I am so upset. I am looking for a forum to discuss

[applegrove]

Last edited Wed Nov 16, 2016, 11:21 PM - Edit history (1)

evolutionary psychology. Seems many are labeled as liberal, conservative or objectivism. This is not science (well the liberal one probably is). I can just see the perspectives of the non scientific ones trying to prove that we humans do not have so much in common. Or that sadism and hate are equal emotions to love and cooperation. Same as they talk about in political forums. If the split starts right at the scientific forums what hope is there for bridging the divide politically. I am guessing the climate forums are equally divided. And we are just supposed to lay back and take it as science is destroyed so that people will follow the psychopaths who are after power (when the psychopaths have proven to be the worst leadership in the history of the world). Love and cooperation are better than sadism and hate -am I right

[cilla4progress]

1. I have heard this discussed

in terms of cooperation and mutuality being the actual real key to survival ...not "survival of the fittest," i.e., the bigger and meaner the more likely to succeed.

It is an anthropological theory of how homo sapien prevailed.

[applegrove]

3. I think fittest implies evolutionary fittest not actual

fitness fittest. Mutation and natural selection are the means to the fitness. So evolutionary fitness would include cooperation and love.

[cilla4progress]

6. Yes, but many subscribe to

might makes right.

Also, we seem to be drawn to bullies. I've thought about this a lot. I think evolutionarily our survival could have depended on the shelter of a bully or authoritarian. That is why some are drawn to them.

[applegrove]

9. Yes. And some are not drawn to bullies but to benevolence in

a leader. Like to Obama. Or Carter. Or Reagan (yes Reagan seemed benevolent...he was just handled by the GOP and given a fake kitchen cabinet to make him think he was in control on policy is my guess). Or Kennedy. Or FDR. Or Bill Clinton. Or the Trudeaus in Canada.

[phallon]

2. Maybe our Constitution will hold

[elleng]

4. Here's one piece that may get you/us started. Professor Lakoff's done a lot of relevant work.

Thanks for prompting me to find it.

Understanding Trump

By George Lakoff

There is a lot being written and spoken about Trump by intelligent and articulate commentators whose insights I respect. But as a longtime researcher in cognitive science and linguistics, I bring a perspective from these sciences to an understanding of the Trump phenomenon. This perspective is hardly unknown. More than half a million people have read my books, and Google Scholar reports that scholars writing in scholarly journals have cited my works well over 100,000 times.

Yet you will probably not read what I have to say in the NY Times, nor hear it from your favorite political commentators. You will also not hear it from Democratic candidates or party strategists. There are reasons, and we will discuss them later I this piece. I am writing it because I think it is right and it is needed, even though it comes from the cognitive and brain sciences, not from the normal political sources. I think it is imperative to bring these considerations into public political discourse. But it cannot be done in a 650-word op-ed. My apologies. It is untweetable.

https://georgelakoff.com/2016/07/23/understanding-trump-2/

[gypsy11]

26. Great article

Fascinating. Thanks for posting that. I've learned something.

[elleng]

27. You're welcome. Glad you like it.

I always learn something from Professor Lakoff.

[canetoad]

35. Thank you so much for the link

I had read this article a few weeks back and couldn't remember the title or author to re-read.

Thanks again.

[elleng]

36. You're welcome.

[ismnotwasm]

5. It's been not exactly totally debunked but certainly taken over by MRA's

The kind that think rape in humans is an adaptive response. And other such bullshit.

The problem is when humans develop a behavior via evolution labeling it "psychology" seems to give certain actrocious behaviors a pass. Or tendencies, such as the idea that women like older men who can care for them, while men like young healthy women who look like they can reproduce (in some cultures and human times it was attractive to men if a woman--or girl-- had proven ability to reproduce, rather than a nubile body. It gets complicated.

I like looking at evolution through a larger lens--not everything evolution brings us is benign. We should adapt out of physical attributes--like the propensity to develop cancer--that kill us but we don't. The genetics are tangled for the most part. Unless say, we started seeing cancers in younger people before they have a chance to reproduce--a very shitty example indeed.

