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> Quite possible, but IMO we shouldn't let popular misunderstandings of science detract from the actual scientific inquiry taking place. The idea that articles

> Quite possible, but IMO we shouldn't let popular misunderstandings of science detract from the actual scientific inquiry taking place. The idea that articles like this are science is a popular misunderstanding of science. The article is not a scientific work. It's a pop science piece where an individual scientist promotes her personal philosophies on love to a public audience. Her beliefs may integrate individual scientific facts but that does not make them scientific in themselves. > Why are some romantic experiences (e.g. an unreasonable crush on a specific person that fades over time) so common in the general population, and why do these experiences happen and play out in these common ways? Let's say you're feeling anxious before an important exam. Someone notices your anxiety and asks you why you're feeling that way. So you provide a detailed explanation of the neurochemical signalling cascade involved in an acute anxiety response and say that is why you are feeling anxious. Does this answer the question? In a very literal way it does. But it's a useless and incomplete answer. "I'm feeling anxious because I have an important exam coming up" is in many senses more useful and accurate. Our biology is shaped and acted on by our environment which includes many psychosocial factors. Culture and individual experience are biopsychosocial. Biology is to human behavior what electromagnetism is to computing. You can't build an understanding by considering only the lowest level details.

selestify 5y ago
> The article is not a scientific work. I never said it was. I said it was pop science — in other words, a highly mangled portrayal of scientific work, made fit for public consumption. > It's a pop science piece where an individual scientist promotes her personal philosophies on love to a public audience. Her beliefs may integrate individual scientific facts but that does not make them scientific in themselves. She’s promoting the theory that she believes best fits the data. Assuming she’s not one of those scientists who fakes her data, that is very much a part of regular scientific discourse. Her theory may very well be wrong, but that doesn’t mean she’s not being scientific. Again, I am assuming that the claims she’s making are backed by actual data that she’s reviewed. Have you reviewed her work and found that this is not in fact the case? If so, I’ll cede that to you. > You can't build an understanding by considering only the lowest level details. No, but abstractions are leaky. You can’t build a full understanding without ignoring the lower level details either, which is what she certainly seems to be doing. As an example, > "I'm feeling anxious because I have an important exam coming up" is in many senses more useful and accurate. If someone notices that you’re always anxious, this is likely just your brain rationalizing the exam being the main or most important cause of your anxiety. On its own, it’s a perfectly plausible explanation. But in reality, how good of a predictor is the presence of an exam for your mental state? How good of a predictor for mating preferences is this evo-psych theory? I’m sure the women the author mentioned here have a unique reason for every man they passed on, but were those men by and large bad protectors and low earners? If so, those unique reasons for rejection sound more like post-hoc rationalizations than “real” reasons, and the cause of such biases deserve to be looked into further to ascertain the magnitude of biological or cultural influences. Unfortunately, as we both note, it’s a pop sci article that doesn’t contain that much information about the methodology or the results. I’m just saying, just as I can’t draw strong conclusions that it’s true based on this article itself, I don’t believe you can draw strong conclusions that it’s bunk and “not science,” either.

selestify 5y ago

> The article is not a scientific work. I never said it was. I said it was pop science — in other words, a highly mangled portrayal of scientific work, made fit for public consumption. > It's a pop science piece where an individual scientist promotes her personal philosophies on love to a public audience. Her beliefs may integrate individual scientific facts but that does not make them scientific in themselves. She’s promoting the theory that she believes best fits the data. Assuming she’s not one of those scientists who fakes her data, that is very much a part of regular scientific discourse. Her theory may very well be wrong, but that doesn’t mean she’s not being scientific. Again, I am assuming that the claims she’s making are backed by actual data that she’s reviewed. Have you reviewed her work and found that this is not in fact the case? If so, I’ll cede that to you. > You can't build an understanding by considering only the lowest level details. No, but abstractions are leaky. You can’t build a full understanding without ignoring the lower level details either, which is what she certainly seems to be doing. As an example, > "I'm feeling anxious because I have an important exam coming up" is in many senses more useful and accurate. If someone notices that you’re always anxious, this is likely just your brain rationalizing the exam being the main or most important cause of your anxiety. On its own, it’s a perfectly plausible explanation. But in reality, how good of a predictor is the presence of an exam for your mental state? How good of a predictor for mating preferences is this evo-psych theory? I’m sure the women the author mentioned here have a unique reason for every man they passed on, but were those men by and large bad protectors and low earners? If so, those unique reasons for rejection sound more like post-hoc rationalizations than “real” reasons, and the cause of such biases deserve to be looked into further to ascertain the magnitude of biological or cultural influences. Unfortunately, as we both note, it’s a pop sci article that doesn’t contain that much information about the methodology or the results. I’m just saying, just as I can’t draw strong conclusions that it’s true based on this article itself, I don’t believe you can draw strong conclusions that it’s bunk and “not science,” either.