Blog: Gene Expression
Topic: Reason: the God that fails, but we keep socially promoting….
Comment: I boggle over a paper on who likes Evolutionary Psychology and Evolution.  Razib subsequently posts on the subject here.

"So far I’ve been talking about opinions and beliefs that are held by contemporaries. The basic model is that you offload the task of reasoning about issues which you are not familiar with, or do not understand in detail, to the collective with which you identify, and give weight to specialists if they exist within that collective".

This appears to be a reasonable perspective and may also help to explain apparent contradictions where they do appear.

For example, I recently found a copy of a paper in my email inbox, after a disagreement about evolutionary psychology in which I was the proponent for, and the other party dismissed the subject matter, by pointing out that those who did not believe in evolution, were much more likely to accept the tenets of evolutionary psychology, than those who did accept the theory of evolution.

My supposition is that the intent behind this, was that having been shown evidence that people of faith accept a certain theory, that this should be sufficient cause for me to discard it, and join in "reading off a collective script".

Quite frankly, I was completely flummoxed. The paper for your consideration is this one:

Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology
2011, 5(2), 1-9. 2011 Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology
WHO LIKES EVOLUTION? DISSOCIATION OF HUMAN EVOLUTION VERSUS EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

"Our results revealed a double dissociation, whereby endorsers of human evolution displayed relatively weak support for claims derived from evolutionary psychology, whereas non-endorsers of human evolution displayed relatively strong support for such claims".

My current working hypothesis after reading the paper, was informed by statements such as this one from the paper which notes that:

"When they learned that the relevant survey items had been drawn from evolutionary theory, opponents of the theory were much less likely to endorse them".

The issue may be attributed to an ideological constraint within a clearly defined boundary, revealing that the individuals have not examined or understood in any great detail what they accept. They have in effect outsourced thinking about these precepts to others.

Under this hypothesis, a grouping such as liberals who accept evolution, reject evolutionary psychology, because their religious beliefs include articles of faith such as the Blank State. Whereas those who believe in God, will accept empirical observation that match their experiences, even if they tie into evolutionary psychology, but their religious beliefs will incline them to reject propositions clearly identified with the theory of evolution.

YMMV.

Blog: Gucci Little Piggy

Topic: Sex to Impress

Comment: I have some admittedly childish fun with Michael and his writing style, and my own, indirectly referencing my ongoing and life long struggle to be "accessible", and hence the weak allusion to McLuhan. Any doubts that my comment was supposed to be gibberish in the postmodernism style, should have been dispelled by the links I provided at the end.

@Michael,
It appears that your inter-textual analysis of cultural deconstruction was not sufficiently broad nor inclusive on the one hand, and on the other the focus was weakly shifted, as it was insufficiently opaque at the edges and margins.

Because one is generally faced with a choice: either reject subcultural modernist theory or conclude that consensus is a product of communication, and I believe you have failed to conclusively demonstrate a sufficiently reductionist posture for the former, while only weakly advancing the case for the latter, and it shows an insufficient appreciation of the transition from within being externalized, while maintaining a cohesive integrity, and to transition this sufficiently while sufficiently populating the exterior, it is also crucial to actualize this posture suitable to the medium it is expressed within.

I can not emphasize enough that synthesis of this dynamic tension predicates a successful strategy.

I hope that you appreciate that I have deliberately structured this critique to be accessible to your demonstrated level of ability, and thus have kept the technical jargon to a minimum.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop