'Is Evolutionary Psychology Possible?' -- It’s not often that a paper attempts to take down an entire field

'Is Evolutionary Psychology Possible?' -- It’s not often that a paper attempts to take down an entire field (https://www.metafilter.com/187021/Its-not-often-that-a-paper-attempts-to-take-down-an-entire-field)

posted on May 13, 2020 11:56 PM by u/AlexCoventry

u/SailOfIgnorance 25 points at 1589430771.000000

Related meme:

if anyone questions ur hypothesis, respond by saying
“evolution didnt stop at the neck”
this is an instant kill shot.

https://twitter.com/evopsychgoogle/status/1202371820516593664?s=20

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u/beth-zerowidthspace 25 points at 1589439278.000000

rationalists: intelligence is a super power that gives you advantage in literally everything in life also rationalists: brown people didn't get naturally selected for smarts

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u/Atupis 10 points at 1589440216.000000

and then you hit them with this paper [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797611421206](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797611421206)

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u/pra1974 3 points at 1589466064.000000

Killshot!

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u/pra1974 3 points at 1589466154.000000

I hope that’s not too low-effort. My IQ is in the 93.4573324th percentile so I think it’s high-quality by default.

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 5 points at 1589455195.000000

Nah they dig that shit, all the way back to Hanson and Yud

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u/veronicastraszh 7 points at 1589476154.000000

Yeah, they just flip the logic: "Since I'm obviously smart, I'm obviously not racist."

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u/Snugglerific 12 points at 1589465865.000000

Buller (2005) addresses this problem by distinguishing “evolutionary psychology” from “Evolutionary Psychology.

”The former is a field of inquiry, a loose confederation of research programs that vary widely in theoretical and methodological commitments and that are feder-ated only by a commitment to ‘‘adopting an evolution-ary perspective on human behavior and psychology’’ (Barrett et al. 2002, p. 1). The latter, Evolutionary Psychology, is a specific doctrinaire research pro-gram within this field of inquiry, a central doctrine of which is the so-called massive modularity hypothesis (MMH). (Buller 2005, p. 881)

This is the main problem I have with this article. Its points against capital-EP are fine, but I prefer Bolhuis et al’s critique Darwin in Mind because it lays out potential ways forward moving on from capital-EP.

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u/metachor 11 points at 1589422730.000000

Now do memetics!

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u/finfinfin 20 points at 1589434650.000000

Ahem: *baby shark doo doo doo doo doo doo*

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u/DELETED 5 points at 1589464396.000000

Whoa, slow down there, Satan.

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u/Soyweiser 6 points at 1589437685.000000

Define memetics and meme.

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u/Snugglerific 6 points at 1589465903.000000

In their own journal no less: http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/2005/vol9/edmonds_b.html

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u/Soyweiser 11 points at 1589433541.000000

Ow this is great. Gonna save this for the next time a debatebro drops several thousand words at me after i say evo psych isnt that great in a joking way.

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