Honestly I think a lot of the worst evo psych takes don’t even get as far as hypothesizing or evidence. They fail at the first hurdle of “identify something about the world”. It’s the classic Freudian error of never once asking “hey wait is everyone like this or is it just me?”
Is shitting on evolutionary psychology the meta in this community?
Like many things, people hate it because of its associations with other things. They will happily throw it out even if it has good uses. Here have some spicy examples:
Some people experience gender dysphoria and may benefit from medical intervention? Nah it got abused by ideological idiots so it must always be bad. Karl Marx says workers must arm themselves? Nah guns are bad, I know this because rightoids like them.
They will happily throw it out even if it has good uses.
Your comment is passive aggressive criticism without any substance. I’m going to challenge you to back up that claim. Name the good uses.
Bad by association and the hivemind are my faves, I particular enjoy:
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“Evolutionary psychology is inherently bad, useless, and only stupid people could have such thoughts. Science as I understand it is the only valid way of thinking.”
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“Dosing a population with fluoride via tap water is inherently a 100% good thing and to question it implies ones utter stupidity, drugging a population this way with any other substance would be unthinkable though.”
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“Guns for civilians have no use other than school shootings, no good person should want a gun they must be banned.”
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“Boomers caused all of our problems, despite the fact that I also willingly participate in all the harmful systems that caused these problems.”
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So that’s what’s going on. I had a feeling everyone dunking on it didn’t actually know anything about psychology. Glad to know it’s just pettiness.
Uhh we studied wolves in captivity and learned all we need to know about every single psychological mentality of every vertebrate in the wild including humans. Educate yourself /s
“Do your research!”
Total beta question /s
Better fire up the ol YouTube machine and search for is Biden actually satin or q real drops
I already know that Biden is glossy, smooth and lustrous. The only problem is that he is not durable and tends to snag.
There’s the pseudoscience, then there’s the useful stuff. Natural selection is a good rational for human cooperation, for instance, and can be a way to explain why we have a conscience and feel guilt, etc… You know, apes together strong.
Of course, it’s also still hypothetical, but it’s at least better than the philosophical/metaphysical way we explain why we behave ourselves. Just wish the good stuff wasn’t drown out by people with dumb takes.
The problem is there isn’t anything “useful” for understanding humans [in evolutionary psychology]. Yes we can come up with plausible evolutionary justifications for behavior like cooperation, but they are basically untestable and useless for predictions.
Edited to clarify I mean specifically evolutionary psychology.
it’s perfectly usable for predictions, basic evolutionary psychology tells me that humans are hilariously deeply programmed to be social, and knowing that gives you the confidence to make use of it.
Just like monkeys grooming each other, we humans can simply give small gifts or go out of our way to do something nice, and that will create trust between people extremely quickly with barely any effort.
I gave an old dusty xbox to a neighbouring family with kids and that was a significant enough gift that their dad basically instantly classed me as a friend and a few weeks later he came over with homemade pierogis.Just thinking about our evolution and looking a bit at recorded history kinda provides a user manual for being human, honestly.
I agree with your sentiment about positive social interactions being important.
But the thing is, and I think that’s what the poster you were replying to meant, that you need zero knowledge about evolution to notice that. Everyone notices it in daily life. Scientific studies give us evidence about our social nature. If we didn’t know about evolution, the conclusion would still be the same: we are deeply programmed to be social. If the same conclusion is reached with or without a specific piece of information, then that information is useless for predictions, like the previous poster said. Or are you in all seriousness telling me that the reason you gifted your XBox to a kid was that you have an understanding of evolution??? And without that understanding, you wouldn’t have thought of making that gift?
Yes, that is precisely what I was attempting to say. Thanks
There’s game theory in human behaviour, very testable and useful.
This is my favorite pseudoscience to shit on. Fundamentally the big problem with it is that there are too many layers of conplexity between psychology and evolution. You can’t ignore genetics and neuroscience if you want to look at how psychology is affected, IF it’s even possible.
I have a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science, and while I was a grad student the department-wide punching bag of choice was ev psych. Every year we all lobbied for more guest speakers from that subdiscipline so that we could wine and dine them before their lectures and then devour them in Q&A. Such easy prey, but so little meat on the bones. 🤷♀️
You also have to look at culture. Culture has such an enormous effect on people’s psychology and behaviour!
“We studied 10 Americans and generalized the findings to all humans”
“We studied 10
AmericansUndergrads and generalized the findings to all humans”at least use the same species, jeez
But also culture is influenced heavily by our evolution, but also also our evolution has been shaped by our cultures, and oh god it’s all spiraling in on itself
the problem IMO is just that people try to force more detail out of studying this than can sensibly be had, basically all i’m confident in concluding from evolutionary psychology is that humans are inherently social to an absurd degree, and contrary to what a lot of people want to believe people do not suck, they just end up doing bad things due to circumstances.
Pepole are inherently good and we need to take care to dismantle the societal structures that make us be not good.
It’s all self-evident.
Don’t worry, they’re going to start using AI to science it up.
this process should result in a trove of indisputable, empirical facts.
“I think, therefore it is true.”
For those interested in this topic (and how it’s the manosphere’s favorite pseudoscience) Muncat brings the receipts.
Fucking hell that video is long.
True. Breadtube should stop with the slogfests
There’s probably some link between human genetics and psychology. It makes sense knowing how other mammals work. However the studies are overwhelmingly so flawed and irreproducible that the entire field can be dismissed
