The rich have less compassion.

[ParaRevolutionary]

I know its obvious, however now theres a bit of scientific study.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/10/rich-people-compassion-mean-money_n_1416091.html#s480579&title=1_Executives_Managers

[Left Leanings]

It's an interesting article, for sure.

It postulates that because the rich have better material resources, they do not need to rely on others as much, and therefore may pay less attention to the needs of others, and be less aware of their sufferings.

I hark back to a point I have made in threads elsewhere, about our morality being social in origin. Collective endeavour and safety in numbers, makes for group survival. We are social beings, and consequently survive.

The rich are certainly cushioned from the harsher material side of life. But the poor who have experienced for themselves, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, sub-standard accommodation and so on, can develop an empathy for those in the same position, acting as a springboard to compassion.

[La Comédie Noire]

We are all alienated from the social labor process, the rich are just more so. It's hard to imagine that "your" stuff came from the combined effort of thousands of other people, spanning the entire globe.

Self reliance is really just an illusion kept up by money.

[Luís Henrique]

During the long, long, long period of ultimate and definitive triumph of capitalism ('somewhen' between the rise of Thatcher and the downfall of Morgan Stanley), there was a lot of "scientific" speculation about how capitalism was both inevitable and indeed a good thing, and trying to ground that into biology. Now that the tide has turned, we are starting to see "scientific" speculation about how capitalism is doomed to fail and indeed a bad thing, and trying to ground that into biology.

Apparently the capitalist cycle has some effect into our genetics. Or perhaps just into the way scientists see the world?

Luís Henrique

[Hit The North]

Bill Gates, who is very rich, seems to have quite a lot of compassion. But some of the hardest people I've ever met have been poor. Poverty can brutalise and eat away at the capacity for compassion.

[Ostrinski]

It wouldn't matter if they were the most compassionate people in the world, they'd still be the class enemy.

[Kenco Smooth]

Apparently the capitalist cycle has some effect into our genetics. Or perhaps just into the way scientists see the world?

Luís Henrique

Or perhaps just the slant you and the media place on research.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

hard sciences like behavioral evo psych or whatever these peoples' game is can be just as biased as the human sciences. i think that's perhaps what he was getting at. at any rate, i like the bias of this paper so ill stand by it till my death.

[Luís Henrique]

hard sciences like behavioral evo psych

Evolutionary psychology is not hard science, and, frankly, I am quite skeptical that it is science at all. It rests on completely ideological assumptions.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

i like the bias of this paper so ill stand by it till my death.

Our cause is best served by good analysis than by sympathetic foolery.

Luís Henrique

[MEGAMANTROTSKY]

Bill Gates, who is very rich, seems to have quite a lot of compassion.
The practical methods of Gates' "charity" leave a lot to be desired. With compassion like his, we wouldn't even need sociopaths.

[Railyon]

Bill Gates, who is very rich, seems to have quite a lot of compassion.

There's a very distinct irony to most prominent philanthropists being rich bourgies. Guilty conscience, perhaps?

[00001]

There's a very distinct irony to most prominent philanthropists being rich bourgies.

There is...? :confused: Its hard to give away a shit ton of money if you don't have it in the first place.

[Ocean Seal]

There's a very distinct irony to most prominent philanthropists being rich bourgies. Guilty conscience, perhaps?
Its not ironic, if you have a fuckton of money, then there's a chance you can donate half a fuckton and feel nothing. If you are working class making 25k/year and you donate half, you have just put your living standard below the poverty line. If you are a working professional making 65k/year then you have just put your living standard as the same as a line worker. And even if you donate half your money chances are you aren't going to get interviewed on the news for it. Now if you have a billion dollars and you donate 90% of that, you haven't changed your living standard at all.
What can you do with 1 billion dollars that you can't do with 100 million?

[Railyon]

The irony being that you give away with one hand what you took with the other while looking like a fucking saint.

If that isn't irony, I don't know what is.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

Evolutionary psychology is not hard science, and, frankly, I am quite skeptical that it is science at all. It rests on completely ideological assumptions.

