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Coolie Ghost posted:It just stuns me that these guys have never heard of the Female Choice research during the 80s and 90s on various primate societies. We have multiple documented examples of female chimps leading the alpha males around in random walks until the male is tired, and then leading him to an area where he has an aggressive competitor, and while those two are fighting, skimps off to the bushes to mate with a "lower status" male primate who grooms her more frequently. Do they not know about basic sexual dimorphism in primates? They can't even get their pet theories right! I've only taken rudimentary bio courses to supplement my psych studies and even I know this. I try explaining this and other basic tenets of evo psych to my almost-TRP brother and he just goes "you don't get it man, evolutionary psychology says I'm hosed! I'm hosed!" So if I'm cherry-picking that study correctly, what you're saying is that Nice Guys™ are a phenomenon that's been observed in nature 
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Aug 19, 2015 23:43
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So this talk of how NRxers understand "straight white men" to be low status reminded me of something I read of Moldbugs a while back. It's long and not particularly good but there is one quote that gives a pretty good understanding of neo reactionary ideas of powerI'm not making this up posted:Who was stronger - Dr. King, or Bull Connor? Well, we have a pretty good test for who was stronger. Who won? In the real story, overdogs win. Who had the full force of the world's strongest government on his side? Who had a small-town police force staffed with backward hicks? In the real story, overdogs win. Now, the first thing that you'll notice is that this is loving insane. The second thing you'll notice is that Moldbug doesn't understand history very well. His "the full force of the world's strongest government" is presumably a reference to the use of the National guard to open schools, but that a) a state, not a municipal issue and b) something that didn't happen in Alabama until after Connor lost his job. He also ignores that COINTELPRO was a thing that existed, but really, should a multi year effort by the FBI to spy on and discredit MLK really be used as evidence the federal government didn't fully support him? But what I find really interesting is that Moldbug doesn't appear to understand that King's goal takes substantially less power to achieve than Connor's. It is harder to oppress a group of people than it is to not be oppressed, and the only reason Jim Crow was ever a possibility was the dramatic imbalance of power between whites and blacks in the south. Also, Moldbug ignores the consequences each man faced for his struggle. Connor did lose his job as Public Safety Commissioner, but he was elected President of the Alabama Public Service Commission a year later, and had that job until shortly before he died of a stroke. MLK? I don't think I need to tell you.
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Aug 20, 2015 00:02
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:So if I'm cherry-picking that study correctly, what you're saying is that Nice Guys™ are a phenomenon that's been observed in nature bretty much, except in nature the nice guys finish in the bushes, both parties terrified the alpha will return soon
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Aug 20, 2015 00:30
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DStecks posted:For somebody who doesn't agree with these people you spend an awful lot of time defending them.
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Aug 20, 2015 00:41
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Someone need to start defending Cingulate so we can have a Scott's Scott's Scott
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Aug 20, 2015 01:06
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Someone need to start defending Cingulate so we can have a Scott's Scott's Scott I agree with Patrick Spens that defending someone against misinterpretations isn't the same as agreeing with them.
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Aug 20, 2015 03:28
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Silver2195 posted:I agree with Patrick Spens that defending someone against misinterpretations isn't the same as agreeing with them. Sure, I was just making a joke.
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Aug 20, 2015 03:29
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Someone need to start defending Cingulate so we can have a Scott's Scott's Scott
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Aug 20, 2015 03:41
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Sure, I was just making a joke. You missed that my post was a defense of Cingulate, thus playing into your joke. 
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Aug 20, 2015 03:57
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Silver2195 posted:You missed that my post was a defense of Cingulate, thus playing into your joke. Are we on the fabled meta-level now?
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Aug 20, 2015 03:57
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Someone need to start defending Cingulate so we can have a Scott's Scott's Scott Great Scott!
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Aug 20, 2015 03:58
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 "Deontological libertarian." That's a lot of syllables for being an rear end in a top hat. (Insert post from Cingulate saying that deontological libertarianism is a perfectly reasonable ideology here.)
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Aug 20, 2015 04:35
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Curvature of Earth posted:(Insert post from Cingulate saying that deontological libertarianism is a perfectly reasonable ideology here.)
