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Douglas_Knight comments on Some counterevidence for human sociobiology - Less Wrong
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I do appreciate your post; see Yvain's comment below for my response. It prompted me to re-read the famous letter Against Sociobiology from 1975. Points to note:
Several of the lynchpins of this letter are based on dogmas that we now look back on as having been upheld for purely ideological reasons. The opening paragraphs criticizing ideas that behaviors could be genetically-biased as "absurd" are one example. The claim that animal behavior can't teach us about human behavior is another. The revisionist pre-history story they allude to which rejects the idea that hunter-gatherers had sexually-defined roles is another.
The motivation for the letter, and its main arguing point, is not about truth, but about EO Wilson's alleged reactionary motives.
They associated Wilson with the Nazis in the second paragraph.
Recall that this letter is the very best argument ever made against sociobiology, by the most prestigious biologists (including Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin), which most later arguments cite as authoritative.
This letter was written by a group that met regularly for over a month to compose it, in a room very near E.O. Wilson's office. No one ever told him about it until after it was published. If the authors of the letter had any interest in truth, they would have walked down the hall, shown him the letter, and said, "What do you say to this?"
I have the impression that 1970 marked the onset of a new dark age in science, after which ideology played a much larger role in the selection of ideas.
Are you endorsing it as the best argument made against (brand-name?) sociobiology? I imagine that it's better than most of the later arguments that endorse it, but that's a much weaker claim than denying the existence of better arguments. You can't rely on opponents of an idea to filter for the good arguments against it. In particular, if the best arguments against it are less sweeping, they may be ignored.
Perhaps I should have said "most famous" or "most influential". I'm not qualified to judge whether it's the best.
I interpreted your comment as meaning that ad hominem (etc) arguments should be seen as in contrast to good arguments. I see it as the opposite. We should expect the use of effective rhetorical techniques and prestigious authors to lead to fame. These are good reasons to expect not to hear of better critiques. [ETA: this is what I was groping towards in my earlier comment]
I read the letter after writing my comment and it is not sweeping, contrary to my claim. Its arguments are pretty reasonable and it doesn't explicitly misrepresent Wilson much. But it is very effective at producing false beliefs, such as my belief that it was sweeping, and TAW's beliefs elsewhere on this thread.