Thank you, Diana. This was a class act, robust and well-written. You remind me of why I began to read the Busses and Thornhills in the first place; that clarity of thought and capacity to parse complex human motivations.
DCB is clearly annointing himself with the blood of the lamb so the angel of death (read: the mob) will pass over him when the time comes. It's cool, but he doesn't get to bedraggle the whole field of EvPsych for that to happen. If course scientists should be careful in the communicating their ideas, but I see no reason why that should apply to EvPsych scholars anymore than it applies to doctors. After all, if a man deliberately poisons another with copious amounts of Digoxin, we don't blame the doctor who prescribed it for Atrial Fibrilation.
I only have an amateur's knowledge of EvPsych—I buy books and read them, because the field is profoundly interesting to me—but even my untrained ears can hear the bastardized quality of the science peddled in the manosphere. Up until today, I'd never associated that with a failure of EvPsych's popularizers. Rather, I understand it has much more to do with the ideological axes manosphere bros have to grind. Some of them aren't, by my estimation, very bright. It's a terrible Duning Kruger effect playing out in the public eye, and no one would give a hoot if it wasn't filling out feeds all the time.
That said, I rarely hear them mention studies or books by notable EvPsych authors, or say explicitly they're operating off the ideas of any particular theorist in the space. It's never that deep for them. DCB's fear about the field is completely unfounded by my lights. Again, it seems to me clear that he is actually trying to wave a flag to his progressive in-group to pass himself off as the white sheep in the black herd.
|The trans gunperson responsible for the Nashville Shooting in 2023 had a manifesto as well, whose pages showed a motivation to kill children with “white privlages” (sic). Conservatives have speculated that this manifesto was not released because the shooter was trans and motivated by anti-Christian and anti-White animus.
I spent a couple minutes trying to find this. Official sources say it was a diary (which is why it wasn't posted online before the shooting), and if I'm reading their statements correctly it was withheld due to infohazardous notes on how to be a successful school shooter. I don't know what fraction of non-manifesto shootings have similar documents released.
More relevantly, anonymous sources in the investigation indicated the shooter expressed hate towards pretty much every group, but only the "white privilages" section was leaked, creating a false impression that these ideas were the motive.
There's room for a good argument that these pages provide a similar level of evidence as what DCB used to discuss the Sydney stabber's ideology, but I think that argument should be made instead of ignoring the uncertainty here.
I appreciate the extra information! Don't know if you had this experience but it was difficult for me to find much about the Nashville shooter and the right-wing websites that had information were not very direct and riddled with ads.
"A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer" so I don't think that this diary, which also contained the shooter's motivations, is that different from a manifesto in terms of what we can glean about the person's ideas/motives. Although I appreciate that a manifesto is released on purpose whereas a diary is private, so you could argue the diary wasn't witheld or censored. I don't think the shooter expressing animus towards lots of other groups makes much difference in terms of my argument. The Buffalo shooter cited lots of other information other than genetic plots. I don't think the Sydney stabber had a diary- the only indication of his motive was from his father, who didn't really seem all there. I disagree that these two have a similar level of evidence, unless there was some written or social media records from the Sydney stabber that I failed to unearth.
Will link to this comment in the text with a small addendum- but I don't think this information warrants a major correction
One of the most useful insights from evolutionary psychology is that human reasoning is not in the first instance aimed at truth; it’s a social competence aimed at solidifying our reputation in our group. Once aware of this dynamic, you see it in all sorts of discussions, especially online. Of course, the place where it is most difficult to see is in one’s own reasoning (as predicted by evolutionary psychology).
This was very insightful, Ms. Fleischman. Evolutionary Psychology gets a very bad rep, which can make people wary about it, but personally (even though I am a complete layman in this field, and so whatever I might think is of no value), I don't tend to lend credence to ad hominem and hate arguments like the above. . On a different front, I've been listening in the last months to the old 'Rationally Speaking' podcast, and when Evolutionary Psychology is mentioned, it is with a lot of suspicion about its scientific credentials. Can you recommend some read that deals with this sort of criticism?
Massimo Pigliucci hates evolutionary psychology which is why Rationally speaking often seems so suspicious of EP. Laith Al-Shawaf has written some excellent stuff defending evolutionary psychology. And Spencer Greenberg is a rationalist who likes evolutionary psychology, his podcast is excellent.
Diana, you are a breath of fresh air. I really enjoy your clear-cut, no bullshit communication. Please stay politically incorrect and say the truth as you see it. I have to say I got the exact same impression as you with regards to the motivation behind the DCB article.
A student of mine just found and watched a video on youtube with you giving an introduction to evolutionary psychology. She was really fascinated and I think inspired by your talk. As a female you can help get more women interested in this important field.
