I agree denotationally but object connotationally. So, yes, it’s true that people seeking to justify social practices that we-socially-liberal-people strongly disapprove of often make poorly-reasoned appeals to evolutionary psychology, and that this is not only bad because it’s bad reasoning, but it also damages the credibility of evopsych as field, but …
I don’t know, correct me if I’m misreading your intent, but to me it seems like your comment is engaged in a mode of reasoning about conflicts between contemporary social groups, rather than reasoning about reality, and that in this venue of all places, we can actually do better. The mindset which dubs an entire area of inquiry “disgraced” because many of the thinkers working in that area are systematically biased in identifiable ways is a common one, but it’s a mistake. There’s absolutely nothing contradictory about simultaneously believing that many scholars whose work is labeled as “evolutionary psychology” have important insights about human nature, and also that many of their critics also have important insights, for the same reason that very different-looking maps can both usefully model different aspects of the same territory. Of course, this is not to say that “everyone is equally right”; rather, I’m saying we can talk about the actual observations and inferences under dispute, rather than getting distracted with irrelevant side issues like whether Satoshi Kanazawa is a bad person.
I think that there’s so little rationality in the world today, that on the current margin it’s more important for those of us who know better to explicitly say things like what I’m saying now (Social Reality Is a Strict Subset of Actual Reality; the Facts Really Aren’t on Anyone’s Side), rather than trying to apply social pressure in favor of our preferred ideology. I say this not because it’s wrong to have ideologically-derived values (I don’t like gender roles, either), but because lots of other people are already working on politics, and not very many people are working on epistemology, so that almost anyone in a position to notice this choice should take the latter. You write that “[t]he victims are currently only pointing out all the crap[;] [t]he gatekeepers need to stop sleeping on the job,” but without necessarily denying that the victims are in fact victims and that the crap is in fact crap, this really seems like a distraction from the real issues.
You quote P. Z. Myers arguing that in order for a sex difference to be evolutionarily favored, there needs to be some reason why the trait in question would be adaptive in one sex but actually maladaptive in the other. To someone in the mindset of “discrediting evolutionary psychology”, this might seem like a crushing objection, but to someone in the mindset of trying to understand human evolution, there’s no reason to be thinking of objecting to anything; it’s just a good line of reasoning that stands on its own merits. And, in fact, competent evolutionary psychologists already know it; Eliezer makes the same point (which I would imagine is standard and familiar to people who really know the literature) in his post “The Psychological Unity of Humankind”:
Note, however, that in the absence of actually opposed selection pressures, the species as a whole will get dragged along even by selection pressure on a single sex. This is why males have nipples; it’s not a selective disadvantage.
So I think a lot of the apparent disagreement between Myers et al. and (well-done) evolutionary psychology is illusory, as should not be surprising because Bayesian reasoners cannot agree to disagree; reality just doesn’t care about our culture wars.
I don’t know, correct me if I’m misreading your intent, but to me it seems like your comment is engaged in a mode of reasoning about conflicts between contemporary social groups, rather than reasoning about reality, and that in this venue of all places, we can actually do better.
“In this venue” is part of the problem. Getting down the fine details of how evolution has influenced human brains and behavior, and the signatures of that in contemporary populations, has obvious value in its own right; however, that is a tricky process, and it is carried out by biased human beings who exist in social and political contexts. Sure, a bunch of people who wanted to make an honest go at it and were good enough at filtering or sidestepping their own systemic biases could probably reach some meaningful insight into the problem, given time and the right methodology.
Doesn’t change the fact that the moment they released any of it into the wider world, it being used to further harmful and oppressive ends (including rampant spin where necessary) would be a pretty much foregone conclusion. Science, Bayescraft, what have you—they do not occur in a vacuum.
it’s just a good line of reasoning that stands on its own merits.
