Glen - > OK. But I believe I merely asked the question: Why talk about these vague > behaviors like "dress for sex", when we can talk about reasonably > well-defined things like hormones and neurotransmitters? What explanatory > power does evopsych have that, say, evolutionary neuroscience would not have? A question, yes, but "mere" I don't think so? > > One possible answer is that evopsych allows us to tap into folktales like > Jungian archetypes, even if only so we can trick people into believing our > rhetoric. while "rhetoric" is defined to be "persuasive", the goal might be to persuade others to consider a hypothesis long enough to investigate it further. On one end of the spectrum, your speculation is probably accurate, sometimes some people simply want to be "right" or "believed" (or may not care or know the difference?) but on the other, they may simply want to engage other's in a little broader speculation as part of expanding a search space? > That trickery is power of a kind, explanatory or not. Science popularizers > walk that thin line all the time. But is there something *more*? Science Popularizers are a good (positive I think) example, but again, on the opposite end of the spectrum I think "guided speculation" has a value when combined/juxtaposed with more rigorous/formal methods for *validating* insights found during the wider ranging speculations? Where does intuition come from? It would seem to find a good launching pad on the foundation of good formalized, quantifiable work, but it also would seem to be fed well by more qualitative and perhaps even verging on "whimsical" considerations? > > Re: thread pollution -- > I don't think it's a big deal. The forum is asynchronous. Anyone can read > or not read, reply or not reply, to any post at any time. It was easier, > I'll admit, when the archives worked. I wasn't necessarily thinking of this as pollution (or any kind of problem)... but rather speciation... more on the exploration theme? It was a conjunction with my nod to Nick's original (early) appeal to those of us with higher bandwidths to somehow keep him in the loop as (even if?) we might explore (more) widely than he was seeking.
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
