NancyLebovitz comments on Rationality Quotes March 2013 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 02 March 2013 10:45AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 March 2013 12:26:10AM 12 points [-]

Popular evopsych, summed up: "Men and women are different. Humans and chimps are the same."

Cliff Pervocracy

Comment author: SaidAchmiz 05 March 2013 02:32:38AM 11 points [-]

This seems to me a form of equivocation: "different" as used in the first sentence and "the same" as used in the second sentence are not opposites. The context is different; the intended meaning (insofar as any evo-psychologists actually make such claims) is something like this:

"Men and women are more different, on average, than men and other men, and certainly more different than (some? most?) people think. The difference is sufficiently large that we cannot indiscriminately apply psychological principles and results across genders."

"Humans and chimps are closer than (some? most?) people think; in fact, sufficiently close that we can apply unexpectedly many psychological principles and results across these two species."

I don't know of anyone (even in "popular" evo-psych) who endorses the view implied in the quote, which I suppose would be something like:

"Humans are chimps are less different from each other than men and women."

In short, I think the quote mocks a strawman.

Comment author: MugaSofer 06 March 2013 09:47:43AM 0 points [-]

Here's how I parsed it:

"You can better extrapolate from a chimp to a human, of the same gender, than from a human to another human of a different gender."

To be fair, most pop evopsych is extrapolating from imaginary details of caveman behavior rather than actual chimp behavior.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 March 2013 11:47:05AM *  9 points [-]

Popular evopsych, summed up: "Men and women are different. Humans and chimps are the same."

Cliff Pervocracy

Flamboyant straw men do not belong in the Rationality Quotes thread. Cliff is clearly not accurately describing reality. Popular evopsych doesn't say that. It doesn't matter how irrational the opponents who are being criticised are, bullshit is still bullshit.

Comment author: MugaSofer 06 March 2013 09:41:11AM 2 points [-]

It's worth noting that LWers may have more exposure to real evopsych relative to popular evopsych. I for one had despared of ever finding rational evopsych before discovering this site. Pop evopsych is incredibly bad.

Comment author: Nornagest 06 March 2013 09:49:53AM *  3 points [-]

Pop evopsych may very well be incredibly bad (I wouldn't know myself, as I've been exposed to very little of it). But if a quote doesn't have any instructive value beyond making fun of bad ideas -- as opposed to more general biases, and even there I'm leery of the "making fun" bit -- I'm not sure it belongs here. Particularly if they're also politically sensitive ideas.

I wouldn't, for example, consider clever attacks on religion to be shiningly rational.

Comment author: MugaSofer 06 March 2013 10:06:19AM -1 points [-]

As a theist, I would have to agree with you there ;)

People like wit, though, so witty defense of rational positions garners upvotes regardless of intrinsic rationality.

Comment author: Nornagest 06 March 2013 10:07:52AM 2 points [-]

I think there's a distinction that could be made between defense of rational positions and attacks on particular irrational ones. Reversed stupidity, etc.

Comment author: mwengler 14 March 2013 04:47:07PM 0 points [-]

The quote is instructive to those of us trying to develop an integrated and rational view of evo psych. In my case, I DO see a lot of compelling material on how women are different from men, and I DO see a lot of compelling material on how humans are like other primates and even mammals. The quote brings me up short: do I have the sex differences within species properly "weighted" in my thinking compared to across-species similarities? Or do I switch between my microscope and my telescope paying attention only to what I am seeing, forgetting which instrument I am using to look?

Comment author: TraderJoe 06 March 2013 08:36:42AM 2 points [-]

Can you add a NSFW disclaimer?

Comment author: TimS 05 March 2013 12:30:30AM 1 point [-]

Much more from the same author.

Comment author: MugaSofer 06 March 2013 09:43:37AM -2 points [-]

Why on earth was this downvoted? Upvoted back to neutral. It's relevant and useful, to the extent the quote is useful.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 March 2013 03:57:25PM 3 points [-]

It's relevant and useful, to the extent the quote is useful.

I haven't downvoted the grandparent, but I'm reading this as an argument that perhaps I ought to!

Comment author: TimS 07 March 2013 02:42:32PM *  1 point [-]

Ha! That's my interpretation as well.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 March 2013 03:36:11PM 1 point [-]

IIRC, a few years ago I was watching the news on TV and they mentioned that a study had found that “females are more [something] than males”. But it turned out that the females in the study were a different species of great apes than the males (neither of which human).

(I hope I just dreamt of it, or am misremembering it, or something.)