Ha! What do phychologists know about evolution anyway?

While I don’t have an evolutionary biologists knowledge of evolution, I know as much as any other reasonably well educated non-biologist.

Jesse –

Is there anything that isn’t physics, that qualifies as science in your world? Because there aren’t any theories out there that have the predictive power of what shape the trajectory of a tossed ball will make. If, on the other hand, you accept that most science is about best evidence, psychology actually makes a whole hell of a lot of predictions about human behavior in a variety of contexts. And really, what we do know is rather remarkable, given the innumerable variables involved in human behavior.

Evolutionary psychology has the problem that too often the people doing it base their premise on a very narrow range of societal possibilities).

No. Evolutionary psychology has the problem of being inundated with fucking morons who believe that science = pretending that commonsensical notions that support their race/sex based biases, based on Western ideals – for the most part, white undergrad ideals. What really sucks about that, is that evo-psych actually has valid purposes that are rather sullied by the prominence of the fucking asshats.

There is interesting and important work being done in the field that is breaking us out of the monocultural mentality that has plagued psychology from the very beginning. We are learning both about what seem to be intercultural universals, and how different cultures express and manage psychopathologies. Indeed this is the frontier on which we are most likely going to be able to create teh most comprehensive and accurate theories governing human behavior.

The difference between what I am going to be engaged in and what the asshats are doing, is that we don’t actually want to make absolute statements about the evolutionary nature of the behaviors we explore. We are far more interested in what actually is likely universal and how certain neuropathologies likely developed – and why they might have developed.

If you think that science is about what we can easily know and understand, then not only is psychology not science, but neither is biology. If however, you believe that science is a method by which to understand and know, then psychology is just as valid a science as the bio-sciences.

Christ, the guy seems to have it in for black folks in particular.

@sailor — evolutionary psychology is like its cousin psychology — not really a science yet, as it has no real predictive power that defines a good theory.

(That is, there is no psychological theory of behavior I am aware of that predicts anything about people in the same general way that physics predicts a ball will make a sort-of-parabola when you toss it. Evolutionary psychology has the problem that too often the people doing it base their premise on a very narrow range of societal possibilities).

The name of the publisher, by the way, is “books”

Which is likely Japanese for something … not sure what, though.

Pseudonyms are fine for fiction and maybe for biographies. But any book that purports to “present facts” needs a real name if the writer wants any credibility. Even the idots who wrote “The Bell Curve” put their real names on it.

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“Richard Tokumei” is the pen name of a ‘writer/editor in Southern California [with] degrees in Humanities and Phychology from the University of California Berkeley

Ha! What do phychologists know about evolution anyway?

Really?

….Sounds pretty appalling. I’m sure my beloved family will be quoting it at me any day now.