Oh, one more thing!
I feel like posting this to the dot_poly_snark community, but I'm not that flame-happy. That said, I'm feeling like a soda bottle over here and I just have to VENT somewhere.
Dear social liberals: stop hating on evolutionary psychology!
In a lot of the online communities of which I consider myself at least a peripheral member, I find myself reading posts in which folks, apparently familiar with some of the more egregiously sexist theories spawned by researchers in evolutionary psych, talk about evo psych in general as if being aware of those incorrect theories entitles them to write off our entire field. The fact that I have taken a seminar on scientific controversies of this exact nature does not in any way diminish the usually unspoken rage that BOILS in me whenever I encounter this kind of willful ignorance.
Many fields have idiots among them. No reasonable person (NB: many people are unreasonable) is going to write off feminism as a category because of the monstrously transphobic opinions of Mary Daly or Janice Raymond. Heck, this even works on an individual level: most people I know don't ignore calculus or gravity just because Sir Newton was also an alchemist. The source of an idea is independent from that idea's truth value, and it's self-imposed ignorance if one choses to assume that an entire field of research is invalid simply because patriarchal assholes are in it making claims that shore up patriarchal power structures. Protip: THIS IS TRUE OF MORE THAN ONE GROUP. Denying evo psych's validity en masse is just herd mentality: it's easy to do because the majority of that group (e.g., active D_P_S members) is devoted to keeping that opinion thinkable and shouting down opposition rather than considering that A) people who are wrong are wrong because of something in their background and experience that allowed the incorrect thought to be thinkable, let's take a look at that, and B) not everything in evo psych is wrong just because someone made a foolish claim about sexuality ARGH YOU FUCKERS. The degree of flippancy and blithe, self-righteous dismissiveness is maddening. Oh, yes, the fact that someone stupid likes a claim derived from this field means that you have the right to discount everything labeled as evolutionary psychology. Brilliant!
News flash: we evolved. This MAY have had some effect on our psychology.
Sugar. Humans tend to love sugar. Why? Historically, it was associated with healthy food (e.g., fruit) of the high-nutrient variety necessary to support a large-brained species, leading to our being a species that just loves to chug down some good lo' fashioned corn syrup. Our love of sugar has had huge economic, social and political consequences. Think I'm exaggerating? Maybe you forgot about the sugar cane/rum/human beings trade triangle your seventh grade history teacher should've mentioned. Yes, folks would've found another way to profit from slave labor if we didn't eat sugar; no, it probably wouldn't have had the same fatality rate that cane harvesting did. Just sayin', kind of important.
Maybe you've noticed that human beings respond to light cycles in a remarkable way when they stop watching the clock. Don't believe me? Go to Alaska in spring and forget your watch; before long, you won't be needing eight hours of sleep. Or, try getting a job on the night shift, flooding your house with blue light before bed, or any one of the other things that we're just now beginning to study thanks to the emphasis of people like the folks in evolutionary psychology.
Humans are social creatures. Maybe you've noticed that we get along with each other better than, say, bears or snakes, but not quite so well as, I don't know, coral. Some people hypothesize that our complex social groups were a major factor in the development of our extraordinary intelligence. They might be right. Wouldn't it be nice if that hypothesis were explored by, say, an evolutionary psychologist?
And the reason it pisses me off is that I consider myself to be someone who shares some critical values, near & dear, with, for instance, the average person in a community dedicated to polyamory, all else being equal. I would like to be able to entertain the fiction that people with whom I associate are slightly more intelligent than the observable masses of idiots parading around and running this world. I know that I'm preaching to the choir unless I post this in one of those communities, but I don't want to run a flame war, I just want to vent. So, please, my darling socially liberal non-readers: TAKE YOUR FINGERS OUT OF YOUR FUCKING EARS! Did educators fight to get evolution taught in schools just so that their political descendants could become obscurantists? I thought that y'all wanted social change, as I do. If we're trying to change human behavior, MAYBE, just maybe, we should put some effort into finding out how humans actually work instead of working off of the assumptions we like best. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot: didn't you say something about questioning one's own assumptions and examining one's viewpoints, maybe something about how it's not the responsibility of the informed to educate the willfully ignorant? I guess I couldn't hear you over the sound of your hypocrisy.
SHINING FINGER!
---
On that note, here is an article on stupidity that I skimmed exactly long enough to read, "And so we naturally develop a very common error of human perception - we think that everybody's circumstances are the same as ours, they just act differently for some stupid (non)reason! Idiots! .... We're all convinced other people in different circumstances are inherently different and stupid because they're not in our circumstances.
"But we have it backwards. We're wrong. We're stupid. Other people are actually incredibly like us - they just have different circumstances. Being like them is not like being like us - or they'd be more like us! In other words, if you had the same circumstances, you'd act pretty much the same way."
