Content warning thread 11/
It's not just about reading the classics. If you want to break ground with that no-nonsense detective story, you're gonna have to read - gasp - fantasy! Sci-fi! Romance! Check into Eddie the Non-Fiction Kid's library and check out with some real stories, capische? And if you know what's good for you, learn a little history. Keep it real.
Content warning thread 12/2. bro's genes told him to get friends
No. That wasn't the first warning. I'd ignored that one.
Will Storr's *The Science of Storytelling* is an odd book. It's not on my postgrad's reading list. In fact, I was recommended this book by a Twitter post years ago. The premise seemed interesting enough, and I thought it relevant to tack on as extra material.
Content warning thread 13/
I don't want to crank the lever and cry 'SCIENCE BRO!' as such, but if your book's title has the word 'science' in it, then - and I did judge the book by its cover - its theses adopt the verisimilitude of having stood up to the scientific method. Which is why the first chapter is, more or less, underpinned by a #critihype take on evolutionary psychology, a proposed subfield notorious for producing unfalsifiable just-so theories at a pace too rapid to be considered happenstance.
Content warning thread 14/
👆 That was irony, by the way.
Evopsych (a.k.a 'Darwinian psychology,' 'human sociobiology' and 'A Story of Science-Telling') presents itself as something you can't just casually unpick or disregard, like swiping past a video on social media you almost certainly know is full of #bullshit. It's a bundle of hypotheses about human cognition and behaviour that you can tell to your friends, family, and passersby on the street, and find them nodding in vague agreement. It sounds… truthy.
Content warning thread 15/
On the other hand, if you've heard anything about evopsych before, I'm 99% sure it's not because of the actual ideas it posits ("we are products of evolution" isn't a bad premise on the surface), but a certain *audience* those ideas attract. They're the sort of folk who claim that natural selection alone can prove we are genetically wired (read: destined) to seek out criminality, hierarchy, war, or greed; believe that, and they can make you believe much worse.
Content warning thread 16/
Not unlike the #Monomyth, starting with the TL;DR of Darwin's theories is more open-ended than you'd think, and this means it lends itself to being fertilizer for shithead ideologues to make their means to an end palatable. Not all evopsych enthusiasts see themselves as bedfellows with eugenicists, nor successors to the phrenologists before them, but if you *are* for #eugenics, then evopsych is the perfect smokescreen, and you might as well call yourself one to confuse everyone else.*
Content warning thread 17/3. my god, pure paleoideology
The author seems keen to promote evopsych not as a third wheel to #neuroscience and #anthropology*, but as the main act (see next post):
Content warning thread 18/
> Evolutionary theory tells us our purpose is to survive and reproduce. These are complex aims, not least reproduction, which, for humans, means manipulating what potential mates think of us. Convincing a member of the opposite sex that we’re a desirable mate is a challenge that requires a deep understanding of social concepts such as attraction, status, reputation and rituals of courting. Ultimately, then, we could say the mission of the brain is this: control.
- pp. 16-17
Content warning thread 19/
Right off the bat, the evopsych framing is front and center. Evolution, alone, can explain why we behave the way we do, and thus, how plot elements work to stir our emotions.
Content warning thread 20/
He takes no pause to consider what this might imply. Were this actually the case, we could quite happily throw #anthropology in its entirety out the window with few consequences; eschew the full, uncut archive of human experience and social/political experimentation, in favour of a few shelves, and say, "Well, it looks better this way, and it makes more sense.*" I find that quite myopic.
Content warning thread 21/
There's a brief section in Chapter 3 of #DavidGraeber and #DavidWengrow's #DawnOfEverything where they argue starting from a common evopsych claim: hierarchy-seeking behaviour after groups pass a certain number is an adaptation from our simian ancestors. Social inequality, therefore, is an effect of genetic destiny. Some erudite Pleistocene archaeologists, "forced to confront" recent evidence of royal burials and commons areas, propose no alternatives. Open and shut case, right?
Content warning thread 20.1a/irony
And yes, I DO know that I'm writing this only having read the first chapter. Let the irony come back to hit me if it turns out the whole book isn't like this.
Content warning thread 17.1a/third wheel
As in, his sources rooted in evopsych are in proximity to those in neuroscience and anthropology, but the former takes significant precedence in his points over the latter.
Content warning thread 16.1a/gay gene agenda
For example: This article from the July 16th 1993 edition of the Daily Mail, a UK newspaper hawkish for far-right policy and pretends its journalistic standards reflect "what everybody's thinking:"
Content warning thread 16.1b/
The headline reads "hope", and the bottom line is, "It could soon be possible to predict whether a baby will be gay and give the mother the option of an abortion." I don't think I'm reading too deep into this by saying this sounds a lot like, "Wahey, let's exterminate the gays!" Please elaborate what the problem is with having a child that might turn out to be gay. I'd love to know.
Content warning thread 16.1c/
A story that keeps the nuance of studies is not mutually exclusive with a story that makes your eyes glaze over, but the Mail, suffice it to say, believes it can't be done. Because it *won't* - the framing of this article is consistent with the party line since Lord Rothermere took ownership in the 1920s:
Content warning thread 16.1d/
The 'gay gene' palaver was a caricature of a study of genes that were *speculated* to have some small influence on male sexual orientation. This has failed to be replicated in future studies; until it has, the 'gay gene' argument fails the scientific method's most fundamental epistemological test - that what you say can be proven with an experiment that can be repeated.