Luís Henrique

right, well they claim that it is, as opposed to like psychoanalyis, & so on.
and it is (mis)used for ideological purposes, but it does not rest on such assumptions. i am no expert in this field, but i can safely tell you, categorically, that it does not completely rest on ideological assumptions.

[La Comédie Noire]

Evolutionary Psychology is misused by politicos, both left and right, to support their assumptions about "human nature".

It may not be a hard science yet, but they are striving to come up with some empirically verifiable claims.

[Kenco Smooth]

Evolutionary psychology is not hard science, and, frankly, I am quite skeptical that it is science at all. It rests on completely ideological assumptions.

Luís Henrique

The assumption that an evolutionary approach to studying the mind can prove helpful in the formulation of hypotheses and explaining the existence and nature of mental modules and trends? I don't see how that is ideological.

I don't personally think evolutionary psychology properly exists as a sub-discipline in itself but it can't be brushed aside so lightly.


Evolutionary Psychology is misused by politicos, both left and right, to support their assumptions about "human nature".

It may not be a hard science yet, but they are striving to come up with some empirically verifiable claims.

They've been producing properly verifiable claims for a decent while now.

[Franz Fanonipants]

why is ev psych so popular on this forum?

[La Comédie Noire]

They've been producing properly verifiable claims for a decent while now.

Like what? Honestly interested.

[gorillafuck]

I don't buy into this really. the traffic thing is ridiculous. it proves that people who drive luxury cars are bigger assholes at one intersection. also, measuring compassion by asking questions about greed is stupid. people don't openly state that they are greedy unless they are an ayn rand follower.

[Kenco Smooth]

Like what? Honestly interested.

A common example is the work of Nairne & Pandeirada (2008) on adaptive memory. The broad hypothesis of their work (in the above paper and others) is that human memory should be to some extent adaptive in an evolutionary sense, so much more sensitive to survival related factors (food, predators and reproduction for example). They were then able to use standard memory scenarios involving priming and surprise recall to test whether or not words previously related as having survival significance were remembered significantly more accurately than words across a range of groups rated to not have survival significance.

They found in this case that concepts rated as having survival significance were significantly better remembered (further research has actually shown survival significance to be one of the most powerful short term factors on memory known to modern psychology) but they could just as easily have identified no effect or an effect in the opposite direction in which case the adaptive memory hypothesis would have faced a pretty straight up falsification trusting repeat experiments produced the same effect.

As examples of evolutionarily based hypothesis that have been experimentally falsified are the kin altruism theory of male homosexuality (Bobrow & Bailey, 2001) and the hypothesis that males have an evolved preference for virgins as long term partners (Buss, 1989).

[La Comédie Noire]

It's just a false dichotomy through and through. Human action is irreducible to purely egoistic or altruistic motives, its both.

[Deicide]

Well.. if you're a billionaire, it's obviously because you're a magnificent genius, which means you're better than everyone else. So fuck everyone else..

[Luís Henrique]

right, well they claim that it is, as opposed to like psychoanalyis, & so on.

I think psychoanalysis has a way better claim to scientific status.


and it is (mis)used for ideological purposes, but it does not rest on such assumptions. i am no expert in this field, but i can safely tell you, categorically, that it does not completely rest on ideological assumptions.

It does. It relies on the assumption that psychological traits can be explained by evolutionary pressure, which is an invalid extension of Darwinism.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

why is ev psych so popular on this forum?

Beats me.

Luís Henrique

[cyu]

The thing is once you start dividing society up into social classes, some upper, some lower, the people in the upper classes will start to believe they are better than others, that they are more entitled to everything. The result is they are more likely to act like @$$holes. The same applies to people who believe their race or their country is better than all the others.

"go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven... it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
^ Wisdom of the Ages

[Kenco Smooth]

I think psychoanalysis has a way better claim to scientific status.

I've no real interest in bashing psychoanalysis (that schtick gets old very fast) but I don't see how such a claim could be maintained. In little over three decades evolutionary psychology (as an explanation for certain mental characteristics) has achieved what psychoanalysis has been unable to do in a century. Develop a vibrant and generalised culture of strict falsifiability as a base for empirical theory construction.

