Pharyngula

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 16, 2011 7:07 PM

@Ichthyic

Because the old wheel didn't promote western sexism enough.

Seriously, does Evo-psyches do any studies not about sex?

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 16, 2011 7:12 PM

Seriously, does Evo-psyches do any studies not about sex?

oh, sure they do. You'll find a large breadth of interest there.

my biggest complaint is, like I said, they basically are taking old ethological concepts, and repackaging them with shiny new jargon.

and most of them apparently feel justified in calling it science when really it's mostly philosophy.

I can understand a fledgling field like, astrobiology say, doing a bit of speculation.

But there has been tremendous numbers of field and lab studies done regarding the evolution of behavior long before the evo-pych crowd got involved. ...But it really seems like they haven't read any of it, and feel like they completely need to reinvent the entire subject.

it's just weird.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 16, 2011 7:17 PM

Also I remember my evo-psyche class where they floated the idea (based on studies in animal behavior and population maths) that homosexuality was itself biologically adaptive for social species.

Posted by: SC OM | March 16, 2011 7:23 PM

It turns out the data is all dueling surveys

That these people think they can make evolutionary claims on the basis of surveys should be a stake through the heart of the "discipline."

Posted by: SC OM | March 16, 2011 7:31 PM

(No, I know of no 'good' examples off the top of my head, but that's because

...You're an idiot ideological (willful) ignoramus.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 16, 2011 7:34 PM

You're an idiot ideological (willful) ignoramus.

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/projection-tv-front-projection.jpg

have a nice day

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 16, 2011 7:38 PM

So but anyway fairly recently now you have these people trained in psych and anthro departments, not biology, ethology, or behavioral ecology, and so steeped in those biases and traditions and histories, yet they are not so stupid as to want to ignore the evolutionary history of behaving people, but so they can't call it Human Behavioral Ecology because their organism is too special and the academic politics, and they can't call it Sociobiology for the same reasons plus politics politics, so they went ahead and re-invented the wheel. What else were they going to do?

actually, that explains it quite nicely.

thanks Sven.

Posted by: Forbidden Snowflake | March 16, 2011 7:46 PM

Consider this a warning: the theory I'm about to describe is likely to boil untold liters of blood and prompt mountains of angry fists to clench in revolt.

What's with all the non-conformist-rebel posturing? The linked 'debunking' article quotes a few more such phrases. It looks like a Galileo Gambit waiting to happen.

Posted by: jbyoder | March 16, 2011 7:49 PM

Glad you liked the post, PZ!

- Jeremy

Posted by: SC OM | March 16, 2011 7:56 PM

What's with all the non-conformist-rebel posturing?

To be expected - race, sex, sexual orientation.

Immoral and infuriating.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | March 16, 2011 8:02 PM

Jeremy @18: your prose is also a delight. I'm afraid I'll spoil this by quoting it without the preceding paragraphs -- Pharyngulites! go read it in full! -- so I'll just say the bit that begins "What this amounts to ..." is some succinct beauty.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | March 16, 2011 8:09 PM

Per SG's comment, a revision: there wasn't more to see in terms of research. The coverage was worth some time and I am glad I made a second pass.

Posted by: SC OM | March 16, 2011 8:30 PM

It didn't strike me as a defense, but rather a scathing critique!

...Am I missing something?

I believe so. (And the historical premises in his first two paragraphs are absurd.)

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 16, 2011 8:42 PM

...moreover, from your perspective, isn't evo psych even equivalently bad sociology?

IOW, not only do they ignore the relevant scientific history in biology, but they also ignore the relevant history in sociology, right?

Posted by: SC OM | March 16, 2011 9:23 PM

From my perspective as someone trained in ethology, biology and behavioral ecology, though, his supposition of why there even IS evo pysch made sense to me though.

How so? Your first answer called it: "frankly, I rather hope so." So for you now to suggest there was a need for this garbage "discipline" is strange, especially given that you're not trained in the social sciences. Sven's history is bogus. There have been sexist/racist/homophobic people for centuries who've wanted to cloak themselves in the mantle of "science" (this is well established historically), and these are simply the latest. The empirical basis for their claims is beyond flimsy. For scientists to defend these claims does nothing to advance science.

...moreover, from your perspective, isn't evo psych even equivalently bad sociology?

IOW, not only do they ignore the relevant scientific history in biology, but they also ignore the relevant history in sociology, right?

Yes. It's rubbish. That's not what Sven is arguing. He's suggesting that sociology is unscientific rhetoric, and that these evo psychics are the few, the brave who will stand up to the social science PC police, but he's stepped in it several times, including on this thread.

Posted by: SC OM | March 16, 2011 9:45 PM

Ooh, now tell me the story about how the elephant got his trunk.

:) Apropos of nothing, Wayne State is I think underappreciated.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | March 16, 2011 9:58 PM

To quote a burning goat:

Actually, evolutionary psychologists are simply psychologists who think in an evolutionary way.

This is not the case. Rather, the term "evolutionary psychology" is associated with a number of specific hypotheses. The following is from Wikipedia, but I doubt the evolutionary psychologists concerned would object to the characterization [they would not, since they were quoted directly from the links I've added -sgbm]:

"The discipline rests on a foundation of core premises. According to evolutionary psychologist David Buss, these include:

1. Manifest behavior depends on underlying psychological mechanisms, information processing devices housed in the brain, in conjunction with the external and internal inputs that trigger their activation.
2. Evolution by selection is the only known causal process capable of creating such complex organic mechanisms.
3. Evolved psychological mechanisms are functionally specialized to solve adaptive problems that recurred for humans over deep evolutionary time.
4. Selection designed the information processing of many evolved psychological mechanisms to be adaptively influenced by specific classes of information from the environment.
5. Human psychology consists of a large number of functionally specialized evolved mechanisms, each sensitive to particular forms of contextual input, that get combined, coordinated, and integrated with each other to produce manifest behavior."

