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This line of thinking falls into a common issue I have with evo-psych work. The paper proposes a mechanism that could select for intelligence, but doesn't provi
by karpierz 6y ago
This line of thinking falls into a common issue I have with evo-psych work. The paper proposes a mechanism that could select for intelligence, but doesn't provide evidence that the mechanism caused humans to evolve to be intelligent.
It's the equivalent of the "Is-Ought" fallacy for empirical sciences.
- otabdeveloper4 6y agoA charitable way to put it. The more straightforward term is "just-so story".
- Hermel 6y agoWould a mechanism that selects for more intelligence automatically create evolutionary pressure into that direction?
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoIf that proposed mechanism is actually operating in practice, and if there are no other mechanisms that counteract it, then yes, it would.
- raincom 6y agoIt is called ad hoc explanation.
- economusty 6y agoI don't believe that counts as science.
- statstutor 6y agoThanks, I didn't know about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hoc_hypothesis
- statstutor 6y agoI often find it "justifying human exceptionalism" presented as science. The unstated assumption is that humans are somehow better than chimpanzees (here, it is almost literally stated), and therefore that we must reverse engineer and fill in the gaps to justify this. It strikes me that I have no reason to believe the assumption, nor any way of reverse engineering the random process of natural selection. In my opinion, other sciences are not immune to this.
- tryonenow 6y ago>I often find it "justifying human exceptionalism" presented as science. The unstated assumption is that humans are somehow better than chimpanzee You find it unscientific to observe that humans are exceptional for being the only known species with the ability to dominate and shape any environment, create, process, and communicate abstract thought, practice science, generate art, communicate across the planet instantly, travel to the bottom of the ocean and to space, with technology that other humans conceived of, designed, and built? If that isn't scientifically provable exceptionalism, I don't know what is. "Better" is a loaded term because you can weasel in talk of destroying the environment and what not - but I don't think there's any argument against obvious and overwhelming human exceptionalism, the origin of which unquestionably begs exploration and explanation.
- statstutor 6y ago> If that isn't scientifically provable exceptionalism, I don't know what is My point is that it isn't scientific at all. Any person can declare themselves exceptional - I have observed consistently that if a person has to declare they are exceptional themselves, it means they probably aren't. I don't assume that general rule to be different on a species-level: if we (as the human race) feel a need to spend a lot of effort making claims to why we are exceptional, acting both as the judge and the jury, it leads me to suspect that we probably are not.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago> The unstated assumption is that humans are somehow better than chimpanzees "Better" always has to carry the "at what?" part, explicitly or implicitly. There's no universal Better, thus humans aren't Better than chimpanzees - but humans are better than chimpanzees at quite a lot of things, including intelligence, learning, preserving knowledge across generations, use of tools... > therefore that we must reverse engineer and fill in the gaps to justify this There's nothing to justify here. We just are better - by far - than every other animal on this planet at the things that makes a species rule every other. This is an observable fact of reality. We had no contenders for this status as far as the recorded history goes. But it's interesting why this is the case. Why us, and not chimpanzees. > any way of reverse engineering the random process of natural selection Natural selection isn't completely random! If it were, there wouldn't be any complex life forms on Earth. Or, more strictly, for natural selection to be completely random, the universe would have to be a fully uniform blob of matter. There's randomness involved in natural selection, but that randomness has a strong bias. That bias itself is the part that's interesting to understand / reverse engineer.
- ajuc 6y agoI wonder what caused dolphins to evolve their intelligence. I don't think they hunted underwater mammoths :)
- yellowapple 6y agoI mean, could they have? "Mammoths" in this case could be whales, sharks, and other large aquatic creatures. Considering the relative lack of deep sea archaeology going on, there could be an abundance of evidence of this that we simply haven't noticed. Plus, there's even extant examples of dolphins hunting sharks (and even knowing to flip them over to render them helpless).
- T-A 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale#Mammals_and_birds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale#Mammals_and_birds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale#Intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_whale#Intelligence
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoI agree with your criticism. Still, I'm trying to figure out exactly what my issue is with evo-psych claims that I don't have with e.g. physics claims. There seem to be some commonalities between the two fields: developing models to explain empirical data. And when working with their models, they're willing to assume a certain degree of causality. I wonder if my issue is that evo-psych is a lot more like history than like physics, in that it's really hard to do repeatable experiments to vet their theories? So when we hear an evo-psych theory stated with confidence, it discredits the speaker?
- busyant 6y ago> Still, I'm trying to figure out exactly what my issue is with evo-psych claims that I don't have with e.g. physics claims. Can you give an example of an analogous claim in physics that you have an easier time accepting? Not flaming. Just trying to understand a similar situation that might arise from physics. One of the main issues I have with evo-psych is that you can't run rigorous control experiments, so my "analysis" of the claims amounts to "Well, that seems like a reasonable explanation. But so do a hundred other models...."
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoAgain, I'm just trying to understand why my BS detector squeals at evo-psych and not physics. Regarding an example: I was thinking along the lines of physics models that, in daily use, physicists treat as genuinely true. This includes concepts that are somewhat problematic, like true causality. (E.g., Newtonian mechanics as taught in high-school.) But after some more thought, I think my real issue is how the two communities vet their theories. My simplistic take on it is: The physics community has a healthy focus on refutability. IIUC, the community has little tolerance for someone even posing an unrefutable theory, let alone espouse it as likely truth. The evo-psych community (and I could be mistaken) is much more tolerant of people advancing theories that are (practically speaking) untestable as though they were genuinely true.
- rightbyte 6y agoHow about the opposite. Smart humans could hunt dangerous animals. The causality is not obvoius ...
- fearling 6y agoThis was my first thought as well.
- danielmarkbruce 6y agoThis is more or less what Yuval Noah Harari lays out in the first section of his book 'Sapiens': 1 - homo sapiens have a cognitive revolution 70k years ago which makes them able to think and communicate in more sophisticated ways. 2 - homo sapiens spread all around the world and wipe out ~all the large animals (including other human species..). His evidence from various places (Australia, America, various islands) of humans arriving then the large animals disappearing is pretty convincing.
- vkou 6y agoThe immediate consequence of me reading evo-psych work, is that I conclude that pretty much all evo-psych work should be piled into a large bonfire, and burned. This is the direct result of an obvious evolutionary psychological adaptation - being warm helps people survive, and fire is warm - therefore, if I were to do that, I would just be following an, ahem, evolutionary imperative.
- cschwarm 6y agoInterestingly, this isn't "evo-psych work", as anyone would see who'd knew how evolutionary psychology works. In fact, the kind of argument used by the authors is more in line what human paleontology looks like.