Will

@Evolving_Moloch

Student. Evolutionary Anthropology. Research Assistant at the Human Systems and Behavior Lab . Blogs on violence, warfare, rituals, deception.

Joined December 2016

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  1. Pinned Tweet
    30 Dec 2018

    Since it is the end of the year, here is a very long and self-indulgent thread on all the articles I wrote over the last 12 months

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  2. 12 hours ago

    "While engaged on a hunting expedition, these hunters...glide along in single file, avoiding every leafy twig the rustling of which might betray their presence...At such times all tread in the footprints of the first man..."

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  3. Jan 31

    "The bear is the only animal the Veddas really fear...at least one man in each community we visited bore marks of the bear's paws. Bear's flesh is not eaten though they sometimes kill one that has attacked them. Hence the bear is called the "enemy" n his name is seldom mentioned"

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  4. Jan 30
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  5. Jan 30

    "As opposed to a canalized human life history strategy, this study suggests potential developmental plasticity in traits associated with foraging skill, which manifest not just in contemporary settings but potentially in ancestral settings as well."

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  6. Jan 30
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  7. Jan 30

    Mead was like the Einstein of anthropology--not the real world Albert Einstein of course, but like the way he was portrayed in that Family Guy episode where he slugs this guy who comes into the patent office and takes his work.

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  8. Jan 29

    Yeah things look bad and there's little reason to be optimistic on this front. I believe social scientists who do cross-cultural or evo work have a responsibility to seriously engage w/ the ethnographic evidence relevant to their topics, but many seem to think differently

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  9. Jan 28

    "As elsewhere in Europe, war underpinned leadership in the late Roman n early medieval periods in northern Britain...elites in early medieval northern Britain were first n foremost leaders in war, with leadership-in-conflict one of the main qualities sought among aspiring rulers"

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  10. Retweeted
    Jan 27

    When I used this method from the a GWAS on educational attainment using between family effect sizes I saw signals of divergent selection, like hereditarians claim, but when I used within-family effect sizes the signal completely disappeared

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  11. Retweeted
    4 Sep 2019

    "our ability to perform GWAS to identify loci underlying variation in traits among individuals vastly outstrips our ability to understand the causal mechanisms underlying these differences. In many cases, genetic contributions may not be separable from [environment and culture]."

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  12. Retweeted
    Jan 28

    PGS offers an amazing tool for all sorts of research, including social sciences, but they are not a magic bullet and we should be very sceptical of anyone who seeks easy answers to policy questions from them

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  13. Jan 27

    Reminded me of R. Dale Guthrie's argument that much of the Paleolithic art that has been discovered is basically just doodling by young males

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  14. Jan 26

    Very little about human history makes sense if you believe human beings cannot be moved by the deaths of people they've never met.

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  15. Retweeted
    Jan 24

    "Baboons, the most versatile of animal polyglots, eavesdrop on G/wi hunters and pass on the plans of the hunters to the intended prey animals. This is not altruism but is caused by the baboons' legendary love of trickery and teasing."

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  16. Jan 26
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  17. Retweeted
    Jan 25

    Contests Between Equals: Men and Beasts

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  18. Jan 25

    "[Innovation] happens where people are relatively prosperous, not desperate."- I tend to think this is generally true, and it's another aspect of why I think the logic behind the 'cold winters' hypothesis is badly flawed

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  19. Jan 25

    "You have to be sly with the animals, you must pretend to be talking about someone else; by fooling the game this way, you somehow annul man's aggressiveness n wipe out the fatal act. The hunter's chanting seals the secret agreement between men n animals."

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  20. Jan 24

    I think this conclusion is right. Love this figure but I think in practice the three boxes to the left tend to be under-utilized in a lot of evo psych work (as Smith n Hagen both agree), which is why I think critiques like Smith can be valuable despite the over-the-top conclusion

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  21. Jan 24

    "Hunting is part of the battle for survival, and the hunted animal is an adversary in the contest of the hunt, not something that exists specially for man to prey upon."

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