Misguided Criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology #2: Evolutionary psychology provides an excuse for bad behavior – in particular, for the kinds of bad behavior that men specialize in. From #TheApeThatUnderstoodTheUniverseamazon.com/Ape-that-Under…
Misguided Criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology #3: Evolutionary psychology implies that certain undesirable phenomena – old-fashioned sex roles, xenophobia, war and aggression – are ultimately ineradicable. From #TheApeThatUnderstoodTheUniverseamazon.com/Ape-that-Under…
"There's no magic-bullet study that can single-handedly establish that a given trait is an adaptation – or that it's not. The best we can ever do is to look at the preponderance of evidence and see which way it points." #TheApeThatUnderstoodTheUniverseamazon.com/Ape-that-Under…
Misguided Criticisms of Evolutionary Psychology #8: Evolutionary psychologists argue that everything is an adaptation. They're guilty, in other words, of what’s sometimes called "panadaptationism." #TheApeThatUnderstoodTheUniverseamazon.com/Ape-that-Under…
Critics who rail against status quo bolstering, genetic determinism and just-so storytelling are like the crazy person in the bus shelter, fighting with a sparring partner who isn't really there: They've invented their own evolutionary psychology and are arguing loudly with that.
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THREAD: Boys Are Falling Behind: An ingenious study explores grading bias against boys
“Boys are increasingly falling behind girls at school. This disadvantage has important consequences.”
[Link at end.]
“[D]espite the commonly held belief that girls are discriminated against, teacher biases favor girls.”
“This favoritism, estimated as individual teacher effects, has long-term consequences: as measured by their national evaluations three years later, male students make less progress than their female counterparts.”
Thread: The Four Laws of Behavior Genetics [links at end]
The 1st Law of Behavior Genetics: All psychological traits are partially heritable.
The 2nd Law of Behavior Genetics: The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes.
The 3rd Law of Behavior Genetics: A lot of the differences between people in psychological traits aren’t attributable to either genes or the family environment.
Amazing. No one knows for sure why dolphins do this, but possible explanations include "leadership or dominance, acoustic communication, courtship display, defining positions of members in the school, and dislodging ectoparasites." doi.org/10.1242/jeb.02…
Do dolphins just spin for fun? That's quite possibly the proximate explanation. The OP is trying to answer a different question, though, namely: What's the ultimate explanation for the behavior – the reason dolphins evolved to find spinning fun in the first place?