Thank you for your perspective! I sensed that there is more to evolutionary theory than meets the (layman's) eye. Sadly, I think most people are introduced to it in the distorted and antiquated way that the manosphere portrays it to be and then don't learn anything else to challenge it. They hear about how evolution harms us (like with t…
Thank you for your perspective! I sensed that there is more to evolutionary theory than meets the (layman's) eye. Sadly, I think most people are introduced to it in the distorted and antiquated way that the manosphere portrays it to be and then don't learn anything else to challenge it. They hear about how evolution harms us (like with the 20th-century eugenics movement), but not much about how it helps us. What do you think?
I think it is a damn shame how evolutionary theory is misrepresented. Evolutionary theory is to biology as Newton's Laws are to physics, a foundation. And biology has to be a foundation of the "human sciences". Because we are evolved animals.
What exactly that means is incredibly important and incredibly contentious. Lots of smart people have been accused of believing that "humans only evolved from the neck down." It's a nice line, but inaccurate. What I think is true is that they believe that over the course of human evolution, the brain was cleansed of most predilections and has turned into the equivalent of a general purpose computer. It will run any program that "society" or "the environment" loads into it.
This means that most bad things are the result of bad environment, bad socialization, bad social structures. Which is actually a heart-warming thing to believe because it means you can solve most problems by changing the environment, socialization, social structures, etc.
Some people, especially evolutionary psychology people, piss on that wonderful confection by saying that lots of bad things happen because that's just the way humans are. Some people are just a lot smarter or a lot stupider. Lots of people can't successfully go to college, or even actually learn a significant fraction of what state departments of education say they are supposed to learn (when states actually tried to test that, they found shockingly high numbers failing, so they stopped testing) We have a strong predilection to divide the world into good "us" and bad "them". Or, pace Joyce Benenson's "Warriors and Worriers", women and men have (on average) different predilections about a lot of things.
We humans have a wonderful predilection to obey rules and to co-operate, but that means we go along with bad laws and customs. One of our most visible co-operations is in the armed forces, where people will kill and die for their buddies.
I fear I'm getting carried away. Steve Stewart-Williams "The Ape That Understood the Universe" is a good introduction to co-operation, evolutionary psychology, and similar things. I found the meme chapter not real convincing. To the extent that meme theory is right, it seems to me to be "old wine in new bottles". In economic terms, it says that we can't just look at the "supply side" of ideas, practices, etc. We also have to think about "demand". What new ideas do people want to believe, what new practices fit in with what they want, etc.
I’m glad we mostly agree. Please don’t think you’re getting carried away! I appreciate when people want to speak in depth on a topic, and not stop the inquiry for the sake of polite conversation.
I don’t know about you, but I come at this topic for a more social/ positive psych perspective, and say that it’s difficult, but not impossible to change the environment someone is in for someone to change for the better, albeit at a smaller, personal scale. I don’t accept that the evidence for refusal to change because “it’s just how humans are.” And correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like much economic theory, especially of the past, tends overemphasize human psychology in the strictest behavioral sense, or what I guess you would call on the “supply side.” Or maybe you’re just reiterating what Steve Stewart Williams is writing about, and I’m missing that?
Also, could you say more about how states have stopped standardized testing in light of the societal problems concerning literacy? Because what I hear ad nauseam from the literature is that states test too much!
I'd love to answer your question but I'm not at all sure what you mean when you say, "it seems like much economic theory, especially of the past, tends overemphasize human psychology in the strictest behavioral sense, or what I guess you would call on the “supply side.”"
I said I come to evolution/behavior/ecology/biology from an economic perspective but I've probably moved out of the economic mainstream. Of course, I think that means I'm wiser and less parochial :)
I should mention that for an important part of my life I was a high school science teacher (physics and physical science). This may sound cynical but ...
Teachers are incredibly scared that their students will not be able to pass outside tests. That is because they know that their students do not learn much--if by "learn" you mean understand for an extended period of time.