I'm not even a particular fan of evolutionary psychology (particularly it has a few practitioners who are little more than academic shock jockeys out to ruffle feathers) but it's scientific status is deserved. Although discussions of what is more and less 'scientific' in my mind are generally futile.



It does. It relies on the assumption that psychological traits can be explained by evolutionary pressure, which is an invalid extension of Darwinism.

Luís Henrique

Invalid or not how is this an ideological assumption and not a scientific one?

[00001]

why is ev psych so popular on this forum?

I assume it is because basement-dwelling nerdboys are overrepresented on this forum.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

I think psychoanalysis has a way better claim to scientific status.

im hardly qualified to disqualify psychoanalysis as a science, nor would i want to. i just said that it's more akin to human sciences than hard sciences.

[black magick hustla]

psychoanalyisis has more simialrity to poetry than science there i said it

[Luís Henrique]

Invalid or not how is this an ideological assumption and not a scientific one?

It naturalises human traits that are historical. That's the kernel of bourgeois ideology: capitalism is a natural system, inherent to human condition.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

As examples of evolutionarily based hypothesis that have been experimentally falsified are the kin altruism theory of male homosexuality (Bobrow & Bailey, 2001) and the hypothesis that males have an evolved preference for virgins as long term partners (Buss, 1989).

Such hypotheses are sheer bullshit from any serious evolutionary point of view. There is no evidence that human homosexuality is hereditary and no model that can explain genetic inheritance of homosexuality in humans. The preference for virgins is even more ridiculous, it isn't even verified in all human societies.

Such people could as well be speculating about the evolutionary qualities of Islam as compared to Buddhism: they simply don't know what they are talking about.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

psychoanalyisis has more simialrity to poetry than science there i said it

Poetry and science have more similarity than science and evolutionary psychology.

Luís Henrique

[Kenco Smooth]

It naturalises human traits that are historical. That's the kernel of bourgeois ideology: capitalism is a natural system, inherent to human condition.

Luís Henrique

Well if viewing certain mental processes as consistent across time and cultures is bourgois then I'm afraid they've got the science right and we've got it wrong. An example of extremely well validated cross-cultural measures would be modern five-factor personality models which show success across all cultures (that I'm aware) it's been applied to.

I'm always a bit bemused by the reaction against the notion of an innate mental structure. No-one seems to get upset by the fact that visual perception (a process which is actively psychological) is claimed to be innate and consistent across time. And you know what's interesting? You can make these claims and keep them entirely separate from political ones. Unless the edifice of social progress is rested upon the notion that the mind is empty until birth then nothing is lost by admitting this to be false. And it in no way naturalises capitalism as inherent. There is a great deal of argument needed to get from here to there and that argument is well out with the boundaries of scientific evolutionary psychology and lies in the realm of polemicists.


Such hypotheses are sheer bullshit from any serious evolutionary point of view. There is no evidence that human homosexuality is hereditary and no model that can explain genetic inheritance of homosexuality in humans. The preference for virgins is even more ridiculous, it isn't even verified in all human societies.

Such people could as well be speculating about the evolutionary qualities of Islam as compared to Buddhism: they simply don't know what they are talking about.

Luís Henrique

If you had a real careful look there you would notice that these had been falsified. Meaning that regardless of how well formed we think the hypotheses are we can discard them. So yay science!

But anyway there is good evidence that homosexuality is in some part hereditary:
Bailey JM, Pillard RC (1991). "A genetic study of male sexual orientation". Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 48 (12): 1089-96
[/URL]Bailey JM, Pillard RC, Neale MC, Agyei Y. (1993). Heritable factors influence sexual orientation in women. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50, 217-223
[URL="http://faculty.bennington.edu/%7Esherman/sex/female-twin-lesbian.pdf"] (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1845227)
The above are two more or less airtight twin studies that both identified a genetic role in the variance of sexuality. However obviously this is not the whole story, exposure to early hormones (Ellis & Ames, 1987; Adkins-Regan, 1988) and the fraternal birth order effect in males (Blanchard, 2004; Blanchard & Lippa, 2007) are just two other factors. However the hereditary component is still there and neither of the other two factors I listed are limited to a particular culture.

