
How evolutionary psychology went viral - samclemens
http://www.thenation.com/article/181555/survival-sexiest?page=full
======
PavleMiha
The author makes some really good points about the quackery in EP. But at no
point are the merits of some of these theories even mentioned. Take for
example the proposition that women are attracted to older men. If it was found
that all current human cultures and other mammals exhibited this behavior you
could begin to think that this behaviour is grounded in biology.

> Evolutionary psychology does draw on empirical data and laboratory studies,
> and those data are falsifiable. But the adaptationist explanations that
> evolutionary psychologists offer are not.

If an explanation fit all current observations and predicted future
experiments why is it not correct?

I'm having trouble expressing what I want to say, and some cursory googling
for sources was met with paywalls but I wasn't a fan of some of the author's
arguments.

Even if EP somehow explained that some very nasty behaviours were actually
evolutionary adaptations that would not make the behaviours correct, and it
would not make the explanation incorrect.

Human behaviour is complex and influenced by factors both societal and
biological. While current pop sci has swung the needle way too far into the
"biological" side of the argument I feel like the author has swung a bit too
far into the "societal" side.

~~~
kijin
> If an explanation fit all current observations and predicted future
> experiments why is it not correct?

In order for anything to count as a "future experiment" with respect to
something that takes as long as evolution does, the predicted phenomena would
have to occur at least thousands of years from now, and you would have to
control for all the socio-economic-cultural-political differences between now
and then. Which would begin to sound like an impossible task, even you
embarked on a millennia-long research project, because humanity is quickly
approaching (and may already have gone beyond) the point where technology
overtakes evolution.

Evolution of the regular type at least has billions of years' worth of fossil
records to compensate for its lack of predictions for the future. The only
thing EP has going for it, on the other hand, is a bunch of surveys, small-N
experiments, and beloved-by-Cosmopolitan stereotypes about the contemporary
courting behavior of affluent, predominantly white college students. That's
like analyzing a tub of ice cream and then making bold claims about the fate
of the Antarctic ice cap.

~~~
tim333
>The only thing EP has going for it, on the other hand, is a bunch of surveys,
small-N experiments, and beloved-by-Cosmopolitan stereotypes about the
contemporary courting behavior of affluent, predominantly white college
students.

There is other evidence also. EP for example would suggest males would tend to
massacre their neighbours and grab their females as this would be a genetic
benefit. To study that experimentally you could look at the historic record of
conquests and the genetic results, study uncontacted human societies, the
stuff ISIS is doing now, chimp studies such as those recently in the news
([http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/science/lethal-violence-
in...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/science/lethal-violence-in-chimps-
occurs-naturally-study-suggests.html?_r=0)) and such like. You could also run
MRIs on people brains to try to understand the mechanisms and so on. It's not
college surveys and just so stories.

Indeed the fact that ISIS massacring the Yazidi's and rounding up women fits
the evolutionary chimp style raiding hypothesis better than the loving God
hypothesis is significant and might discourage the guys from doing if they
realised that. Then maybe the massacres could stop through scientific
enlightenment rather than us reluctantly having to go bomb them. Again it's
more than Cosmo type stuff.

~~~
kijin
It's very difficult to avoid sampling bias and confirmation bias when you're
looking for historical and contemporary events that seem to fit your curve.
What about all the men throughout history who didn't massacre their neighbors?
How do you control for massive confounding factors such as religious
brainwashing, economic circumstances, poor education, and individual
idiosyncrasies?

~~~
tim333
True. Difficult but even if there's some bias you can still get useful data I
think. There are things that do not fit well with the basic evolutionary
psychology model such as homosexuality. You'd think, using the EP model, that
genes corresponding to that would die out however there are a few gay guys out
there which suggests you might look for other explanations. Just to say it's
not the case that you can find experimental evidence for all EP type
hypotheses. Some fit, some don't.

------
arandr
Is there any reason most evolutionary psychology articles talk about gender?
Is there not any other element of human society that has both a biological and
a behavioral component to study?