Similarly, pioneers of the field Leda Cosmides and John Tooby consider five principles to be the foundation of evolutionary psychology:

1. The brain is a physical system. It functions as a computer with circuits that have evolved to generate behavior that is appropriate to environmental circumstances
2. Neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems that human ancestors faced while evolving into Homo sapiens
3. Consciousness is a small portion of the contents and processes of the mind; conscious experience can mislead individuals to believe their thoughts are simpler than they actually are. Most problems experienced as easy to solve are very difficult to solve and are driven and supported by very complicated neural circuitry
4. Different neural circuits are specialized for solving different adaptive problems.
5. Modern skulls house a stone age mind."

In my view, of Buss's premises, 1 is only controversial insofar as some might balk at describing the brain simply as an "information processing device" (are the levels of hormones or alcohol present, both of which affect cognition, "information"?). 2 is false if taken to mean that the brain is sufficient to produce our manifest behaviour: we were not selected to read, write, pass laws, or undertake research in psychology; and acquiring these skills depends crucially on the use of external cognitive prostheses. 3 is certainly at least partly true, but does not allow for the possibility that some psychological mechanisms are byproducts of adaptations. 4 is true, 5 is controversial.

Of Cosmides' and Tooby's 5, in my view 1 is true as long as we use a wide-enough definition of "computer", but the brain is not sufficient to explain human cognition and behaviour: it interacts in crucial ways with the rest of the body and the external environment, including the anthropogenic aspects of that environment. 2 is false: natural selection designs nothing. 3 is true, 4 is at least partly true but how far is controversial, 5 is false: for example, acquiring the skill of reading is known to have physical effects on neuronal connections:
Castro-Caldas A, Petersson KM, Reis A, Stone-Elander S, Ingvar M. (1998). The illiterate brain. Learning to read and write during childhood influences the functional organization of the adult brain. Brain 121(6), 1053-63.

Of course, my view is just my view - but this is enough to show that "evolutionary psychologists" does not just mean simply psychologists who think in an evolutionary way: the leading practitioners of the discipline are making substantive claims which may be true or false, and which they themselves describe as central to it.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 16, 2011 10:07 PM

Evolution by selection is the only known causal process capable of creating such complex organic mechanisms.

*buzz*

evolution?

yes.

selection?

not always.

I do recall having recommended Gould's old "Spandrels" paper to more than one evo psych grad student.

and THAT I consider to be a rather flawed argument that only works at the most basic level of understanding.

Posted by: Amphiox, OM | March 16, 2011 10:11 PM

Actually, evolutionary psychologists are simply psychologists who think in an evolutionary way.

Well the evidence before us is more consistent with evolutionary psychologists being psychologists who think they think in an evolutionary way, but actually don't.

Though this, honestly, ought not be that hard to remedy, provided the will is there.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 16, 2011 10:20 PM

How so? Your first answer called it: "frankly, I rather hope so." So for you now to suggest there was a need for this garbage "discipline" is strange, especially given that you're not trained in the social sciences.

hmm, I'll try to clarify further.

I DO think it's garbage. I was curious as to why it might even exist to begin with, like theology exists as a discipline outside of philosophy. More a rhetorical question than one I was really looking for an answer for, but I decided to respond to what Sven offered up anyway.

If, as appears to be the case, it as a field conceived of by people OUTSIDE of the field of biology itself, it explains quite nicely why it often appears so disconnected, reinvents old ethological concepts, etc..

this is why I took Sven's answer as a CRITIQUE of evo pysch, not a defense of it, and why my desire that it perhaps die of it's own weight is not contradictory.

...that it ALSO suffers from an ignorance of social sciences is what i expected you would add on!

I have no stake in the debate between you and Sven (if there is one?) about sociology itself, and so tended to ignore his commentary there.

I don't consider evo pysch, as a whole, and sociology, as a whole, to be on even footing wrt to empirical support at all. Fuck, sociology as a field has empirical support that is well established in the lit, of course. Not hard to grasp that if one takes even a cursory glance.

IMO, evo psych still seems on pretty much untested ground, with VERY few actual tests of the proposed hypotheses and speculations propping up the field. But then, I think this is what Sven was getting at when he was talking about humans being rather difficult test subjects when viewing them from a sociobiological standpoint.

You might be reading more into that than I did, but that's how I read it anyway.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 16, 2011 10:32 PM

Remember who the italicized quote is from?

yes.

and I also get a sense of deja vu whenever another evo pych paper comes up here...

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/01/the_evolution_of_rape.php

It's not the first time I've ripped into "teh basic principles of evo psych", either.

I practically was burned at the stake once (mostly by the now absent Pim Van Meurs) at Panda's Thumb for daring to challenge Allen MacNeill to support this crap, and pointing out to him that every time he explained a concept that was supposedly unique to evo-psych, I could point to an ethologist who had originally explored the idea decades earlier, and had already run field experiments looking at it in the field.

for whatever it's worth.

bottom line, I do encourage the idea of looking at the evolution of behavior in humans, and I do think we can apply a lot of what we have learned about the evolution of behavior in other animals.

but I think that the evo psych folks are simply unaware of what is already out there, or at least aren't plugged in enough to it understand where it might apply, and where it most likely does not.

