Nothing for me thanks but merry fucking Christmas to you you magnificent bastard.

Keep 'em coming

I have been, and always shall be, the best Star Trek movie.

Oh no…

I thought we were tired of experts.

Gentlemen, we have a holy site for the NCD pilgrimage.

Plenty of blame to go around. Where is Gerhard Schroder these days?

Nice to see on the fediverse General MacArthur.

You canard be serious

Careful you almost misquoted me there

For the non-human animals, it certainly isn’t controversial to say evolution is the only explanation for the origin of behaviour. What else could it be?

there’s a lot to unpack here. firstly, there is more to human behavior than genetics/evolution, hence nature vs nurture.

It’s a jolly good thing I was talking about non-human animals then.

in other words our human experience determines our behavior in addition to genetics.

It’s a common fallacy to suppose that because an behavioural adaption has a genetic basis that therefore having the genes determines the behaviour.

https://areomagazine.com/2019/08/20/seven-key-misconceptions-about-evolutionary-psychology/

Misconception #3 in the above.

Secondly, that’s not the only claim or assumption of Evolutionary Psychology. There is lots of other stuff besides that statement that is controversial at best.

Evolutionary Psychologists make claims, some of which yes are clearly lacking in explanatory power, evidence and predictions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology

Yes I’m familiar with Wikipedia, if I’m just going to be talking to a search engine here I’m not terribly invested in continuing.

It was in response to your claim that Evolutionary Psychology is the “the only accepted explanation for the origin of animal behaviour.”

Well it doesn’t refute that.

If you want to make that claim you need to support it with some kind of reference.

Well ok, perhaps “only accepted explanation” was claiming too much given that a large proportion of the population believe in souls or pure blank-slatism for human behavior.

For the non-human animals though, it certainly isn’t controversial to say evolution is the only explanation for the origin of behaviour. What else could it be?

This is not true. Firstly, Evolutionary Psychology is not involved with “animal” behavior in general, it is specific to human psychology.

Most of the field focuses on primates because, unsurprisingly, that’s where we find most of psychology. It is wrong to say it has nothing to do with animals.

Ethology is the general study of animal behavior.

And botany is the study of plants? Every field in biology overlaps with evolution.

Also Evolutionary Psychology is not the only approach to studying human behavior either.

That’s not a challenge to the premise of evopsych. If anything it sort of supports it.

That is rather unwarranted given its still an active field and is the only accepted explanation for the origin of animal behaviour.

Sorry… you don’t think printing what notable critics of Pinker say about him is relevant?

It should not form 100% of an encyclopedia article about anyone. And they aren’t notable, it seems as if tue one editor who’s been running that page since last year added every possible article they found through Google.

It would be worth including his seminal work such as his 1990 paper on th evolution of language (worth a read)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/natural-language-and-natural-selection/CDD84686D58AF70E3D2CB48486D7940B

Is his so-called science above criticism?

No one is above criticism but an encyclopedia is meant to be comprehensive.

Is the racism much of his so-called science is based upon also beyond criticism? And no, evo psych is garbage because it’s garbage. Or at least mostly garbage.

Well now we’re just being silly. You can’t seriously believe that animal behaviour has no evolutionary component? You believe in souls instead?

Let’s start with the Center for Inquiry. I hope, as someone posting in a skeptic community, you consider them a valid source: https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2006/03/22164612/p23.pdf

Well that’s not CFI that’s Skeptical Enquirer and it’s an article from Massimo Pigliucci and the headline is subject to Betteridges law of headlines.

But in case you don’t, here’s spam

Please don’t spam, I’d rather hear you articulate your reasons rather than resorting to other people to do the work for you.

(Although all those articles follow the same formula: find some garbage evopsych publications => conclude the whole premise is nonsense)

Oh my, what happened to rationalwiki? Reading that you wouldn’t have the first clue about who Pinker is or what contributions he’s made. It’s just a list of quote articles from critics of varying levels of note.

His work on linguistics and cognition is seminal. I would heartily recommend “the language instinct” and “rationality”.

On evo-pysch, lots of garbage gets published because the tabloids love “women enjoy shopping because science” stories, and the field itself suffers from charlatans that grift in it. The principle behind it, namely that animal behaviour is subject to evolutionary forces, however is of course true.

It is not a pointless difference. The use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists have been banned in the UK for the treatment of gender dysphoria. They are of course still available for treating precocious puberty, regardless of how anyone identifies.

They aren’t banned for kids who suffer from dysphoria. They are banned from being used as a treatment for dysphoria. Important difference.

They aren’t banned for use as a treatment for precocious puberty, which presumably is something anyone can suffer from trans or otherwise.

Transkids get access to these drugs just as easily as ciskids.