Aside from their hyperfocus on a specific part of what they claim to be their
subject of interest, my main problem with evolutionary psychologists is that
they keep the "evolutionary" part of their argument (too often) to a vaguely-
plausible story that has exactly no biological substance whatsoever. I would
be more interested if they even went so far as to use comparisons with other
species or actual ethnographic research rather than elaborating about their
idea of prehistoric human societies.

I also find strange that it's accepted in psychology to derive conclusions on
human nature from a study of a single class of Western freshman psych students
that have probably been recruited via spam email. I think even focus groups
are more scientific.

~~~
kijin
The greatest factors that determine the course of evolution are (1) how likely
you are to get laid and (2) how likely your offspring are to get laid.

Since it's already difficult enough to produce falsifiable conjectures about
an aspect of human psychology (sex/gender) that is directly related to those
factors, it's not surprising that most EP researchers haven't even bothered to
branch out into less closely related things.

~~~
arandr
I think there's a debate to be had as to the relative importance of sexual
selection (how likely you are to get laid) versus plain old selection (how
likely you are to not die) or competition (how likely you are to have to share
your food), especially over the timeframes being considered.

I agree that current EP research seems unlikely to ever manage to produce
falsifiable conjectures (let alone actual hypotheses and experiments) on e.g.
suicidality, social competition, or other subjects related to selection, but
those questions are also interesting (even more interesting, I would say, that
the question of whether women evolved to wear high heels). I would like to see
an "evolutionary psychology" article linking studies of depression with, for
example, studies of the effect of loneliness on the behavior of non-human
social animals, or theorizing as to how depression continues to exist despite
being on the face of it a negative trait for the purposes of reproduction and
survival. As an added help there have been studies on genetic and metabolic
associations to depression, whereas near as I can tell exactly zero molecular
biologists are interested in the high heel connection.

------
api
_Most_ evo-psych is pretty weak stuff, basically a lot of dubious and
untestable just-so rationalizations for various prejudices and apparent human
tendencies. A good chunk of it is full-on woo-woo nonsense.

Sometimes I get the (rather cynical) sense that there's an inverse
relationship between the merit of an idea and its virality.

~~~
jbhatab
I'm going to have to disagree here. I think that the tests necessary to prove
psych are incredible difficult, but I can still use limited sets of data to
verify things. Evolutionary psych is the philosophy that matches up the best
with what I have seen in this world. This isn't scientific, but if I don't
have another philosophy to go off of then I will at least reference that model
for ideas on how people will behave.

~~~
ksk
>but I can still use limited sets of data to verify things.

Such as?

>This isn't scientific, but if I don't have another philosophy to go off of
then I will at least reference that model for ideas on how people will behave.

I don't understand your point. If you say it's not scientific, what exactly
are you "verifying" ?

~~~
larksimian
He's verifying his ability to use the terminology of science to justify and
legitimate his personal biases about other human beings and the way the world
works. Limited sets of data aka personal anecdotes. The plural of anecdote and
all that.

Unfortunately, as science becomes the hegemonic source of authority in our
world, pseudo-science becomes the preferred language for demagoguery and
bullshit.

The greatest crime of the modern scientific community(in some disciplines at
least) is to viciously betray the skeptical roots of scientific thought by
ignoring the value of understanding and admitting what we DO NOT know.

My personal bias is that a shitty model with 0 statistical validity should not
be treated as gospel because 'It's the best we've got.' I believe that it is
better to accept ignorance and act with according caution in some areas of
life. But then again I have no scientific justification for that, anymore than
people do for the reverse.

~~~
jev
Here's the simplest and most convincing argument I've heard to not dismiss evo
psych.

The development of male features in foetuses is triggered by a massive release
of testosterone. The second stage of gendered differentiation, puberty, is
similarly driven by the release of sex hormones in both men and women.
Noticeably, adolescent boys with a malfunctioning endocrine system do not
display typical male features (lowered voice, facial hair, etc), lesser
tendency to masculine psychology (like risk taking and aggression), and don't
develop sex drive (straight or gay) unless they start taking injections for
life. It should be uncontroversial to say that sex and gender differences,
both physiological and psychological, are tied to hormones.

