Economics is built on the assumption that individual behavior can best be predicted by assuming that each individual will take the actions that best achieve his objectives. Evolutionary psychology offers an alternative approach based on the objectives not of us but of our genes.
> Similarly, the ability of a woman to persuade a man to produce children with her and help support them depends in part on her status relative to the other women on whose children that man might spend his limited resources.
I've never understood this part. Women seem to play status games just as much as men, and yet female status seems illegible, almost incomprehensible to men.
I once did an experiment with some friends. I noticed a woman of my acquaintance was wearing a very nice pair of bright red shoes, so I covered them with my coat and asked everyone what colour the shoes were. All the women knew, and none of the men (except me) did.
I would be curious to see what you make of the argument that an aversion to bad deals drives the endowment effect (see https://datacolada.org/38 for a paper summary) rather than loss aversion. I am unsure if that is at odds with the evolutionary argument you describe.
I have always held a lot of skepticism for evolutionary psych because, unlike as with animals, you cannot compare two different species (there being only one) who evolved in similar environments to distinguish the effects of the environment from happenstance, and you can't compare more than two to work out which environmental effects caused the difference and which only appear to fit it. Since there is only one human species, and it evolved in exactly one environment, I am not aware of any way to do better, empirically, than observing interesting coincidences and saying, "yes, that might be why."
<i>Homo sapiens sapiens</i> may have evolved originally in one environment, but our evolution didn't stop when we had spread out into a very wide range of environments, from tropical rain forests to arctic tundra to fertile rivers valleys. It went one, with different groups facing different selective pressures. Hence such phenomena as the famous emergence of "milk drinking mutants."
The one nit I'd pick here is that there is no "environment of evolutionary adaptedness," because evolution never stops.
If traits that produced evolutionary success for primitive foragers proved less effective for early farmers, evolution predicts reduced selection pressure for those traits, and new selection pressure for whatever traits work better in that environment. If the traits that produced success for foragers are counter-productive, it predicts evolutionary pressure against them.
If the traits you describe are counterproductive in the modern world, there's pressure against them, and there will be less in future generations - until the environment changes in some other way. If on the other hand they have no net effect currently they'll tend to hang around.
FWIW, we have excellent evidence of evolutionary changes resulting from agriculture - in particular, the domestication of mammals as a source of milk. If we got physical changes in that time, I think we can expect we also got mental changes - they are merely more subtly. OTOH, not all humans got the changes that enable adults to digest milk, and even more interestingly, there are several different changes producing the same ability. Mental changes might be a similar mishmash.
We also see changes in modern populations, but nothing that I know of is extreme and blatant.
I’d think two or more standard deviation differences qualifies as extreme, and the avg. IQ of Ashkenazi Jews compared to Avg IQ of US Blacks is blatant, significant, and highly unWoke.
A reasonable review. I agree with his criticism of the author's comments re civil rights. I have the book but have only read parts of it.
A different criticism is that it is almost entirely an intellectual biography. She doesn't, for example, mention Ed and Laura Banfield, who were close friends of my parents, and although she makes clear the academic connection with Dorothy Brady I don't think the reader would realize that she was a close personal friend who my mother, in their autobiography, describes as the most nearly perfect person she had known (not verbatim — I'm going by memory). For all that view the autobiography is better.
Also, of course, the title is wrong. My father was a classical liberal/libertarian, not a conservative.
If I had read more of the book I might be able to give a more complete account. I attended one talk the author gave and I thought in that she presented my father's views as more sympathetic to present institutions than they were. She mentioned the earned income credit as coming from the negative income tax without ever making it clear that the negative income tax was proposed as a replacement for all welfare, not an addition to it. The same is true of her mentions of the EITC in the book.
> Similarly, the ability of a woman to persuade a man to produce children with her and help support them depends in part on her status relative to the other women on whose children that man might spend his limited resources.