And genetic inheritance of tendency towards homosexuality is perfectly explainable in evolutionary terms especially if the genetic process involved is a complicated one which will not always produce the same phenotypic result.

Islam and Buddhism are very recent occurrences. There's no good reason to immediately assume that traits observed across cultures in various stages of development are not.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

It naturalises human traits that are historical. That's the kernel of bourgeois ideology: capitalism is a natural system, inherent to human condition.

Luís Henrique

but dont you see... that bourgeois discourse is based on evo psych. evo psych is not based on that bourgeois discourse. this is self evident i believe. the claim that human or social behavior is natural to any degree does not rely on bourgeois ideology. furthermore, evo psych is not as limited as you make it out to be.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

I'm always a bit bemused by the reaction against the notion of an innate mental structure.

wait, mental structure? i thought we were talking about behaviour

[Kenco Smooth]

wait, mental structure? i thought we were talking about behaviour

Sorry flipped between explanatory levels there without thinking. Cognitive structures are the typical explanation for how evolutionary factors influence behaviour so the two aren't particularly seperate. In arguing whether evolution influences psychology the two are more or less interchangeable in my mind.

[Luís Henrique]

but dont you see... that bourgeois discourse is based on evo psych. evo psych is not based on that bourgeois discourse.

Yes, it is: it is based on "human nature" bourgeois ideology.


this is self evident i believe. the claim that human or social behavior is natural to any degree does not rely on bourgeois ideology.

How not? Indeed it is the core of bourgeois understanding of human behaviour.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

A common example is the work of Nairne & Pandeirada (2008) on adaptive memory. The broad hypothesis of their work (in the above paper and others) is that human memory should be to some extent adaptive in an evolutionary sense, so much more sensitive to survival related factors (food, predators and reproduction for example). They were then able to use standard memory scenarios involving priming and surprise recall to test whether or not words previously related as having survival significance were remembered significantly more accurately than words across a range of groups rated to not have survival significance.

They found in this case that concepts rated as having survival significance were significantly better remembered (further research has actually shown survival significance to be one of the most powerful short term factors on memory known to modern psychology) but they could just as easily have identified no effect or an effect in the opposite direction in which case the adaptive memory hypothesis would have faced a pretty straight up falsification trusting repeat experiments produced the same effect.

I am not sure how this would even be falsifiable first place.

That human memory should be "to some extent adaptive in an evolutionary sense" seems empty. We all have biceps, and the existence of our biceps is evidently coded in our DNA. However the size and strenght of any individual human biceps' aren't primarily coded in DNA, but are dependent of how much use and exercise such individual gives to his biceps: biceps are largely more "adaptative" in a non-evolutionary, non-genetic sence. The same seems to go with memory. And, consequently, the extent to which human memory is "more sensitive to survival related factors (food, predators and reproduction for example)" varies on to what extent an individual's survival is related to food, predators and reproduction. In a modern industrial society, I would say that predators are not a factor at all, and that remembering a number like 911 (totally unrelated to food or predation) is much more important from the point of view of survival than knowing the proper method of cultivating tomatoes, the recipe for apple pie, or how to deflect an imminent attack by a cougar (all more or less directly related with food and predators). I frankly don't see how one could measure the relatedness of any rememberable (if that is a word) item to "food, predators, and reproduction" to adequately test the hypothesis.

And indeed I am far from sure that human memory is a single process. Spacial memory seems unrelated, or at least not immediately related, to verbal memory (you can't remember most things without verbalising them, but one thing you can remember without verbalisation is how to get from one place to another, and in fact you learn such a thing better by actually going from one place to another than by having an explanation of how to do it). And there seems to be an olfative memory distinct from both as well, even if by far less important to humans, just like smells in general are by far less important to us than sounds and images.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Well if viewing certain mental processes as consistent across time and cultures is bourgois then I'm afraid they've got the science right and we've got it wrong. An example of extremely well validated cross-cultural measures would be modern five-factor personality models which show success across all cultures (that I'm aware) it's been applied to.