The problem with biology is that reason only gets you so far. The problem with discussing evolutionary psychology on LW is that biology is not particularly well-understood here; both the general contents of the field and its history, current open questions, controversies, and cutting-edge are barely even touched on, in favor of a relatively narrow slice of pop-evobio, and a bit of “Dawkins good; Gould bad!”
biology is not particularly well-understood [on Less Wrong]; both the general contents of the field and its history, current open questions, controversies, and cutting-edge are barely even touched on, in favor of a relatively narrow slice of pop-evobio, and a bit of “Dawkins good; Gould bad!”
I believe you. (Is there any way we can recruit more biologists? Or maybe there should be subject-specific “Please only comment if you’ve read at least X textbooks” threads?)
I don’t know, correct me if I’m misreading your intent, but to me it seems like your comment is engaged in a mode of reasoning about conflicts between contemporary social groups, rather than reasoning about reality, and that in this venue of all places, we can actually do better.
Conflicts between contemporary social groups are part of reality.
The topic of this debate is “How to Avoid the Conflict Between Feminism and Evolutionary Psychology?”. This debate is inherently about reasoning about conflicts between contemporary social groups.
If you want to reduce that conflict it makes sense to reason about the conflict.
Resolving conflicts is not an end in itself. The goal is to find the truth, in the process conflicts are likely to be resolved, but we shouldn’t attempt to resolve conflicts by agreeing to believe a “compromise position” at the expense of seeking truth.
The goals set out in the opening post are to reduce certain bad consequences of the conflict:
But the fact is, the conflict arose. It has only bad consequences as far as I could see, such as people fighting over each other, breaking friendships, and prejudice of great intensity on both sides.
Those goals are valid ends in themselves. Especially for those people who are autists or have otherwise weak social skills, communicating their truth in a way that doesn’t destroy some of their friendship is very valuable.
we shouldn’t attempt to resolve conflicts by agreeing to believe a “compromise position” at the expense of seeking truth.
I don’t think anybody argued in this debate that one should agree to believe in a “compromise position”.
I understood Eneasz in a way where he argued that proper evolutionary psychologists don’t spend enough public effort on debunking incorrect and sexist evolutionary psychology.
As a sidenote, evolutionary psychology predicts that few people have the goal of finding truth. Knowing “the truth” is not very useful for a hunter gatherer. It is more important for the hunter gatherer to have a high social status in his tribe.
Humans might publically profess that finding truth is their motive but they don’t act accordingly. Most people care a lot more about getting approval from other people. They care about feeling like they are in a priveliged position where they know more about the way the world works then other people.
If people would really care about being truthful, they would be less confident that their overconfident positions are true. Holding to an overconfident position on the other hand make it easier to feel like you know the truth while other people don’t.
In the cartoon Dilbert doesn’t really provide rational evidence for his claim either.
In this case there clear rational evidence that evolution evolved human’s to try to show their high status by debating. There’s little rational evidence that evolution gave people the goal of finding truth.
In the cartoon Dilbert doesn’t really provide rational evidence for his claim either.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any.
In this case there clear rational evidence that evolution evolved human’s to try to show their high status by debating. There’s little rational evidence that evolution gave people the goal of finding truth.
If the only point of debating was status, people would evolve not to listen to what anyone else says. Furthermore, the results of debates and human reasoning (flawed as it is) is correlated with truth; if this wasn’t the case, we’d still be on the savannah getting chased by lions.
But the fact is, the conflict arose. It has only bad consequences as far as I could see, such as people fighting over each other, breaking friendships, and prejudice of great intensity on both sides.
This is a universal argument against debating any controversial topic.
I understood Eneasz in a way where he argued that proper evolutionary psychologists don’t spend enough public effort on debunking incorrect and sexist evolutionary psychology.
In my experience, the typical feminist complaint is that the evolutionary psychologists don’t debunk correct but “sexist” evolutionary psychology.
This is a universal argument against debating any controversial topic.
I don’t think anybody argued here that one shouldn’t debate whether evolutionary psychology is correct. The only thing that’s argued is that this debate isn’t primarily that claim.
On LessWrong I also consider it a bit strange to claim that the question of whether evolutionary psychology is correct is a controversial claim. In this venue it’s a quite boring consensus claim.
