Eugine_Nier comments on Using Evolution for Marriage or Sex - Less Wrong

17 Post author: diegocaleiro 06 May 2013 05:34AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 07 May 2013 11:44:06AM *  -1 points [-]

Marvin Minsky (2007), who thinks the main problem with psychology is physics envy.

By "physics envy", he means (from this article of his, not having The Emotion Machine to hand):

They've all been searching for some minimal set of basic principles of psychology, some very small collection of amazingly powerful ideas that, all by themselves, can explain how the mind works. They'd like to imitate Isaac Newton, who discovered three simple laws of motion which solved an entire world of problems about mechanics.

Fine, the mind is more complicated than Newton's Laws. But so is the body, and biologists know a great deal about that, by doing actual science that has nailed down a lot of things. In comparison, that string of dubifiers is just... just... what on Earth are these people thinking, to be satisfied with so little?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 08 May 2013 04:04:16AM *  4 points [-]

But so is the body, and biologists know a great deal about that, by doing actual science that has nailed down a lot of things.

Yes, and biologists understand the Harvard Law:

Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 08 May 2013 08:50:21AM *  -1 points [-]

Yes, and biologists understand the Harvard Law:

Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

Written by Larry Wall, the famous biologist.

ETA: If the organism does as it damn well pleases, you didn't do the right experiment.

ETA2: Don't take my word for it, here's Richard Feynman on the subject. (Where he talks about running rats in mazes, near the end.)

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