Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Roger Critchlow]

Ah, here's an article about Peterson that touches on the evolutionary psych
angle,


http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and-fascist-mysticism/

but what's a little pseudo-science among fascist mystics?

-- rec --

On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 1:43 PM, uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:

> Well, again caveat my ignorance, many of these evolutionary justifications
> seem to ignore any possible eusocial effects.  The idea of transgenders
> showing a predisposition to hair dressing BEGS us to make a spitball
> eusocial (or at least semiotic) evolutionary argument ... you know, the
> benefits of good grooming and all.
>
> The same could easily be said for curiosity and intelligence.  Groups with
> innovative members are likely to outperform groups without them ... like
> Steve's regular invocation of The Shaman.  I know *I'm* happier with people
> like Lady Gaga and Marilyn Manson running around making noise. 8^)
>
> On 03/09/2018 10:26 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> > I thought of that factoid when looking over some of Peterson's remarks.
>  If this is generally true in the population, is it because of nature vs.
> nurture?   I anecdotally had the experience it was true, and that (just
> now) made me go look to see if there was any research on it.
> > Lady Gaga's interpretation of Born This Way seems to be the
> politically-correct perspective these days.   (As opposed to the more
> sensible "Who the hell are you to tell me how to live?")
> > Presumably, the T in LGBT would also tend to adopt that perspective.
>  Running with that, it seems to be reasonable to ask what other
> pseudo-gender differences exist, like intelligence, and the other things
> mentioned.
> > There could be cognitive benefits to the alternative wiring, like there
> might be creative benefits from having synesthesia.
> >
> > Alternatively, a Peterson (faced with robust statistics on this) would
> have to consider the hypothesis that the (maladaptive?) lifestyle selected
> for intelligence or perhaps even improved it.
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Well, again caveat my ignorance, many of these evolutionary justifications seem 
to ignore any possible eusocial effects.  The idea of transgenders showing a 
predisposition to hair dressing BEGS us to make a spitball eusocial (or at 
least semiotic) evolutionary argument ... you know, the benefits of good 
grooming and all.

The same could easily be said for curiosity and intelligence.  Groups with 
innovative members are likely to outperform groups without them ... like 
Steve's regular invocation of The Shaman.  I know *I'm* happier with people 
like Lady Gaga and Marilyn Manson running around making noise. 8^)

On 03/09/2018 10:26 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I thought of that factoid when looking over some of Peterson's remarks.   If 
> this is generally true in the population, is it because of nature vs. 
> nurture?   I anecdotally had the experience it was true, and that (just now) 
> made me go look to see if there was any research on it.
> Lady Gaga's interpretation of Born This Way seems to be the 
> politically-correct perspective these days.   (As opposed to the more 
> sensible "Who the hell are you to tell me how to live?")
> Presumably, the T in LGBT would also tend to adopt that perspective.   
> Running with that, it seems to be reasonable to ask what other pseudo-gender 
> differences exist, like intelligence, and the other things mentioned.
> There could be cognitive benefits to the alternative wiring, like there might 
> be creative benefits from having synesthesia.
> 
> Alternatively, a Peterson (faced with robust statistics on this) would have 
> to consider the hypothesis that the (maladaptive?) lifestyle selected for 
> intelligence or perhaps even improved it.


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Marcus Daniels]

I thought of that factoid when looking over some of Peterson's remarks.   If 
this is generally true in the population, is it because of nature vs. nurture?  
 I anecdotally had the experience it was true, and that (just now) made me go 
look to see if there was any research on it.
Lady Gaga's interpretation of Born This Way seems to be the politically-correct 
perspective these days.   (As opposed to the more sensible "Who the hell are 
you to tell me how to live?")
Presumably, the T in LGBT would also tend to adopt that perspective.   Running 
with that, it seems to be reasonable to ask what other pseudo-gender 
differences exist, like intelligence, and the other things mentioned.
There could be cognitive benefits to the alternative wiring, like there might 
be creative benefits from having synesthesia.

Alternatively, a Peterson (faced with robust statistics on this) would have to 
consider the hypothesis that the (maladaptive?) lifestyle selected for 
intelligence or perhaps even improved it.

Marcus

On 3/9/18, 10:36 AM, "Friam on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣"  wrote:

Weird paper!  Right off the bat, I'm not surprised by the inference that 
people who entertain the idea of being a different gender would test with 
higher IQs.  But I *am* surprised by their abilities to draw!  Surely the 
authors cherry-picked the good ones and the rest were as crappy as my own 
attempts to draw people.

On 03/08/2018 12:59 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> 
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10./j.2164-0947.1967.tb02279.x/abstract


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Weird paper!  Right off the bat, I'm not surprised by the inference that people 
who entertain the idea of being a different gender would test with higher IQs.  
But I *am* surprised by their abilities to draw!  Surely the authors 
cherry-picked the good ones and the rest were as crappy as my own attempts to 
draw people.

On 03/08/2018 12:59 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10./j.2164-0947.1967.tb02279.x/abstract


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Marcus Daniels]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10./j.2164-0947.1967.tb02279.x/abstract




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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Ah!  OK.  I take it that you're not looking at any of Peterson's videos, then 
... only at the commentary about his videos/lectures/book, etc.

I also hear you when you say you haven't seen evidence that Peterson is an 
evolutionary psychologist (because his Wikipedia page or whatever doesn't 
mention it).  But that's some sort of persnickety "letter" vs. "spirit".  Even 
if there's some obscure technical defn of "evolutionary psychologist" that 
Peterson does not meet, he's clearly a clinical psychologist whose professorial 
lectures and his pop book justify his psychological framework with concepts 
from biological evolution.  So, he fits pretty much every defn of "evolutionary 
psychologist" I can think of, in my naivety.  If you can present a definition 
for which he does not fit, I'd appreciate hearing it.

More directly, though, it's not at all clear that the typical conservative 
rhetoric consists of evolutionary arguments.  There's a common conception that 
much of conservative rhetoric denies biological evolution.  I've already agreed 
that Peterson and his ilk (like Harris and Haidt) often slip down the slope 
into typical conservative rhetoric.  But that ilk makes a special appeal to 
authority by winding back to more solid turf, invoking "science" (neuro- for 
Harris, social- for Haidt, evolution for Peterson) when the validity of their 
inferences are challenged.  In these cases, we have to separate the champion 
from their followers.  Peterson's fanboys might rely on the typical 
conservative rhetoric, but Peterson does not.  He pretends/tries to *derive* 
typical conservative rhetoric from more primitive principles.

I suppose I can answer my own question to you and say that the analogies 
Peterson:Harris and Peterson:Haidt are broken because Peterson has no credible 
(scientific) background in evolution.  He's merely cherry-picked popularized 
tokens from evolution to use willy-nilly.  But, implicitly assuming that is 
analogous to implicitly assuming meteorologists *obviously* can't speak 
credibly about climate science.  And we know how badly that assumption has hurt 
the climate science literacy.  As unfair as it is 
(http://quillette.com/2016/02/15/the-unbearable-asymmetry-of-bullshit/), the 
burden lies upon those of you who are literate to illuminate and educate those 
of us who are pseudo-literate.

Hence, this thread.

On 03/08/2018 11:13 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> I'm not finding any pseudo-scientific arguments in the stuff I'm looking
> at.  It's just typical conservative rhetoric: my rights, my rights!  the
> marxists, the marxists! all to defend the established order at any cost.  I
> guess this article,
> https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/rights-favorite-new-intellectual-has-some-truly-pitiable-ideas-about-masculinity,
> from your first post found some evolutionary psychology, but it sounds more
> like rhetorical sawdust than the planks he stands on.
> 
> I guess maybe I am being picky.

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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Roger Critchlow]

I'm not finding any pseudo-scientific arguments in the stuff I'm looking
at.  It's just typical conservative rhetoric: my rights, my rights!  the
marxists, the marxists! all to defend the established order at any cost.  I
guess this article,
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/rights-favorite-new-intellectual-has-some-truly-pitiable-ideas-about-masculinity,
from your first post found some evolutionary psychology, but it sounds more
like rhetorical sawdust than the planks he stands on.

I guess maybe I am being picky.

-- rec --

On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 12:25 PM, uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:

> I'm confused by your use of "again".  This all smacks of pseudoscience,
> similar to the anti-vaxxers and the hyped claims of chemicals like
> reseveratrol or bee pollen.  Perhaps you're using a focused definition of
> "pseudoscience"?  For me, it's basically any claim dressed up in the
> trappings of science, but lacking any credible methodology.
>
> Peterson dresses his obsolete cultural and psychological ideas up in the
> trappings of biological evolution, with no methodology to back them up.
> So, his claims are pseudoscience.  It's difficult for me to impute that you
> (or any scientifically literate person would) disagree. 8^)
>
> Now, you could simply be arguing that evopsych is not pseudoscience,
> Peterson is pseudoscientific, hence Peterson is not evopsych.  That seems
> reasonable.  Or, perhaps you're simply saying that this article, like so
> many others don't make a clear case for (or against) Peterson's claims as
> pseudoscientific?
>
>
> On 03/08/2018 09:10 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> > Again there's no hint of pseudo-science, he's getting roasted by lawyers
> in this telling for simple factual errors.
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

I'm confused by your use of "again".  This all smacks of pseudoscience, similar 
to the anti-vaxxers and the hyped claims of chemicals like reseveratrol or bee 
pollen.  Perhaps you're using a focused definition of "pseudoscience"?  For me, 
it's basically any claim dressed up in the trappings of science, but lacking 
any credible methodology.

Peterson dresses his obsolete cultural and psychological ideas up in the 
trappings of biological evolution, with no methodology to back them up.  So, 
his claims are pseudoscience.  It's difficult for me to impute that you (or any 
scientifically literate person would) disagree. 8^)

Now, you could simply be arguing that evopsych is not pseudoscience, Peterson 
is pseudoscientific, hence Peterson is not evopsych.  That seems reasonable.  
Or, perhaps you're simply saying that this article, like so many others don't 
make a clear case for (or against) Peterson's claims as pseudoscientific?


On 03/08/2018 09:10 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> Again there's no hint of pseudo-science, he's getting roasted by lawyers in 
> this telling for simple factual errors.
-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Roger Critchlow]

Here's another take on Jordan Peterson from The Medium by a guy who also
got the recommendation from YouTube.  Sounds like Peterson's campaign
against the Canadian civil rights legislation was a bunch of hooey, too.
https://medium.com/s/story/a-field-guide-to-jordan-petersons-political-arguments-312153eac99a
Again there's no hint of pseudo-science, he's getting roasted by lawyers in
this telling for simple factual errors.  There's an article in Time, too,
haven't had the heart to look at that.

It seemed to me that all of this feeds back into the sustainable minority
paper.  The alt-right is afraid of being swallowed up by the globalist
majority, christian bakers afraid of enforced cakes, canadian psychologists
afraid of non-binary pronouns, women afraid of male violence, blacks of
white violence, back country tribes afraid of casual weekend genocides, gun
owners of gun confiscation, & c..   So, is the fundamental question of the
age who gets refuge and what kind of refuge do they get?  Because we're not
addressing the question at all, we're still arguing about who gets to be
the dominant group and what indignities they can impose on the rest of us.

-- rec --





On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 6:31 PM, uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:

> That's a great way to phrase the question.  It highlights, I think, that
> evolutionary _psychology_ is a bit strange.  It's much stranger than, say,
> the article Roger posted, which refers to evolutionary anthropology.  In
> this question, there are 2 concrete things: 1) the extent to which
> poly[andry|gyny] is engaged vs. 2) the extent to which it is accepted,
> discussed, thought about, etc.  It (again) brings to mind the ubiquity of
> hypocrisy (a form of game playing) as a kind of falsification method for
> evolutionary psychological hypotheses. The preacher preaches against some
> behavior, but then is found to engage in that behavior.  Or, another
> example, an insecure male watches youtube videos which present rhetoric he
> can wear on his sleeve (Peterson) and how-to instructions on how to better
> *present* a persona, but deep down, in his physiology, he is insecure, the
> opposite of the affect presented.
>
> So, if evopsych is *anything*, it should be about the *disconnect* between
> behavior and what we say/think about that behavior.
>
>
> On 03/01/2018 03:07 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> > Finally, and to the point of this thread, might the prevalence of
> polygyny and the rarity of polyandry among humans be an evolutionary
> adaptation" and/or an evolutionary psychology adaptaptation?
> >
> > Evidence suggests that women can accommodate the sexual needs of
> multiple husbands, but not the procreative needs. cultural evolution might
> allow for polyandrous relations within the context of cultural evolution
> but the procreative needs would dominate biological evolution.
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

That's a great way to phrase the question.  It highlights, I think, that 
evolutionary _psychology_ is a bit strange.  It's much stranger than, say, the 
article Roger posted, which refers to evolutionary anthropology.  In this 
question, there are 2 concrete things: 1) the extent to which poly[andry|gyny] 
is engaged vs. 2) the extent to which it is accepted, discussed, thought about, 
etc.  It (again) brings to mind the ubiquity of hypocrisy (a form of game 
playing) as a kind of falsification method for evolutionary psychological 
hypotheses. The preacher preaches against some behavior, but then is found to 
engage in that behavior.  Or, another example, an insecure male watches youtube 
videos which present rhetoric he can wear on his sleeve (Peterson) and how-to 
instructions on how to better *present* a persona, but deep down, in his 
physiology, he is insecure, the opposite of the affect presented.

So, if evopsych is *anything*, it should be about the *disconnect* between 
behavior and what we say/think about that behavior.


On 03/01/2018 03:07 PM, Prof David West wrote:
> Finally, and to the point of this thread, might the prevalence of polygyny 
> and the rarity of polyandry among humans be an evolutionary adaptation" 
> and/or an evolutionary psychology adaptaptation?
> 
> Evidence suggests that women can accommodate the sexual needs of multiple 
> husbands, but not the procreative needs. cultural evolution might allow for 
> polyandrous relations within the context of cultural evolution but the 
> procreative needs would dominate biological evolution.

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Prof David West]

An observation, if this thread is not totally abandoned.

Last Thursday night I had a conversation with Brigham Young. (I am a
huge fan of and explorer of altered states of consciousness, so take
that statement as denoting an experience that my mind turned into a
visual/audio metaphor.) One of the threads in our discussion was women
and in particular why so many religions (Christianity, Islam, Mormonism)
that began with pro-woman beliefs and practices only to devolve into
abhorrent misogynistic cults. (Brigham was an ardent feminist.)
I was talking with a friend about this conversation and he challenged me
with the question: if they were so pro-female, why not practice
polyandry? My first response was he was mistaking polygyny as a
"privilege" rather than a "responsibility." Of course, the foundation of
his taking things this way was the apparent sexual availability of
multiple women.
That aside, I began thinking about why polygyny is so common and
polyandry is so rare. About 2/3 of the cultures we know about are
'officially' polygynous — multiple wives and consorts are approved and
expected. Almost a third of cultures are serial monogamist. around 1%
are monogamous, and only a handful are polyandrous. In those few that
are polyandrous, it is most commonly fraternal polyandry — marry a man
and all his brothers.
Thoughts circled back to the onus of polygyny via Mark Twain's faux
interview of Brigham Young. Brigham saying that he cannot bring a
rose to one of his wives, he must bring 27 and how expensive that is.
And, if he gives a tin whistle to one child he must give one to each,
and imagine living in a home with 40-50 kids running around blowing
tin whistles.
Almost flow of consciousness takes me back to Peterson. His "alpha
males" cannot be more than greedy little boys because they do not accept
the responsibility of their actions - they are not Men! The same scorn
directed to absentee fathers in impoverished communities has been earned
by Peterson's minions. In cultures like Mormonism and mainstream Islam,
polygyny is (was) allowed, but there are strict expectations that must
be met by the polygynist.
Finally, and to the point of this thread, might the prevalence of
polygyny and the rarity of polyandry among humans be an evolutionary
adaptation" and/or an evolutionary psychology adaptaptation?
Evidence suggests that women can accommodate the sexual needs of
multiple husbands, but not the procreative needs. cultural evolution
might allow for polyandrous relations within the context of cultural
evolution but the procreative needs would dominate biological evolution.
davew



On Sun, Feb 25, 2018, at 12:04 PM, Edward Angel wrote:
> Both the Lena image and the Utah Teapot have their own
> wikipedia pages.> 
> I was working with the image processing group at USC when they started
> using  the Lena image as their standard test image. Before that they
> had been using what they all called the “girl image” which was
> probably from the 50’s and had a resolution of around 256 x 256 so it
> was pretty limited. There were no women working in what was a very
> large research group so I doubt there was any protest over the use of
> the Playboy centerfold. At that time it was not easy to find good
> images to test compression algorithms with.> 
> The Utah teapot was created by Martin Newell at Utah from his wife’s
> teapot. It was very nice because it could be described by 32 smooth
> bicubic spline patches and was used everywhere for a long time to test
> rendering algorithms. It’s not used much anymore as people use much
> larger data sets and there isn’t as much interest in splines since you
> now render tens of millions of animated triangles in real time.> 
> The really great story about standard data sets (but not on wikipedia)
> is the 3D data set of a lobster. It was created from a CT scan of dead
> lobster. I heard a talk by the guy who did it. He had to sneak into
> the medical scanner room in a hospital where he was working at night
> to do it. It took multiple days at the end of which the lobster really
> reeked and was losing body parts (which is noticeable in the
> reconstruction). My student, Pat Crossno, did the 3D reconstruction
> with a particle system that sought out body parts and then distributed
> the particles across the surfaces.> 
> Ed
> 
> ___
> 
> Ed Angel
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
> (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of
> New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home)   an...@cs.unm.edu
> 505-453-4944 (cell)   http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
> 
> 
>> On Feb 25, 2018, at 11:28 AM, Steven A Smith
>>  wrote:>> 
>> I appreciate and second Ed's observaions here.  While my own role as
>> an instructor during this period was very limited.   I was first a
>> student *among* CS majors (I was a Physics/Math major with a CS
>> minor) in the 70's when it was all pretty new by some measure

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Edward Angel]

Both the Lena image and the Utah Teapot have their own wikipedia pages.

I was working with the image processing group at USC when they started using  
the Lena image as their standard test image. Before that they had been using 
what they all called the “girl image” which was probably from the 50’s and had 
a resolution of around 256 x 256 so it was pretty limited. There were no women 
working in what was a very large research group so I doubt there was any 
protest over the use of the Playboy centerfold. At that time it was not easy to 
find good images to test compression algorithms with. 

The Utah teapot was created by Martin Newell at Utah from his wife’s teapot. It 
was very nice because it could be described by 32 smooth bicubic spline patches 
and was used everywhere for a long time to test rendering algorithms. It’s not 
used much anymore as people use much larger data sets and there isn’t as much 
interest in splines since you now render tens of millions of animated triangles 
in real time.

The really great story about standard data sets (but not on wikipedia) is the 
3D data set of a lobster. It was created from a CT scan of dead lobster. I 
heard a talk by the guy who did it. He had to sneak into the medical scanner 
room in a hospital where he was working at night to do it. It took multiple 
days at the end of which the lobster really reeked and was losing body parts 
(which is noticeable in the reconstruction). My student, Pat Crossno, did the 
3D reconstruction with a particle system that sought out body parts and then 
distributed the particles across the surfaces.

