There are some psychological behaviors for which there are known genetic components, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneti...ocial_behavior. But even the known function of genes hardly tells the whole story, as different expression levels can result in wildly different outcomes. Furthermore, environmental factors can have a profound impact on gene expression levels. Thus, it's very likely incorrect to assert that we have the same brains as primitive humans, as even if we were genetically identical at the relevant loci to primitive humans, the differing stresses and environments we faced would almost certainly result in differential expressions of those genes, resulting in substantially different brain wirings. At that point, trying to distinguish what was "learned" vs. what was "innate" gets very fuzzy.

I'm not logged into the site, and I'm at home and not some library or academic institution. Maybe try from the search link?

https://www.bing.com/search?pc=COSP&...ken%20language

Or pdf link?

https://science.sciencemag.org/conte...61/50.full.pdf

We know humans are sexually dimorphic now. And we knew they were sexually dimorphic 100,000 years ago in the same way. We know this dimorphism is due in large part to gene expression and hormone regulation.

We knows gene expression and hormone regulation affects brain development and behavior in the natural world, and in humans today. From experiments on model organisms we know behavior evolves, and we can even map how this happens mechanistically at the genetic/phenotpyic level.

There is A LOT more, but you get the point. Generally, all the direct and circumstantial evidence indicates human behavior, including sexual dimorphic behavior, was evolved and has a significant genetic component.

Theoretical evolutionary psychology is about taking the evidence we have, and making predictions from it. If that isn't scientific enough for you, or you think the field is too corrupted by the biases of the people in the field today, then so be it.

However, it is MUCH more scientific than your "we don't know, therefor it is likely all human behavior is learned" blank slate premise. There is absolutely nothing scientific about your viewpoint that I can see. It seems to come from a purely emotional and ideological viewpoint. I am not aware of a single credible scientific experiment, paper, etc. that supports this premise.

Edit: As an aside, my favorite IDW podcaster (who actually coined the phrase) Eric Weinstein makes the same complaints about string theory that you made. He argues an entire generation of physics progress has been lost by string theorists hijacking the field and corrupting it with their failed ideas.

But I surmise there is very little else you and Eric Weinstein would see eye to eye on.

It wouldn't let me get the PDF without login either, but here it is.

Hahahahahahhaha, no he didn't coin the phrase. The incredible hubris to try and pass that whopper off on me when I supplied the example. The guy who coined it, Pauli, was dead before Weinstein was even born.

Yes, just like I've been explaining to you.
And of course, then you take a massive leap beyond what the evidence shows.

What is a testable prediction of evolutionary psychology? A "prediction" that cannot be tested is not a prediction at all.


Another strawman. Dude, I just explained things to you.

I meant he coined the phrase IDW. I am guessing you interpreted my statement as arguing Weinstein coined the phrase String Theory? However awkwardly I phrased it, the fact that you apparently actually believed a 55 year old investment banker would argue he coined the phrase String Theory, and I am parroting that statement, indicates that your own cognitive abilities are clouded by your emotions.

I think this highlights a challenge in having a conversation with you. You have such a high amount of disgust and contempt for people that you perceive as being ideologically "unclean", that there is no straw man you wouldn't believe or enthusiasitcaly propagate.

The phrase that Pauli coined was "not even wrong," I think?

Yes. If Kelhus was referring to "Intellectual Dark Web," well, ok, I'm not sure why I should give a **** that Weinstein coined a name for that cadre of sophists. It would actually make sense to note the coinage if he thought Weinstein coined "not even wrong" in his likeminded criticism of string theory. Noting how Weinstein coined "Intellectual Dark Web" is so completely irrelevant to the rest of the post that it never crossed my mind that would be what he was referring to.

Eric Weinstein has a PhD from Harvard in Mathematics (I think), is an investment banker, and hosts 2 hour podcasts with actual physicists on the topic of physics. But in Wookie's world he is a charlatan who Wookie legitimately believes would actually argue he coined the phrase String Theory.

In another conversation a few months a biologist from UC Irvine who is cited on over 100 peer reviewed academic papers is just handwaived away and dismissed as a hack by Wookie, and I imagine Wookie actually believes this.

The emotional baggage and ideological conviction you bring to these conversations makes them extremely challenging. I realize I have some of the same baggage, but I at least am self aware and do sometimes make attempts to look past it. But your emotional disgust is so off the charts it makes conversations with you challenging to say the least.

I read the first page of your EW thread. The theory he was pushing about ideas being suppressed was utter bullshit, for exactly the reasons explained to you. He may well have a PhD and be very smart. That doesn't preclude him from being a charlatan.