Posted by: Cerberus, unnatural product of en-OMnomnom-ification | March 16, 2011 10:39 PM

Is this to be the fate of evolutionary psychology, that it shrivels away into irrelevancy as its proponents overhype feeble, pathetic data sets?

Pretty much. It's sort of like libertarianism, not so much a discipline as it is an advertising for discredited social theories (why women don't have sex drives, the intelligence gap between the races, why homosexuals are abnormal, and why men just can't help to rape women, but should still be treated as the superior sex, and so on).

Much of it seems to be just retreads of garbage sold in books like "Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars".

And much of what sells itself (or perhaps, those parts of it that sell iteself the loudest) seems to be trying to crowd out the actual science with "studies that make sense" often employing faulty surveys or failing to consider the impact of social conditioning.

Basically what Ichthyic @1 says.

There is benefit in seeking out the cultural and biological origins of thought processes and cognition and well, there are a good number of disciplines working on gaining the correct science on it from a number of different angles:

Ethology, Behavioral Ecology, Sociology, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Neurobiology, Cultural and Biological Anthropology, and so on.

Maybe this is like the term libertarian, where whatever it once stood for was canibalized by shysters looking to gain respectability for learned biases and "common sense". More likely is that evopsych has always been like "intelligent design". Something to pose as "hard science" to those who don't understand science or academic rigor in general.

Which ever it is, what evopsych is now, what it has become is one of the most infuriating insulting pseudosciences out there. Especially to female or gay scientists, because of all the science out there, none get so much media attention as the pseudoscience produced by this "field".

Every "men are like this, women are stupid sluts" published by the NYT and Newsweek and so on tend to be poorly developed studies surrounded by bullshit and cultural assumption.

And we're supposed to treat it as science as if the whole of all those other disciplines have been doing naught but jack off since the 1950s.

Fuck that horse shit.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 16, 2011 10:44 PM

*yawn*
read the words I typed.
That's what I meant.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
I have no ideological or rhetorical goals.
Just interested in the truth, that's all.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 16, 2011 10:48 PM

That's what I meant.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.

oh come on.

that's a bit of a cop out, dontchya think?

Just interested in the truth, that's all.

the what now?

c'mon. You're already wearing the fencing outfit; why waste it?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 16, 2011 10:50 PM

I give up, SC.
What's my ideology?

Posted by: skeptifem | March 16, 2011 10:52 PM

Whatever sven, you decided the truth already about a couple of topics relevant to EP already and said so in other threads. Be honest.

Posted by: SC OM | March 16, 2011 10:58 PM

I give up, SC. What's my ideology?

What's your science? You said above:

My sense is that this depends entirely on which proponents you're talking about.

Which specific claims do you think stand up scientifically, and why? Cite and explain.

Posted by: Cerberus, unnatural product of en-OMnomnom-ification | March 16, 2011 11:13 PM

Also should be on my list from earlier (covered under so on):

The more general disciplines of evolutionary biology and bioinformatics.

A lot of research has been going into mathematically calculating the course of genuine genetic evolution, how it affects populations, how changes affect behavior, lifespan, susceptibility, so on.

And that's always missing from the "hard science" of evopsych. Oh sure, they are sure to present sociological data without doing checks for social origins and so on, dualing surveys and the like, but for all the talk about being a "hard" science asking the "penetrating" questions of "soft" "ascientific" fields like sociology wrapped in their "PC bubbles", I do so rarely see any evolutionary biology, any demonstration of effects by said "hard science" methods (just perversions of sociological methods that tend to beg the question).

I mean, as part of my work for my Master's I was looking at Alzheimer's data, looking at the inhibition of brain activity, measuring the rise in mutations, trying to find consistent areas of failure that might point to the reason that one's mind could "slip away" due to mtDNA failures.

And you'd expect for a field that's supposedly asking about the "immutable" behaviors sketched on our DNA that we can do naught but struggle against in vain, there would be more of that. Or at least the desire to look through that data to find a mutation that makes one more conforming to 1950s gender stereotypes and so forth.

But yeah...nothing.

Well, and nothing by most other measures. The rigor is sadly lacking by whatever discipline you judge it by.

But I think that's an interesting note. That the evopsych types seem to revile sociology as they continue to bastardize their methods, ignoring the sciences that you would think would be best suited for the arguments they are making.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 16, 2011 11:22 PM

What's my ideology?

Easy. That I am an idiot.

*nods sagely*

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 16, 2011 11:32 PM

Considering I've read some pretty out there stuff in my time, I'm sure there have been a number of idiots who have argued that biological evolution should be discounted as evidence.

coincidentally (?) one of the reasons I tell evo psych folks to read the spandrels paper, is NOT just so they understand the arguments made against "the panglossian paradigm", but if they're smart, they'll realize it was an overreaction as well, given that very few evolutionary biologists of the time actually WERE uberselectionists. For example, the concept of drift and its import had been around long before Sociobiology was published.

IOW, Spandrels was attacking a strawman, but a necessary one at the time. A necessary argument for students entering the field of evolutionary biology, if not for the majority of practicing evolutionary biologists themselves.

It's perhaps a subtle point that many seem to have never gotten out of reading the paper itself, and only becomes readily apparent when reading the critiques of it.

which, I guess is also why I don't tend to recommend reading Spandrels without providing a link to the critique of it.

To support the idea that Gould was painting a deliberate strawman of the state of affairs in evolutionary biology research, you can find any number of quotes where he speaks positively about apply concepts of selection to human behavior, like kin selection, etc.

for a fun bit of discussion from someone who actually was THERE when Gould first presented the concepts for the spandrels paper, I give you..

