posted
I'm still waiting for someone to demonstrate where in the article he states that behavior that was selected for by evolution is behavior that we should encourage, find acceptable, or believe to be justified.
I recommend Diamond's response in "The Third Chimpanzee" to the criticism that recognizing evolutionary roots of behavior is somehow morally excusing that behavior.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: And because he tried to portray his position, himself as bleeding edge "politically incorrect": once again misusing the phrase to describe the politically correct (ie pandering to the powerful).
This seems to be the first post of about three that I need to gently correct. There are actually two authors, not one.
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posted
Steven Pinker also wrote about this in The Blank Slate. He is right: saying that a behavior occurs in nature does not imply that the behavior is morally acceptable. Unless we want to accept eating your mate's head like a praying mantis.
Posts: 544 | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Qaz: Steven Pinker also wrote about this in The Blank Slate. He is right: saying that a behavior occurs in nature does not imply that the behavior is morally acceptable. Unless we want to accept eating your mate's head like a praying mantis.
Why do you think husbands of pregnant women are willing to get up at any hour in the night to fetch them pickles or icecream when they crave it? They know if they don't, bits of their head or possibly the whole thing could disappear while they sleep.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: If sexual harassment was not sexist then men would sexually harass other men just as much as they do women.
Chris, I don't know what your experience was as an adolescent, but I was sexually harassed quite a bit in Highschool- and it was an all boys Catholic school.
If we define sexual harassment as degredation, humiliation and intimidation of a sexualized nature or with highly sexual overtones, then I experienced quite a bit of this from other males (and sometimes still do, although not as much). Some of this experience was traumatic, and I imagine if a female had had to experience it, she would have believed that they would never have treated a male the same way.
I do not believe my experience was special- I think boys (especially in an all male environment) treat each other this was quite a bit. It isn't called sexual harassment even though with a female it would be.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Qaz: Steven Pinker also wrote about this in The Blank Slate. He is right: saying that a behavior occurs in nature does not imply that the behavior is morally acceptable. Unless we want to accept eating your mate's head like a praying mantis.
But the politically correct would have us believe that it is within or nature to be politically correct. Each of the points stated in the article resonated with a part of me, probably because it is at least an attempt to cut through the fog that necessarily surrounds every one of these issues. There is unfortunately a confusing and ever shifting difference between what people are told they should feel and believe, and what we actually do or are ready to accept.
There have been a thousand instances where one of these points has occurred to me as just a simple alternative to the aphorisms bandied about in society- that sexual harassment is "about power" not sex, or that rape is a "violent crime," and not a sexual one.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: If sexual harassment was not sexist then men would sexually harass other men just as much as they do women.
Chris, I don't know what your experience was as an adolescent, but I was sexually harassed quite a bit in Highschool- and it was an all boys Catholic school.
If we define sexual harassment as degredation, humiliation and intimidation of a sexualized nature or with highly sexual overtones, then I experienced quite a bit of this from other males (and sometimes still do, although not as much). Some of this experience was traumatic, and I imagine if a female had had to experience it, she would have believed that they would never have treated a male the same way.
I do not believe my experience was special- I think boys (especially in an all male environment) treat each other this was quite a bit. It isn't called sexual harassment even though with a female it would be.
I'm now having flashbacks to junior high gym. Yup, I've experienced that as well.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Qaz: Steven Pinker also wrote about this in The Blank Slate. He is right: saying that a behavior occurs in nature does not imply that the behavior is morally acceptable. Unless we want to accept eating your mate's head like a praying mantis.
Why do you think husbands of pregnant women are willing to get up at any hour in the night to fetch them pickles or icecream when they crave it? They know if they don't, bits of their head or possibly the whole thing could disappear while they sleep.
posted
I don't have time to read the thread right now, so please forgive this non-sequiter. I just wanted to let everyone know that Psychology Today is not a credible source of information about current scholarly views among practitioners of the SCIENCE of Psychology.
I'd personally put it somewhere between Reader's Digest and Cosmo on the credibility scale, in general. And I'd put it completely off (below) the scale with respect to scientific or scholarly rigor.
It is such that no self-respecting scholar would want their stuff published there (even in excerpt) and they would definitely never put it on a curriculum vida if they did publish something there.
Posts: 61 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Whatever your opinion might be (edit: or the true quality of psychology today ), Kanazawa is a respected evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, and Miller was a respected social and evolutionary psychologist at Hokkaido University (he died in 2003, apparently). They both publish regularly in top-tier journals.
edit: note that I consider their results suspect due to having used flawed statistical methods to arrive at at least some of their conclusions.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I seriously think evolutionary psychology is pure bunk. Just like Frued, it's as outmoded as the great chain of being, it drives me crazy. Simply because how can we, modern people really, acurately know what life was like back then? Even so, I don't think it matters nearly as much as the individual and their decisions. Perhaps it's because I can't identify with any of these things.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
You're misunderstanding evolutionary psychology. What you're talking about seems to be something along the lines of what's sometimes called paleopsychology.
Evolutionary psychology is about understanding psychology through evolutionary explanations -- by understanding what things might cause which psychological adaptations.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Whatever your opinion might be (edit: or the true quality of psychology today ), Kanazawa is a respected evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, and Miller was a respected social and evolutionary psychologist at Hokkaido University (he died in 2003, apparently). They both publish regularly in top-tier journals.
edit: note that I consider their results suspect due to having used flawed statistical methods to arrive at at least some of their conclusions.
So, I guess my question is: respected by whom? Other economists? In which case, I rest my case regarding the inappropriate nature of using Psychology Today as a venue for learning about current thinking in the Science of Psychology.
I haven't read their work, but I do have to say that I've been remarkably unimpressed with the contributions that economists have recently tried to make in the fields of Sociology and Psychology. The flaw (as you point to in this case) is often with the analytic methods selected, but I know of at least one case where the data set they used actually does not contain the data they thought it did. They used it anyway, and came to erroneous conclusions as a consequence. (This was the folks who wrote that lame book subtitled something like "A Rogue Economist...")
PS: This is an alt, by the way. I keep forgetting not to log in using this name, but now that I've posted in this thread, I'll just use it any way. It's me...B_S.
Posts: 61 | Registered: Aug 2004
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It includes Journal of Theoretical Biology, Intelligence, British Journal of Health Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, Managerial and Decision Economics, Cross-Cultural Research, Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies, Rationality and Society, Journal of Biosocial Science.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Other economists? They're not economists. The London School of Economics is one of the pre-eminent institutions for social science of many kinds, and is internationally renowned in numerous areas.
edit: he does occasionally publish economics-related papers, but they're hardly his focus, and he's not well known there. His PhD is in sociology, from the University of Arizona, and it seems he's been doing evolutionary psych since his postdoc at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, NZ.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
What about #7, which is about the "age-genius curve"? It sounds plausible, but might the simpler explanation be (for geniuses) that because nobody's brain is infintely malleable, it becomes harder to be original the more past originality you've created and (for criminals) that after you've committed some crimes or killed some people, you discover that the money you stole or the vengeance you obtained doesn't make you happy?
Posts: 781 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
It could also be economic. It makes good sense to produce fewer papers, say, if you are an academic, if you're close to retirement, because you wont' have much time to enjoy the promotions.
It could also be that we're programmed to try more new things at a time when we need to try more new things, that is, early adulthood.
However the author made one big mistake. Bill Gates was never a computer whiz. He was a business whiz, and still is. So actually he turns out to be a counterexample.
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), Kanazawa is a respected evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, and Miller was a respected social and evolutionary psychologist at Hokkaido University (he died in 2003, apparently). They both publish regularly in top-tier journals.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
