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Even without a time machine to witness it, we can be certain that the evolutionary process has sorted away ancestors who failed to reproduce, leaving only those

Even without a time machine to witness it, we can be certain that the evolutionary process has sorted away ancestors who failed to reproduce, leaving only those fit for the environment. But like machine learning, we can never know why life “chose” one way over the other. Still, that any trait in us or other species, psychology or other, is selected by evolution must be true, as any trait selected away by evolution by definition does not live. The alternative explanation of our psychology would require a supernatural spiritual force, which is even harder to falsify with experiment than evolutionary psychology. So to questions of “why” natural selection chose us who live now to have the psychology we have, can never be answered by experiment. When we can’t find knowledge through experiment, wouldn’t logic deduction and educated guesses/models be the best method - leaving us with the flawed but but interesting subject of the evolution of our psychology

marcus_holmes 5y ago
> wouldn’t logic deduction and educated guesses/models be the best method I would agree, if I saw anyone actually doing this. But every single time I see someone using evolutionary psychology to explain something they already believe in. It might be interesting to start with a blank slate, no assumptions, and work from there to see what sort of psychology you end up with. But that would be a bit like predicting evolution: if you started out with some amino acids the odds of getting to Elvis are ridiculously small. There's no guarantee that if we started with a blank slate we'd end up where we are. There's too many other possibilities, the process is chaotic. Obviously our psychology evolved. But that provides a mechanism, not an explanation. Just like "why are our eyeballs the wrong way around?" has no answer except "because we evolved that way". "why is social media so bad for us?" has no answer except "because we evolved that way". You can't explain why our eyeballs are the wrong way around, because there were no "reasons" for that. It wasn't a choice that anyone made logically. Trying to provide reasons for it misses the point of evolution completely. Same for our psychology. Trying to reason about it misses the point. It is the way it is because that's a local optimum in the solution space of human-shaped brains.
propater 5y ago
"Still, that any trait in us or other species, psychology or other, is selected by evolution must be true, as any trait selected away by evolution by definition does not live." This is a false dichotomy. Some traits do not provide enough of an advantage or a drawback to be selected for or against. Some traits reach fixation by piggy-backing on an other advantageous trait (either because they are a byproduct or just because the advantageous trait first appeared in a small insular population that shared that neutral trait.) Some reached fixation because, by chance, they got through an evolutionary bottleneck.
- jeofken 5y ago
  “Selected” doesn’t imply “better”, just that it was included in the set.

marcus_holmes 5y ago

> wouldn’t logic deduction and educated guesses/models be the best method I would agree, if I saw anyone actually doing this. But every single time I see someone using evolutionary psychology to explain something they already believe in. It might be interesting to start with a blank slate, no assumptions, and work from there to see what sort of psychology you end up with. But that would be a bit like predicting evolution: if you started out with some amino acids the odds of getting to Elvis are ridiculously small. There's no guarantee that if we started with a blank slate we'd end up where we are. There's too many other possibilities, the process is chaotic. Obviously our psychology evolved. But that provides a mechanism, not an explanation. Just like "why are our eyeballs the wrong way around?" has no answer except "because we evolved that way". "why is social media so bad for us?" has no answer except "because we evolved that way". You can't explain why our eyeballs are the wrong way around, because there were no "reasons" for that. It wasn't a choice that anyone made logically. Trying to provide reasons for it misses the point of evolution completely. Same for our psychology. Trying to reason about it misses the point. It is the way it is because that's a local optimum in the solution space of human-shaped brains.

propater 5y ago

"Still, that any trait in us or other species, psychology or other, is selected by evolution must be true, as any trait selected away by evolution by definition does not live." This is a false dichotomy. Some traits do not provide enough of an advantage or a drawback to be selected for or against. Some traits reach fixation by piggy-backing on an other advantageous trait (either because they are a byproduct or just because the advantageous trait first appeared in a small insular population that shared that neutral trait.) Some reached fixation because, by chance, they got through an evolutionary bottleneck.

jeofken 5y ago
“Selected” doesn’t imply “better”, just that it was included in the set.