Ed
___

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 

505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel 


> On Feb 25, 2018, at 11:28 AM, Steven A Smith  wrote:
> 
> I appreciate and second Ed's observaions here.  While my own role as an 
> instructor during this period was very limited.   I was first a student 
> *among* CS majors (I was a Physics/Math major with a CS minor) in the 70's 
> when it was all pretty new by some measure and the participation by women was 
> higher than in the more physical engineering and science disciplines (ME/EE 
> and Physics/Chemistry) which I generally attribute to the socialization of 
> girls against manipulating the natural world as aggressively as boys (i.e. 
> playing with sticks and stones outside), but might *also* reflect the 
> possibility that males DO have a *different* sense of 3D spatial relations 
> and possibly even materials than females.
> 
> As for Lena... I think the fact that *she* was selected in the first place by 
> the male eye, and her recurrence in the "industry" was probably almost 
> exclusively a male propagation for what I would call "obvious" reasons (and 
> Glen might argue against that).   I think Lena's pervasive image might have 
> been a symbol of the "maleness" of CS in general and Image Processing in 
> particular and THAT might have inhibited some women at a very subtle level, 
> recognizing that the other (male) students might objectify them a bit.  Of 
> course one could make a MUCH stronger argument in this regard for any of the 
> Sports fields and perhaps some subset of "Sports Journalism"?
> 
> One might want to infer something about the ubiquity of the Teapot in the 
> field of Computer Graphics... Ed can probably reference how it got started 
> (who made the first Teapot as a 3D model?) and why it got re-used so 
> ubiquitously... sort of the "Hello World" of CG.   But probably nothing about 
> culinary arts or kitchens or even the British love of Tea is likely to be 
> significant.
> 
> - Stve
> 
> On 2/24/18 6:57 PM, Edward Angel wrote:
>> I found the email with David’s question for me re the Lena image.
>> 
>> I don’t think the Lena image had anything significant to do with the decline 
>> in the percentage of women going into CS. It was a very limited group of 
>> people that actually dealt with or even saw the image. And they were almost 
>> all male.
>> 
>> When I was chair of the CS dept at UNM (1985-88) about 40% of the majors 
>> were women. Two other factors were much more responsible for the decline 
>> that started around then First, pre the mid 80’s, women saw CS as closer to 
>> Math but a major that led to jobs. However, they found that CS was more like 
>> Engineering (or was becoming more like Engineering), a field which for 
>> various reasons was not appealing to women or welcoming of them. Second, 
>> more and more students were attracted to CS because they they were computer 
>> game players. They were almost 100% male, aggressive, individualistic and 
>> often obnoxious, all characteristics that were not those that women 

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Steven A Smith]

I appreciate and second Ed's observaions here.  While my own role as an
instructor during this period was very limited.   I was first a student
*among* CS majors (I was a Physics/Math major with a CS minor) in the
70's when it was all pretty new by some measure and the participation by
women was higher than in the more physical engineering and science
disciplines (ME/EE and Physics/Chemistry) which I generally attribute to
the socialization of girls against manipulating the natural world as
aggressively as boys (i.e. playing with sticks and stones outside), but
might *also* reflect the possibility that males DO have a *different*
sense of 3D spatial relations and possibly even materials than females.

As for Lena... I think the fact that *she* was selected in the first
place by the male eye, and her recurrence in the "industry" was probably
almost exclusively a male propagation for what I would call "obvious"
reasons (and Glen might argue against that).   I think Lena's pervasive
image might have been a symbol of the "maleness" of CS in general and
Image Processing in particular and THAT might have inhibited some women
at a very subtle level, recognizing that the other (male) students might
objectify them a bit.  Of course one could make a MUCH stronger argument
in this regard for any of the Sports fields and perhaps some subset of
"Sports Journalism"?

One might want to infer something about the ubiquity of the Teapot in
the field of Computer Graphics... Ed can probably reference how it got
started (who made the first Teapot as a 3D model?) and why it got
re-used so ubiquitously... sort of the "Hello World" of CG.   But
probably nothing about culinary arts or kitchens or even the British
love of Tea is likely to be significant.

- Stve


On 2/24/18 6:57 PM, Edward Angel wrote:
> I found the email with David’s question for me re the Lena image.
>
> I don’t think the Lena image had anything significant to do with the
> decline in the percentage of women going into CS. It was a very
> limited group of people that actually dealt with or even saw the
> image. And they were almost all male.
>
> When I was chair of the CS dept at UNM (1985-88) about 40% of the
> majors were women. Two other factors were much more responsible for
> the decline that started around then First, pre the mid 80’s, women
> saw CS as closer to Math but a major that led to jobs. However, they
> found that CS was more like Engineering (or was becoming more like
> Engineering), a field which for various reasons was not appealing to
> women or welcoming of them. Second, more and more students were
> attracted to CS because they they were computer game players. They
> were almost 100% male, aggressive, individualistic and often
> obnoxious, all characteristics that were not those that women students
> possessed (to their credit). Consequently, beginning programming
> classes were terrible experiences for many women students and they
> left the program With the faculty almost all male and comprised of
> people who had been rewarded for precisely these characteristics,
> there wasn’t much effort to change to make the program more attractive
> to women. Eventually CS at UNM changed and now has a healthy
> percentage of women students and faculty.
>
> Ed
> ___
>
> Ed Angel
>
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory
> (ARTS Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
>
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 
> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel
> 
>
>> On Feb 16, 2018, at 10:41 AM, Prof David West > > wrote:
>>
>> Some questions for Nick and one for Ed Angel
>>
>> Peterson's "alpha male" silliness seemed to have prompted this thread
>> but I wonder if a different example might advance the discussion more
>> productively, especially since, I suspect, most everyone on the list
>> would dismiss Peterson as inane.
>>
>> The example I have in mind is sexism in computing. Back in the
>> sixties, two psychologists (Cannon and Perry) created a "profile" or
>> aptitude test to determine who would be a good programmer. Their work
>> became the de facto standard used for hiring (and to a lesser extent
>> for admission to grad school in CS) up to and including today.
>>
>> Two psychological / behavioral traits dominate their profile: 1)
>> affinity for and proficiency at 'logical / mathematical puzzle
>> solving';and 2) antipathy towards people. Both of these traits are,
>> supposedly, more prevalent in males than females, especially the
>> second one. This instantly marginalized women as potential
>> programmers. (I would argue that this work also had significant
>> impact, indirectly and via cultural diffusion, on the reduction of
>> women in all of the STEM educational paths and professions.)
>>
>> Within the last year, James Damone, former 

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Edward Angel]

I found the email with David’s question for me re the Lena image.

I don’t think the Lena image had anything significant to do with the decline in 
the percentage of women going into CS. It was a very limited group of people 
that actually dealt with or even saw the image. And they were almost all male.

When I was chair of the CS dept at UNM (1985-88) about 40% of the majors were 
women. Two other factors were much more responsible for the decline that 
started around then First, pre the mid 80’s, women saw CS as closer to Math but 
a major that led to jobs. However, they found that CS was more like Engineering 
(or was becoming more like Engineering), a field which for various reasons was 
not appealing to women or welcoming of them. Second, more and more students 
were attracted to CS because they they were computer game players. They were 
almost 100% male, aggressive, individualistic and often obnoxious, all 
characteristics that were not those that women students possessed (to their 
credit). Consequently, beginning programming classes were terrible experiences 
for many women students and they left the program With the faculty almost all 
male and comprised of people who had been rewarded for precisely these 
characteristics, there wasn’t much effort to change to make the program more 
attractive to women. Eventually CS at UNM changed and now has a healthy 
percentage of women students and faculty.

Ed
___

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu 

505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel 


> On Feb 16, 2018, at 10:41 AM, Prof David West  wrote:
> 
> Some questions for Nick and one for Ed Angel
> 
> Peterson's "alpha male" silliness seemed to have prompted this thread but I 
> wonder if a different example might advance the discussion more productively, 
> especially since, I suspect, most everyone on the list would dismiss Peterson 
> as inane.
> 
> The example I have in mind is sexism in computing. Back in the sixties, two 
> psychologists (Cannon and Perry) created a "profile" or aptitude test to 
> determine who would be a good programmer. Their work became the de facto 
> standard used for hiring (and to a lesser extent for admission to grad school 
> in CS) up to and including today.
> 
> Two psychological / behavioral traits dominate their profile: 1) affinity for 
> and proficiency at 'logical / mathematical puzzle solving';and 2) antipathy 
> towards people. Both of these traits are, supposedly, more prevalent in males 
> than females, especially the second one. This instantly marginalized women as 
> potential programmers. (I would argue that this work also had significant 
> impact, indirectly and via cultural diffusion, on the reduction of women in 
> all of the STEM educational paths and professions.)
> 
> Within the last year, James Damone, former Google engineer, essentially made 
> the same argument and explicitly stated that the prevalence of the two 
> behavioral traits was "biological" in origin.
> 
> Some questions for Nick:
> 
>   -- is any assertion of a biological origin for a psychological / behavioral 
> trait a naive evolutionary psychology argument? I say naive because I doubt 
> that any of those individuals had any knowledge of the evolutionary 
> psychology discipline or research.
> 
>   -- If the assertion is made that 'anti-social nerdiness' is biological 
> (evolutionary psychological) in origin, what criteria could / would be used 
> to affirm or deny? Must you show that the trait yielded reproductive 
> advantage? Would you need to show the trait was present in antecedent 
> instances of the species — e.g. would you find individuals in hunter-gatherer 
> tribes that exhibited the trait? Could the trait be biological in origin but 
> not 'continuous' in some fashion — e.g. a case of punctuated equilibrium.
> 
> Nick has accused me of shameless reification when I use the term/concept of 
> "cultural evolution" but ... I was taught that the time frame required for 
> biological evolution is too long to be a reasonable basis for explaining or 
> accounting for observed psychological / behavioral changes in human beings. 
> E.g. psychological behaviors associated with things like social media and 
> cell phones are clearly observable but occur in time frames that are 
> generational at most, and most commonly intra-generational.
> 
>   -- Is it possible to argue for some kind of biological 'precursors' — 
> traits from which the observable changes are derived, and dependent? (Kind of 
> like the evolution of eyes being dependent on precursors like photo-sensitive 
> cells.)
> 
>   -- Is it possible to disprove an evolutionary psychological argument (ala 

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Roger Critchlow]

Jordan Peterson doesn't list evolutionary psychology anywhere in his
wikipedia article.  He paints himself as much more of the Carl Jung variety
psychologizer, which makes sense since his PhD is in Clinical Psychology.
Then he tacks on Soren Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich as influences, which
puts him pretty far out there for any kind of psychologist.

His principle work is *Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief *which
looks on the face of it, and on his appeals to its authority, to be a
strong appropriationist claim to understand everyone's belief systems
better than the believers do themselves.  This is why he attacks all his
enemies at the universities, because he has identified postmodernism as
crypto-marxist (ie, they claim to have rejected Marxism, but their maps of
meaning are clearly still Marxist, as his many years of studying
authoritarian thought systems allow him to see).

It's pretty obvious why dialogue with Peterson is awkward for people who do
not grant his assumption that he understands why everyone believes what he
thinks they believe.  Those kinds of people are always awkward partners for
intellectual discussions, they're always telling you to sit down, shut up,
and listen.  It's also clear why his secret decoder ring lectures for
filing political opponents into pigeon holes could collect such a
following, who wouldn't want to know what everyone really believes?

His research program at Toronto is currently crowdfunded after his Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council

grant
was cancelled last spring.  Bizarrely foreshadowing the future of all
academics?

There's a funny part in the article where he describes "white privilege" as
a totally unfair way of blaming whites because some of their ancestors were
assholes, where I always think of it as calling out whites for being
assholes in real life.  I guess the meaning sort of floats around or
flickers between those poles, also making dialogue awkward.

-- rec --


On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 11:49 AM, ∄ uǝʃƃ  wrote:

>
> On 02/23/2018 07:12 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > I think one is an evolutionary psychologist if and only if one thinks
> that knowledge of human evolutionary history has something to contribute to
> our understanding of contemporary human behavior.  So, yes, you may call me
> an evolutionary psychologist.  My guess is that, on that definition, so are
> you.
>
> Ha!  No, I'm not.  As I've argued lots on this list, I think thoughts are
> either purely epiphenomenal or, at least, rhetorical abstractions. (Yes.
> "This sentence is false.")  To the extent that even an extreme behaviorist
> draws a (artificial) line between a behavior like sneezing and its
> underlying physiology, you can't include me in that group.  There is no
> line.  Psychology seems, to me, like a misguided stepchild of philosophy.
>
> Add to that my appreciation for postmodernism and context-determined
> behavior and you might wonder what strength evolutionary arguments hold at
> all, of anything other than trickery and artifice like Peterson's.  Note
> that I'm qualifying "argument" with "evolutionary", not suggesting I don't
> believe evolution is, and is accurate.  It is both.  But the space of
> arguments invoking it is *swamped* with bullsh¡t (
> https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html).  Luckily, I see no
> bullsh¡t in the 3 or so papers of yours that I've read.
>
> > ... particularly if we take them as CAUSAL claims.  And what other kind
> of claims to increased understanding are there?
>
> Now *that's* another interesting topic, non-causal claims.  But I suspect
> everyone's tired of me by now.  So, I really should back off. 8^)
>
> --
> ∄ uǝʃƃ
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[∄ uǝʃƃ]

On 02/23/2018 07:12 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I think one is an evolutionary psychologist if and only if one thinks that 
> knowledge of human evolutionary history has something to contribute to our 
> understanding of contemporary human behavior.  So, yes, you may call me an 
> evolutionary psychologist.  My guess is that, on that definition, so are you. 
>  

Ha!  No, I'm not.  As I've argued lots on this list, I think thoughts are 
either purely epiphenomenal or, at least, rhetorical abstractions. (Yes. "This 
sentence is false.")  To the extent that even an extreme behaviorist draws a 
(artificial) line between a behavior like sneezing and its underlying 
physiology, you can't include me in that group.  There is no line.  Psychology 
seems, to me, like a misguided stepchild of philosophy.

Add to that my appreciation for postmodernism and context-determined behavior 
and you might wonder what strength evolutionary arguments hold at all, of 
anything other than trickery and artifice like Peterson's.  Note that I'm 
qualifying "argument" with "evolutionary", not suggesting I don't believe 
evolution is, and is accurate.  It is both.  But the space of arguments 
invoking it is *swamped* with bullsh¡t 
(https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html).  Luckily, I see no bullsh¡t in 
the 3 or so papers of yours that I've read.

> ... particularly if we take them as CAUSAL claims.  And what other kind of 
> claims to increased understanding are there?  

Now *that's* another interesting topic, non-causal claims.  But I suspect 
everyone's tired of me by now.  So, I really should back off. 8^)

-- 
∄ uǝʃƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Glen,

I think one is an evolutionary psychologist if and only if one thinks that 
knowledge of human evolutionary history has something to contribute to our 
understanding of contemporary human behavior.  So, yes, you may call me an 
evolutionary psychologist.  My guess is that, on that definition, so are you.  

If I am correct about all of that, the rest is details.  Very important and 
interesting details, mind you, but details, all the same. 

And, yes, I do keep ducking your specific references to Petersen.   Which is to 
say, I guess, that I am stipulating that there is a lot of stupid evolutionary 
psychology out there.  My interest is in answering the question, When is it NOT 
stupid.  After all, we are talking about a field which claims to explain things 
that happen today in terms of things that happened 150 THOUSAND years ago.  On 
their face, such claims would seem tenuous, particularly if we take them as 
CAUSAL claims.  And what other kind of claims to increased understanding are 
there?  



Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 7:28 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

OK. So if you're not sure how to make a case *like* the one Peterson makes, and 
I'm allowed to call you an evolutionary psychologist, then I can say, at least, 
Peterson's argument is unjustified. ... or at least not well enough justified, 
even in the domain in which he works.

 Combined with finer grained arguments like those presented by Dave, it leaves 
Peterson's case pretty weak, albeit not as weak as I thought.


On February 22, 2018 8:56:38 PM PST, Nick Thompson  
wrote:
>Some consequences of this formulation are: 
>
> 
>
>1.   Simultaneous events (such as amygdala excitation and anger)
>canNOT be causes of one another. 
>
>2.   The notion of cause and effect as we deploy it in ordinary
>language is a category error.  No single event can ever said to be 
>either a cause or an effect of another single event.
>
>3.   The very notion of causality as applied to ANY historical
>science – history, evolution, history of the universe, etc., is placed
>in question.   I don’t know where that argument comes out.  I would
>like to be able to say things like , “The physical and behavioral 
>dimorphisms observed in the human species are to some degree the result 
>of differential selection upon the two sexes,” but I am not sure how I 
>can.
--
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[glen]

OK. So if you're not sure how to make a case *like* the one Peterson makes, and 
I'm allowed to call you an evolutionary psychologist, then I can say, at least, 
Peterson's argument is unjustified. ... or at least not well enough justified, 
even in the domain in which he works.

 Combined with finer grained arguments like those presented by Dave, it leaves 
Peterson's case pretty weak, albeit not as weak as I thought.


On February 22, 2018 8:56:38 PM PST, Nick Thompson  
wrote:
>Some consequences of this formulation are: 
>
> 
>
>1.   Simultaneous events (such as amygdala excitation and anger)
>canNOT be causes of one another. 
>
>2.   The notion of cause and effect as we deploy it in ordinary
>language is a category error.  No single event can ever said to be
>either a cause or an effect of another single event.  
>
>3.   The very notion of causality as applied to ANY historical
>science – history, evolution, history of the universe, etc., is placed
>in question.   I don’t know where that argument comes out.  I would
>like to be able to say things like , “The physical and behavioral
>dimorphisms observed in the human species are to some degree the result
>of differential selection upon the two sexes,” but I am not sure how I
>can. 
-- 
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Glen, 

 

So we are going to have to look out for our notions of causality as sources of 
confusion in the future because my notion of cause is:

 

An C is a cause of an effect, E, if, and only if C and E are classes of events, 
and

Class C events occur before and contiguously (for Immediate causes) to Class E 
events,  and

The occurrence of Class C events is statistically associated with an increase 
in the relative frequency of the occurrence of Class E events. 

 

Some consequences of this formulation are: 

 

1.   Simultaneous events (such as amygdala excitation and anger) canNOT be 
causes of one another. 

2.   The notion of cause and effect as we deploy it in ordinary language is 
a category error.  No single event can ever said to be either a cause or an 
effect of another single event.  

3.   The very notion of causality as applied to ANY historical science – 
history, evolution, history of the universe, etc., is placed in question.   I 
don’t know where that argument comes out.  I would like to be able to say 
things like , “The physical and behavioral dimorphisms observed in the human 
species are to some degree the result of differential selection upon the two 
sexes,” but I am not sure how I can. 

 

Nick

 

Nick 

 



 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 6:09 PM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

 

OK.  It's good to have you respond directly to the physiology stuff.  Thanks.

 

Yes, I tried to respond to your causal model question.  My response is 
basically that any causal analysis should target the parts on the "critical 
path" ... the bottlenecks ... the "rate limiters" ... whatever your language.  
In your example below, if happiness can be caused not only by the pill, but by 
thousands of other things, yet the physiological process is common to it all, 
then *that's* the important part, not whatever of the thousands of stimuli that 
might have stimulated it.

 

And, yes, I admit that causality is often thought of in terms of time.  But 
having struggled with parallelism and redundancy in my own thinking, time isn't 
what determines cause.  The determinant is the limited resource ... the 
bottleneck.  In biomedicine, it's the target of intervention.  Even if you 
think that's a perversion of the word "cause", you should still be able to grok 
my point.

 

 

On 02/22/2018 04:58 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Well, that was the point of my bee comment.  We start in the middle somewhere 
> and work out from there.  There is no absolute boundary of the organism.  But 
> as boundaries go, it's a pretty good one, and so we start there.  Once 
> started, we don't switch without a good reason.  

> 

> Did you ever answer my question about how you understand "causality"?   So, 
> let's say I give you a pill and you get happy.  At the behavioral level, I 
> would say that the pill caused the happiness.  At the physiological level, I 
> would say that the chemical in the pill slowed the uptake of serotonin.  Then 
> I might say that the slowing of the uptake of serotonin mediated your 
> improvement of mood.  I am not sure I would say it caused it because CAUSES 
> by my definition have to occur BEFORE the events they cause and the up-take 
> slowing and the mood-improving are going on simultaneously. 

 

--

☣ uǝlƃ

 



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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

OK.  It's good to have you respond directly to the physiology stuff.  Thanks.

Yes, I tried to respond to your causal model question.  My response is 
basically that any causal analysis should target the parts on the "critical 
path" ... the bottlenecks ... the "rate limiters" ... whatever your language.  
In your example below, if happiness can be caused not only by the pill, but by 
thousands of other things, yet the physiological process is common to it all, 
then *that's* the important part, not whatever of the thousands of stimuli that 
might have stimulated it.

And, yes, I admit that causality is often thought of in terms of time.  But 
having struggled with parallelism and redundancy in my own thinking, time isn't 
what determines cause.  The determinant is the limited resource ... the 
bottleneck.  In biomedicine, it's the target of intervention.  Even if you 
think that's a perversion of the word "cause", you should still be able to grok 
my point.


