which they think they can explain while leaving the rest; and they get themselves in massive trouble as soon as they go beyond examining broad categories of human behaviors across societies and cultures, becoming crassly ethnocentric. But that doesn’t stop me enjoying their ideas.

This week every single newspaper in the world lapped up the story that scientists have cracked the pink problem. “At last, science discovers why blue is for boys but girls really do prefer pink” said the Times. And so on.

The study took 208 people in their twenties and asked them to choose their favourite colours between two options, repeatedly, and then graphed their overall preferences. It found overlapping curves, with a significant tendency for men to prefer blue, and female subjects showing a preference for redder, pinker tones. This, the authors speculated (to international excitement and approval) may be because men go out hunting, but women need to be good at interpreting flushed emotional faces, and identifying berries whilst out gathering.

Now there are some serious problems here. Firstly, the test wasn’t measuring discriminative ability, just preference. I am yet to be given evidence that my girlfriend has the upper hand in discriminating shades of red as we gambol foraging for the fruits of the forest (which we do).

http://www.badscience.net/2007/08/pink-pink-pink-pink-pink-moan/

dude. i have given you a hell of a lot of info from every direction. your post is insulting, as you continually chenge direction and i provide. so kicked your ass in giving factual info. now. i will not reply again.

[rrneck]

114. Um,

what evolutionary psychologist posited that “girls prefer pink because they need to be better at hunting berries”? One may have, but I don't know that. And apparently, neither do you. There is nothing in the blog post to support your assertion. The authors of the study (Ling and Hulbert) appear to be neuroscientists, not evolutionary psycologists. Did you even read it?

From the abstract of the study cited by Goldacre:

We find a consistent sex difference in these weights, which, we suggest, may be linked to the evolution of sex-specific behavioral uses of trichromacy.

That looks pretty lean to me. I doubt there is a relationship between biology and color preferences among the sexes. I suspect that biology has a role in more fundamental traits like reciprocity, collaborative behavior, kinship identification, tribalism, and other fundamental concepts that can be applied to circumstances as they transpire.

[CFLDem]

52. Bookmarked for later

Thanks Sea!

[seabeyond]

57. you are welcome. cfl. nt

[Nuclear Unicorn]

67. I object to the use of the term "douchebag"

Real douchebags are actually good for women's health.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

73. except that they are not. nt

[Nuclear Unicorn]

87. This town needs an enema. nt

[seabeyond]

85. i object also, but i believe in putting in the title given. and no, it is not. nt

[La Lioness Priyanka]

70. evo is al post-hoc nonsense (well mostly, at any rate). nt

[boston bean]

80. but what about the bonobo's?

Aren't human males suppose to have the same traits as male bonobo's and the same goes for the female sex?

again...

[seabeyond]

107. i do not know if they are bonobos, but have you seen this thread. love.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024830546

[Humanist_Activist]

95. I think that the issue is that the field is far too young, and involved psychology...

now I'm not discounting psychology in general, buts its a sofer science, as it were, than, for example, biology or physics. Its harder to draw consistent conclusions, and so much easier to have confirmation bias creep in and remain unnoticed for a long time.

To be frank, I find that those who created this field extrapolate too much and are going about things precisely backwards from actual scientific rigor. Bad science practices leads to bad results, as we can see.

Its best to take a, pardon the expression, conservative approach to science, not try to claim every wild idea out there is valid.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

100. yes. it is best to not extrapolate wildly from tiny effect sizes.

[seabeyond]

105. thanks humanist. i agree with you. nt

[seabeyond]

104. i see a handful of men really invested in evo psych. and i am not surprised by a single man that is

invested in evo psych.

[Major Nikon]

119. So if it quacks like a duck....

I'm not really surprised by certain types of feminists who have a vested interest in denying it either. The reasons why aren't that hard to find and it also goes a long way to explaining other behavior as well.

