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Ten politically incorrect truths?
I'm not sure they are all true, or for that matter politically incorrect, but here is the list.
Thanks to a loyal reader for the pointer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 6, 2007 at 01:15 PM in Science | Permalink
Comments
Handwaving, handwaving, handwaving. Anyway, Kanazawa has a poor grasp of statistics (cf. Gelman's Comment in J Theor. Biology).
Posted by: Jack at Jul 6, 2007 1:27:44 PM
It is misleading to say that most suicide bombers are Muslim. The largely Hundu Tamil rebels in Sri Lanka developed the modern concept of the suicide bomber, and have used it to very deadly effect. The War Nerd has written a couple of interesting pieces about this group, well worh reading.
Posted by: Peter at Jul 6, 2007 1:27:59 PM
Re Muslims and women:
Polygamy is not widespread in the Muslim world, I think the stats for Egypt were like 1% of marriages or something. And most Muslim terrorists are educated and live in the west, and probably wouldn't have trouble finding a girl if they really wanted to. Anecdotally brown males are in more demand from white girls than, for example, east asian males. Yet east asian males don't do much terrorism (Cho excepted). No guys, the problem is not Islam's legalization of polygamy - the problem is Islam.
Re men liking blondes:
Not among all races, I believe darkish Italian/Greek/Persian beauty would predominate if there was a world survey.
Posted by: adrian at Jul 6, 2007 1:33:04 PM
"Kanazawa has a poor grasp of statistics"
That is a big understatement.
Posted by: Murphy at Jul 6, 2007 1:40:08 PM
The polygamy angle is consistent with the Hudson and Den Beer's hypothesis from their book Bare Branches - that imbalanced "effective" sex ratios can encourage violence in young men.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Jul 6, 2007 1:52:37 PM
This article (point #1 in particular) strikes me as a good example of why evolutionary psychology is often maligned - not simply for being "politically incorrect", but because a lot of the hypotheses come off as completely ad hoc theories borne out of a desperate desire for evolutionary psychologists to feel relevant. Not to say that they aren't, but it strikes me as overreach to try to attach such a subtle evolutionary explanation to a preference in big breasts, for example. How about certain accents, then? A lack of body hair? There's a point where we try to shift to non-biological (largely cultural) explanations... right?
Posted by: Peter Twieg at Jul 6, 2007 2:08:37 PM
After reading this, I am reminded of the Mark Twain quote: 'Interesting, if true. And interesting, anyway."
Posted by: pawnking at Jul 6, 2007 2:18:56 PM
The claims are not so much politically incorrect as they are just plain incorrect. Seems like you can find an "evolutionary" explanation for anything.
Posted by: David at Jul 6, 2007 2:32:47 PM
"Seems like you can find an "evolutionary" explanation for anything."
Isn't the point of a theory to use it to try to explain phenomena and then to predict results? This claim that evolutionary theory is so capable of universal application thus it is incorrect seems nonsensical. Gould's point with his Just So stories (where I assume this argument is coming from) also had this flaw in that he didn't seem to grasp wide application is good or that it is a necessary preliminary to the next step (ie. specific predictions)...This article seems to do a good job in showing how controversial predictions such as those made by Trivers-Willard hold up when empirical records are examined...
Posted by: v at Jul 6, 2007 2:42:24 PM
"We know that humans have been polygynous throughout most of history because men are taller than women.
Among primate and nonprimate species, the degree of polygyny highly correlates with the degree to which males of a species are larger than females. The more polygynous the species, the greater the size disparity between the sexes. Typically, human males are 10 percent taller and 20 percent heavier than females. This suggests that, throughout history, humans have been mildly polygynous."
I guess it suggests that if you want it to.
Yet east asian males don't do much terrorism (Cho excepted). No guys, the problem is not Islam's legalization of polygamy - the problem is Islam.
a) The claim wasn't regarding terrorism, it was specific to suicide bombing.
b) You're correct in that East Asians don't typically suicide bomb. Which is interesting in that the largest Muslim population in the world belongs to an East Asian country (Indonesia). Which would lead one to believe that your simplistic claim that "the problem is Islam" is incorrect.
The problem, in my opinion, is Islam as it is practiced in the Middle East, specifically.
Posted by: fustercluck at Jul 6, 2007 2:55:04 PM
Regarding the blondes: Young Scandinavian women often dye their hair black. Go figure.
Posted by: Jacob Christensen at Jul 6, 2007 2:55:26 PM
I should clarify: the problem is linkd to the distorted and perverted versions of Islam that are taught and practiced in the Middle East.
Posted by: fustercluck at Jul 6, 2007 3:05:09 PM
#3 (women benefit from polygyny) is only true if you hold the woman's control over household resources a constant. However, polygyny tends to flourish most in strongly patriarchal cultures. This makes sense: in the limit where the man has arbitrary authority over the household resources, acquiring additional wives does not dilute this authority.
