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its actually not that hard to make this case. We have an excellent proxy to prove a psychological tendencies are bread in and are an reinforced through the env

its actually not that hard to make this case. We have an excellent proxy to prove a psychological tendencies are bread in and are an reinforced through the environment. Selective breeding of dogs. We speed up natural selection via selective breeding and created dogs of various utility to us. Not only physical characteristics but also psychological too. Border Collies have ingrained instinct to heard and work the fields. People buying them as couch dogs end up with agitated dogs who go crazy due to lack of mental stimulation. We bread dogs for agression self evident with number of dog attack amongst the 'agressive' breeds. You can guy a border collie puppy and never show it a farm, sheep and it will still be predisposed to herding and waiting for commands. Blaming action movies as a cause for risk taking behavior is akin to blame video games for school shootings . > I would argue that it’s possible small sex differences often reinforce themselves socially in a feedback loop, so even a small difference in, for example, risk taking behavior could be amplified through nurture to the extent we see. I dont know a single tribe that has broken the 'hunter - men, camp tasks - women' division. >You’d need to show me studies on infants to convince me that’s meaningfully based on nature, because unsubstantiated evopsych arguments are notoriously easy to make. We both know that sooner the hell will freeze over, than a study like that on infants will ever get approved

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
The entire argument you're making regarding dogs can be reduced down to the statement that animals possess innate instincts, which nobody in their right mind could disagree with. I'll explain why that's all you're saying. Wolves have the instinct to herd animals then kill them. Border collies were selectively bred to reduce the instinct to kill while retaining the one to herd. They then, as puppies, go through months of scaffolded training to make them productive livestock herders. They don't pop out of the doggie womb as herding dogs, we build on top of their refined herding instinct through tons of conditioning. > Blaming action movies as a cause for risk taking behavior is akin to blame video games for school shootings. There are so many things that make this parallel ridiculous. Firstly, a school shooter has to plan their actions out. As far as I'm aware, most display warning signs well before the shooting because they usually plan to do so long in advance. They thus need to be more or less aware of the fact that they are likely committing suicide, as well as murdering children. Thus, a shooter needs to mull over the very extreme negative consequences of their actions for days, if not weeks, before they take action. Risk-taking, in contrast, is usually impulsive. The action one intends to take is, furthermore, usually not whatever negative consequence they may unfortunately bring about. I hope you can see that it is dramatically, incomparably more difficult to condition a person to commit a school shooting than to condition them to be more willing to take risks. I also only brought up action movies as an example because I thought this would be very obvious. We tell boys, explicitly at times, that bravery, i.e. lack of fear, is part of being a man. One would intuitively expect that this could sometimes cause the dimmer males among us to engage in risky behavior to demonstrate their masculinity (hence why they so often do so in front of women they find attractive). > I dont know a single tribe that has broken the 'hunter - men, camp tasks - women' division. No offense, but your not knowing of it doesn't constitute an argument. I found this an informative read: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-men-evolved-to-hunt-and-women-evolved-to-gather-is-wrong1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-m... It leads by illustrating that women are perfectly capable hunters physically and mentally. It then points out that we have plenty of evidence to indicate that they did hunt. The reality is simply that ancient man couldn't afford to divide itself like that, and that doing so would be a massive waste of manpower. "For those practicing a foraging subsistence strategy in small family groups, flexibility and adaptability are much more important than rigid roles, gendered or otherwise. Individuals get injured or die, and the availability of animal and plant foods changes with the seasons. All group members need to be able to step into any role depending on the situation, whether that role is hunter or breeding partner." Skeletons of Neanderthals don't exhibit sex-differentiated wear and tear. "Neandertal females and males do not differ in their trauma patterns, nor do they exhibit sex differences in pathology from repetitive actions. Their skeletons show the same patterns of wear and tear. This finding suggests that they were doing the same things, from ambush-hunting large game animals to processing hides for leather." Tribes with shared responsibility exist. "Observations of recent and contemporary foraging societies provide direct evidence of women participating in hunting. The most cited examples come from the Agta people of the Philippines. Agta women hunt while menstruating, pregnant and breastfeeding, and they have the same hunting success as Agta men." Sex-based division of labor largely emerged with the advent of agriculture; it isn't ingrained in our genes the way you represent. "It was the arrival some 10,000 years ago of agriculture, with its intensive investment in land, population growth and resultant clumped resources, that led to rigid gendered roles and economic inequality." I'm sorry bombard you with a big article here, but I think this is a genuine misunderstanding and I hope you'll be open to the information, because I also used to assume men did the hunting and it was really informative when I learned about this. > We both know that sooner the hell will freeze over, than a study like that on infants will ever get approved A study on whether infants (or toddlers, since infants probably can't anticipate consequences) demonstrate differences in risk-taking behavior based on their sex? That seems pretty inoffensive to me; I wouldn't be surprised if one existed already.

BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago

The entire argument you're making regarding dogs can be reduced down to the statement that animals possess innate instincts, which nobody in their right mind could disagree with. I'll explain why that's all you're saying. Wolves have the instinct to herd animals then kill them. Border collies were selectively bred to reduce the instinct to kill while retaining the one to herd. They then, as puppies, go through months of scaffolded training to make them productive livestock herders. They don't pop out of the doggie womb as herding dogs, we build on top of their refined herding instinct through tons of conditioning. > Blaming action movies as a cause for risk taking behavior is akin to blame video games for school shootings. There are so many things that make this parallel ridiculous. Firstly, a school shooter has to plan their actions out. As far as I'm aware, most display warning signs well before the shooting because they usually plan to do so long in advance. They thus need to be more or less aware of the fact that they are likely committing suicide, as well as murdering children. Thus, a shooter needs to mull over the very extreme negative consequences of their actions for days, if not weeks, before they take action. Risk-taking, in contrast, is usually impulsive. The action one intends to take is, furthermore, usually not whatever negative consequence they may unfortunately bring about. I hope you can see that it is dramatically, incomparably more difficult to condition a person to commit a school shooting than to condition them to be more willing to take risks. I also only brought up action movies as an example because I thought this would be very obvious. We tell boys, explicitly at times, that bravery, i.e. lack of fear, is part of being a man. One would intuitively expect that this could sometimes cause the dimmer males among us to engage in risky behavior to demonstrate their masculinity (hence why they so often do so in front of women they find attractive). > I dont know a single tribe that has broken the 'hunter - men, camp tasks - women' division. No offense, but your not knowing of it doesn't constitute an argument. I found this an informative read: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-men-evolved-to-hunt-and-women-evolved-to-gather-is-wrong1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-m... It leads by illustrating that women are perfectly capable hunters physically and mentally. It then points out that we have plenty of evidence to indicate that they did hunt. The reality is simply that ancient man couldn't afford to divide itself like that, and that doing so would be a massive waste of manpower. "For those practicing a foraging subsistence strategy in small family groups, flexibility and adaptability are much more important than rigid roles, gendered or otherwise. Individuals get injured or die, and the availability of animal and plant foods changes with the seasons. All group members need to be able to step into any role depending on the situation, whether that role is hunter or breeding partner." Skeletons of Neanderthals don't exhibit sex-differentiated wear and tear. "Neandertal females and males do not differ in their trauma patterns, nor do they exhibit sex differences in pathology from repetitive actions. Their skeletons show the same patterns of wear and tear. This finding suggests that they were doing the same things, from ambush-hunting large game animals to processing hides for leather." Tribes with shared responsibility exist. "Observations of recent and contemporary foraging societies provide direct evidence of women participating in hunting. The most cited examples come from the Agta people of the Philippines. Agta women hunt while menstruating, pregnant and breastfeeding, and they have the same hunting success as Agta men." Sex-based division of labor largely emerged with the advent of agriculture; it isn't ingrained in our genes the way you represent. "It was the arrival some 10,000 years ago of agriculture, with its intensive investment in land, population growth and resultant clumped resources, that led to rigid gendered roles and economic inequality." I'm sorry bombard you with a big article here, but I think this is a genuine misunderstanding and I hope you'll be open to the information, because I also used to assume men did the hunting and it was really informative when I learned about this. > We both know that sooner the hell will freeze over, than a study like that on infants will ever get approved A study on whether infants (or toddlers, since infants probably can't anticipate consequences) demonstrate differences in risk-taking behavior based on their sex? That seems pretty inoffensive to me; I wouldn't be surprised if one existed already.