I believe kelhus is victim of evolutionary mechanisms that protected his ego by making that abstract sound like mumble jumble.

There isn't a single aspect of your own sociological worldview that has been scientifically validated or explored, and that doesn't appear to affect your belief structure. I don't recall any rigorous scientific experiments that proved white privilege is a real thing, and yet it is clearly you feel very strong it is nonetheless.

I am not making any argument "evolutionary biology" is a scientific discipline that can be experimentally validated. It is a model to explain the anthropologic world (past, present and future) and IMO it does a hell of a lot better job of mapping reality than the models you subscribe to.

Evolutionary psychology arguments model and explain why xenophobia seems so preserved across space and time, and why the xenophobia going on in China, Japan and Saudi Arabia right now isn't much different than what is going on in the United States. And moving forward such models may highlight the universal challenges in developing non xenophobic societies, and maybe provide insights into solutions.

White privilege has no explanatory power at all except in an extremely narrow and arbitrary place and time, and frankly doesn't model reality very good at all IMO. It certainly doesn't seem a very valid explanation for all the videos of non-white people beating up Asians in NYC the last couple of months.

I'm generally more skeptical than kelhus about evolutionary psychology, and maybe you're drawing a distinction between xenophobia and out-group bias (which seems reasonable enough), but fwiw I believe there is evidence that the tendency towards in-group/out-group biases has at least some roots in biology. For example in Becoming Human the authors present some evidence of those biases in human infants at like 12 months old. This is not to say that xenophobia does not also (and very importantly) involve a lot of enculturated behavior, because it clearly does.

But, that said, like you my biggest complaint about ev psych explanations is also that they do too often seem to lack much empirical support, and instead function as just-so stories that mostly act to rationalize pre-existing beliefs. So I would also criticize the "xenophobia as selected for as a way to minimize disease" risk as such a story. Even though it does seem likely enough that there is some evolutionary path involved.

They may also have some predictive power. I mean, I have been arguing for years that a big part of seemingly universal xenophobia (out-group bias) is probably an evolutionary adaptation against disease spread, and current events don't exactly invalidate that argument.

Quite frankly, your ability to describe contorted ways in which evidence supports your hypothesis is uninteresting. How would you falsify this hypothesis?

I'm unfamiliar with the book, but sure, I would not be the least bit surprised if very young infants show some biases for things like looking at mom and dad, and looking at people who look more like mom and dad. I also wouldn't be surprised if that could be demonstrated in e.g. chimps and not in e.g. fish, suggesting that it is an evolved preference. There is a chasm between those sorts of biases and how xenophobia manifests in society, however, and writing off xenophobia as an innate evolutionary adaptation because babies look at mom more is absurd.

I'm not nearly as willing to grant the likelihood of some evolutionary pathway, but the rest I agree with.

I guess we are just different that way. I find myself extremely fascinated with people that view the world differently than I do. Probably why if given our respective choices, I would prefer to discuss/argue with people and you would prefer to ban and silence them.

Obviously we don't have a time machine to go back rigorously test models of evolutionary psychology. We just test as best we can with the tools at our disposal.

I mean, at the end of the day the fact the phrase has the term "psychology" in it at all indicates there are some limitations, as psychology itself is more descriptive than mechanistic (although I find research of work trying to bridge the gap very interesting).

Wookie, do you even believe in evolutionary biology?

I actually dont know how one could reconcile believing in evolutionary biology and not being able to entertain the idea that humans may have hardwired behavioral tendencies that were selected for at some point in the past.

I think one of the most fascinating things about human societies is not how different we are, but how alike we are. And I don't really have any other way to reconcile this. There is such a large possible universe for behavior, and yet we have all followed the same basic beats for most of space and time.

