
Why Social Science Needs Evolutionary Theory - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/why-social-science-needs-evolutionary-theory
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ramen-san
Admittedly I’m a little shocked and disappointed that the field of social
science wouldn’t already be leaning heavily on the concepts of evolution to
understand and explain human behavior. Personally, it’s one of the primary
ways I’m able to make sense of the world and the human experience. For those
interested, Sapiens is IMO the best, most accessible book on this topic. Puts
human evolution and behavior in great context.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind)

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niceperson
What about r/K selection theory?

[https://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/the-theory/rk-
sel...](https://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/the-theory/rk-selection-
theory/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory)

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joker3
People are working on this, but it's incredibly complicated and hard to get
right. Look at what's going on in evolutionary psychology and neuroeconomics,
as well as the controversies surrounding them, for an idea of what's involved.

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lainga
I was under the impression that they were avoiding it so as not to (re)open
the Pandora's box of social Darwinism.

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flomble
This is a frustratingly common but utterly confused viewpoint stemming from
the naturalistic fallacy. Facts about our evolution do not entail that we
should strive to embrace every human tendency which it has imparted to us.

People are appalled at the suggestion that we have innate tendencies toward
aggression, for example, because it clashes with narratives about all social
ills being caused by culture, and if you suffer from utopian notions of
humanity in its natural state, it seems like endorsement of violence to
acknowledge that it is an evolved behaviour, as opposed to a brute fact which
we can use to better understand and combat the problem.

"Social Darwinism" is a misleading label, because it refers to the idea that
we should allow the weak to perish because it improves the quality of people
in society, but this principle does not follow from the fact of human
evolution. It is deriving a highly questionable "ought" from an "is", and it's
a line of thought which long predates the discovery of evolution. Socrates
argued against Callicles' belief that the strong dominating the weak was the
justice of nature more than two millennia before Darwin was born.

