Sunday, February 11, 2018

Don't know much about history, don't know much biology

As I have discussed in this evo-psycho bro series, the bros like to throw out all considerations of history and I am currently examining their erasure of economics. 

Here they go again:






If you're going to base claims about the innate sexual tendencies of women by speculating about pre-historic behavior and then proclaiming "it is plausible" the most efficient way to dismiss the claim is to say: "no, it is not plausible."

We have reams and reams of data demonstrating that throughout human history men have controlled women's sexual expression through double-standards, women's economic disadvantage  etc etc.

And in fact there are some places in the world right now where little girls are sold to old men for a life of sexual slavery. And although I'm confident that evo-psychos can come up with a just-so "plausible" theory for why 12-year-old girls really want to fuck middle-aged men, in fact being forced to marry an older man is considered such a horrible fate by many young women they risk death to avoid it.

Only an evo-psycho bro would completely ignore patriarchy as the obvious explanation for greater variety in male sexual expression.

It takes two seconds to disprove the claim that contemporary women's sexual behaviors are the result of evolved differences:
Since 1990, notes the psychoanalyst and writer, the rate of married women who report they've been unfaithful has increased by 40 percent, while the rate among men has remained the same.
And this is only people who admit to adultery. And only married people who presumably have a greater commitment to the relationship than just dating.

"Since 1990" is not an evolutionary time-span, therefore obviously the evo-psycho claim about women's innate tendencies is proven wrong. 

The reason women cheat more now is because, unlike during most times throughout human history a woman caught cheating will not be left without a home or income. 

Once women began to become increasingly independent of men, economically, thanks to the easily demonstrable phenomenon of women working outside the home - so easy to demonstrate I already did - the old economic dangers were removed. Although women trying to leave men still risk death. And yet they do it anyway.

How is all this not obvious to people who like to imagine themselves exemplars of rationality?

I have a theory as to why so many proponents of evolutionary psychology are conservative: 

The authors test the hypothesis that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism. In Study 1, alcohol intoxication was measured among bar patrons; as blood alcohol level increased, so did political conservatism (controlling for sex, education, and political identification). In Study 2, participants under cognitive load reported more conservative attitudes than their no-load counterparts. In Study 3, time pressure increased participants’ endorsement of conservative terms. In Study 4, participants considering political terms in a cursory manner endorsed conservative terms more than those asked to cogitate; an indicator of effortful thought (recognition memory) partially mediated the relationship between processing effort and conservatism. Together these data suggest that political conservatism may be a process consequence of low-effort thought; when effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases.
Do I really believe this? Well let's use the standards evo-psycho bros use: 

It is plausible.