Next up, the brain: the most complex and expensive organ we have, a complex
system of feedback loops, again driven and regulated by secretions of hormones
and peptides and so on. To say that evolutionary psychology is false and just
anecdotes, you'd have to argue that, despite all the other visible changes
that sex hormones make, somehow, the brain is entirely unaffected by all of
that. That gender is mostly (or as some claim, entirely) a social construct,
determined by something as subtle as a tone of voice or the presence of
'patriarchal gender roles'. Even though studies show children and teenagers
are more affected by their peers' behaviours and attitudes than their
parents'. Even though there is no culture where gender roles are truly
swapped, and the 'Norwegian Gender Paradox' remains true.

Not only does the science show nature plays a significant role in the "nature
vs nurture" debate on sex and gender, but policies based on denying it have
failed to work.

I'm not an evo psychologist, or a biologist either. But it seems a lot more
reasonable to me than what's coming from the supposed equality camp.

~~~
api
When I'm skeptical of evo psych, I am not arguing that gender or sex hormones
have no effect on the brain. That would be silly... there's abundant evidence
that they do.

What I'm being skeptical about is that we can take that all the way out to
surface characteristics and then make blanket statements, or that we can
concoct untestable fables based in current evolutionary models and then use
those to justify those blanket statements.

There certainly is gender dimorphism (the right term) in humans, but it's also
very hard to separate genes/development, environment, and culture. It's also
very hard to go from the cellular and hormonal level all the way up to, say,
how people tend to behave in job interviews.

The reason I get so skeptical in these areas is that history teaches us that
human beings will rationalize their prejudices using whatever system of belief
they find around them. Historically that's usually been religion, hence it use
to rationalize gender and racial stereotypes. Now we live in a scientific age
(supposedly), so we should be on guard for pseudoscientific attempts to do the
same with scientific-sounding language. Indeed the "social Darwinists" were on
that beat a century ago already. So whenever I smell an attempt to explain or
justify a social prejudice or a class system, my skeptic hat goes on.

That was rambling... need coffee..

------
daveloyall
NB I haven't read the article; I try to keep it tech related at work.

NB I'm male, white, 31 years old, born poor, raised isolated, computers
brought me out of poverty, and people--specifically women--brought me out of
isolation.

Geeks are my original people, my first clan. I believed that The (dial up,
text based) Internet was the great equalizer--that it was a medium which made
it impossible to see race or sex or creed or weight or shape, that each entity
could only be judge by its character, choice of moniker, and actions. The
people you'd fall in love with were the ones that would create amazing things
and share them... Remember?

Ok, I've set the stage, now I've gotta ask...

I gotta ask the people who say that women are different from men: are you
trolling? Was there some great internet convention that I missed at which it
was agreed by consensus to all act like idiots for a few years for some
greater good?

Seriously, what am I missing?

You do know that women are people, right? Like, half the people, 3.5 billion
women.

[Update: Thus far the responses have indicated that I probably haven't asked
the right question. In my country, the question as to whether or not a given
entity "is a person" is an important, well known, well discussed question and
the answer always carries a great number of implications. Pardon me, I'll try
to improve the question, but it's unlikely that I'll make any progress on the
timescale of days. These things are hard.]

[Update: I should not have said "the people who say that men and women are
different" when I meant to say "the people who use 'men and women are
different' as a euphemism for something more insidious".]

~~~
enoch_r
> I gotta ask the people who say that women are different from men: [...] You
> do know that women are people, right? Like, half the people, 3.5 billion
> women.

Let's examine two claims:

1\. "Group A is genetically predisposed to different behavior than Group B, to
which I belong."

2\. "Group A is culturally predisposed to different behavior than Group B, to
which I belong."

You claim that making statement (1) indicates that I disbelieve in the
personhood of people in Group A. I assume that you do not believe the same
about statement (2)--that is, it's possible for me to notice that men are more
likely to be murderers without claiming that women aren't people, _as long as
I accept "culture" as the only explanation for the difference_.

