Interesting read, as always, Rob. I’m curious about how theories survive. It seems like the ones that do are written by the best storytellers. Plausibility suggestions are the play of the day. They are like layers of stories told and retold into acceptable group think. Human psychological evolution seems very susceptible to imaginative myth making. All theories, of course, take a leap at some point where the missing evidence requires some measure of confabulation. So much of academia seems like that---groups of very imaginative storytellers striving to keep their myths alive. But I keep reading. I love stories true and otherwise.
Wow this is one of the most honest, balanced criticisms I’ve seen, of anything.
I stopped to think about what you said here.
Then I thought a couple things:
1. Any scientific discovery was formerly in the unknown, and couldn’t be accessed except for even a tiny morsel of a creative spark, such as the spark that leads a fiction author to begin a novel.
2. Then I thought of Barry and Seager lecturing on “schemas” as a truthful nugget of basis for what have been called stereotypes (which are like stories) in that they don’t contain the whole truth of a thing, just an intuitive initial read of a phenomenological situation unfolding in front of us.
Their example is that you walk into a large room in which everyone is dressed in black and most people are crying. Your starting assumption that dominates is that you just burst into a funeral.
That’s the “schema.”
As in science you could be wrong. But it’s a starting place for wondering more about the details and investigating your intuitive spark that could now be a hypothesis.
Perhaps it’s hard to literally investigate the hypothesis in evolutionary psychology generally but perhaps fossil records, accounts of factual events in written language etc.
In other words after an initial hypothesis it’s not the end of the “story.”
There needs to be peer review, “testing” the hypothesis, a search for the presence or absence of supporting facts and a reworking of the hypothesis based on that.
But it seems that “schemas” have some statistical validity at least as a start because they carry in them some statistical likelihood (even if rendered as the story “One day I burst into what appeared to be a funeral.”)
Without a creative spark of curiosity in science I think we have, well, nothing.
The “funeral” is then memorializing the death of discovery itself.
The quote above points out that human ancestors had “less interesting lives than we do.”- This holds up. I grew up in a small town with limited access to exciting things. We were bored. I had my first child at 16. When I go back to visit, there are young adults and teenagers who are pregnant, married, and raising families. This is not ideal, but it forms from less choice.
"Many young people today claim they aren’t having children because it’s expensive. They’ll say that baby boomers had it economically easier than them. It seems peculiar, though, to say because your life doesn’t measure up to a particularly unique and prosperous period of American history, you won’t have kids. Imagine someone in the Dark Ages in the year 936 living in squalor and filth saying, “Well, life nowadays isn’t very good, so I’m not having kids.” Life across history and prehistory mostly sucked."
Lately, I have been thinking that the advent of reliable birth control plus our affluence will result in a population bottleneck. No one is forcing people not to have kids, but that is the result that many are selecting. I can't help but think that theses choices will shape humanity. Will it be pro-social (the people that have kids are the people that really want to have kids) or impulsive (the people that have kids did not have the planning skills to avoid them)? Before reliable birth control, horny teenagers would quickly become parents and, by then, not be able to select a different life. Now, there are so many options, including social ideologies and self-identifications that are less likely to produce children. These ways of thinking are, perhaps, luxury beliefs in that they are not easily available to parents. I'm thinking here not of the divide between those with or without money but of the divide between those with or without kids.
I am a bit pessimistic on this concept. It seems like most of the brightest and most talented or gifted young people I know have no intention of having children; and are also the most vigilant about effective birth control. And the ones who are having the most babies are the ones who can’t seem to remember to take the pill every day or to remember to buy condoms; and who are also the most prone to having sex with charming but unsuitable men.
This phenomenon could be one of the causes for the sharp increase in ADHD - I believe it has been shown in studies that people with ADHD tend to have more children, due to higher libido, impulsive natures and tendency to forget about contraception.
(Full disclosure: I have been diagnosed with ADHD and have three
Freudian at the end there! "The practice of abandoning newborns that arrived at inopportune times" -- There's been a recent rethinking of prehistoric settlement patterns. Humans have been pausing in their nomadic hunter-gathering to build homesteads and hamlets, leaving them behind years or decades later. Children are a very good reason to do this. A crying infant is an advertisement to predators and competitors for resources. Settlement allows for the accumulation and protection of children and other resources. (Yes, think of kids as resources.) Breaking camp, these units set out to meet and mix and trade resources (marriages).