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Aug 20, 2015 08:20
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Coolie Ghost posted:It just stuns me that these guys have never heard of the Female Choice research during the 80s and 90s on various primate societies. We have multiple documented examples of female chimps leading the alpha males around in random walks until the male is tired, and then leading him to an area where he has an aggressive competitor, and while those two are fighting, skimps off to the bushes to mate with a "lower status" male primate who grooms her more frequently. Do they not know about basic sexual dimorphism in primates? They can't even get their pet theories right! I've only taken rudimentary bio courses to supplement my psych studies and even I know this. I try explaining this and other basic tenets of evo psych to my almost-TRP brother and he just goes "you don't get it man, evolutionary psychology says I'm hosed! I'm hosed!" As someone who mostly hangs out in the humanities, are there any good resources on EvoPsych? The poo poo I've seen in the wild makes me very suspicious of the field, but 1) I almost certainly have biases about EvoPysch that would make me distrustful of it in general and 2) I am almost certainly seeing the shittiest version of EvoPsych.
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Aug 20, 2015 19:16
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I'm kind of late to the party here but I've been reading this thread on and off for a while now and was hoping somebody could explain who this Slate Star Codex guy is and why anyone pays any attention to him?
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Aug 20, 2015 20:23
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Helsing posted:I'm kind of late to the party here but I've been reading this thread on and off for a while now and was hoping somebody could explain who this Slate Star Codex guy is and why anyone pays any attention to him? He spun off of Less Wrong and got his own blog. From what I can tell, most of his early popularity came from people wanting a rationality blogger who wasn't whatever Yudkowsky is. Then he started engaging with the neo-reactionaries, and then that just kind of kept going forever with him moving ever-rightward since then.
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Aug 20, 2015 20:38
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divabot posted:Yeah, that's the gay SF Jew snide disdain crowd. Incidentally, I went back to this post today to try to remember something, and made the eternal blunder of reading the comments. it's a trainwreck that never stops happening.
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Aug 20, 2015 23:11
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Incidentally, I went back to this post today to try to remember something, and made the eternal blunder of reading the comments. I really cannot recommend this highly enough.
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Aug 20, 2015 23:33
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The Vosgian Beast posted:He spun off of Less Wrong and got his own blog. From what I can tell, most of his early popularity came from people wanting a rationality blogger who wasn't whatever Yudkowsky is. He was very popular on LW too, mostly for not being the pompous rear end Yudkowsky is. Here's Scott on LessWrong 2015: In a casual Tumblr aside, Scott posted:The people still on the LW site are not a representative sample of anything. With the exception of a few people like Stuart Armstrong, they’re some kind of pack of unquiet spirits who have moved in to haunt it after it got abandoned by the founding community members. At this point it’s pretty much diaspora all the way down. The Vosgian Beast posted:Then he started engaging with the neo-reactionaries, and then that just kind of kept going forever with him moving ever-rightward since then. But he's posted extensively how he doesn't think that stuff, and has feminist thoughts! He just writes otherwise.
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Aug 21, 2015 07:54
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Reflections85 posted:As someone who mostly hangs out in the humanities, are there any good resources on EvoPsych? The poo poo I've seen in the wild makes me very suspicious of the field, but 1) I almost certainly have biases about EvoPysch that would make me distrustful of it in general and 2) I am almost certainly seeing the shittiest version of EvoPsych. I'm at work now and can't post a direct link, but on Stanford's youtube channel there's a pretty great lecture series on human behavioral biology by Dr. Robert Sapolsky. Aimed at beginner-level students, so very little heavy biochemistry stuff. Or check out one of his books, dude seems to be on top of this poo poo.
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Aug 21, 2015 09:16
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Reflections85 posted:As someone who mostly hangs out in the humanities, are there any good resources on EvoPsych? The poo poo I've seen in the wild makes me very suspicious of the field, but 1) I almost certainly have biases about EvoPysch that would make me distrustful of it in general and 2) I am almost certainly seeing the shittiest version of EvoPsych. FWIW, here's a developmental biologist (PZ Myers, huge SJW btw) going on about how crappy the field is as science. (Here's a whole series of posts as a scientist on the bad science going on. Note argument with Jerry Coyne, another developmental biologist who (literally) wrote the textbook on speciation, so check the linked Coyne posts too.)