I claim that both statements (1) and (2) are compatible with a belief in
personhood of people in Group A. And this is much firmer ground, ideologically
speaking. If presented with strong evidence of genetic differences between two
groups, I am not forced to either deny the evidence or give up and accept that
some groups aren't people anymore. I can simply say "even if the two groups
are genetically different, this doesn't change a thing: personhood is not
determined by someone's genetic similarity to me, people deserve respect, and
prejudice is wrong even if it is somewhat predictive." Finally, in a situation
where genetics _clearly_ affect behavior or personality--for example, Asperger
Syndrome--I don't need to shift around my values to claim that yes, autistic
people are still people.

~~~
daveloyall
I think I more or less understand what you are getting at. You're saying that
my question was silly because it's not necessary to think that women aren't
people in order to think that they ARE different than men.

Okay.

As I've indicated in a few places so far, I don't think I expressed my
question as I'd intended to.

enoch_r, you seem like a methodical sort of person, maybe you can help me
think this through.

I've jotted down some notes.

1\. Basically I want to address internet misogynists, including but not
limited to those that don't believe they are one. (I would like to exclude
those who believe they are wrong and do it anyway. That's a whole 'nother
conversation that might as well be had over a bottle.)

2\. I believe that being a person is basically an excuse to get away with a
lot of stuff, and an entitlement to receive the benefit of the doubt a lot.

3\. I believe that one effective way to communicate is to present your own
point in unfavorable terms. It's polite, saves a ton of time, and reminds
yourself to avoid being defensive. Sometimes people even help you improve your
point!

4\. I believe that point 2 is true, most people believe it, and everybody
benefits from it, and you're usually not aware that you're benefiting from it.
But most people probably phrase it in more favorable terms. "The Golden Rule"
is pretty catchy.

5\. There's a comment here which states:

> I don't think you can find a lot of sane individuals who believe women
> aren't humans.

...I believe that it's tragically easy to find otherwise sane individuals who
don't really, in their heart of hearts, in their innermost thoughts, believe
that women are people in the same way that they believe that they themselves
are people. I can't imagine that misogyny would be so common otherwise...

6\. To the group described in 1., with 5. in mind: _You know they are. Knock
it off!_

------
azakai
> But EP has not gotten us any closer to understanding “human nature.”
> Instead, its provocations about gender have distracted us from what is truly
> interesting—and radical—about Darwin. Several EP scholars argue that human
> nature was fixed in the Pleistocene Era, that modern culture is merely a
> flimsy cover for our cave-dweller minds. But a great deal of evidence
> suggests that evolution occurs at a much faster rate than evolutionary
> psychologists think.

On the one hand, this says that EP is wrong, and on the other, that there is a
more radical and more interesting approach, more _true_ to Darwin's thinking.

First, to say "EP has not gotten us any closer to understanding “human
nature”" is a joke. At _worst_ , it has at least eliminated some options. But
the worst is very unlikely. Even if much of EP is wrong, many of the results
appear to be solid. To so discount an entire field of science, done by very
smart men and women, is completely unfair.

Second, the hint at a more "true-to-Darwin" approach of faster evolution,
seems odd - just an attempt to say "EP is wrong, and boring - check _this_
out!" First, if evolution is faster than we expected, then EP will adjust to
that. It already has - we now know that things like lactose tolerance arose
quite recently, and mental traits would not be surprising as well. Faster
evolution will only make what these critics don't like about EP stronger, not
weaker.

But more importantly, while the "frozen at the Pleistocene" approach is false
- and already known to be false, no serious scientist believes that literally
nothing changed since - it is also true to large extent. The Pleistocene is a
huge amount of time, and in the short amount of time following it humanity
diverged quite a bit - yet, we find humans extremely similar, mentally. From
aboriginal Australians to Africans to Europeans to native Americans, mentally
humanity is extremely close. That is very strong support that while clearly
evolution continued after the Pleistocene, major things were already set by
then.

