I question the evidential value of the statement below. It seems to me that it argues against evolutionary fine tuning.
″ Similarly, the graph that correlates to parental grief is for the future reproductive potential of a child that has survived to a given age, and not the sunk cost of raising the child which has survived to that age. (Could we get an even higher correlation if we tried to take into account the reproductive opportunity cost of raising a child of age X to independent maturity, while discarding all sunk costs to raise a child to age X?)”
Evolution should have set the cost to a given age as approximately equal to the expected benefit. It manifestly failed to do so in establishing an approximately equal gender ratio despite the larger cost of boys than girls… unless hunter gatherers Had/Have very unequal gender ratios (inversely proportional to the cost of children) but modern environments lead to FAR less selective abortion of boys.
When I proposed a study like this a few years ago as the sort of thing that evolutionary psychologists should do if they were to be taken seriously I pointed out that hypothetical grief over girls should show much lower variance than that over boys to reflect varied reproductive expectations which should be predictable by fairly early childhood.
I’m also bothered by the idea that our ancestors even had a concept of “3 years from now” distinct from “5 years from now”. If they didn’t shouldn’t their estimates be based on environmentally impacted physiological factors like age of puberty or height which would vary between Canad and the ancestral environment?
That said, this was my exemplar when I was looking for an example of an experiment that should be done in evolutionary psychology that could boost its credibility. Updating on both its credibility and on the ability of the scientific community to integrate data. Common sense does NOT, IMHO, say that parents would be more unhappy by the death of a 12-year-old than that of an 8-year-old.
I question the evidential value of the statement below. It seems to me that it argues against evolutionary fine tuning.
″ Similarly, the graph that correlates to parental grief is for the future reproductive potential of a child that has survived to a given age, and not the sunk cost of raising the child which has survived to that age. (Could we get an even higher correlation if we tried to take into account the reproductive opportunity cost of raising a child of age X to independent maturity, while discarding all sunk costs to raise a child to age X?)”
Evolution should have set the cost to a given age as approximately equal to the expected benefit. It manifestly failed to do so in establishing an approximately equal gender ratio despite the larger cost of boys than girls… unless hunter gatherers Had/Have very unequal gender ratios (inversely proportional to the cost of children) but modern environments lead to FAR less selective abortion of boys.
When I proposed a study like this a few years ago as the sort of thing that evolutionary psychologists should do if they were to be taken seriously I pointed out that hypothetical grief over girls should show much lower variance than that over boys to reflect varied reproductive expectations which should be predictable by fairly early childhood.
I’m also bothered by the idea that our ancestors even had a concept of “3 years from now” distinct from “5 years from now”. If they didn’t shouldn’t their estimates be based on environmentally impacted physiological factors like age of puberty or height which would vary between Canad and the ancestral environment?
That said, this was my exemplar when I was looking for an example of an experiment that should be done in evolutionary psychology that could boost its credibility. Updating on both its credibility and on the ability of the scientific community to integrate data. Common sense does NOT, IMHO, say that parents would be more unhappy by the death of a 12-year-old than that of an 8-year-old.