[FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Excellent contribution!  Thanks, Nick.

Of course, your arguments, in this letter, are primarily academic.  So, they won't grip the populace in the way Peterson's have (unless you launch a marketing campaign like he did, of course).  But I found the biased sample argument plausible as something which *would* grip the public, especially with this President and the #metoo stuff.

I believe (though I'm often wrong) Peterson's arguments seem closely parallel with the sexual gamers, pick-up artists, who try to game the mating game.  It's akin, I think, to the "power pose" concept or, perhaps even the "smile to be happier" thing.  In Peterson's case, it amounts to "act successful, and you'll have more sex."

Your two arguments: 1) that we'd expect a "curvilinear" relationship between success and more partners -- from which I infer some sort of saturation curve, and 2) justificationist studies will tend to self-select towards posers, combine to form an argument that might grip the public, in these times.

Women (and men) should be understood as complex enough creatures so as to be capable of spotting the gamers.  Even *if* Peterson et al are presenting some sort of essentialist truth (while squinting from the window of an airplane), too many details have been removed for their self-help woo to be true in any concrete circumstance.

My goal, however, would be to formulate a counter-hypothesis, perhaps based on the detection of defectors ... an evol. psych. counter-hypothesis.  Perhaps the detection of *lies* is rooted somewhere in biology?  Renee' mentioned the other day that some squirrels are defectors/gamers and they'll simply watch the industrious squirrels as they stash their nuts, then the defector will go dig up the stashed nut.  So, some industrious squirrels have developed a lying technique where they pretend to bury a nut, then run off to bury it somewhere else.  It seems we could formulate a testable, evol. psych. hypothesis that claims men and women who are authentic tend to be happier and have more babies?



On 02/15/2018 11:58 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Here is another paper <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247372033_Oh_no_Not_social_Darwinism_again> much shorter (only 600 wds)  and better Xeroxed, which exemplifies my contempt for this latter sort of evolutionary psychology.


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