[lbo-talk] The Rise of the Evolutionary Psychology Douchebag

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 16 14:32:05 PDT 2013


CB: The evpsych error is not so much that humans have evolved biologically from the time of species origin , but that the evpsych misrepresent in a Social Darwinist manner what humans were like at origin. And they understate the determining factor of culture in shaping human individuals.

[WS:] The error of Social Darwinism is its teleology. They have the needed conclusions - the superiority of the upper social stratum, and they are providing rationalizations of those conclusion by pseudo-scientific arguments how the outcome claimed by this need conclusion came to existence. The word Darwnism is is quite misleading here. AFAIK - Darwnism is the claim that evolution occurs by different survival rates which is pretty much due to chance rather than any "superiority". Gold fish evolved from carp by pure chance - the appeal of certain look to the human eye. As a result, specimens that did not have that certain look were systematically culled by breeders even though they were inferior to the "original" in that they swam slower and thus were more vulnerable. What these fraudsters do, however, is equate survival with some kind of

superiority - "if X survived, therefore X must be superior. Ergo, superiority evolved through the evolutionary process" The premise of that argument is false, even though the claim of the evolutionary change is not.

This is a typical bait and switch. They smuggle a questionable assumption, and then they focus their attention to an otherwise valid reasoning that rationalizes but does not prove that questionable assumption to make it appear as proven. The fact that such garbage passes for "science" and is being taught at top universities clearly testifies that academia is - paraphrasing John Kenneth Galbraith - in the business of providing the needed conclusions to those in the position to pay for them.

-- Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."



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