6 ms·

Why do we rape, kill and sleep around? Don't blame the caveman

40 points by madars 17y ago

michael_browne 17y ago
I'm surprised this article is getting as positive feedback as it is. The author is clearly guilty of a pretty significant straw-man argument, presenting evolutionary biology in very simplified, extreme terms, casting it as essentially hardline biological determinism. The author is clearly uncomfortable with the suggestion that violent and socially unacceptable actions may be very normal parts of human behavior (given the right environmental conditions) and seems very eager to validate any suggestion that we are "blank slates." The idea that there is no such thing as human nature is patently ridiculous. Is there no such thing as dog, or elephant, or orangutan nature? If we accept that at least one important aspect of what a human being is is an evolutionarily-developed biological organism, than how can this also not apply to us? At the same time, the idea that we are hopelessly determined to express our instincts and innate drives in any one particular way is also surely not valid. Are evo-psych researchers suggesting that the existence of genetic tendencies makes their (extreme) expression (via rape, murder, infanticide, etc.) acceptable? Clearly not, though that is what the author of the article is unavoidably hinting at with lines like "[l]et's not speculate on the motives that (mostly male) evolutionary psychologists might have in asserting that their wives are programmed to not really care if they sleep around..." Her tone throughout the piece communicates the opinion that evol-psych proponents are just looking for excuses for bad behavior, something which I really don’t think is true. Understanding why bad behaviors are so common is not the same things as justifying them and, actually, seems like a more useful step towards making society better than arguing that they’re just the result of "bad" individuals or something. Evolutionary biology is effective and meaningful when it is used to explain and account for the particular expression of some genetic tendency (in the form of an observed behavior.) It doesn’t make sense to argue that abuse of stepchildren, for instance, is an acceptable or inevitable thing in contemporary society for several reasons, including the fact that this particular expression of instinct is one we have deemed undesirable for moral/ethical reasons. The underlying idea, that we are genetically predisposed to care for our own offspring ahead of the offspring of others, though, seems a useful observation. Overall, theories like evo-psych are ways of understanding why things occur as they do, not a means of prescribing how they should or must be. That being said, political ideologies like mainstream feminism and much of contemporary liberalism intentionally strive to deny the existence of human nature or instinct because it doesn’t fit into their worldviews, more so than because it really appears not to be present, I suspect. They start with an abstract idea of how things "should" be and work backwards from there, rather than trying to understand why we are the way we are and then working forward from that. There seems to me a significant weakness and danger in drawing a blind spot upon our underlying motivations and darker, biological imperatives.
- olavk 17y ago
  The article does point out scientifically based refutations of some simplistic eve-psych explanations rape, abuse of stepchildren and so on. Doesn't your point about the motives of feminism and liberalism use political name-calling to counter the scientific arguments? I agree that evo-psych in general is an interesting field - and certainly all human behavior is somehow rooted in evolution. So of course rape also have some kind direct or indirect evolutionary explanation, just as love, music, wine-tasting, pole-sitting and so on. But the explanation is probably a lot more complex than "rape helps spread genes". Pop-evo-psych have gotten great exposition in the popular media lately, so it is quite refreshing to see a debunking.
  - Tichy 17y ago
    "refutations of some simplistic eve-psych explanations" That's one of the classics, though. For the same reason creationists think they have refuted evolution theory if they find some bone in some hidden corner of the world that some random biologist had a wrong hunch about. Some of the claims of "evo-psych" often seemed simplistic to me (like the hip-waist ratio), but then these were often the ones spread by journalists in popular newspapers, not by scientists. I wouldn't assume that they were as universally accepted among scientists. For a long time "strange" variations of sexual preference have been known, for example the mutilations some people seem to prefer (small feet in chinese women, elongated necks in some tribes where they put rings around their neck during growth and so on). I can't imagine any serious scientist would not know about them. Many of the "refutations" seem a bit weak, too. For example the rape gene: let's accept that for the average member of society rape makes no "economical" sense. But is the typical rapist an average member of society? If rape is your only chance at spreading your genes, the economics might be different. From the article it did not sound as if that was taken into account in the "refuation". Another thing I am 100% sure: evo-psych did not predict that women would prefer to be monogamous. So refuting that is just a strawman. The final straw for the article is when they describe how evo-psych can now only fight back by getting personal and unscientific. Followed up by a personal and unscientific quote by the anti-evo-psych guy.
    - 17y ago
deleted 17y ago
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tokenadult 17y ago
"Cashdan puts it this way: which body type men prefer 'should depend on the degree to which they want their mates to be strong, tough, economically successful and politically competitive.' "Depend on? The very phrase is anathema to the dogma of a universal human nature. But it is the essence of an emerging, competing field. Called behavioral ecology, it starts from the premise that social and environmental forces select for various behaviors that optimize people's fitness in a given environment. Different environment, different behaviors--and different human 'natures.'" The article reports a really interesting integration of evolutionary pressures on human thinking and social constraints on human behavior. Well worth a read.
- berntb 17y ago
  The article really do say that evolutionary biologists (here evol psychologists) don't think evolution can build a function into the brain that modifies behavior after environment... Which should either be a straw man argument or that the journalist has garbled some serious argument. Edit: In the last evolution article from the author, she fell over her own feet... explains a bit. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/sharon_begley_how_could_you.php http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/sharon_begley_how...
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    The article really do say that evolutionary biologists (here evol psychologists) don't think evolution can build a function into the brain that modifies behavior after environment. I'd like to respectfully request that you restate that sentence with clearer grammar. For what is mainstream in evolutionary psychology, one reasonable source is http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
    - berntb 17y ago
      Is this understandable: The article really claims that evol psychology says that the environment shouldn't influence behavior! (English isn't my native language and the only thing I can write clearly, without a few rewrites, is code.) It is a nice link, a long while since I read it.
geebee 17y ago
I'm glad that some of the more extreme conclusions of evolutionary psychology are being challenged, though not for political reasons. Their conclusions never really bothered me, because I never thought that an evolutionary incentive for immoral behavior gave a "free pass" in any way whatsoever. What I dislike about evolutionary psychology is that it often tries to use the word "scientific" for explanations that are really "just so." I suppose it's an improvement that the explanation made to fit "just so" fits with a vaguely scientific worldview rather than consulting the bones, tea leaves, tarot, or astrological charts. But a just so explanation that fits with science is not! scientific reasoning, and that's where the evo-pysch folks got themselves in trouble. I think evo-pysch is a great idea, but it needs to be scientific. And you know, some of it probably is - though those studies probably haven't produced the same sensationalistic headlines, and as a result aren't defining the field. "Just so" isn't scientific, but evo-psych certainly could be.
- Retric 17y ago
  I agree with the "just so" problem, but evolutionary psychology is still proposing testable ideas. You can look for the DNA that would cause the trait and you can simulate the history. Granted, simulations are imperfect and the article's simulation ignores rape of the concurred vs intra tribe rape and age factors etc, but it's still testing the hypothesis.
- dejb 17y ago
  I think the word 'scientific' is one of the most abused or confused words around. Should it only be used for areas where relative certainty can be established or should it also encompass logical and evidence-based speculation on things that cannot currently be tested well? It doesn't matter what the 'true' definition of the word is when the majority of people use it differently. From one direction calling evo-psych 'scientific' can fool others into believing there is more evidence than there really is. From the other side a well-reasoned argument with incomplete evidence like 'smoking causes cancer (in the 60s)' can be made to look like astrology by using the word 'unscientific'. Perhaps a new words need to be invented so that people can talk about these things more clearly.
