Popularized evo-psych seems to be a lot like appealing that a certain way of life is “natural” and thus “good”.
Does anyone actually do this? Do I just hang out in the wrong circles? Are there people who do this and yet I never talk to any of them or read anything they write?
I have definitely seen it leveled as an argument against feminists (or, more generally, pro-altruist exhortations.) Men are evolved to cheat on women and be bad fathers, so don’t ask them to do otherwise. Humans are evolved to make war, so don’t ask them to do otherwise. You hear a lot of evo-psych from people who have a generally pessimistic view of human nature: everybody’s mean, nobody is nice, all niceness is futile.
I find that attitude exhausting and the associated arguments usually overstated. But hey, that’s just me.
Such pessimism is dangerously close to fatalism, and wrong for the same reasons. Just as we have reasons to contemplate our choices despite their inevitability, we have reason to fight our bad urges even under the (weaker!) influence of genetics.
And then there’s the fact that societies with stronger norms against infidelity had less of it, suggesting that men “had the willpower all along!”
Does anyone actually do this? Do I just hang out in the wrong circles? Are there people who do this and yet I never talk to any of them or read anything they write?
I have definitely seen it leveled as an argument against feminists (or, more generally, pro-altruist exhortations.) Men are evolved to cheat on women and be bad fathers, so don’t ask them to do otherwise. Humans are evolved to make war, so don’t ask them to do otherwise. You hear a lot of evo-psych from people who have a generally pessimistic view of human nature: everybody’s mean, nobody is nice, all niceness is futile.
I find that attitude exhausting and the associated arguments usually overstated. But hey, that’s just me.
The standard rejoinder is that women are evolved to ask men to stop cheating, so men shouldn’t ask them to do otherwise.
I’ve evolved to stop talking to people who abuse evolutionary psychology.
Such pessimism is dangerously close to fatalism, and wrong for the same reasons. Just as we have reasons to contemplate our choices despite their inevitability, we have reason to fight our bad urges even under the (weaker!) influence of genetics.
And then there’s the fact that societies with stronger norms against infidelity had less of it, suggesting that men “had the willpower all along!”
Yes people do it. Most of the time actually. You just hang in the right circles to avoid it.
Yes, unfortunately people do this.
Ever been in a health food store? And then of course there’s this.