Richard Dawkins hisself:

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/11/29/its-a-spandrel-sort-of/

scroll down to number 4 response.

note that Jerry was one of Lewontin's students at the time, too!

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 16, 2011 11:39 PM

I have to admit that I find people's perceptions of me and my beliefs and what I've said to be hilariously off. You-all think I've said shit that I never said. I type words and you read something else.
Quote me a quote and I'll stand by it or I'll demur and explain why.
Vague references to half-remembered comments don't cut it.

Bring it specifically or shut the fuck up, please.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 16, 2011 11:40 PM

and, just to be fair to evo psych, since I'm old enough to knee-jerk just despise the field, I think they DO tend to cover issues other than sex and race.

you can of course, just read the journal:

http://www.epjournal.net/

it's free.

Posted by: Azkyroth | March 16, 2011 11:50 PM

I think they still publish a few about race, from time to time.

...on second thought, "ideas" is a little strong. "A few claims about race, from time to time?"

Posted by: SC OM | March 16, 2011 11:59 PM

Quote me a quote and I'll stand by it or I'll demur and explain why.

You're such an asshole, Sven.

Your stupid statements have been met with arguments and evidence again and again. When you made them.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | March 17, 2011 12:28 AM

I have to admit that I find people's perceptions of me and my beliefs and what I've said to be hilariously off. You-all think I've said shit that I never said. I type words and you read something else.

Sven, I actually do understand you and I largely grok what you think. As evidence I would offer the rare occasions -- okay it might be occasion singular -- when I've defended you.

Think I'm blowing smoke right now? Well, I've got that one data point in my favor. Thus to support your claim, you ought to be able to quote a quote of me fundamentally misunderstanding you, or else adjust your prior.

My complaint is not so much with deliberate prejudices of yours -- though you demonstrate at least one -- but the way that you take on a belligerent role even when such is highly inappropriate.

Newer participants I'm not sure about, but I believe that SC at least groks you similarly, and I am surprised that you don't understand that we understand.

In another corner of the multiverse:

"Mister DiMilo, there's a representative from NOW on the phone."
"No calls. Send them the press package on my philanthropic work for the women's movement."
"Can I take a message?"

"They said, quote, 'we found your remarks on the announcement of the Rhodes sentencing to be distracting from the message that men need to change men's culture.'"
"Ugh. It wasn't about the Rhodes thing. But I guess -- I could have had bad timing. All right, issue a press release that I'm sorry if I offended anyone, you know, and of course I'm against sexism."
"I'll get right on it. Mister DiMilo, they're also emailing a special committee's observations on how you may be contributing to sexism."
"Oh, for fuck's -- fine, forward a copy to the HR lawyers. It's like nobody cares I've been building women's health clinics since '78. Book a vacation until this blows over, maybe something like that island last year. The kids loved the turtles."

Posted by: SC OM | March 17, 2011 12:45 AM

??

none were directed at specific people, it was directed at the general concept of evo pych itself, and, "coincidentally", one of the criticisms OF evo psych happens to be the same as that of Gould claimed of the evo bio community at the time he wrote "spandrels"

Sorry. I know, but my problem is that these discussions tend to move from the analysis of concrete claims/research to an abstract plane in a way that I think is frequently evasive. I know that's not what you're doing.

Posted by: skeptifem | March 17, 2011 1:11 AM

sven at 62

I have to admit that I find people's perceptions of me and my beliefs and what I've said to be hilariously off. You-all think I've said shit that I never said. I type words and you read something else.

you are talking to a bunch of regulars, and genuinely trying to say "everyone but me must have some kind of serious communication problem because they don't hear me right". ha. Its you. You are either doing a shit job of communicating clearly or you haven't been able to really comprehend the other perspectives people offered you (either out of inability or unwillingness to genuinely consider any of it). Either way, this bullshit where you want specifics! now! so you can argue against it? Way to pretend that no one did that at the time of said remarks- they fucking did. Someone tried to get you to clarify something in this thread and you didn't genuinely try to have a discussion.

read the words I typed. That's what I meant. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Well gee, now I totally wanna go dig through old threads to find responses from you that several other people remember, you know, to prove to you that it really happened, just so you can BS us all some more!!11 gaslighting, much???

You crapped all over the possibility of defending specifics here, for something said only a little while ago, but insist everyone scramble around to find specifics from the past so you can do the same passive aggressive nonsense all over again. You are really fucking dishonest or really fucking dysfunctional, maybe both?

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 17, 2011 1:38 AM

SC: Or too smart. I germinated a whole tray of snapdragons last week. I can't wait to put them in the dirt.

Nighty night.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | March 17, 2011 2:54 AM

Note the focus again on "beliefs" while he knows that many of his critics have minimal care about intent.

Recall the Kenneth Rhodes thread. Unfortunately we cannot know exactly what, if anything, Sven learned from the responses there and on the endless thread, because -- unless I missed something -- he decided to clam up about it. And that's perhaps understandable, but it leaves many with the plausible assumption that he learned nothing.

Note the suggestion that only his stated beliefs are open to criticism. It's apparently unfair to criticize him for anything that follows from his behavior.

Taken together, these suggest that perhaps Sven does not understand that if a person wants to be appreciated and accepted in the world, they do have to work to earn that appreciation. And there is invariably the question of "yes but what have you done for me lately?"

Some people reject social expectations and live with the consequences; that is their choice. But Sven, despite the insight that a healthy cannabis habit might bring, acts like he's entitled to others' patience. He is not. No one is.

