Psychologist and writer’s appearance on Aporia condemned for helping to normalise ‘dangerous, discredited ideas’
The Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker appeared on the podcast of Aporia, an outlet whose owners advocate for a revival of race science and have spoken of seeking “legitimation by association” by platforming more mainstream figures.
The appearance underlines past incidents in which Pinker has encountered criticism for his association with advocates of so-called “human biodiversity”, which other academics have called a “rebranding” of racial genetic essentialism and scientific racism.
Pinker’s appearance marks another milestone in the efforts of many in Silicon Valley and rightwing media and at the fringes of science to rehabilitate previously discredited models of a biologically determined racial hierarchy.
Hm, I generally had a decently positive opinion of Pinker. Is this a case of him not knowing what this was and getting ambushed? Or did he know what was up going in?
This is who he is. Check out evolutionary psychology. He’s a proponent of this theory that has strong tendency towards racial biases.
Er, evolutionary psychology is a whole field of study with its own journal with hundreds of published studies. If you’re going to claim that a whole branch of psychology is racist you’re going to need to provide some evidence to back those claims up, because that wikipedia article has nothing more damning in it than the following suggestion that there are critics who think there might be some ethical problems with how it’s sometimes used, but that’s not a condemnation of the value of the science itself.
Critics have argued that evolutionary psychology might be used to justify existing social hierarchies and reactionary policies. It has also been suggested by critics that evolutionary psychologists’ theories and interpretations of empirical data rely heavily on ideological assumptions about race and gender.
But that’s like saying a wrench is a weapon because it can be thrown at someone’s head; that’s problem with the user, not a problem inherent in the tool.
well yeah if you cherrypick a two sentence synopsis you can make anything sound ridiculous.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
…criticisms include disputes about the testability of evolutionary hypotheses, cognitive assumptions such as massive modularity, vagueness stemming from assumptions about the environment that leads to evolutionary adaptation, the importance of non-genetic and non-adaptive explanations, as well as political and ethical issues in the field itself.
those are all pretty significant criticisms.
regarding the racism specifically, you need to read between the lines. of course they’re not going to outright admit they are being racist. But when you are dealing with unfalsifiable/non-empiracle hypotheses, while over-emphasising biology (race/sex), that’s not science, that’s politics wrapped in a scientific facade.
Yeah, that information was not on the page you linked me. I didn’t realize it was reasonable to expect people to go spelunking in your links to find the actual information you’re trying to gesture vaguely at without laying it out explicitly in the first place for some reason.
Also, other than vague ‘political and ethical issues’ none of that has anything to do with racism, which was your initial claim.
Firstly, I am a different person adding to the discussion.
Secondly, you do have the ability to look into things beyond what you are directly given by others. you have the entire internet at your disposal. That criticism page was one click away from the original article, hardly “spelunking” if you were legitimately interested in criticism of the field. I figured I would help you out with a little more information, and you downvote. So something tells me you aren’t actually interested in learning anything here, just burying comments you don’t like.
Lastly, as i said, you need to do some reading between the lines. Obviously no one is going to present their field in an overtly racist manner. All the criticism above leads to politiziation in the field, including racism. When you are not bound by empirical science, personal biases fill the void.
Firstly, I am a different person adding to the discussion.
My apologies, I didn’t notice the different name.
Secondly, you do have the ability to look into things beyond what you are directly given by others.
The ability, certainly. The time or inclination, not so much. Sorry, if people can’t be bothered to do the legwork to support their own arguments I’m certainly not going to do it for them; if you’re going to cite me a source to back up your argument the evidence you claim is on that page should actually be on that page, not buried in some link halfway down it.
and you downvote.
Actually I didn’t downvote; I almost never downvote unless the comment is trolling or being a shitlord or whatever.
So something tells me you aren’t actually interested in learning anything here, just burying comments you don’t like.
What I’m interested in learning is why the person who replied initially thinks evolutionary psychology as a field his racist, because that was the initial - rather extraordinary - claim, for which I have yet to see any evidence. I am not at all surprised to learn that a scientific field (especially one within the field of psychology) has critics, and while I’m sure those criticisms are valid and interesting, it’s kinda beside the point.
This is who Pinker is as evidenced by his being a major proponent of evolutionary psychology.
Even in academia you will have bigots who will work really hard to legitimize their biases. Seems like they go harder on the bigotry research the older they get.
I’m not familiar with evolutionary psychology but I clicked the link and checked out the page. It seems… not an immediate and total brand of evil? It’s a very broad concept at the high level: that features of human psychology can be survival adaptations and say something about the conditions during our evolution. I read the reactions and criticisms section too and I can see how some sus claims about biological essentialism could be taken too far.
But I guess my point is that just invoking the term and posting the Wikipedia page do not seem to be the immediate character assassination you seem to want them to be. “Look at this guy! He believes our psychology is informed by survival adaptations during our evolution! What a bigot!”
I don’t get it. I think I would need you to say more about what specific cases he has made under this umbrella that you find objectionable. Because on the face of it, it doesn’t seem crazy to say that people have an instinct to be helpful to one another because that turns out to be a positive population evolutionary trait.
I teach evolutionary psychology and show a scene from.Planet Earth where birds of Paradise dance for mates. Food’s plentiful, so going “hey, girl. I can get food.” Isn’t an asset. They gotta do a silly dance to attract a mate in such a food-loaded environment, instead.
I guess you can spin that kind of stuff to poorly explain human behaviors, but from everything I’ve read and prepped, it’s a very broad but innocuous field of psych, if relatively nascent.
Evolutionary psychology is pseudoscience to affirm conservative beliefs. It’s unfalsifiable conjecture
I mean it’s very often used in that way, but evolutionary psychology isn’t quite the same as phrenology. To be clear, there are definitely people who are using evolutionary psychology to justify their racism, but like… how would you discuss the evolution of depression unless you’re speculating about something that could be considered to be evolutionary psychology?
I mean I guess you could argue that all psychology is sort of just a byproduct, but that hardly seems scientific at all.
So while I’m equally concerned about racists and bigots using pseudoscience to justify their backwards beliefs, I don’t believe the whole approach of evolutionary psychology is complete bunk.
Please do enlighten me if you can.
You know what else is pretty unfalsifiable, but still pretty darn usable? Proto-Indo-European, but I’m pretty sure they’ve got some of it right.
