I can't say I'm a big fan of Pinker. RationalWiki goes over the multiple reasons: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker
The biggest (non-personal) one though is that Evo Psych is garbage.
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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Oh my, what happened to rationalwiki? Reading that you wouldn't have the first clue about who Pinker is or what contributions he's made. It's just a list of quote articles from critics of varying levels of note.
His work on linguistics and cognition is seminal. I would heartily recommend "the language instinct" and "rationality".
On evo-pysch, lots of garbage gets published because the tabloids love "women enjoy shopping because science" stories, and the field itself suffers from charlatans that grift in it. The principle behind it, namely that animal behaviour is subject to evolutionary forces, however is of course true.
Sorry... you don't think printing what notable critics of Pinker say about him is relevant? Is his so-called science above criticism? Is the racism much of his so-called science is based upon also beyond criticism?
And no, evo psych is garbage because it's garbage. Or at least mostly garbage.
Let's start with the Center for Inquiry. I hope, as someone posting in a skeptic community, you consider them a valid source: https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2006/03/22164612/p23.pdf
But in case you don't, here's more, from numerous sources and of varying degrees of complexity:
https://philpapers.org/rec/ESMIEP-2
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10113342/
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/04/09/i-almost-felt-pity-for-evolutionary-psychology/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/201412/how-valid-is-evolutionary-psychology
Sorry... you don't think printing what notable critics of Pinker say about him is relevant?
It should not form 100% of an encyclopedia article about anyone. And they aren't notable, it seems as if tue one editor who's been running that page since last year added every possible article they found through Google.
It would be worth including his seminal work such as his 1990 paper on th evolution of language (worth a read)
Is his so-called science above criticism?
No one is above criticism but an encyclopedia is meant to be comprehensive.
Is the racism much of his so-called science is based upon also beyond criticism? And no, evo psych is garbage because it's garbage. Or at least mostly garbage.
Well now we're just being silly. You can't seriously believe that animal behaviour has no evolutionary component? You believe in souls instead?
Let's start with the Center for Inquiry. I hope, as someone posting in a skeptic community, you consider them a valid source: https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2006/03/22164612/p23.pdf
Well that's not CFI that's Skeptical Enquirer and it's an article from Massimo Pigliucci and the headline is subject to Betteridges law of headlines.
But in case you don't, here's spam
Please don't spam, I'd rather hear you articulate your reasons rather than resorting to other people to do the work for you.
(Although all those articles follow the same formula: find some garbage evopsych publications => conclude the whole premise is nonsense)
Evolutionary psychology is as scientific as phrenology.
That is rather unwarranted given its still an active field and is the only accepted explanation for the origin of animal behaviour.
is the only accepted explanation for the origin of animal behaviour.
This is not true. Ethology is the general study of animal behavior. Evolutionary Psychology is specific to human behavior and is not the only approach to studying it either. Sociobiology an example of a less criticized field studying human behavior based on evolution.
This is not true. Firstly, Evolutionary Psychology is not involved with "animal" behavior in general, it is specific to human psychology.
Most of the field focuses on primates because, unsurprisingly, that's where we find most of psychology. It is wrong to say it has nothing to do with animals.
Ethology is the general study of animal behavior.
And botany is the study of plants? Every field in biology overlaps with evolution.
Also Evolutionary Psychology is not the only approach to studying human behavior either.
That's not a challenge to the premise of evopsych. If anything it sort of supports it.
That’s not a challenge to the premise of evopsych. If anything it sort of supports it.
It was in response to your claim that Evolutionary Psychology is the "the only accepted explanation for the origin of animal behaviour." If you want to make that claim you need to support it with some kind of reference.
It was in response to your claim that Evolutionary Psychology is the "the only accepted explanation for the origin of animal behaviour."
Well it doesn't refute that.
If you want to make that claim you need to support it with some kind of reference.
Well ok, perhaps "only accepted explanation" was claiming too much given that a large proportion of the population believe in souls or pure blank-slatism for human behavior.
For the non-human animals though, it certainly isn't controversial to say evolution is the only explanation for the origin of behaviour. What else could it be?
it certainly isn't controversial to say evolution is the only explanation for the origin of behaviour. What else could it be?
there’s a lot to unpack here. firstly, there is more to human behavior than genetics/evolution, hence nature vs nurture. in other words our human experience determines our behavior in addition to genetics.