And what such "five-factor personality models" would be?


I'm always a bit bemused by the reaction against the notion of an innate mental structure. No-one seems to get upset by the fact that visual perception (a process which is actively psychological) is claimed to be innate and consistent across time.

That (most) humans have eyes and see? Yes, this is undeniably transhistoric. The way humans see and interpret what they are seeing? No, that is not transhistoric, and varies deeply between cultures.


And you know what's interesting? You can make these claims and keep them entirely separate from political ones. Unless the edifice of social progress is rested upon the notion that the mind is empty until birth then nothing is lost by admitting this to be false.

The mind is empty until birth? Not so, fetuses are aware of their environment and respond to it. And evidently brains, and perception organs, are hardware. Beyond that, I doubt any thing else is transhistoric.


And it in no way naturalises capitalism as inherent. There is a great deal of argument needed to get from here to there and that argument is well out with the boundaries of scientific evolutionary psychology and lies in the realm of polemicists.

Well, if psychologic traits are genetically inherited, why wouldn't the ability to be a "rational maximiser" be genetically inherited, too?


If you had a real careful look there you would notice that these had been falsified. Meaning that regardless of how well formed we think the hypotheses are we can discard them. So yay science!

The fact that they were falsified doesn't mean the methodology is correct.


But anyway there is good evidence that homosexuality is in some part hereditary:
Bailey JM, Pillard RC (1991). "A genetic study of male sexual orientation". Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 48 (12): 1089-96

Here is the abstract of this article:


Homosexual male probands with monozygotic cotwins, dizygotic cotwins, or adoptive brothers were recruited using homophile publications. Sexual orientation of relatives was assessed either by asking relatives directly, or when this was impossible, asking the probands. Of the relatives whose sexual orientation could be rated, 52% (29/56) of monozygotic cotwins, 22% (12/54) of dizygotic cotwins, and 11% (6/57) of adoptive brothers were homosexual. Heritabilities were substantial under a wide range of assumptions about the population base rate of homosexuality and ascertainment bias. However, the rate of homosexuality among nontwin biological siblings, as reported by probands, 9.2% (13/142), was significantly lower than would be predicted by a simple genetic hypothesis and other published reports. A proband's self-reported history of childhood gender non-conformity did not predict homosexuality in relatives in any of the three subsamples. Thus, childhood gender nonconformity does not appear to be an indicator of genetic loading for homosexuality. Cotwins from concordant monozygotic pairs were very similar for childhood gender nonconformity.

Their samples are too small, and I don't see adequate control of variables here. Monozygotic cotwins are evidently genetically closer than dizygotic cotwins, and those are closer than adoptive brothers. But they are environmentally closer, too. Even so, "the rate of homosexuality among nontwin biological siblings, as reported by probands, 9.2% (13/142), was significantly lower than would be predicted by a simple genetic hypothesis and other published reports", and "childhood gender nonconformity does not appear to be an indicator of genetic loading for homosexuality".

The other article is quite similar, though the samples there are somewhat wider.


The above are two more or less airtight twin studies that both identified a genetic role in the variance of sexuality. However obviously this is not the whole story, exposure to early hormones (Ellis & Ames, 1987; Adkins-Regan, 1988) and the fraternal birth order effect in males (Blanchard, 2004; Blanchard & Lippa[COLOR=#DDDDCC][FONT=Verdana][SIZE=2][COLOR=Black], 2007) are just two other factors. However the hereditary component is still there and neither of the other two factors I listed are limited to a particular culture.

They don't even claim to have demonstrated that claim. What they say is,


How do the findings of the present study compare with those of Bailey and Pillard genetic study of male sexual orientation, which employed a similar method? The most important similarity is that both male and female sexual orientation appeared to be influenced by genetic factors. However, in neither study was an indicator of genetic loading found.