[applegrove]

7. Just because something is adaptive does not make it legal.

The ability of a man to murder is adaptive but we have laws on that. What is a MRA

[ismnotwasm]

8. Men's right activist

I'm no expert but I've done extensive reading on the topic--it's got an inherent gender bias

[mopinko]

16. i dont think the bias is inherent. i just think the mra types

are very happy being stimulus response machines who cannot override their baser instincts. so they cherry pick.

i came to the topic more through 2 pov's.

one- when bill clinton was being impeached, i started thinking about the aphrodisiac power of power. i came to the conclusion that politics evolved out of the competition for the best females by the big apes. tho many other things come w power, evolutionarily speaking, mating is all.
just assured me that the whole thing was going on in an invisible soup, like the fish who does know he is in the water. that there were ancient forces at play, and that it was just one of a zillion times the same story has played out.

two- raising my kids. watching their oh so amazing development as phylogeny recapitulated ontogeny. (the development of the individual repeats the development of the species. basic tenant of evolution.)
from their little chimpy legs, picking things up w their toes, cave making, playing house, playing war, picking up language, picking up morays. little apes, standing upright, and following a well worn path to adulthood.

but what really got me was that the first willful act of a new human is to smile. to make their caregiver fall in love w them.
so anybody talking about human evolutionary psychology w/o talking about the bonds of love, w mates and children and friends and tribe, is missing the most important lesson of it all, imho.

so, of course it seems biased. who puts any value on motherly love and recreational sex and lifetime bonds?

[ismnotwasm]

28. This is a long conversation

In short, to me, evolutionary psychology has inherent gender bias, because while evolution itself does not, the study of it at times most certainly has. Same with psychology.

[Mosby]

33. evo psych is mostly unprovable

It relies completely on "self-report" type DVs.

Most Psych research uses multiple DVs and structural equation models which are pretty solid.

[mopinko]

42. not sure what a dv is, but

that is not where i read/heard about it. what i read was interdisciplinary thought and research.
primate research
anthropological research
archeological research
interdisciplinary advances in other science that started to lead to more and more information about the genetic basis of all kinds of behaviors. ie- e.o. wilson. and advances in genetics itself. of evolution itself.

[Mosby]

43. sorry, it stands for dependent variable

DVs are what are used to measure changes in the independent variables, which are the research questions.

evo psych hypotheses are very, very hard to test using the scientific method and inferential stats.

Generally speaking self report is considered a very weak DV, especially in the absence of other measures.

[cilla4progress]

10. Chaos theory

It has a place here. Even in adaptation, I believe. There is no intrinsic order. There is no all-powerful connective force leading us ever higher.

Here is a quote I saved after some horrible disaster:

There is no rhyme or reason.
There is only the chilling reminder that we live precariously
and die randomly,
and that there is honor in facing each day
with purpose and grace.

Steve Lopez, LA Times

[applegrove]

11. As chaos theory relates to fractals I agree. There is order out of

nature.

[cilla4progress]

14. Ah yes, nature...

I remember it well.

Synchronicity.

Symmetry.

Balance.

Right-wingers seems to forget we co-evolved with this ecosystem. We rely on it for our survival. Adaptation only can do so much and takes time. Of course, the 1% in their gilt bunkers will last a bit longer than the rest of us. Hopefully theirs will be a drawn-out suffering.

Alas..

[applegrove]

17. I think that is the very reason Ryan wants to undo

obamacare, medicare and social security. Because they want the rich to have the option to live longer than everyone else. Everyone else not so much. I say we start a movement to have extended lifetimes only go to people who have done alot of good in the world. It could be called the Maya Angelou law for access to drugs that will extend lives beyound 110 years.

[cilla4progress]

18. I like the way you think

Kind of idealistic-like, like myself ...

[applegrove]

19. Can you believe we are still idealistic so soon after Trump

won by going alt right

[cilla4progress]

20. Child of the 60s

I'll never change

[applegrove]

21. Yes. A good childhood is the best medicine for what life

throws at us.

[cilla4progress]

22. Not so sure mine was all that good

but I grew up believing in peace, love and brother/sisterhood.

Hippie.

[applegrove]

23. Yes. I got those values too. From two very christian

(protestant) grandmothers and my parents. All of them Nova Scotians at heart.

[cilla4progress]

25. Wonderful!

My parents were humanists! Found their way together from their Russian Jewish roots!

[applegrove]

29. That must have been fun at the dinner table.

[cilla4progress]

30. Yes

lively!

[Mosby]

34. chaos theory is not about randomness

It's about a natural order that is mostly unseen.

Another way to describe it is that in any given system we can know the outcomes, but not know which one will emerge.

[cilla4progress]

37. Known knowns and

known unknowns?

Was Rumsfeld an adherent?

[Mosby]

38. I have no idea.

[applegrove]

39. Actually Prescient because Rumsfeld was referring

to Douglas Feith the dyslexic when he talked of assumptions or known unknowns I speculate. Dyslexics look at the world through varying perspectives or assumptions. Donald was waiting for the oracle Feith to come up with a battle plan- I obviously guessing. That did not work out too well. Especially not for the Iraqis or the Syrians. Or many, many troops.

