Perplexed comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: gjm 07 October 2010 09:12PM

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Comment author: Perplexed 02 November 2010 01:52:36PM 2 points [-]

Speech, sexual selection rituals, sex itself, cooperation in the social insects ... There are many things which seem to require a more complex and subtle narrative for their explanation than the usual simple Darwinian story of a mutant individual doing better than his conspecific competitors and then passing on his genes.

But that doesn't mean that a died-in-the-wool neo-Darwinian needs to accept the group-selection explanation any more than an Ayn Rand fan confronted with a skyscraper has to admit that Kropotkin was right after all.

However, I am taking your implicit advise and dutifully upvoting Tim's comment.

Comment author: timtyler 03 November 2010 07:21:14AM *  1 point [-]

I wasn't suggesting that speech evolved via group selection - just that it evidently did evolve - and so proposing the existence of "evolved adaptations that make human society work better" is not an error.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 03 November 2010 04:02:03AM -1 points [-]

Tim's comment doesn't say that speech evolved via group selection. It could be that it did not; in that case, Tim's comment would be pointing out that Eliezer was unjustified in calling out a belief in "evolved adaptations that make human society work better" as an error.