This may be the place to make an observation which is still growing in me, so I can only state it in a very preliminary way for now. The great historical precursor is to be found in the psychoanalytic subculture which sprung up after Freud, with all its competing schools. Two facts stand out: these people believed that they understood the human mind, and their theories shaped their interactions with each other. (As when one school’s rejection of the theories of another was itself explained psychoanalytically.)
There are new conceptions of human nature springing up from genetics, neuroscience, and cognitive science, and these conceptions are spreading into the culture at large. The most prominent vector for the spread of these ideas is the mass media. But enthusiast online communities like this one are going to be far more demonstrative of the social and psychological effects which result from taking these new ideas utterly to heart.
Two other examples come to mind. There is a sub-blogosphere focused on a particular conception of male and female psychology, centered on the blogger Roissy, which owes a lot to evolutionary psychology. And there is another sub-blogosphere focused on a new racial politics, centered on the blogger Steve Sailer, which owes a lot to human genomics. Together with the bias/rationality focus found here and at Overcoming Bias, these blog communities are not just an exercise in trying to assimilate new discoveries and live their implications, they are themselves little sociological case studies in the impact of science on human subjectivity, individually and collectively.
Now beyond sounding generic warnings about the lesson of history, that people have repeatedly thought that they had things figured out, when they didn’t; and reminding everyone of the skeptical abyss which exists beneath almost all assertions of what is so; I do not really have a way to inoculate you against the errors that come from embracing your favorite paradigm, whatever it is. This post gave me an opportunity to sound the alarm only because it exposes just one of the ways whereby that which is taken to be new knowledge, hereabouts, may not be knowledge at all. I suppose one principle is to keep an eye on whatever part of the culture you think epitomizes the old beliefs, the old way of thinking that has been superseded, because if anyone will escape whatever pathologies accompany the embrace of the new, if anyone knows things that you cannot believe to be true because of what you “know”, it’s going to be Them, the Opposition, whoever they may be. And specifically with respect to evolutionary psychology, just to throw an opposite perspective into the ring, I’m going to mention Jeremy Griffith, a totally obscure Australian thinker who puts the biohistorical perspective on human cognition and human values to a completely different use than anyone else. He has his own problems as a thinker, but perhaps he can be a corrective to some of the excesses of the ev-psych outlook.
In the end, though, I guess we have no choice but to endure whatever downsides accompany the outlooks we choose, if we really do insist on holding those outlooks. So, pointless best wishes to us all, as we suffer the travails of inevitable cause and effect. :-)
There is a sub-blogosphere focused on a particular conception of male and female psychology, centered on the blogger Roissy, which owes a lot to evolutionary psychology.
I’m a big fan of evolutionary psychology, including practical applications of it. Roissy makes a good start attempting to apply it, but he falls prey to major ideological errors, overgeneralization, and oversimplification. I see no evidence that he has read more than a few popular books on the subject. He has made the discovery that even naive applications of evolutionary psychology can be incredibly powerful in the practical world, then falls into the naive realist pit and assumes that his theories are true just because they work better than the conventional alternatives. Furthermore, he fails at ethics really, really badly. I’m being kinda vague, but I’ll go into further detail upon request.
Evolutionary psychology is great. Applied evolutionary psychology is great. Roissy just isn’t doing it right.
Given the emerging influence of ‘game’ bloggers such as roissy and their often disappointing interaction with so-called “men’s rights” activism, (see e.g. [1] and resulting comments, [2]) I think it would be useful if you did take the time to write an extended critique of them. Are you still affiliated with feministcritics.org?
It’s hard to discuss the subject with the debate becoming emotional, but let me just say that Roissy’s goals are to be an entertaining writer, to succeed at picking up women, and to debunk false commonsense notions of dating, through real-life experience.
He’s not trying to submit a peer-reviewed paper on evo psych to a rationality audience. To judge him on that basis is to kind of miss the point.
(Ethics is a whole separate question. But then, Stalin was a atheist too, wasn’t he?)