Instead, what happens is this. The year is divided into "units" of one to three weeks. During that time, students listen, do worksheets, maybe do projects or various classroom activities. Then at the end, the teacher reviews, being sure to hit everything that will be on unit test and not much that won't. Young people have good short term memories and most will remember enough to pass the test the next day. If not, the teacher may "scale" the scores because if she fails too many students, she will be called a bad teacher and get a bad schedule the next year or not be retained. The next year, she will try new things to get the student to understand but it won't work so, if possible, she will change the test to make it easier to pass. Or perhaps come up with something that can be graded subjectively so enough kids pass. More experienced teachers can help with this. For one thing, they know what proportion of students can be failed without incurring the wrath of the higher ups.
Most of the material in any one unit will not be mentioned again and within a few months, most of it will be forgotten. But the teacher can say, "they passed the test, so they must know it." Most teachers know deep down that that is b.s. (All teachers know that knowledge "decays" over summer but the official line is that's because they aren't in school. Yes, but not being in school is just a special case of not using the knowledge after the test.)
So when around the turn of the century states started giving subject matter tests that students might need to graduate, the scores were terrible. And of course teachers freaked. They would be blamed, though the problem is that the state expects young people to learn way, way more than they ever reasonably will. States responded by lowering the passing scores and making the tests easier and often doing away with them entirely.
Sure teachers complain about those tests. They take up time and generally the results aren't back in time to provide any useful information during that school year. BUT TEACHERS GIVE TESTS ALL THE TIME. They are not opposed to tests. They are opposed to tests made up by other people. But the states tell each teacher what the students are supposed to learn. I think every state now has state "standards" which prescribe a curriculum in just about every course, and also say what courses must be taken and passed to get a diploma. It hardly seems unfair for the state to try to find out if the students are actually learning what they are supposed to. But nobody, I mean NOBODY in the education industry wants to hear just how little they are.
I think of the scene in "A Few Good Men." Tom Cruise character: "I want the truth." Jack Nicholson character: "You can't handle the truth!"
Thank you for your perspective! I sensed that there is more to evolutionary theory than meets the (layman's) eye. Sadly, I think most people are introduced to it in the distorted and antiquated way that the manosphere portrays it to be and then don't learn anything else to challenge it. They hear about how evolution harms us (like with the 20th-century eugenics movement), but not much about how it helps us. What do you think?
I think it is a damn shame how evolutionary theory is misrepresented. Evolutionary theory is to biology as Newton's Laws are to physics, a foundation. And biology has to be a foundation of the "human sciences". Because we are evolved animals.
What exactly that means is incredibly important and incredibly contentious. Lots of smart people have been accused of believing that "humans only evolved from the neck down." It's a nice line, but inaccurate. What I think is true is that they believe that over the course of human evolution, the brain was cleansed of most predilections and has turned into the equivalent of a general purpose computer. It will run any program that "society" or "the environment" loads into it.
This means that most bad things are the result of bad environment, bad socialization, bad social structures. Which is actually a heart-warming thing to believe because it means you can solve most problems by changing the environment, socialization, social structures, etc.
Some people, especially evolutionary psychology people, piss on that wonderful confection by saying that lots of bad things happen because that's just the way humans are. Some people are just a lot smarter or a lot stupider. Lots of people can't successfully go to college, or even actually learn a significant fraction of what state departments of education say they are supposed to learn (when states actually tried to test that, they found shockingly high numbers failing, so they stopped testing) We have a strong predilection to divide the world into good "us" and bad "them". Or, pace Joyce Benenson's "Warriors and Worriers", women and men have (on average) different predilections about a lot of things.
We humans have a wonderful predilection to obey rules and to co-operate, but that means we go along with bad laws and customs. One of our most visible co-operations is in the armed forces, where people will kill and die for their buddies.
