[FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -
> OK.  But I believe I merely asked the question: Why talk about these vague behaviors like "dress for sex", when we can talk about reasonably well-defined things like hormones and neurotransmitters?  What explanatory power does evopsych have that, say, evolutionary neuroscience would not have?
A question, yes, but "mere" I don't think so?
>
> One possible answer is that evopsych allows us to tap into folktales like Jungian archetypes, even if only so we can trick people into believing our rhetoric. 
while "rhetoric" is defined to be "persuasive", the goal might be to
persuade others to consider a hypothesis long enough to investigate it
further.   On one end of the spectrum, your speculation is probably
accurate, sometimes some people simply want to be "right" or "believed"
(or may not care or know the difference?) but on the other, they may
simply want to engage other's in a little broader speculation as part of
expanding a search space?
>  That trickery is power of a kind, explanatory or not.  Science popularizers walk that thin line all the time.  But is there something *more*?
Science Popularizers are a good (positive I think) example, but again,
on the opposite end of the spectrum I think "guided speculation" has a
value when combined/juxtaposed with more rigorous/formal methods for
*validating* insights found during the wider ranging speculations?  
Where does intuition come from?  It would seem to find a good launching
pad on the foundation of good formalized, quantifiable work, but it also
would seem to be fed well by more qualitative and perhaps even verging
on "whimsical" considerations?
>
> Re: thread pollution --
> I don't think it's a big deal.  The forum is asynchronous.  Anyone can read or not read, reply or not reply, to any post at any time.  It was easier, I'll admit, when the archives worked.
I wasn't necessarily thinking of this as pollution (or any kind of
problem)... but rather speciation...  more on the exploration theme?  
It was a conjunction with my nod to Nick's original (early) appeal to
those of us with higher bandwidths to somehow keep him in the loop as
(even if?) we might explore (more) widely than he was seeking.