[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 78, Issue 40

Emlyn emlynoregan at gmail.com
Sun Mar 21 23:10:14 UTC 2010


On 22 March 2010 08:13, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> From: Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com>
>
>> Evolutionary Psychology is seeming more and more bogus to me. Wall to
>> wall just-so stories, grand conclusions drawn from very specific,
>> restricted scope studies, mathematical model based "proofs" with
>> ridiculously parsimonious assumptions.
>
> Normally parsimonious assumptions are considered better.  Can you be
> more specific?

Parsimony is fabulous, as long as you don't leave things out that are
necessary, then it just becomes a toy model (I would throw much
libertarian theory into the too-parsimonious-to-be-correct basket
too). Make things as simple as possible *but not simpler*, to
paraphrase a clever chappy.

>> Plus its popularity seems tied
>> to its ability to support the political assumptions of the theorist,
>> whatever they may be (too often a very 19th century social-darwinistic
>> kind of sensibility), and it has the added benefit that you don't need
>> to know anything about the real work done in academic disciplines that
>> have studied the field in question.
>
> The first half of this sentence is getting close to Godwin's law.  The
> second half looks to me like ad hominem.

Godwins is very specific and I didn't go there. I do think there are
benefits to the ev psych outlook (eg: balancing the blank slate
assumptions of the 20th century), and probably academics in the area
are more sophisticated than the run-of-the-mill armchair ev psych
posturing you see around the place. But you must have seen examples of
this?

Random google turns this up:
http://www.jasnh.com/a8.htm

"Evolutionary psychologists have noted that men and women seek
different traits when looking for a mate. Men value physical
characteristics in women such as smooth skin, a small waist-to-hip
ratio, and a youthful appearance (Buss, 1995). It has been argued that
such traits are desirable because they signal fertility. Women value
physical characteristics in men such as height, muscularity, and broad
shoulders (Buss, 1994; Barber, 1995; Franzoi & Herzog 1987) and
personality characteristics such as power, ascendance, and dominance
(Botwin, Buss, & Shackelford, 1997). It has been argued that such
traits are desirable because they signal the ability to provide
resources. However, such traits could also signal the ability to
provide protection from a variety of threats, including sexual
predators."

I'm surprised they haven't thrown in a bit of phrenology for good measure.

I think if you consulted people from the social sciences, some people
might object that there's a little thing called "culture" being
neglected here...

Plus, there are these wonderfully cartoonish assumptions about the
"ancestral environment" that just don't draw on any evidence. The link
Damien provided detailed a bit of this: eg: all this ape-based
assumption of the alpha male dominating and getting all the women
doesn't tie in with male human penis size, which is ridiculously large
for primates, and appears to be the result of an evolutiionary arms
race based in women having many mates (it's for getting past/flushing
out competitor's sperm).

As to ad hominem, do you see ev psych papers strongly referencing
other fields that study the same area, eg psych, sociology,
anthropology? The one I linked seems to almost exclusively reference
other ev psych papers, and even one about non-human primates, but
where's the anthropology, for example? I'm suspicious that we've been
studying humans, individuals and groups, successfully now for at least
a hundred years, and a new discipline can basically ignore all that.

>
> Evolutionary psychology is currently placing a foundation under much
> of social science.  My estimate is that it has done this in virtually
> all of the top rated schools, and may be more than half way through
> with the rest.  Google for Evolutionary Psychology graduate programs.
> It's a way to look at behavior, and a fundamental outline of how to
> construct models.
>
> Models lead to predictions.  If the predictions fail, then the model
> needs to be reconsidered.  Even poor models are better than no models
> because they lead to better models.
>
> For example, my initial model for what leads to wars failed with the
> US Civil war.  The current economic situation was not contributing
> since there was no economic downturn at that time.  But the
> _anticipation_ of hard times due to ending slavery was a factor and
> indeed the population of the South was correct in this assessment.
>
> Keith

I've read your paper, and quite liked the ideas (basically, we are
genetically programmed to go to war when we feel our resource outlook
is or might become desperate). But, where is any consideration of
culture? Some peoples seem far less likely to go to war than others.
Actually you talk about "xenophobic memes", so are assuming states are
more warlike if their population is more xenophobic, but how does that
explain a country like the US which is more or less constantly
involved in (and often starting) wars, while have a pretty low level
of xenophobia and little or no resource stress or perceived resource
stress? I bet at many times in the past few decades, pre 9/11, the
general population was hardly even aware of the wars the country was
fighting.

Where is any acknowledgement of other pre-existing theories about war,
and how this theory compares? For instance, the Marxian contention
that war is basically economic, that the ruling classes start wars to
benefit capitalists? Not that I'm saying that particular theory is
true, but it makes some very different claims to what your theory
makes, predicts different types of behaviour.

I do like the way your theory takes into account the differences
between the "ancestral environment" and modern states, but claims such
as this one:

"So the huge US "tribe" was attacked on 9/11 by OBL's tiny "Al Qaeda
tribe" and went into war mode due to being attacked."

Do you feel that this properly explains the war in Iraq?

To me this theory looks like an attempt at underpinning Political Realism:

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

but without any acknowledgement of that orientation, or indeed any
sign of awareness that this is only one way of understanding world
politics, and not without serious criticisms.

-- 
Emlyn

http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog
Find me on Facebook and Buzz




More information about the extropy-chat mailing list