I am glad you mentioned the attractiveness bias. I was very unattractive in middle school and high school. That coupled with my shyness and physical clumsiness put me at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Between 17 and 19 I lost my braces, glasses and 15 pounds. It wasn’t until I was in my 20th year that I was noticed as a sexual being (by women and men). It took me awhile to acclimatize to the attention due to my shyness.
I have to assume the hypothesis that crying babies show vigor was not made by someone around a baby. In my experience, the crying noise sounds so horrible that you do what needs to be done to make the crying stop.
My eldest two babies were crabby, fussy babies who seemed to enjoy screaming constantly for no apparent reason. Many of my elderly relatives and acquaintances told me that it is good for babies to cry, it shows they have strong lungs. I also heard older women state that it’s fine to let baby cry for a while, she’s “exercising her lungs”. So at least in the earlier parts of the 20th century, fussy babies seemed to be associated with vigor to some extent.
Thankfully, baby #3 was much calmer and easier to soothe. However, all of my babies were deeply suspicious of anyone who was not me or my husband. I never worried about them being kidnapped - I was pretty sure any baby’ snatcher would return them immediately when they realized how loud and long they could scream!
I will note that however much we counsel the young that they should become established and stable before having children, the main thing you need is sheer physical energy. If a child has very minimal needs met, they don't know they are poor.
We talk about how much abortion and birth control have shaped things, but at about the same time, reliable paternity testing came in. No one much talks about it, but I suspect it is just as big, culturally.
While it is true that modern humans are descended from women who had children (as opposed to those who didn’t), those women had children under vastly different circumstances.
In the patriarchal state of nature it was hard for women to avoid becoming pregnant so the optimal strategy is to be anti-natal to increase mate quality as much as possible.
I wonder how much infant abandonment occurred when a woman became pregnant by a man and then partnered with a higher status one shortly thereafter.
Fascinating read. I appreciate how the evolutionary logic can preserve and seemingly enhance the concepts I always appreciated about psychodynamic theories. The evolutionary framework provides (to me) a more grounded frame than most of theories from that family of thought.
This comment is dangerously racial in its take, but... the first section of this made me wonder about parenting in poor, urban, African-American neighborhoods. Is it possible that the most violent, predatory males are passing along their genes at an unusually high rate thus making the next generation more predisposed to dark-triad traits?
Incorporating evolutionary psychology ideas like these in the therapy room would help reduce shame and anxiety (e.g new parents), increasing mindfulness and self compassion instead (it’s not you, it’s your software!). Too bad the majority of therapists (less so the psychoanalysts) are trained on blank slatism.
Fantastic, Rob. I offer the following excerpt regarding evolution:
MODIFICATION OF SPECIES
We have now come to the question of the modification of species and of organic development: that is to say, to the point of inquiring whether man's descent is from the animal.
This theory has found credence in the minds of some European philosophers, and it is now very difficult to make its falseness understood, but in the future it will become evident and clear, and the European philosophers will themselves realize its untruth. For verily it is an evident error. When man looks at the beings with a penetrating regard, and attentively examines the condition of existences, and when he sees the state, the organization, and the perfection of the world, he will be convinced that in the possible world there is nothing more wonderful than that which already exists. For all existing beings, terrestrial and celestial, as well as this limitless space and all that is in it, have been created and organized, composed, arranged, and perfected as they ought to be; the universe has no imperfection; so that if all beings became pure intelligence and reflected for ever and ever, it is impossible that they could imagine anything better than that which exists.
If, however, the creation in the past had not been adorned with utmost perfection, then existence would have been imperfect and meaningless, and in this case creation would have been incomplete. This question needs to be considered with the greatest attention and thought. For example, imagine that the world of possibility-- that is, the world of existence--resembles in a general way the body of man. If this composition, organization, perfection, beauty, and completeness which now exist in the human body were different, it would be absolute imperfection. Now, if we imagine a time when man belonged to the animal world, or when he was merely an animal, we shall find that existence would have been imperfect; that is to say, there would have been no man, and this chief member, which in the body of the world is like the brain and mind in man, would have been missing. The world would then have been quite imperfect. It is thus proved that if there had been a time when man was in the animal kingdom, the perfection of existence would have been destroyed; for man is the greatest member of this world, and if the body was without this chief member, surely it would be imperfect. We consider man as the greatest member because, among the creatures, he is the sum of all existing perfections. When we speak of man, we mean the perfect one, the foremost individual in the world, who is the sum of spiritual and apparent perfections, and who is like the sun among the beings. Then imagine that at one time the sun did not exist, but that it was a planet--surely at such a time the relations of existence would be disordered. How can such a thing be imagined? To a man who examines the world of existence, what we have said is sufficient.