On 02/22/2018 04:58 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Well, that was the point of my bee comment.  We start in the middle somewhere 
> and work out from there.  There is no absolute boundary of the organism.  But 
> as boundaries go, it's a pretty good one, and so we start there.  Once 
> started, we don't switch without a good reason.  
> 
> Did you ever answer my question about how you understand "causality"?   So, 
> let's say I give you a pill and you get happy.  At the behavioral level, I 
> would say that the pill caused the happiness.  At the physiological level, I 
> would say that the chemical in the pill slowed the uptake of serotonin.  Then 
> I might say that the slowing of the uptake of serotonin mediated your 
> improvement of mood.  I am not sure I would say it caused it because CAUSES 
> by my definition have to occur BEFORE the events they cause and the up-take 
> slowing and the mood-improving are going on simultaneously. 

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Well, that was the point of my bee comment.  We start in the middle somewhere 
and work out from there.  There is no absolute boundary of the organism.  But 
as boundaries go, it's a pretty good one, and so we start there.  Once started, 
we don't switch without a good reason.  

Did you ever answer my question about how you understand "causality"?   So, 
let's say I give you a pill and you get happy.  At the behavioral level, I 
would say that the pill caused the happiness.  At the physiological level, I 
would say that the chemical in the pill slowed the uptake of serotonin.  Then I 
might say that the slowing of the uptake of serotonin mediated your improvement 
of mood.  I am not sure I would say it caused it because CAUSES by my 
definition have to occur BEFORE the events they cause and the up-take slowing 
and the mood-improving are going on simultaneously. 

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 4:24 PM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

Hm.  To be clear, I'm not only talking about the testes and adrenals.  I'm 
talking about the parts of the system that are modulated by testosterone as 
well ... which, given that testosterone partly determines our gender-associated 
traits, seems like a "behavior of the individual organism".  So, you're 
position still seems muddled and vague.  If there's no clear line between 
"behavior of the individual organism" and "behavior of a significant part of 
the organism", then what *IS* the subject of evopsych?  Really?


On 02/22/2018 03:07 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Well, than that is exactly where we part company.  You're talking about the 
> behavior of the testes (and the adrenals);  I am talking about the behavior 
> of the individual organism.  Gets fuzzy when we talk about bees. 


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Hm.  To be clear, I'm not only talking about the testes and adrenals.  I'm 
talking about the parts of the system that are modulated by testosterone as 
well ... which, given that testosterone partly determines our gender-associated 
traits, seems like a "behavior of the individual organism".  So, you're 
position still seems muddled and vague.  If there's no clear line between 
"behavior of the individual organism" and "behavior of a significant part of 
the organism", then what *IS* the subject of evopsych?  Really?


On 02/22/2018 03:07 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Well, than that is exactly where we part company.  You're talking about the 
> behavior of the testes (and the adrenals);  I am talking about the behavior 
> of the individual organism.  Gets fuzzy when we talk about bees. 


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Well, than that is exactly where we part company.  You're talking about the 
behavior of the testes (and the adrenals);  I am talking about the behavior of 
the individual organism.  Gets fuzzy when we talk about bees. 

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 3:31 PM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

That's not at all the distinction I'm making (never mind "precisely"). 8^)  All 
3 of us are talking about selecting for behavior.  The difference is that I'm 
claiming "expressing and responding to testosterone" is a behavior.

On 02/22/2018 01:39 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I feel mildly a failure to not be able to articulate (even recognize) 
> what the fundamental abstraction is around the difference between 
> selecting for behaviour vs something more material or more 
> (presumably) quantifiable such as Testosterone levels.   I am not sure 
> if that is precisely the distinction Glen is making here, but the 
> former seems "oh so more relevant" in spite of the latter being 
> "possibly somewhat more measureable".

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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

That's not at all the distinction I'm making (never mind "precisely"). 8^)  All 
3 of us are talking about selecting for behavior.  The difference is that I'm 
claiming "expressing and responding to testosterone" is a behavior.

On 02/22/2018 01:39 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I feel mildly a failure to not be able to articulate (even recognize)
> what the fundamental abstraction is around the difference between
> selecting for behaviour vs something more material or more (presumably)
> quantifiable such as Testosterone levels.   I am not sure if that is
> precisely the distinction Glen is making here, but the former seems "oh
> so more relevant" in spite of the latter being "possibly somewhat more
> measureable".

-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Well, since you're talking about sneezing, and because sneezing is a 
physiological process, whatever model of cause we use will have to involve the 
physiological process.  I'd claim that, if not identical, very close to the 
exact same physiological process occurs in the body when you sneeze because you 
have a cold vs. sneezing because you got some pepper up your nose.  So, the 
model would have lots of possible input stimuli, go through a narrowing 
(bottleneck) at the set of physiological behaviors that "mediates" -- to use 
your word -- the sneeze, then the *effect* is high velocity/pressure air coming 
out your nose/mouth.

We have to talk that way because we have common interventions like 
antihistamines that don't really block the stimulus, they block part of the 
physiology.  Or, if you prefer, I could refer to my method for blocking 
sneezes, which is to put pressure on the bridge of my nose, which seems to have 
something to do with blood flow.  The stimulant is (presumably) still there.  
But the sneeze is blocked because I'm interfering with the physiology.

On 02/22/2018 01:22 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Can you give me a model of causality your happy with, or do you avoid causal 
> talk, generally? 


-- 
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Steven A Smith]

Nick -

Nice idiom there... the 747s bashing around in your head like blocks of
text... (vice-versa)... in my own case, I am often most prolific here
when I'm avoiding another project/deadline, but I understand your challenge.

I feel mildly a failure to not be able to articulate (even recognize)
what the fundamental abstraction is around the difference between
selecting for behaviour vs something more material or more (presumably)
quantifiable such as Testosterone levels.   I am not sure if that is
precisely the distinction Glen is making here, but the former seems "oh
so more relevant" in spite of the latter being "possibly somewhat more
measureable".

I only invoked your name in the thread because you indicated you didn't
want to be left behind (or run over) as we all scurried about on this
thread as we are wont to do!  

- Steve


On 2/21/18 11:41 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Glen and Steve, 
>
> The reason that I am not answering is not that good points aren't being made, 
> but that I am in the midst of a writing project and it's not going well, 
> which means that I am carrying blocks of ill organized text around in my head 
> like so many 747's just after the  air traffic control system went down.  If 
> I stop to think about anything else, I am afraid they will all crash.  
>
> I am inclined to share Steve's view that behavior is where the rubber meets 
> the road, and so to agree that talk of the evolution of behavior makes sense. 
>  Let me risk one thought.  Let's imagine that (as I believe) that 
> testosterone is an aggression hormone.  It's effect on the nervous system is, 
> other things being equal, to make a person a tad more assertive in all 
> domains of action.  Let it be the case that a little more assertiveness in 
> all domains leads to reproductive success.  The nature will be selecting not 
> for the individual behaviors but for the "style" of behaving.  Now, I call a 
> style of behaving, a behavior, or a behavior pattern, or a meta-behavior, or 
> a behavioral design.  What have you.  So talk of selecting for behavior 
> doesn't bother me.  I am not quite sure what "selecting for testosterone" 
> would mean.  When it comes to evolution, behavior functions, physiology 
> mediates.  
>
> Nick 
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
> Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 2:40 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?
>
> Glen -
>> OK.  But I believe I merely asked the question: Why talk about these vague 
>> behaviors like "dress for sex", when we can talk about reasonably 
>> well-defined things like hormones and neurotransmitters?  What explanatory 
>> power does evopsych have that, say, evolutionary neuroscience would not have?
> A question, yes, but "mere" I don't think so?
>> One possible answer is that evopsych allows us to tap into folktales like 
>> Jungian archetypes, even if only so we can trick people into believing our 
>> rhetoric. 
> while "rhetoric" is defined to be "persuasive", the goal might be to persuade 
> others to consider a hypothesis long enough to investigate it further.   On 
> one end of the spectrum, your speculation is probably accurate, sometimes 
> some people simply want to be "right" or "believed"
> (or may not care or know the difference?) but on the other, they may simply 
> want to engage other's in a little broader speculation as part of expanding a 
> search space?
>>  That trickery is power of a kind, explanatory or not.  Science popularizers 
>> walk that thin line all the time.  But is there something *more*?
> Science Popularizers are a good (positive I think) example, but again, on the 
> opposite end of the spectrum I think "guided speculation" has a value when 
> combined/juxtaposed with more rigorous/formal methods for
> *validating* insights found during the wider ranging speculations? Where does 
> intuition come from?  It would seem to find a good launching pad on the 
> foundation of good formalized, quantifiable work, but it also would seem to 
> be fed well by more qualitative and perhaps even verging on "whimsical" 
> considerations?
>> Re: thread pollution --
>> I don't think it's a big deal.  The forum is asynchronous.  Anyone can read 
>> or not read, reply or not reply, to any post at any

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Glen, 

Can you give me a model of causality your happy with, or do you avoid causal 
talk, generally? 

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 10:39 AM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?


Neither, obviously.  The proximal cause of sneezing is a complex of 
neuro-muscular behaviors.  That complex has an untold number of triggers, from 
bright lights and sound to tickling.  Any competent analysis of such causation 
will focus on the *bottleneck*, which is the neuro-muscular complex, not the 
huge number of triggers.

On 02/22/2018 09:22 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Is sneezing caused by dust OR by the forceful expulsion of air through 
> our nasal tracts?  We would never ask such a question, right?

--
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Neither, obviously.  The proximal cause of sneezing is a complex of 
neuro-muscular behaviors.  That complex has an untold number of triggers, from 
bright lights and sound to tickling.  Any competent analysis of such causation 
will focus on the *bottleneck*, which is the neuro-muscular complex, not the 
huge number of triggers.

On 02/22/2018 09:22 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Is sneezing caused by dust OR by the forceful expulsion of air through our 
> nasal tracts?  We would never ask such a question, right? 

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Hi, Frank, 

 

To answer your question, the language is do dominating and the issues so 
complicated that I can’t say for sure. 

 

Again, I apologize for being unable to put the kind of time I should into this 
debate.  But …

 

…let’s talk about sneezing …

 

Is sneezing caused by dust OR by the forceful expulsion of air through our 
nasal tracts?  We would never ask such a question, right?  

 

If I sneeze on you and give you the flu, should I feel guilty?  Or is a sneeze 
an “act of God”, in the legal sense? Am I responsible for my sneezes?  

 

Are all sneezes the same?  Or are some sneezes more intentional than others?  
How would we tell?  

 

My guess is that if we talked about sneezing for a while, and the transferred 
our relatively lucid patterns of thought back onto Glen’s challenge, we would 
perhaps see a path to clear thought and agreement.  

 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> 
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2018 7:08 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

 

Nick,

 

Is it possible that "behavioral patterns" is similar to what I called "dominant 
themes of motivation" when Glen suggested that I was over discretizing.

 

Frank


Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly 
<http://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly> 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918  

 

On Feb 21, 2018 11:42 PM, "Nick Thompson" mailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net> > wrote:

Glen and Steve,

The reason that I am not answering is not that good points aren't being made, 
but that I am in the midst of a writing project and it's not going well, which 
means that I am carrying blocks of ill organized text around in my head like so 
many 747's just after the  air traffic control system went down.  If I stop to 
think about anything else, I am afraid they will all crash.

I am inclined to share Steve's view that behavior is where the rubber meets the 
road, and so to agree that talk of the evolution of behavior makes sense.  Let 
me risk one thought.  Let's imagine that (as I believe) that testosterone is an 
aggression hormone.  It's effect on the nervous system is, other things being 
equal, to make a person a tad more assertive in all domains of action.  Let it 
be the case that a little more assertiveness in all domains leads to 
reproductive success.  The nature will be selecting not for the individual 
behaviors but for the "style" of behaving.  Now, I call a style of behaving, a 
behavior, or a behavior pattern, or a meta-behavior, or a behavioral design.  
What have you.  So talk of selecting for behavior doesn't bother me.  I am not 
quite sure what "selecting for testosterone" would mean.  When it comes to 
evolution, behavior functions, physiology mediates.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com 
<mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com> ] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 2:40 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group mailto:friam@redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

Glen -
> OK.  But I believe I merely asked the question: Why talk about these vague 
> behaviors like "dress for sex", when we can talk about reasonably 
> well-defined things like hormones and neurotransmitters?  What explanatory 
> power does evopsych have that, say, evolutionary neuroscience would not have?
A question, yes, but "mere" I don't think so?
>
> One possible answer is that evopsych allows us to tap into folktales like 
> Jungian archetypes, even if only so we can trick people into believing our 
> rhetoric.
while "rhetoric" is defined to be "persuasive", the goal might be to persuade 
others to consider a hypothesis long enough to investigate it further.   On one 
end of the spectrum, your speculation is probably accurate, sometimes some 
people simply want to be "right" or "believed"
(or may not care or know the difference?) but on the other, they may simply 
want to engage other's in a little broader speculation as part of expanding a 
search space?
>  That trickery is power of a kind, explanatory or not.  Science popularizers 
> walk that thin line all the time.  But is there something *more*?
Science Popularizers are a good (positive I think) example, but again, on t

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[∄ uǝʃƃ]

But, again, testosterone obviously plays more roles in our behaviors than a 
behavior pattern of "tad more assertive".  Do you mean animals with ZERO 
testosterone are the control and those with some tiny amount are a tad more 
assertive?  Or do you mean the (fictitious) average person who takes an 
external dose of it becomes a tad more assertive than they otherwise would be?

Your position is confusing.  Testosterone is a ubiquitous part of a *complex* 
of structure and behavior.  And it's the complex that is selected for or 
against.  It seems to make perfect sense to suggest that "the complex of 
physiological processes of which testosterone is a part" has been selected.  
Formulating it into something testable would mean (in my naive view) checking 
for animals that don't use testosterone and finding where they relate, how they 
interact, if they compete, etc. Again, naively, 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#Other_animals might imply that 
testosterone is more competitive than androstenedione, 11-ketotestosterone, and 
ecdysone (whatever the hell those are).  If it helps you, I'm happy to say 
"systems involving testosterone are more competitive than systems involving 
...".

Then again, maybe it doesn't imply that, at all.  Maybe one could argue that 
each different male hormone is the most competitive in the niche we find it in. 
 Fine.  We'd have to explore the other (systems involving) other hormones that 
have gone extinct or are rare variants in those niches.  But to claim some 
*vague* "behavior pattern" is a more clear topic in the context of natural 
selection seems strange to me.  It seems like you're piling vague concepts on 
top of vague concepts ignoring huge swaths of available data.



On 02/21/2018 10:41 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Let's imagine that (as I believe) that testosterone is an aggression hormone. 
>  It's effect on the nervous system is, other things being equal, to make a 
> person a tad more assertive in all domains of action.  Let it be the case 
> that a little more assertiveness in all domains leads to reproductive 
> success.  The nature will be selecting not for the individual behaviors but 
> for the "style" of behaving.  Now, I call a style of behaving, a behavior, or 
> a behavior pattern, or a meta-behavior, or a behavioral design.  What have 
> you.  So talk of selecting for behavior doesn't bother me.  I am not quite 
> sure what "selecting for testosterone" would mean.  When it comes to 
> evolution, behavior functions, physiology mediates.  


-- 
∄ uǝʃƃ


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Frank Wimberly]

Nick,

Is it possible that "behavioral patterns" is similar to what I called
"dominant themes of motivation" when Glen suggested that I was over
discretizing.

Frank


Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Feb 21, 2018 11:42 PM, "Nick Thompson" 
wrote:

> Glen and Steve,
>
> The reason that I am not answering is not that good points aren't being
> made, but that I am in the midst of a writing project and it's not going
> well, which means that I am carrying blocks of ill organized text around in
> my head like so many 747's just after the  air traffic control system went
> down.  If I stop to think about anything else, I am afraid they will all
> crash.
>
> I am inclined to share Steve's view that behavior is where the rubber
> meets the road, and so to agree that talk of the evolution of behavior
> makes sense.  Let me risk one thought.  Let's imagine that (as I believe)
> that testosterone is an aggression hormone.  It's effect on the nervous
> system is, other things being equal, to make a person a tad more assertive
> in all domains of action.  Let it be the case that a little more
> assertiveness in all domains leads to reproductive success.  The nature
> will be selecting not for the individual behaviors but for the "style" of
> behaving.  Now, I call a style of behaving, a behavior, or a behavior
> pattern, or a meta-behavior, or a behavioral design.  What have you.  So
> talk of selecting for behavior doesn't bother me.  I am not quite sure what
> "selecting for testosterone" would mean.  When it comes to evolution,
> behavior functions, physiology mediates.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
> Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 2:40 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?
>
> Glen -
> > OK.  But I believe I merely asked the question: Why talk about these
> vague behaviors like "dress for sex", when we can talk about reasonably
> well-defined things like hormones and neurotransmitters?  What explanatory
> power does evopsych have that, say, evolutionary neuroscience would not
> have?
> A question, yes, but "mere" I don't think so?
> >
> > One possible answer is that evopsych allows us to tap into folktales
> like Jungian archetypes, even if only so we can trick people into believing
> our rhetoric.
> while "rhetoric" is defined to be "persuasive", the goal might be to
> persuade others to consider a hypothesis long enough to investigate it
> further.   On one end of the spectrum, your speculation is probably
> accurate, sometimes some people simply want to be "right" or "believed"
> (or may not care or know the difference?) but on the other, they may
> simply want to engage other's in a little broader speculation as part of
> expanding a search space?
> >  That trickery is power of a kind, explanatory or not.  Science
> popularizers walk that thin line all the time.  But is there something
> *more*?
> Science Popularizers are a good (positive I think) example, but again, on
> the opposite end of the spectrum I think "guided speculation" has a value
> when combined/juxtaposed with more rigorous/formal methods for
> *validating* insights found during the wider ranging speculations? Where
> does intuition come from?  It would seem to find a good launching pad on
> the foundation of good formalized, quantifiable work, but it also would
> seem to be fed well by more qualitative and perhaps even verging on
> "whimsical" considerations?
> >
> > Re: thread pollution --
> > I don't think it's a big deal.  The forum is asynchronous.  Anyone can
> read or not read, reply or not reply, to any post at any time.  It was
> easier, I'll admit, when the archives worked.
> I wasn't necessarily thinking of this as pollution (or any kind of
> problem)... but rather speciation...  more on the exploration theme? It was
> a conjunction with my nod to Nick's original (early) appeal to those of us
> with higher bandwidths to somehow keep him in the loop as (even if?) we
> might explore (more) widely than he was seeking.
>
>
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Frid

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Glen and Steve, 

The reason that I am not answering is not that good points aren't being made, 
but that I am in the midst of a writing project and it's not going well, which 
means that I am carrying blocks of ill organized text around in my head like so 
many 747's just after the  air traffic control system went down.  If I stop to 
think about anything else, I am afraid they will all crash.  

I am inclined to share Steve's view that behavior is where the rubber meets the 
road, and so to agree that talk of the evolution of behavior makes sense.  Let 
me risk one thought.  Let's imagine that (as I believe) that testosterone is an 
aggression hormone.  It's effect on the nervous system is, other things being 
equal, to make a person a tad more assertive in all domains of action.  Let it 
be the case that a little more assertiveness in all domains leads to 
reproductive success.  The nature will be selecting not for the individual 
behaviors but for the "style" of behaving.  Now, I call a style of behaving, a 
behavior, or a behavior pattern, or a meta-behavior, or a behavioral design.  
What have you.  So talk of selecting for behavior doesn't bother me.  I am not 
quite sure what "selecting for testosterone" would mean.  When it comes to 
evolution, behavior functions, physiology mediates.  

