If you have had better success than I in finding ANY valid argument in this jumble of unfinished thoughts and unsupported conclusions that passed for an article, please, specify in reply to me exactly which argument you found to be valid, substantiated, and having proved the conclusion given.
If you have had better success than I in finding ANY valid argument in this jumble of unfinished thoughts and unsupported conclusions that passed for an article, please, specify in reply to me exactly which argument you found to be valid, substantiated, and having proved the conclusion given.
Hi Steven, thank you for taking the time to engage with my post. I value constructive feedback, as it helps me improve the clarity and impact of my writing. That being said, I would appreciate it if we could keep the discussion civil.
I am sorry to have failed to convey useful insights to you with this post and your comment made me think about how I could have presented some things differently. Nonetheless, I think your first comment is slightly unfair in suggesting that the post throws out random things in the hope that something sticks. The post reviews diverse criticisms and discusses them. The diversity of content is in large part driven by the diversity of criticisms. The post responds to these criticisms with broadly two principles:
1. Evolution does not imply any particular moral principles.
2. Rejecting some factual arguments because we don’t like the conclusion is not a good idea.
Your later comments suggest that you have drawn incorrect conclusions from the post. It is not about denying that evolutionary ideas have been used to justify some social outcomes; it is about arguing that this justification does not follow from the facts of evolution. The fact that most evolutionary scientists are now left-wing or female is not necessarily a good thing; it is rather evidence that the worries (traditionally coming from the left) are not warranted.
Is there a risk of bias in the other direction now? Certainly. It is even discussed by Vandermassen in her 2005 book. Such a bias is not desirable, and I might talk about it in later posts. But this post is not primarily about the biases in evolutionary science as it is currently practised; it is about whether evolutionary principles have the dire political implications they have been accused of having.
Ironically, Steven's comments are a compelling example of the validity of Mercier and Sperber's ideas in The Enigma of Reason, which are rooted in evolutionary theory.
Funny how a critique of evolutionary thinking ends up coming full circle, unintentionally reinforcing it.
If you have had better success than I in finding ANY valid argument in this jumble of unfinished thoughts and unsupported conclusions that passed for an article, please, specify in reply to me exactly which argument you found to be valid, substantiated, and having proved the conclusion given.
Hi Steven, thank you for taking the time to engage with my post. I value constructive feedback, as it helps me improve the clarity and impact of my writing. That being said, I would appreciate it if we could keep the discussion civil.
I am sorry to have failed to convey useful insights to you with this post and your comment made me think about how I could have presented some things differently. Nonetheless, I think your first comment is slightly unfair in suggesting that the post throws out random things in the hope that something sticks. The post reviews diverse criticisms and discusses them. The diversity of content is in large part driven by the diversity of criticisms. The post responds to these criticisms with broadly two principles:
1. Evolution does not imply any particular moral principles.
2. Rejecting some factual arguments because we don’t like the conclusion is not a good idea.
Your later comments suggest that you have drawn incorrect conclusions from the post. It is not about denying that evolutionary ideas have been used to justify some social outcomes; it is about arguing that this justification does not follow from the facts of evolution. The fact that most evolutionary scientists are now left-wing or female is not necessarily a good thing; it is rather evidence that the worries (traditionally coming from the left) are not warranted.
Is there a risk of bias in the other direction now? Certainly. It is even discussed by Vandermassen in her 2005 book. Such a bias is not desirable, and I might talk about it in later posts. But this post is not primarily about the biases in evolutionary science as it is currently practised; it is about whether evolutionary principles have the dire political implications they have been accused of having.
Ironically, Steven's comments are a compelling example of the validity of Mercier and Sperber's ideas in The Enigma of Reason, which are rooted in evolutionary theory.
Funny how a critique of evolutionary thinking ends up coming full circle, unintentionally reinforcing it.