David_Gerard comments on Beware of WEIRD psychological samples - Less Wrong

38 Post author: ciphergoth 13 September 2009 11:28AM

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Comment author: HughRistik 14 September 2009 10:36:09PM *  7 points [-]

There is a sub-blogosphere focused on a particular conception of male and female psychology, centered on the blogger Roissy, which owes a lot to evolutionary psychology.

I'm a big fan of evolutionary psychology, including practical applications of it. Roissy makes a good start attempting to apply it, but he falls prey to major ideological errors, overgeneralization, and oversimplification. I see no evidence that he has read more than a few popular books on the subject. He has made the discovery that even naive applications of evolutionary psychology can be incredibly powerful in the practical world, then falls into the naive realist pit and assumes that his theories are true just because they work better than the conventional alternatives. Furthermore, he fails at ethics really, really badly. I'm being kinda vague, but I'll go into further detail upon request.

Evolutionary psychology is great. Applied evolutionary psychology is great. Roissy just isn't doing it right.

Comment author: David_Gerard 07 June 2011 09:56:18AM *  -1 points [-]

then falls into the naive realist pit and assumes that his theories are true just because they work better than the conventional alternatives.

Upvoted for this. Now to get it down to 140 characters ...

Edit: Posted. Suggestions for how to cut it down enough to add credit welcomed.