Julie Bindel, another prominent radical feminist, promotes misconceptions by stating that “transsexualism, by its nature, promotes the idea that it is ‘natural’ for boys to play with guns and girls to play with Barbie dol…the idea that gender roles are biologically determined rather than socially constructed is the antithesis of feminism.” She blames transgender people for promoting sexual stereotypes because male-to-female transgenders are supposedly driven to achieve an ultra-feminine ideal. She overlooks the fact that being transgender is about self-identification and that what someone actually does to transition is up to them and doesn’t necessarily include hormones or surgery.

http://www.transadvocate.com/unpacking-transphobia-in-feminism_n_9964.htm

Just sayin'

[seabeyond]

123. I hVe scientists on my side and most of the population. The other side? Anti feminists. Anti women.

I am ok where I sit

[Major Nikon]

129. Somehow I doubt that

If you ask most people if there are inherent differences between the male and female brain, I suspect most would say there are. It's not as if it matters much as science doesn't rely much on public opinion, but rather facts and reason.

Also on "your side" are the worst sort of transphobes which include creationists and TERFs, so I'm not really sure you want to play your guilt by association games here, but if you do, saddle up and let's ride. We can even do 0 degrees of separation if you like as there's at least one poster here in this thread on "your side" which has a published history of transphobia, so it's not as if they were reallyquiet about it.

The whole field of EP was basically founded by a woman, and there's no shortage of women and even feminists who are evolutionary psychologists, so how you reconcile that with your guilt by association schtick is anyone's guest.
http://shell.newpaltz.edu/jsec/articles/volume7/issue4/Chang_Vol7Iss4.pdf

[seabeyond]

133. post 64. i give you the info. you refuse to read. i understand it is an illusion for SOME men to

hold dear. you would be wrong.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024833695#post64

[Major Nikon]

146. Illusion my ass

First of all, I haven't expressed an opinion one way or another, so saying I'm wrong when you obviously don't have the slightest clue what my thoughts are on the subject seems more than just a bit egocentric. Damn egocentric even.

As far as who's right or who's wrong on this, I don't spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about it. However, when someone I know, and respect, and trust, tells me their gender doesn't match their plumbing and it's been that way from birth, I'm a helluva lot more inclined to believe them than someone who tells me that gender is nothing more than a social construct, especially when quite a bit of that garbage comes from some very dark and hateful places. So sure, there are some who try to use the science for their own nefarious purposes, but I really don't see that as all that different from those who are convinced the science is junk when their only basis is their preconceived ideological views and whatever they can dig up on their google.

Just sayin'

[LeftishBrit]

106. In 2010, I said of evolutionary psychology..

I think a lot of it shows fundamental confusions about both evolution and behavioural genetics...
Posted by LeftishBrit on Sat Feb-27-10 04:05 PM

It hardly needs to be said that evolution occurs at the genetic level, not at the level of the individual item of behaviour.

And almost all behavioural characteristics involve not single genes, but multiple genes interacting with each other and with the environment.

Moreover, a characteristic could evolve not because it has direct advantages to the individual, but because it is genetically associated with some other characteristic that is. Even at the single-gene level: sickle-cell anaemia is surprisingly common in some areas of the world, not because it conveys an evolutionary advantage (it clearly does not), but because having *one* gene for this recessive disorder confers relative resistance to malaria. It's likely that there are lots of similar genetic associations that we don't even know about at present.

I suspect, for example, that a lot of the evolutionary explanations for behavioural gender differences and how they might have been an advantage in early societies are missing the point. Gender differences in cognition and behaviour are much smaller than is often assumed anyway, but insofar as they exist: they appear to be mainly associated with differences in level of male and female sex hormones. Since sex hormones are *directly* associated with fertility and reproduction, particular levels of such hormones would most probably evolve for *that* reason; their effects on the brain might be a byproduct.

Of course, *some* genetic variations could well have increased in frequency because of their effects on a particular behaviour; but we need to be careful before making simplistic assumptions that 'people do X; therefore there must be a specific evolutionary advantage in X'.'




I would add to that: some evolutionary psychologists, especially those who do not have an initial background in evolutionary biology or in brain sciences, can sound remarkably like creationists. X exists: therefore it has a specific purpose; and we should not try to prevent it, because that is going against the will of God, oops, I mean the purposes of evolution. Kanazawa went so far as to describe feminism as 'evil' on those grounds.