Secondly, that’s not the only claim or assumption of Evolutionary Psychology. There is lots of other stuff besides that statement that is controversial at best.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
Careful you almost misquoted me there
For the non-human animals, it certainly isn't controversial to say evolution is the only explanation for the origin of behaviour. What else could it be?
there’s a lot to unpack here. firstly, there is more to human behavior than genetics/evolution, hence nature vs nurture.
It's a jolly good thing I was talking about non-human animals then.
in other words our human experience determines our behavior in addition to genetics.
It's a common fallacy to suppose that because an behavioural adaption has a genetic basis that therefore having the genes determines the behaviour.
https://areomagazine.com/2019/08/20/seven-key-misconceptions-about-evolutionary-psychology/
Misconception #3 in the above.
Secondly, that’s not the only claim or assumption of Evolutionary Psychology. There is lots of other stuff besides that statement that is controversial at best.
Evolutionary Psychologists make claims, some of which yes are clearly lacking in explanatory power, evidence and predictions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
Yes I'm familiar with Wikipedia, if I'm just going to be talking to a search engine here I'm not terribly invested in continuing.
Garbage psuedointellectual analysis.
Absolutely ridiculous to compare the Warren Commission to established scientific theories. Months before Kennedy's assassination, Allen Dulles, the man who turned the CIA into an organization that specialized in assassinating world leaders and covering it up, was fired by JFK. After his death, Dulles was placed on Warren Commission, in charge of investigating the event. Aside from this blatant conflict of interest, the commission proceeded to make an absolute joke of the proceedings, with key evidence such as the bullet that killed him having a breach in the chain of custody. There are real causes to be suspicious of the official story, and it's not really possible for anyone to conduct an independent investigation, basically the whole thing requires the assumption that Dulles is above suspicion.
Science does not do that. In science, you don't have to trust any one individual, because experiments are meant to be replicated and subject to peer review. By placing these things on the same level, Pinker is lending credibility to the US government and intelligence community at the expense of science.
He then goes on to lend credence to ridiculous COVID conspiracy theories and minimizes far-right, pro-Trump conspiracy theories, including Alex Jones.
Then he starts talking about Russia, "You see that Russia has tsars, then the Soviet Union, then Putin, so there's this historical continuity there," which an absolutely insane thing to say, arguing that Russians are just innately prone to rejecting "Enlightenment values" and to "authoritarianism." It's an extremely trite and lazy analysis which simply doesn't care about the vast historical differences between those three forms of government of the vastly different philosophical framework behind each. Has Stephen Pinker considered the possibility that the reason smart people believe stupid things is that overconfidence causes them to make broad sweeping judgements about fields outside their expertise without doing a thorough investigation?
Stopped watching as they start going into AI, not worth my time.
So who really killed Kennedy?
Likely Lee Harvey Oswald, but that doesn't mean that he was acting alone. The fact that he was killed before he could testify could indicate a cover-up.
I believe that Dulles orchestrated the assassination. The CIA had been assassinating democratically elected leaders in every far corner of the globe, if they were willing to overthrow the government of Guatemala over some bananas, I find it hard to believe that they didn't have a plan for what to do in the event that a US president went against their interests.
Dulles had both the means and motive to pull it off and cover it up afterwards, that doesn't conclusively prove he did it, but it's enough to establish reasonable suspicion.
So you genuinely believe the conspiracy theory that the CIA was behind the Kennedy assassination?
That's got to be the OG of conspiracy theories.
I do. That something is a conspiracy theory does not make it false, conspiracies do happen. For a long time, it would've been a conspiracy theory to say that the CIA was behind the 1953 Iranian coup, for instance. They covered it up for decades before finally admitting to it. The person who first broke the Watergate story was a woman named Martha Mitchell, who was branded as crazy and delusional before it was revealed that she was right. The government's illegal mass surveillance program was long dismissed as a conspiracy theory before Edward Snowden came forward with proof.
Placing these sorts of things on the same level as things that are scientifically proven to be false is harmful, both because it gives undue credibility to the government, and detracts from the credibility of science. There are scientific means of proving that the moon landing was real, that 9/11 was not faked, that the earth is not flat, that evolution happens, etc. But those things are categorically different from reasonable speculation about what intelligence agencies may be up to behind closed doors, in the absence of conclusive proof.