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 2:40 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

Glen -
> OK.  But I believe I merely asked the question: Why talk about these vague 
> behaviors like "dress for sex", when we can talk about reasonably 
> well-defined things like hormones and neurotransmitters?  What explanatory 
> power does evopsych have that, say, evolutionary neuroscience would not have?
A question, yes, but "mere" I don't think so?
>
> One possible answer is that evopsych allows us to tap into folktales like 
> Jungian archetypes, even if only so we can trick people into believing our 
> rhetoric. 
while "rhetoric" is defined to be "persuasive", the goal might be to persuade 
others to consider a hypothesis long enough to investigate it further.   On one 
end of the spectrum, your speculation is probably accurate, sometimes some 
people simply want to be "right" or "believed"
(or may not care or know the difference?) but on the other, they may simply 
want to engage other's in a little broader speculation as part of expanding a 
search space?
>  That trickery is power of a kind, explanatory or not.  Science popularizers 
> walk that thin line all the time.  But is there something *more*?
Science Popularizers are a good (positive I think) example, but again, on the 
opposite end of the spectrum I think "guided speculation" has a value when 
combined/juxtaposed with more rigorous/formal methods for
*validating* insights found during the wider ranging speculations? Where does 
intuition come from?  It would seem to find a good launching pad on the 
foundation of good formalized, quantifiable work, but it also would seem to be 
fed well by more qualitative and perhaps even verging on "whimsical" 
considerations?
>
> Re: thread pollution --
> I don't think it's a big deal.  The forum is asynchronous.  Anyone can read 
> or not read, reply or not reply, to any post at any time.  It was easier, 
> I'll admit, when the archives worked.
I wasn't necessarily thinking of this as pollution (or any kind of problem)... 
but rather speciation...  more on the exploration theme? It was a conjunction 
with my nod to Nick's original (early) appeal to those of us with higher 
bandwidths to somehow keep him in the loop as (even if?) we might explore 
(more) widely than he was seeking.




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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -
> OK.  But I believe I merely asked the question: Why talk about these vague 
> behaviors like "dress for sex", when we can talk about reasonably 
> well-defined things like hormones and neurotransmitters?  What explanatory 
> power does evopsych have that, say, evolutionary neuroscience would not have?
A question, yes, but "mere" I don't think so?
>
> One possible answer is that evopsych allows us to tap into folktales like 
> Jungian archetypes, even if only so we can trick people into believing our 
> rhetoric. 
while "rhetoric" is defined to be "persuasive", the goal might be to
persuade others to consider a hypothesis long enough to investigate it
further.   On one end of the spectrum, your speculation is probably
accurate, sometimes some people simply want to be "right" or "believed"
(or may not care or know the difference?) but on the other, they may
simply want to engage other's in a little broader speculation as part of
expanding a search space?
>  That trickery is power of a kind, explanatory or not.  Science popularizers 
> walk that thin line all the time.  But is there something *more*?
Science Popularizers are a good (positive I think) example, but again,
on the opposite end of the spectrum I think "guided speculation" has a
value when combined/juxtaposed with more rigorous/formal methods for
*validating* insights found during the wider ranging speculations?  
Where does intuition come from?  It would seem to find a good launching
pad on the foundation of good formalized, quantifiable work, but it also
would seem to be fed well by more qualitative and perhaps even verging
on "whimsical" considerations?
>
> Re: thread pollution --
> I don't think it's a big deal.  The forum is asynchronous.  Anyone can read 
> or not read, reply or not reply, to any post at any time.  It was easier, 
> I'll admit, when the archives worked.
I wasn't necessarily thinking of this as pollution (or any kind of
problem)... but rather speciation...  more on the exploration theme?  
It was a conjunction with my nod to Nick's original (early) appeal to
those of us with higher bandwidths to somehow keep him in the loop as
(even if?) we might explore (more) widely than he was seeking.




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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

OK.  But I believe I merely asked the question: Why talk about these vague 
behaviors like "dress for sex", when we can talk about reasonably well-defined 
things like hormones and neurotransmitters?  What explanatory power does 
evopsych have that, say, evolutionary neuroscience would not have?

One possible answer is that evopsych allows us to tap into folktales like 
Jungian archetypes, even if only so we can trick people into believing our 
rhetoric.  That trickery is power of a kind, explanatory or not.  Science 
popularizers walk that thin line all the time.  But is there something *more*?

Re: thread pollution --
I don't think it's a big deal.  The forum is asynchronous.  Anyone can read or 
not read, reply or not reply, to any post at any time.  It was easier, I'll 
admit, when the archives worked.

On 02/21/2018 12:37 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> my argument should be more
> correctly that *IF* we are going to make a drastic oversimplification of
> natural selection,reducing it to *selecting for form* to the exclusion
> of *selecting for function* is not warranted, except perhaps to make the
> point that the vice-versa is also bogus?  I responded (reacted) to your
> seeming to prefer the form over the function and suggested that bias
> might be because it was more easily measured/quantified?
> 
> I agree that natural selection is multiscale and that one must consider
> selection of the "ecosystem of self" which would include the human
> microbiome, which based on generational scale alone would be presumed to
> evolve much more quickly than humans whose characteristic reproductive
> time scale is on the order of decades rather than days or even hours.
> 
> I can't tell if we are converging or if we are refolding in the
> subthreads that Dave and Nick (and others) intended.  Threads here seem
> to easily/naturally diverge (fray?).


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

No, I don't agree.  I had intended to reply to Dave's (twice repeated) question 
about the speed of evolution with this response.  But I'll do it, here, anyway. 
 Remember that I'm not a biologist.  So, corrections of what I say are more 
than welcome.  It seems to me that natural selection is multi-grained.  Even if 
we reject the general concept of group selection, I think it's safe to say that 
something like our "dopaminergic system" can be selected for or against just as 
well as some behavior like fight or flight.  At the very least, we can talk 
about the speed of evolution in bacteria and the idea that we are covered in, 
and filled with bacteria (which affects our survivability in the face of what 
we eat and breathe).  But you're right that I would NOT argue that the map from 
mechanism to phenomenon is simple.  Selection is phenomenal.  However, the 
structure of the systems being operated on are not merely 2-layer gen-phen 
systems.  They're a complex convolution of 2-layer systems, some fast, some 
slow, some tiny, some large, etc., all inter-embedded with each other.  The 
phenomenal "function" of one 2-layer part might well be considered the 
generative mechanism of another 2-layer part.

So, no, natural selection doesn't simply select function.  Even if 
*technically* true, that's an over-simplification.


On 02/21/2018 11:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> But don't you agree that *physiology* is NOT what is being directly
> selected for, but rather what is more directly *expressed* from what is
> *encoded* (genome) (therefore easier to identify/detect/measure).  Is it
> not *function* rather than *form* which is being selected?   Isn't that
> the point of *exaptation*, that one phenotypic element originally
> selected for around *one* context/utility function trips into another
> context with an entirely different utility?

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ

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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Steven A Smith]

Glen
> No, I don't agree.  I had intended to reply to Dave's (twice repeated) 
> question about the speed of evolution with this response.  But I'll do it, 
> here, anyway.  Remember that I'm not a biologist.  So, corrections of what I 
> say are more than welcome.  It seems to me that natural selection is 
> multi-grained.  Even if we reject the general concept of group selection, I 
> think it's safe to say that something like our "dopaminergic system" can be 
> selected for or against just as well as some behavior like fight or flight.  
> At the very least, we can talk about the speed of evolution in bacteria and 
> the idea that we are covered in, and filled with bacteria (which affects our 
> survivability in the face of what we eat and breathe).  But you're right that 
> I would NOT argue that the map from mechanism to phenomenon is simple.  
> Selection is phenomenal.  However, the structure of the systems being 
> operated on are not merely 2-layer gen-phen systems.  They're a complex 
> convolution of 2-layer systems, some fast, some slow, some tiny, some large, 
> etc., all inter-embedded with each other.  The phenomenal "function" of one 
> 2-layer part might well be considered the generative mechanism of another 
> 2-layer part.
>
> So, no, natural selection doesn't simply select function.  Even if 
> *technically* true, that's an over-simplification.
I DO agree with this last point.   However, my argument should be more
correctly that *IF* we are going to make a drastic oversimplification of
natural selection,reducing it to *selecting for form* to the exclusion
of *selecting for function* is not warranted, except perhaps to make the
point that the vice-versa is also bogus?  I responded (reacted) to your
seeming to prefer the form over the function and suggested that bias
might be because it was more easily measured/quantified?

I agree that natural selection is multiscale and that one must consider
selection of the "ecosystem of self" which would include the human
microbiome, which based on generational scale alone would be presumed to
evolve much more quickly than humans whose characteristic reproductive
time scale is on the order of decades rather than days or even hours.

I can't tell if we are converging or if we are refolding in the
subthreads that Dave and Nick (and others) intended.  Threads here seem
to easily/naturally diverge (fray?).
>
>
> On 02/21/2018 11:59 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>> But don't you agree that *physiology* is NOT what is being directly
>> selected for, but rather what is more directly *expressed* from what is
>> *encoded* (genome) (therefore easier to identify/detect/measure).  Is it
>> not *function* rather than *form* which is being selected?   Isn't that
>> the point of *exaptation*, that one phenotypic element originally
>> selected for around *one* context/utility function trips into another
>> context with an entirely different utility?




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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -
> Re: artificial distinctions --
> Allergy?  No.  The word "allergy" implies something like an *unhealthy*, more 
> than normal, immune response.  My take would be that my (yes, abnormally 
> high) immune response to artificial discretization is *healthy* and 
> appropriate.  Those of you who don't have such a high response to it are the 
> unhealthy ones. 8^)
Probably just my own "inner Troll" that made that suggestion.   I think
that using arbitrary thresholds to describe heightened immune responses
as "allergies" is *also* an example of "artifical discretization", just
how much violent vomiting, sneezing, coughing, or other expellations is
appropriate in a given situation is ...erh... "situational".  
> Re: obfuscation --
> Yes, that's part of the problem with Peterson and his ilk.  They are 
> justifying folktale motifs with scientismist jargon, much like the quantum 
> and complexity woo rampant in new age, self-help communities.
I have come full-circle on this over many decades, most spent in the
mode (as I apprehend it) that you are in... but have come to be more
tolerant of some of this kind of conflation.   I'm still offended that
some (many) use the language of Science to dress up something which is
patently not, but in the same vein as "Just because you are paranoid,
doesn't mean they aren't out to get you!", I'm more interested in the
outliers which include ideas which might be (partially) right for the
(mostly) wrong reasons. 
> Re: intra- vs. organism behavior
> I'm not suggesting there's no reason to distinguish between playing blackjack 
> and fighting.  What I am suggesting is that biological evolution is an 
> appropriate explanatory tool for physiology, but NOT an appropriate 
> explanatory tool for behaviors like playing blackjack and fighting.  Please 
> note that I'm not *claiming* evolution is inappropriate for such questions 
> ... only positing it as a provocative counter-claim to evopsych claims being 
> made by others.
But don't you agree that *physiology* is NOT what is being directly
selected for, but rather what is more directly *expressed* from what is
*encoded* (genome) (therefore easier to identify/detect/measure).  Is it
not *function* rather than *form* which is being selected?   Isn't that
the point of *exaptation*, that one phenotypic element originally
selected for around *one* context/utility function trips into another
context with an entirely different utility?
> Re: evopsych-appropriate questions
> I'm not so much asking what we're *interested* in.  I'm asking what kinds of 
> questions should evopsych apply to?
I'm not sure which hair you are splitting here?   I understand that
"mere interest" does not a "universal should" make, but in an informal
discussion group such as this, I would claim that "interest" and
"unction" are nearly identical.
>   I'd enjoy seeing a response to Dave's last post, though I seriously 
> question the assumptions he's embedded in them. 8^)
Example of my point above... your invoking your "enjoyment" suggests
that it is equivalent to some kind of "should".
>  In particular, it's not clear to me if the evidence decisively shows that, 
> in all hunter-gatherer societies, women exclusively gathered and men 
> exclusively hunted.
I also find Dave's assertions a little suspect or at least
provocative.   While I suspect he is broadly correct, that the
literature will reflect the truism he referencs (on this specific
topic), that doesn't account for a possible (likely?) confirmation bias
in the community.  On the other hand, I'd be surprised to find that a
*very* significant (statistically) bias won't still be evident after
adjusting for that.   Softening the exclusivity of the argument *barely*
undermines the motivation to consider it as a real phenomenon IMO.
>  The recent discovery that neolithic (?) women's arms were much stronger than 
> we might have thought, shows our inferences from (whatever) evidence can be 
> fragile. But answers to his questions would be helpful, regardless.  Going 
> back to physiology or anatomy, perhaps gender role differences can be tied to 
> something like the evolution of the hippocampus, but not to something 
> psychological like "multi-tasking"?
Part of what I'm hearing here is the (obvious?) fact that what are often
impugned as "the soft sciences" are in fact much harder places to obtain
significant amounts of quantitative data, in particular because of the
difficulty of setting up controlled experiments and of directly
measuring the more *interesting* properties related in the models
proposed.  I might be persuaded that there is a tendency to
over-informalize these domains and tightening them up might be fruitful
(indicated), but I am not persuaded that the near folktale/mythological
style that seems to come with the territory does more harm than good, or
is categorically "wrong".

I'm wondering if Nick's early appeal to have this topic discussed
without "moving too fast" has been achieved and if we

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Re: artificial distinctions --
Allergy?  No.  The word "allergy" implies something like an *unhealthy*, more 
than normal, immune response.  My take would be that my (yes, abnormally high) 
immune response to artificial discretization is *healthy* and appropriate.  
Those of you who don't have such a high response to it are the unhealthy ones. 
8^)

Re: obfuscation --
Yes, that's part of the problem with Peterson and his ilk.  They are justifying 
folktale motifs with scientismist jargon, much like the quantum and complexity 
woo rampant in new age, self-help communities.

Re: intra- vs. organism behavior
I'm not suggesting there's no reason to distinguish between playing blackjack 
and fighting.  What I am suggesting is that biological evolution is an 
appropriate explanatory tool for physiology, but NOT an appropriate explanatory 
tool for behaviors like playing blackjack and fighting.  Please note that I'm 
not *claiming* evolution is inappropriate for such questions ... only positing 
it as a provocative counter-claim to evopsych claims being made by others.

Re: evopsych-appropriate questions
I'm not so much asking what we're *interested* in.  I'm asking what kinds of 
questions should evopsych apply to?  I'd enjoy seeing a response to Dave's last 
post, though I seriously question the assumptions he's embedded in them. 8^) In 
particular, it's not clear to me if the evidence decisively shows that, in all 
hunter-gatherer societies, women exclusively gathered and men exclusively 
hunted.  The recent discovery that neolithic (?) women's arms were much 
stronger than we might have thought, shows our inferences from (whatever) 
evidence can be fragile. But answers to his questions would be helpful, 
regardless.  Going back to physiology or anatomy, perhaps gender role 
differences can be tied to something like the evolution of the hippocampus, but 
not to something psychological like "multi-tasking"?

On 02/21/2018 10:19 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I think you are overly sensitive to *potential* artificial discretization and 
> perhaps project your fear/resentment/mistrust of it onto some of the 
> statements made here?  I take some of this to be a feature of contrarian 
> trolling (in the Socratic sense invoked above), but is it also in some way a 
> personal allergy you suffer?


> I don't find Oxytocin or Dopamine any more (and possibly less) "obvious" 
> personally.  While I have some storytelling about those two molecules, their 
> source in the body, their effect on neurobiology, metabolism, mood, and 
> behaviour, those stories all depend very much on specialized/reserved 
> knowledge, while the "alpha male" and the "female display" (and similar) 
> stories come from a much larger lore than what you might be suggesting that 
> EP is as arcane/obscure/un(der)motivated as (fairly modern/recent) 
> neurobiology.


> Your general line of reasoning/discussion here would suggest that there is no 
> reason to look at the artifice of playing BlackJack to in any way relate to 
> more visceral risk taking such as fighting off a predator with primitive 
> weapons or that the cuddling/coddling of a child shouldn't be considered a 
> deep part of a group-survival instinct of humans (and most/all 
> mammals/warm-blooded creatures)?


> If you are asking why we are not interested in the possible selective value 
> of mimicry and adoption of cultural norms but we ARE interested in the 
> possible value of controlling/influencing choice of one's reproductive 
> partner's, I would answer:  1) I think "we" ARE interested in both; and 2) 
> the latter is somewhat more salacious than the former and we *might* look at 
> to EP arguments for preferences for salacity as well?


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Glen, 

People often talk as if references to internal things ... hormones, etc., are 
less mediated than references to behavior .  Your reference to lactic acid is a 
good example.  "Lactic acid" might be an partial explanation for "legs giving 
out" but it's not a substitute for it.Psychophysiological explanation, to 
the extent that its ever relevant,  relies on careful behavioral observation 
and analysis. 

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 10:42 AM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

I realized last night that someone might think my response is either a) moving 
the goal posts or b) nonsequitur, since it seems obvious that behaviors at the 
organism layer are categorically different from behaviors at the organ layer.  
What seems obvious is often misleading.  So, I figured I'd follow it up with 2 
stories:

1) https://www.wikihow.com/Dilate-or-Shrink-Your-Pupils-on-Command

The parry against a gamer who would manipulate your tendency toward pupil 
mimicry might be to warn them, "Be careful, now, I loaded up on oxytocin before 
our meeting."  (Oxytocin having been shown to increase skepticism about others' 
trustworthiness.)

2) 
http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2013/06/01/burn-baby-burn-the-truth-about-lactic-acid-and-exercise/

Although I think we know it's not the lactate that causes the exercise burn, is 
it really any *more* expressive to say "my legs started to give out at mile 23" 
than "I really felt the lactic acid at mile 23" ... or "the acidosis got me at 
mile 23"?

There are plenty of other stories, as well ... like being "hangry", as a pop 
culture way of invoking ghrelin and/or insulin.  Or the "rush" one might get 
from bungie jumping or slot machines.  My point being that the distinction 
between intra-organism vs. organism behaviors is artificial, an artifice put to 
good use in rhetoric like the "alpha male" or "female 'display'".


On 02/20/2018 02:24 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> 
> On 02/20/2018 02:14 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Well, the reason we don't talk about oxytocin, or dopamine, or even 
>> testosterone, much, is that they aren't behaviors.
> 
> Yes, they are behaviors.  When we talk about something like a hormone, 
> we're not really talking about the molecule, are we?  Yes, the 
> molecule is part of the conversation.  But the real conversation is 
> about the *interaction* of that molecule with other structures in the 
> body.  (E.g. hormones behave differently from neurotransmitters ... 
> what makes them different is *that* they behave differently, not so 
> much that their structures are different.)
> 
> To boot, when we talk about psychiatric interventions like SRIs, we're 
> talking about the behaviors "X reuptake inhibition".  So, that they are 
> behaviors isn't even (merely) relegated to physiology.  They're straight up 
> psychiatry.
> 
>> I really don't give a damn about your testosterone levels so long as you 
>> don't punch me in the nose.  
>>
>> By the way, we have a friend back east who is constantly looking for new 
>> drugs to increase her energy and well-being, and so she decided to try 
>> testosterone.  After a month on testosterone supplements, she said:  "I am 
>> surprised you guys behave as well as you do!"
>>
>> Testosterone IS a poison.  
> 
> Heh, the dose is the poison!
> 

--
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

I realized last night that someone might think my response is either a) moving 
the goal posts or b) nonsequitur, since it seems obvious that behaviors at the 
organism layer are categorically different from behaviors at the organ layer.  
What seems obvious is often misleading.  So, I figured I'd follow it up with 2 
stories:

1) https://www.wikihow.com/Dilate-or-Shrink-Your-Pupils-on-Command

The parry against a gamer who would manipulate your tendency toward pupil 
mimicry might be to warn them, "Be careful, now, I loaded up on oxytocin before 
our meeting."  (Oxytocin having been shown to increase skepticism about others' 
trustworthiness.)

2) 
http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2013/06/01/burn-baby-burn-the-truth-about-lactic-acid-and-exercise/

Although I think we know it's not the lactate that causes the exercise burn, is 
it really any *more* expressive to say "my legs started to give out at mile 23" 
than "I really felt the lactic acid at mile 23" ... or "the acidosis got me at 
mile 23"?

There are plenty of other stories, as well ... like being "hangry", as a pop 
culture way of invoking ghrelin and/or insulin.  Or the "rush" one might get 
from bungie jumping or slot machines.  My point being that the distinction 
between intra-organism vs. organism behaviors is artificial, an artifice put to 
good use in rhetoric like the "alpha male" or "female 'display'".


