Psychologist and writer’s appearance on Aporia condemned for helping to normalise ‘dangerous, discredited ideas’

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.

  • Libra00English
    1•13 days ago

    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?

      • Libra00English
        2•13 days ago

        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.

        • @acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
          -1•13 days ago

          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.

          • Libra00English
            2•13 days ago

            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.

      • jwigglerEnglish
        0•13 days ago

        Idk, I mean I’m not a fan of Pinker (his whole book on why violence has declined seems to ignore structural violence all around us, especially lower classes, and heavily supports capitalism) but evolutionary psychology seems pretty legit to me?

        Geographically isolated groups of a single species will show variations of behavior and psychology that is affected by their environment and genetic predispositions – that seems like a pretty reasonable take.

        Yeah, when people take that to racist extremes, its problematic. You can’t assume a person’s quality because, when it comes to individuals in a particular, geographically originated group, you don’t know where they landed on the spectrum re: genetic predisposition, and then you don’t know their current environment either. It all comes out in the wash. I don’t really think that means evolutionary psychology is total bunk, though. Its useful to put humans along with other animals when we think about their how their behavior and psychology are affected by evolution.

        • @acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
          -1•13 days ago

          Geographically isolated groups of a single species will show variations of behavior and psychology that is affected by their environment and genetic predispositions – that seems like a pretty reasonable take.

          call it reasonable or plausible or whatever you want, but for it to be science it needs empirical evidence and predictive value. Failing that you just have “reasonable” hypotheses, and one person’s “reasonable” is another person’s racist/sexist/transphobic/whatever, especially when the hypotheses emphasize nature over nurture. That’s the problem with evolutionary psychology.