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Good stuff! I’m bookmarking this for future reference.
I particularly liked this point:
Thus, impulsivity can be understood as an adaptive response to the contingencies present in an unstable environment rather than a moral failure in which animalistic drives overwhelm human rationality.
I hate the false dichotomy of “animalistic” vs “rational”, because animals are highly rational. They are even better than humans at some high-level tasks! For example: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/surprising-results-game-theory-studies-42926
That said, I don’t think the lack of a physical basis should dissuade anyone from thinking of psychology in terms of evolution. Regardless of the physical structure of the brain, I think it is reasonable to consider that high-level human behavior has origins going far back in our evolutionary chain, and that we share much of that with our animal cousins. In any case, this idea should be supported by behavioral research, not by an appeal to neurology — and particularly not by an appeal to fake neurology.
Other lamentation is the tendency to see development as to the ‘advanced’ or ever more refined and always a strict linear progression in one singular direction which isn’t a good reflection of reality. Behavior of anything is modulated by environmental factors, ex adapting to the said situation even if its not ideal in our eyes allows said thing to persist.
These ideas are also consistent with such traditional views of human nature as rationality battling emotion, the tripartite Platonic soul, Freudian psychodynamics, and religious approaches to humanity. They are also simple ideas that can be distilled to a single paragraph in an introductory textbook as a nod to biological roots of human behavior. Nevertheless, they lack any foundation in our understanding of neurobiology or evolution and should be abandoned by psychological scientists.
In summary, almost all of Freud is more than likely built on complete pseudoscience. Checks out, i’m not surprised. This is the guy who projected his gay sex dreams onto the entire field of psychology.
It’s incredible how this stuff is the basis for so much psychology when we have concrete evidence that it’s all just nonsense.
It’s really not the basis of most science these days though. Freud is not taught in classes except in a very prefacatory for history context.
the paper seems to disagree
It’s why i’m never too mean to woo-woo types. Sure their prospectives are lacking a solid foundation but at least they’re not building it on commonly held beliefs we now know aren’t accurate. Just teach them a little bit of diamat and let them come to their off-meta conclusions.
As long as your ideas are self-consistent, aren’t fascist and apply to the real world, that’s all that really matters.
completely agree
That was a good read
When you think about it “lizard brain” does kind of have the stink of human supremacy to it. I bet it even came out of that era of fascist pseudoscience. Not that I gave that theory much credence anyway, as I always used a more computer-oriented tree model for that sort of thing. Your brain stem is the root it has ultimate power but only does the most important things (as it would constantly override stuff if it didn’t) while the more specialized stuff happens out in the distance where it can do some more radical stuff without disrupting the entire process.
Carl Sagan’s (1978) Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The Dragons of Eden, and Steven Johnson’s (2005) Mind Wide Open were both popular books that drew heavily on this idea, and Sagan’s book played a large role in bringing these ideas to nonacademic audiences.
My god hexbear was literally right about bazinga brains being a blight on society.
Hold on, shifting paradigm
Kinda wish I’d taken some comparative biology when I had the chance
