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PZ Myers agrees with UD News on something, again

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Well, it is more or less the same subject

The last time we agreed was that New York Times’s David Brooks is a dreadful novelist. His stinker was an “evolutionary psychology” novel, a description which principally guarantees ballast under the thinking person’s canoe shed.

Anyway, Myers says,

I must have been taking a nap a couple of years ago. I just found this interesting discussion of EP by a psychologist, and I agree very much with it.

Evolutionary psychologists believe that the human mind works much like the body… that it is an information-processing system, with pre-specified psychological programs (or environmentally-triggered ones), adapted much like the rest of the body, to meet specific problems in our … More.

What’s mainly wrong with evolutionary psychology—and has probably largely killed it, apart from new atheist cults—can be summed up in one sentence: If no event between millions of years ago on the African savannah and today makes any difference to human behaviour, then evolution did not happen during that entire period.

But the evolutionary psychologists are, heart and soul, evolutionists. They think evolution happens.

Hmmmm.

But what the heck, they are also the arts faculty tax burdens.

Smart kids: DON’T pay for training from these people.

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Comments
SteRusJon - Both tree-swinging knuckle-draggers and modern humans have a social life and structure. It's not obvious to me that that would have changed a huge amount before the invention of agriculture, so why shouldn't there still be an evolutionary signal? Even our space stations show signs of our evolutionary past: they are designed for a species that used to live in a very different environment. (incidentally, I'm not sure how far back in our evolutionary past you would have to go to see tree-swinging. Jogging around savannas seems to be the preferred stereotype now)Bob O'H
September 14, 2015
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News @ 4 - No I'm not! I've no idea how you made that leap of illogic.Bob O'H
September 14, 2015
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Who cares what a crackpot thinks? Why this guy has any "scientific" credibility is lost to me. And when in debate, he thought no problem with whales "evolving" from a land based animal. (Simmons debate) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiZc4fg-L_4. Declaring victory in a "debate" without answering the many questions that need answering to make such unsubstantiated claims. Using childish semantics, trite observations and win at all cost rhetoric to put down legitimate questions regarding sacred nde claims. Then there are what I presume to be facts as presented here: http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2015/09/dr-sternberg-whale-evolution-and-living-waters/ I regard social "labels" as economic-political rhetoric. To me, if someone wants to call the Discovery Institute a "creationist" think tank it is irrelevant. As long as they present the facts that I can research and come to my own conclusions about. Personally I am sick and tired of people who claim to be "scientists" promoting heavily unsubstantiated claims about what the alleged mechanisms of nde can accomplish. And, in some part, because they have a problem with a creator? A true "scientist", to me, should have no prejudice. Or at least leave that out of any serious scientific discussions. The overwhelming evidence seems to be that "guidance" of some kind is necessary to move chemicals through the laws of nature along to what we observe in living systems. And regardless of any "save" and "build-upon" notion of developmental accumulations.bpragmatic
September 13, 2015
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"That doesn’t mean nothing happened since then, just not enough to obscure any ancient signal." Yeah, right! In those purported millions of years, hominins, so the story goes, went from tree-swinging, knuckle draggers without the sense to get in out of the rain to mental, societal and craft skills capable of building and inhabiting space stations. And somehow, those that still swing from trees and drag their knuckles inform who and what we are with a signal that can be heard above the symphony that is humankind. Sorry, I don't buy it. But, I do have some oceanfront property just outside Topeka. Bob, you interested? StephenSteRusJon
September 13, 2015
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Bob O'H at 3, what you are telling us is that they do not have a discipline. They may have funding, but not a discipline. Thanks!News
September 13, 2015
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That doesn't mean nothing happened since then, just not enough to obscure any ancient signal.Bob O'H
September 13, 2015
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Bob O'H at 1: But evo psychs are committed to the prop that we can predict people's behaviour based on what happened back then. Speculation on that is their evidence base.News
September 13, 2015
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If no event between millions of years ago on the African savannah and today makes any difference to human behaviour, then evolution did not happen during that entire period.
Isn't the opposite actually true? If no event made a difference, then human behaviour is as it was then, i.e. it has not changed (and has not evolved). OTOH if some event has made a difference, then presumably human behaviour has changed, i.e. it has evolved.Bob O'H
September 13, 2015
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