On 02/20/2018 02:24 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> 
> On 02/20/2018 02:14 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>> Well, the reason we don't talk about oxytocin, or dopamine, or even 
>> testosterone, much, is that they aren't behaviors.
> 
> Yes, they are behaviors.  When we talk about something like a hormone, we're 
> not really talking about the molecule, are we?  Yes, the molecule is part of 
> the conversation.  But the real conversation is about the *interaction* of 
> that molecule with other structures in the body.  (E.g. hormones behave 
> differently from neurotransmitters ... what makes them different is *that* 
> they behave differently, not so much that their structures are different.)
> 
> To boot, when we talk about psychiatric interventions like SRIs, we're 
> talking about the behaviors "X reuptake inhibition".  So, that they are 
> behaviors isn't even (merely) relegated to physiology.  They're straight up 
> psychiatry.
> 
>> I really don't give a damn about your testosterone levels so long as you 
>> don't punch me in the nose.  
>>
>> By the way, we have a friend back east who is constantly looking for new 
>> drugs to increase her energy and well-being, and so she decided to try 
>> testosterone.  After a month on testosterone supplements, she said:  "I am 
>> surprised you guys behave as well as you do!"
>>
>> Testosterone IS a poison.  
> 
> Heh, the dose is the poison!
> 

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Frank Wimberly]

Freud (bad word) tried to answer the last question in "Future of an
Illusion".

Frank


Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Feb 20, 2018 3:41 PM, "Prof David West"  wrote:

> High heels and platform shoes were originally a male fashion statement.
> Louis XIV fancied himself a dancer and made skin tight, body revealing
> clothing de rigueur  for everyone at court just so he could show of his
> beautiful legs. There are numerous cultures — some, who were able to avoid
> the pollution of missionaries, are still extant — where it is the males who
> wear beads and feathers and oil their exposed skin to attract females. Ever
> hear of penis sheaths? how about cod pieces?
>
> With all due respect to Nick — whom I love like a father (well brother as
> we are not that different in age) — and all the other serious evopsych
> researchers; I just cannot buy a biological explanation, even a
> biological-root explanation for phenomena that change in time frames orders
> of magnitude shorter than those required by biological evolution.
>
> An example of the kind of question that I think evopsych could be
> profitably employed would be: why is it that, in all the hunter-gatherer
> societies studied by anthropologists, it is the case that women gather and
> men hunt?
>
> A class of questions that could (IMHO) very well be informed by evopsych
> research: why does welfare beget more welfare? why does sexual suppression
> beget violence expression (a corollary to the last one would be why does
> imminent peril increase sexual arousal); why are humans so xenophobic; why
> do all cultures, including prehistoric, incorporate some kind of belief in
> the "supernatural?" An answer to the last one might provide some insight
> into why humans cannot evolve past the need for "God" and "religion."
>
> davew
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 20, 2018, at 2:15 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> >
> > On 02/20/2018 12:26 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> > > I doubt that Nick nor I believe that *every* thought is traceable back
> > > to some prehistoric evolutionary trait".
> >
> > 8^)  I know.  I'm just trolling you.  But the bait I'm trying to use is
> > important.
> >
> > > Female "display" is the one I identified here.   And it *definitely*
> > > doesn't rule out precisely what you say in the next paragraph being at
> > > work as well.  I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.
> >
> > Right, which is why this is in the sub-thread started by Frank.
> > Artificial discretization seems rampant.  Why would we talk about things
> > like "female display" or "alpha male" when there are MUCH more obvious
> > things to talk about like oxytocin and dopamine?  As Dave points out,
> > why would we talk about evopsych when we can talk about biology?
> >
> > Feelings of belonging, love, and satisfaction can come from playing
> > blackjack *or* coddling one's baby.  Women might show their arms because
> > all the designers make clothing that bares arms *or* because they want
> > to be provocative or both or for other reasons.  Why do we feel the need
> > to trace one motivation to biology (and a phylogenetic tree) but not the
> > other?
> >
> > --
> > ☣ uǝlƃ
> >
> > 
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Prof David West]

High heels and platform shoes were originally a male fashion statement. Louis 
XIV fancied himself a dancer and made skin tight, body revealing clothing de 
rigueur  for everyone at court just so he could show of his beautiful legs. 
There are numerous cultures — some, who were able to avoid the pollution of 
missionaries, are still extant — where it is the males who wear beads and 
feathers and oil their exposed skin to attract females. Ever hear of penis 
sheaths? how about cod pieces?

With all due respect to Nick — whom I love like a father (well brother as we 
are not that different in age) — and all the other serious evopsych 
researchers; I just cannot buy a biological explanation, even a biological-root 
explanation for phenomena that change in time frames orders of magnitude 
shorter than those required by biological evolution.

An example of the kind of question that I think evopsych could be profitably 
employed would be: why is it that, in all the hunter-gatherer societies studied 
by anthropologists, it is the case that women gather and men hunt?

A class of questions that could (IMHO) very well be informed by evopsych 
research: why does welfare beget more welfare? why does sexual suppression 
beget violence expression (a corollary to the last one would be why does 
imminent peril increase sexual arousal); why are humans so xenophobic; why do 
all cultures, including prehistoric, incorporate some kind of belief in the 
"supernatural?" An answer to the last one might provide some insight into why 
humans cannot evolve past the need for "God" and "religion."

davew


On Tue, Feb 20, 2018, at 2:15 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> 
> On 02/20/2018 12:26 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> > I doubt that Nick nor I believe that *every* thought is traceable back
> > to some prehistoric evolutionary trait".
> 
> 8^)  I know.  I'm just trolling you.  But the bait I'm trying to use is 
> important.
> 
> > Female "display" is the one I identified here.   And it *definitely*
> > doesn't rule out precisely what you say in the next paragraph being at
> > work as well.  I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.
> 
> Right, which is why this is in the sub-thread started by Frank.  
> Artificial discretization seems rampant.  Why would we talk about things 
> like "female display" or "alpha male" when there are MUCH more obvious 
> things to talk about like oxytocin and dopamine?  As Dave points out, 
> why would we talk about evopsych when we can talk about biology?
> 
> Feelings of belonging, love, and satisfaction can come from playing 
> blackjack *or* coddling one's baby.  Women might show their arms because 
> all the designers make clothing that bares arms *or* because they want 
> to be provocative or both or for other reasons.  Why do we feel the need 
> to trace one motivation to biology (and a phylogenetic tree) but not the 
> other?
> 
> -- 
> ☣ uǝlƃ
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

On 02/20/2018 02:14 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Well, the reason we don't talk about oxytocin, or dopamine, or even 
> testosterone, much, is that they aren't behaviors.

Yes, they are behaviors.  When we talk about something like a hormone, we're 
not really talking about the molecule, are we?  Yes, the molecule is part of 
the conversation.  But the real conversation is about the *interaction* of that 
molecule with other structures in the body.  (E.g. hormones behave differently 
from neurotransmitters ... what makes them different is *that* they behave 
differently, not so much that their structures are different.)

To boot, when we talk about psychiatric interventions like SRIs, we're talking 
about the behaviors "X reuptake inhibition".  So, that they are behaviors isn't 
even (merely) relegated to physiology.  They're straight up psychiatry.

> I really don't give a damn about your testosterone levels so long as you 
> don't punch me in the nose.  
> 
> By the way, we have a friend back east who is constantly looking for new 
> drugs to increase her energy and well-being, and so she decided to try 
> testosterone.  After a month on testosterone supplements, she said:  "I am 
> surprised you guys behave as well as you do!"
> 
> Testosterone IS a poison.  

Heh, the dose is the poison!

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Glen, 

Well, the reason we don't talk about oxytocin, or dopamine, or even 
testosterone, much, is that they aren't behaviors.  I really don't give a damn 
about your testosterone levels so long as you don't punch me in the nose.  

By the way, we have a friend back east who is constantly looking for new drugs 
to increase her energy and well-being, and so she decided to try testosterone.  
After a month on testosterone supplements, she said:  "I am surprised you guys 
behave as well as you do!"

Testosterone IS a poison.  

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2018 2:16 PM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?


On 02/20/2018 12:26 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I doubt that Nick nor I believe that *every* thought is traceable back 
> to some prehistoric evolutionary trait".

8^)  I know.  I'm just trolling you.  But the bait I'm trying to use is 
important.

> Female "display" is the one I identified here.   And it *definitely* 
> doesn't rule out precisely what you say in the next paragraph being at 
> work as well.  I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.

Right, which is why this is in the sub-thread started by Frank.  Artificial 
discretization seems rampant.  Why would we talk about things like "female 
display" or "alpha male" when there are MUCH more obvious things to talk about 
like oxytocin and dopamine?  As Dave points out, why would we talk about 
evopsych when we can talk about biology?

Feelings of belonging, love, and satisfaction can come from playing blackjack 
*or* coddling one's baby.  Women might show their arms because all the 
designers make clothing that bares arms *or* because they want to be 
provocative or both or for other reasons.  Why do we feel the need to trace one 
motivation to biology (and a phylogenetic tree) but not the other?

--
☣ uǝlƃ


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe 
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

On 02/20/2018 12:26 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I doubt that Nick nor I believe that *every* thought is traceable back
> to some prehistoric evolutionary trait".

8^)  I know.  I'm just trolling you.  But the bait I'm trying to use is 
important.

> Female "display" is the one I identified here.   And it *definitely*
> doesn't rule out precisely what you say in the next paragraph being at
> work as well.  I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.

Right, which is why this is in the sub-thread started by Frank.  Artificial 
discretization seems rampant.  Why would we talk about things like "female 
display" or "alpha male" when there are MUCH more obvious things to talk about 
like oxytocin and dopamine?  As Dave points out, why would we talk about 
evopsych when we can talk about biology?

Feelings of belonging, love, and satisfaction can come from playing blackjack 
*or* coddling one's baby.  Women might show their arms because all the 
designers make clothing that bares arms *or* because they want to be 
provocative or both or for other reasons.  Why do we feel the need to trace one 
motivation to biology (and a phylogenetic tree) but not the other?

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Steven A Smith]

On 2/20/18 12:14 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> It seems to me the best way to have the conversation is to see the "women at 
> the GG" topic as the exact same (pseudoscience) as the "alpha male" nonsense 
> invoked by Peterson.  Both you and Steve seem to have succumbed to the "every 
> thought is tracable back to some prehistoric evolutionary trait" when you say:
>
>> I suppose it's, "I can't make the sale if I can't make the contact".
I doubt that Nick nor I believe that *every* thought is traceable back
to some prehistoric evolutionary trait".   Speaking only for myself, I'd
say rather that every significant behavior or habit that is identifiable
across populations with disparate "nurture" contexts is worth
considering for a "nature" argument, and those which are less obviously
so, STILL might have a measurable "nature" contribution, but not as easy
to recognize?

Female "display" is the one I identified here.   And it *definitely*
doesn't rule out precisely what you say in the next paragraph being at
work as well.  I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.
> And Steve talks about an "instinctual response".  I'd like to propose that 
> men act like idiots because their peers act like idiots, women wear tight 
> dresses because their peers wear tight dresses ... and teens have cell phones 
> glued to their hands because their peers have cell phones glued to their 
> hands.
> If evopsych is NOT a pseudoscience, then every pseudoscientific claim made in 
> the NAME of evopsych should be buttressed by a better counter-claim.  Perhaps 
> a counter claim for all this "dress for sex" nonsense is that, perhaps we are 
> evolutionarily wired to have (at least some of) our thoughts socially 
> programmed into us by our context.  Going back to the squirrels, perhaps our 
> biology wires our thoughts simply to play *games*, the details of which will 
> change depending on the circumstance?  I don't know ... I'm just tossing out 
> ideas.
I am inclined to agree that "gaming" both in the sense of trying to
negotiate a stronger role in a social context and in the sense of more
simple "play" are pretty deep in us.   But that looks like what you have
already (tried to?) dismiss.   If you don't like "dress for sex" in any
of it's variants as having any validity, then let's talk about "play" or
"gaming" and whatever "nature" roots it might have. 
> And, going back to Dave's questions, do we have a sense for what questions 
> evopsych can and cannot answer?
Like most questions of this type, the questions EP cannot answer well
are likely diverse and uncountable, so I guess I'd be more inclined to
try to outline a spectrum of more/less likely and more/less interesting
more/less relevant ones?

The question of "dress for sex" (or "success") was on the table, maybe
it isn't relevant.    On the other hand, I think the history (as
presented to us) of earlier ages includes significant male foppery (to
use a perjorative term)... huge display via clothing, makeup and even
wigs to establish *something* about their role in society.  

- Steve




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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

It seems to me the best way to have the conversation is to see the "women at 
the GG" topic as the exact same (pseudoscience) as the "alpha male" nonsense 
invoked by Peterson.  Both you and Steve seem to have succumbed to the "every 
thought is tracable back to some prehistoric evolutionary trait" when you say:

> I suppose it's, "I can't make the sale if I can't make the contact".

And Steve talks about an "instinctual response".  I'd like to propose that men 
act like idiots because their peers act like idiots, women wear tight dresses 
because their peers wear tight dresses ... and teens have cell phones glued to 
their hands because their peers have cell phones glued to their hands.

If evopsych is NOT a pseudoscience, then every pseudoscientific claim made in 
the NAME of evopsych should be buttressed by a better counter-claim.  Perhaps a 
counter claim for all this "dress for sex" nonsense is that, perhaps we are 
evolutionarily wired to have (at least some of) our thoughts socially 
programmed into us by our context.  Going back to the squirrels, perhaps our 
biology wires our thoughts simply to play *games*, the details of which will 
change depending on the circumstance?  I don't know ... I'm just tossing out 
ideas.

And, going back to Dave's questions, do we have a sense for what questions 
evopsych can and cannot answer?


On 02/20/2018 10:47 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I am trying to think, how do we have this conversation in a way that is not 
> obnoxiously an example of itself.   Everything I write on the subject makes 
> me cringe.  

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Hi, Glen, 

Thanks for your forbearance in not considering the obvious explanation (}:-(]

And thanks also for the whole text.  

I vaguely remember a Gogol  (???)  short story from my youth?  It begins with 
unctuous guy-talk about how if you can get a woman to take her shoes off, then 
you are home free.  And then a bunch of dancers come to a party and the first 
thing they do when they enter the room is take their shoes off.  Nothing 
happens. End of story.  (I read the story 60 years ago, so forgive me it I have 
altered it;  I would love to know the truth about my source, here).  

The question is, "How do we get noticed."  The sociobiological question is, do 
we get noticed because we display some bits of flesh rather than others, or do 
we get noticed merely because we violate expectations.  I would say it's mostly 
the latter.  If you want to be stared at, go to the beach in a tuxedo.   And 
why WOULD one want to be noticed?  I suppose it's, "I can't make the sale if I 
can't make the contact".   If so, dressing up is like hitchhiking.  If nobody 
stops you won't get a good ride, but most rides are bad ones.   Finding someone 
who's going where you're going is hard work. .  

Frankly, I can't imagine "a beautiful pair of heels".  They look like torture 
instruments to me, only slightly less cruel than oriental foot-binding.   On 
the other hand,  when deciding whether to take another person seriously on 
first meeting,  I would bet that eye-height factors in.  It certainly was a 
factor with my monkeys.  

I am trying to think, how do we have this conversation in a way that is not 
obnoxiously an example of itself.   Everything I write on the subject makes me 
cringe.  

Nick 



Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2018 10:28 AM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

Hm.  It's the same link.  And your email program didn't mess it up because I 
just clicked on it in your response and it worked.  Perhaps there's a problem 
with https?  Whatever, here is the full article:

https://medium.com/@drjasonfung/how-to-not-beat-cancer-d0e9571e8792
-

Women must have the right to bare their arms without comment Rhiannon Lucy 
Cosslett

The remarks of Canada’s first female prime minister compound a society where 
women are valued above all on appearance.

There is not a day that goes by where I don’t feel grateful for the fact that I 
am no longer embedded tit-deep in the feminist movement. Though I remain a 
feminist – my commitment to the cause is unaltered – it is a relief, not to 
mention immeasurably better for my mental health, to find myself no longer 
overly concerned with putting a step wrong somewhere and facing the wrath of, 
well, everyone. “Did you see the fallout from so-and-so’s column?” a friend who 
is very much still involved in the feminist media circus asked me the other 
day. “Nope, don’t care,” I replied. She looked at me with wonder in her eyes.

Women are so frequently pitted against each other that it feels somewhat 
disloyal to admit that some of the worst tearing downs to which we can be 
subject are often from other women – so much for sisterhood. One such example 
was the time my co-writer Holly Baxter and I were at a literary festival 
discussing the societal pressure placed upon women to adhere to certain beauty 
standards, when an older feminist very much of the radical variety stood up and 
yelled at us for having long hair and wearing dresses.

That same year, the Observer published an article analysing the fact that we 
had both posed for a photo with our hands on our hips. We were accused of 
“semaphoring the classic pose of the ‘look-at-me’ beauty queen; the unnatural 
strut of every woman on display for the pleasure of the male eye”. The writer 
was a woman. Both incidents were humiliating.

The reason I drag this up is because of a story about red carpet dressing. 
German actor Anna Brüggemann has pointed out – correctly – that women actors 
are still expected to wear tight-fitting dresses and high heels on the red 
carpet for the purposes of appealing to the male gaze. She has launched a 
campaign, #NobodysDoll, encouraging women to wear more comfortable clothes. 
Also this week, Kim Campbell, a former prime minister of Canada, commented that 
women on television who bare their arms in sleeveless dresses while their male 
colleagues are covered up in suits “undermine credibility and gravitas”.

Oh my God, can we just stop? I am so sick of every woman’s choice, especially 
their fashion choices, being pulled apart and examined as to whether or not it 
is feminist. Surely we should have got to the po

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Steven A Smith]

> Since the horse isn't quite dead:

I think the horse has barely been flicked with the tip of the quirt...
or perhaps it is the wrong horse which we are flogging, or both?

 1. Is it possible that female hominids, specifically "modern women",
are responding to their own instinctual responses to what is
normally *male* display (most vertebrates, birds and herd mammals
being the more obvious examples) to help them choose which mates
they will be most receptive to is turned inside out by a combination
of simple-self-image-awareness and the technological development of
mirrors (and now selfies)?   Is it possible they are *assuming*
instinctively that men expect (nay, demand?) the display they offer? 
 2. Is it possible that male hominids, specifically "modern men",
through another aspect of self-image *are* subject to extravagant
display based on their own instincts to be on display themselves to
attract mates?

In the language of Complexity, these are examples of Exaptation and
(proto?)Spandrels, if in fact  they demonstrate any real utility over
the long haul... they may just be a temporary side-effect of the
development of the neocortex to include a stronger "sense of self".
> Women must have the right to bare their arms without comment
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/19/women-right-bare-arms-canada-prime-minister-kim-campbell
>
> "I look at that photo now and see someone who was actually really shy and 
> uncomfortable in the public eye, the opposite of a “look-at-me” beauty queen."
What I glean from former PM Kim Campbell's rant is a parallel to my take
on the "problem of PC".  I will acknowledge that somewhere along the
line, the term "Politically Correct" got co-opted and became a
dogwhistle for racist/misogynistic/??? rhetoric.   I know there is thin
ice near this topic and have stepped through the ice here before. 
Pardon me for my clumsy mincing here?

I think all *deliberate*? change requires over-correction, like most
materials with both elastic and plastic properties... one must
*overbend* to achieve the final bend one wishes.    Having come of age
during the height of the Equal and Civil Rights era, I experienced
directly and (more often) indirectly these over-corrections.   The
"token white males" on interview lists for jobs which they would never
be selected for, or the occasional "very good man/father" who got raked
over the "deadbeat dad" coals by an angry ex-spouse and a overzealous
justice system.  

Statistically, those (ab)uses of their white male status contributed to
an improvement in the overall "Balance of Justice", but individually
they were travesties, of the same order in many ways as those who we
were trying to help with the over-corrections.   When one person leans
out one side of the canoe, that everyone else leaningout the other side
might (temporarily) increase it's "balance" but undermines it's
"stability". 

As father to two adult daughters and grandfather to one young
granddaughter, I know that there is still plenty of room for continued
improvement, and that will require some continued vigilance and (over)
corrections.   The recent events and tendencies at the national level
(marked well perhaps by the Ferguson MO case, but spiked with the
Donald's anti-immigrant/ethnic rants/policies) suggest that there might
be even *more* room on the issues of ethnic equality.