“There a way that would allow evolutionary scientistis to be better at communicating their science to the public” is a controversial claim on LessWrong.
In my experience, the typical feminist complaint is that the evolutionary psychologists don’t debunk correct but “sexist” evolutionary psychology.
So? I don’t see how that negates anything anybody argued here.
Sure. But “reducing the conflict” can also mean taking steps to reduce the significance of the undesired social dynamic / cognitive bias known as the halo effect.
First, we could recognize the limitations of attempting to apply cutting edge Ev. psych to daily life. In terms of practical effect, ev. psych is behind nutrition science in terms of relevance to individual decision-making.
Second, more hostility to what Eliezer might call blogosphere ev. psych would clearly improve the quality of discourse.
I agree denotationally but object connotationally. So, yes, it’s true that people seeking to justify social practices that we-socially-liberal-people strongly disapprove of often make poorly-reasoned appeals to evolutionary psychology, and that this is not only bad because it’s bad reasoning, but it also damages the credibility of evopsych as field, but …
I don’t know, correct me if I’m misreading your intent, but to me it seems like your comment is engaged in a mode of reasoning about conflicts between contemporary social groups, rather than reasoning about reality, and that in this venue of all places, we can actually do better. The mindset which dubs an entire area of inquiry “disgraced” because many of the thinkers working in that area are systematically biased in identifiable ways is a common one, but it’s a mistake. There’s absolutely nothing contradictory about simultaneously believing that many scholars whose work is labeled as “evolutionary psychology” have important insights about human nature, and also that many of their critics also have important insights, for the same reason that very different-looking maps can both usefully model different aspects of the same territory. Of course, this is not to say that “everyone is equally right”; rather, I’m saying we can talk about the actual observations and inferences under dispute, rather than getting distracted with irrelevant side issues like whether Satoshi Kanazawa is a bad person.
I think that there’s so little rationality in the world today, that on the current margin it’s more important for those of us who know better to explicitly say things like what I’m saying now (Social Reality Is a Strict Subset of Actual Reality; the Facts Really Aren’t on Anyone’s Side), rather than trying to apply social pressure in favor of our preferred ideology. I say this not because it’s wrong to have ideologically-derived values (I don’t like gender roles, either), but because lots of other people are already working on politics, and not very many people are working on epistemology, so that almost anyone in a position to notice this choice should take the latter. You write that “[t]he victims are currently only pointing out all the crap[;] [t]he gatekeepers need to stop sleeping on the job,” but without necessarily denying that the victims are in fact victims and that the crap is in fact crap, this really seems like a distraction from the real issues.
You quote P. Z. Myers arguing that in order for a sex difference to be evolutionarily favored, there needs to be some reason why the trait in question would be adaptive in one sex but actually maladaptive in the other. To someone in the mindset of “discrediting evolutionary psychology”, this might seem like a crushing objection, but to someone in the mindset of trying to understand human evolution, there’s no reason to be thinking of objecting to anything; it’s just a good line of reasoning that stands on its own merits. And, in fact, competent evolutionary psychologists already know it; Eliezer makes the same point (which I would imagine is standard and familiar to people who really know the literature) in his post “The Psychological Unity of Humankind”:
So I think a lot of the apparent disagreement between Myers et al. and (well-done) evolutionary psychology is illusory, as should not be surprising because Bayesian reasoners cannot agree to disagree; reality just doesn’t care about our culture wars.
“In this venue” is part of the problem. Getting down the fine details of how evolution has influenced human brains and behavior, and the signatures of that in contemporary populations, has obvious value in its own right; however, that is a tricky process, and it is carried out by biased human beings who exist in social and political contexts. Sure, a bunch of people who wanted to make an honest go at it and were good enough at filtering or sidestepping their own systemic biases could probably reach some meaningful insight into the problem, given time and the right methodology.
Doesn’t change the fact that the moment they released any of it into the wider world, it being used to further harmful and oppressive ends (including rampant spin where necessary) would be a pretty much foregone conclusion. Science, Bayescraft, what have you—they do not occur in a vacuum.
