Identifying the “Grand Challenge” in a Specialty Grand Challenge Article, Peter K. Jonason, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Western Sydney University, explains: If one assumes, like evolutionary psychologists do, that psychological systems are biological and physical (i.e., no ethereal concept of mind) in nature, evolutionary models must apply to the brain and its sequalae. However, since at least Descartes and, perhaps as far back as Plato, a mind-body dualism has existed whereby the mind (i.e., psyche) has been treated as distinct from the body and there is a tendency to treat humans as distinct from “animals” in some form of implicit anthropocentrism which has led to psychological theories generally being developed in parallel deafness to biological theories (Jonason and Read More ›

In a coherent system, that would be a dilemma. As progressives turn and rend each other with increasing ferocity—as a break from attacking others— we learn that the engineer who was fired from Google for authoring the anti-diversity memo was relying on the principles of evolutionary psychology. From Nitasha Tiku at Wired: The 10-page missive was posted on an internal discussion board and went viral inside, and outside, the company Friday and Saturday. The document cited purported principles of evolutionary psychology to argue that women make up only 20 percent of Google’s technical staff because they are more interested in people rather than ideas, which the author considers an obstacle to being a good engineer. The author, James Damore, said Read More ›

No, look, we are just passing this on, on our way out to do chores.* From Angela Chen at The Verge: Donald Trump has only been president for two weeks, but if you’re not happy about the new administration, those 14 days might feel more like 14 years. That’s normal: our brains really do distort time based on how we’re feeling. It’s an evolutionary trick that was helpful when large predators lurked around every corner, but less helpful now as the days seem to drag by.More. Why do probable urbanites feel they intimately know what it would take to survive in the Old Stone Age? Skinny: It was never helpful not to have a good sense of time, just like Read More ›