I still heartily recommend everything Clifford Geertz ever wrote

To accept a hypothesis that is not merely untested but that one you cannot conceive of a way to falsify is to admit openly and for all to see that you are not just rigidly beholden to your chosen ideology, but that you are immutably so. Why do you expect anyone here to take you seriously on evolutionary psychology when to you it is not a science? To you, it is a religion.

Psychology is a discipline with a lot of bad science in it (so is biology, even molecular biology!), but it is not impossible to falsify psychological hypotheses. There has been plenty of good, sound work in the field as well. If you can't think of an experiment that would falsify what you think you know that doesn't involve time machines, the correct response is to be a whole lot more humble about what you think you know rather than to forge ahead and evangelize your gut feels as gospel.

Evolutionary biology is a thing born out of falsifiable hypotheses. Evolutionary psychology is not, as you lay bare.

What if I believe that humans have evolved above and beyond hardwired behavioral tendencies? What if I believe humans have some base tendencies, but also they've evolved hypersocial tendencies that are not innate but that are rigidly enforced in a manner that spans generations? What if I don't hitch my wagon to either of those two hypotheses or to yours because they have not been rigorously tested?

Your musings on the similarities and differences of human societies are completely uninteresting as they pertain to any semblance of the science of evolutionary psychology. If one were to put forth social groups with differences compared to ours, you get to elect to either contort your interpretation such that the differences are somehow actually similarities, or choose that instead the differences are such but are nevertheless still proof that your hypothesis is still true. As you are unwilling to put forth objective standards by which you would be force to reject your current hypothesis, it is not a science, it is not a worthwhile subject of debate, and no one should bother to engage you in a debate on the subject except to point out how your pseudoscience is nothing but giving your gut feelings a veneer of respectability.

Human psychology is so dependent on environment (including knowledge/therapy/trauma), and is not as resilient to trauma as you would expect, to the point it's hard to imagine how it's evolved.

I could make these exact same observations about most of your beliefs. They certainly smack way more of religious orthodoxy and revealed truth. At least I am trying to understand the world. You are not even trying to do that IMO.
You just decide how the world is based on your orthodoxy, and shut out everything that doesn't comform. I mean, this is a basic beat of most of our "conversations":

Wookie: White privilege is clearly why we have racism and inequality in the United States.

Kelhus100: But there are a lot of places that have similar racism and inequality, including places where there are no white people. Maybe there is some deeper reason.

Wookie: No. Its white privilege. The problem is just white people. They are racist and so are you. Your feelings don't interest me.

--That isn't exactly what I would call having a humble, open mind.

You seem to have a fairly strong belief in general progressive orthodoxy, despite the fact it hasn't been rigorously tested. So it doesn't appear to be that big of a roadblock for you.

one might suspect that human psychology being unable to cope with a wide range of environments would have been fairly unfit.

When considering evolutionary aspects of human psychology it might be better to look for what isn't there rather than what is. Difficult of course because we're evolve to look more for what is there.

I mean the fact that in the year 2020 virtually every human in the world who has a choice engages in deliberate procreation, despite no "rational" reason for doing so beyond the rationality of evolutionary biology, lays pretty strong testament to the universal perseverance of our hardwiring.

Good luck explaining that one using a framework of blank slate progressive orthodoxy.

The sexual selection part of evolution is premised on psychological behaviour. The onus is far more on proving it's a trait that has died out in **** sapien than on demonstrating it still exists.

Well, you've managed to get my understanding of the interplay between white privilege, racism, and inequality all wrong, and then baselessly accused me of having an unfalsifiable belief in the the thing that I don't believe. Congratulations.

You, uh, think there's no possible selection for people wanting to procreate other than your unfalsifiable belief in the idea that tons of human behavioral patterns are rigidly rooted in a natural selection process that you don't know happened for behaviors you don't know were common? Geez man, get a hold of yourself.