Islam and Buddhism are very recent occurrences. There's no good reason to immediately assume that traits observed across cultures in various stages of development are not.

"Homosexuality" as such is a quite recent phenomenon, too. Evidently you can see homosexual behaviour in quite different cultures, and you can theorise that such behaviour is dependent on psychological pulsions that are essentially the same, and as such transhistoric (but this is already quite a leap, that shouldn't go acritically accepted). Even then, however, you see that such homosexual pulsions are by no means restricted to homosexual people; they are certainly present among heterosexuals too. Even eventual homosexual behaviour can be observed among heterosexuals (which should bring into the discussion also the issue of bisexuality). The way such things are culturally constructed varies widely among cultures, and it is only in Western industrial societies that "homosexuality" as a separate "sexual orientation", not as a part of a continuum between predominantly heterosexual and predominantly homosexual behaviour arises. There is absolutely no reason to naturalise such process, and it is the undue and acritical naturalisation of it that accounts for hypotheses like Bailey and Pillard are seeking to test.

Luís Henrique

[Kenco Smooth]

I am not sure how this would even be falsifiable first place.

That human memory should be "to some extent adaptive in an evolutionary sense" seems empty. We all have biceps, and the existence of our biceps is evidently coded in our DNA. However the size and strenght of any individual human biceps' aren't primarily coded in DNA, but are dependent of how much use and exercise such individual gives to his biceps: biceps are largely more "adaptative" in a non-evolutionary, non-genetic sence.

Whether or not variation in bicep size is "primarily coded in DNA" or not is not the essential issue. Rather it's whether it is to a point that a theory informed by evolution can provide the best explanation of some aspect of the data. The example also compares two quite different things. Psychological and physiological explanation. Psychology has to work via inference in theory construction a lot more than physiologists who have reached a point where direct study of gene effects has overtaken building theories of difference and development.

The way it's handled in the pop sci sphere often boils down to being precisely empty. But the research behind it is not.


The same seems to go with memory. And, consequently, the extent to which human memory is "more sensitive to survival related factors (food, predators and reproduction for example)" varies on to what extent an individual's survival is related to food, predators and reproduction. In a modern industrial society, I would say that predators are not a factor at all, and that remembering a number like 911 (totally unrelated to food or predation) is much more important from the point of view of survival than knowing the proper method of cultivating tomatoes, the recipe for apple pie, or how to deflect an imminent attack by a cougar (all more or less directly related with food and predators).

In the same manner that a representative sample would be presumed to remove any effects of individual differences in an experiment the presumption of an evolutionary adaption gives license to remove relatively transient cross-cultural in forming an explanatory theory/hypothesis. This process could realistically be accused of allowing for a procession of post hoc explanations being made up to account for novel data like epicycles in Ptolemaic astronomy; but trusting rigorous standards are applied as regards the interaction of theory and data it's no more susceptible to this accusation than another science.

Ultimately whether or not the hypothesis is accurate will be indicated by it's fit to the data and ultimately it's place within an explanatory theory with predictive power and capable of producing novel research.



I frankly don't see how one could measure the relatedness of any rememberable (if that is a word) item to "food, predators, and reproduction" to adequately test the hypothesis.


In one of their studies (http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/17/4/239.short) participants rated the words themselves. They were asked to imagine themselves in a survival situation and rate randomly selected objects (they don't go into detail on how the words were randomly selected but the fact it made it past peer review makes it seem unlikely there was any poor practice here, if deliberately chosen words could even change the results) on relevance to the situation, exact text below.

In this task we would like you to imagine that you are stranded in the grasslands of a foreign land, without any basic survival
materials. Over the next few months, you’ll need to find steady supplies of food and water and protect yourself from
predators.We are going to show you a list of words, and we would like you to rate how relevant each of these words would
be for you in this survival situation. Some of the words may be relevant and others may not—it’s up to you to decide.

After this they were given a surprise memory recall on all the words. Words previously rated for survival relevance were consistently remembered more reliably remembered than two other control groups who had received instructions similar to above but for relevance to moving and pleasantness.

