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0 pointshliyan10y ago0 comments

There's no need for condescension (especially on HN). I presented that as an opinion rather than a scientific assertion. In terms of practicality, it is no more valid or invalid than most of the other theories/models of the human mind we entertain. But yes, I share your disdain for evolutionary psychology theories not backed up by data (I suspect these are what you call "cheap").

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mjburgess10y ago· 2 in thread

It wasn't condescension. Every word was accurate, intended, and addressed widely with the intention of it being understood by equally competent people. My concision was a reaction to its banality.

The problem with evo-psych just-so stories is that they do not discriminate between possible worlds: ie. if men of place A were all angry then the just-so-ers of place A would come up with a story about why men are "evolutionaryily angry". And if men were mellow in place B, we'd get some other story about how men are evolutionarily mellow.

Narratives of this kind are not good explanations of anything. And I suspect mostly false anyway, since evoltuion does not provide particular psychologies genetically - genetics provides merely the hardware, not the software.

hliyanOP10y ago

> since evoltuion does not provide particular psychologies genetically - genetics provides merely the hardware, not the software.

I'd venture to say that's an unsupported assertion.

0xcde4c3db10y ago

> genetics provides merely the hardware, not the software

Much like code and data, there has never really been a fixed bright line between hardware and software, even in systems where we intentionally engineer that distinction (whence came the term "firmware" and the closely related concept of "microcode").

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