I've never understood this part. Women seem to play status games just as much as men, and yet female status seems illegible, almost incomprehensible to men.
I once did an experiment with some friends. I noticed a woman of my acquaintance was wearing a very nice pair of bright red shoes, so I covered them with my coat and asked everyone what colour the shoes were. All the women knew, and none of the men (except me) did.
Perhaps you could expand?
I bet men notice which woman has a high status man.
R.I.P. John Tooby (July 26, 1952 – November 10, 2023): "The brain is a Swiss army knife."
Very sad news.
Oh no! I didn't know. A great man.
I would be curious to see what you make of the argument that an aversion to bad deals drives the endowment effect (see https://datacolada.org/38 for a paper summary) rather than loss aversion. I am unsure if that is at odds with the evolutionary argument you describe.
I have always held a lot of skepticism for evolutionary psych because, unlike as with animals, you cannot compare two different species (there being only one) who evolved in similar environments to distinguish the effects of the environment from happenstance, and you can't compare more than two to work out which environmental effects caused the difference and which only appear to fit it. Since there is only one human species, and it evolved in exactly one environment, I am not aware of any way to do better, empirically, than observing interesting coincidences and saying, "yes, that might be why."
<i>Homo sapiens sapiens</i> may have evolved originally in one environment, but our evolution didn't stop when we had spread out into a very wide range of environments, from tropical rain forests to arctic tundra to fertile rivers valleys. It went one, with different groups facing different selective pressures. Hence such phenomena as the famous emergence of "milk drinking mutants."
The one nit I'd pick here is that there is no "environment of evolutionary adaptedness," because evolution never stops.
If traits that produced evolutionary success for primitive foragers proved less effective for early farmers, evolution predicts reduced selection pressure for those traits, and new selection pressure for whatever traits work better in that environment. If the traits that produced success for foragers are counter-productive, it predicts evolutionary pressure against them.
If the traits you describe are counterproductive in the modern world, there's pressure against them, and there will be less in future generations - until the environment changes in some other way. If on the other hand they have no net effect currently they'll tend to hang around.
Given enough time in our present environment you are correct, but human generations are long so human evolution is slow.
Slow, but it never stops.
FWIW, we have excellent evidence of evolutionary changes resulting from agriculture - in particular, the domestication of mammals as a source of milk. If we got physical changes in that time, I think we can expect we also got mental changes - they are merely more subtly. OTOH, not all humans got the changes that enable adults to digest milk, and even more interestingly, there are several different changes producing the same ability. Mental changes might be a similar mishmash.
We also see changes in modern populations, but nothing that I know of is extreme and blatant.
I’d think two or more standard deviation differences qualifies as extreme, and the avg. IQ of Ashkenazi Jews compared to Avg IQ of US Blacks is blatant, significant, and highly unWoke.
I loved reading the works of Cosmides and Tooby. I probably cited them (I can't remember, offhand) in my dissertation on Leadership.
I would be interested in your take on Barton Swaim’s review in the WSJ today of the new biography of your father.
A reasonable review. I agree with his criticism of the author's comments re civil rights. I have the book but have only read parts of it.
A different criticism is that it is almost entirely an intellectual biography. She doesn't, for example, mention Ed and Laura Banfield, who were close friends of my parents, and although she makes clear the academic connection with Dorothy Brady I don't think the reader would realize that she was a close personal friend who my mother, in their autobiography, describes as the most nearly perfect person she had known (not verbatim — I'm going by memory). For all that view the autobiography is better.
Also, of course, the title is wrong. My father was a classical liberal/libertarian, not a conservative.
If I had read more of the book I might be able to give a more complete account. I attended one talk the author gave and I thought in that she presented my father's views as more sympathetic to present institutions than they were. She mentioned the earned income credit as coming from the negative income tax without ever making it clear that the negative income tax was proposed as a replacement for all welfare, not an addition to it. The same is true of her mentions of the EITC in the book.