Hacker News Reader

Comment by PieterH | Hacker News Reader

Many people dislike EP intensely (and have attacked its developers, such as Steven Pinker) because they are passionate (I'd say fanatical) believers that culture is what defines us, not biology. So yes, you can find a lot of hate for EP. That doesn't mean much.

If you have studied EP or even human nature at all, then you realize quite rapidly that the blank slate proponents (who claim we're born with nothing in our minds, waiting for culture to define us) are delusional in some profound way.

It is clear, and Pinker makes this argument well in his book The Blank Slate, that we're the product of biology (EP) tuned and shaped by our environment.

To claim that this, decades of careful documented research and reproducible results, is magical thinking and not science is... hallucinatory.

View on HN

Not all evo-psych critics are blank slate fans. Some of us just like our science to be based on repeatable experiments. The truth in evo-psych, that humans are animals that evolved in various environments, sometimes has only a tenuous connection to the claims of evo-psych. (e.g. that any particular aspect of modern life has some sort of link to some particular aspect of life on the savanna -- how could we possibly know that?)

Well, that's not entirely true (while I do admit the nurture bunch are loud).

Some of us are skeptical on EP's results more than EP itself. I believe that is undeniable that some (or most) behavior is imprinted within our genes, animal domestication being a pretty solid proof.

That doesn't invalidate the fact that most of the time, when I read some study on the field feels more like conjectures made fit in the researcher's beliefs; some flawed logic where the consequent is used to prove the antecedent, and some dubious experiment most of the time made in other species (biological studies on other species don't translate pretty well on humans, and yet, we try the same with a less measurable parameter?) It's even worse if you happen to read some generalist media approach to EP, where EP is used to push down the editor's narrative.

In short, some of us are careful on EP not because it's not a promising field, but because these days is being used to prove everything and it's opposite.

I think everything you want from EP is available in social psychology textbooks like "The Social Animal" by Pratkanis. Unlike EP practitioners the authors actually start out with falsifiable hypothesis and then conduct actual experiments to derive their theories. A lot of people take the results of actual social psychological research and rediscover it with a non-falsifiable EP justification. That's not science, that's just taking scientific observations and reinterpreting them as the will of God or "Evolution" in this case.

> decades of careful documented research and reproducible results, is magical thinking and not science is... hallucinatory.

Right, the same careful research that helps me characterize personality disorders in my day job. You really should stop doing hobbyist research, because The Psychopath Code proves how badly it can end.

Can you tell us what's wrong with The Psycopath Code and/or the parent's arguments? I can't tell based on your comment.

It would be really useful to have an actual concrete argument of how and why, rather than vague "your amateurish book proves how bad your book is" statements.

Edit: ah, checked your comment history, you've been trolling for a while HN. Enjoy yourself, it's a weird hobby but hey. Some people like to cook and make music, and other people... they troll.

http://archive.is/5DbNQ

None of the posts in that archive are troll posts. Another false claim from Hintjens.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com