Whenever I read something written by Diana Fleischman I think, 'Wow, she's good: clever, honest and doesn't suffer fools gladly. Why don't I hear more from her?' And then I realise I have answered my own question. Writers like her are precisely the ones consigned to the margins. And I was pleased to see that she and Geoffrey Miller are on the same page. A decade ago, in the days when I still read whole non-fiction books rather than random online articles and substack pieces, I read his book 'Spent' and thought it was terrific. Nowadays I only ever make it to the end of fiction books, and even they have to involve shootings, spying and beatings rather than, say, witty talk at a tea party.
Good article,linking buss's paper at the end was even better,and pinker retweeting it today is the best outcome.Wokeness has elevated 'safety' way above truth,completely blind to the lingering effects of spreading lies,and red-pill/manosphere types being popular is the direct result of their immature academic censoring.We have to get political activism outside of academia/science if we wanna 'conserve' the massive improvements to modern life we are experiencing after industrial revolution
I have a bias already so my opinion should be viewed with the topmost suspicion. I believe all science should be allowed to roam free in their search for truth, but on how this affects the general populace, I believe this is where Philosophy and ethics come in hand. Security should not be a job of scientists. Security should be a job of the government and its armed forces, the laws that govern the state, etc. Science and ideas should be free, untainted, and by all means gay!(Happy). Truth should be the only thing sacred.
The real problem is the dichotomy between facts and values, a cry from David Hume's, "Is and Ought" problem. The fact that our actions concerning a fact is a function more of our values than the facts themselves.
*An Example
Evolutionary Psychologist: Women evolved hypergamy to deal with the perilous nature of the time and their own vulnerability.
Person A: So women should all go for men that have more resources than them?
Person B: So I should try my best to make money to attract more women?
Person C: Make sure women are held down economically so men get more women?
Person D: Ugh, I can't deal with this. I am a failure and I hate that I can't get ahead at anything to attract women, so I should die instead and or kill some people to take them with me.
What do we do with this information? Every thought of action as you see, reflects the values of who is saying it. Government, ought, if they value society, to make sure to enforce the right values, right from the lowest rung of society, the family. The mentally ill such as Person D, should be given special treatments, and perhaps, be watched on the kind of information they take in.
I keep waiting for people to tired of the mass-shooting blame game. First thing we want to know? Identity. Second thing? Ideology. The exercise gets us nowhere, and does nothing to reduce the likelihood of the next catastrophe.
Thank you, Diana. This was a class act, robust and well-written. You remind me of why I began to read the Busses and Thornhills in the first place; that clarity of thought and capacity to parse complex human motivations.
DCB is clearly annointing himself with the blood of the lamb so the angel of death (read: the mob) will pass over him when the time comes. It's cool, but he doesn't get to bedraggle the whole field of EvPsych for that to happen. If course scientists should be careful in the communicating their ideas, but I see no reason why that should apply to EvPsych scholars anymore than it applies to doctors. After all, if a man deliberately poisons another with copious amounts of Digoxin, we don't blame the doctor who prescribed it for Atrial Fibrilation.
I only have an amateur's knowledge of EvPsych—I buy books and read them, because the field is profoundly interesting to me—but even my untrained ears can hear the bastardized quality of the science peddled in the manosphere. Up until today, I'd never associated that with a failure of EvPsych's popularizers. Rather, I understand it has much more to do with the ideological axes manosphere bros have to grind. Some of them aren't, by my estimation, very bright. It's a terrible Duning Kruger effect playing out in the public eye, and no one would give a hoot if it wasn't filling out feeds all the time.
That said, I rarely hear them mention studies or books by notable EvPsych authors, or say explicitly they're operating off the ideas of any particular theorist in the space. It's never that deep for them. DCB's fear about the field is completely unfounded by my lights. Again, it seems to me clear that he is actually trying to wave a flag to his progressive in-group to pass himself off as the white sheep in the black herd.
But none of us are buying it.
Typos will be the death of me 🤦.
Good article.
One quibble:
|The trans gunperson responsible for the Nashville Shooting in 2023 had a manifesto as well, whose pages showed a motivation to kill children with “white privlages” (sic). Conservatives have speculated that this manifesto was not released because the shooter was trans and motivated by anti-Christian and anti-White animus.
I spent a couple minutes trying to find this. Official sources say it was a diary (which is why it wasn't posted online before the shooting), and if I'm reading their statements correctly it was withheld due to infohazardous notes on how to be a successful school shooter. I don't know what fraction of non-manifesto shootings have similar documents released.
More relevantly, anonymous sources in the investigation indicated the shooter expressed hate towards pretty much every group, but only the "white privilages" section was leaked, creating a false impression that these ideas were the motive.
There's room for a good argument that these pages provide a similar level of evidence as what DCB used to discuss the Sydney stabber's ideology, but I think that argument should be made instead of ignoring the uncertainty here.