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Aug 21, 2015 11:02
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divabot posted:FWIW, here's a developmental biologist (PZ Myers, huge SJW btw) going on about how crappy the field is as science. (Here's a whole series of posts as a scientist on the bad science going on. Note argument with Jerry Coyne, another developmental biologist who (literally) wrote the textbook on speciation, so check the linked Coyne posts too.) Now, keep in mind, it has its place. The ant biologist who founded the field had some good insights. It just quickly flooded with ad hoc hypotheses that oversimplified human thought.
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Aug 21, 2015 12:19
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I'd love to be a contrarian here and defend evolutionary psychology, but it's really mostly pretty bad. For some reason, it's attracting "race realists", sexists etc., and everyone doing research on the same questions who's not one of these doesn't work under the label. I don't think it can be easily condemned based on such observations, you still need to engage with the actual issues. But very often, that's not too hard. Steven Pinker is a strange exception in that everyone loves the guy and he's pretty much a typical evolutionary psychologist nowadays. (I dislike most of his stuff.)
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Aug 21, 2015 12:24
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I'm so glad PZ Myers exists because otherwise I'm not sure there's any publicly outspoken atheists who aren't shrieking racist, sexist assholes.
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Aug 21, 2015 12:30
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Cingulate posted:I'd love to be a contrarian here and defend evolutionary psychology, but it's really mostly pretty bad. For some reason, it's attracting "race realists", sexists etc., and everyone doing research on the same questions who's not one of these doesn't work under the label. At an abstract (or possibly....META??  ) level there idea that human psychology is influenced by evolution has obvious merit. Unfortunately I think the amount of baggage society has with appeals to nature fucks things up and gives cover for racism and sexism to pass as science. Way too much seems to be guys attempting to justify why their preference in women or their stereotypical beliefs on race are actually not just cultural. The biggest thing is just-so theorizing about some mythologized ancestor, with no direct evidence linking any supposedly observed pattern (in a group of us college students) to any sort of documented difference in genetics. Or equating gender differences to some made up bullshit analogy to wolf packs instead of even at least apes or something. Political Whores has a new favorite as of 12:52 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 12:47
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divabot posted:http://therightstuff.biz - a white nationalist group blog with a bit of neoreactionary jargon and a STUPENDOUS number of comments per post. The furthest alt-right you could go and still be in neoreaction. See also The Right Drama and The Right Vidya, or better still don't. Gooooold quote:But with all of that emotional nonsense out of the way, let's get to why this is a good-ish thing. Being the autiste that I am, I borrowed a quote from Warhammer 40k to title this article. More specifically, it's from the last words of Konrad Curze, before being struck down by an assassin sent by his father the Emperor of Mankind. Curze, a traitor to his father, accepted his death because it proved that his own brutal draconian methods of punishment were good enough for the Emperor to embrace. By striking down /r/Coontown, reddit has finally cast aside it's classical liberalism in favor of a more fascist-oriented system. A selection of headlines: To Work Toward Racial Justice We Need Jewish Wounding THE DAILY SHOAH! SEASON TWO Cuckservative Insider Episode 1 Immigration Reform for Normies Christians Must Learn To Hate Again
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Aug 21, 2015 13:11
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Evolutionary Psychology has its use, it's just that people want to use it for anything and everything because it lets you make just-so stories into science. Like, obviously "women like red because red berries" is ludicrous horseshit, but "Stockholm Syndrome is a misfiring of instincts related to social formation" seems legit. It's always a huge red flag if somebody is trying to insist that there's an evolutionary basis for a psychological phenomenon that is culture-specific, i.e. anything at all about gender roles.
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Aug 21, 2015 13:40
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DStecks posted:"[almost anything we ever do, ever] is a misfiring of instincts related to social formation"  DStecks posted:It's always a huge red flag if somebody is trying to insist that there's an evolutionary basis for a psychological phenomenon that is culture-specific, i.e. anything at all about gender roles. I think one New Atheist talking point is actually a pretty good metaphor here. We're all atheists with regards to Zeus, right? Not all religions can't be right because they're contradictory of each other all the time, so everyone, even every believer, is much more of an atheist than a believer. And the same works with gender roles; most gender roles we do not believe in.
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Aug 21, 2015 14:43
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Political Whores posted:At an abstract (or possibly....META?? I wrote this several years ago. Everything up to the last two paras is real free-newspaper "science" (and now I wish I'd put together a full cite list). Political Whores posted:Or equating gender differences to some made up bullshit analogy to wolf packs instead of even at least apes or something. This useful article should be applied whenever anyone on the internet talks about alphas, betas etc. and especially when they claim it's SCIENCE.
