PZ Myers. 2004 Sep 07. I should know better than to prod The Comic Book Guy. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/i_should_know_better_than_to_prod_the_comic_book_guy/>. Accessed 2008 May 17.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Tuesday, September 07, 2004
I should know better than to prod The Comic Book Guy
Wow. It's hard to take this 'godless' fellow at Gene Expression seriously. In my previous comment on his nonsense, I suggested that it was a waste of time to erect straw men against each other's positions, so what does he do? He assembles a long, rambling post in which he tries to tell me what I actually think, and gets it completely wrong at every point. In fact, his entire argument is unpleasantly dishonest, relying entirely on assigning me false positions.
I'm not going to spend a lot of effort dissecting the silliness of his accusations, but here's a sampling of what he claims that I believe.
There are plenty of people who deny that biology significantly affects human behavior, and yeah, PZ is one of them. He really does think it's possible to culturally reprogram people to not be sexually jealous, despite the copious evidence to the contrary.
Pray tell, PZ, where are those well controlled studies that show humans that aren't sexually jealous?
PZ just will not accept that men and women are behaviorally different and no amount of cultural upheaval and government intervention will eliminate all differences between them.
He really does believe that male and female nature is so plastic that some kind of societal intervention can make men and women indistinguishably androgynous from a behavioral standpoint. There's no room for the norm of reaction in this Lysenkoist worldview, so let's take the point on directly.
So we are left with the very strong statement that according to PZ, human culture evolved independently of human biology.
it's a blanket assumption from the "social constructionist/blank slate" crowd that Darwinian selection explains nothing about human behavior (in this case, sexual jealousy), and that exclusively social explanations for cultural institutions should be privileged over any explanation that invokes biology.
It's good to see that PZ knows the basics about steroid hormones, but it's bad to see that he falsely implies to his readers that those different side groups are unimportant in understanding sex differences.
PZ (or should I call him PC?) would like you to remain unaware of all this, because he'd like you to believe that sex differences stop at the neck, and couldn't possibly affect neurological processes or behavior on average.
Finally, PZ believes we most *certainly* mustn't think of supposing that biology might have impacted cultural evolution, at least not until we've tried the utopian re-engineering of society that will - in PZ's words - show us there is "no reason to suspect biology is directly involved in the cultural institutions around marriage".
many of the individuals involved (from PZ Myers to Majikthise to Sapphos, etc.) have stated that it's not right to criticize open marriage, but it is right to criticize those who criticize open marriage...even if the facts strongly indicate that open marriage is likely to lead to breakups.
It's simply breathtaking. I don't think I've ever seen quite so large an army of straw soldiers erected in my honor. Every one of those statements—from the idea that I don't believe people are jealous to my belief that biology doesn't affect culture to my plan for a Lysenkoist re-engineering of society—are nothing but fatuous inventions of Mr Godless that are in direct contradiction of my actual beliefs. I'm tempted to respond by refuting his ridiculous delusion that the moon is made of vanilla ice cream, but that would be stooping to his level. No, thank you. I will, however, assure everyone that I actually have noticed that men and women tend to be different both above and below the neck, and can think of lots of examples where biology affects culture, and vice versa.
I'm going to single out just one example of Mr Godless's astonishing lack of comprehension, the example of a hilarious and pathetic remark from one of his colleagues, who said, "can anyone really believe that feminist studies has anything relevant to tell us about 'the social construction' of male-female interaction when degree recipients aren’t even required to know the difference between the chemical structure of estrogen vs. that of testosterone, let alone anything about the comparative genomics of the X and Y chromosomes?" My reply was "What kind of geek would think that knowing that estrogen’s C19 is unmethylated while its A ring is aromatic gives him any insight at all into the different behaviors of the sexes?"
His rebuttal?
You see, steroid hormones like estrogen and testosterone do their job by slipping through the plasma membrane and turning on various genes...and different side groups mean that different genes get turned on in men and women. These differing patterns of gene expression produce the physiological and behavioral differences between the sexes.
Zoom, right over his head, and he geekily plods on, compounding the error. I'm sorry, guy, but knowing the methylation state of one of the carbons in a steroid hormone tells me nothing about social and sexual differences between men and women; there's a whole world of stuff going on between the chemistry and the behavior that emerges. It's like listening to a typography nerd earnestly explaining what a 'serif' is, who concludes that he has now explained all of Shakespeare, and that by demonstrating the irrefutable existence of type he has proven his superiority over me, the guy who doesn't believe in the alphabet. I think I'll stand by my belief that I'll get more insight on the matter by talking to a radical feminist humanities professor (who will recognize that I know my ABCs) than I will wasting my time with the uneducated boy in the print shop.