I appreciate the extra information! Don't know if you had this experience but it was difficult for me to find much about the Nashville shooter and the right-wing websites that had information were not very direct and riddled with ads.
"A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer" so I don't think that this diary, which also contained the shooter's motivations, is that different from a manifesto in terms of what we can glean about the person's ideas/motives. Although I appreciate that a manifesto is released on purpose whereas a diary is private, so you could argue the diary wasn't witheld or censored. I don't think the shooter expressing animus towards lots of other groups makes much difference in terms of my argument. The Buffalo shooter cited lots of other information other than genetic plots. I don't think the Sydney stabber had a diary- the only indication of his motive was from his father, who didn't really seem all there. I disagree that these two have a similar level of evidence, unless there was some written or social media records from the Sydney stabber that I failed to unearth.
Will link to this comment in the text with a small addendum- but I don't think this information warrants a major correction
One of the most useful insights from evolutionary psychology is that human reasoning is not in the first instance aimed at truth; it’s a social competence aimed at solidifying our reputation in our group. Once aware of this dynamic, you see it in all sorts of discussions, especially online. Of course, the place where it is most difficult to see is in one’s own reasoning (as predicted by evolutionary psychology).
📌
This was very insightful, Ms. Fleischman. Evolutionary Psychology gets a very bad rep, which can make people wary about it, but personally (even though I am a complete layman in this field, and so whatever I might think is of no value), I don't tend to lend credence to ad hominem and hate arguments like the above. . On a different front, I've been listening in the last months to the old 'Rationally Speaking' podcast, and when Evolutionary Psychology is mentioned, it is with a lot of suspicion about its scientific credentials. Can you recommend some read that deals with this sort of criticism?
Massimo Pigliucci hates evolutionary psychology which is why Rationally speaking often seems so suspicious of EP. Laith Al-Shawaf has written some excellent stuff defending evolutionary psychology. And Spencer Greenberg is a rationalist who likes evolutionary psychology, his podcast is excellent.
Diana, you are a breath of fresh air. I really enjoy your clear-cut, no bullshit communication. Please stay politically incorrect and say the truth as you see it. I have to say I got the exact same impression as you with regards to the motivation behind the DCB article.
A student of mine just found and watched a video on youtube with you giving an introduction to evolutionary psychology. She was really fascinated and I think inspired by your talk. As a female you can help get more women interested in this important field.
Whenever I read something written by Diana Fleischman I think, 'Wow, she's good: clever, honest and doesn't suffer fools gladly. Why don't I hear more from her?' And then I realise I have answered my own question. Writers like her are precisely the ones consigned to the margins. And I was pleased to see that she and Geoffrey Miller are on the same page. A decade ago, in the days when I still read whole non-fiction books rather than random online articles and substack pieces, I read his book 'Spent' and thought it was terrific. Nowadays I only ever make it to the end of fiction books, and even they have to involve shootings, spying and beatings rather than, say, witty talk at a tea party.
Good article,linking buss's paper at the end was even better,and pinker retweeting it today is the best outcome.Wokeness has elevated 'safety' way above truth,completely blind to the lingering effects of spreading lies,and red-pill/manosphere types being popular is the direct result of their immature academic censoring.We have to get political activism outside of academia/science if we wanna 'conserve' the massive improvements to modern life we are experiencing after industrial revolution
I have a bias already so my opinion should be viewed with the topmost suspicion. I believe all science should be allowed to roam free in their search for truth, but on how this affects the general populace, I believe this is where Philosophy and ethics come in hand. Security should not be a job of scientists. Security should be a job of the government and its armed forces, the laws that govern the state, etc. Science and ideas should be free, untainted, and by all means gay!(Happy). Truth should be the only thing sacred.
The real problem is the dichotomy between facts and values, a cry from David Hume's, "Is and Ought" problem. The fact that our actions concerning a fact is a function more of our values than the facts themselves.
*An Example
Evolutionary Psychologist: Women evolved hypergamy to deal with the perilous nature of the time and their own vulnerability.
Person A: So women should all go for men that have more resources than them?
Person B: So I should try my best to make money to attract more women?
Person C: Make sure women are held down economically so men get more women?
Person D: Ugh, I can't deal with this. I am a failure and I hate that I can't get ahead at anything to attract women, so I should die instead and or kill some people to take them with me.
What do we do with this information? Every thought of action as you see, reflects the values of who is saying it. Government, ought, if they value society, to make sure to enforce the right values, right from the lowest rung of society, the family. The mentally ill such as Person D, should be given special treatments, and perhaps, be watched on the kind of information they take in.
NO…
:)
I keep waiting for people to tired of the mass-shooting blame game. First thing we want to know? Identity. Second thing? Ideology. The exercise gets us nowhere, and does nothing to reduce the likelihood of the next catastrophe.