Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Thank you me from 16 years ago

I was arguing with a proponent of evolutionary psychology (like you do) and I needed to quickly find Marvin Harris's list of bio-psychological constants. I even looked on my own cultural materialism web site, (which sorely needs an upgrade) and for some reason it wasn't there. So I did a Google search on "bio-psychological constants, marvin harris" and what should turn up but my old web site!

I took it down long ago but part of it lives on at archive.is, which appears to be a German version of archive.org. I'm sure glad I put it there back in 1998, guess I knew it would come in handy some day.

I kind of feel like Bill and Ted.




More on the predestination paradox vis-a-vis Bill and Ted.

PS - here's the list of bio-psychological constants:
  1. People need to eat and will generally opt for diets that offer more rather than fewer calories and proteins and other nutrients.
  2. People cannot be totally inactive, but when confronted with a given task, they prefer to carry it out by expending less rather than more energy.
  3. People are highly sexed and generally find reinforcing pleasure from sexual intercourse -- more often from heterosexual intercourse.
  4. People need love and affection in order to feel secure and happy, and other things being equal, they will act to increase the love and affection which others give them.