I am not of course objecting to the general view that the brain, like other organs, is a product of evolution; just to the confusion between natural selection of genes and natural selection of behaviours.

[seabeyond]

110. evolution occurs at the genetic level, not at the level of the individual item of behaviour.

excellent.

good post leftish. my son took genetic biology. what he was explaining to me, is just what you were sayin. i get that. and it is like the poster asking if testosterone causes aggression. not singularly. takes more than one factor.

this explains it well, from the genetic biological perspective. thank you so much for sharing this. i really appreciate it.

i totally agree with your conclusion.

[rrneck]

117. From what I've seen so far

nobody is making the claim that behavior is the result of specific genetic traits. In fact, it is frequently asserted that our objectives and the objectives of our genes are at cross purposes.

But I've just started looking at it, so I could easily be wrong. I'm already operating above my pay grade here.

[Humanist_Activist]

118. A lot of them actually sound like "Natural Law" philosophers. n/t

[Vashta Nerada]

121. *cough*

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v5/n1/evolutionary-psychology

[seabeyond]

124. Post 123 dude. As I say, the only ones invested in evo psych in this thread are those anti feminist

[Vashta Nerada]

125. Yes.

You have the fundamentalist christians on your side.

[bettyellen]

127. MRAs are much closer aligned with conservative Fundies- unless your ONLY concern is porn? Nice try!

[Vashta Nerada]

128. Did you even read the link I provided in post #121?

[seabeyond]

131. do you know the difference between the theory of evo and evo psych? do you understand why the fundie

opposes theory of evo but embraces evo psych? do you not even have a clue what you are arguing?

[Vashta Nerada]

134. You don't.

Because the link I provided is xtian fundamentalists talking against evo psych.

[seabeyond]

136. a lot fo christian coalition men support evo psych. this author actually points out

why it is flawed. you might read it and take note. the majority of people get that it is a pseudo science. only those that need to dominate and control women to feel like men actually buy into this garbage. as you can tell by the posters defending in this thread.

[seabeyond]

130. and in this thread alone, beside the men that consistently fight against women issues, everyone

else. but hey.... need to stay blind to hold onto your made up manhood, totally ok with me.

[Vashta Nerada]

135. Yeah, I'm not fighting against women's issues.

Provide a link of where I am fighting against women's issues.

I can wait.

I provided a link where xtian fundies fight against evo psych.

[seabeyond]

137. just about every thread that comes up. and no... i am not gonna point out what you are well aware

of.

[Vashta Nerada]

138. Provide links.

This is a baseless accusation that I may have a jury look at for a personal attack.

[seabeyond]

139. No. It is not a personal attack. And I did not create this op for you and

There other man that consistently dismiss women's voice. This thread is for those that are interested in the reality of evo psych. I am really not into wasting time with the same ole in the same dance

[Vashta Nerada]

140. So you've got nothing.

Baseless accusations and personal attack it is, then.

[seabeyond]

141. Every thread on women's issue. Have a good night

[Sheldon Cooper]

142. You may want to have a jury look at this too, then.

Because seabeyond speaks the truth. So go ahead, push the button.

[kcr]

149. You're confusing evolution with evo-psych. n/t

[Democracyinkind]

126. It's the favorite pseudoscience of our time...

Last edited Thu Apr 17, 2014, 08:28 PM - Edit history (1)

There's only a small amount of evopsych that should be taken seriously. Most of it relies on fallacies, especially the popular sort.

It's an appealing fallacy, though. Aristotle fell for it, in certain respects. As do many. No wonder, popular evopsych can make an ought out of any is it desires. Such philosophical alchemy is hard to resist, even for smart people. Especially if you're of the conservative persuasion.

[seabeyond]

132. "It's an appealing fallacy, though." they are here in the thread, well invested in their evo psych

they are the same men that deny rape culture, spout false rape claim 45-75%, want women to prevent their rape, insist men not take ownership of rape, think women should pay more for health care, and argue the pay gap.

surprise.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

150. well stated. nt

[Shankapotomus]

143. I've always had questions

about the advocates of evolutionary psychology. It's Social Darwinism.