This may be the place to make an observation which is still growing in me, so I can only state it in a very preliminary way for now. The great historical precursor is to be found in the psychoanalytic subculture which sprung up after Freud, with all its competing schools. Two facts stand out: these people believed that they understood the human mind, and their theories shaped their interactions with each other. (As when one school’s rejection of the theories of another was itself explained psychoanalytically.)
There are new conceptions of human nature springing up from genetics, neuroscience, and cognitive science, and these conceptions are spreading into the culture at large. The most prominent vector for the spread of these ideas is the mass media. But enthusiast online communities like this one are going to be far more demonstrative of the social and psychological effects which result from taking these new ideas utterly to heart.
Two other examples come to mind. There is a sub-blogosphere focused on a particular conception of male and female psychology, centered on the blogger Roissy, which owes a lot to evolutionary psychology. And there is another sub-blogosphere focused on a new racial politics, centered on the blogger Steve Sailer, which owes a lot to human genomics. Together with the bias/rationality focus found here and at Overcoming Bias, these blog communities are not just an exercise in trying to assimilate new discoveries and live their implications, they are themselves little sociological case studies in the impact of science on human subjectivity, individually and collectively.
Now beyond sounding generic warnings about the lesson of history, that people have repeatedly thought that they had things figured out, when they didn’t; and reminding everyone of the skeptical abyss which exists beneath almost all assertions of what is so; I do not really have a way to inoculate you against the errors that come from embracing your favorite paradigm, whatever it is. This post gave me an opportunity to sound the alarm only because it exposes just one of the ways whereby that which is taken to be new knowledge, hereabouts, may not be knowledge at all. I suppose one principle is to keep an eye on whatever part of the culture you think epitomizes the old beliefs, the old way of thinking that has been superseded, because if anyone will escape whatever pathologies accompany the embrace of the new, if anyone knows things that you cannot believe to be true because of what you “know”, it’s going to be Them, the Opposition, whoever they may be. And specifically with respect to evolutionary psychology, just to throw an opposite perspective into the ring, I’m going to mention Jeremy Griffith, a totally obscure Australian thinker who puts the biohistorical perspective on human cognition and human values to a completely different use than anyone else. He has his own problems as a thinker, but perhaps he can be a corrective to some of the excesses of the ev-psych outlook.
In the end, though, I guess we have no choice but to endure whatever downsides accompany the outlooks we choose, if we really do insist on holding those outlooks. So, pointless best wishes to us all, as we suffer the travails of inevitable cause and effect. :-)
I’m a big fan of evolutionary psychology, including practical applications of it. Roissy makes a good start attempting to apply it, but he falls prey to major ideological errors, overgeneralization, and oversimplification. I see no evidence that he has read more than a few popular books on the subject. He has made the discovery that even naive applications of evolutionary psychology can be incredibly powerful in the practical world, then falls into the naive realist pit and assumes that his theories are true just because they work better than the conventional alternatives. Furthermore, he fails at ethics really, really badly. I’m being kinda vague, but I’ll go into further detail upon request.
Evolutionary psychology is great. Applied evolutionary psychology is great. Roissy just isn’t doing it right.
Given the emerging influence of ‘game’ bloggers such as roissy and their often disappointing interaction with so-called “men’s rights” activism, (see e.g. [1] and resulting comments, [2]) I think it would be useful if you did take the time to write an extended critique of them. Are you still affiliated with feministcritics.org?
I am indeed planning such an extended critique. I’m just deciding whether it would make sense to post it here, or FC.org, or somewhere else entirely.
And yes, I’m still one of the bloggers there, though I am sort of on hiatus.
Upvoted for this. Now to get it down to 140 characters …
Edit: Posted. Suggestions for how to cut it down enough to add credit welcomed.
It’s hard to discuss the subject with the debate becoming emotional, but let me just say that Roissy’s goals are to be an entertaining writer, to succeed at picking up women, and to debunk false commonsense notions of dating, through real-life experience.
He’s not trying to submit a peer-reviewed paper on evo psych to a rationality audience. To judge him on that basis is to kind of miss the point.
(Ethics is a whole separate question. But then, Stalin was a atheist too, wasn’t he?)