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bramflakes comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - Less Wrong
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How, precisely, is astrology an "extension of a good theory"?
There is a cute answer -- that movements of celestial bodies (e.g. the Sun and the Moon) certainly affect people's lives and fates.
And there is a historical answer -- that for centuries astronomy and astrology were, basically, inseparable.
The cute answer is actually more revealing than you think and might help resolve this conversation.
Astronomy lets you predict the way celestial objects move in the sky. You can trivially extend this to weak!Astrology, which just asserts that the movement of the celestial bodies has some kind of systematic causal impact on the way humans behave. However, you would quite reasonably take issue with strong!Astrology, which makes specific, detailed, wrong claims about the nature and extent of these interactions, as well as the general sloppy standards of the field of strong!Astrology.
Evolution lets you predict the way natural selection affects a population over time. You can trivially extend this to weak!Evpsych, which just asserts that evolution will have some impact in shaping the mental faculties of the population. But you can still disagree with some specific claims of evolutionary psychology, as well as the methodologies used to generate them, and the practices of the field as a whole.
I think that Benito thinks you're saying weak!Evpsych is wrong (that evolution didn't shape our minds at all), when you're actually just critiquing aspects of strong!Evpsych - e.g. that evolutionary psychologists are too quick to generalize from WEIRD college students into the rest of humanity, and so on. At least, my usual kneejerk response to critics of evpsych is "what, you think evolution stops above the neck?"
Does it? I don't think evopsy predicts anything, I think it only constructs plausible stories after the fact.
No, I'm not saying that, it would be pretty silly.
No, and not only that as well. I am not critiquing certain aspects, I'm critiquing the whole field for failing the usual criteria of a science.
It doesn't even construct plausible stories about evolution. In the time in which rather simple morphological changes to the bone shapes make some very minor progress, we supposedly evolve whole new instincts, whose morphological complexity (in terms of wiring adjustments in the brain), if innate, would be comparable to entire new organs, if not higher.
Where evolutionary biology predicts that X won't evolve (and thus doesn't exist as an innate quality), evolutionary psychology claims X evolved from scratch and exists.
[citation please]
Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology , or go explain massive modularity to almost any neurobiologist and see what they say about it.
I meant can you site a specific example of an evolutionary psychologist proposing an evolved instinct "whose morphological complexity (in terms of wiring adjustments in the brain), if innate, would be comparable to entire new organs, if not higher". The wikipedia article doesn't seem to include any.
Looking at the criticism at best some are valid criticisms of a few stupid evolutionary explanations that some people cite, e.g., the claim that homosexuality is adaptive. Most are, however, either simply incoherent like the "Disjunction and grain problems" section, based on false premises like the "ethnocentrism" section, or straw men like the section on "rape".
The synaptic structure even of parts of your brain is vastly more complex than the organisational structure of any other organ. You can draw diagrams of about how various hepatic cells go together, and that's all there is to it (caveats apply, though the rules are kind of simple). A diagram which tells you where the synapses go, so that you'd get e.g. a fight-or-flight response? Vastly more complex.
Now consider the evopsych innate module explanation for improved performance on Wason selection task when it's specified verbally in terms of social rules, just to pick a specific and common example. (How the hell would such a module even interface to a bunch of learned language circuitry? That's a question which would have to be answered first).
There's a good overview of the clashes between evopsych modules and neuroscience:
http://www.niu.edu/phil/~buller/publications/_pdf/epmdn.pdf
Note, by the way, that evopsych proposes a very specific explanation - modules performing very specific tasks - not something like e.g. higher general arousal improving general cognitive performance depending on the context, improved clarity, greater involvement of mental visualization, or the like. edit: that's is, without trying to explain it in terms of use or evolution of existing traits (specialized mental visualization) they skip to postulating a new module.
Type error. The complexity of the details of a specific phenotype are not the same as the complexity of the adaptation. This is especially the case when considering the organ that is explicitly design to adapt to complexity via bulk application of an adaptive neural algorithm. The diagram of synapses involved in a given process will be completely different between genetically identically individuals.
Analogy: I don't know whether there is more complexity in apples or watermelons. I do know that a lot more can be said about an individual watermelon than about an individual apple, if I represent enough detail.
I don't think it weakens your point (given charitable reading) but using 'fight-or-flight response' as the illustration of how the brain is most complex than other organs has difficulties given just how many of those other organs are involved in the response. Especially when a diagram "so that you'd get e.g. a fight-or-flight response" could plausibly be an electric wire stabbed into either the pituitary or adrenal glands.