Lately, it seems like every thread- especially anything even vaguely involving gender- ends up clogged up with biological determinism bullshit. For example:
Now, I acknowledge that we are animals and we have evolved and men and women have differences, etc. But no, I’m not going to listen to your cockameny theories about how every tiny social phenomena can be traced to some caveman urge based on some cute convinient connection you just made up a second ago because it sounds good.
And I’m especially not going to listen when you tell me that men are nothing more than sex machines and women are nothing more than baby factories. Believe it or not, women enjoy sex and men sometimes enjoy other things. Anyway, we have thousands of years of human history behind, a complicated culture that is actually quite unique from other cultures (which you wouldn’t expect if we were all basically cavemen in suits) and at least something that resembles free will. The reasons why we do the things we do are infinitely more complex than you can lay out in one pseudo-scientific just so story.
This has been getting on my nerves, too. Especially the GQ threads: “What’s the evolutionary explanation for why I like cars but my girlfriend likes motorcycles?” They’ve been popping up a lot lately. And there’s always this small population of posters who insist on taking the questions seriously, coming up with preposterous convoluted explanations without a shred of evidence… Gah.
Must be because people on the SDMB have a biological determinism gene. That’s the only explanation for the series of speculations that gay people have a gay gene, religious people have a religious gene, people who like dogs have a liking-dogs gene, Twitter users have a twit gene, sock-sock shoe-shoe people are genetically distinct from sock-shoe sock-shoe people…
Biological determinism is a fad and eventually people will look back with embarrassment at the idea that genes could explain everything. There are genetic causes for a lot of things and genetic factors involved with a great many things, but a lot of this stuff is bullshit and ignores the complexity of our environments.
Well, the fact is we are cavemen in suits, for some values of “cavemen”. Our bodies and brains aren’t detectably different from Homo sapiens sapiens that lived 70,000 years ago.
I agree that doesn’t mean every behavior has some biological source, except in the trivial sense that chimpanzees don’t bake cupcakes. Especially differences between people. But there is such a thing as human nature, and we aren’t born as blank slates. But of course, much of what we think of as human nature is really primate nature and mammal nature and animal nature. We’re a lot more like other animals than we realize.
But to add another but, making up just-so stories isn’t exactly helpful either. So yeah.
Yeah, pretty much, we are. Except that we’ve probably evolved less testosterone so males can hang around unrelated males and not kill each other, resulting in larger societies, which is adaptive.
Cavemen evolved a complicated culture which is unique from other cultures?
What other cultures are there that didn’t come from cavemen? Marley sock-sock, shoe-shoe people RULE! We must band together and kill all the sock-shoes. That way lies madness and chaos!
Plus, I am so hot that having sex IS baking for me.
Good rant. I have considered starting a similar thread myself on a few occasions. The ones i notice in particular are some of the retarded “What is the evolutionary benefit of…?” questions in GQ. Here’s a few that appeared over the past few months and that really stood out to me as completely pointless:
The idea that there must be some directly tangible and traceable “benefit” from something is completely bizarre.
Look further back, and there are threads asking about the evolutionary purpose or benefit of: masturbation; thin hair versus thick hair; the placebo effect (!!!); men finding women’s asses attractive; beards and mustaches; hearing octaves “the same” (!!!); wide noses in Hispanics; the opposable thumb; personality traits; the smell of mint (WTF!!!); leaf flutter (WTF x 10[sup]gajillion[/sup]); racism; homosexuality; nerdiness (given its “link to behavioral sterility”!!!); humor and laughter; and male pattern baldness.
It’s like there are millions if not billions of people who don’t understand that evolution doesn’t have a purpose. If a mutation occurs and it does not interfere with reproduction there is no driving force to eliminate it. If it happens to be dominant it can take over the whole population. Sometimes I think it’s creationists trying to say if there’s no evolutionary point to something evolution must be a crock, but mostly I think it’s just ignorance of how DNA works.
Fine by me. “Come see my cave paintings” indeed! Typical Erectus male…
Marley–I say we jump 'em as they lean down to get their other sock. With only one shoe on, they’re bound to be caught off balance and unaware. Victory is in the air!
