dripgrind comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

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Comment author: taw 15 March 2010 03:46:47PM 3 points [-]

Here's explanation of my pro-ultra-behaviorist position.

First, I haven't seen any convincing evidence against ultra-behaviorism, but plenty against ultra-innatism. Look at Flynn effect for example. There's absolutely no way a universe in which ultra-innatism is true is compatible with Flynn effect. There has been so many drastic shifts in behavior without slightest shift in underlying genetic makeup of population - abandonment of violence, shift from large families and low offspring investment to small families and high offspring investment, shift from agricultural to urban lifestyle etc. - these are vastly greater than any of the proposed genetic variations. And not a single kind of proposed genetically-based behavioral variation had a convincing genetic marker found for it (yes, there are heredity studies on twins etc. but I find they highly unconvincing). So my estimate of the truth is far closer to ultra-behaviorist end than ultra-innatist end, so much closer than ultra-behaviorism might be a good "tl;dr" version, even if not 100% accurate.

And second, I find ultra-behaviorism instrumentally useful. Overestimating how much you can change your life leads to better outcomes than underestimating it and just giving up.

Comment author: dripgrind 16 March 2010 02:29:15PM 1 point [-]

It's not true to say that those shifts took place without any "shift in underlying genetic makeup of population" - there has been significant human evolution over the last 6,000 years during the "shift from agricultural to urban lifestyle".

Of course, this isn't an argument for innatism, since evolution didn't cause the changes in lifestyle, but the common meme that human population genetics are exactly the same today as they were on the savannah isn't true.