~~~
kgbdrop
> But more importantly, while the "frozen at the Pleistocene" approach is
> false - and already known to be false, no serious scientist believes that
> literally nothing changed since - it is also true to large extent. The
> Pleistocene is a huge amount of time, and in the short amount of time
> following it humanity diverged quite a bit - yet, we find humans extremely
> similar, mentally. From aboriginal Australians to Africans to Europeans to
> native Americans, mentally humanity is extremely close. That is very strong
> support that while clearly evolution continued after the Pleistocene, major
> things were already set by then.

While this is undoubtably true, this is one aspect of the criticisms of EP
where I can understand where they are coming from. This is due to the history
of EP. I do capitalize EP to distinguish the strain of psychological thinking
and research primarily flowing from a relatively small group of researchers
who owe much of their intellectual heritage to researchers at UC Santa Barbara
from the generic view of placing psychological findings into an evolutionary
perspective.

The critics were right that EP is _basically_ rebranded sociobiology. Now
sociobiology flamed out very quickly due to the backlash that EO Wilson
received after the publication of his book Sociobiology in the mid 1970s. No
only had adaptationist perspectives in biology not entirely taken hold, there
were numerous academic disciplines almost fundamentally opposed to the idea
that culture (and humanity) was not entirely arbitrary. Hell, in 1983 after
Derek Freeman published his debunking of Margaret Mead's claims about the
Samoan people, the American Anthropological Association passed a motion
declaring his work unscientific and _irresponsible_.

This milieu where EP formed was absolutely toxic to any claims about a
(universal) biological influence on behavior and held nearly to an axiom that
talk of genetic variation which influences behavior was inherently racist,
sexist, etc. Take the controversy over the Bell Curve, published in 1994. The
entire book, save one chapter, dealt with claimed genetic factors which
influence behavior that broke down by class or socioeconomic status. A lone
chapter dealt with race. Yet the initial controversy and the book's legacy is
that of being racist. Nevermind the fair more numerous claims about the role
genetics played in arranging people into social and economic classes. The mere
mention of biological variation influencing behavior was a tactical move that
virtually no scientist would touch.

With this backdrop, EP was developed. Honestly, marginal scientists trudging
away in the relative backwoods of academia began to synthesize a perspective
on human nature that took our biological past seriously. The obvious route,
and probably the most common route, focused on human universals. Anyone with a
basic understanding of biology will understand the general thesis of this
strain of EP. All humans everywhere dealt with a shared set of problems: (1)
finding food and shelter to survive (classic selection) and (2) finding a mate
so that you can pass you genes to the next generation (sexual selection).
There are derivative issues which arise from our shared experience like being
able to cooperate with non-kin to form basic societies or being able to detect
cheaters in all realms where there is a risk of someone being a free rider.

Taking these basic claims about shared human experience, you can begin to
apply them in slowly expanding circles to many facets of human behavior and
psychology. But the core will always be about human universals. There will
always be variation, but they are variations on universals. This is precisely
why many who are unversed in the actual work of EP have the instinctual worry
about EP focusing too much on the Pleistocene. The Pleistocene is a safe
refuge for a perspective that develops in a hostile intellectual climate. It
is also tactically a wise strategy. Focus on universals to gain credibility
like say with David Buss's 1989 paper "Sex differences in human mate
preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures". Go broad or
become smeared.

As you say, there is unlikely any researcher in EP who gives any sort of
credence to the notion that our psychology was 'frozen in the Pleistocene',
but especially historically, there was little place else to go. Beyond that,
there are mounds of fascinating findings which only need to focus on how much
our psychology has _not_ adapted that it has kept researchers busy for quite
some time.

That intellectual heritage along with the fact that the gold standard in EP
(legitimate cross cultural work) is extraordinarily hard and expensive
combined with our infantile understanding of genetics makes doing serious work
in understanding the ways that post-Pleistocene environments have shaped our
psychology very, very difficult indeed.

------
briandh
> Spencer and his followers read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species as a
> justification for unregulated market competition and colonization.

