4 ms·

You can't use biological evolution to explain high level cultural behavior. Why not?

• cowpig 7y ago
  It's like trying to use molecular physics to explain the immune system. It's not just impractical; it's impossible to know enough of the variables to derive one from the other. In practice "evolutionary" explanations are constantly used to make something intuitively plausible for which there is no evidence sound scientific and convincing.
  • ryanmarsh 7y ago
    Perhaps, but in this case might it be true? There seems to be evidence in nature of something similar such as birds building nests and other costly activities to secure a mate. Also, love that I was downvoted for merely trying to understand someone’s rationale. LOL fuck HN. I regret all the time I spend here.
    • Miraste 7y ago
      A more concrete reason it's not true in this case: diamonds as engagement gifts from men to women are a recent cultural phenomenon. For most of human history this was not the case, and there were/are large cultures where the tradition is a dowry instead (more or less the reverse) or nothing at all.
• zelly 7y ago
  It's not science. Human brains are very recent in evolutionary terms. What a frog or a peacock does is a result of many orders of magnitude more time under natural selection than the age of modern humans. People guess that this or that behavior is because of natural/sexual selection and pass it off as science with no proof just because the word evolution was mentioned. It takes a very long time for something to become an instinct. Given how much human brains are capable of, I just think the most Occam's razor answer is culture and mimicry rather than somehow some {{uniquely human behavior}} having been important enough to survival to become an instinct across the board.