Evolutionary psychology seems like a variant of Freud's theory which I think lends itself well to describing the inner workings of more of an unhealthy psychology (Maslow picking up the banner for the good in us) than as a model for all human psychology. That could be good for uncovering the ancient links to current and seemingly self-destructive behavior patterns. But it stinks as a template on which to base or justify any future violent and hostile behavior choices. Yes, humans can behave badly and even seemingly gain short term benefits from competition. But it is not a fully civilized or evolved life. It still has one foot in the law of the jungle. There is a price to pay for using force to get what you want and that behavior and price will always keep that species a few rungs down from the species that engages in less in-group rivalry and competition. We evolve and evolved toward negotiation and more cooperation because, ultimately, it has more survival value than conflict. A species that is free from in-group competition over territory or food or sex or power or any resource is a species that is free to operate and organize in mutual cooperation to mutual benefit of the group and the individual over and against any out group species.

Evolutionary psychology can push the benefits of force all it wants but at the end of the argument they have to confront that's not what brought us to the advances in society we see today. What brought us here is overcoming and resolving, at each step, one conflict after another we had previously over one resource after another. Humans didn't always peacefully share land in the form of huge territories we now call countries. How did we go from fighting over caves to fighting over huge nations and then organizing the UN if we didn't leave some of that oh so vital evolutionary instinct to fight for resources behind?

[seabeyond]

144. How do you know cooperation was not the start and with a hierarchy and power over

Didn't develop in time? Why are you assuming that the lowest wrung we define in society is where we started at. Maybe we started in a community based cooperative environment and evolved to our competitive self with hierarchy.

[Shankapotomus]

145. I always get pegged when I

grant the counter position for argument's sake. Lol. My actual position is that competitive and egalitarian behavior patterns probably evolved side by side as it has in our closest relatives with many advances and relapses along the way.

Also, consider that the smallest community is the individual and one other, in terms of resources. That's always going to be there so the issue of resource management will perpetually come up.

And certainly cooperation was not an out group behavior. Different species are and were feeding on each other.

I agree though that with the introduction if agriculture we took a step toward more hierarchy from the more developed egalitarianism of hunter gatherer tribes.

[seabeyond]

147. You are fun. I enjoyed reading your post but...

Too tired to delve much further. Thanks

[Shankapotomus]

148. No worries

I can see you've been very active in this thread..no need to ever feel compelled to respond to my blabberings..,mostly I'm just thinking out loud...I'll be tired too until the elections...

[DonCoquixote]

152. The most dangerous lies

are sweetened by a bit of truth.

Are we a lot more like our more primtive ancestors than we like to think?, possibly.

Does this mean we can use that as an excuse to act like a bunch of animals, NO!!

There has always been money to gild the baser desires of powerful people. The priests and the lawyer did that, now come in the "psychologists", the sort that most in the profession would laugh off stage. But lo and behold, the sort of people in power will love to hear stuff quoted, just like they did with that stupid "Bell curve" book.

The danger is that the people ready to make people rich are the people who already knwo what they want to hear, they just need someone to say that they are following science. They want to believe that their cruelty, selfishness, and cowardice is all as much science as 2 + 2=4. We saw this with the Ayn Rand types, and this new breed is ready to take their place.

Which is why we need to shun them, disprove them, and reveal them to be charlatans.

[ismnotwasm]

155. Just a reminder; MRA's are considered HATE groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Although this article isn't about them per se; it's often the fallback for "logic" for these hate-filled souls

The so-called “manosphere” is peopled with hundreds of websites, blogs and forums dedicated to savaging feminists in particular and women, very typically American women, in general. Although some of the sites make an attempt at civility and try to back their arguments with facts, they are almost all thick with misogynistic attacks that can be astounding for the guttural hatred they express. What follows are brief descriptions of a dozen of these sites. Another resource is the Man Boobz website (manboobz.com), a humorous pro-feminist blog (its tagline is “Misogyny: I Mock It”) that keeps a close eye on these and many other woman-hating sites.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/misogyny-the-sites

[seabeyond]

156. ah, what is it with all the hate. does it really simply boil down to a two yr old tantrum cause he

wants?