  - 17y ago
ellyagg 17y ago
At some level, rape is absolutely a product of evolution, unless you don't believe in evolution. The desire for a male to have sex with a female is so strong that it approaches a need. Acknowledging this doesn't condone rape, but it does allow us to not be morons.
- dantheman 17y ago
  Isn't all human behavior is a product of evolution by definition? Humans like to explore because it can improve their mating chances due to prestige, wealth, less competitation (those unsuccessful thin the pack) hence people went to the moon. I'm not trying to be a troll, but how can we have behavior that wasn't caused by evolution?
  - jibiki 17y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology) Not contradicting you, just saying there are shades of nuance to the verb "to cause".
  - ellyagg 17y ago
    Sure, any behavior is going to be a product of evolution and environment. Of course, sex is actually the mechanism of evolution, so it's doubtful that pretending behaviors associated with it are not strongly related to it will yield sensible results.
  - berntb 17y ago
    >>I'm not trying to be a troll, but how can we have behavior that wasn't caused by evolution? We are genetically programmed (from evolution) to get most of our behavior from culture. That is what evolutionary biologists (and evolutionary psychologists) say, afaik. So lots of behavior is based on evolution, by way of cultural evolution. (Then there is random noise etc.) Edit: I might add that I believe the book about rape wasn't exactly seen as the best of research in the evol psychology area... But I've also seen lots of ideologically motivated (marxists and religious) attacks on evol psych.
  - sethg 17y ago
philwelch 17y ago
A lot of interesting and informative points. For instance, I never knew that the "universal preference" for a 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio was debunked.
drcode 17y ago
I think it's good that the tenets of evo psych are being challenged (they are indeed based on shaky evidence) but these naysayers do little to propose an alternative. The evo psych folks are at least offering some theories, which is still vastly superior than just saying "we'll never know."
- Avshalom 17y ago
  They're saying "We don't know" which is worlds apart from saying "We'll never know" and running around spouting bullshit to the the lay audience is vastly worse than saying "We don't know."
  - drcode 17y ago
    That's what science is: Coming up with bullshit (or "theories" as scientists call them) and then finding evidence for and against. As for scientists "spouting off", I think you sound pretty paternalistic saying that lay audiences need to be protected from scientific theories, no matter if they are unproven. As for whether the article argues "we'll never know", the gist of the article is that there is no way of answering these questions without having a time machine- That suggests they preclude the possibility of answering these questions. Then it knocks scientists who at least attempt to come up with theories, given the limited data, which is exactly what scientists _should_ try to do. (That being said, evo psych folks clearly have been sloppy in popular expositions just how shaky the foundations of the discipline actually are.)
akamaka 17y ago
Thank you very much for posting this! After years of reading articles that thoughtlessly parroted the lastet evo psych "research", I started to think that good science journalism was dead. Apparently some journalists can still think critcally!
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lallysingh 17y ago
1) I'm not seeing any discussion of group survival. At an individual level, a lot of human behavior can look counterproductive, but makes sense at the group sense. If a genetic line evolves to support other members of the same (or similar) line, then that line as a whole has a better chance of lasting. 2) If anyone's interested in longer discussions of these (and they are interesting): - _The_Red_Queen_ (why we sleep around) http://www.amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human-Nature/dp/0060556579/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1248738373&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human-Nature/dp/00... - _The_Dark_Side_Of_Man_ (why we rape, kill) http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Man-Michael-Ghiglieri/dp/0738203157/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1248738408&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Man-Michael-Ghiglieri/dp/073... Note that the 2nd tries to make political/policy conclusions which IMHO don't hold up. However, the scientific work in the text is pretty enjoyable.
req2 17y ago
"Depend on? The very phrase is anathema to the dogma of a universal human nature." It's unfortunate to find such a simple misunderstanding in the middle of the article; as Robert Wright explains in "The Moral Animal", it is not necessarily behavior that is coded, but adaptability. To shuffle this entire domain off to behavioral ecology ignores the fact that adaptability doesn't have to be an overt product of higher functions. An evolutionarily coded genotype that is dependent on environment for phenotype still falls under the purview of ev psych.
gort 17y ago
Some points in the article could be queried... (but I'm not trying to suggest this invalidates the whole thing) the notion that being a brave warrior helps a man get the girls and leave many offspring has been toppled. Until missionaries moved in in 1958, the Waorani tribe of the Ecuadoran Amazon had the highest rates of homicide known to science Why then are they being treated as representative? One would expect adaptations to be suited to normal conditions, not extreme outliers. If the male mind were adapted to prefer the most fertile women, then AARP-eligible men should marry 23-year-olds, which [...] they do not, instead preferring women well past their peak fertility. It's unclear what "prefer" means; but the context suggests it means "who did they actually marry" rather than "who would their ideal woman be". Clearly, we can't all get what we want. I really wish it was more common for articles like this to provide a list of the scientific papers they're relying on, so readers could conveniently investigate deeper (for some definition of "conveniently").
10ren 17y ago
I don't think we have much in the way of "behavioural modules" that are instinctively programmed for specific inputs and outputs, in the way a sensible engineer would design it. I doubt that many animals do. It's more likely that we have modules that react to a certain range of inputs, in certain ways, and their combination forms reactions that evolutionary pressure select against. It's neither modular nor hierarchical. In other words: mess, not modules. It's clear that animals have instincts, and it would be surprising if we didn't have any. Clearly, we do: for hunger, for sex, for defending territory, for pecking order (dominance hierarchies) but also for language, conscience, law, commerce, cooperation, tool-making and wanting to believe in something greater. These things arise in groups of us without instruction. But I think two kinds of layers separate us from most other animals, which the article refers to as our flexibility and adaptability. There is conscious adaptability, where you refrain from punching the other fellow on the nose, because of your ethics or fear of consequences or whatever - the reason doesn't matter, the point is that you can modify your response. And there's the much more important unconscious adaptability (which I think coincides with the physical outer layer in the brain - the cerebral cortex). Conceptually, this acts like an abstraction layer, so that you can treat a tool as an extension of your body; litigation as if it were a physical threat; or users of a computer program as if they formed a tribe. Your interpretation of input is what gives the input meaning - e.g. misunderstandings will affect your reaction. I think this layer can pretty much convert anything into anything; though some instincts, like hunger, can apply pressure towards overriding it (but not control - consider hunger strikers). I don't claim any special insight here, just restating common sense.
sethg 17y ago
I quibble with one small part of this article: [Evolutionary psychology] has had the field to itself, especially in the media, for almost two decades. In large part that was because early critics, led by the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, attacked it with arguments that went over the heads of everyone but about 19 experts in evolutionary theory. Philip Kitcher's Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature (MIT Press, 1987) is a thorough devastating takedown of sociobiology, especially what Kitcher calls "pop sociobiology". Except for bits of the first and last chapters, it is entirely based on empirical arguments rather than "OMG the political implications of this are awful"; and you don't need a biology degree to understand it. All the arguments I have seen for the controversial claims in popularized evolutionary psychology (e.g., "this behavior exists and therefore it must be adaptive") were answered by Kitcher twenty years ago. (I don't follow the field, so if there are people doing good work in evo-psych that is too boring for the mainstream press, well, good for them.) (Kitcher also wrote Abusing Science, a takedown of "creation science", back when it was called "creation science" rather than "intelligent design".)
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40 points by madars 17y ago

