Please shoot me

[Abagadro]

There are actually multiple books and articles on information processing in political systems and subsystems in government. It's one of the hot areas right now. I'm too short on time right now to dig a list up, but if you remind me after November 9th I'll get some for you.

[Margalis]

Ew Evolutionary Psychology. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. Evo Psych is nothing more than a bunch of "just so stories" that sound plausible but have no actual evidence in support of them, no predictive power and no falsifiability.

It's always great fun reading about an Evo Psych theory then concocting your own plausible but opposite theory.

[MahrinSkel]

Until you start mixing it with Cognitive Neuro-Psychology, then it starts becoming a much more solid science.  Not that anything in that direction is past the very earliest stages, yet.  It would be more accurate to say that it is not *yet* falsifiable, much like most of the physics of the 1930's was beyond their ability to verify (hell, we *still* haven't fully verified Quantum Mechanics).  It's certainly a hell of a lot better in that department than any *other* school of psychology.

--Dave

[Margalis]

EvoPsych will never be falsifiable because it has no predictive power. I suppose you could come up with some EvoPsych theory and then discover some lost tribe someplace that proved or disproved something about it somehow...who knows...

There is nothing *to* verify for the most part. What does EvoPsych say about what will happen tomorrow? Nothing really.

Let's play the game. Point me to an EvoPsych theory and I'll come up with a plausible but exactly opposite theory -- it's really great fun.

[MahrinSkel]

First point me to *any* non-Behaviorist theory of psychology that satisfies the same criteria of prediction and falsifiability.  :-D

The core tenet of evolutionary psych, that many parts of our mental processes are genetically derived and therefore the result of a selection process, is pretty damned hard to argue with.  Where (or if) you transit from derived to learned behaviors controlling actions, and what role (if any) volition and consciousness play, is at least potentially a solvable problem using evolutionary psych tools.  It has at least the potential of being a *true* "science of the mind", something no other school of psychology has offered since Behaviorism.

When you compare Evolutionary Psych's "Just So" stories with Freudian theory, or even so-called "Cognitive" theory, it's a marvel of scientific rigor.  It's easier to attack *because* it aspires to rigor and precision, rather than just being a flat-out confabulation worth no more than the reputation of the adherents.  It's "Germ Theory" vs. the "Humors".

--Dave

[Margalis]

The core tenet of evolutionary psych, that many parts of our mental processes are genetically derived and therefore the result of a selection process, is pretty damned hard to argue with. 

That's true, but that says nothing about individual theories and how to derive them. Also EvoPsych to my knowledge does not rely much on actual biology or genetics. It isn't grounded in "this gene causes aggression and as we can see over time this gene has become more prevalent due to the following reasons..."

That would be the scientific approach, if it is based on genetics start with the genetics and then somehow trace the genetic traits through time, and only then explain why the traits propagated the way they did. In the end *why* they propagated the way they did probably doesn't even matter very much vs. the fact that they did at all.

[MahrinSkel]

That's true, but that says nothing about individual theories and how to derive them. Also EvoPsych to my knowledge does not rely much on actual biology or genetics. It isn't grounded in "this gene causes aggression and as we can see over time this gene has become more prevalent due to the following reasons..."

That would be the scientific approach, if it is based on genetics start with the genetics and then somehow trace the genetic traits through time, and only then explain why the traits propagated the way they did. In the end *why* they propagated the way they did probably doesn't even matter very much vs. the fact that they did at all.

True enough, and there is some work being done there in fruit-flies.  In fact, one of the *first* phenomena that argued for EvoPsych was that a genetic change (resistance to a pesticide) had a behavioral effect (putting their pupae at the edges of the petri dish, when they were normally random).

That's also why the work in Neuro-Cognitive Psychology is so critical.  As we find out more about how brains actually *work*, we open doors for tracing the influence of genes on behavior.

Beyond that, the progress in a-life and social simulation ties in as well, if we can show a *step-by-step* simulation of how a behavior can be selected for, it greatly increases the strength of the argument that it was.  Of course, this amounts to an extremely detailed "Just So" story.  But as the models get more sophisticated, it's very probable that they'll start showing predictive power.  In fact, they can do a very *good* job of post-dicting insect behaviour, already.

--Dave

EDIT: The point is that it's not just about a "Just So" story.  There's an implicit assumption that a selection process is a selection process, if you can define and run a simulation of behavioral interactions that shows how a behavior can be selected for, then you've got a good argument that it *was* selected for in a way very similar to that.  Since other forms of psychology use incredibly baroque and frankly arbitrary frameworks to explain behavior, it seems odd to attack EvoPsych for *that* particular sin.  Can any modern psychologist *really* predict a psychotic break or suicidal depression on the basis of anything but their own experience with the patient and the resulting "gut feeling"?

That the change in your simulation was a numeric weighting and the change in the real world was a gene that produced a different protein which acted through a possibly *extremely* complicated causal chain could be significant, but only once you've gone to the *next* step, which is trying to predict how a desirable behavior may have indesirable side effects (that presumably don't outweigh the advantages from the main effect), or how a mutation can pre-adapt for other mutations. 

That would be Maxwell or Einstein to the current Gallileo or Newton stage.  Newton couldn't explain *where* the force of gravity came from, only describe how if something like it existed, it would have certain implications.