In this task we would like you to imagine that you are planning to move to a new home in a foreign land. Over the next few
months, you’ll need to locate and purchase a new home and transport your belongings.We are going to show you a list of
words, and we would like you to rate how relevant each of these words would be for you in accomplishing this task. Some
of the words may be relevant and others may not—it’s up to you to decide.

In this task, we are going to show you a list of words, and we would like you to rate the pleasantness of each word. Some of the
words may be pleasant and others may not—it’s up to you to decide.

This provides evidence both that words rated for survival importance are more consistently remembered than non-survival words but more importantly it provides good evidence for 'survival processing' as a distinct aspect of memory. The evolutionary explanation seems not only the best way to describe these findings but also is construed in such a way that it provides numerous possibilities for further research into this area, a hallmark of a good scientific theory.



And indeed I am far from sure that human memory is a single process. Spacial memory seems unrelated, or at least not immediately related, to verbal memory (you can't remember most things without verbalising them, but one thing you can remember without verbalisation is how to get from one place to another, and in fact you learn such a thing better by actually going from one place to another than by having an explanation of how to do it). And there seems to be an olfative memory distinct from both as well, even if by far less important to humans, just like smells in general are by far less important to us than sounds and images.

Luís Henrique

You're in good company arguing for the modularity of mental phenomena. Notably Pain & Pandeirada above. It's actually a pretty central assumption in evolutionary psych. Steven Pinker is so enamored by it that the theory's developer actually had to tell him to calm himself right down (http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Mind_Doesn_t_Work_That_Way.html?id=vHFPYg5Xwew C&redir_esc=y)with it.


And what such "five-factor personality models" would be?


Notably, the sillily named 'Big Five' model primarily associated with Costa & McCrae has been well validated across cultures (http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/89/3/407/).



That (most) humans have eyes and see? Yes, this is undeniably transhistoric. The way humans see and interpret what they are seeing? No, that is not transhistoric, and varies deeply between cultures.


I think you're underestimating how much mental work goes into organising perception. Every thing from depth perception (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception#Monocular_cues) to visual grouping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception#Monocular_cues) involves active mental activity. Mental activity which is a wonderful example of gene-environment interaction in its development.



The mind is empty until birth? Not so, fetuses are aware of their environment and respond to it. And evidently brains, and perception organs, are hardware. Beyond that, I doubt any thing else is transhistoric.


There's literally too much research pointing to the innateness of structures which play an essential role throughout life to even touch the surface on. Chomsky on universal grammar is one example that jumps to mind but that i can't speak in favour of or against. Trevarthen as an example has done a lot of research into areas that would be presumed to have no innateness but are indeed present in very young infants such as a relatively developed sense of self and other in human interaction (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1469-7610.00701/abstract) and musicality (http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-856628-X.pdf).



Well, if psychologic traits are genetically inherited, why wouldn't the ability to be a "rational maximiser" be genetically inherited, too?


Not quite sure what you're getting at with that question. Are you saying that if we're all rational maximisers then capitalism is justified as a system? If no then that finding would not be an essentially political one. If yes then hey, science showed us the best system to run with, but I don't see how you could connect the two like that.



The fact that they were falsified doesn't mean the methodology is correct.

Whether or not it seems likely or not at the outset isn't a facet of methodology unless your a some variety of Bayesian. They could feasibly have been validated or not regardless presuming there were no internal issues.



Here is the abstract of this article:

Their samples are too small, and I don't see adequate control of variables here. Monozygotic cotwins are evidently genetically closer than dizygotic cotwins, and those are closer than adoptive brothers. But they are environmentally closer, too. Even so, "the rate of homosexuality among nontwin biological siblings, as reported by probands, 9.2% (13/142), was significantly lower than would be predicted by a simple genetic hypothesis and other published reports", and "childhood gender nonconformity does not appear to be an indicator of genetic loading for homosexuality".


Really wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of this article properly but it's behind an impressive pay wall which is a shame. Anyway it still provides initial evidence of higher levels of homosexuality in genetically closer siblings, differences found between adopted siblings and particularly the differences between twin levels and . Granted it lacks controls for environment (it was just grabbed out of an old folder of mine sitting around on the subject so maybe not the best example) but the consistent pattern suggests a modest heritability.