My biggest task with these "over-corrections" beyond the various
personal inconveniences they cause me from time to time (which I'm
willing to accept if there is a greater good being served) is when they
have begun to work *against* the greater good which they are exhorted to
be supporting.   I think this is roughly what Kim Campbell is trying to
address/redress in her rant.

- Steve
>
> On 02/15/2018 08:44 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
>> Exactly!  So, it seems most reasonable to assume that the style of the 
>> clothing one wears to an awards ceremony, including how much skin is 
>> exposed, has more to do with cultural and clique norms than a "desire to be 
>> desired", whatever that may mean.
>>
>> On 02/15/2018 08:16 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>>> It's probably true that there are as many idiosyncratic motives as there 
>>> are people.  But I believe that there are dominant themes in that set of 
>>> motives.  Which begs the question how you know what someone's motives are, 
>>> including yourself.


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Hm.  It's the same link.  And your email program didn't mess it up because I 
just clicked on it in your response and it worked.  Perhaps there's a problem 
with https?  Whatever, here is the full article:

https://medium.com/@drjasonfung/how-to-not-beat-cancer-d0e9571e8792
-

Women must have the right to bare their arms without comment
Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

The remarks of Canada’s first female prime minister compound a society where 
women are valued above all on appearance.

There is not a day that goes by where I don’t feel grateful for the fact that I 
am no longer embedded tit-deep in the feminist movement. Though I remain a 
feminist – my commitment to the cause is unaltered – it is a relief, not to 
mention immeasurably better for my mental health, to find myself no longer 
overly concerned with putting a step wrong somewhere and facing the wrath of, 
well, everyone. “Did you see the fallout from so-and-so’s column?” a friend who 
is very much still involved in the feminist media circus asked me the other 
day. “Nope, don’t care,” I replied. She looked at me with wonder in her eyes.

Women are so frequently pitted against each other that it feels somewhat 
disloyal to admit that some of the worst tearing downs to which we can be 
subject are often from other women – so much for sisterhood. One such example 
was the time my co-writer Holly Baxter and I were at a literary festival 
discussing the societal pressure placed upon women to adhere to certain beauty 
standards, when an older feminist very much of the radical variety stood up and 
yelled at us for having long hair and wearing dresses.

That same year, the Observer published an article analysing the fact that we 
had both posed for a photo with our hands on our hips. We were accused of 
“semaphoring the classic pose of the ‘look-at-me’ beauty queen; the unnatural 
strut of every woman on display for the pleasure of the male eye”. The writer 
was a woman. Both incidents were humiliating.

The reason I drag this up is because of a story about red carpet dressing. 
German actor Anna Brüggemann has pointed out – correctly – that women actors 
are still expected to wear tight-fitting dresses and high heels on the red 
carpet for the purposes of appealing to the male gaze. She has launched a 
campaign, #NobodysDoll, encouraging women to wear more comfortable clothes. 
Also this week, Kim Campbell, a former prime minister of Canada, commented that 
women on television who bare their arms in sleeveless dresses while their male 
colleagues are covered up in suits “undermine credibility and gravitas”.

Oh my God, can we just stop? I am so sick of every woman’s choice, especially 
their fashion choices, being pulled apart and examined as to whether or not it 
is feminist. Surely we should have got to the point by now where we accept 
that, while equality is a laudable thing to aim for, none of us is perfect and 
not everything we do is going to be ideologically pure.

I wish, back in 2014, I had had the courage to say to those women that it is 
entirely possible to critique a structure while at the same time inhabiting it. 
In fact, you’re in many ways perfectly placed to do so. But I was young, and 
terribly insecure. I look at that photo now and see someone who was actually 
really shy and uncomfortable in the public eye, the opposite of a “look-at-me” 
beauty queen.

Putting women under a microscope like this is bad for us all. It affects the 
confidence of those being subject to the examination, of course, but more 
broadly, it isn’t good for any woman. It’s ironic that those who rail against 
the scrutiny of women’s bodies the hardest so often unwittingly end up piling 
on that scrutiny. You might argue that the clothes we wear invite scrutiny, 
that they are signs we hold up to the outside world that attempt to express who 
we are. This is true.

And certainly, a woman in a skimpy dress with lots of flesh on display 
surrounded by a sea of men in black who are completely covered up will carry a 
significant visual message to a little girl watching an awards show on 
television. But to give it undue focus is to treat the symptom and not the 
cause, which is a society in which women are valued above all on their 
appearance. Focusing on the fashion choices of a few individual women won’t 
change that. Working to change attitudes will.

Every year a red carpet will see a few badass women who buck the trend and wear 
a tux, and these women should be applauded. Brüggemann should too, for 
encouraging women to dress differently if they so choose. But no woman should 
feel bad because she doesn’t feel comfortable doing that, is simply dressing in 
the way society has encouraged her to dress, or, God forbid, actually likes her 
beautiful shoes and gown.

Saying this does not mean that I’m engaging in some wishy-wishy brand of choice 
feminism. You can be wearing high heels or a tight dress and still think sexual 
harassment is

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

This is a good horse.  Let's keep it alive.  

 

Alas, Glen, the link didn't work.   Can you resend it, if it is crucial to my 
understanding what you wrote. 

 

Meantime, I offer the following for you all to stew on: 

 

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

   And should I then presume?

   And how should I begin?

 

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of ? u???
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2018 9:06 AM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

 

Since the horse isn't quite dead:

 

 

Women must have the right to bare their arms without comment

 
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/19/women-right-bare-arms-canada-prime-minister-kim-campbell>
 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/19/women-right-bare-arms-canada-prime-minister-kim-campbell

 

"I look at that photo now and see someone who was actually really shy and 
uncomfortable in the public eye, the opposite of a “look-at-me” beauty queen."

 

 

On 02/15/2018 08:44 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> Exactly!  So, it seems most reasonable to assume that the style of the 
> clothing one wears to an awards ceremony, including how much skin is exposed, 
> has more to do with cultural and clique norms than a "desire to be desired", 
> whatever that may mean.

> 

> On 02/15/2018 08:16 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

>> It's probably true that there are as many idiosyncratic motives as there are 
>> people.  But I believe that there are dominant themes in that set of 
>> motives.  Which begs the question how you know what someone's motives are, 
>> including yourself.

> 

 

--

∄ uǝʃƃ

 



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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[∄ uǝʃƃ]

Since the horse isn't quite dead:

Women must have the right to bare their arms without comment
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/19/women-right-bare-arms-canada-prime-minister-kim-campbell

"I look at that photo now and see someone who was actually really shy and 
uncomfortable in the public eye, the opposite of a “look-at-me” beauty queen."


On 02/15/2018 08:44 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> Exactly!  So, it seems most reasonable to assume that the style of the 
> clothing one wears to an awards ceremony, including how much skin is exposed, 
> has more to do with cultural and clique norms than a "desire to be desired", 
> whatever that may mean.
> 
> On 02/15/2018 08:16 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>> It's probably true that there are as many idiosyncratic motives as there are 
>> people.  But I believe that there are dominant themes in that set of 
>> motives.  Which begs the question how you know what someone's motives are, 
>> including yourself.
> 

-- 
∄ uǝʃƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Pieter Steenekamp]

I'm not a psychologist but I currently work in the field of AI deep
learning and this is modeled on the human brain, so let me comment on
Dave's question from my insight I developed working in this field.

In addition to the evospych component of human behavior, the human brain
also works like a "scenario simulator/tester". Our evospych component is
similar to those find in other animals, but the  "scenario simulator/tester" is
practically unique in humans. It's strong in humans and very weak or absent
in animals. The brain's simulator has a model of the world to simulate
different scenarios and compares the outcome to select the action resulting
in the best outcome. The actual behavior is then a combination of
evospych (instinct)
and reason (using the simulator).

Just an afternote on my work. The current mainstream AI deep learning does
not have a "scenario simulator/tester", it merely uses artificial neural
networks that learn like the brain's neurons learn. The scenario
simulator/tester is new groundbreaking work spearheaded by Demis Hassibis
of DeepMind (owned by Google). I'm not an academic, I use the same
structure for commercial applications. In my work, I also include an ABM
model as part of the  "scenario simulator/tester" to model human behavior
to do dynamic pricing.



On 16 February 2018 at 23:15, Prof David West  wrote:

> Another question for Nick
>   -- does evolutionary psychology hold that every psychological behavior
> is explainable, at least in principle, or are some behaviors / some
> psychological states outside the purview of evospych? For example, is the
> an evolutionary explanation for the observed behavior that people generally
> drink red wine at room temp and white only when chilled.  If not, what is
> required to elevate a behavior to a "trait" worthy of the attention of
> evopsychs?
>
> davew
>
> On Fri, Feb 16, 2018, at 10:43 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> >
> > Excellent contribution!  Thanks, Nick.
> >
> > Of course, your arguments, in this letter, are primarily academic.  So,
> > they won't grip the populace in the way Peterson's have (unless you
> > launch a marketing campaign like he did, of course).  But I found the
> > biased sample argument plausible as something which *would* grip the
> > public, especially with this President and the #metoo stuff.
> >
> > I believe (though I'm often wrong) Peterson's arguments seem closely
> > parallel with the sexual gamers, pick-up artists, who try to game the
> > mating game.  It's akin, I think, to the "power pose" concept or,
> > perhaps even the "smile to be happier" thing.  In Peterson's case, it
> > amounts to "act successful, and you'll have more sex."
> >
> > Your two arguments: 1) that we'd expect a "curvilinear" relationship
> > between success and more partners -- from which I infer some sort of
> > saturation curve, and 2) justificationist studies will tend to self-
> > select towards posers, combine to form an argument that might grip the
> > public, in these times.
> >
> > Women (and men) should be understood as complex enough creatures so as
> > to be capable of spotting the gamers.  Even *if* Peterson et al are
> > presenting some sort of essentialist truth (while squinting from the
> > window of an airplane), too many details have been removed for their
> > self-help woo to be true in any concrete circumstance.
> >
> > My goal, however, would be to formulate a counter-hypothesis, perhaps
> > based on the detection of defectors ... an evol. psych. counter-
> > hypothesis.  Perhaps the detection of *lies* is rooted somewhere in
> > biology?  Renee' mentioned the other day that some squirrels are
> > defectors/gamers and they'll simply watch the industrious squirrels as
> > they stash their nuts, then the defector will go dig up the stashed nut.
> > So, some industrious squirrels have developed a lying technique where
> > they pretend to bury a nut, then run off to bury it somewhere else.  It
> > seems we could formulate a testable, evol. psych. hypothesis that claims
> > men and women who are authentic tend to be happier and have more babies?
> >
> >
> >
> > On 02/15/2018 11:58 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > > Here is another paper  publication/247372033_Oh_no_Not_social_Darwinism_again> much shorter
> (only 600 wds)  and better Xeroxed, which exemplifies my contempt for this
> latter sort of evolutionary psychology.
> >
> >
> > --
> > ☣ uǝlƃ
> >
> > 
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
> 
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Prof David West]

Another question for Nick
  -- does evolutionary psychology hold that every psychological behavior is 
explainable, at least in principle, or are some behaviors / some psychological 
states outside the purview of evospych? For example, is the an evolutionary 
explanation for the observed behavior that people generally drink red wine at 
room temp and white only when chilled.  If not, what is required to elevate a 
behavior to a "trait" worthy of the attention of evopsychs?

davew

On Fri, Feb 16, 2018, at 10:43 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
> 
> Excellent contribution!  Thanks, Nick.
> 
> Of course, your arguments, in this letter, are primarily academic.  So, 
> they won't grip the populace in the way Peterson's have (unless you 
> launch a marketing campaign like he did, of course).  But I found the 
> biased sample argument plausible as something which *would* grip the 
> public, especially with this President and the #metoo stuff.
> 
> I believe (though I'm often wrong) Peterson's arguments seem closely 
> parallel with the sexual gamers, pick-up artists, who try to game the 
> mating game.  It's akin, I think, to the "power pose" concept or, 
> perhaps even the "smile to be happier" thing.  In Peterson's case, it 
> amounts to "act successful, and you'll have more sex."
> 
> Your two arguments: 1) that we'd expect a "curvilinear" relationship 
> between success and more partners -- from which I infer some sort of 
> saturation curve, and 2) justificationist studies will tend to self-
> select towards posers, combine to form an argument that might grip the 
> public, in these times.
> 
> Women (and men) should be understood as complex enough creatures so as 
> to be capable of spotting the gamers.  Even *if* Peterson et al are 
> presenting some sort of essentialist truth (while squinting from the 
> window of an airplane), too many details have been removed for their 
> self-help woo to be true in any concrete circumstance.
> 
> My goal, however, would be to formulate a counter-hypothesis, perhaps 
> based on the detection of defectors ... an evol. psych. counter-
> hypothesis.  Perhaps the detection of *lies* is rooted somewhere in 
> biology?  Renee' mentioned the other day that some squirrels are 
> defectors/gamers and they'll simply watch the industrious squirrels as 
> they stash their nuts, then the defector will go dig up the stashed nut.  
> So, some industrious squirrels have developed a lying technique where 
> they pretend to bury a nut, then run off to bury it somewhere else.  It 
> seems we could formulate a testable, evol. psych. hypothesis that claims 
> men and women who are authentic tend to be happier and have more babies?
> 
> 
> 
> On 02/15/2018 11:58 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > Here is another paper 
> > 
> >  much shorter (only 600 wds)  and better Xeroxed, which exemplifies my 
> > contempt for this latter sort of evolutionary psychology.
> 
> 
> -- 
> ☣ uǝlƃ
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Excellent contribution!  Thanks, Nick.

Of course, your arguments, in this letter, are primarily academic.  So, they 
won't grip the populace in the way Peterson's have (unless you launch a 
marketing campaign like he did, of course).  But I found the biased sample 
argument plausible as something which *would* grip the public, especially with 
this President and the #metoo stuff.

I believe (though I'm often wrong) Peterson's arguments seem closely parallel 
with the sexual gamers, pick-up artists, who try to game the mating game.  It's 
akin, I think, to the "power pose" concept or, perhaps even the "smile to be 
happier" thing.  In Peterson's case, it amounts to "act successful, and you'll 
have more sex."

Your two arguments: 1) that we'd expect a "curvilinear" relationship between 
success and more partners -- from which I infer some sort of saturation curve, 
and 2) justificationist studies will tend to self-select towards posers, 
combine to form an argument that might grip the public, in these times.

Women (and men) should be understood as complex enough creatures so as to be 
capable of spotting the gamers.  Even *if* Peterson et al are presenting some 
sort of essentialist truth (while squinting from the window of an airplane), 
too many details have been removed for their self-help woo to be true in any 
concrete circumstance.

My goal, however, would be to formulate a counter-hypothesis, perhaps based on 
the detection of defectors ... an evol. psych. counter-hypothesis.  Perhaps the 
detection of *lies* is rooted somewhere in biology?  Renee' mentioned the other 
day that some squirrels are defectors/gamers and they'll simply watch the 
industrious squirrels as they stash their nuts, then the defector will go dig 
up the stashed nut.  So, some industrious squirrels have developed a lying 
technique where they pretend to bury a nut, then run off to bury it somewhere 
else.  It seems we could formulate a testable, evol. psych. hypothesis that 
claims men and women who are authentic tend to be happier and have more babies?



On 02/15/2018 11:58 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Here is another paper 
> 
>  much shorter (only 600 wds)  and better Xeroxed, which exemplifies my 
> contempt for this latter sort of evolutionary psychology.


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Prof David West]

Some questions for Nick and one for Ed Angel

Peterson's "alpha male" silliness seemed to have prompted this thread
but I wonder if a different example might advance the discussion more
productively, especially since, I suspect, most everyone on the list
would dismiss Peterson as inane.
The example I have in mind is sexism in computing. Back in the sixties,
two psychologists (Cannon and Perry) created a "profile" or aptitude
test to determine who would be a good programmer. Their work became the
de facto standard used for hiring (and to a lesser extent for admission
to grad school in CS) up to and including today.
Two psychological / behavioral traits dominate their profile: 1)
affinity for and proficiency at 'logical / mathematical puzzle
solving';and 2) antipathy towards people. Both of these traits are,
supposedly, more prevalent in males than females, especially the second
one. This instantly marginalized women as potential programmers. (I
would argue that this work also had significant impact, indirectly and
via cultural diffusion, on the reduction of women in all of the STEM
educational paths and professions.)
Within the last year, James Damone, former Google engineer, essentially
made the same argument and explicitly stated that the prevalence of the
two behavioral traits was "biological" in origin.
Some questions for Nick:

  -- is any assertion of a biological origin for a psychological /
  behavioral trait a naive evolutionary psychology argument? I say naive
  because I doubt that any of those individuals had any knowledge of the
  evolutionary psychology discipline or research.
  -- If the assertion is made that 'anti-social nerdiness' is biological
  (evolutionary psychological) in origin, what criteria could / would be
  used to affirm or deny? Must you show that the trait yielded
  reproductive advantage? Would you need to show the trait was present
  in antecedent instances of the species — e.g. would you find
  individuals in hunter-gatherer tribes that exhibited the trait? Could
  the trait be biological in origin but not 'continuous' in some fashion
  — e.g. a case of punctuated equilibrium.
Nick has accused me of shameless reification when I use the term/concept
of "cultural evolution" but ... I was taught that the time frame
required for biological evolution is too long to be a reasonable basis
for explaining or accounting for observed psychological / behavioral
changes in human beings. E.g. psychological behaviors associated with
things like social media and cell phones are clearly observable but
occur in time frames that are generational at most, and most commonly
intra-generational.
  -- Is it possible to argue for some kind of biological 'precursors' —
  traits from which the observable changes are derived, and dependent?
  (Kind of like the evolution of eyes being dependent on precursors like
  photo-sensitive cells.)
  -- Is it possible to disprove an evolutionary psychological argument
  (ala Peterson and Malone) simply by pointing out that it emerged and
  became prevalent in a time frame inconsistent with biological
  evolution?
The question for Ed Angel (only because he is a graphics maven):

  -- pure speculation, but what impact did the Lena image (de facto
  standard for testing image compression algorithms), in 1973, have on
  the decline of women in the profession? A mere six years earlier,
  *Cosmopolitan* magazine was touting programming as a smart career path
  for women and around the same time a peak of 37% of students in CS
  were women.
davew


On Fri, Feb 16, 2018, at 1:53 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> IMO it's going to be difficult to debunk evolutionary psychology.  It
> is a valid part of the medley of components of psychology and
> sociology. But is it the truth the whole truth and nothing but the
> truth? No, certainly not. There is much more to human behavior than
> evolutionary psychology.> What's coming out from the #MeToo movement is just 
> horrible. Sure, it
> may be consistent with evolutionary psychology, but we as humans
> should not accept it and root out the abhorrent behavior of some of
> the male of the species. And our society has been protecting the
> perpetrators and thank god that's changing.> But don't throw out the baby 
> with the bathwater. Give credit to
> evolutionary psychology as part of the effort to understand human
> behavior.> 
> On 15 February 2018 at 22:08, uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:
>> But your point *did* come through.  Peterson's (and many people's)
>> conception of the "alpha male" (or "alpha female" for Frank), has
>> become second nature.  It's everywhere in our culture.  And it is
>> ripe for a debunking that is complete enough to GRIP the populace.
>> Dave's debunking is right, I think.  The Adam Ruins Everything video
>> is good, but too fluffy.>> 
>>  Since Peterson depends on (some bastardization of) evol. psych.,
>>  then it would be healthy to have an evol. psych. debunking.
>>  *That's* what I'm actually looking for.  Perhap

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[glen]

Nobody's talking about debunking an entire domain. As Nick argues in the 1st 
paper and the quote from the Wikipedia page argues, it makes the most sense to 
treat particular hypotheses.

So I asked for testable hypotheses involving the alpha male concept and, in 
particular, Peterson's evolutionary psychology justification for that concept. 
And as I said, Dave West's debunking of the alpha male concept is good but it 
would be best to combat an evolutionary psychology justification for "alpha 
male" with an evolutionary psychology debunking of "alpha male".

