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Shulamis's avatar

Yup 💯! The hate article on Taylor Swift for finding her true love, trying to say that her album wasn’t as good after she met Travis. What?? Ophelia is a brilliant song! And get this: it was written by Kat Rosenfeld, who I normally really enjoy. 🤷‍♀️ go figure. This shit is so complex.

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William's avatar

Rob—question for you (or anyone else in the comments): what does one say to the argument that these ultimate causes, such as mate suppression, are basically unfalsifiable, “just-so” stories (and therefore all that really matters is the proximal cause one can identify in oneself)?

I guess one could cite a combination of behavior in primates, as well as counterfactuals (like your point about the abundance of “red flag” articles and the dearth of “green flags”). I just can see a sharp interlocutor raising an eyebrow and saying “this sounds like you are attributing motives to me that you have no real evidence for except for a story that casts me in a rather unflattering light.” And I’d frankly not really know what to say back, except that this seems like a plausible cause this particular constellation of behaviors and cultural phenomena.

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