Also no-one who knew what they were on about would argue that a simple genetic hypothesis comes close to adequate or that it essentially implies concordance between childhood gender non-conformity and homsexuality. I suppose this goes for below also.



The other article is quite similar, though the samples there are somewhat wider.



They don't even claim to have demonstrated that claim. What they say is,

[/i]





"Homosexuality" as such is a quite recent phenomenon, too. Evidently you can see homosexual behaviour in quite different cultures, and you can theorise that such behaviour is dependent on psychological pulsions that are essentially the same, and as such transhistoric (but this is already quite a leap, that shouldn't go acritically accepted). Even then, however, you see that such homosexual pulsions are by no means restricted to homosexual people; they are certainly present among heterosexuals too. Even eventual homosexual behaviour can be observed among heterosexuals (which should bring into the discussion also the issue of bisexuality). The way such things are culturally constructed varies widely among cultures, and it is only in Western industrial societies that "homosexuality" as a separate "sexual orientation", not as a part of a continuum between predominantly heterosexual and predominantly homosexual behaviour arises. There is absolutely no reason to naturalise such process, and it is the undue and acritical naturalisation of it that accounts for hypotheses like Bailey and Pillard are seeking to test.

Luís Henrique

Different expressions and constructions across cultures does not necessarily mean the two processes are biologically (or even cognitively) different. Uni-polar depression for example in East-Asia is typically reported as and associated with the physical pains and barriers to healthy action as opposed to the emotional and mental in Europe and the US however depression still has a large genetic component to it.

Whoo, that took longer than I expected.

[Kenco Smooth]

Going to have to back my shit up on the genetics of homosexuality. Looking properly into it and the link is not nearly as clearly established as I had believed. Still looks like there is some effect overall but the lines are all much more blurry than I had thought.

[CAleftist]

Bill Gates, who is very rich, seems to have quite a lot of compassion.

Somehow, I don't associate acts of "charity" (for the purpose of tax shelters and promotion of the neo-liberal programme) with "compassion."

But that's just me.

[Luís Henrique]

Going to have to back my shit up on the genetics of homosexuality. Looking properly into it and the link is not nearly as clearly established as I had believed. Still looks like there is some effect overall but the lines are all much more blurry than I had thought.

There is a more interesting article by Bailey (http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/dev/31/1/124/)* on the subject of sexual orientation of sons of gay fathers. He manages to dismiss homoxesuality being an additive hereditary characteristic, as well as an acquired one. I don't think he can even tentatively establish any kind of genetic Mandelian model though.

Luís Henrique

* I had found and read it complete online the other day, but for some reason cannot find any more than an abstract today.

[Luís Henrique]

Not quite sure what you're getting at with that question. Are you saying that if we're all rational maximisers then capitalism is justified as a system? If no then that finding would not be an essentially political one. If yes then hey, science showed us the best system to run with, but I don't see how you could connect the two like that.

I am pretty sure we are all rational maximisers. Or those of us who are able to "function" more or less adequately in a capitalist society. I am also pretty sure that most people in a feudal society were not rational maximisers. And since I don't think there was a genetic mutation involved in the transition from one mode of production to other, I am also quite sure that being a rational maximiser is a learned trait.

The point is not immediately political, it is rather ideological. I don't think the problem is that someone would claim, "see, rational maximisation is an inherited characteristic, therefore capitalism is justified" - not at least in the laboratory, though of course vulgarisation magazines could do it. Where I see the problem is in this kind of ideological notions being naturalised to the point that they aren't even being tested as hypotheses, but assumed as accepted knowledge, as an uncriticised part of the theoretical instruments. This seems to me the case of such researches about homosexuality, which assume that the categorisation of human beings as "homosexual" and "heterosexual" is transhistoric, when it is not (just think on how homosexual behaviour was thought of and categorised in Ancient Greece, for instance).

Luís Henrique