

Why we are, as we are - flavio87
http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12795581

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jbert
Interesting stuff, but I'm surprised by the observation that number of
children correlates positively with income.

I would have guessed the opposite. Does anyone have the data?

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graemep
People in richer countries have fewer children and the birth rate falls with
economic growth.

My personal observation is that people in Salford (not a nice area at all)
have more children and MUCH earlier than those in Wimbledon (fairly affluent).

The study also found that education is negatively correlated to number of
offspring:
[http://www.scientificblogging.com/rationally_speaking/so_muc...](http://www.scientificblogging.com/rationally_speaking/so_much_absence_natural_selection_modern_human_populations)

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DanielBMarkham
This is pseudo-science, and I don't mean that as an insult. It takes general
scientific principles and expounds on them in a "suppose X is linked to Y"
manner.

The problem, of course, is that X can be linked to Y, Z, and Theta. Nobody
knows for sure. But you can use general theories and general statements to
connect the dots to make a pretty picture. It's speculative.

It was a good, entertaining read. I liked it. I would just caution to take it
as it was meant: fun.

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mynameishere
It's an overview of sociobiology in a popular magazine. That it doesn't
provide proofs for its assertions doesn't make the whole thing "pseudo-
science".

The fact that wolves hunt in packs and that falcons hunt alone is _probably_
not due to different styles of elementary schooling. It's _probably_ due to
evolutionary forces, and studying such things in an appropriate manner is
scientific, even if it's in political defiance of your own (and my own)
elementary schooling.

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DanielBMarkham
All I meant is that the style of the article was conversational, the material
was presented in commentary format, and the use of hypothesis and reproduced
proof was lacking.

There's a lot of probabalies in there. I could see where different conclusions
could be made with the same observations.

"Psedo-science" has gotten a really bad name lately. It just means talk with
the air of science. It doesn't imply falsehood or defectiveness in any way.
SETI, for instance, is full of a lot of pseudo-science, simply because there
are so many unknowns we take what science we have and creatively speculate
what might be. In that way, pseudo-science is abduction -- the formulation of
possible rules around a given set of data -- a critical part of the scientific
process.

The danger with evolutionary explanations to everything is that we lose track
of just what it is that we're talking about. For instance, in the conversation
about morality, the article makes a case that crime is _not_ a result of a
lack of morality but the evolutionary desire for low-status people to compete
for genes. I could make the case that morality was in itself an evolved
abstract set of codes to do the same thing -- it's all in your perspective.
You can "evolve out" higher concepts like morality, or you can "evolve in"
those concepts. Without empirical data and reproducible results, it's
speculative. Nothing wrong with that. I enjoy scientific-based speculation.

This is getting into the question of "are the soft sciences really science?"
That's out of my pay grade. All I want to know is that given an initial set of
reproducible conditions, can an idea give me a consistent set of results? If
so, that's science to me. I freely acknowledge that the definition gets a lot
looser for other folks. I'm definitely not the person to ask about any of
that.

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robotrout
I note that references to the actual studies were given in the article.

I also note that your quest for "reproducible results" was definitely met in
the England/Wales vs Chicago murder statistics the article reproduced.

I am of the camp that the term pseudo-science is a derogatory one, and should
remain so. Otherwise, how else should we label such things as SETI and Human
Induced Global Warming to warn the uninformed that the rigor of the scientific
method as it's applied in every other field is not being followed in these ,
ahem, "fields"?

As for whether pseudo-science is an apt definition of what the author engaged
in, I'm afraid, without reading the quoted studies, I must remain uncommitted.
I did very much enjoy the article, however.

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sjs382
Completely off-topic, but I really enjoyed the illustrations in this article.

