Nick Szabo  🔑

1/ All psychology is evolutionary psychology. We are the products of natural/sexual selection (and drift). Therefore our brains are evolved structures.

Interesting thread (as usual). But, with all due respect to evolutionary psychology, which has had much insight, and the need for a unifying sound theoretical framework (which evo psych nicely has and rest of social sciences largely lacks and desperately needs), I disagree 1/n

Your argument is based on a false dichotomy and an equivocation. False dichotomy: not everything is either a non-functional byproduct or a biological adaptation. Some adaptations come bout through other dynamic processes. Like reinforcement learning. 2/n

Equivocation: our mind evolved, so in *that sense* evo psych is (trivially) true. But as a field, evo psych presumes more than *that*. EP presumes our behavior can be understood based on pre-adapted modules. Adaptation due to, eg, RL don’t fit that less trivial description. 3/n

This distinction isn’t meaningless. EP, and this non-trivial presumption, hit the nail on the head when it comes to mating, attraction, and sex differences. But misses the boat on aesthetics, morals, passions, principles, & politics. Due to this bad premise. 4/n