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As soon as I read “evolutionary perspectives” I noped out. Musicians aren’t competing to spread their genes, especially not as a result of evolution. Music may

As soon as I read “evolutionary perspectives” I noped out. Musicians aren’t competing to spread their genes, especially not as a result of evolution. Music may have helped us in our journey somehow, maybe even as a precursor to language. But music is something we do to bring us together, not to compete for dominance.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
justinclift 3y ago
> Musicians aren’t competing to spread their genes ... Groupies are a well known thing.
- bongoman37 3y ago
  [dead]
romwell 3y ago
>As soon as I read “evolutionary perspectives” I noped out. Musicians aren’t competing to spread their genes ...and their study, unsurprisingly, came to the same conclusion. >But music is something we do to bring us together, not to compete for dominance. Sure, but the specific genre they looked into is more athletics than music. Competition for dominance may be a part of music and poetry, too. Diss tracks have existed since ancient times ("Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo"[1]), and today's Nicki Minaj vs. Megan Thee Stallion feud is very much a performative competition for dominance. Music brings us together, music also divides us (many subcultures formed around musical genres). It's a medium of human expression. And as such, it can reflect all of our sides. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16
- defrost 3y ago
  Ó nón, cupídinem sció
andriesm 3y ago
I've always found evo psych interesting and it has some very serious scolars, a lot of experiments and predictions, yet a few years ago it used to be very trendy to say it is all bunk and projective stories about human behavior. Also it seems some people are more comfortable with evo-psych when it comments on male-behavior than when it comments on female behavior. I think the entire field is massively interesting.
- RoyalHenOil 3y ago
  The problem with evo psych is the poor science that goes into verifying the claims, not the concept itself. The field presents a lot of extremely interesting hypotheses, but then does not test them rigorously. Psychology can often be pretty bad about this (overreliance on very weak experimental methods, such as surveys), but evolutionary psychology is a particularly weak subfield of psychology. For this reason, scientists in more rigorous fields tend to look upon evolutionary psychology as pseudoscience. If there is good science happening there, I am unaware of it. I strongly suspect that serious scientists interested in this subject matter go into more rigorous fields, like evolutionary biology or neuroscience. If you are interested in this subject matter (I know I am!), I recommend following these fields instead because they are far less likely to dress up an under-tested hypothesis as true.
Brian_K_White 3y ago
People compete for dominance in literally any possible context. Anything people do at all, a bunch of them do for dominance. There are people competing for dominance at volunteering in soup kitchens.
anamax 3y ago
> Musicians aren’t competing to spread their genes Says who? Eric Clapton said that he learned guitar to meet girls and that was well before the thing with George Harrison. There's probably a point of diminishing returns but ....

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

justinclift 3y ago

> Musicians aren’t competing to spread their genes ... Groupies are a well known thing.

bongoman37 3y ago
[dead]

romwell 3y ago

>As soon as I read “evolutionary perspectives” I noped out. Musicians aren’t competing to spread their genes ...and their study, unsurprisingly, came to the same conclusion. >But music is something we do to bring us together, not to compete for dominance. Sure, but the specific genre they looked into is more athletics than music. Competition for dominance may be a part of music and poetry, too. Diss tracks have existed since ancient times ("Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo"[1]), and today's Nicki Minaj vs. Megan Thee Stallion feud is very much a performative competition for dominance. Music brings us together, music also divides us (many subcultures formed around musical genres). It's a medium of human expression. And as such, it can reflect all of our sides. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16

defrost 3y ago
Ó nón, cupídinem sció

andriesm 3y ago

I've always found evo psych interesting and it has some very serious scolars, a lot of experiments and predictions, yet a few years ago it used to be very trendy to say it is all bunk and projective stories about human behavior. Also it seems some people are more comfortable with evo-psych when it comments on male-behavior than when it comments on female behavior. I think the entire field is massively interesting.

RoyalHenOil 3y ago
The problem with evo psych is the poor science that goes into verifying the claims, not the concept itself. The field presents a lot of extremely interesting hypotheses, but then does not test them rigorously. Psychology can often be pretty bad about this (overreliance on very weak experimental methods, such as surveys), but evolutionary psychology is a particularly weak subfield of psychology. For this reason, scientists in more rigorous fields tend to look upon evolutionary psychology as pseudoscience. If there is good science happening there, I am unaware of it. I strongly suspect that serious scientists interested in this subject matter go into more rigorous fields, like evolutionary biology or neuroscience. If you are interested in this subject matter (I know I am!), I recommend following these fields instead because they are far less likely to dress up an under-tested hypothesis as true.

Brian_K_White 3y ago

People compete for dominance in literally any possible context. Anything people do at all, a bunch of them do for dominance. There are people competing for dominance at volunteering in soup kitchens.

anamax 3y ago

> Musicians aren’t competing to spread their genes Says who? Eric Clapton said that he learned guitar to meet girls and that was well before the thing with George Harrison. There's probably a point of diminishing returns but ....