It is possible that Sven is accustomed to more appreciation in his daily life because he earns it quite naturally. I can imagine that he is good at his job, and conscientious in his interpersonal relationships, habitually enough that he isn't even cognizant of all the work he actually does to earn social status. He may thus be used to being treated in ways that he finds fair, without realizing that he's constantly doing something to earn it.

In the more occluded environment of text on a screen, he may bring the expectation of similar treatment, without realizing that it must be earned here too.

In this speculation I'm projecting from hydro-fueled introspection of my worst failings, but it's what I can do to be generous in my interpretation. The alternative is that he really is a thoroughly selfish person who in all aspects of his life gives little and demands much.

But I do not expect that is the case with Sven. I recall some glimpses that make me think otherwise.

Of course none of this is to suggest that anyone should go easy on him. Rather I am hoping to get beneath the surface and better understand just what the fuck is wrong with him. I would appreciate corrections and suggestions.

you seem to be only concerned with the truth insofar as it falls in line with your preferred version of it.

While this is true of (almost?) everyone to some degree, it is not my sense that Sven is notable in this regard. I would instead suggest that he is less than adept at understanding others' perspectives -- also true of many people but it may be more notably true of him -- as evidenced by his misunderstanding of "people's perceptions of [him] and [his] beliefs". Again, as far as newer participants, he may be right that he's being misunderstood. But it's clear enough that this is not the case with some longstanding critics.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | March 17, 2011 8:01 AM

@Allen:

As for the ridiculous idea that evolutionary psychology only deals with sex

I think the fact the statement was ridiculous was the point.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 17, 2011 11:13 AM

Allen you fail because you didn't answer the question "If homophobia genetic/biological" before answering "Is the genetic/biological homophobia beneficial" You didn't make sure there's a there there.

Imagine a biologist saying "I'm going to try to see what the mechanism is for the interaction between a mosquitoes cytochrome p450 enzymes and pesticide spinosad" before asking "does a mosquitoes Cytochrome p450 even react with spinosad?"

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 17, 2011 11:50 AM

it's clear enough that this is not the case with some longstanding critics.

Wrong. You and SC in particular have never demonstrated any understanding at all of what I actually think or believe. I type a sentence and you both habitually argue with something I didn't type and didn't mean. Again and again and again.

For the record:
I know more about animal behavior than anybody else who posts here with the possible exception of Ich.
I know that humans are animals with an evolutionary history that did not just start up in the last half-million years.
Those are the entire extent of the foundations of whatever "ideology" or preconceived ideas I bring to the subject.
So yes, you're fuckin-A dead right I am convinced that something like Evolutionary Psychology is 'true'; that is, that human social behavior is at least in part a product of evolution and is therefore at least in part homologous to that of other animals, and that a full understanding of human behavior MUST include the ecological and social selection pressures that have guided its evolution.

That's it. Really. No further ideology or political considerations involved.

I admit forthrightly my ignorance of most of the details of modern Evolutionary Psychology as actually practiced; I've never even read Pinker to be honest (though I met him once at a party kwokkwokkwok). It's just not a subject I care enough about to allocate it much reading time. So I have NEVER mounted any kind of defense of any kind for Evolutionary Psychology as an academic field. I just don't know much about what it actually entails. I do know that Psychology Today, the popular media, and the blogosphere are not reliable sources of information, so if I wanted to find out about it I'd look elsewhere; one of the textbooks listed by McNeill above, or perhaps a journal.

My ignorance of the specifics admitted, however (will you admit yours?), I remain convinced that the general approach--attempting to explain patterns of human behavior with use of evolutionary analysis derived from the behavioral ecology of other animals--is not just valid but necessary.

And I will stand by my observation that 99% of the criticism I have seen of Evolutionary Psychology is of obvious ideological/political origin, not scientific.

there it is; spin away

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 17, 2011 12:42 PM

Allen MacNeill:

3) Here's the definition of "adaptation" I use:
An evolutionary adaptation is any heritable phenotypic character whose frequency of appearance in a population is the result of increased reproductive success relative to alternative versions of that heritable phenotypic character.

This ignores the important distinction drawn by Gould and Lewonton between adaptation as a state and adaptation as a process; your definition conflates these concepts. But whatevs. Let’s not quibble about terminology.

4) Here are the criteria I believe are most useful when one is attempting to determine if one is dealing with an "adaptation":
Qualification 1: An evolutionary adaptation will be expressed by most of the members of a given population, in a pattern that approximates a normal distribution;

Trait variation in HW, Fisher-Wright Drift, and Mutation-Drift also approximates the normal distribution. In fact some modes of selection result in decidedly non-normal distributions. Directional selection results in kurtosis before equilibrium (and purifying selection) takes over. Disruptive selection results in a bimodal distribution. So… checking for normality in the distribution of a phenotype is hardly an indicator of adaptation under the definition you have given.

Qualification 2: An evolutionary adaptation can be correlated with underlying anatomical and physiological structures, which constitute the efficient (or proximate) cause of the evolution of the adaptation;

I’m not sure what you mean, but if you define adaptation as a heritable phenotype, how would you separate adaptation from its underlying anatomical and physiological structure? Those things are the adaptation by your own definition. It seems like what you are trying to say here is that an adaptation is a trait that isn’t anatomical or physiological but is correlated with anatomy/physiology and is under selection?

Qualification 3: An evolutionary adaptation can be correlated with a pre-existing evolutionary environment of adaptation (EEA), the circumstances of which can then be correlated with differential survival and reproduction; and

OK…is a pre-existing evolutionary environment of adaptation the same as a selective regime? Because the selective regime is what is normally thought to be correlated with differential reproductive success (you know, selection).