The problem with biology is that reason only gets you so far. The problem with discussing evolutionary psychology on LW is that biology is not particularly well-understood here; both the general contents of the field and its history, current open questions, controversies, and cutting-edge are barely even touched on, in favor of a relatively narrow slice of pop-evobio, and a bit of “Dawkins good; Gould bad!”
I believe you. (Is there any way we can recruit more biologists? Or maybe there should be subject-specific “Please only comment if you’ve read at least X textbooks” threads?)
You’ve at least got one now (though one with significantly lower free-internet-time once he returns to work from vacation).
No idea how to go about doing that. Given what LW is, they’d kinda have to want to be here.
Conflicts between contemporary social groups are part of reality.
The topic of this debate is “How to Avoid the Conflict Between Feminism and Evolutionary Psychology?”. This debate is inherently about reasoning about conflicts between contemporary social groups.
If you want to reduce that conflict it makes sense to reason about the conflict.
Resolving conflicts is not an end in itself. The goal is to find the truth, in the process conflicts are likely to be resolved, but we shouldn’t attempt to resolve conflicts by agreeing to believe a “compromise position” at the expense of seeking truth.
The goals set out in the opening post are to reduce certain bad consequences of the conflict:
Those goals are valid ends in themselves. Especially for those people who are autists or have otherwise weak social skills, communicating their truth in a way that doesn’t destroy some of their friendship is very valuable.
I don’t think anybody argued in this debate that one should agree to believe in a “compromise position”.
I understood Eneasz in a way where he argued that proper evolutionary psychologists don’t spend enough public effort on debunking incorrect and sexist evolutionary psychology.
As a sidenote, evolutionary psychology predicts that few people have the goal of finding truth. Knowing “the truth” is not very useful for a hunter gatherer. It is more important for the hunter gatherer to have a high social status in his tribe.
Humans might publically profess that finding truth is their motive but they don’t act accordingly. Most people care a lot more about getting approval from other people. They care about feeling like they are in a priveliged position where they know more about the way the world works then other people.
There a good Dilbert cartoon: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-10-07
If people would really care about being truthful, they would be less confident that their overconfident positions are true. Holding to an overconfident position on the other hand make it easier to feel like you know the truth while other people don’t.
The cartoon confuses scientific evidence with rational evidence.
In the cartoon Dilbert doesn’t really provide rational evidence for his claim either.
In this case there clear rational evidence that evolution evolved human’s to try to show their high status by debating. There’s little rational evidence that evolution gave people the goal of finding truth.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any.
If the only point of debating was status, people would evolve not to listen to what anyone else says. Furthermore, the results of debates and human reasoning (flawed as it is) is correlated with truth; if this wasn’t the case, we’d still be on the savannah getting chased by lions.
This is a universal argument against debating any controversial topic.
In my experience, the typical feminist complaint is that the evolutionary psychologists don’t debunk correct but “sexist” evolutionary psychology.
I don’t think anybody argued here that one shouldn’t debate whether evolutionary psychology is correct. The only thing that’s argued is that this debate isn’t primarily that claim.
On LessWrong I also consider it a bit strange to claim that the question of whether evolutionary psychology is correct is a controversial claim. In this venue it’s a quite boring consensus claim.
“There a way that would allow evolutionary scientistis to be better at communicating their science to the public” is a controversial claim on LessWrong.
So? I don’t see how that negates anything anybody argued here.
Sure. But “reducing the conflict” can also mean taking steps to reduce the significance of the undesired social dynamic / cognitive bias known as the halo effect.
Could you elaborate about how exactly you think the halo effect could be reduced in this case?
First, we could recognize the limitations of attempting to apply cutting edge Ev. psych to daily life. In terms of practical effect, ev. psych is behind nutrition science in terms of relevance to individual decision-making.
Second, more hostility to what Eliezer might call blogosphere ev. psych would clearly improve the quality of discourse.