On February 16, 2018 12:53:03 AM PST, Pieter Steenekamp 
 wrote:
>IMO it's going to be difficult to debunk evolutionary psychology.  It
>is a
>valid part of the medley of components of psychology and sociology. But
>is
>it the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth? No, certainly
>not.
>There is much more to human behavior than evolutionary psychology.
>What's coming out from the #MeToo movement is just horrible. Sure, it
>may
>be consistent with evolutionary psychology, but we as humans should not
>accept it and root out the abhorrent behavior of some of the male of
>the
>species. And our society has been protecting the perpetrators and thank
>god
>that's changing.
>But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Give credit to
>evolutionary psychology as part of the effort to understand human
>behavior.
>
>
>On 15 February 2018 at 22:08, uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:
>> Since Peterson depends on (some bastardization of) evol. psych., then
>it
>> would be healthy to have an evol. psych. debunking.  *That's* what
>I'm
>> actually looking for.  Perhaps your "Oh no" paper contains that
>debunking.
>> I'll look.
-- 
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Pieter Steenekamp]

 IMO it's going to be difficult to debunk evolutionary psychology.  It is a
valid part of the medley of components of psychology and sociology. But is
it the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth? No, certainly not.
There is much more to human behavior than evolutionary psychology.
What's coming out from the #MeToo movement is just horrible. Sure, it may
be consistent with evolutionary psychology, but we as humans should not
accept it and root out the abhorrent behavior of some of the male of the
species. And our society has been protecting the perpetrators and thank god
that's changing.
But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Give credit to
evolutionary psychology as part of the effort to understand human behavior.


On 15 February 2018 at 22:08, uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:

> But your point *did* come through.  Peterson's (and many people's)
> conception of the "alpha male" (or "alpha female" for Frank), has become
> second nature.  It's everywhere in our culture.  And it is ripe for a
> debunking that is complete enough to GRIP the populace.  Dave's debunking
> is right, I think.  The Adam Ruins Everything video is good, but too fluffy.
>
> Since Peterson depends on (some bastardization of) evol. psych., then it
> would be healthy to have an evol. psych. debunking.  *That's* what I'm
> actually looking for.  Perhaps your "Oh no" paper contains that debunking.
> I'll look.
>
>
> On 02/15/2018 11:58 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> > I apologize for the length of MY DESCENT and for the poor quality of the
> Xerox.  It doesn't surprise me that the main point didn't come through.   I
> think Evolutionary Psychology does provide testable hypotheses, but I also
> think testability is not /sufficient /to make a hypothesis heuristic.  The
> hypothesis also has to be interesting.  To be interesting, a hypothesis has
> to challenge some way of thinking that has become second nature, and good
> EP thought sometimes produces such surprising challenges.  Such interesting
> challenges do not arise from studies designed to bolster social stereotypes
> with biological bafflegab.  Here is another paper <
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247372033_Oh_no_
> Not_social_Darwinism_again> much shorter (only 600 wds)  and better
> Xeroxed, which exemplifies my contempt for this latter sort of evolutionary
> psychology.
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>

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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

But your point *did* come through.  Peterson's (and many people's) conception 
of the "alpha male" (or "alpha female" for Frank), has become second nature.  
It's everywhere in our culture.  And it is ripe for a debunking that is 
complete enough to GRIP the populace.  Dave's debunking is right, I think.  The 
Adam Ruins Everything video is good, but too fluffy.

Since Peterson depends on (some bastardization of) evol. psych., then it would 
be healthy to have an evol. psych. debunking.  *That's* what I'm actually 
looking for.  Perhaps your "Oh no" paper contains that debunking.  I'll look. 


On 02/15/2018 11:58 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> I apologize for the length of MY DESCENT and for the poor quality of the 
> Xerox.  It doesn't surprise me that the main point didn't come through.   I 
> think Evolutionary Psychology does provide testable hypotheses, but I also 
> think testability is not /sufficient /to make a hypothesis heuristic.  The 
> hypothesis also has to be interesting.  To be interesting, a hypothesis has 
> to challenge some way of thinking that has become second nature, and good EP 
> thought sometimes produces such surprising challenges.  Such interesting 
> challenges do not arise from studies designed to bolster social stereotypes 
> with biological bafflegab.  Here is another paper 
> 
>  much shorter (only 600 wds)  and better Xeroxed, which exemplifies my 
> contempt for this latter sort of evolutionary psychology.

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Hi, Glen

 

I said I would be slow in responding.  True to my word.  

 

I agree with you that Cosmides and Tooby are among the most interesting 
manifestations of the Evolutionary Psychology ... movement, fad, whatever.  
Their strongest "suit" was their attack on "Darwinian Psychology" which 
consists of picking out some trait valued by the author and his graduate 
students and making an argument that that trait exists because it is favored by 
natural selection.  C. and T. reminded us that no trait that came into being by 
selection should be expected to be favorably selected in the current 
environment.  However, they are. are, unfortunately, the worst sort of 
mentalists, people who think that brain research is going to save us from the 
absurdities of causal mentalism.

 

I agree also that some of the most interesting manifestations of evolutionary 
thought with respect to humans have come from Evolutionary Medicine.  Pregnancy 
sickness is a good example; I suspect food finickiness in little kids is 
another.  "Croupy" crying in babies might be a third.I have always been 
interested in the argument that so-called "insecure" attachment in children is 
not a pathology but an alternative pathway adapted for (selected in?) the 
excruciatingly narrow "bottleneck" that human populations came through 1 to 200 
thousand years ago.  I have argued myself that road rage is a form of altruism, 
in which the rager risks his own life to enforce a social norm.  

 

I apologize for the length of MY DESCENT and for the poor quality of the Xerox. 
 It doesn't surprise me that the main point didn't come through.   I think 
Evolutionary Psychology does provide testable hypotheses, but I also think 
testability is not sufficient to make a hypothesis heuristic.  The hypothesis 
also has to be interesting.  To be interesting, a hypothesis has to challenge 
some way of thinking that has become second nature, and good EP thought 
sometimes produces such surprising challenges.  Such interesting challenges do 
not arise from studies designed to bolster social stereotypes with biological 
bafflegab.  Here is another paper 
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247372033_Oh_no_Not_social_Darwinism_again>
  much shorter (only 600 wds)  and better Xeroxed, which exemplifies my 
contempt for this latter sort of evolutionary psychology. 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 12:24 PM
To: FriAM 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

 

 

Having skimmed your paper, I think the wikipedia quote is adequate and more 
appropriate simply because it's shorter:

 

>From  
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology#Testability>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology#Testability

> Leda Cosmides argued in an interview:

> 

> "Those who have a professional knowledge of evolutionary biology know 
> that it is not possible to cook up after the fact explanations of just any 
> trait. There are important constraints on evolutionary explanation. More to 
> the point, every decent evolutionary explanation has testable predictions 
> about the design of the trait. For example, the hypothesis that pregnancy 
> sickness is a byproduct of prenatal hormones predicts different patterns of 
> food aversions than the hypothesis that it is an adaptation that evolved to 
> protect the fetus from pathogens and plant toxins in food at the point in 
> embryogenesis when the fetus is most vulnerable – during the first trimester. 
> Evolutionary hypotheses – whether generated to discover a new trait or to 
> explain one that is already known – carry predictions about the nature of 
> that trait. The alternative – having no hypothesis about adaptive function – 
> carries no predictions whatsoever. So which is the more constrained and sober 
> scientific approach?" 

 

Given that, we can move back to Jordan Peterson and ask: Are there any testable 
hypotheses for this "alpha male" concept Peterson peddles to his "masculinity" 
fanboys?

 

 

 

 

On 02/14/2018 10:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Once the two extreme positions have been set aside, we are left in the 

> messy middle.

> 

>  

> 

> */Under what circumstances and in which domains does knowledge of 

> human evolutionary history have anything to contribute to our 

> understanding of contemporary human behavior?  /*

> 

>  

> 

> I would love to have a sustained, thoughtful discussion of this 

> question on this list.  It is very close to 

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Exactly!  So, it seems most reasonable to assume that the style of the clothing 
one wears to an awards ceremony, including how much skin is exposed, has more 
to do with cultural and clique norms than a "desire to be desired", whatever 
that may mean.

On 02/15/2018 08:16 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> It's probably true that there are as many idiosyncratic motives as there are 
> people.  But I believe that there are dominant themes in that set of motives. 
>  Which begs the question how you know what someone's motives are, including 
> yourself.

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Frank Wimberly]

It's probably true that there are as many idiosyncratic motives as there
are people.  But I believe that there are dominant themes in that set of
motives.  Which begs the question how you know what someone's motives are,
including yourself.




Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Feb 15, 2018 7:45 AM, "glen"  wrote:

> No. I'm saying that you are artificially discretizing the motivation of
> the women (and men) at the GG.
>
> On February 14, 2018 5:43:08 PM PST, Frank Wimberly 
> wrote:
> >I think you're saying that your motivation for exposing skin is
> >different  from that of the women on the Golden Globes program, which
> >seems correct to me.
> >
> >Frank
> >
> >-Original Message-
> >From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
> >Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 4:46 PM
> >To: FriAM
> >Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?
> >
> >Your questions seem to assume that the only reason to expose one's body
> >is to be desired.  I know that *I* don't wear shorts in the summer so
> >that I'll be desired by the women (or men) in my neighborhood. 8^)  One
> >reason I try to expose my arms even when I'm cold is in order to
> >increase my cold tolerance.  It has nothing to do with being desired.
> >
> >
> >On 02/14/2018 03:27 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> >> This is not particularly relevant to Dave's essay but was stimulated
> >by his questions about physical attraction between genders.  I was
> >puzzled while watching the Golden Globes (for a few minutes) by the
> >apparent conflict between the themes of "Me Too" and "Time's Up"(?) and
> >the very provocative display of women's bodies.  I wonder if Jacques
> >Lacan's insight that "Man's desire is the desire of the other" is
> >relevant.  In this case: women want to be desired but not to be
> >possessed or seduced.  Note that their bodies are on display to
> >who-knows-how-many strangers. A warm, affectionate relationship with
> >that number of men is not possible.  On the other hand, maybe it's a
> >question of asserting alphaness among women.  I don't presume to know
> >whether either speculation is the case.
> >
> >
> >--
> >☣ uǝlƃ
> >
> >
> >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> >http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> >FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
> >
> >
> >
> >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> >to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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>
> --
> glen
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[glen]

No. I'm saying that you are artificially discretizing the motivation of the 
women (and men) at the GG.

On February 14, 2018 5:43:08 PM PST, Frank Wimberly  wrote:
>I think you're saying that your motivation for exposing skin is
>different  from that of the women on the Golden Globes program, which
>seems correct to me.
>
>Frank
>
>-Original Message-
>From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
>Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 4:46 PM
>To: FriAM
>Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?
>
>Your questions seem to assume that the only reason to expose one's body
>is to be desired.  I know that *I* don't wear shorts in the summer so
>that I'll be desired by the women (or men) in my neighborhood. 8^)  One
>reason I try to expose my arms even when I'm cold is in order to
>increase my cold tolerance.  It has nothing to do with being desired.
>
>
>On 02/14/2018 03:27 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>> This is not particularly relevant to Dave's essay but was stimulated
>by his questions about physical attraction between genders.  I was
>puzzled while watching the Golden Globes (for a few minutes) by the
>apparent conflict between the themes of "Me Too" and "Time's Up"(?) and
>the very provocative display of women's bodies.  I wonder if Jacques
>Lacan's insight that "Man's desire is the desire of the other" is
>relevant.  In this case: women want to be desired but not to be
>possessed or seduced.  Note that their bodies are on display to
>who-knows-how-many strangers. A warm, affectionate relationship with
>that number of men is not possible.  On the other hand, maybe it's a
>question of asserting alphaness among women.  I don't presume to know
>whether either speculation is the case.
>
>
>--
>☣ uǝlƃ
>
>
>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
>http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
>
>
>FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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-- 
glen


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Pieter Steenekamp]

Nick,

I'd love to hear from you about evolutionary psychology and are prepared to
wait patiently until you have time to respond properly.

Pieter

On 14 February 2018 at 20:48, Nick Thompson 
wrote:

> Dear Glen and Peter,
>
>
>
> I started out my career calling myself an Ethologist and studying
> communication in monkeys and then crows. I ended my career as an
> Evolutionary Psychologist studying human infant’s cries.  So I feel some
> obligation to stand up to your critique, while acknowledging that much of
> it is fair.
>
>
>
> Lots going on right now so I will have to go at this slowly.  But for
> starters could we just agree to avoid saying anything stupid.  The two most
> obvious stupidities to avoid are:
>
>
>
> *Human Evolutionary history has nothing to do with contemporary human
> behavior*
>
>
>
> *Human Evolutionary history has everything to do with contemporary human
> behavior*.
>
>
>
> Once the two extreme positions have been set aside, we are left in the
> messy middle.
>
>
>
> *Under what circumstances and in which domains does knowledge of human
> evolutionary history have anything to contribute to our understanding of
> contemporary human behavior?  *
>
>
>
> I would love to have a sustained, thoughtful discussion of this question
> on this list.  It is very close to my heart.   Because I don’t have time,
> right now,  to write a screed, or even a rant, I shall fall back on that
> practice favored by all academic scoundrels:  I shall cite one of my own
> papers.
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302220782_My_Descent_from_the_Monkey>
> (If this link doesn’t work, could somebody let me know, please?)
>
>
>
> I hope we can carry this on for some time, but SLOWLY, please, so I can
> keep up.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Pieter
> Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 14, 2018 9:20 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam@redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?
>
>
>
> It may be difficult to quantify evolutionary psychology, but that does not
> mean it is pseudoscience. Like string theory that's also difficult to
> quantify, the scientific method is also applicable to evolutionary
> psychology.
>
>
>
> I support the view as expressed in https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/
> Evolutionary_psychology:
>
> "Just as Darwin's theory of natural selection was almost immediately
> perverted to justify cruel bigotry (Social Darwinism, eugenics), so
> evolutionary psychology is readily twisted to buttress prejudice. This does
> not make evolutionary psychology wrong, any more than the brutality of
> Social Darwinism made evolutionary theory wrong, but it does suggest that
> claims rooted in it should be assessed very carefully, both by those
> reading them and those writing them."
>
>
>
> On 13 February 2018 at 23:07, uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:
>
> I remain fascinated by the neoreactionaries (most of whom have ceded their
> soap boxes to their alt-right offspring).  And Google's tendency to promote
> fringe garbage (https://www.wired.com/story/google-autocomplete-vile-
> suggestions/) landed Jordan Peterson in my Youtube recommendations awhile
> back.  Based on the videos Youtube recommended, he sounded like a typical
> right-wing pseudo-intellectual.  But when I noticed Sam Harris taking him
> seriously, I thought I'd look a little closer.  Sure enough, the majority
> of his online lectures spout fairly reasonable (albeit justificationist)
> rhetoric ... a lot like Harris and fellow right-wing flirt Jonathan Haidt,
> both of whom appeal to our xenophobic friends for differing reasons.
>
> I'm reminded of the argument I made on this list some time ago that,
> although I believe open source is necessary for pretty much all things, it
> *facilitates* nefarious action by obscurity.  Because your library (e.g.
> RSA backdoors or JavaScript cryptocurrency miners) has so much code in it,
> and is just one library in a gamut of libraries you invoke, there's
> absolutely no way you can *trust* that stack ... even if it's FOSS and gets
> lots of eyeballs.
>
> Peterson, Harris, and Haidt, rely on the overt reasonability of 90% of
> what they say in order to Trojan Horse the racist or otherwise questionable
> content of the other 10%.  Sure, they make a *technical* effort to weight
> their assertions.  

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Marcus Daniels]

Frank writes:

< I was puzzled while watching the Golden Globes (for a few minutes) by the 
apparent conflict between the themes of "Me Too" and "Time's Up"(?) and the 
very provocative display of women's bodies. >

“I’ll stop using my sex appeal as a weapon when you stop using your hands as a 
weapon..”
(Why should I compromise for the greater good when you won’t?  That is the 
worst victimization..)

Marcus
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 4:27 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

This is not particularly relevant to Dave's essay but was stimulated by his 
questions about physical attraction between genders.  I was puzzled while 
watching the Golden Globes (for a few minutes) by the apparent conflict between 
the themes of "Me Too" and "Time's Up"(?) and the very provocative display of 
women's bodies.  I wonder if Jacques Lacan's insight that "Man's desire is the 
desire of the other" is relevant.  In this case: women want to be desired but 
not to be possessed or seduced.  Note that their bodies are on display to 
who-knows-how-many strangers. A warm, affectionate relationship with that 
number of men is not possible.  On the other hand, maybe it's a question of 
asserting alphaness among women.  I don't presume to know whether either 
speculation is the case.

Frank

Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly<http://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly>

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Feb 14, 2018 3:42 PM, "Prof David West" 
mailto:profw...@fastmail.fm>> wrote:
Until this week I was blissfully unaware of Jordan Petersen. Two hours of 
YouTube research later my beta male mellow has been well and truly harshed. Be 
that as it may, the area of "evolutionary psychology" is interesting and I 
would like to respond to Nick's request to discuss it further.

I apologize in advance for the length of the post.

At the outset I would assert that Peterson's assertions have nothing to do with 
evolutionary psychology as I understand it because the 'evolution" in question 
is biological evolution. The grounds for this assertion will follow a bit of 
story telling.

Once upon a time there was a context (we will call it Nature, or Gaia if you 
want some personification) and a homogeneous population  of organisms. Nature 
provided a plethora of distinct and distinctive niches; into which the 
organisms flowed and began to exploit. Most often each niche required some kind 
of particularistic change in the organism occupying that niche and voila - 
adaptation.

if the niche were static, if Nature was static and unchanging, we would have 
diversity but no evolution. The diversity could mask itself as 'evolutionary' 
just because adjacent niches could marginally idiosyncratic requiring 
marginally idiosyncratic adaptations and we have finches with different beaks.

Evolution requires either: change in the niche or differential efficiency among 
the organisms (otherwise homogeneous) occupying that niche. If the rate of 
change in Nature is slow enough or the efficiency gradient is not too steep, 
the conditions are created for adaptation over time. True the finches 
adaptations occur over time, over generations of finches, but one more element 
is essential for evolution as I understand it — an increase in complexity.

It is this 'adaption over time' along with 'increasing complexity' that naive 
people like me take to be "evolution."

Our most primitive ancestors were a product of this kind of evolution - 
biological evolution.

Our most primitive ancestors almost certainly had a "psychology" given that the 
only requirement to develop one is sufficient "self awareness" (sorry Nick) to 
differentiate between 'this' and that' with 'this' very rapidly becoming "I" 
and 'that' becomes anything and everything else.

Now "I" and 'other' is kind of lonely. and probably not a good adaption or 
evolutionary move, so gradations of 'Other' ensue and we have the foundation 
for "Us" and "Them" and "Other." This allows basic social organization and 
interaction of the sort we still see in primates and would have seen in among 
our most ancient ancestors.

The closest approximation to what was, would be the few hunter-gatherer 
societies known to cultural anthropologists and the recreations that arose when 
archeological findings were compared to extant hunter-gatherers. It would not 
be unreasonable to assume that the 'psychology' of these ancestors was the 
product of biological evolu

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Frank Wimberly]

I think you're saying that your motivation for exposing skin is different  from 
that of the women on the Golden Globes program, which seems correct to me.

Frank

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 4:46 PM
To: FriAM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

Your questions seem to assume that the only reason to expose one's body is to 
be desired.  I know that *I* don't wear shorts in the summer so that I'll be 
desired by the women (or men) in my neighborhood. 8^)  One reason I try to 
expose my arms even when I'm cold is in order to increase my cold tolerance.  
It has nothing to do with being desired.


On 02/14/2018 03:27 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> This is not particularly relevant to Dave's essay but was stimulated by his 
> questions about physical attraction between genders.  I was puzzled while 
> watching the Golden Globes (for a few minutes) by the apparent conflict 
> between the themes of "Me Too" and "Time's Up"(?) and the very provocative 
> display of women's bodies.  I wonder if Jacques Lacan's insight that "Man's 
> desire is the desire of the other" is relevant.  In this case: women want to 
> be desired but not to be possessed or seduced.  Note that their bodies are on 
> display to who-knows-how-many strangers. A warm, affectionate relationship 
> with that number of men is not possible.  On the other hand, maybe it's a 
> question of asserting alphaness among women.  I don't presume to know whether 
> either speculation is the case.


