Evolutionary Psychology and RP - Some stuff to chat about.

OK,

So, I feel like having a bit of chat about Evo-Psych given a few comments I’ve replied to over the past couple of days and it seemed reasonable to do a thread on it so we could setup the discussion in a reasonable way.

First, we’re going to make the distinction between “Evo-Psych” and “RP”.

Evo-Psych is a scientific discipline concerned with how human brains are structured. Specifically, the core of the field is the insight that human brains are evolved organs (like all your other organs) and as such are created with the sole purpose of assisting genes in copying themselves. Just as the rest of your body is.

A human body and brain is simply a complicated mechanism built by genes to copy themselves (the human genes contained within that body). In the same way an elephants body and brain is a complicated mechanism built by elephant genes to copy them. And a bacteria or a virus is a significantly less complicated mechanism built by bacterial/viral genes to copy them. Thats what we are.

That has left an extremely significant “mark” on how we act and what we do that cannot be erased. It’s NOT a rigid never deviating program (like a computer program is). We are more complicated than that. However, genetics is very much the base from which everything else is developed and so which makes critical differences at all sorts of stages, all the way through that structure. It is the hardware on which our cultural software runs.

So when we refer to Evo-Psych here, thats what I am referring to. That discipline. The notion that humans have genetic hardware, which runs cultural software.

This is extremely different from traditional psychology which deals with culture as a thing of itself a sui generis construct that is not running on any particularly defined hardware that constrains it. That just IS what it IS as we have measured it.

RP is not Evo-Psych. It does not seek to explain how/why human bodies and brains are built. It is not a scientific discipline. It is not an attempt to truly understand humans on a deep and true level. It does not engage in peer review. Its formed of thousands of frustrated males and females trying to work out how to be less frustrated, not thousands of dispassionate scientists attempting validate/invalidate hypothesis dispassionately.

RP is a praxeology and an attempt to create practical means knowledge can be applied in the real world to achieve certain results. An attempt to use knowledge gained elsewhere in order to generate actionable advice a human can follow in order to improve his chances of achieving his/her sexual objectives (knowledge gained through Evo-Psych, by “normal” psychological research, by “trial-and-error” in the real world, by the collection and collation of thousands of humans experiences in human sexual relations, and by other means).

This distinction is, or should be, similar to the distinction between (say) Physics and Car Mechanics. The first is a scientific discipline concerned with how material objects function in the universe. The second is a praxeology. An attempt to use Physics and all sorts of other knowledge bases) to achieve a practical result in the world (the ability to fix cars that turn up at your shop) by defining a series of practical actions that should have that effect, resting on physics and other sources (car manuals, chemistry, heuristics and other discovered solutions).

So, hopefully, that helps deal with the thrust of the comments I’ve been receiving (which more or less say “Evo-Psych is wrong because these RP guys are saying stuff I disagree with”.)

Thats immaterial to Evo-Psych. Evo-Psych is not RP and in no way "rests" on RP at all. Just as it’s immaterial to physics rightness/wrongness if the car mechanic doesn’t fix your car. You can’t argue physics is wrong, because the car mechanic was wrong. Well, in the same way, you can't argue that Evo-Psych is wrong because some RP Dood said something nutty yesterday. Physics/Evo-Psych can be entirely right as scientific disciplines even if every Car Mechanic/RP-Dood is wrong out in the real world.

The next thing I want to get onto, now we’ve got that out of the way, is “Well, fine. But is Evo-Psych right ?” to which the answer is, yes. Pretty much self-evidently and definitionally so as a principle, whether any particular application/theory made by humans within it is or isn’t.

Aside from the god-botherers, does anyone here seriously contend that your brain/body wasn't formed by an evolutionary process ? That it was formed by that evolutionary process to serve the fundamental underlying purpose of replication of genes ? I assume no-one here is a creationist. We all accept we are evolved beings. We accept that our hands are the way they are because they evolved that way, because it was adaptive. That our legs and ears are the way they are because that was adaptive. That the way they function was “designed” by the natural selection process to be adaptive to (ultimately) copying genes ?

Right. That goes for your brain too. And, in particular, that also goes for the workings of that brain too. Your Psychology.

To say this is not true is a statement that ultimately devolves down into saying that we are not evolved beings. The only way to refute this is to refute Natural Selection, Evolution and our modern understanding of Biology.

In the same way you hand has evolved to have a pincer grip and to be able to perform that function, because it was adaptive.... The brain functions that have been formed have formed to be adaptive to perform those functions.

I’m not going to go into ALL the ways your genes have formed your brain (there are billions) but, critically for discussions here, your genes have fundamentally formed the functions in your psychology that....

• Select Mates
• Reject Mates
• Establish long term bonds (or not) with those Mates
• Act and Interact with members of the opposite sex
• Have different versions of the above behaviours, depending on whether you are a “male human” or a “female human”.
• Make, or rescind, or cheat on agreements with your partner (like, say, “A Marriage”)

Now, this is not to say we are perfect little robot automatons. Genes work by “bashing off the environment around them”, including the human social environment we call “culture”. Nature(Genes) and Nurture(Culture) are inextricably intertwined with each other. It’s Nature via Nurture (not Nature Vs. Nurture).