[ismnotwasm]

12. I posted this but it went nowhere---not chaos theory-- but quantum physics

For some reason it made me feel better

Want to understand how Trump happened? Study quantum physics


The past decade will be remembered as the period when the global underclass revolt snowballed into a movement with political bite. From Occupy Wall Street to Brexit to Donald Trump’s election, these post-financial crisis years have featured many unsynchronized awakenings that are forcing a renegotiation of the terms of governance and globalization. Our politics needs to adjust to these demands. The reverse is impossible.

Could we have seen it coming?

Donald Trump’s election victory is only a shock if you have been looking at the world through simple equations. Classical physics is rooted Newton’s three laws, where an action has an equal reaction, objects at rest tend to stay there, and force equals mass times acceleration. Newton describes the observable world in ways that are logical. But long ago, scientists showed the underlying physical world can’t be explained with algebra. To understand the universe, classical physics had to incorporate quantum mechanics, which describes a micro-world of uncertainty and ambiguity that is harder to measure but defines our true reality. Likewise, as recent geopolitical shocks have proven, outdated methods are no longer capable or sufficient to explain global society’s complex and interconnected systems.


Michael Frayn’s award-winning play Copenhagen presents multiple versions of what might have transpired when German physicist Werner Heisenberg paid a visit to his Danish mentor Niels Bohr in late 1941. Against the backdrop of an intense arms race between the US and Germany to develop atomic weapons that could determine the outcome of World War II, the two Nobel laureates debated the scientific aspects of nuclear fission and the psychology of nuclear deterrence, seamlessly blending physics and geopolitics in their discourse.

http://qz.com/834735/want-to-understand-how-trump-happened-study-quantum-physics/

[applegrove]

13. Trump is dyslexic so he is all about form in his brain.

Last edited Wed Nov 16, 2016, 08:34 PM - Edit history (1)

Not language. And he pulls down human created fictions (like the constitution, diplomacy, the law, democracy, that the GOP claimed to not be racist) because he cannot learn them (he lives only in a concrete world). And he then replaces the system with something simpler he can understand that comes from the gut. So by pulling down the old, he endears himself to people who are afraid of all the complexity.

(I have not read the whole article as i cannot print it off. I will get back to it once I have fixed my printer).

[cilla4progress]

15. Fabulous

[ErikJ]

24. Science means Truth. So Republicans are anti-Truth.

Yet theyre always the ones calling Liberal emotional, fact-free and fantasy based. lol

[BootinUp]

31. Hate is the result of not being able to deal with reality.

I hope that makes sense to more people than myself.

[applegrove]

40. The nasty people not being able to deal with a world

Last edited Thu Nov 17, 2016, 02:24 AM - Edit history (4)

where most people, and the moral arc, gravitate towards fairness and love. You are right on. Though hate is an important emotion when it comes to those that are too passive. We all need to be balanced. And if you are slow to anger or defend yourself perhaps a bit of hate towards evil will keep you out of trouble. Like any adaptation. Or any emotion. There was a purpose. In the case of hate it is still valid in some cases of specific evil. But not in the generalized hate of specific groups for the most part.

[BootinUp]

41. Thanks!

I appreciate the positive feedback.

[BootinUp]

32. I just want to admit that your OP might be over my head. nt

[McCamy Taylor]

44. What is evolutionary psychology?

Is it an attempt to explain why murder in the context of war is applauded and in the context of peace is condemned?

In a world subject to cataclysmic climate change, any species that can adapt has an advantage. The easiest way to adapt is to have a genome that codes for a variety of traits. The current climate or ecology then selects the traits that are most advantageous---in context. Better yet, you program the infant brain to respond to different cues by changing how it functions. Research suggests that perinatal stress can trigger Aspergers and other types of autism, mostly in males. Since females will almost inevitably be involved in child rearing, their personality traits need to be fairly constant, but the ones not as closely involved in child rearing (i.e the men) can exhibit a variety of character and behavior traits.

Ever wonder why human and dolphin females have hidden ovulation? I.e. the female herself does not know when she is most fertile? I think it is because the intelligent animals that knew when they were fertile selected males with certain desirable traits to be the father---and therefore, they lost less desirable (at the time) but no less essential traits that were necessary when the volcano exploded sending the world into volcanic winter for a decade.

Even if we were about to enter a hundred year volcanic winter, Trump's personality traits would not be desirable for a president.

[applegrove]

45. I think Trump is an undeveloped man. His childishness and insecurity

are because he has focused on getting rich and not on paying taxes or giving to charity. He is interconnected to selfish businessmen and mentors like Roger Stone and Roy Cohn. He doesn't know himself. Of course he is half a man. Of course he is miserable. That is no way to be. Of course he admires authoritarians and wanted to be president. He is empty. Even his wives have said they sensed something decent in him when they first got together and hoped to explore that side of him in their marriages but it all came to naught.