Comments on: Evolution of the Mind: Fallacies of Psychology

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:29:13 +0000

I love a good smackdown of evolutionary psychology. It fills me with geeky glee.

Thanks, coops!

By: Theresa

Theresa — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:21:30 +0000

“…that our minds have not evolved much since the Stone Age….”

Au contraire:

The 10,000 Year Explosion

By: Bruce Hood

Bruce Hood — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:56:25 +0000

This is clear evidence of some innate structuring of the mind (see Chomksy and language or Spelke, Pinker etc). The problem is when claims are made that go beyond the verifiable evidence. Just because something is universal and widespread, doesn’t make it evolutionary endowed..(ie. religions). Rather they may build on other mechanisms that were actually selected for. So that’s part of the problem… untangling the mess of culture and genes.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:01:56 +0000

Enjoyed reading this. As someone interested but with very little in the way of formal psychology qualifications [just every day life and a GCSE taken at evening class when my son was a toddler to give my brain something to do other than build ever increasingly complex wooden train track layouts on the living room floor] it can sometimes be difficult to know from reports in the popular media whether what you are reading/hearing is based on good scientific evidence or just pure speculation. Evolutionary psychology appears to be one of those areas where exciting theories are reported as commonly accepted when clearly from this that is not the case.

Good to read an article such as this to remind me to keep my questioning head on and not be seduced by tempting theories.

By: Debra

Debra — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:29:03 +0000

There’s still a lot to be said for evolutionary psychology. I recommend the book “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters” by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa. It’s a fascinating, well-researched book that’s a great introduction to this field for the layman. From what I recall, it does not promote the so-called “Pop Evolutionary Psychology” concepts criticized in the article. The book is based on solid evidence, and a lot of its concepts jive with what you may already know about human nature–the book just explains WHY.

By: Ms G

Ms G — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:59:51 +0000

I’m not even sure if we are the same as those in the back … the same species … the missing link … maybe we just got dumped here by a species from up there .. or we crashed … whatever .. or just another specie that popped up. If we look at the single cell organism .. than we def. did expand ourselves a bit .. and needed to have larger brains to do the stuff to survive.

It’s not the brain that evolved .. but the surroundings that ask for another way of dealing with it. And some lazy bums who had a little too much time on their hands and started pondering upon things, researching, brainstorming, checking.
None of us will get credit for the so called evolving of our brains .. it’s something that maybe developed over a very long period … if you want to call it evolving .. if it like that. If you are very busy you will not have time to think about things … if you do have time to spare … does not make one more evolved than the other. You will just use your brain for several things. Will it become more shallow with time? That’s already the case for a lot of people .. user friendly things all over the place .. no need to know how it works internally .. machine dependent .. weakening our I’s, developing new I’s on top of the core I’s. MPS. LOL.

Maybe it annoys me that they still want to see our kind right now as so very much more intelligent … whereas they aren’t .. as they can’t even see that they did not achieve anything anymore than back then ..

it’s the first steps on a new route that count, the very first steps placed by none yet. All we do right now is built on the one before us .. which is not that hard. It’s not our own achievement, it’s of all of those before us + ourselves. Universe dealing with things over time. So dealing with .. not really evolving as what they should see as most significant.

All this intelligent data that is thought up by lots of people is not even stored in our own brains (we’ve got the internet, who needs the brain storage …). We’ve got our specialisms. But we hardly ever become one with it. And it will go out of our brain before we die … therefor evolvement of brain will not happen .. we adapt from another point of view and learn to use brain/body in other ways.

So, now I’m going for one of those things created by evolved brains … a cigarette ……………………. and ponder upon all these things in this world … chewing on my gum like crazy (stimulates the brain) …

Gazing up … please beam me up Scotty!