So there's that, too.
Dear social liberals: stop hating on evolutionary psychology!
In a lot of the online communities of which I consider myself at least a peripheral member, I find myself reading posts in which folks, apparently familiar with some of the more egregiously sexist theories spawned by researchers in evolutionary psych, talk about evo psych in general as if being aware of those incorrect theories entitles them to write off our entire field. The fact that I have taken a seminar on scientific controversies of this exact nature does not in any way diminish the usually unspoken rage that BOILS in me whenever I encounter this kind of willful ignorance.
Many fields have idiots among them. No reasonable person (NB: many people are unreasonable) is going to write off feminism as a category because of the monstrously transphobic opinions of Mary Daly or Janice Raymond. Heck, this even works on an individual level: most people I know don't ignore calculus or gravity just because Sir Newton was also an alchemist. The source of an idea is independent from that idea's truth value, and it's self-imposed ignorance if one choses to assume that an entire field of research is invalid simply because patriarchal assholes are in it making claims that shore up patriarchal power structures. Protip: THIS IS TRUE OF MORE THAN ONE GROUP. Denying evo psych's validity en masse is just herd mentality: it's easy to do because the majority of that group (e.g., active D_P_S members) is devoted to keeping that opinion thinkable and shouting down opposition rather than considering that A) people who are wrong are wrong because of something in their background and experience that allowed the incorrect thought to be thinkable, let's take a look at that, and B) not everything in evo psych is wrong just because someone made a foolish claim about sexuality ARGH YOU FUCKERS. The degree of flippancy and blithe, self-righteous dismissiveness is maddening. Oh, yes, the fact that someone stupid likes a claim derived from this field means that you have the right to discount everything labeled as evolutionary psychology. Brilliant!
News flash: we evolved. This MAY have had some effect on our psychology.
Sugar. Humans tend to love sugar. Why? Historically, it was associated with healthy food (e.g., fruit) of the high-nutrient variety necessary to support a large-brained species, leading to our being a species that just loves to chug down some good lo' fashioned corn syrup. Our love of sugar has had huge economic, social and political consequences. Think I'm exaggerating? Maybe you forgot about the sugar cane/rum/human beings trade triangle your seventh grade history teacher should've mentioned. Yes, folks would've found another way to profit from slave labor if we didn't eat sugar; no, it probably wouldn't have had the same fatality rate that cane harvesting did. Just sayin', kind of important.
Maybe you've noticed that human beings respond to light cycles in a remarkable way when they stop watching the clock. Don't believe me? Go to Alaska in spring and forget your watch; before long, you won't be needing eight hours of sleep. Or, try getting a job on the night shift, flooding your house with blue light before bed, or any one of the other things that we're just now beginning to study thanks to the emphasis of people like the folks in evolutionary psychology.
Humans are social creatures. Maybe you've noticed that we get along with each other better than, say, bears or snakes, but not quite so well as, I don't know, coral. Some people hypothesize that our complex social groups were a major factor in the development of our extraordinary intelligence. They might be right. Wouldn't it be nice if that hypothesis were explored by, say, an evolutionary psychologist?
And the reason it pisses me off is that I consider myself to be someone who shares some critical values, near & dear, with, for instance, the average person in a community dedicated to polyamory, all else being equal. I would like to be able to entertain the fiction that people with whom I associate are slightly more intelligent than the observable masses of idiots parading around and running this world. I know that I'm preaching to the choir unless I post this in one of those communities, but I don't want to run a flame war, I just want to vent. So, please, my darling socially liberal non-readers: TAKE YOUR FINGERS OUT OF YOUR FUCKING EARS! Did educators fight to get evolution taught in schools just so that their political descendants could become obscurantists? I thought that y'all wanted social change, as I do. If we're trying to change human behavior, MAYBE, just maybe, we should put some effort into finding out how humans actually work instead of working off of the assumptions we like best. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot: didn't you say something about questioning one's own assumptions and examining one's viewpoints, maybe something about how it's not the responsibility of the informed to educate the willfully ignorant? I guess I couldn't hear you over the sound of your hypocrisy.
SHINING FINGER!
Click to view---
On that note, here is an article on stupidity that I skimmed exactly long enough to read, "And so we naturally develop a very common error of human perception - we think that everybody's circumstances are the same as ours, they just act differently for some stupid (non)reason! Idiots! .... We're all convinced other people in different circumstances are inherently different and stupid because they're not in our circumstances.
"But we have it backwards. We're wrong. We're stupid. Other people are actually incredibly like us - they just have different circumstances. Being like them is not like being like us - or they'd be more like us! In other words, if you had the same circumstances, you'd act pretty much the same way."
So there's that, too.