"You can subject some atrocious things like infanticide and homicidal rampages to evolutionary explanations. I don't think anyone's closed the book on any of these, but in all these cases I think EP has an interesting perspective."
Huh? We know that group selection can lead to cannibalism, so analyzing infanticide and homicidal rampages would seem rather trivial. On the other hand, it's rather surprising that purely evolutionary mechanisms would lead to something as complex as our psychology and sense of morality. From a rational Bayesian persp... (read more)
Right, this is a bit of a problem. Why do we have these complicated brains that work toward their own goals? This seems counter-productive to the goal of maximizing fitness by executing adaptations... but maybe it has other advantages we've not yet understood.
"You can subject some atrocious things like infanticide and homicidal rampages to evolutionary explanations. I don't think anyone's closed the book on any of these, but in all these cases I think EP has an interesting perspective."
Huh? We know that group selection can lead to cannibalism, so analyzing infanticide and homicidal rampages would seem rather trivial. On the other hand, it's rather surprising that purely evolutionary mechanisms would lead to something as complex as our psychology and sense of morality. From a rational Bayesian persp... (read more)