Original research
4 Mar 2010 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firecatIn reaction to a lot of articles about evolutionary psychology/sociobiology I've read over the years, and especially this news article reporting on one such person's claim that people with higher IQs are more liberal and more likely to be sexually exclusive:
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2010/03/02/Higher-IQ-linked-to-liberalism-atheism/UPI-68381267513202/
Less intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be evolutionary psychologists, a researcher sitting at home in front of her computer suggests.
firecat, whose morning caffeine consumption is correlated with an urge to be a loudmouth on the Internet, argues that the tendency to associate complex modern concepts with simplistic notions of biological urges is a preference that the ancestors of evolutionary psychologists had for millions of years.
These so-called "scientists" are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their sexual interest in young females. Being able to understand the limits of using one's sexual desires to explain the entire universe and the possibility that other people might have different sexual preferences and even nonsexual interests is evolutionarily novel.
Data from the Wasted Money Endlessly Going to Sociobiology Study supportfirecat's hypothesis. Middle-aged white males who frequently try to write papers explaining why attraction to young thin white European females is essential to the understanding of human evolution, history, and the popularity of red sports cars have an average IQ (whatever that is) of π, whereas people who pay attention to the way other people actually behave have an average IQ that matches the boiling point of water in Celsius.
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2010/03/02/Higher-IQ-linked-to-liberalism-atheism/UPI-68381267513202/
Less intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be evolutionary psychologists, a researcher sitting at home in front of her computer suggests.
firecat, whose morning caffeine consumption is correlated with an urge to be a loudmouth on the Internet, argues that the tendency to associate complex modern concepts with simplistic notions of biological urges is a preference that the ancestors of evolutionary psychologists had for millions of years.These so-called "scientists" are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their sexual interest in young females. Being able to understand the limits of using one's sexual desires to explain the entire universe and the possibility that other people might have different sexual preferences and even nonsexual interests is evolutionarily novel.
Data from the Wasted Money Endlessly Going to Sociobiology Study support
firecat's hypothesis. Middle-aged white males who frequently try to write papers explaining why attraction to young thin white European females is essential to the understanding of human evolution, history, and the popularity of red sports cars have an average IQ (whatever that is) of π, whereas people who pay attention to the way other people actually behave have an average IQ that matches the boiling point of water in Celsius.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 08:10 pm (UTC)(One of my tags is "evolutionary bullology." I don't use it nearly enough, probably because ranting brings out unfortunate writing (and what
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 08:40 pm (UTC)Love it!
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 10:25 pm (UTC)-J
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Date: 5 Mar 2010 01:57 pm (UTC)"Critics of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology have advanced an adaptationists-as-right-wing-conspirators (ARC) hypothesis, suggesting that adaptationists use their research to support a right-wing political agenda. We report the first quantitative test of the ARC hypothesis based on an online survey of political and scientific attitudes among 168 US psychology Ph.D. students, 31 of whom selfidentified as adaptationists and 137 others who identified with another nonadaptationist meta-theory. Results indicate that adaptationists are much less politically conservative than typical US citizens and no more politically conservative than non-adaptationist graduate students. Also, contrary to the “adaptationists-aspseudo-scientists” stereotype, adaptationists endorse more rigorous, progressive, quantitative scientific methods in the study of human behavior than nonadaptationists." Tybur, J. M., Miller, G. F., & Gangestad, S. W. (2007). Testing the controversy: An empirical examination of adaptationists' attitudes towards politics and science. Human Nature, 18(4). (PDF (http://www.unm.edu/~psych/faculty/articles/tybur%202007%20politics.pdf)).
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Date: 5 Mar 2010 01:57 pm (UTC)Don't we like the shiny red sports cars because of the berries we (females) were picking in the forests? I don't recall anything about the ones driving them in evo psych/sociobiological thought, but perhaps it's something to do with tools/
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Date: 5 Mar 2010 06:59 pm (UTC)OMG A GIANT BERRY THAT I CAN RIDE!!!!!
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Date: 5 Mar 2010 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 08:07 pm (UTC)Despite the disclaimer, that article was like a bingo-card of insulting assumptions and correlation equating to causation.
My real-world reaction included more insults and swearing, but 140 characters limits me.
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 4 Mar 2010 08:12 pm (UTC)Marry me?
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 4 Mar 2010 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 4 Mar 2010 08:37 pm (UTC)(Hm, I need a relevant icon.)
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 09:53 pm (UTC)Permission to repost this on
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Date: 5 Mar 2010 12:23 am (UTC)Sure, repost away!
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 10:06 pm (UTC)Lovely, just lovely! Thank you!
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Mar 2010 12:31 am (UTC)Quite!
why we have such an inclination to tell ourselves "biological" stories about stuff
Long long ago, when men came back from the hunt and and their wimminfolk served them fermented grain and rubbed their feet while they sat at the fire, the men used to tell stories about their powerful relationships with totem animal spirits. This improved their status and they were able to get access to more fermented grain. Gradually these turned into stories about the deep evolutionary origin of modern Western culture, which is the ultimate expression of humanity.
These stories also evolved separately into LOLcats.
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 11:26 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 4 Mar 2010 11:59 pm (UTC)I've seen what I consider sociobiology done well, but it's like a needle in a haystack. Of needles.
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Date: 5 Mar 2010 12:32 am (UTC)Me too, which is why the poorly done stuff bugs me so much.
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Date: 5 Mar 2010 08:24 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 5 Mar 2010 12:42 am (UTC)/bemusedoutsider here/
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