You don't have the awareness to even retract your strawman about me being a blank slater or the humility to see that you're explaining the same concepts to someone who just explained them to you in greater detail.

I originally prefaced my statement as saying it was "your version of blank slatism" although I subsequently dropped the "your version" part of it.

I don't think it is a straw man to remark that someone who made the below statement (you) has their own particular version of a blank slate viewpoint.

"As such, there's little reason to believe that the behaviors in question are a consequence of selective pressures long ago rather than having just been conventionally learned."

Yawn. Do you deny the existence of learned behaviors? I don't think so, and as such, a claim that a particular behavior is the result of evolution in antiquity and not learning is a bold one that deserves scientific proof by experiment and demonstration of an evolutionary mechanism, rather than pontificating right out of your ass to justify your prior assumptions. Such work is possible, as cited above, and so if a particular behavior cannot be attributed in such a manner, then it should be treated with great skepticism that the behavior is not, in fact, learned, even if you can fabricate a "just so story" that aligns your assumptions about how the world works now with your imaginations about behaviors in antiquity.

We will have to agree to disagree

Given our understanding of the natural world (which humans are a part of), behavior and evolution, I think that assuming all human behavior is learned as being the default position that must be accepted unless definitively proven otherwise (where you would set the bar for this being so high it is impossible) to be a very unscientific position.

And on this matter, I surmise the vast majority of the scientific community is on my side. Although of course you are welcome to present evidence otherwise. As far as I see it, you are the climate change denier equivalent in this discussion.

If you want to make a social justice focused argument that assuming all behavior is learned is the morally ethical position, regardless of the science, that is fine. But that is completely different.

We don't have to struggle to understand learned behavior. People learn all kinds of behavior, playing musical instruments, brain surgery, touch typing, how to yoyo, basketball, sous vide cooking, etc. that never existed in antiquity. It is hardly a bold claim that I learned to brush my teeth rather than it being a reflection of the genetics of my fitter, surviving ancestors.

The notion that the entire scientific community buys into a theory for which you cannot point to a single testable hypothesis is incredibly weak trolling.

Again, maybe it is my own lack of imagination In devising an ethical or plausible experiment. But I do postulate that is we ran “lord of the fly” experiments on humans there would be a consistent range of non learned behavior that isolated populations/individuals would independently exhibit without learning with high fidelity, including the most obvious one of figuring out how to mate.

Are you actually willing to go so far as to suggest that you don’t think humans would figure out how to mate without learning?

I certainly wasn't at my best on my first go round, and that's a pretty common human experience. But I got better with practice. Must be innate? But putting that aside, your larger error seems to be taking something that is innate, like sex drive, and generalizing that to something much more complex, like visual preferences in a potential partner, which appear to have a mix of innate and learned things (e.g., beauty standards have some commonalities that manifest even in infants but also many differences, and they vary between populations and even temporally within the same one on a timescale much faster than human evolution), and then onto a behavior that's hopelessly complex and containing numerous aspects that are obviously learned, like division of labor within a marriage, and pointing back to the sliver that's innate and concluding the whole pie is.

Your experiment is also very poorly controlled, as you'd be selecting to adaptation to a hunter-gather environment. In such an environment, it would be difficult to tease apart which behaviors were innate vs. which were simply optimal for that environment and learned. That certain hunter-gatherers do things similarly is not quite as interesting as you think it would be, because it does not necessarily generalize outside of hunter-gatherers as well as you think it does, at least not outside of much stronger biochemical, morphological and/or genetic evidence that as yet is nonexistent.

Ok, so it seems we have some common ground in agreeing that sex drive in humans (like every other sexual reproducing animal) is innate, and most humans will figure out the mechanics (eventually) without having to be taught.

To take another edge case, do you believe there is such a thing as maternal "instinct," or that infant care is all learned behavior?

As far as the "Lord of the Flies" experiment, yes you would probably want to have a lot of different environments/conditions to try to tease out how dependent on environment behavior is. But again, I guess I just lack the imagination to work out how to practically and ethically go about performing such an experiment on humans.

Even doing a bunch of different environments is not a controlled experiment, as it could easily let you cherrypick commonalities amidst an unlimited number of variables, some of which are bound to be found across a relatively limited number of populations. Again, the idea is not to design an experiment that would let you confirm your hypothesis. It is to design an experiment so airtight that you would abandon your own hypothesis immediately if it goes the other way.

Oxytocin, the hormone behind a lot of bonding feelings, is present in men and has the same effect. You are assuming your conclusion in the way that you ask the question.