Original research

[firecat]

In 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 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.

Comments

[daze39.livejournal.com]

Seems like the interesting tendency that the sociobiologists need to study is why we have such an inclination to tell ourselves "biological" stories about stuff that is probably much more determined by culturally-patterned expectations: for example, it may well be the manifestation of some "biological mating impulse" that most of us seem to be hard-wired to experience orgasm as an entertaining sensation... but I think most of the rest of the attitudes people have about sexuality - the particular patterns of motivation we (FSVO "we", of course!) expect to be associated with desire, the specific emotional "meanings" we apply to various aspects of sexual interaction and experience - all this is, I suspect, a lot more culturally determined than many folks admit to themselves.

[firecat]

all this is, I suspect, a lot more culturally determined than many folks admit to themselves.

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.