miss_s_b: The Blood is the Life!

miss_s_b (

miss_s_b) wrote,
@ 2009-06-24 11:48 pm UTC

Current location:	in bed
Current mood:	blah
Current music:	radio 4 news
Entry tags:	the blood is the life

The Blood is the Life!

Fresh Squeezings from the veins of t'intertubes.

Evolutionary Psychology is bad science. Yeah, yeah, I know, preaching to the converted here. But the article is a good one, and deserves to be disseminated as widely as possible.

Speaking of science, Phil Willis MP tweets some welcome news. I fully agree with him that we need to make sure science is where it belongs at the heart of gov.

Rebecca Dalzell tells a heartwarming tale of Radio 4 addiction. Radio 4 is one of those things that you either get or you don't. I count myself among the utterly addicted. I was led in by the Now Show and now I have the damn thing on for a minimum of 8 hours a day. Radio 4 is the rhythm of life; a comfort and an education in one. I'm glad I'm not alone. Especially in listening with rapt attention to gardeners' question time when I only have a few plant pots...

andrewducker makes a fabulous point about comment threads. Pls take note, maintainers of Lib Dem Voice, which I have all but stopped visiting, given that you can no longer subscribe to comments and they still have that stupid please add us to your advertising whitelist! Oh, go on, PLEASE thing.

Space Geeks! Look at this awesome audio-visual slideshow of Saturn and its moons, compiled by the BBC from various sources, including CassiniSaturn.

And today's Meme is an old one from the depths of my LJ:

Poll #619 Truth or Lie?

Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

View Respondents

One of these is true, five are lies. Vote for the one you think is true.

View Answers

My favourite song of all time is Living Dead Girl by Rob Zombie
0 (0.0%)

I have owned six dogs in my lifetime
0 (0.0%)

The first album I bought with my own money was Sheer Heart Attack by Queen. It was on cassette.
5 (50.0%)

I have eaten and enjoyed sheep's brain
2 (20.0%)

I have dyed my hair many colours, but never black
3 (30.0%)

My favourite beer is called Moonshine
0 (0.0%)

I'll give you the answers tomorrow.

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Evo psych

joeotten.blogspot.com
2009-06-25 12:27 am UTC (link)

The article is attacking some total cobblers, but is making a meal of it.

a. Gene for any complex behaviour stories are cobblers. Nobody has found these genes, it is all speculation.

b. "Trait x is there because it is or was adaptive." On its own this says nothing because the claim could be made of any trait at all. There's no more scientific content here than saying Goddidit. Anybody doing real science will have details that are not just speculation.

c. If there were genes-for-behaviour, it wouldn't just be bad behaviour. There is Genesis-type fall narrative going on here, of evolution corrupting good people. Well it sells newspapers I suppose.

And there is a real problem with how people to what they think is an explanation. An explanation seems somehow like it ought to temper moral judgement. Which is a big mistake - whether something was ever adaptive says nothing about whether it is right. If we had an ancestor that, like some spiders, would kill and eat its parents - would that really affect your judgement of somebody who ate their parents?

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	Re: Evo psych ginasketch 2009-06-25 10:00 am UTC (link)
	Except there are plenty of Evolutionary Psychologists out there who shove their own biases into those "explanations" and then try to pass it off as hard science. When people start saying rape is an adaptive measure I want to smack those people. I don't care if that makes me "reactionary." (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 1 comment) (Show 1 comment)

	Re: Evo psych ginasketch 2009-06-25 10:03 am UTC (link)
	I also detst the kneejerk reaction that any criticism of Ev Psych at any time is equiavalent to creationist Bible-Thumping. LOL (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

Re: Evo psych

ms_daisy_cutter
2009-06-25 01:30 pm UTC (link)

What Gina said. Just about all ev-psy proponents I've seen are extremely eager to reinforce the status quo w/r/t race and especially gender. And they all seem to think that humans at all points in history, in all parts of the world, "naturally" do gender as in the United States in the 1950s. I can't tell you the number of evolutionary biologists I've seen commenting online about their contempt for the EP "experts."

Given how the mainstream media has unskeptically piled onto the EP bandwagon over the last decade or so, I'm glad to see an article in a major American news magazine attempting to dissect that school of thought, even if the reporter doesn't get everything right.

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