There is another more subtle proof: all these endless beings which inhabit the world, whether man, animal, vegetable, mineral---whatever they may bc---are surely, each one of them, composed of elements. There is no doubt that this perfection which is in all beings, is caused by the creation of God from the composing elements, by their appropriate mingling and proportionate quantities, the mode of their composition, and the influence of other beings. For all beings are connected together like a chain, and reciprocal help, assistance, and influence belonging to the properties of things, are the causes of the existence, development, and growth of created beings. It is confirmed through evidences and proofs that every being universally acts upon other beings, either absolutely or through association. Finally, the perfection of each individual being, that is to say the perfection which you now see in man or apart from him, with regard to their atoms, members, or powers, is due to the composition of the elements, to their measure, to their balance, to the mode of their combination, and to mutual influence. When all these are gathered together, then man exists.
As the perfection of man is entirely due to the composition of the atoms of the elements, to their measure, to the method of their combination, and to the mutual influence and action of the different beings--then, since man was produced ten or a hundred thousand years ago from these earthly elements with the same measure and balance, the same method of combination and mingling, and the same influence of the other beings, exactly the same man existed then as now. This is evident and not worth debating. A thousand million years hence, if these elements of man are gathered together and arranged in this special proportion, and if the elements are combined according to the same method, and if they are affected by the same influence of other beings, exactly the same man will exist. For example, if after a hundred thousand years there is oil, fire, a wick, a lamp, and the lighter of the lamp---briefly, if there are all the necessaries which now exist, exactly the same lamp will be obtained.
These are conclusive and evident facts. But the arguments which these European philosophers have used raise doubtful proofs and are not conclusive.
I enjoy your increasingly frequent references to the "equity-obsessed chattering class".
Interesting read, as always, Rob. I’m curious about how theories survive. It seems like the ones that do are written by the best storytellers. Plausibility suggestions are the play of the day. They are like layers of stories told and retold into acceptable group think. Human psychological evolution seems very susceptible to imaginative myth making. All theories, of course, take a leap at some point where the missing evidence requires some measure of confabulation. So much of academia seems like that---groups of very imaginative storytellers striving to keep their myths alive. But I keep reading. I love stories true and otherwise.
Wow this is one of the most honest, balanced criticisms I’ve seen, of anything.
I stopped to think about what you said here.
Then I thought a couple things:
1. Any scientific discovery was formerly in the unknown, and couldn’t be accessed except for even a tiny morsel of a creative spark, such as the spark that leads a fiction author to begin a novel.
2. Then I thought of Barry and Seager lecturing on “schemas” as a truthful nugget of basis for what have been called stereotypes (which are like stories) in that they don’t contain the whole truth of a thing, just an intuitive initial read of a phenomenological situation unfolding in front of us.
Their example is that you walk into a large room in which everyone is dressed in black and most people are crying. Your starting assumption that dominates is that you just burst into a funeral.
That’s the “schema.”
As in science you could be wrong. But it’s a starting place for wondering more about the details and investigating your intuitive spark that could now be a hypothesis.
Perhaps it’s hard to literally investigate the hypothesis in evolutionary psychology generally but perhaps fossil records, accounts of factual events in written language etc.
In other words after an initial hypothesis it’s not the end of the “story.”
There needs to be peer review, “testing” the hypothesis, a search for the presence or absence of supporting facts and a reworking of the hypothesis based on that.
But it seems that “schemas” have some statistical validity at least as a start because they carry in them some statistical likelihood (even if rendered as the story “One day I burst into what appeared to be a funeral.”)
Without a creative spark of curiosity in science I think we have, well, nothing.
The “funeral” is then memorializing the death of discovery itself.
The quote above points out that human ancestors had “less interesting lives than we do.”- This holds up. I grew up in a small town with limited access to exciting things. We were bored. I had my first child at 16. When I go back to visit, there are young adults and teenagers who are pregnant, married, and raising families. This is not ideal, but it forms from less choice.
