h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

All this cultural appropriation theory is lily-livered heart bleeding. Yes, we *do* trash other cultures, but by exploiting them economically, not merely by misunderstanding them.

My problem with this thread was this it will likely end up in "evolutionary psychology" territory, which annoys me. A bit like someone starting a thread saying "let´s discusss how the movement of the stars cause our behaviour".
When it comes to physiological things, it is easier to find out what they were used for and if they are still useful. With psychology, you´re dealing with behaviour that might not even have existed a hundred years earlier. Making any inferences about it´s evolutionary benefits rather moot. If Plato saw some guy checking out his wife, he´s probably be jealous he wasn´t checking out him instead. Whereas he might get rather angry if he found a woman checking out his wife, since lesbianism seems to have been rather despised then. I can´t say which of those two behaviours a caveman would have had.

Xanatic:

your comment on behaviors which may not have existed 100 years ago puts me in mind of the fact that before Freud European literature was about all sorts of things including, for example, killing fathers and marrying mothers, but after Freud authors started to write works filled with Freudian symbolism and yelled 'art imitates life!' when, in fact, their art was more often imitating the art of Freud.

anhaga, the sentence that got me was:

"The videotapes were rated by two professors of sexology and two research assistants trained in the functional-sexological approach to sexology, who were not aware of the women's orgasmic history."

queegles,

"I had expected at least one person to come along with "what a pile of tosh, we're far too civilised to succumb to the whims of biology"!"

I don't think anyone is saying that, we're all agreed that we all succumb to our biology. We disagree about what that means...

Ed,

"So on that basis, we can perhaps sometimes legitimately veer towards behaviourist rather than evolutionary explanations..."

Well, I'm not sure that sullying ourselves with behaviourism is any better than sullying ourselves with evolutionary psychology!

I agree with your point that we can find explanations that are just as good and more testable without invoking some functional role for aspects of our psychologies in our evolutionary history. The evopsych people always assume that if there is an identifiable aspect of our psychologies it must have been selected for somehow at some point.

Oh this thread was briefly such fun but its gone down the usual dried up path all of a sudden.

But like I said good on you Quee. I think this thread idea had all sorts of possibilities.

I must remember to add a to some of my posts.

anhaga:
>>their art was more often imitating the art of Freud.

And since Freud was an incestuous coke addict...his life.

frs:
>>the usual dried up path all of a sudden

Oh, not quite, surely? You haven't even torn into me for my last provocation yet.

seriously Dogster, can you not sometimes think of varying your posting *style*. I find myself just going all glazed when you post...and it's too early for it to be due to the drink.

Oh it was so predictable Ed that you wanted that. But it was a nice analytical post I have to say.

np. You post the rules of how you'd like the thread to go and we'll be sure to follow them.

<<Evolutionary history & modern behaviour/health>>

western civilisation is 24 hours an 3 meals away from the stone age

Don't be ridiculous. I just think variety is the spice of life...and I get fed up with the usual white male suspects going off their boys own stuff. This always happens unless people like kea and Mar are around IMO. It's either dry as dust analysis stuff or knockabout playground. Nothing in between. I notice Ed, that you completely ignored properly responding to my points. Maybe if I called myself 'daughter of Dogster' you'd actually respond.

What can I say except I'm being honest.

I like the reference that our behaviour may be more acceptable due to whichever age we live in, rather than being based on evolutionary instinct.

I think what's been said so far is great, whether they're speculative, in agreement or disagreement. It's nice to be able to hear from people willing to think about it enough to have an opinion.


To me, the idea that so much of our behaviour stems from very basic instincts hewn from millions of years of survival seems common sense. That we can no more change those instincts than we can change our stomachs to be able to cope with the levels of chemicals we injest through junk / ready-prepared / industrial farming foods.

If we understand more the reasons behind our (particularly negative) actions, does it not give us more power to change those actions?

Effers, what is it about my posting style you dislike?

>> This phenomenon has been noticed for years. <<

Indeed. But a case can be made that environmental and sociological changes may be producing extreme fractal variants of normal (and cyclical) generational differentiations.

If one considers not just the coal dust and plastics (and other pollutants we've been sniffing for the past couple of centuries) and gives some accounting of the exponential growth of man-made electromagnetic stimuli, it is quite conceivable that our higher functions really are impaired and degenerating.


~jwf~

It's not all about you, you know.

'it is quite conceivable that our higher functions really are impaired and degenerating.'


it is also quite conceivable that these are applying increased selective pressure in favour of improved higher functions which are actually improving.

Btw, it might be worth a word of explanation about why people like me, Xanatic and Ed get het up about evolutionary psychology.

As Queegles said, "the idea that so much of our behaviour stems from very basic instincts hewn from millions of years of survival seems common sense". And I'd agree also that "If we understand more the reasons behind our (particularly negative) actions, does it not give us more power to change those actions?"

So explanations about why we do what we do in terms of our evolutionary history seem like a very natural thing to do, and the explanations can often be compelling. The problem is that there's a whole area of research ('evolutionary psychology') which makes doing this sort of thing its business, and unfortunately the field as a whole is marked by abysmal standards of scientific evidence, and rather dubious and socially destructive conclusions. It's the latter which makes people who have come across evolutionary psychology have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to it whenever anyone mentions anything similar.

Evolutionary psychology as a subject seems to play the social role of giving pseudo-scientific backing to simplistic prejudicial views of what is and what must be: men are serial rapists; women are nurturers; men are good at technical stuff; women are good at feelings; etc. It's horribly simplistic stuff that supports a backwards political agenda, particularly in its anti-feminism: we shouldn't expect to see women earning as much as men because they're programmed to be less aggressive and to want to spend their time with children instead of earning money; we shouldn't expect them to do well at maths or science because their brains can't handle it, they should do art or literature instead; etc.

So I criticise ideas surrounding or similar to evolutionary psychology for two reasons: first of all most of it is bad science, there's very little evidence to support it, and secondly it is used to justify a backwards, patriarchal political system. (To Effers: sorry if you think that makes me boring to read, but I think it's important so I'll go on saying it.)

Anyway, I'm just posting this to explain why it is that there has been a somewhat hostile reaction to what seems like a perfectly good idea. I still think the idea is good, but you do have to be careful not to be satisfied with stories that sound compelling but that aren't backed up with any evidence.

Stuff like this Dogster.

>I agree with your point that we can find explanations that are just as good and more testable without invoking some functional role for aspects of our psychologies in our evolutionary history. The evopsych people always assume that if there is an identifiable aspect of our psychologies it must have been selected for somehow at some point.<

This strikes me as excessively wordy gigantic sentence and I really can't work out what it means. I don't think that there is such a thing as neutrality of language. The medium is the message. And a certain way of using it will alienate people. I notice that whenever these kind of debates happen on h2g2, they get what I call 'stifled' by a certain use of language.

I mean where the hell are your *commas* which are *essential* in making communication more enjoyable and understandable to everyone?