Qualification 4: An evolutionary adaptation can be correlated with the presence and expression of an underlying gene or gene complex, which directly or indirectly causes and influences the expression of the phenotypic trait that constitutes the adaptation.

Yeah. So it’s heritable. That’s in the definition.

Seems like a lot of word salad to me. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, you aren’t bringing anything new to the table as much as garbling a frequently used research program for studying selection. I don’t think that anyone** doubts that human behavior is influenced by evolutionary history or even that much of that influence took place in the form of natural selection. However, the study that is the topic of the post fails to apply an effective system of inference (even by your garbled program), and yet draws inference anyway. In my opinion, that is bullshit.
Maybe you have some particular insight on the study that we are discussing? Because your defense of evolutionary psychology* is not enlightening.

*A short-list of text titles, one of which you wrote.
**Or anyone with a very basic understanding of biology.

Posted by: Allen MacNeill | March 17, 2011 1:31 PM

Re comment #85:
Apparently Rutee the Mad Crapper couldn't be bothered to notice that I am not the author (or co-author, or reviewer, or even a defender) of the paper that is the subject of this post. So much for elementary reading comprehension...

Re comment #86:

My comment was not intended as a defense of the paper mentioned in the OP. Rather, it was intended as a response to the general drift among the comments here that evolutionary psychology as a whole is a bogus science. This is no more valid than the implication that physics is bogus as a science because Fleischman and Pons managed to publish a paper on cold fusion in a physics journal. Lots of bogosity gets published in science journals all the time. Does that mean that science is therefore bogus? If you agree, then you should be spending your time at Uncommon Descent, where virtually all of the commentators accept this premise as the basis for their world view.

Antiochus wrote "I don’t think that anyone doubts that human behavior is influenced by evolutionary history or even that much of that influence took place in the form of natural selection." If that's the case, how are we to study such things, if not by using the kinds of investigative methods and inferential tools used by evolutionary psychologists?

Would it help if it were called "human ethology" rather than "evolutionary psychology" (or *shudder* "sociobiology")? Ethnologists aren't particularly well known for tying animal behaviors to the underlying neurobiology and/or genetics of the behavior (and I say this as someone who called himself an ethologist for three decades), yet no one (except a bunch of wacko creationists) calls ethology as a whole bogus, despite the fact that many weak inferences have been published in journals of ethology.

So, to make it simple, can there be any valid empirical science based on the assumption that human behavior is influenced by evolutionary history and that much of that influence took place in the form of natural selection?

And if so, how do we go about studying it?

Posted by: dartigen | March 17, 2011 2:01 PM

@29 I was thinking that...even the Romans didn't have a big thing against it (although depending on the relationship setup it was sometimes considered the past-time of barbarians i.e. un-Roman) although I don't know about any other cultures...IIRC it really wasn't until after the fall of Western Rome that the problems started.

(However, lesbians have been discriminated against since Sappho's time. Perhaps less virulently, but she was repeatedly called ugly and it was once speculated that the reason she was a lesbian was because she couldn't get the guys. At least it was only name-calling...)

Evo-psych seems inherently impossible to me. We don't have time machines so we can't properly evaluate human cultural beliefs and behvaiour properly for most of history - the best we can do is looking at what little in the way of personal diaries, letters, and newspapers have survived from the 1800s and speculated from there. And even then, you can only speculate.
With that being said, if they were on the angle of 'beliefs and behaviours learned from parents and passed on' rather than the 'it's in the genes' angle I'd be more inclined to think they might be onto- wait, I just said I prefer some other field, right?

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | March 17, 2011 6:59 PM

Wrong. You and SC in particular have never demonstrated any understanding at all of what I actually think or believe.

Ah but I did give at one example of understanding when you mean well. Be a good Bayesian and counterquote me a quote then. For all your bluster about me being enamoured of some queer studies professor, I have in fact never taken such a class, and am only trained in what they call the hard sciences.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 17, 2011 9:53 PM

And if so, how do we go about studying it?

wait, you say you were an ethologist for decades, but can't suggest how to go about studying human behavior other than to suggest a field started by non-biologists is the way to go?

interesting.

let's be clear, as we are both trained as ethologists, we both really have no problem with the concept of studying the evolution of behavior in any creature, human or otherwise. But you note the shock and horror that Sociobiology was received with by the couch fainters.

so, it's not a new field that is needed, obviously, but rather a simple acceptance that science does not have poltical goals, backed up by research with good evidence behind it.

evo pysch has not demonstrated an ability to do this, and has not even demonstrated a need to exist beyond political machinations.

there was nothing radical in Sociobiology. There is nothing radical in standard ethology or behavioral ecology or even sociology.

the bases were already covered by method, just not by choice.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 17, 2011 9:59 PM

And how would one do this?

you might ask one of those folks over in the Sociology dept for advice. It's what I would do.

just a thought.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 18, 2011 11:31 AM

Allen if you're going to study human behavior and make claims about biology from it, it's your responsibility to figure out how to isolate the variables. Don't complain to me "but how can I separate culture from biology!" that's your job. Your field is making the claims. I'm sorry that science is difficult.

Seriously that whining bullshit wouldn't fly in biology, "Oh how do you expect us to know WHICH Cytochrome p450 is the active agent! There's so many and the invivo system is so complicated! Can't you just accept our assertion on our word?"

Bullshit.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 18, 2011 8:04 PM

If people want to make the case for the scientific importance or necessity of this work they should produce or point to some fucking solid, original science and defensible arguments, not to politics, real or imagined.

*looks to see if Allen himself even did that*

nnnnope.

