I haven’t seen a lot of this, either. This account is moderately persuasive, however.
Thanks—I had either missed that or forgotten it. You’re right, it does seem somewhat persuasive, though still rather speculative.
Not sure I understand your point here. I think the difference is that Hanson doesn’t consider human hypocrisy to be a conscious act in the way that computer use is. Do you dispute that?
I don’t dispute that.
My point is that we have a variety of complex, subtle behaviors driven by modules that were originally evolved for completely different purposes. Nobody would claim that because we can use computers well, we must have evolved to use them. It’s a given that we’ve simply co-opted existing modules for entirely new purposes. But “our computer-use skills prove that we evolved to use computers” is of the same logical form as “our hypocrisy skills prove that we evolved to be hypocrites”—if one is fallacious, then the other must be as well. (Though it could probably be made non-fallacious with more supporting arguments.)
Overall, though, I feel like speculating over the evolutionary origin of a specific behavior is something of a red herring, for reasons I’ve covered before. We can never really know for sure what the real evolutionary reason for something was. Even if we could, knowing it constrains our anticipations much less than actually studying how the thing behaves in a modern-day environment.
Thanks—I had either missed that or forgotten it. You’re right, it does seem somewhat persuasive, though still rather speculative.
I don’t dispute that.
My point is that we have a variety of complex, subtle behaviors driven by modules that were originally evolved for completely different purposes. Nobody would claim that because we can use computers well, we must have evolved to use them. It’s a given that we’ve simply co-opted existing modules for entirely new purposes. But “our computer-use skills prove that we evolved to use computers” is of the same logical form as “our hypocrisy skills prove that we evolved to be hypocrites”—if one is fallacious, then the other must be as well. (Though it could probably be made non-fallacious with more supporting arguments.)
Overall, though, I feel like speculating over the evolutionary origin of a specific behavior is something of a red herring, for reasons I’ve covered before. We can never really know for sure what the real evolutionary reason for something was. Even if we could, knowing it constrains our anticipations much less than actually studying how the thing behaves in a modern-day environment.