The Countless Controversies of Evolutionary Psychology

Time Stamps:
0:00 What is evolutionary psychology?
2:34 EP has few clinical applications
3:33 The naturalistic fallacy
6:27 Support from bigoted circles
10:15 EP hyper-focuses on sex differences
12:40 These alleged sex differences are used to justify human rights violations
15:08 EP often gets used as manosphere ammunition
18:36 EP often ignores the role of social factors
23:12 We know very little about our ancestors
25:06 Just-so stories
26:40 Neural plasticity threatens the modularity hypothesis
27:35 The time machine argument: we cannot know these changes came from adaptation
28:40 EP is too predeterministic and reductionistic
29:45 Conclusions

References:

[fyfoh]

I don't have a problem with any of your criticisms of ep, but I think it's possible to arrive at a well-researched and tested conclusion that many people would find distasteful. These kinds of discussions remind me of the Machiavelli quote, “How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.”

[moonsweater]

Maybe this is my inner mathematician coming out, but it makes me sad to see the idea that something with few practical applications can't be worthwhile. Isn't it enough to help expand our knowledge on a topic for its own sake, and be confident that practical applications will eventually flow outward from knowing the truth about things?

[mikamika]

I’m so glad you touch this topic. I feel like these theories need more counter arguments because a lot of it leads to a very narrow mindset.

[Trapping_ackbar]

27:37 You'e right not all traits evolve because they were adaptive, some may occur because of random chance, also called genetic drift. Or a trait can "hitchhike" with another due to proximity on a particular locus. But there are means of determining whether a trait is adaptive or not and to handwave the whole field is the same tactic of young earth creationists who say we weren't alive so we can't know.

Also your justification for saying the big bang is okay to theorize but not EP being "it can be used to justify human rights violations" is very dangerous and unscientific. We know science can be used for horrible reasons but to shut down the pursuit of scientific truth because of bad actors is a terribly slippery slope.

[Exostin]

There’s a nice book called “Survival of the friendliest”, which challenges the popular belief of aggression as the driving factor of our success as a species

[hahayes]

I feel like EP is a powerful tool to describe our fundamental emotions, but not so good at describing/observing our societies. But with that said, you have to use the right tool for the right occasion.

[maynardewm]

A lot of EP to me seems like stuff that can’t even be proven. It’s just “I say it’s true because it seems like a reasonable conclusion based on what humans in the Stone Age would do.” But we have no way of knowing what life and social structures actually looked like back then. No way to perform studies that support hypothesis. It feels so much like Freudian thinking.

[MrQuantumInc]

The module theory really seems like it exists because it gives people an excuse to ignore the many ways that different human tendencies and the factors that influence them interact with each other. Human psychology is complicated and imagining you can focus on one module at a time is wishful thinking.
Most of the people advocating for evolutionary psychology are NOT biologists. There needs to be a distinction between the people who simply study evolution and apply that logic to human behavior and those who try to use that idea to excuse their beliefs about gender. You can apply the logic and end up at very different conclusions. The most well know example is described by Christopher Ryan in "Sex at Dawn" and suggests that we are naturally polyamorous. The theories of promiscuous men and choosy women are the most popular because they line up with stereotypes and it suggests they are natural and inevitable.

[Kswhajakky]

I really like the overall conclusions you've drawn from this. Even though there may be some truths behind some hypothesis proposed by evolutionary psychology, the overall aplications of them are rare and unsubstantiated and they tend to reduce people to some sort of mechanistic robot driven solely by instinct. It ignores the ability of people to generate insight, it ignores the ability of people to modulate their behavior, and it ignores the ability of people to have will outside of their most primal instincts. Great video Ana!

[nicadquartz]

I'm so happy to hear evolutionary psychology be interrogated more. I remember when I was first learning about it, I would often hear things and think, "someone is gonna take this and use it to justify some bullshit" haha

[Trapping_ackbar]

26:41 I wish you flushed out this point more because I don't see how they conflict. It can be both true that our brain is modular and neuroplastic, while both being a product of natural selection. Take language acquisition for example: cognitive psychologists like chomsky have demonstrated that there is an overarching, innate structure for learning and producing language. That's a domain general ability. While at the same time the brain need to be plastic enough to adjust to whatever language the baby is brought up in. Evolution can produce meta structures of organization while also favoring the adaptability of the brain for variations in environment. To say it's one or the other is a false dichotomy.

[haldude]

Great video, so glad I finally found something to act as an outlet for my gripes with this way of thinking, heck, I didn’t even know it had a name like EP in the first place. In recent times I’ve really struggled as a guy when my new friends are dudes who say shit like ‘men cheat because it’s natural, us men are scumbags’, it becomes easy to feel like I’m alone in this world in holding onto a moral compass and a set of values, a sense of right and wrong.

[kevintse]

Regarding destroying the planet and substance abuse, I know two evolutionary biologists say that these are the effect of humans facing a completely different set of problems than they were evolved to deal with: that we weren’t exactly evolved to “survive and reproduce” per se, but our behaviors worked in the past and therefore they were passed along whether they’re useful or not. It’s like how in GoT, the commander of the City Watch was sent to The Wall with a set of skills, and these skills turned out to be completely irrelevant at his new location. So in a way, you’re right in that the way we act shouldn’t be guided by the way we’re programmed to act.

[tdwebste]

Everyone fails to see societies as organisms that seeks to grow and expand.

Psychologists who don't consider societies as organisms are missing the big picture.

[carbon]

6:15 - A couple thoughts on the value of ev psych and ev game theory: 1) putting a context around stresses, pressures, and even unconscious / covert agendas that tend to initiate human behaviors often with the person themselves backfilling rationalizations which tend toward increased mate value or other proxies such as power and status, 2) it's a antithesis to 'blank slate' ideas which typically make a mess of the world when pulled into political theories by ignoring pitfalls and dangers inherent in their express goals. I'd also suggest that there's a difference between naturalistic fallacy such as saying certain things 'should' be a certain way vs. insolubility such as that certain problems, like inequality, result the moment you have two limited conscious agents interacting which aren't precisely identical. It's good to try to reduce the negative impacts of inequality and give people a wider variety of positive-sum games where they can focus on applying their strengths, OTOH trying to manually wring out all inequality from the human species would be as bad an idea as trying to wring out all carbon, oxygen, or nitrogen from human biology, that's not because inequality 'should' exist but because it's insoluble.

[Moshmn]

The EP dialogue misses the primary evolutionary superpower of human beings: adaptation. Our ability to survive and thrive under a multitude of environments and circumstances. There are things that keep us grounded as manifestly human, but we're flexible animals keeping us at the top of the food chain. When Manospherian content creators dive into EP, they speak along deterministic lines. EP is better as a predictor than a determiner of outcomes.

[ollielon]

Well, if EP is true, then it is useful. Knowing ourselves is the first step in personal development.

[brezgatnik]

I always get stuck on evolutionary psychology despite hating it, and it always makes me hate being human and feel like the world will never be a better place. i needed this video.

[stevengotts]

Well researched and argued. Thanks for sharing. you changed my opinion. Keep up the good work.

[SoVidushi]

I don't have anything to contribute to the convo so I'm just commenting for the algorithm. But thanks for this video, it'll come in handy to educate a lot of people or just make them think more criticically about the information they are being presented. Have a great one Ana :)