/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.12777502]

Why is evolutionary psychology so controversial?

[Anonymous No.12777568]

It seems pretty dumb when you think about it. most of the explanations for stuff while they seem plausible on a surface level, when you really think about it, there isn't enough selection pressure to influence literally every action that we do like armchair evolutionary psychologists say we do.
>why did I just lightly scratch my ribcage?
>real answer: because it itched
>evolutionary pysch answer: because long ago you needed to remind the members of your tribe that there was an important organ there, the members of your group upon seeing that action would also scratch their rib lightly to make sure their precious organs were in good condition

[Anonymous No.12777577]

>>12777502
Isn't the way the brain went through evolution unknown?

[Anonymous No.12777591]

>>12777502
Racist

[Anonymous No.12777611]

Many of the claims are unverifiable.

[Anonymous No.12777612]

>>12777568
Why can't the "real answer" and "evolutionary psych answer" both be correct? You really cannot comprehend from your modern perspective the selective pressures your ancestors went through, like not at all. The fact that we're even finding out even stuff like political affiliation is genetically influenced, and populations have clear markers for positive selection of certain political affiliations, should tell you that there's more than enough selective pressure there to do most anything. In fact, for some traits, such as intelligence, we've undergone positive selection far too rapidly, causing women to have birth complications from our heads.

[Anonymous No.12777678]

>>12777568
>there isn't enough selection pressure to influence literally every action

There is. When you consider the sheer amount of generations that came before us, stretching back about 100 million years, the amount of selection that has taken place makes it more plausible that almost any behaviour has an evolutionary origin than that there are behaviours that don't.

[Anonymous No.12777701]

>>12777502

Because its literally working backwards to make an answer so anyone can bullshit anything and make it plausible.

[Anonymous No.12777723]

>>12777678
Selective pressures change over time.

[Anonymous No.12777764]

>>12777723
Yes but that doesn't mean that traits that evolved, say, 50 million years, or 10 million years ago, or 2 million years ago, or 100,000 years ago can persist. Almost any behaviour could have some explicable evolutionary origin.

[Anonymous No.12777881]

It triggers the fuck out of political extremist sub humans like /pol/ and sjws, who are the loudest and dumbest attention whores on the internet. it’s not very controversial at all among smart people, or even just average people.

[Anonymous No.12777913]

>>12777764
This claim then seems to reduce to tautology. Sure, all effects are predicated on causes, but the degree to which we can meaningfully and verifiably attribute behaviors to evolutionary conditions is limited.

[Anonymous No.12778097]

>>12777568
>there isn't enough selection pressure to influence literally every action
not every action but enough of them.

[Anonymous No.12778102]

>>12777913
that is the limitation in verification, but it's like with the explanation of macro-evolution. it is logically deduced from accumulated micro.

[Anonymous No.12778105]

>>12777577
no certain things are traced back to specific events. like the forebrain evolving in mice during dino years.

[Anonymous No.12778119]

>>12777502
the problem with that pic is it starts from humans when a lot of our traits evolved in the many species before that and persisted.

[Anonymous No.12778130]

>>12777502
because it's horseshit and is trying to make psych more legitimate

[Anonymous No.12778426]

>>12777701
This

[Anonymous No.12778671]

People really hate the fact that everything and anything we do extends from our desire to reproduce. We're the same as microorganisms multiplying in a Petri dish.

[Anonymous No.12778729]

>>12777502
It doesn't make a strong enough correlation between the proximate and ultimate reasoning for a lot of it's claims.
Many claims are fine but a lot of them are bunk.

[Anonymous No.12778735]

>>12777881
/pol/ loves evolutionary psychology. What are you talking about?

[Anonymous No.12778739]

>>12777701
Oh yeah, as if the rest of psychology isn't doing the exact same thing.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_theory_(sociology)
Evolutionary psychology is an attempt to annihilate the overabundance of absolute pseudoscientific theory constructs in sociology and psychology so it at least has some integration into the quantitative world. At least with evolutionary psychology you can make testable predictions, and not just attempt to fit some nonsense woke-friendly framework around observations when they don't adhere to political correctness.

Strain theory is working from the top down, evolutionary psychology is working from the ground up. You tell me which is better.

[Anonymous No.12778742]

>>12778671
this

[Anonymous No.12778846]

fag

[Anonymous No.12779173]

>>12777502
>Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly.

[Anonymous No.12779176]

>>12778846

[Anonymous No.12779183]

>>12777502
people can't handle the truth. and because they descend from potato nigger slaves they will gladly be subservient to ZOG

[Anonymous No.12779253]

>>12777568
You clearly don't know anything about evolutionary psychology if you think the proponents of it believe that every action has a selection pressure tied to it, that's retarded and no evolutionary psychologist believes that

[Anonymous No.12779318]

>>12778671
*extends from desired that arose chaotically and increased or did not sufficiently harm inclusive genetic fitness
Ftfy