I'm surprised this article is getting as positive feedback as it is. The author is clearly guilty of a pretty significant straw-man argument, presenting evolutionary biology in very simplified, extreme terms, casting it as essentially hardline biological determinism. The author is clearly uncomfortable with the suggestion that violent and socially unacceptable actions may be very normal parts of human behavior (given the right environmental conditions) and seems very eager to validate any suggestion that we are "blank slates." The idea that there is no such thing as human nature is patently ridiculous. Is there no such thing as dog, or elephant, or orangutan nature? If we accept that at least one important aspect of what a human being is is an evolutionarily-developed biological organism, than how can this also not apply to us? At the same time, the idea that we are hopelessly determined to express our instincts and innate drives in any one particular way is also surely not valid. Are evo-psych researchers suggesting that the existence of genetic tendencies makes their (extreme) expression (via rape, murder, infanticide, etc.) acceptable? Clearly not, though that is what the author of the article is unavoidably hinting at with lines like "[l]et's not speculate on the motives that (mostly male) evolutionary psychologists might have in asserting that their wives are programmed to not really care if they sleep around..." Her tone throughout the piece communicates the opinion that evol-psych proponents are just looking for excuses for bad behavior, something which I really don’t think is true. Understanding why bad behaviors are so common is not the same things as justifying them and, actually, seems like a more useful step towards making society better than arguing that they’re just the result of "bad" individuals or something. Evolutionary biology is effective and meaningful when it is used to explain and account for the particular expression of some genetic tendency (in the form of an observed behavior.) It doesn’t make sense to argue that abuse of stepchildren, for instance, is an acceptable or inevitable thing in contemporary society for several reasons, including the fact that this particular expression of instinct is one we have deemed undesirable for moral/ethical reasons. The underlying idea, that we are genetically predisposed to care for our own offspring ahead of the offspring of others, though, seems a useful observation. Overall, theories like evo-psych are ways of understanding why things occur as they do, not a means of prescribing how they should or must be. That being said, political ideologies like mainstream feminism and much of contemporary liberalism intentionally strive to deny the existence of human nature or instinct because it doesn’t fit into their worldviews, more so than because it really appears not to be present, I suspect. They start with an abstract idea of how things "should" be and work backwards from there, rather than trying to understand why we are the way we are and then working forward from that. There seems to me a significant weakness and danger in drawing a blind spot upon our underlying motivations and darker, biological imperatives.