"Many young people today claim they aren’t having children because it’s expensive. They’ll say that baby boomers had it economically easier than them. It seems peculiar, though, to say because your life doesn’t measure up to a particularly unique and prosperous period of American history, you won’t have kids. Imagine someone in the Dark Ages in the year 936 living in squalor and filth saying, “Well, life nowadays isn’t very good, so I’m not having kids.” Life across history and prehistory mostly sucked."
Lately, I have been thinking that the advent of reliable birth control plus our affluence will result in a population bottleneck. No one is forcing people not to have kids, but that is the result that many are selecting. I can't help but think that theses choices will shape humanity. Will it be pro-social (the people that have kids are the people that really want to have kids) or impulsive (the people that have kids did not have the planning skills to avoid them)? Before reliable birth control, horny teenagers would quickly become parents and, by then, not be able to select a different life. Now, there are so many options, including social ideologies and self-identifications that are less likely to produce children. These ways of thinking are, perhaps, luxury beliefs in that they are not easily available to parents. I'm thinking here not of the divide between those with or without money but of the divide between those with or without kids.
I am a bit pessimistic on this concept. It seems like most of the brightest and most talented or gifted young people I know have no intention of having children; and are also the most vigilant about effective birth control. And the ones who are having the most babies are the ones who can’t seem to remember to take the pill every day or to remember to buy condoms; and who are also the most prone to having sex with charming but unsuitable men.
This phenomenon could be one of the causes for the sharp increase in ADHD - I believe it has been shown in studies that people with ADHD tend to have more children, due to higher libido, impulsive natures and tendency to forget about contraception.
(Full disclosure: I have been diagnosed with ADHD and have three
children).
Freudian at the end there! "The practice of abandoning newborns that arrived at inopportune times" -- There's been a recent rethinking of prehistoric settlement patterns. Humans have been pausing in their nomadic hunter-gathering to build homesteads and hamlets, leaving them behind years or decades later. Children are a very good reason to do this. A crying infant is an advertisement to predators and competitors for resources. Settlement allows for the accumulation and protection of children and other resources. (Yes, think of kids as resources.) Breaking camp, these units set out to meet and mix and trade resources (marriages).
I am glad you mentioned the attractiveness bias. I was very unattractive in middle school and high school. That coupled with my shyness and physical clumsiness put me at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Between 17 and 19 I lost my braces, glasses and 15 pounds. It wasn’t until I was in my 20th year that I was noticed as a sexual being (by women and men). It took me awhile to acclimatize to the attention due to my shyness.
I have to assume the hypothesis that crying babies show vigor was not made by someone around a baby. In my experience, the crying noise sounds so horrible that you do what needs to be done to make the crying stop.
My eldest two babies were crabby, fussy babies who seemed to enjoy screaming constantly for no apparent reason. Many of my elderly relatives and acquaintances told me that it is good for babies to cry, it shows they have strong lungs. I also heard older women state that it’s fine to let baby cry for a while, she’s “exercising her lungs”. So at least in the earlier parts of the 20th century, fussy babies seemed to be associated with vigor to some extent.
Thankfully, baby #3 was much calmer and easier to soothe. However, all of my babies were deeply suspicious of anyone who was not me or my husband. I never worried about them being kidnapped - I was pretty sure any baby’ snatcher would return them immediately when they realized how loud and long they could scream!
Lol, yes! I too gave birth to a car alarm! 😆
Fascinating post. Thanks for writing it.
Every post I read from Rob feels like a breath of fresh air.
Just so
I will note that however much we counsel the young that they should become established and stable before having children, the main thing you need is sheer physical energy. If a child has very minimal needs met, they don't know they are poor.
We talk about how much abortion and birth control have shaped things, but at about the same time, reliable paternity testing came in. No one much talks about it, but I suspect it is just as big, culturally.
While it is true that modern humans are descended from women who had children (as opposed to those who didn’t), those women had children under vastly different circumstances.
In the patriarchal state of nature it was hard for women to avoid becoming pregnant so the optimal strategy is to be anti-natal to increase mate quality as much as possible.
I wonder how much infant abandonment occurred when a woman became pregnant by a man and then partnered with a higher status one shortly thereafter.
Fascinating read. I appreciate how the evolutionary logic can preserve and seemingly enhance the concepts I always appreciated about psychodynamic theories. The evolutionary framework provides (to me) a more grounded frame than most of theories from that family of thought.