I see no links to any original research that is supposed to be representative of why the field is uniquely qualified to answer questions regarding the evolution of behavior, or even any specific examples representing a case of good methods followed by a reasonable conclusion. I saw links to books, instead. Funny, but when I talk about subjects, say, like kin selection, I tend to actually link to relevant papers on the subject if I want to show the value of the theory in the field. I refer to books when I just want to get people to be interested in ideas.

I guess we'll just have to read Allen's book to find out what wonderful secrets evo psych has apparently been keeping out of the published literature!

Because I've read the journal, and I'm not seeing it there.

Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist | March 18, 2011 9:46 PM

@SC

Seriously. Isn't that like declaring that you've built a time machine when all you've done is buy a POlice box?

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 19, 2011 10:44 AM

ricksumner: You seem like an insufferable ass, but I will address your comment anyway. When I have student's "read" Gould and Lewontin*, it is in the context of a classroom discussion on testing hypotheses of selection. Whenever Spandrels is introduced as a topic in a blog thread, a fight ensues. It does the same in a classroom, and they fight about it all week in the halls, in their offices, on facebook, etc. I want my students to argue with each other, so that they better understand the history of their discipline. Because that's what we do: fight.

I guess maybe students at the Vulcan University of Evolution Geniuses where you went need no such exercise. Unfortunately, all of our students have round ears and sometimes require education.

*Why does everyone forget Dick?

Posted by: ricksumner | March 19, 2011 11:38 AM

I'll have to offer further apologies, scrolling back up the comment wasn't even directed at you (should have been self-evident from the note regarding Lewontin).

It was instead directed at post #34:

I do recall having recommended Gould's old "Spandrels" paper to more than one evo psych grad student. and THAT I consider to be a rather flawed argument that only works at the most basic level of understanding.

Which does imply a rather bizarre notion: That graduate level students in evolutionary psychology are not familiar with Gould's "spandrels." If what is implied is indeed the case, then the standards for admission are, at least ostensibly, embarrassingly low. It's functionally equivalent to suggesting a cognitive scientist who has never heard of the Chinese room. Possible, perhaps even happens on occasion, but any school where it is the norm at a graduate level needs to seriously reconsider its department.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 19, 2011 12:11 PM

Ricksumner, you sound as if you've never actually known any graduate students.
Is it really your claim that a student beginning a Masters degree in biology or whatever else should already be completely up to speed on Teh Literature?
Because that's both unrealistic and stupid.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 19, 2011 12:29 PM

Sven: I hear you. I'd just point out that you were already under the bus before I said anything. Nota bene that my position (that you were not a rape apologist) earned me a couple glares.

But whatever, man.

Posted by: SC OM | March 19, 2011 2:15 PM

*shrug*

And there's another. I hate this passive aggressive bullshit that combines constant "*shrug*" and "I don't give a shit" with numerous and often lengthy comments. It's obvious you give a shit, Sven, or you wouldn't have posted about it. As I said in the past when you started it, I would have been fine with "SIWOTI?OK!" if I thought there was any chance you'd actually stick to it. I was hoping you'd go back to the sorts of comments you used to make and for which I suggested you for a Molly. (Of course, you have every right to change your posting style and topics, but some of your comments on other, unrelated subjects of late have struck me as ill-considered and self-destructive, and frankly I don't think you add anything to discussions of this one.)

It's especially annoying because you do have the luxury of shrugging it all off and never have to deal with this research again. This nonsense does affect you more than you know, but not in the same way its constant flogging in the media and so-called skeptical community harms others.

Naturally it is my sincere feeling that your analysis is crap, and that in any case none of the stuff you've so painstakingly listed is evidence of political or ideological presupposition

Of course it is. These are standard science-denialist tactics, used especially by corporations in response to critics.

beyond the vaguely stated insistence on the importance of biology to us, you know, organisms that I stated above.

That disingenuous insistence is as vapid now as it was then.

I find myself the most boring topic of discussion possible, and I'm just not interested in rising to obvious bait, and so I am going to ignore everybody's comments on me, my beliefs, opinions, and attitudes, and my putative fucked-upness.

Starting when?

1. Fair context: As you know, SC, and yet disingenuously omit, my appeal to the authority* of Richard Fucking Dawkins was made explicitly and specifically as a binary choice between his opinion on the subject of the evolution of behavior vs. that of Nancy Fucking McL*rnan. (Go back to the notorious Baby Bear thread and check if you doubt it.)

It was a logical fallacy in any context - the point is that you have to address the arguments people are actually making, regardless of what you think of them. And it wasn't simply a binary choice - it was an irrelevant and hugely condescending personal attack on Nancy for daring to challenge Dawkins. (The irony was that Dawkins had already acknowledged once on that thread that he had been mistaken.) I've said before that I don't care for Nancy's style. The funny thing is that the aspect that most annoys me - that she shows up to make a few arguments and then disappears - was exactly, as I pointed out, what Dawkins did on that thread and elsewhere. None of this matters; the point is that most (possibly all; I can't remember) of Nancy's arguments on that thread were correct.

If we're choosing up sides here and you're on her team? um then you ain't on mine

Several people agreed with her on various substantive points and made our case. There are no teams.

2. Only once have I ever showed up in a comment thread and dropped a deliberate punchbowl-turd (can you hear me, AE? I know I must sound muffled from here under the bus)(and even then it was a straightforward and perfectly rational statement from first principles of population genetics that I posted just to see how anybody could possibly argue with it).

Instead, I have only, ever, explicitly, reacted to other people's comments, usually when I perceive them to be bullshit.