olavk 17y ago
The article does point out scientifically based refutations of some simplistic eve-psych explanations rape, abuse of stepchildren and so on. Doesn't your point about the motives of feminism and liberalism use political name-calling to counter the scientific arguments? I agree that evo-psych in general is an interesting field - and certainly all human behavior is somehow rooted in evolution. So of course rape also have some kind direct or indirect evolutionary explanation, just as love, music, wine-tasting, pole-sitting and so on. But the explanation is probably a lot more complex than "rape helps spread genes". Pop-evo-psych have gotten great exposition in the popular media lately, so it is quite refreshing to see a debunking.
- Tichy 17y ago
  "refutations of some simplistic eve-psych explanations" That's one of the classics, though. For the same reason creationists think they have refuted evolution theory if they find some bone in some hidden corner of the world that some random biologist had a wrong hunch about. Some of the claims of "evo-psych" often seemed simplistic to me (like the hip-waist ratio), but then these were often the ones spread by journalists in popular newspapers, not by scientists. I wouldn't assume that they were as universally accepted among scientists. For a long time "strange" variations of sexual preference have been known, for example the mutilations some people seem to prefer (small feet in chinese women, elongated necks in some tribes where they put rings around their neck during growth and so on). I can't imagine any serious scientist would not know about them. Many of the "refutations" seem a bit weak, too. For example the rape gene: let's accept that for the average member of society rape makes no "economical" sense. But is the typical rapist an average member of society? If rape is your only chance at spreading your genes, the economics might be different. From the article it did not sound as if that was taken into account in the "refuation". Another thing I am 100% sure: evo-psych did not predict that women would prefer to be monogamous. So refuting that is just a strawman. The final straw for the article is when they describe how evo-psych can now only fight back by getting personal and unscientific. Followed up by a personal and unscientific quote by the anti-evo-psych guy.
  - 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

