One of the major insights of contemporary cognitive psychology is that a lot of human mental processes emerge from the intersection of lower level intuitions/models/instincts. The key is to remember that a lot of mental operations occur implicitly and rapidly, and we often construct ad hoc rationalizations after the fact (see The Enigma of Reason).
Because rationality is such a good talker many of us have deluded ourselves into thinking that instead of being a mouthpiece and a lawyer that gets us out of sticky situations, it’s actually calling the shots. No.
Anyone interested in these topics should check out Paul Bloom’s Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human (or his other books).
This comes to mind when thinking about issues that have been bubbling up in our society. A friend on Facebook who is an evolutionary anthropologist wondered about the context of Harvey Weinstein’s serial rapes. I think A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion get’s a bad rap because of the incendiary topic, but in this case, I think cognitive psychology yields a quicker and clearer answer. Weinstein is a very wealthy man, so if it was sex with nubile women he could have paid for high-priced escorts (and it seems he did on occasion). But cognitive psychology suggests that people crave “authenticity.” Weinstein’s targeting and abuse of women he knew professionally and personally clearly provided for him an addictive frisson that paying for sex wouldn’t have given him.
Today people are passing around this “shock poll,” Poll: 37 percent of Alabama evangelicals more likely to vote for Moore after allegations. Probably most of these people think this is a politically motivated hit. That being said, it brought to mind a passage from In Gods We Trust where respondents asserted that disconfirming evidence in regards to their beliefs actually made them stronger in their beliefs.
In other words, when it comes to deeply held beliefs people aren’t going to react in a straightforward manner to reason and logic. Don’t be surprised if they behave irrationally. If the irrationality is consistent across individuals there’s probably some deeper psychology you aren’t accounting for.
The problem of doctors’ salaries. The AMA licensing cartel is keeping the supply of medical services constrained. Yes, we need more doctors. But we need more non-doctors to be able to do things that only doctors can do right now.
On the other hand, medical doctors have on average $200,000 of educational debt when they graduate. The high debt load is probably in part because there is the assumption that they will be making between $200,000 and $400,000 per year (though with income tax rates, as well as malpractice insurance, remember their net take home is considerably less).
These sorts of structural features are why we can’t have nice things. I suspect most people agree that the American tax code should be reformed…but peoples’ choices have been made with deductions in mind!
We’re rolling out more shirts for DNAGeeks. Eight people have bough GNXP t-shirts. Would be curious to post a picture of someone wearing one of those. A little surprised, but the Evo-Devo t-shirts are selling well. Anyone have any ideas for something more pop-gen related?
I love maps which have more granularity than country vs. country comparisons. I really hate when people compare the USA to European countries. California alone is nearly as populous as Spain, which isn’t even a small European country.
The map to the left shows the areas of high GDP in South Asia, though resizing region by the size of the population would help give a better sense. The distinction between urban and rural is very stark in Bangladesh.
I predict Twitter will be clearly in a death spiral in a year. The proportion of highly polarized political chatter on my timeline keeps increasing, even though I’m not following anyone different. The vibrant years of “genomics twitter” seem to be a thing of the past.
when i was young i imagined that fundamentally the non-west would become like the west. now i see the west become like the non-west. #globalismIsABitch
— Razib Khan (@razibkhan) November 10, 2017
The above tweet has gone somewhat viral. What did I mean above? The sort of thing in The End of History and the Last Man, that the terminal stable state of humanity would be post-materialist secular individualist liberalism. Though secularism seems to remain ascendant in the West, for now, the post-materialist individualism liberal project seems to be fraying. Instead of Western culture being a stand-in for global culture, it may be in the near future it will again be just another culture among cultures.