If you think I've said otherwise, you're mistaken.

Lots of what I perceive to be bullshit is promulgated around here, almost always by people with whom I basically agree.

It's the bullshit promulgated for the 'right' (in my view) reasons that bothers me most. I've said all this before.

But you have to show that it's bullshit. You have to engage with a set of arguments fairly. You don't do that.

So there are certain patterns of friendly-fire bullshit around here (again, YMalmostcertainlyVs; that's kind of my point), and the most common one is probably this strange dogmatic insistence on [what often, imo, bears all the hallmarks of] science denialism and/or a-rationalism in the name of feminism.

Usually it's been some stupidly sweeping statement of overgeneralized radical skepticism or blithe dismissal of an entire academic field of which I suspect the commenter to be wholly ignorant.

Again, you have to show that, concretely, in specific cases. (And moving from patterns to commenters and statements isn't helping your case.) What I've seen is crap evo psych and "race" research (or research being used in illegitimate ways) being used to make unfounded claims, and people criticizing this. People are understandably sensitive in these areas and it's likely that a few or many will at some moments make unsupported/able statements. Can these be criticized? Sure, but keep in mind that if you're turning your criticism almost entirely on one set of people and rarely/never on another, and you appear to be scanning through dozens of solid arguments to find one or two weak ones you then characterize as a pattern, you're going to be perceived as having a bias and concern trolling (and you go well beyond this).

[Again, I am willing to re-examine and stand by or disavow specific statements I have made; I think you'd find if you cared that I've almost never defended specific claims of evolutionary psychologists.

Still bullshit.

As for your vervet-study obsession, SC, my extremely limited defense of that study (not a single word of which has managed to penetrate your force-field of notgettingit, and which in consequence you have yet again libelously misstated)

This is simply shocking. No one - not I, KG, windy, or anyone else who's analyzed the "study" - has been able to get you to understand why it's laughably stupid and not evidence of anything with regard to human beings (and nothing interpretable or likely in any way meaningful with regard to vervets).

i

s a matter of public record--oh wait, except for those parts that you moderated down the memory hole at your anarchist blog.]

Look, I stated my comments policy for that post very clearly in the post itself. I was in large part trying to keep you from embarrassing yourself further in public. You have a blog. There are comment threads here on which it's been discussed. No one is censoring you.

Hey, I know you-all don't see it that way, OK? I see it that way. And that's the source of my ridiculous reputation as a sexist misogynist rape-apologist pigassholedouchebagnozzlehat.

This is dishonest. I've said that your history of comments on this subject shows a clear sexist bias, and elaborated on this above (I also think you've acted like a thickheaded douchenozzle). The accusations of being a rape apologist were not from me; they were in response to a couple of specific comments you made, about rape, and I wasn't around for that thread. If you want to make comments about these subjects, people are going to respond to them and draw conclusions about you because of them.

Which, honestly, is ridiculous. It has gotten so weird around here at times that you-all seem to me collectively insane.

And again, I'd say that if a group of people you otherwise like, agree with, andor respect appears to you collectively insane, odds are you're the one with the problem.

[

Yes, thanks in advance for the suggestion that that should make me think about it...I do think about this shit, man, a lot. But in my thoughts I almost always turn out to have been right all along. Oh, you too? Fascinating. Have a nice day.]

Actually, I don't know the percentage of the time when my thoughts turn out that way, but it's much lower than yours, apparently. I try, not always successfully, not to be a windbag on subjects I don't know enough about. I have stopped commenting at three blogs recently that I otherwise like because commenting there (on certain topics in particular) had become unpleasant for me. Not a bad thing, necessarily - leads me to seek out new sites and I know to avoid posts or threads that will anger me. I've said my thing and left. That could also be done in a more limited way.

3. I forget what # 3 was going to be. Oh, maybe a sarcastic apology to SC for spending my reading time reading shit that I want to read instead of her assignments.

Um, the Fine book was recommended by someone else, to anyone reading that thread, and you volunteered a response thanking her and saying you planned to read it. It takes a few seconds to get and a few hours to read. At the very least, you could shut up on the subject until you read Part 2. At this point, I'm not confident in any case.

*incidentally, 'Cordelia Fucking Fine' has a nice ring, no?

I suppose so, but I haven't heard anyone say or imply any such argument from authority.

Posted by: SC OM | March 19, 2011 10:09 PM

(I also think you've acted like a thickheaded douchenozzle)

I should add that you've also been kind and thoughtful at times when it was needed and appreciated, and I'm not ignoring that. I really did think of you as a "friend" of sorts.

Sven, try to look at it like this: You know that JoC paper? Imagine 30 like it a year, and not only the media but bloggers you read and respect report on them uncritically, ignoring your and others' substantive criticisms, accusing you of ideological hysteria, and endlessly repeating that biologists and skeptics just need to understand that astrobiology is important and these authors are brilliant. Imagine that the claims have a real impact on your life, how others see you, and social policy. Imagine that a thread of comments pointing out flaws, questions, or problems is met by science and skeptical bloggers with picayune digs at minor errors, condescension, and mocking. Every time you go online, you have to anticipate another "This will shut those idiots up and vindicate every claim we've made!" example swirling through the blogosphere. That's what it's like. Every day. I'm tired, I'm angry, and I'm hurt.

Posted by: ricksumner | March 19, 2011 10:44 PM

it took Tooby and Cosmides to draw the connection between the effect and kin selection.

The screwed up tag is bad enough, but hoow the hell did I miss this? There are really only two inseparable pairs in the subject and I just mixed them up.

Wilson and Daly.