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tokenadult 17y ago

"Cashdan puts it this way: which body type men prefer 'should depend on the degree to which they want their mates to be strong, tough, economically successful and politically competitive.' "Depend on? The very phrase is anathema to the dogma of a universal human nature. But it is the essence of an emerging, competing field. Called behavioral ecology, it starts from the premise that social and environmental forces select for various behaviors that optimize people's fitness in a given environment. Different environment, different behaviors--and different human 'natures.'" The article reports a really interesting integration of evolutionary pressures on human thinking and social constraints on human behavior. Well worth a read.

berntb 17y ago
The article really do say that evolutionary biologists (here evol psychologists) don't think evolution can build a function into the brain that modifies behavior after environment... Which should either be a straw man argument or that the journalist has garbled some serious argument. Edit: In the last evolution article from the author, she fell over her own feet... explains a bit. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/sharon_begley_how_could_you.php http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/sharon_begley_how...
- tokenadult 17y ago
  The article really do say that evolutionary biologists (here evol psychologists) don't think evolution can build a function into the brain that modifies behavior after environment. I'd like to respectfully request that you restate that sentence with clearer grammar. For what is mainstream in evolutionary psychology, one reasonable source is http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.html
  - berntb 17y ago
    Is this understandable: The article really claims that evol psychology says that the environment shouldn't influence behavior! (English isn't my native language and the only thing I can write clearly, without a few rewrites, is code.) It is a nice link, a long while since I read it.

geebee 17y ago

I'm glad that some of the more extreme conclusions of evolutionary psychology are being challenged, though not for political reasons. Their conclusions never really bothered me, because I never thought that an evolutionary incentive for immoral behavior gave a "free pass" in any way whatsoever. What I dislike about evolutionary psychology is that it often tries to use the word "scientific" for explanations that are really "just so." I suppose it's an improvement that the explanation made to fit "just so" fits with a vaguely scientific worldview rather than consulting the bones, tea leaves, tarot, or astrological charts. But a just so explanation that fits with science is not! scientific reasoning, and that's where the evo-pysch folks got themselves in trouble. I think evo-pysch is a great idea, but it needs to be scientific. And you know, some of it probably is - though those studies probably haven't produced the same sensationalistic headlines, and as a result aren't defining the field. "Just so" isn't scientific, but evo-psych certainly could be.

