[FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

It seems to me the best way to have the conversation is to see the "women at the GG" topic as the exact same (pseudoscience) as the "alpha male" nonsense invoked by Peterson.  Both you and Steve seem to have succumbed to the "every thought is tracable back to some prehistoric evolutionary trait" when you say:

> I suppose it's, "I can't make the sale if I can't make the contact".

And Steve talks about an "instinctual response".  I'd like to propose that men act like idiots because their peers act like idiots, women wear tight dresses because their peers wear tight dresses ... and teens have cell phones glued to their hands because their peers have cell phones glued to their hands.

If evopsych is NOT a pseudoscience, then every pseudoscientific claim made in the NAME of evopsych should be buttressed by a better counter-claim.  Perhaps a counter claim for all this "dress for sex" nonsense is that, perhaps we are evolutionarily wired to have (at least some of) our thoughts socially programmed into us by our context.  Going back to the squirrels, perhaps our biology wires our thoughts simply to play *games*, the details of which will change depending on the circumstance?  I don't know ... I'm just tossing out ideas.

And, going back to Dave's questions, do we have a sense for what questions evopsych can and cannot answer?


On 02/20/2018 10:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I am trying to think, how do we have this conversation in a way that is not obnoxiously an example of itself.   Everything I write on the subject makes me cringe.  

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☣ uǝlƃ