Please. I don't know about Spencer's unnamed "followers", but he was not quite
what you would call a fan of the colonialism of his day:

> That a government cannot undertake to administer the affairs of a colony,
> and to support for it a judicial staff, a constabulary, a garrison, and so
> forth, without trespassing against the parent society, scarcely needs
> pointing out.

> Moreover, colonial government, properly so called, cannot be carried on
> without transgressing the rights of the colonists. For if, as generally
> happens, the colonists are dictated to by authorities sent out from the
> mother country, then the law of equal freedom is broken in their persons, as
> much as by any other kind of autocratic rule.

From Social Statics, Chapter 27, Section 1 (available at
[http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/spencer-social-
statics-185...](http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/spencer-social-statics-1851)
).

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Those quotes make it sound like he's perfectly fine with colonialism, just not
particular kinds of colonialism.

~~~
briandh
The article is referring to a brand of colonialism mentioned, also next to
Spencer's name, earlier on:

> The philosopher Herbert Spencer famously argued that competition among men
> for survival was not only inevitable but good. [...] In retrospect, it is
> easy to recognize his theory of nature as an unacknowledged description of
> nineteenth-century England... It was only natural that colonial regimes
> brutally extracted resources from Asians and Africans unable to resist their
> guns. Those who survived at the expense of others were simply proving their
> own fitness, and their enemies’ weakness.

Or, as I specified in my original comment, "the colonialism of his day".

------
detcader
Cordelia Fine's _Delusions of Gender_, evopsych is largely for bullying [1],
etc etc.

[1]
[http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/evolutionar...](http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/evolutionary-
psychology-the-confront-of-the-bully/)

------
pervycreeper
The article, ironically, posits a"just so story" about the popularity of EP
being related to economic conditions. I couldn't discern any good arguments
against the discipline, she just seems upset that its findings contradict her
personally held dogmas.

------
tokenadult
I recall that we have discussed the Ray Baumeister speech, "Is There Anything
Good about Men?"[1] as a direct submission to Hacker News before. Baumeister
is one of several psychologists who sometimes hypothesizes from an
evolutionary psychology perspective. The "Evolutionary Psychology Primer" by
Leda Cosmides and John Tooby[2] is often taken to be the definitive discussion
of what evolutionary psychology is as an intellectual movement. An article
from _American Psychologist_ in 2010, "Evolutionary Psychology: Controversies,
Questions, Prospects, and Limitations"[3] by young women (perhaps that's
significant here) who had recently finished graduate study in evolutionary
psychology argues that evolutionary psychology has important contributions to
make to psychology research in general. Every psychologist I know is sure that
human beings originated from a process of biological evolution, but I don't
meet a lot of working psychologists who describe themselves as evolutionary
psychologists. The Wikipedia articles on evolutionary psychology seem to be
beset by edit wars between supporters and critics of that perspective, rather
than combining both points of view in one balanced article with lots of good
references.

A psychologist with a contrasting point of view is Janet Hyde,[4] a
psychologist well trained in human behavior genetics. She has published papers
suggesting that most supposed innate gender differences between men and women
are shaped mostly by culture rather than by biological inheritance.

See what you think after reading some of the key documents. I'm still making
up my mind.

[1]
[http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm](http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm)

[2] [http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html](http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html)

[3]
[http://www.dianafleischman.com/epap.pdf](http://www.dianafleischman.com/epap.pdf)

[4] [http://psych.wisc.edu/faculty-hyde.htm](http://psych.wisc.edu/faculty-
hyde.htm)

[http://www.apa.org/research/action/difference.aspx](http://www.apa.org/research/action/difference.aspx)

------
boyaka
This is where I first stumbled upon evolutionary psychology:

[http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/evolve/evolmenu.html](http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/evolve/evolmenu.html)

I was trying to make sense of some feminist arguments and this provided
answers for me as well as lots of other fascinating ideas. He also made a
series on YouTube about the stone age man in a modern world.

------
epx
People are quick to dump evolution when it does not sing along with PC.

I agree that EP has a low SNR ratio but I don't buy that every difference is
socially constructed.

------
davidgerard
WELL I NEVER, See I Told You, Morning Commuter Time (NNN) — British scientists
have uncovered why little girls like pink toys. “Women are hardwired to like
pink,” says Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro, “because their
cavewoman foremothers spent their days gathering red leaves and berries
amongst the trees.” Later, women needed to notice red-faced babies and
blushing boyfriends. Men are attracted to blue because of the colour of the
sky as seen when hunting.

Women are also predisposed to backstab one another in the workplace and cry in
the boardroom, just like the social structures in the cave population as
extrapolated from these two bone needles. Being too successful will increase
women’s testosterone, giving them hairy nipples and male-pattern baldness.
Females joining the hunt may also explain the end of the Neanderthals.

IQ test studies show that women have lower IQs on average than men,
undoubtedly from lesser need for environmental variation while taking care of
the cave. Tests on little boys prove that testosterone correlates with a sense
of humour, which is why women just can’t take a joke. Housework has been shown
to cut the risk of several fatal diseases, and dressing up nicely around the
house is psychologically healthy as it uses the Homo erectus clan maintenance
abilities of the female of the tribe.

Men are naturally predisposed to sleep with as many women as possible, as
proven by lions, whereas women are naturally predisposed to stay loyal to
their man and their spawn. Women who sleep around are at increased risk of
parasites and death, as proven by cheetahs, who are a pack of catty sluts.

In a final crowning achievement, the team has shown that daily fellatio
greatly reduces the incidence of breast cancer. Furthermore, regular sexual
intercourse is essential to feminine health, but may be injurious if prolonged
for more than two minutes or conducted while the man is sober.

“In conclusion,” says Professor Hunt, “all of this is top-notch science that
you can absolutely rely on. Now get your knickers back on and make me a
cuppa.”

from [http://newstechnica.com/2008/10/23/science-reveals-
evolution...](http://newstechnica.com/2008/10/23/science-reveals-evolutionary-
origins-of-gender-stereotypes/)

------
mudil
Psychological differences between men and women are real because they were
shaped by "eons" of evolution. And as it relates to ever present discussions
on HN about women in tech, the reason women are not in tech is because they
are not interested in tech as much as men. For whatever reason they simply are
not. (Yes, not all women, but when it comes to evolution it is percentages and
chances that are discussed. So, for all practical purposes, women are not
interested in tech.) Can we increase percentage of women in tech? Probably.
Should we do it? Sure. But at the end of the day, women, mostly, are not going
to be into tech.

(And, please, don't think that we can change evolution in 10 or 20 years. Or
even 1000. Or even 10,000. We are talking millions of years for changes to
occur.)