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So, um, where are all those facts he's mentioning? Where are the statistical studies of open marriages (open marriage != cheating, incidentally) that he refers to?
#: Posted by on 09/07 at 01:45 AM
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They don't seem to exist, but he can tell me that different steroid hormones activate different genes, so QED.
He's a very good squinker -- great at throwing up a barrage of irrelevant factlets -- but he's not so good on comprehension, or actually listening to what the other guy has to say, and it looks like arguing with him is pointless, since he's just going to distort everything to fit his preconceptions. -
Yeah, that happens.
I actually would like to see studies of open marriages, to see things like how well they work, how open they are, even how the participants define their own sexuality.
I think Mr. ClosedMindedMarriage is still clinging to the romantic love/property inheritance/holy writ version of marriage where the vows include "forsaking all others". Like, durrr, if I don't promise that, I don't have to go by it, and the county clerk would record the marriage no matter what!
Unless, of course, I wanted to marry a woman.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 01:58 AM -
"So, um, where are all those facts he’s mentioning? Where are the statistical studies of open marriages (open marriage != cheating, incidentally) that he refers to?"
Erm, could it be that "open marriages" are pretty rare, and therefore hard to study 'in bulk'? (That would hardly contradict the notion that sexual jealousy is a strong innate tendency in humans...)
As for the X- and Y-cromosomes, the point was that "Gender Studies"-types rarely regognize the fact that men and women exist as separate categories because of, well, 'biology'. Rather, they skip biology , genetics, etc. entirely and axiomatically assume it has nothing whatsoever to do with gender differences, etc.
Finall, in order to aviod the "strawman" metadiscussion, it would be interesting to see you lay out your actual beliefs on the subject.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 06:33 AM -
The thing that never ceases to puzzle me is how the folks who insist that XY works this way and XX that end up getting so bent out of shape when individual men and women persist in behavior that confounds their theories. They claim the mantle of rational scientist, after all: shouldn't they be used to going back to the drawing board?
(I can't be arsed to check, PZ: does he ignore bonobos entirely, or has he come up with some chemically detailed scheme [doubtless beyond my poor liberal arts education] explaining why some of our closest genetic cousins enjoy so much non-monogamous, non-procreative, polymorphous sex?)#: Posted by Kip Manley on 09/07 at 08:08 AM -
Nice try, but I gave up on that thread myself, precisely because there's a breathtaking collision between an idee fixe and a total lack of scientific literacy. Pinker and the rest of the EP crowd have a lot to answer for having handed loaded guns to so many ill-equipped to use them.
I mean, here's a few basics that godless just doesn't seem to grasp:
1) Individual cases cannot be described by mapping what is typical, normal or general about a population onto them. If I say, "human beings have five fingers on each hand" and someone posts, "But I have six on my right hand", I'm not going to get anywhere by saying, "No, you don't: human beings have five fingers on each hand." Because it's perfectly possible that the individual case is not described by the general rule. This is a thousandfold more true for ill-defined and vague behavioral or cognitive traits like "sexual jealousy", which is a compound term for a wide range of social practices and psychological states. To predictively state that a particular individual case must have a certain resolution or trend towards a certain norm in this instance is simply ignorant.
2) Bad EP or sociobiology does two things that really irk me: it flattens out actually existing variation between species and actually existing variation within a species.
So, for example, even among the great apes, there's quite a notable variety of modes of sexual organization within social groups ranging from monogamy (gibbons) to territorially enforced senior-male privileged access to breeding females (gorillas) to the widespread polymorphous use of sexual connections (reproductive and non-reproductive) as a basic part of social relations (bonobo chimps). Reducing that to a simple statement like "sexual jealousy is common among animals" is like trying to describe the biodiversity of chordata by saying, "They all have skeletons". Again, "sexual jealousy" is a very simple gloss on a very complex and highly variable constellation of social behaviors--at that level of generality, it tells you very little about what kinds of consequences could be expected to ensue from the existence of the general phenomenon.