--
☣ uǝlƃ


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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Your questions seem to assume that the only reason to expose one's body is to 
be desired.  I know that *I* don't wear shorts in the summer so that I'll be 
desired by the women (or men) in my neighborhood. 8^)  One reason I try to 
expose my arms even when I'm cold is in order to increase my cold tolerance.  
It has nothing to do with being desired.


On 02/14/2018 03:27 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> This is not particularly relevant to Dave's essay but was stimulated by his 
> questions about physical attraction between genders.  I was puzzled while 
> watching the Golden Globes (for a few minutes) by the apparent conflict 
> between the themes of "Me Too" and "Time's Up"(?) and the very provocative 
> display of women's bodies.  I wonder if Jacques Lacan's insight that "Man's 
> desire is the desire of the other" is relevant.  In this case: women want to 
> be desired but not to be possessed or seduced.  Note that their bodies are on 
> display to who-knows-how-many strangers. A warm, affectionate relationship 
> with that number of men is not possible.  On the other hand, maybe it's a 
> question of asserting alphaness among women.  I don't presume to know whether 
> either speculation is the case.


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Frank Wimberly]

This is not particularly relevant to Dave's essay but was stimulated by his
questions about physical attraction between genders.  I was puzzled while
watching the Golden Globes (for a few minutes) by the apparent conflict
between the themes of "Me Too" and "Time's Up"(?) and the very provocative
display of women's bodies.  I wonder if Jacques Lacan's insight that "Man's
desire is the desire of the other" is relevant.  In this case: women want
to be desired but not to be possessed or seduced.  Note that their bodies
are on display to who-knows-how-many strangers. A warm, affectionate
relationship with that number of men is not possible.  On the other hand,
maybe it's a question of asserting alphaness among women.  I don't presume
to know whether either speculation is the case.

Frank


Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Feb 14, 2018 3:42 PM, "Prof David West"  wrote:

> Until this week I was blissfully unaware of Jordan Petersen. Two hours of
> YouTube research later my beta male mellow has been well and truly harshed.
> Be that as it may, the area of "evolutionary psychology" is interesting and
> I would like to respond to Nick's request to discuss it further.
>
> I apologize in advance for the length of the post.
>
> At the outset I would assert that Peterson's assertions have nothing to do
> with evolutionary psychology as I understand it because the 'evolution" in
> question is *biological* evolution. The grounds for this assertion will
> follow a bit of story telling.
>
> Once upon a time there was a context (we will call it Nature, or Gaia if
> you want some personification) and a homogeneous population  of organisms.
> Nature provided a plethora of distinct and distinctive niches; into which
> the organisms flowed and began to exploit. Most often each niche required
> some kind of particularistic change in the organism occupying that niche
> and voila - adaptation.
>
> if the niche were static, if Nature was static and unchanging, we would
> have diversity but no evolution. The diversity could mask itself as
> 'evolutionary' just because adjacent niches could marginally idiosyncratic
> requiring marginally idiosyncratic adaptations and we have finches with
> different beaks.
>
> Evolution requires either: change in the niche or differential efficiency
> among the organisms (otherwise homogeneous) occupying that niche. If the
> rate of change in Nature is slow enough or the efficiency gradient is not
> too steep, the conditions are created for adaptation over time. True the
> finches adaptations occur over time, over generations of finches, but one
> more element is essential for evolution as I understand it — an increase in
> complexity.
>
> It is this 'adaption over time' along with 'increasing complexity' that
> naive people like me take to be "evolution."
>
> Our most primitive ancestors were a product of this kind of evolution -
> biological evolution.
>
> Our most primitive ancestors almost certainly had a "psychology" given
> that the only requirement to develop one is sufficient "self awareness"
> (sorry Nick) to differentiate between 'this' and that' with 'this' very
> rapidly becoming "I" and 'that' becomes anything and everything else.
>
> Now "I" and 'other' is kind of lonely. and probably not a good adaption or
> evolutionary move, so gradations of 'Other' ensue and we have the
> foundation for "Us" and "Them" and "Other." This allows basic social
> organization and interaction of the sort we still see in primates and would
> have seen in among our most ancient ancestors.
>
> The closest approximation to what was, would be the few hunter-gatherer
> societies known to cultural anthropologists and the recreations that arose
> when archeological findings were compared to extant hunter-gatherers. It
> would not be unreasonable to assume that the 'psychology' of these
> ancestors was the product of biological evolution as much as the
> physiological evolution.
>
> So - first test for Petersen: were "alpha males" present in those
> societies? If yes, then he has some, minimal, grounds for asserting
> evolutionary psychological roots for his current claims.
>
> Unfortunately for him, the answer is no. The closest approximation would
> be 'leadership' roles. But those roles were - as near as we can determine -
> both situational and ephemeral. Herd of bison walking by? The most
> experienced bison hunter assumed leadership and organized the band to run
> them over a cliff. Hunt over? So is the leadership.
>
> The only person in the group that had lifetime status as a result of
> specialized ability was the shaman and SHE was definitely not an alpha male.
>
> Shortly after the emergence of the "I" came language and, very
> importantly, story. The ground is set for an alternative, mostly
> complementary, form of evolution — cultural evolution. Instead of waiting
> to evolve fur, like the polar bear,

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Prof David West]

Until this week I was blissfully unaware of Jordan Petersen. Two hours
of YouTube research later my beta male mellow has been well and truly
harshed. Be that as it may, the area of "evolutionary psychology" is
interesting and I would like to respond to Nick's request to discuss
it further.
I apologize in advance for the length of the post.

At the outset I would assert that Peterson's assertions have nothing to
do with evolutionary psychology as I understand it because the
'evolution" in question is _biological_ evolution. The grounds for this
assertion will follow a bit of story telling.
Once upon a time there was a context (we will call it Nature, or Gaia if
you want some personification) and a homogeneous population  of
organisms. Nature provided a plethora of distinct and distinctive
niches; into which the organisms flowed and began to exploit. Most often
each niche required some kind of particularistic change in the organism
occupying that niche and voila - adaptation.
if the niche were static, if Nature was static and unchanging, we would
have diversity but no evolution. The diversity could mask itself as
'evolutionary' just because adjacent niches could marginally
idiosyncratic requiring marginally idiosyncratic adaptations and we have
finches with different beaks.
Evolution requires either: change in the niche or differential
efficiency among the organisms (otherwise homogeneous) occupying that
niche. If the rate of change in Nature is slow enough or the efficiency
gradient is not too steep, the conditions are created for adaptation
over time. True the finches adaptations occur over time, over
generations of finches, but one more element is essential for evolution
as I understand it — an increase in complexity.
It is this 'adaption over time' along with 'increasing complexity' that
naive people like me take to be "evolution."
Our most primitive ancestors were a product of this kind of evolution -
biological evolution.
Our most primitive ancestors almost certainly had a "psychology" given
that the only requirement to develop one is sufficient "self awareness"
(sorry Nick) to differentiate between 'this' and that' with 'this' very
rapidly becoming "I" and 'that' becomes anything and everything else.
Now "I" and 'other' is kind of lonely. and probably not a good adaption
or evolutionary move, so gradations of 'Other' ensue and we have the
foundation for "Us" and "Them" and "Other." This allows basic social
organization and interaction of the sort we still see in primates and
would have seen in among our most ancient ancestors.
The closest approximation to what was, would be the few hunter-gatherer
societies known to cultural anthropologists and the recreations that
arose when archeological findings were compared to extant hunter-
gatherers. It would not be unreasonable to assume that the 'psychology'
of these ancestors was the product of biological evolution as much as
the physiological evolution.
So - first test for Petersen: were "alpha males" present in those
societies? If yes, then he has some, minimal, grounds for asserting
evolutionary psychological roots for his current claims.
Unfortunately for him, the answer is no. The closest approximation would
be 'leadership' roles. But those roles were - as near as we can
determine - both situational and ephemeral. Herd of bison walking by?
The most experienced bison hunter assumed leadership and organized the
band to run them over a cliff. Hunt over? So is the leadership.
The only person in the group that had lifetime status as a result of
specialized ability was the shaman and SHE was definitely not an
alpha male.
Shortly after the emergence of the "I" came language and, very
importantly, story. The ground is set for an alternative, mostly
complementary, form of evolution — cultural evolution. Instead of
waiting to evolve fur, like the polar bear, so we could inhabit
the arctic, cultural evolution led us to wearing the polar bear's
fur instead.
Here Petersen might, but I doubt it, find some antecedents for his
absurdities. E.g.,  -- unless it has happened in the last decade no one has 
ever been able
  to explain why 'men hunt and women gather', a pretty universal
  division of labor in hunter-gatherer and antecedent cultures. -- why have all 
cultures (excepting one small group on the south of the
 Black Sea a few thousand years ago) been patriarchal? (There are lots
 of matrilineal cultures, but that is different.)-- why, according to 
anthropologist Maria Lepowski, is there only one
culture, in historical times, based on sex/gender equality. (The pre-
WWII Vanuatu.)  -- why, statistically speaking, are men attracted to women 
having the
  appearance of fecundity (physical symmetry, developed breasts, width
  of pelvic girdle, hence hips) and women are attracted to men with the
  appearance of power (fame, money, social position, all being secondary
  indicators).
Don't shoot the messenger for the last one. Merely reporting what was
learned in a year

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Having skimmed your paper, I think the wikipedia quote is adequate and more 
appropriate simply because it's shorter:

From 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology#Testability
> Leda Cosmides argued in an interview:
> 
> "Those who have a professional knowledge of evolutionary biology know 
> that it is not possible to cook up after the fact explanations of just any 
> trait. There are important constraints on evolutionary explanation. More to 
> the point, every decent evolutionary explanation has testable predictions 
> about the design of the trait. For example, the hypothesis that pregnancy 
> sickness is a byproduct of prenatal hormones predicts different patterns of 
> food aversions than the hypothesis that it is an adaptation that evolved to 
> protect the fetus from pathogens and plant toxins in food at the point in 
> embryogenesis when the fetus is most vulnerable – during the first trimester. 
> Evolutionary hypotheses – whether generated to discover a new trait or to 
> explain one that is already known – carry predictions about the nature of 
> that trait. The alternative – having no hypothesis about adaptive function – 
> carries no predictions whatsoever. So which is the more constrained and sober 
> scientific approach?" 

Given that, we can move back to Jordan Peterson and ask: Are there any testable 
hypotheses for this "alpha male" concept Peterson peddles to his "masculinity" 
fanboys?




On 02/14/2018 10:48 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Once the two extreme positions have been set aside, we are left in the messy 
> middle. 
> 
>  
> 
> */Under what circumstances and in which domains does knowledge of human 
> evolutionary history have anything to contribute to our understanding of 
> contemporary human behavior?  /*
> 
>  
> 
> I would love to have a sustained, thoughtful discussion of this question on 
> this list.  It is very close to my heart.   Because I don’t have time, right 
> now,  to write a screed, or even a rant, I shall fall back on that practice 
> favored by all academic scoundrels:  I shall cite one of my own papers. 
> 
>   (If this link doesn’t work, could somebody let me know, please?)


-- 
☣ uǝlƃ

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Nick Thompson]

Dear Glen and Peter, 

 

I started out my career calling myself an Ethologist and studying communication 
in monkeys and then crows. I ended my career as an Evolutionary Psychologist 
studying human infant’s cries.  So I feel some obligation to stand up to your 
critique, while acknowledging that much of it is fair. 

 

Lots going on right now so I will have to go at this slowly.  But for starters 
could we just agree to avoid saying anything stupid.  The two most obvious 
stupidities to avoid are: 

 

Human Evolutionary history has nothing to do with contemporary human behavior

 

Human Evolutionary history has everything to do with contemporary human 
behavior.  

 

Once the two extreme positions have been set aside, we are left in the messy 
middle.  

 

Under what circumstances and in which domains does knowledge of human 
evolutionary history have anything to contribute to our understanding of 
contemporary human behavior?  

 

I would love to have a sustained, thoughtful discussion of this question on 
this list.  It is very close to my heart.   Because I don’t have time, right 
now,  to write a screed, or even a rant, I shall fall back on that practice 
favored by all academic scoundrels:  I shall cite one of my own papers. 
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302220782_My_Descent_from_the_Monkey> 
  (If this link doesn’t work, could somebody let me know, please?)

 

I hope we can carry this on for some time, but SLOWLY, please, so I can keep 
up. 

 

Nick 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> 
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Pieter Steenekamp
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 9:20 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

 

It may be difficult to quantify evolutionary psychology, but that does not mean 
it is pseudoscience. Like string theory that's also difficult to quantify, the 
scientific method is also applicable to evolutionary psychology. 

 

I support the view as expressed in 
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology:

"Just as Darwin's theory of natural selection was almost immediately perverted 
to justify cruel bigotry (Social Darwinism, eugenics), so evolutionary 
psychology is readily twisted to buttress prejudice. This does not make 
evolutionary psychology wrong, any more than the brutality of Social Darwinism 
made evolutionary theory wrong, but it does suggest that claims rooted in it 
should be assessed very carefully, both by those reading them and those writing 
them."

 

On 13 February 2018 at 23:07, uǝlƃ ☣ mailto:geprope...@gmail.com> > wrote:

I remain fascinated by the neoreactionaries (most of whom have ceded their soap 
boxes to their alt-right offspring).  And Google's tendency to promote fringe 
garbage (https://www.wired.com/story/google-autocomplete-vile-suggestions/) 
landed Jordan Peterson in my Youtube recommendations awhile back.  Based on the 
videos Youtube recommended, he sounded like a typical right-wing 
pseudo-intellectual.  But when I noticed Sam Harris taking him seriously, I 
thought I'd look a little closer.  Sure enough, the majority of his online 
lectures spout fairly reasonable (albeit justificationist) rhetoric ... a lot 
like Harris and fellow right-wing flirt Jonathan Haidt, both of whom appeal to 
our xenophobic friends for differing reasons.

I'm reminded of the argument I made on this list some time ago that, although I 
believe open source is necessary for pretty much all things, it *facilitates* 
nefarious action by obscurity.  Because your library (e.g. RSA backdoors or 
JavaScript cryptocurrency miners) has so much code in it, and is just one 
library in a gamut of libraries you invoke, there's absolutely no way you can 
*trust* that stack ... even if it's FOSS and gets lots of eyeballs.

Peterson, Harris, and Haidt, rely on the overt reasonability of 90% of what 
they say in order to Trojan Horse the racist or otherwise questionable content 
of the other 10%.  Sure, they make a *technical* effort to weight their 
assertions.  And that's laudable.  (Slate Star Codex and Alexander's ilk do 
this well with their "epistemic status" rating, displayed fairly prominently 
most of the time.)  But this raises the reason I'm posting this to FriAM.  The 
quote from the Alternet article is (should be) provocative:

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/rights-favorite-new-intellectual-has-some-truly-pitiable-ideas-about-masculinity
"Devotees of the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology are fond of this 
particular maneuver: locate some behavior in the more ancient branches of the 
tree of life and project it forward across eons to expla

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

On 02/14/2018 08:20 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> It may be difficult to quantify evolutionary psychology, but that does not 
> mean it is pseudoscience. Like string theory that's also difficult to 
> quantify, the scientific method is also applicable to evolutionary psychology.

But is it really a matter of quantification?  It seems, to me, more a matter of 
experimentation.  Does evolutionary psychology provide any predictions that are 
(might one day be) testable?

> I support the view as expressed in 
> https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology:
> "Just as Darwin's theory of natural selection was almost immediately 
> perverted to justify cruel bigotry (Social Darwinism, eugenics), so 
> evolutionary psychology is readily twisted to buttress prejudice. This does 
> not make evolutionary psychology wrong, any more than the brutality of Social 
> Darwinism made evolutionary theory wrong, but it does suggest that claims 
> rooted in it should be assessed very carefully, both by those reading them 
> and those writing them."

Yes, that's a specific example of the larger point, that anything can be 
abused.  A great example is quantum woo, where the stranger inferences of 
quantum physics are abused to, e.g., justify belief in free-will or "mind over 
matter".  Or, an even better example would be the complaints lodged against 
Penrose for abusing Gödel's Incompleteness theorems to justify that humans 
engage in non-computable processes when doing math.

I.e. saying evolution and evolutionary psychology can be abused isn't really 
saying much unless we say *why* it's easier to abuse those two "theories" and, 
perhaps, more difficult to abuse Gödel's theorems ... or, e.g. theories about 
the electrical properties of materials or somesuch.  My proposal is that bodies 
of knowledge overwhelmingly populated with ambiguous gobbledy-gook are *easier* 
to abuse than those bodies of knowledge that are "hard", with well-defined 
terms, domains of applicability, and use cases.

Testability is a kind of pragmatic trickery we use to get at the truth in spite 
of swaths of gobbledy-gook.  I suppose I'd argue that string theory is more 
like Gödel's theorems than it is like evolutionary psychology.

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Re: [FRIAM] the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology?

[Pieter Steenekamp]

It may be difficult to quantify evolutionary psychology, but that does not
mean it is pseudoscience. Like string theory that's also difficult to
quantify, the scientific method is also applicable to evolutionary
psychology.

I support the view as expressed in
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology:
"Just as Darwin's theory of natural selection was almost immediately
perverted to justify cruel bigotry (Social Darwinism, eugenics), so
evolutionary psychology is readily twisted to buttress prejudice. This does
not make evolutionary psychology wrong, any more than the brutality of
Social Darwinism made evolutionary theory wrong, but it does suggest that
claims rooted in it should be assessed very carefully, both by those
reading them and those writing them."

On 13 February 2018 at 23:07, uǝlƃ ☣  wrote:

> I remain fascinated by the neoreactionaries (most of whom have ceded their
> soap boxes to their alt-right offspring).  And Google's tendency to promote
> fringe garbage (https://www.wired.com/story/google-autocomplete-vile-
> suggestions/) landed Jordan Peterson in my Youtube recommendations awhile
> back.  Based on the videos Youtube recommended, he sounded like a typical
> right-wing pseudo-intellectual.  But when I noticed Sam Harris taking him
> seriously, I thought I'd look a little closer.  Sure enough, the majority
> of his online lectures spout fairly reasonable (albeit justificationist)
> rhetoric ... a lot like Harris and fellow right-wing flirt Jonathan Haidt,
> both of whom appeal to our xenophobic friends for differing reasons.
>
> I'm reminded of the argument I made on this list some time ago that,
> although I believe open source is necessary for pretty much all things, it
> *facilitates* nefarious action by obscurity.  Because your library (e.g.
> RSA backdoors or JavaScript cryptocurrency miners) has so much code in it,
> and is just one library in a gamut of libraries you invoke, there's
> absolutely no way you can *trust* that stack ... even if it's FOSS and gets
> lots of eyeballs.
>
> Peterson, Harris, and Haidt, rely on the overt reasonability of 90% of
> what they say in order to Trojan Horse the racist or otherwise questionable
> content of the other 10%.  Sure, they make a *technical* effort to weight
> their assertions.  And that's laudable.  (Slate Star Codex and Alexander's
> ilk do this well with their "epistemic status" rating, displayed fairly
> prominently most of the time.)  But this raises the reason I'm posting this
> to FriAM.  The quote from the Alternet article is (should be) provocative:
>
> https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/rights-favorite-
> new-intellectual-has-some-truly-pitiable-ideas-about-masculinity
> "Devotees of the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology are fond of this
> particular maneuver: locate some behavior in the more ancient branches of
> the tree of life and project it forward across eons to explain little
> Johnny pulling little Susie’s pigtails, or the collapse of Lehman Brothers,
> or the Holocaust, or whatever. In any case, I like to imagine the
> diaphanous, energy-based extraterrestrials in their invisible starships, so
> unutterably alien that they gaze upon man and lobster and can’t tell them
> apart."
>
> In particular re: Peterson, I've actually *used* (although mostly
> jokingly) the alpha- beta-male (false) dichotomy at cocktail parties ... to
> justify why I, as a proud beta male, am a wallflower.  But now, I'm worried
> that (like the many memes I learned from my libertarian friends) it's not
> merely a useful fiction, but complete garbage:
> https://youtu.be/YTyQgwVvYyc
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove