Evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby explain how “our “stone age minds” have programs that are very good at things like detecting lies, attracting mates and avoiding predators, they are in many ways ill equipped for the kind of complex market-based society that we live in today. The lens of evolutionary psychology, for example, provides insights into why so many people in industrialized countries are overweight and sympathetic to socialist ideas.”
I always knew socialism was a mental disorder.
It doesn’t appeal to human nature. It goes against everything that is human nature. The goal of communism is to change humanity to suit the system. What is appealing is the false advertisement that used by communists to gain popular support. Most people who support communist enterprises do not not know what the real agenda is. They only get the version designed for the useful idiot masses.
Awesome vid! Thanks for the link. I’ll have to look for books/articles by these two.
Clayton -
Evolutionary psychology itself tells nothing of complex human society. Like all sciences.
That bridge between mind and matter is difficult to place, and in the meanwhile, all reasoning and empiricism about other humans can be conducted only by introspecting on our own minds. That’s why we have social “scientists”; I put quotes, because they are not scientists. Just people complicating common sense.
So with that settled, the question itself is another way of saying, “Why are you beating your wife?” What, I don’t have a wife and I don’t beat people so why are you asking why I did something I didn’t do? Similarly, asking, “why are so many people socialists?” is a silly question, because how would you really know how many people are or are not socialists?
On top of which, different people’s views don’t neatly fall across party lines. So just ask why some people believe something to be true. People who think a money-less, state-less, property-less society is ideal simply believe so because they think a money-less, state-less, property-less society is ideal. A socialist’s thinking admits of no other explanation than the fact that he is a socialist. That’s all. It’s just as simple as the fact that the French folks who hated Jews and wrongly condemned Dreyfus did so just because they hated Jews. It’s a self-evident fact that you can neither prove or disprove.
Prateek, praxeology is common sense too. If you disregard the evolutionary biology based on it, doe you also disregard the work of Mises and company?
interesting what she ways saying about fats. and diet. I think most Paleo-Austrians on here would agree with what she has to say about sugar, but it would seem that the paleo diet advocated by Harris which is high in fat, would run contrary to what the lady was saying in the video
This is not evolutionary biology. Unlike evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology is pure art.
“Prateek, praxeology is common sense too. If you disregard the evolutionary biology based on it, doe you also disregard the work of Mises and company?”
If it’s common sense, then how come nobody understands Austrian economics?
It is a serious mistake to equivocally compare the term “common sense” with “deductive reasoning” or “logic”. The propositions of economics are certainly not based on common sense. Our common sense is fundamentally biased due to our biological makeup, i.e., primitive intuitions, and cultural statist indoctrinations, i.e., internetwork of fallacies and misinformation.
Seems a bit obtuse to be defining things in such terms, but yeah I believe capitalism as a whole my be against some of man’s sociological tendencies, as would certain aspects of socialism (and I think Milton Friedman believed this as well). In the end though, it doesn’t matter, so long as one is capable of acting and thinking for oneself. Human nature can be a bit of a chimera in these types of discussions.