Did you blog about the "Fan Reactions to Character Death" panel at Gally? If so, please link me to it; I'd like to do a roundup.
It's super good to be home. Claudette (who we may be renaming Cricket) is a lot more confident and Pretty seems happier although there is occasional hissing. Meanwhile, Patty is the awesome.
Opening to weirdest email I've written in a long time: "Dear Virgin America: I was on flight VX 406 out of LAX yesterday, and -- and I know this is bizarre -- there were ants on it."
For those of you not paying attention to the sheer WTFery in New York State, we've gone from an ineffectual state government run by legislators who can't agree on anything and never ever get voted out (even the guy who slashed his girlfriend's face and then got censured and kicked out of office by the rest of the senate -- he's now suing AND running for reelection; I'm not even kidding) and a governor who came to power due to the former governor's sex scandal to a state government that can't get anything done because of all of the above and the fact that now it turns out that that governor interceded to try to stop the ex-gf of one of his aides from pressing her own domestic violence charges. FAIL.
On the Internet, I would also argue that everyone is a potential reality TV show. Which is a little scary. You wouldn't believe the ideas I come up with and cull.
That depression article commits the fallacy of not allowing some that traits can be neutral in evolution - they stay in a population because there's no particular evolutionary pressure to lose them, not because they're actively advantageous.
Well said. To much evo psych is about trying to concoct explanations for various traits. Mostly I see it being used to attempt to explain how modern western ideas about sex and gender are "natural" & inevitable, but you also have a strong current of certainty that every trait is both separate from every other trait & each of these traits must be adaptive in and of itself. The result is usually nothing more than a series of evolutionary "just-so stories".
To much evo psych is about trying to concoct explanations for various traits.
Exactly, and reverse engineering doesn't work, because it's not like a streamlined machine where every piece has a vital and efficient function brought together for an ultimate purpose; you're looking for reasons in a process that doesn't have reasons. And, as you say, making the really poor assumption that traits evolve in isolation from each other and so can be reduced to a single cause, which is nonsense. I really feel quite strongly people who study something that has "evolution" in the name should have a better understanding of how it actually works.
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Date: 2010-03-03 01:17 am (UTC)Well said. To much evo psych is about trying to concoct explanations for various traits. Mostly I see it being used to attempt to explain how modern western ideas about sex and gender are "natural" & inevitable, but you also have a strong current of certainty that every trait is both separate from every other trait & each of these traits must be adaptive in and of itself. The result is usually nothing more than a series of evolutionary "just-so stories".
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Date: 2010-03-03 01:49 am (UTC)Exactly, and reverse engineering doesn't work, because it's not like a streamlined machine where every piece has a vital and efficient function brought together for an ultimate purpose; you're looking for reasons in a process that doesn't have reasons. And, as you say, making the really poor assumption that traits evolve in isolation from each other and so can be reduced to a single cause, which is nonsense. I really feel quite strongly people who study something that has "evolution" in the name should have a better understanding of how it actually works.