However, where household resources are shared, the potential cost of acquiring an additional wife is much greater. Each additional spouse is another person who must be trusted not to squander or otherwise dissipate the household resources. Marriages of equals are hard enough when two people are involved.
Posted by: Cyrus at Jul 6, 2007 3:11:53 PM
wow, what utter bulls#$t.
Posted by: zubin at Jul 6, 2007 3:12:02 PM
I pay no attention to any writer who lists "PhD" in their byline. Both of those authors do, and the effect is additive.
- Tom Slee, Ph.D.
Posted by: tom s. at Jul 6, 2007 3:54:24 PM
I'm not sure where you get the idea that Indonesians don't suicide bomb. Plots in Singapore? The Bali Bombing? The Jakarta Marriott? Religious conflict in Aceh and Sulawesi?
Posted by: cure at Jul 6, 2007 4:17:01 PM
#7 (What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals) is indicative of the whole problem with these "truths". Pick a couple of data points. Create a simplistic model. Tout the answer as fact. Art is filled with examples where someone's work gets better as they get older. Beethoven's late music far surpass his earlier works. Mozart's fame rests on his last few symphonies, piano concerti and the Da Ponte operas. Among first rate classical composers, Stravinsky is the only example I can think of off the top of my head who peaked early on. It holds true for great literature too. The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoevsky's greatest novel. The writing of Dickens never dropped off. etc.
The problem with their reasoning is that they only look at the 20th century (and even then only looked at a limited number of fields.) The reason rock musicians peak early has more to do with the cultural and stylistic characteristics of rock. A 50 year old Peter Townsend smashing a guitar and talking about how he wants to die before he 'gets old' is a silly image to think about. Out of the biggest names in jazz, many(Coltrane, Monk, Mingus) died early (which I suppose proves that they do their best work at a young age >_>). But even then their work often was improving until they died. A Love Supreme is a better album than Giant Steps.
Posted by: Alex J at Jul 6, 2007 4:50:33 PM
#3(Women benefit from polygyny)suffers from a lack of understanding of what marriage is. The researchers seem to think of it as something like this
Woman: I'll give you sex.
Man: I'll take care of you financially.
In this conception of marriage the only difference between a wife and a prostitute is that the wife gets a long-term contract. The emotional aspects of marriage aren't so easily split up as money is.
Posted by: Alex J at Jul 6, 2007 5:02:32 PM
The Muslim one would make more sense if polygyny was at all prevalent anymore. Maybe it is in Afghanistan or Sudan, or for wealthy Saudis, but in the urbanized states--Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, etc--polygyny is very rare. That's because people are poor and wives are expensive.
Posted by: jb at Jul 6, 2007 5:28:24 PM
v, The evolutionary explanations assume that the original claim is true. That's not logical application of theory; it's like working backwards. There's no quantification. How much, really, do blue eyes factor into attractiveness? If it's so preferred, how to explain that blue eyes are becoming more and more rare due to ethnic intermarriage? I guess that "proves" people with blue eyes don't prefer others with blue eyes as mates. Oops. It's like the authors had an interesting tidbit about blue eyes and so threw it in.
Posted by: David at Jul 6, 2007 5:41:51 PM
Alex--didn't you just do what you accused them of doing relative to the age-productivity curve? That is, pick a few anecdotes and generalize the hell out them?
Posted by: TO at Jul 6, 2007 5:55:11 PM
Alex the phenomenon is unconcious, but correct on average. Most cultures view sex as a favor a woman gives a man. Genes work by building efficient systems that respond to other systems in certain ways - female systems who fell in love with rich male systems survived and reproduced, males who did the same with attractive female systems predominated also.
The two are seperate, however (the pleasure buttons pushed by the act of falling in love and the subtle, unconscious genetic reasons we were designed by our genes to fall in love in the first place). The latter shouldn't take away from the former, do we stop eating because we uncovered its evolutionary rationale?
Posted by: adrian at Jul 6, 2007 6:01:49 PM
What's the evo-psych explanation for why I want to punch evolutionary psychologists? Maybe on the veldt, smug idiots drew tigers to the tribe or something.
Posted by: Michael B Sullivan at Jul 6, 2007 6:03:19 PM
The social sciences mainly exist to generate mildly risque cocktail party conversations. This list does an excellent job of that.
Anything that gives a plausible, semi-respectable excuse to discuss breast size with a cute girl has done it's job and provided value to society.
I always liked the breasts as front-butt theory (evolved after standing upright, taking advantage of male response to the female butt.) Who knows, it could even be right. :-)
If a cute girl finds your sex-related evolutionary psych babblings interesting then you know things are going well. Discussing the latest findings on workplace injury rates ... much less effective way of measuring her interest.
Posted by: jim at Jul 6, 2007 6:04:20 PM
This thread is so timely. I was just wrapping up my treatise on the evolutionary reasons women talk more than men...
Posted by: David at Jul 6, 2007 6:11:43 PM