I fear I'm getting carried away. Steve Stewart-Williams "The Ape That Understood the Universe" is a good introduction to co-operation, evolutionary psychology, and similar things. I found the meme chapter not real convincing. To the extent that meme theory is right, it seems to me to be "old wine in new bottles". In economic terms, it says that we can't just look at the "supply side" of ideas, practices, etc. We also have to think about "demand". What new ideas do people want to believe, what new practices fit in with what they want, etc.
I’m glad we mostly agree. Please don’t think you’re getting carried away! I appreciate when people want to speak in depth on a topic, and not stop the inquiry for the sake of polite conversation.
I don’t know about you, but I come at this topic for a more social/ positive psych perspective, and say that it’s difficult, but not impossible to change the environment someone is in for someone to change for the better, albeit at a smaller, personal scale. I don’t accept that the evidence for refusal to change because “it’s just how humans are.” And correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like much economic theory, especially of the past, tends overemphasize human psychology in the strictest behavioral sense, or what I guess you would call on the “supply side.” Or maybe you’re just reiterating what Steve Stewart Williams is writing about, and I’m missing that?
Also, could you say more about how states have stopped standardized testing in light of the societal problems concerning literacy? Because what I hear ad nauseam from the literature is that states test too much!
I'd love to answer your question but I'm not at all sure what you mean when you say, "it seems like much economic theory, especially of the past, tends overemphasize human psychology in the strictest behavioral sense, or what I guess you would call on the “supply side.”"
I said I come to evolution/behavior/ecology/biology from an economic perspective but I've probably moved out of the economic mainstream. Of course, I think that means I'm wiser and less parochial :)
I should mention that for an important part of my life I was a high school science teacher (physics and physical science). This may sound cynical but ...
Teachers are incredibly scared that their students will not be able to pass outside tests. That is because they know that their students do not learn much--if by "learn" you mean understand for an extended period of time.
Instead, what happens is this. The year is divided into "units" of one to three weeks. During that time, students listen, do worksheets, maybe do projects or various classroom activities. Then at the end, the teacher reviews, being sure to hit everything that will be on unit test and not much that won't. Young people have good short term memories and most will remember enough to pass the test the next day. If not, the teacher may "scale" the scores because if she fails too many students, she will be called a bad teacher and get a bad schedule the next year or not be retained. The next year, she will try new things to get the student to understand but it won't work so, if possible, she will change the test to make it easier to pass. Or perhaps come up with something that can be graded subjectively so enough kids pass. More experienced teachers can help with this. For one thing, they know what proportion of students can be failed without incurring the wrath of the higher ups.
Most of the material in any one unit will not be mentioned again and within a few months, most of it will be forgotten. But the teacher can say, "they passed the test, so they must know it." Most teachers know deep down that that is b.s. (All teachers know that knowledge "decays" over summer but the official line is that's because they aren't in school. Yes, but not being in school is just a special case of not using the knowledge after the test.)
So when around the turn of the century states started giving subject matter tests that students might need to graduate, the scores were terrible. And of course teachers freaked. They would be blamed, though the problem is that the state expects young people to learn way, way more than they ever reasonably will. States responded by lowering the passing scores and making the tests easier and often doing away with them entirely.
Sure teachers complain about those tests. They take up time and generally the results aren't back in time to provide any useful information during that school year. BUT TEACHERS GIVE TESTS ALL THE TIME. They are not opposed to tests. They are opposed to tests made up by other people. But the states tell each teacher what the students are supposed to learn. I think every state now has state "standards" which prescribe a curriculum in just about every course, and also say what courses must be taken and passed to get a diploma. It hardly seems unfair for the state to try to find out if the students are actually learning what they are supposed to. But nobody, I mean NOBODY in the education industry wants to hear just how little they are.
I think of the scene in "A Few Good Men." Tom Cruise character: "I want the truth." Jack Nicholson character: "You can't handle the truth!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk