Evolutionary Psychology: Redpill, Manosphere Nonsense
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 12/12/2023

Psychology is pseudoscience, behaviors, unlike limbs, are spectra and highly idiosyncratic. Replication crisis proves that behaviors are so mutable that they are nonrecurrent (on the fly). Confusing behaviors and routines.

Adaptation applies to populations, not to individuals (thus sociobiology and behavioral ecology are more scientific). It is totally automatic. It cannot take into account cognitions, emotions, beliefs, values, and mental health disorders (such as psychosis).

Each psychological process and behavior involve thousands of co-expressed genes.

Focus on reproduction and reproductive success is utterly delusional and counterfactual. Example: rape is a misogynistic power trip, not about reproduction or even sex.

Ignores the role of intangibles such as meaning, truth, security, or happiness. 

Domain (task) specific (modules) or domain general?

Computational models are behaviorist (input-processing-output). Dual Inheritance Theory DIT (Baldwin effect): genes+culture.

Determinism: stone age determined who we are (ignoring neuroplasticity).

We know very little about the environment in the past.

The conundrum of altruism: inclusive fitness applies only to relatives and reciprocity theories are counterfactual.

Exaptations, spandrels (byproducts), random variability are not adaptations but probably contribute more to survival.

Adaptations are complex, species universal, adaptively functional. Obligate (environment-invariant) or facultative. Most psychological adaptations are facultative.

Cultural universals are few and often confused with skills acquisition or conditioning (eg, via socialization and acculturation, social learning and modeling). Promiscuity as an example.

Environment of evolutionary adaptedness (recurrent selection pressures and boundary conditions) is retrodictive, teleological, and tautological. 
Concept of mismatch (between erstwhile adaptations and changing environments). 

Mismatch implies any number of possible original environments and explanations for the development of a trait. 

Even hunter-gatherers lived in settlements, with rudimentary agriculture, and art. 

Supernormal stimulus: impulse control.

Evo-devo (Evolutionary-Developmental Psychology): confusing biology with psychology (smiling, crying, facial expressions). This is an example of the pan-adaptationist fallacy. 

Function to form (problem to solution): uncertain paternity led to male romantic jealousy (but exists also in childless couples, reaction to catastrophized loss and the intimacy part of the sex).

Form to function (reverse engineering solution to problem): morning sickness to avoid ingestion of toxins (nonsense: it is bad even when not pregnant, it stop in the second trimester, is biological).

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