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Aug 21, 2015 14:45
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grate deceiver posted:I'm at work now and can't post a direct link, but on Stanford's youtube channel there's a pretty great lecture series on human behavioral biology by Dr. Robert Sapolsky. Aimed at beginner-level students, so very little heavy biochemistry stuff. Or check out one of his books, dude seems to be on top of this poo poo. Someone once gave me a copy of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis from Harvard University Press by Dr. Edward O. Wilson, is this real science and not  because I'm extremely suspicious of evolutionary psychology.
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Aug 21, 2015 17:34
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Of all the evo-psych hypotheses lovely evo-psych researchers have put together based on studies done on WEIRD samples, usually their own students, basically none replicate. A good article.Woolie Wool posted:Someone once gave me a copy of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis from Harvard University Press by Dr. Edward O. Wilson, is this real science and not Not only is Sociobiology complete bullshit, that's also a pretty old book, and E. O. Wilson has been pursuing his hereditist agenda for a long time, or at least most strongly in the 80s, when bullshiting about the false dichotomy of nature - nurture was acceptable (still is, see Pinker, J. R. Harris, and other assorted heredist morons.) Merdifex has a new favorite as of 17:41 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 17:36
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Woolie Wool posted:Someone once gave me a copy of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis from Harvard University Press by Dr. Edward O. Wilson, is this real science and not The latter.
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Aug 21, 2015 17:38
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Merdifex posted:Of all the evo-psych hypotheses lovely evo-psych researchers have put together based on studies done on WEIRD samples, usually their own students, basically none replicate. The stuff from psychology that's really stable and replicates really well is almost all about how people are a lot less rational than they think they are. Yud occasionally references Kahneman; that's a good example of a good reference, because that's really good science.
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Aug 21, 2015 17:46
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Woolie Wool posted:Someone once gave me a copy of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis from Harvard University Press by Dr. Edward O. Wilson, is this real science and not A brilliant book length teardown of WIlson and Sociobiology was done way back in 1978 by Mary Midgley in Beast and Man, which I'd recommend to anyone interested in the topic.
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Aug 21, 2015 19:32
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Stephen Jay Gould has been dead 15 years, but he was smart about dumb poo poo since the Bell Curve days. Evopsych used to be called sociobiology until some rape apologists poisoned the term with an awful book explaining how rape is a reproductive strategy for men who can't get laid and thus an inescapable feature of human society so sorry ladies get used to it. I fully expect "human biodiversity" to replace evopsych as the umbrella term for this nonsense in like 5-10 years.
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Aug 21, 2015 19:40
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whats LessWrong? Sounds like something some smarmy rear end in a top hat came up with trying to copy 1984 Newspeak
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Aug 21, 2015 19:43
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Race Realists posted:whats LessWrong? Sounds like something some smarmy rear end in a top hat came up with trying to copy 1984 Newspeak I feel I covered this pretty well in the OP of the now-locked old mock thread http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3627012
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Aug 21, 2015 20:03
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Merdifex posted:Not only is Sociobiology complete bullshit, that's also a pretty old book, and E. O. Wilson has been pursuing his hereditist agenda for a long time, or at least most strongly in the 80s, when bullshiting about the false dichotomy of nature - nurture was acceptable (still is, see Pinker, J. R. Harris, and other assorted heredist morons.) These articles argue something rather less dramatic than what you're trying to prove.
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Aug 21, 2015 20:05
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grate deceiver posted:I'm at work now and can't post a direct link, but on Stanford's youtube channel there's a pretty great lecture series on human behavioral biology by Dr. Robert Sapolsky. Aimed at beginner-level students, so very little heavy biochemistry stuff. Or check out one of his books, dude seems to be on top of this poo poo. I recommend sapolsky's lectures. He may make a few glaring flaws (how he rails against behaviorism) but he helps to make many connections between constructs at the biological, evolutionary, and psychological levels.
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Aug 21, 2015 20:46
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Silver2195 posted:These articles argue something rather less dramatic than what you're trying to prove. And what am I trying to prove? Sociobiological theories have never been proven, that's self-evident when you pore over the mainstream literature. A fixed human nature as postulated by the sociobiologists, and evo-psych has never been proven to exist. If anything, human nature is adaptable, and adaptability is adaptive. Merdifex has a new favorite as of 21:00 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 20:54
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