This comment is dangerously racial in its take, but... the first section of this made me wonder about parenting in poor, urban, African-American neighborhoods. Is it possible that the most violent, predatory males are passing along their genes at an unusually high rate thus making the next generation more predisposed to dark-triad traits?
Incorporating evolutionary psychology ideas like these in the therapy room would help reduce shame and anxiety (e.g new parents), increasing mindfulness and self compassion instead (it’s not you, it’s your software!). Too bad the majority of therapists (less so the psychoanalysts) are trained on blank slatism.
Fantastic, Rob. I offer the following excerpt regarding evolution:
MODIFICATION OF SPECIES
We have now come to the question of the modification of species and of organic development: that is to say, to the point of inquiring whether man's descent is from the animal.
This theory has found credence in the minds of some European philosophers, and it is now very difficult to make its falseness understood, but in the future it will become evident and clear, and the European philosophers will themselves realize its untruth. For verily it is an evident error. When man looks at the beings with a penetrating regard, and attentively examines the condition of existences, and when he sees the state, the organization, and the perfection of the world, he will be convinced that in the possible world there is nothing more wonderful than that which already exists. For all existing beings, terrestrial and celestial, as well as this limitless space and all that is in it, have been created and organized, composed, arranged, and perfected as they ought to be; the universe has no imperfection; so that if all beings became pure intelligence and reflected for ever and ever, it is impossible that they could imagine anything better than that which exists.
If, however, the creation in the past had not been adorned with utmost perfection, then existence would have been imperfect and meaningless, and in this case creation would have been incomplete. This question needs to be considered with the greatest attention and thought. For example, imagine that the world of possibility-- that is, the world of existence--resembles in a general way the body of man. If this composition, organization, perfection, beauty, and completeness which now exist in the human body were different, it would be absolute imperfection. Now, if we imagine a time when man belonged to the animal world, or when he was merely an animal, we shall find that existence would have been imperfect; that is to say, there would have been no man, and this chief member, which in the body of the world is like the brain and mind in man, would have been missing. The world would then have been quite imperfect. It is thus proved that if there had been a time when man was in the animal kingdom, the perfection of existence would have been destroyed; for man is the greatest member of this world, and if the body was without this chief member, surely it would be imperfect. We consider man as the greatest member because, among the creatures, he is the sum of all existing perfections. When we speak of man, we mean the perfect one, the foremost individual in the world, who is the sum of spiritual and apparent perfections, and who is like the sun among the beings. Then imagine that at one time the sun did not exist, but that it was a planet--surely at such a time the relations of existence would be disordered. How can such a thing be imagined? To a man who examines the world of existence, what we have said is sufficient.
There is another more subtle proof: all these endless beings which inhabit the world, whether man, animal, vegetable, mineral---whatever they may bc---are surely, each one of them, composed of elements. There is no doubt that this perfection which is in all beings, is caused by the creation of God from the composing elements, by their appropriate mingling and proportionate quantities, the mode of their composition, and the influence of other beings. For all beings are connected together like a chain, and reciprocal help, assistance, and influence belonging to the properties of things, are the causes of the existence, development, and growth of created beings. It is confirmed through evidences and proofs that every being universally acts upon other beings, either absolutely or through association. Finally, the perfection of each individual being, that is to say the perfection which you now see in man or apart from him, with regard to their atoms, members, or powers, is due to the composition of the elements, to their measure, to their balance, to the mode of their combination, and to mutual influence. When all these are gathered together, then man exists.
As the perfection of man is entirely due to the composition of the atoms of the elements, to their measure, to the method of their combination, and to the mutual influence and action of the different beings--then, since man was produced ten or a hundred thousand years ago from these earthly elements with the same measure and balance, the same method of combination and mingling, and the same influence of the other beings, exactly the same man existed then as now. This is evident and not worth debating. A thousand million years hence, if these elements of man are gathered together and arranged in this special proportion, and if the elements are combined according to the same method, and if they are affected by the same influence of other beings, exactly the same man will exist. For example, if after a hundred thousand years there is oil, fire, a wick, a lamp, and the lighter of the lamp---briefly, if there are all the necessaries which now exist, exactly the same lamp will be obtained.
These are conclusive and evident facts. But the arguments which these European philosophers have used raise doubtful proofs and are not conclusive.
-Some Answered Questions, pg 175-179