There’s far more hypotheses which a human updates on when learning in the early life than there are genes, so there’s simply not enough genes to address priors to hypotheses individually.
Was anyone claiming they do?
The fidelity is very low—it’s not a blueprint. The thing is, you can’t make predictions about what would evolve from just what’s beneficial. It’d be beneficial for many mammals to have extra eyes in the back, but not a single mammal has those, because the developmental process doesn’t provide for a simple mutation that yields such eyes.
Yes, and it would also be beneficial to correctly apply the Wason selection principle to all problems not just ethical ones, but because the relevant circuitry is in the ethics module, our brains only apply it to ethics.
Yes, and it would also be beneficial to correctly apply the Wason selection principle to all problems not just ethical ones, but because the relevant circuitry is in the ethics module, our brains only apply it to ethics.
Or do they really?
A large fraction of people get the problem right even in it’s more abstruse form, where it is harder to leverage the experience to correctly understand the problem statement.
Evopsych you describe is actually a very fringe interpretation of how we get improved performance on Wason selection task. Source . There just isn’t a reason to believe that improved performance has anything to do with ethics, rather than, for example, general improvement in understanding when describing problems that make more sense. Something as simple as replacing ‘married’ with something patently irrelevant such as hair colour, throws people off. A proposed explanation had been that most people just flip cards that seem relevant to them, and that’s it, they aren’t actually solving a logical problem.
A large fraction of people get the problem right even in it’s more abstruse form, where it is harder to leverage the experience to correctly understand the problem statement.
Yes, our brain also has the a general purpose module, but it’s not as effective as the special purpose ones on the problems they are designed for.
There just isn’t a reason to believe that improved performance has anything to do with ethics, rather than, for example, general improvement in understanding when describing problems that make more sense.
Do you have an example of an experiment that distinguishes this from the ethics hypothesis?
Something as simple as replacing ‘married’ with something patently irrelevant such as hair colour, throws people off.
That is also what the ethics theory would predict.
A proposed explanation had been that most people just flip cards that seem relevant to them, and that’s it, they aren’t actually solving a logical problem.
That’s a non-explanation. It doesn’t explain why some cards and not others seem relevant. That just relates a black box in the subjects’ brains with the corresponding black box in the explainer’s brain without saying anything about how either of them work.
Yes, our brain also has the a general purpose module, but it’s not as effective as the special purpose ones on the problems they are designed for.
They aren’t designed, they’re shaped by evolution, and evolution is driven by differential reproduction, which is larger for more widely applicable improvements.
That is also what the ethics theory would predict.
How so? Did you read my link? Two people are making a bet on a trait. If results gone other way, would ethics theory predict that too?
It doesn’t explain why some cards and not others seem relevant.
The relevance is complicated and highly dependent on context and prior experience of the subject.
Yes, our brain also has the a general purpose module, but it’s not as effective as the special purpose ones on the problems they are designed for.
They aren’t designed, they’re shaped by evolution, and evolution is driven by differential reproduction, which is larger for more widely applicable improvements.
It’s also larger for improvements that do really well in situations that commonly come up.
How so? Did you read my link? Two people are making a bet on a trait. If results gone other way, would ethics theory predict that too?
Sorry, I didn’t. Now taking a look at it, that is indeed not directly moral. Although I suspect it might be implicitly moral since there is a presumption in our culture that unmarried men are not to be trusted with children.
The relevance is complicated and highly dependent on context and prior experience of the subject.
Was anyone claiming they do?
Yes, and it would also be beneficial to correctly apply the Wason selection principle to all problems not just ethical ones, but because the relevant circuitry is in the ethics module, our brains only apply it to ethics.
Or do they really?
A large fraction of people get the problem right even in it’s more abstruse form, where it is harder to leverage the experience to correctly understand the problem statement.
Evopsych you describe is actually a very fringe interpretation of how we get improved performance on Wason selection task. Source . There just isn’t a reason to believe that improved performance has anything to do with ethics, rather than, for example, general improvement in understanding when describing problems that make more sense. Something as simple as replacing ‘married’ with something patently irrelevant such as hair colour, throws people off. A proposed explanation had been that most people just flip cards that seem relevant to them, and that’s it, they aren’t actually solving a logical problem.
Yes, our brain also has the a general purpose module, but it’s not as effective as the special purpose ones on the problems they are designed for.
Do you have an example of an experiment that distinguishes this from the ethics hypothesis?
That is also what the ethics theory would predict.
That’s a non-explanation. It doesn’t explain why some cards and not others seem relevant. That just relates a black box in the subjects’ brains with the corresponding black box in the explainer’s brain without saying anything about how either of them work.
They aren’t designed, they’re shaped by evolution, and evolution is driven by differential reproduction, which is larger for more widely applicable improvements.
How so? Did you read my link? Two people are making a bet on a trait. If results gone other way, would ethics theory predict that too?
The relevance is complicated and highly dependent on context and prior experience of the subject.
It’s also larger for improvements that do really well in situations that commonly come up.
Sorry, I didn’t. Now taking a look at it, that is indeed not directly moral. Although I suspect it might be implicitly moral since there is a presumption in our culture that unmarried men are not to be trusted with children.
Ok, so your theory is even less falsifiable.