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You make a great point, there's a big temptation to commit narrative fallacy when trying to explain narrative fallacy. So we should look for empirical evidence
by post_below 6y ago
You make a great point, there's a big temptation to commit narrative fallacy when trying to explain narrative fallacy.
So we should look for empirical evidence.
At the same time brains are complicated, psychology is complicated, genetics is complicated.
We know a lot about all of the above but we don't really understand any of them.
The history of all three sciences is full of narrative fallacies.
Given what we don't know, absolute proof, especially in genetics, isn't currently possible. So we have to settle for the best working explanation based on what we know. I think there is plenty of peer reviewed support for the idea that we are biologically inclined to look for neat explanations so that we can file challenging concepts away as resolved and focus our bandwidth on other things.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI think this means we're in agreement that it is probably so, but not necessarily so? But still enough in the air to refrain from claiming biological inclination.
- post_below 6y agoSure, but biological inclination is the best available explanation to the degree that I'm not sure it has any competition at this point. Asking for proof is useful, but it's a token exercise if you don't have an alternative explanation.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agothe reason that I don't see it as a token exercise is that ascribing things to biological inclination seems to be its own easy to fall into fallacy. So I like to avoid it while still conceding it may very well be the case in particular cases.