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Chris Schuck's avatar

So glad to see you bring up Subrena Smith's matching problem paper, as I think this (and Maung's) is an important critique that I rarely see people engaging with, wherever one might fall in their agreement/disagreement. Curious what you think about its relevance and whether you were fully satisfied with Jesse's response.

To me this is a great example of a certain fault line you often see between those who feel strongly that empirical research must rest on sufficiently coherent philosophical grounds to be defensible, and those who consider philosophical/conceptual coherence less essential (if perhaps still desirable) as a precondition for viable research programs, where the latter find such critiques hopelessly abstract.

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Mark Reichert's avatar

A few thoughts on evolutionary psychiatry. For one, I don't believe human evolution has been following the rules of "survival of the fittest" for a long time. Humans are so successful that negative traits, such as near-sightedness, are easily passed on to successive generations. There is no reason to believe psychological traits that are somewhat harmful, but not devastating to survival chances, will be eliminated until humans reach some kind of choke-point where only the fittest can survive.

I also believe that evolutionary psychology focuses too much on complex outcomes, like OCD, rather than the more granular foundations of such disorders. Seems to me that OCD and anorexia nervosa are extensions of mostly beneficial anxieties, particularly social anxieties, positive evolutionary reactions for the most part. If not anxious about where their next meal is coming from people could easily starve to death. If not anxious about social interactions people can easily become social outcasts. And social anxiety can be easily traced back to pre-human social primates. It is not something that evolved with humans. The real question is: what causes anxiety to go into overdrive and become debilitating?

One more point. I am confused by the statement "the scientific understanding of social behavior was transformed by the recognition that tendencies for an individual to make sacrifices that benefit the group are shaped not by benefits to the group, but by benefits to kin who have genes in common with the individual." I am well aware of the "kin selection theory" and find it unconvincing. The "group benefit" idea makes much more sense. What is the background of this transformation? This topic seems worth of a detailed discussion.

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