Category: Sociobiology
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The evolutionary necessity of lying
John Horgan has a long review of Robert Trivers’ long overdue book, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life. I really don’t care how well Trivers analyzed the topic, this is such a rich and important issue that I can’t help but think he must have hit some important…
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The end of evolutionary psychology
A new paper in PLoS Biology is rather like the last person to leave turning the light off. Evolutionary psychology as we understood it in the 1980s and 1990s is over. Darwin in Mind: New Opportunities for Evolutionary Psychology: None of the aforementi…
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Muslim over-reliance on logic
I’ve been mulling over omar’s comment below: And about women, he made the argument that all this equality business is a sideshow and even a net negative. We dont have to buy this silly notion that “we are wasting the talents of 50% of the population”. Once we sort out our technology issues, we will…
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A mismeasured Mismeasurement of Man
I would say The Mismeasurement of Man is one of the most commonly cited books on this weblog over the years (in the comments). It comes close to being “proof-text” in many arguments online, because of the authority and eminence of the autho…
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Nature vs. nurture, again, and again, and again….
In The New York Review of Books Richard Lewontin has a long review up of Evelyn Fox Keller‘s last work, The Mirage of a Space between Nature and Nurture. Here’s the blurb from Duke University Press: In this powerful critique, the esteemed h…
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Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species
Link to review: Mother Nature: a complicated and morally ambivalent tale
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Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species
Link to review: Mother Nature: a complicated and morally ambivalent tale