Retric 17y ago
I agree with the "just so" problem, but evolutionary psychology is still proposing testable ideas. You can look for the DNA that would cause the trait and you can simulate the history. Granted, simulations are imperfect and the article's simulation ignores rape of the concurred vs intra tribe rape and age factors etc, but it's still testing the hypothesis.
dejb 17y ago
I think the word 'scientific' is one of the most abused or confused words around. Should it only be used for areas where relative certainty can be established or should it also encompass logical and evidence-based speculation on things that cannot currently be tested well? It doesn't matter what the 'true' definition of the word is when the majority of people use it differently. From one direction calling evo-psych 'scientific' can fool others into believing there is more evidence than there really is. From the other side a well-reasoned argument with incomplete evidence like 'smoking causes cancer (in the 60s)' can be made to look like astrology by using the word 'unscientific'. Perhaps a new words need to be invented so that people can talk about these things more clearly.
- 17y ago

ellyagg 17y ago

At some level, rape is absolutely a product of evolution, unless you don't believe in evolution. The desire for a male to have sex with a female is so strong that it approaches a need. Acknowledging this doesn't condone rape, but it does allow us to not be morons.

dantheman 17y ago
Isn't all human behavior is a product of evolution by definition? Humans like to explore because it can improve their mating chances due to prestige, wealth, less competitation (those unsuccessful thin the pack) hence people went to the moon. I'm not trying to be a troll, but how can we have behavior that wasn't caused by evolution?
- jibiki 17y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology) Not contradicting you, just saying there are shades of nuance to the verb "to cause".
- ellyagg 17y ago
  Sure, any behavior is going to be a product of evolution and environment. Of course, sex is actually the mechanism of evolution, so it's doubtful that pretending behaviors associated with it are not strongly related to it will yield sensible results.
- berntb 17y ago
  >>I'm not trying to be a troll, but how can we have behavior that wasn't caused by evolution? We are genetically programmed (from evolution) to get most of our behavior from culture. That is what evolutionary biologists (and evolutionary psychologists) say, afaik. So lots of behavior is based on evolution, by way of cultural evolution. (Then there is random noise etc.) Edit: I might add that I believe the book about rape wasn't exactly seen as the best of research in the evol psychology area... But I've also seen lots of ideologically motivated (marxists and religious) attacks on evol psych.
- sethg 17y ago

philwelch 17y ago

A lot of interesting and informative points. For instance, I never knew that the "universal preference" for a 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio was debunked.

drcode 17y ago

I think it's good that the tenets of evo psych are being challenged (they are indeed based on shaky evidence) but these naysayers do little to propose an alternative. The evo psych folks are at least offering some theories, which is still vastly superior than just saying "we'll never know."

Avshalom 17y ago
They're saying "We don't know" which is worlds apart from saying "We'll never know" and running around spouting bullshit to the the lay audience is vastly worse than saying "We don't know."
- drcode 17y ago
  That's what science is: Coming up with bullshit (or "theories" as scientists call them) and then finding evidence for and against. As for scientists "spouting off", I think you sound pretty paternalistic saying that lay audiences need to be protected from scientific theories, no matter if they are unproven. As for whether the article argues "we'll never know", the gist of the article is that there is no way of answering these questions without having a time machine- That suggests they preclude the possibility of answering these questions. Then it knocks scientists who at least attempt to come up with theories, given the limited data, which is exactly what scientists _should_ try to do. (That being said, evo psych folks clearly have been sloppy in popular expositions just how shaky the foundations of the discipline actually are.)

akamaka 17y ago

Thank you very much for posting this! After years of reading articles that thoughtlessly parroted the lastet evo psych "research", I started to think that good science journalism was dead. Apparently some journalists can still think critcally!

deleted 17y ago
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[deleted]

deleted 17y ago
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lallysingh 17y ago

1) I'm not seeing any discussion of group survival. At an individual level, a lot of human behavior can look counterproductive, but makes sense at the group sense. If a genetic line evolves to support other members of the same (or similar) line, then that line as a whole has a better chance of lasting. 2) If anyone's interested in longer discussions of these (and they are interesting): - _The_Red_Queen_ (why we sleep around) http://www.amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human-Nature/dp/0060556579/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1248738373&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Red-Queen-Evolution-Human-Nature/dp/00... - _The_Dark_Side_Of_Man_ (why we rape, kill) http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Man-Michael-Ghiglieri/dp/0738203157/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1248738408&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Man-Michael-Ghiglieri/dp/073... Note that the 2nd tries to make political/policy conclusions which IMHO don't hold up. However, the scientific work in the text is pretty enjoyable.

req2 17y ago

"Depend on? The very phrase is anathema to the dogma of a universal human nature." It's unfortunate to find such a simple misunderstanding in the middle of the article; as Robert Wright explains in "The Moral Animal", it is not necessarily behavior that is coded, but adaptability. To shuffle this entire domain off to behavioral ecology ignores the fact that adaptability doesn't have to be an overt product of higher functions. An evolutionarily coded genotype that is dependent on environment for phenotype still falls under the purview of ev psych.

gort 17y ago

Some points in the article could be queried... (but I'm not trying to suggest this invalidates the whole thing) the notion that being a brave warrior helps a man get the girls and leave many offspring has been toppled. Until missionaries moved in in 1958, the Waorani tribe of the Ecuadoran Amazon had the highest rates of homicide known to science Why then are they being treated as representative? One would expect adaptations to be suited to normal conditions, not extreme outliers. If the male mind were adapted to prefer the most fertile women, then AARP-eligible men should marry 23-year-olds, which [...] they do not, instead preferring women well past their peak fertility. It's unclear what "prefer" means; but the context suggests it means "who did they actually marry" rather than "who would their ideal woman be". Clearly, we can't all get what we want. I really wish it was more common for articles like this to provide a list of the scientific papers they're relying on, so readers could conveniently investigate deeper (for some definition of "conveniently").

10ren 17y ago

I don't think we have much in the way of "behavioural modules" that are instinctively programmed for specific inputs and outputs, in the way a sensible engineer would design it. I doubt that many animals do. It's more likely that we have modules that react to a certain range of inputs, in certain ways, and their combination forms reactions that evolutionary pressure select against. It's neither modular nor hierarchical. In other words: mess, not modules. It's clear that animals have instincts, and it would be surprising if we didn't have any. Clearly, we do: for hunger, for sex, for defending territory, for pecking order (dominance hierarchies) but also for language, conscience, law, commerce, cooperation, tool-making and wanting to believe in something greater. These things arise in groups of us without instruction. But I think two kinds of layers separate us from most other animals, which the article refers to as our flexibility and adaptability. There is conscious adaptability, where you refrain from punching the other fellow on the nose, because of your ethics or fear of consequences or whatever - the reason doesn't matter, the point is that you can modify your response. And there's the much more important unconscious adaptability (which I think coincides with the physical outer layer in the brain - the cerebral cortex). Conceptually, this acts like an abstraction layer, so that you can treat a tool as an extension of your body; litigation as if it were a physical threat; or users of a computer program as if they formed a tribe. Your interpretation of input is what gives the input meaning - e.g. misunderstandings will affect your reaction. I think this layer can pretty much convert anything into anything; though some instincts, like hunger, can apply pressure towards overriding it (but not control - consider hunger strikers). I don't claim any special insight here, just restating common sense.

sethg 17y ago

I quibble with one small part of this article: [Evolutionary psychology] has had the field to itself, especially in the media, for almost two decades. In large part that was because early critics, led by the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, attacked it with arguments that went over the heads of everyone but about 19 experts in evolutionary theory. Philip Kitcher's Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature (MIT Press, 1987) is a thorough devastating takedown of sociobiology, especially what Kitcher calls "pop sociobiology". Except for bits of the first and last chapters, it is entirely based on empirical arguments rather than "OMG the political implications of this are awful"; and you don't need a biology degree to understand it. All the arguments I have seen for the controversial claims in popularized evolutionary psychology (e.g., "this behavior exists and therefore it must be adaptive") were answered by Kitcher twenty years ago. (I don't follow the field, so if there are people doing good work in evo-psych that is too boring for the mainstream press, well, good for them.) (Kitcher also wrote Abusing Science, a takedown of "creation science", back when it was called "creation science" rather than "intelligent design".)

deleted 17y ago

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