“Real life” doesn’t even remotely resemble the ancestral environment. In the modern world, a big family is evidence about your cultural background, especially the relationship between your cultural background and contraception, and that might be a turn-off for some. This is the same kind of phenomenon that makes having extra fat evidence, in the ancestral environment, that you were good at acquiring food and other resources, but in the modern world it’s evidence that you’re poor or lack access to good food or lack self-control or whatever.
I mean, I’d rather say “evo-psych has a certain domain of applicability, and also it’s not the only force that shapes human behavior, and also most people who try to apply evo-psych don’t understand the evolutionary-cognitive boundary, and...”
It seems a little presumptuous to say “if I naively apply this idea, I get something that looks wrong, therefore this is a dumb idea” instead of saying “if I naively apply this idea, I get something that looks wrong, therefore I may have applied it in a dumb way.” Have you read an actual textbook on evolutionary psychology?
Nope. I was kind of hoping some expert would answer.
To reformulate the question, is there some easy way to see that my prediction is wrong without going out and checking? The arguments in your first comment apply to all of evo-psych equally. Your second comment mentioned the “evolutionary-cognitive boundary” which doesn’t seem to be what I want, unless I’m missing something...
It was an example of how people can incorrectly apply evolutionary psychology. Anyway, despite my previous comment, it’s not clear to me that your prediction is in fact wrong.
“Real life” doesn’t even remotely resemble the ancestral environment. In the modern world, a big family is evidence about your cultural background, especially the relationship between your cultural background and contraception, and that might be a turn-off for some. This is the same kind of phenomenon that makes having extra fat evidence, in the ancestral environment, that you were good at acquiring food and other resources, but in the modern world it’s evidence that you’re poor or lack access to good food or lack self-control or whatever.
Yeah, saying “evo-psych doesn’t work” is one way to answer my question :-)
I mean, I’d rather say “evo-psych has a certain domain of applicability, and also it’s not the only force that shapes human behavior, and also most people who try to apply evo-psych don’t understand the evolutionary-cognitive boundary, and...”
It seems a little presumptuous to say “if I naively apply this idea, I get something that looks wrong, therefore this is a dumb idea” instead of saying “if I naively apply this idea, I get something that looks wrong, therefore I may have applied it in a dumb way.” Have you read an actual textbook on evolutionary psychology?
Nope. I was kind of hoping some expert would answer.
To reformulate the question, is there some easy way to see that my prediction is wrong without going out and checking? The arguments in your first comment apply to all of evo-psych equally. Your second comment mentioned the “evolutionary-cognitive boundary” which doesn’t seem to be what I want, unless I’m missing something...
It was an example of how people can incorrectly apply evolutionary psychology. Anyway, despite my previous comment, it’s not clear to me that your prediction is in fact wrong.