[FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Pieter Steenekamp]

Nick,

I'd love to hear from you about evolutionary psychology and are prepared to
wait patiently until you have time to respond properly.

Pieter

On 14 February 2018 at 20:48, Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Dear Glen and Peter,
>
>
>
> I started out my career calling myself an Ethologist and studying
> communication in monkeys and then crows. I ended my career as an
> Evolutionary Psychologist studying human infant’s cries.  So I feel some
> obligation to stand up to your critique, while acknowledging that much of
> it is fair.
>
>
>
> Lots going on right now so I will have to go at this slowly.  But for
> starters could we just agree to avoid saying anything stupid.  The two most
> obvious stupidities to avoid are:
>
>
>
> *Human Evolutionary history has nothing to do with contemporary human
> behavior*
>
>
>
> *Human Evolutionary history has everything to do with contemporary human
> behavior*.
>
>
>
> Once the two extreme positions have been set aside, we are left in the
> messy middle.
>
>
>
> *Under what circumstances and in which domains does knowledge of human
> evolutionary history have anything to contribute to our understanding of
> contemporary human behavior?  *
>
>
>
> I would love to have a sustained, thoughtful discussion of this question
> on this list.  It is very close to my heart.   Because I don’t have time,
> right now,  to write a screed, or even a rant, I shall fall back on that
> practice favored by all academic scoundrels:  I shall cite one of my own
> papers.
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302220782_My_Descent_from_the_Monkey>
> (If this link doesn’t work, could somebody let me know, please?)
>
>
>
> I hope we can carry this on for some time, but SLOWLY, please, so I can
> keep up.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Pieter
> Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 14, 2018 9:20 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?
>
>
>
> It may be difficult to quantify evolutionary psychology, but that does not
> mean it is pseudoscience. Like string theory that's also difficult to
> quantify, the scientific method is also applicable to evolutionary
> psychology.
>
>
>
> I support the view as expressed in https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/
> Evolutionary_psychology:
>
> "Just as Darwin's theory of natural selection was almost immediately
> perverted to justify cruel bigotry (Social Darwinism, eugenics), so
> evolutionary psychology is readily twisted to buttress prejudice. This does
> not make evolutionary psychology wrong, any more than the brutality of
> Social Darwinism made evolutionary theory wrong, but it does suggest that
> claims rooted in it should be assessed very carefully, both by those
> reading them and those writing them."
>
>
>
> On 13 February 2018 at 23:07, uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I remain fascinated by the neoreactionaries (most of whom have ceded their
> soap boxes to their alt-right offspring).  And Google's tendency to promote
> fringe garbage (https://www.wired.com/story/google-autocomplete-vile-
> suggestions/) landed Jordan Peterson in my Youtube recommendations awhile
> back.  Based on the videos Youtube recommended, he sounded like a typical
> right-wing pseudo-intellectual.  But when I noticed Sam Harris taking him
> seriously, I thought I'd look a little closer.  Sure enough, the majority
> of his online lectures spout fairly reasonable (albeit justificationist)
> rhetoric ... a lot like Harris and fellow right-wing flirt Jonathan Haidt,
> both of whom appeal to our xenophobic friends for differing reasons.
>
> I'm reminded of the argument I made on this list some time ago that,
> although I believe open source is necessary for pretty much all things, it
> *facilitates* nefarious action by obscurity.  Because your library (e.g.
> RSA backdoors or JavaScript cryptocurrency miners) has so much code in it,
> and is just one library in a gamut of libraries you invoke, there's
> absolutely no way you can *trust* that stack ... even if it's FOSS and gets
> lots of eyeballs.
>
> Peterson, Harris, and Haidt, rely on the overt reasonability of 90% of
> what they say in order to Trojan Horse the racist or otherwise questionable
> content of the other 10%.  Sure, they make a *technical* effort to weight
> their assertions.  And that's laudable.  (Slate Star Codex and Alexander's
> ilk do this well with their "epistemic status" rating, displayed fairly
> prominently most of the time.)  But this raises the reason I'm posting this
> to FriAM.  The quote from the Alternet article is (should be) provocative:
>
> https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/rights-favorite-
> new-intellectual-has-some-truly-pitiable-ideas-about-masculinity
> "Devotees of the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology are fond of this
> particular maneuver: locate some behavior in the more ancient branches of
> the tree of life and project it forward across eons to explain little
> Johnny pulling little Susie’s pigtails, or the collapse of Lehman Brothers,
> or the Holocaust, or whatever. In any case, I like to imagine the
> diaphanous, energy-based extraterrestrials in their invisible starships, so
> unutterably alien that they gaze upon man and lobster and can’t tell them
> apart."
>
> In particular re: Peterson, I've actually *used* (although mostly
> jokingly) the alpha- beta-male (false) dichotomy at cocktail parties ... to
> justify why I, as a proud beta male, am a wallflower.  But now, I'm worried
> that (like the many memes I learned from my libertarian friends) it's not
> merely a useful fiction, but complete garbage:
> https://youtu.be/YTyQgwVvYyc
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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