~~~
tejon
> And as it relates to ever present discussions on HN about women in tech, the
> reason women are not in tech is because they are not interested in tech as
> much as men. For whatever reason they simply are not.

Jumping from this to "therefore evolution" is exactly as specious as jumping
to "therefore culture." Actually moreso, because it's cultural by definition;
the question is what _sparked_ the culture.

The culture may, indeed, be rooted in biological predisposition toward the
topics involved. It could also be rooted in biological predisposition toward
shoving others out of a social club, and/or allowing oneself to _be_ shoved
out -- metaphorically _or_ through literal physical force.

Or it could be rooted in a long history of self-serving decisions which have
nothing to do with biology whatsoever, only people in power working to
concentrate and maintain that power. Disqualifying half the race is quite a
coup.

Yes, we have significant gender dimorphism in our hormones and
neurotransmitters. It's very likely that at some level, that's relevant. But
claiming it as the root cause is arbitrary non-sequitur. Causation has to be
demonstrated, it can't simply be inferred.

~~~
mudil
Your logic is just a wishful thinking. According to you, men must have been
excluded from nursing, public relations, or hospitality services because they
are not members of "the club." And this is not only in US, but in societies
across the world, from Sweden to Sri Lanka, despite massive efforts in many
corners of the world to make sure that men and women are the same.