You do not have a hardcoded "IF woman has big boobs THEN marry woman ELSE reject woman" statement in your brain. BUT the way you have learned to be attracted has been entirely bounded by the methods that were successful copying genes in the past, and if they were not successful in doing so you do not have a brain setup that way because the genes that would have built that brain got bred out down the millennia.

SO.... And this last point is critical.... It is the genes in human bodies that set the boundaries of this playing field. They create the brains that are the substrate on which “culture” runs. No human genes = no human brains = no human culture.

In the same way the car mechanic can’t do something that breaks the boundaries set on that praxeology by physics, no matter how hard he tries. RP (or other human sexual relationship praxeologies) can’t go outside the boundaries set on that behaviour by the human brains genes have constructed, no matter how hard people try.

Human genes form the boundaries of human societies aggregate sexual relationships. Culture has a large role to play inside this boundary, but it’s the genes that set the boundary and without changing the genes you are not going to get humans in the aggregate to exceed those boundaries (although any individual human snowflake may do something really fucking weird, humans as a class of animals aren’t all going to want to go off and be that fucking weird).

As a human you have the ability all the time to act against your genes interests, and do but humans as a species, as an aggregate, tend always to do what genes desire them to do across very large numbers of people. The mass of humanity is like water flowing between a series of hills set by genetics. The occasional splash or drop may go another way, but the bulk of us all flow downhill in the same big mass (there are some exceptions to this for technical reasons, contraception being one of them, we can talk about that in the comments if you like).

Although you may indeed be that rare kind of special snowflake that desires 300lb land whales with terrible fashion sense and only 3 limbs as “your most desired” sexual partners... Even you must understand that the human species as an aggregate doesn’t feel that way. You must realise that it’s NOT good advice to people to put on 300lb, wear shitty clothes and chop a leg off. That you personal desires are not a good guide, but where genes are sending that huge flow of the human water IS a good guide.

Those broad human desires are set by genes bashing off the environment, and are defined by them, and explain just WHY it’s good advice to say “be the ideal weight for your height and somewhat fit, we are clothes designated as fashionable, stick with the 4 limbs for now”.

Another way you can say this is .... Culture is a software application that runs on a genetic hardware substrate.... The software can't do anything the hardware does not allow it to, although the amount of things the hardware substrate allows is very large. BUT culture is not a thing in itself. An object separate and different from the rest of the evolved biology in this world, it’s software that runs on that substrate... just as Elephant Culture does (and they do have rudimentary culture)... or Chimpanzee culture does etc etc.

Even if we committed “mass social engineering” and spent every waking day of every waking hour trying to train children to do so.... we would not succeed in making the vast bulk of humanity desire 300lb individuals, with bad fashion sense, missing a limb.

RP’s central insight is that it’s the first praxeology of human sexual relations that has acknowledged the existence of this substructure, and formally tried to plug that into it’s applied actions, it’s advice.

They have not always done this the right way.... They, like anyone else, are not always right... But fundamentally, they are the only sexual advice praxeology that attempts to do this and thats how you get the conjunction between RP and Evo Psych that you do NOT get between /r/relationships and/or /r/relationships advice and (really) any scientific discipline.

The other praxeologies in sexual relations (particularly those of the BP variety) attempt to define human relations and human culture as sui generis ... a thing in and of themselves... related to nothing but itself, and what human minds decide they want to do. A setup where it really would be possible to mass brainwash people such that everyone desires a 300lb human with <4 limbs and poorly dressed. This causes them to say very silly things very often. To give poor advice.

Because of this, only RP attempt to confine that within the bounds of an evolved human nature, and evolved human sexual response mechanisms that are different by sex as evolution (but not social science) says they should be.

Wheres other sexual advice praxeologies take the view that “Well, if it’s good for men it must be good for women too”.... or.... “Well, if men want that women would want it if it weren’t for the culture/if women want it men would want it if it weren’t for the culture”... Only RP really genuinely, at a base level, takes the view that “You wouldn’t expect strict fairness and symmetry between the sexes, fundamentally men and women want different things, and because their genes enforce that NOT because society has programmed them that way”.

This makes a big difference.

Similarly, only RP and not other sexual advice praxeologies say "Humans are not rational beings when it comes to sex. You should appeal to the instinctive desires of humans first and only to their rational desires second because it works out better that way".

In essence they are saying with this that if you are desirable in a way genes would define desirable then you will be desirable to a huge majority of the opposite sex, whether this is rational in a modern society or not. This is because genes change slowly, and culture changes fast, and your genes specifically are still interested in an ideal man that is defined as "what was ideal a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away" in human lifescale's (but not genetic replication) terms.

(i.e. it explains WHY women like fit and tall men.... When fitness and tallness are no longer especially desirable things rationally anymore. Rationally, in the modern world, computer programmers should be desirable and sporty guys shouldn't)

Anyway, thats enough for now. OP is already longer than it should be.

What do we want to talk about concerning the above ?

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TL:DR;

Evo Psych isn't RP.

Evo Psych is a science.

RP is a praxeology not a science

Evo Psych is correct in principle (whilst like all other disciplines subject to human error on any particular).

Human sexual relations, and culture more generally, are not sui generis they are "cultural software, running on genetically defined hardware".

Failure of other sexual advice praxeologies to understand this causes them to give bad advice.

Although RP does not always properly apply Evo-Psych, and does not always offer good advice, it fundamentally bounds it's advice in an understanding not shared with other sex advice sites that avoids making the errors those other praxaelogies make.