Tap dancing Jesus, to think this is some sort of gotcha. Politics isn't strictly a science, and I don't pretend it is. Some things can be treated in a quasi-scientific fashion (granting that negative controls are often difficult), such as competing policy hypotheses on how to generate better outcomes on things like health care. On questions like that, my policy preferences can most definitely be falsified: show me a better system with better outcomes, and I'll show you my new policy preference. But a lot of politics is expressions of values, which are usually axiomatic and not themselves falsifiable. Many debates are about how certain things, be they policy proposals, candidates, etc. fit within expressed values, which is an exercise with much more in common with theology than with biology.

Pretty much the only system of values that can purport to be grounded in empiricism is nihilism. The rest generally rest on unfalsifiable axioms, whether it's the value of human life, the goodness of happiness, etc. And that's a good thing, in my opinion! What I'm taking you to task for, and which the article takes the field of evolutionary psychology to task for, is that you purport evolutionary psychology to be a science, when certainly your manifestation of it is most definitely not a science. It's a mythology: some early humans you imagine did some things, and therefore liberals' obsession with gender equality is actually a perversion of human nature (as you imagine it). There is not a shred of empiricism in your frequent musings, and even if a more skilled, deeper thinker were to try to do evolutionary psychology in an empirical, hypothesis-driven, falsifiable manner, he or she will run into the matching problem outlined in the article.

FWIW I view evolutionary psychology as a social science, not a hard science. I don't recall ever making any grand claims otherwise. That being said I do think it draws on falsifiable scientific concepts (such as Darwinian evolution) and models the world better than other ideas, and even has predictive power.

The author of the article didn't use the word science once in their entire abstract, so if their argument was that evolutionary psychology isn't a hard science they sure went about it in a roundabout way. The title of the article is "Is Evolutionary Psychology Possible" and my opinion is "Yes, and given how well it draws on scientific concepts to map reality it is certainly much more possible than intersectionality or critical theory or other frameworks that are the foundation of progressive ideology"

I find the whole idea, "You can't prove evolutionary psychology, therefor it has no value" argument a little insincere, when most of the people making said arguments have metaphysical worldviews/beliefs which are grounded much less in physical reality, and have no problem with this inconsistency.

Haven't been following this thread closely but from my experience the people who are critical of EP lean towards blank slate theories as explanations. Which of course get falsified all the time. Actually some people participating ITT have embarrassed themselves thoroughly and had their blank slate leaning theories falsified by the kinds of research someone in EP does.

Lots of good research has consilience and could also be falsified by looking at things like neuro science & imaging, biology, evolution, endocrinology, etc

I think this might help

The issue is that sociobiology/behavioral ecology is a legitimate science. It's just the evolutionary extension of those fields that is problematic as human behavior is too complex to be captured with that sort of thinking. Suicide, for example, is an issue that evolutionary psychologists struggle to explain.
Ultimately with humans, things that apply to groups do not necessarily apply to individuals within that group. And while this concept isn't that hard, it's impossible to handle in a forum like this which is why all nature/nurture discussions eventually get locked/banned.

It doesn't seem any more problematic than any other framework which tries to explain human behavior at the group/individual level. In fact, it seems less problematic IMO. All else being equal, from what we do think we understand about biology it seems a lot more reasonable to assume human psychology is limited in part by its natural history and hardware, than it has overcome it and humans have a completely self-moving soul; and the data we do have seems to support this also.

I mean going back to the astronomy example, most of what we understand about the history of the universe is based on models, with similar limitations, and I don't see anyone getting praise for arguing "Is astronomy possible?" and deciding no because of it.

Your personal failings with respect to evolutionary psychology are in addition to the things outlined in the article, not identical. You're the one who admitted you can't think of a way to falsify your own beliefs. Other evolutionary psychologists may be both more creative and critical of their own understandings to think of ways they could. However, they run into the matching problem outlined in the article.

Another blatant misstatement of what I've said. You're really bad at this.

When you get to just ascribe theories to your opponents and then debunk those theories, you can win the argument you imagined you had, sure.