[SpaceRenaissance-349] Closed comments? (LMU)

Date: Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 8:31 AM
memills@... cosmides@...

You need to consider the "environment of evolutionary adaptiveness"
(EEA) when talking about human psychological traits. I.e., in the
historical and prehistorical environment what psychological traits
contributed to reproductive fitness? And you must keep in mind
"inclusive fitness" because it's the genes that get selected over
evolutionary time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_fitness

And on top of that you need to take into account recent selection and
just how fast psychological traits can change under intense selection.

http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Capitalism%20Genes.pdf

Recent authors may have had some insight into human psychology, indeed
Robert Wright thinks they had a better feel for the problems than
scientists until recent times when evolutionary psychology emerged
from cognitive psychology, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience.

To warp this discussion back to the origin,

"I can only conclude that some politicians actually want global
warming to be a serious threat to humanity. I wonder why?"

I know what tools need to be applied to generate a satisfactory answer
to this question. The psychological traits behind this tendency
(which applies to a much larger group than just politicians) must have
had positive reproductive value at some point in the past.

I understand where capture-bonding came from, and even what conditions
lead to human groups getting into wars.

Henson, H. Keith: Sex, Drugs, and Cults. An evolutionary psychology
perspective on why and how cult memes get a drug-like hold on people,
and what might be done to mitigate the effects, The Human Nature
Review 2002 Volume 2: 343-355

H. Keith Henson: Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War. Also [7]

But even though I know from what area of human knowledge the answer
will come from, I don't know why humans have the traits that lead to
people to "directly arguing that a human die-back is more desirable
than cheap energy."

Speculations on this point _in the context of EP models_ would be welcome.

Not understanding this could be lethal to a high fraction of the human
race. On the other hand, understanding it may not be helpful at all.

Keith

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:50 AM, Michael