3) More to the point, saying "sexual jealousy is hardwired among humans" comes smack-dab up against long-lasting social institutions in human societies which rest upon behaviors that godless says are unstable and unwise. Polygamy in the long span of human society is more common than monogamy, and in many societies is or has been a stable, socially sanctioned institutional form. Godless is making a prediction that this cannot be so; it is a prediction which is retroactively contradicted by human history and ethnography.#: Posted by Timothy Burke on 09/07 at 08:21 AM -
Yes, exactly. The irony here is that proponents of something called human biodiversity seem intent on flattening the range of observed variation to support their notions that all people are hardwired in similar ways, with differences that can be mapped neatly to discrete human groups -- so all people of that ethnic group can be lumped together, and are different in some common way from people in this other ethnic group.
The striking thing in the criticisms of Bitch, Ph.D. is the way a simple-minded version of theory is used to club an observed data point into line -- we can't allow no wimmin to violate our preconceptions, and any that do are damned!
And no, Kip, no bonobos, and we certainly can't accept that human societies might have different cultural practices. Polygamy, polygyny, and any practice different from a kind of monogamy where males jealously restrict their mates from adulterous situations don't happen or are doomed to failure, for strictly objective evolutionary reasons, of course.
Also note this post from Carl Zimmer -- the molecular evidence suggests a significant period where polygyny was common in human evolution. -
"1 To predictively state that a particular individual case must have a certain resolution or trend towards a certain norm in this instance is simply ignorant."
Godless' argument was probabilistic, not deterministic, as you try to make it out to be. Furthermore, until you have more specific information regarding an individual, using the general case to make predictions is hardly invalid. Moving into the moral realm, running a custom-made moral system for each individual would be unworkable. Therefore, modelling morality on the general case (five fingers) is often completely defensible.
" Polygamy in the long span of human society is more common than monogamy, and in many societies is or has been a stable, socially sanctioned institutional form. Godless is making a prediction that this cannot be so; it is a prediction which is retroactively contradicted by human history and ethnography."
The presence of sexual jealousy would predict that, all other things being equal, higher levels of jealousy would prevail in a society running hard-core polygamy. That in turn, *could* lead to the system going unstable. However, it is far from certain that higher levels of jealousy would cause any upheaval, or - as you imply - make polygamy impossible. As long as the sexually privileged are able to keep the jealous at bay (Extreme examples: Harems.) the system keeps running.
"So, for example, even among the great apes, there’s quite a notable variety of modes of sexual organization within social groups ranging from monogamy (gibbons) to territorially enforced senior-male privileged access to breeding females (gorillas) to the widespread polymorphous use of sexual connections (reproductive and non-reproductive) as a basic part of social relations (bonobo chimps)."
True, and Godless does quite a few cites to support his assertion that significant levels of sexual jealousy are indeed present in us humans. (The other side has so far come up with 0 cites.)#: Posted by on 09/07 at 08:48 AM -
It’s hard to take this ‘godless’ fellow at Gene Expression seriously.
Yes, yes it is. Nice post, but I'd beware of the tar baby that is Gene Expression, or more specifically the tireless clueless assholery of its denizens. Waste of a good url and blog name.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 08:50 AM -
"Yes, exactly. The irony here is that proponents of something called human biodiversity seem intent on flattening the range of observed variation to support their notions that all people are hardwired in similar ways, with differences that can be mapped neatly to discrete human groups — so all people of that ethnic group can be lumped together, and are different in some common way from people in this other ethnic group."
This is not a case of anyone trying to "flatten the range of observed variation" - rather, not knowing much about the specific case, making predictions based on the general case is usually the best way to go about things. I.e, while it is possible that X is completely non-jealous, GC predicts otherwise based on an assumed population jealousy distribution.
As for the group categorization problem, people are indeed points on a genetic continuum, rather than members of some "True" group. For the sake of categorization, howerver, it's usually practical to assign group labels based on what in the end becomes cluster analysis.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 08:58 AM -
"Yes, yes it is. Nice post, but I’d beware of the tar baby that is Gene Expression, or more specifically the tireless clueless assholery of its denizens."
Too late, I'm already here ;)#: Posted by on 09/07 at 08:59 AM -
True, and Godless does quite a few cites to support his assertion that significant levels of sexual jealousy are indeed present in us humans.
He does? You mean those strawmen are actually clutching studies in their straw hands?#: Posted by on 09/07 at 09:06 AM -
OK, B, that's a good natured response to an ill mannered comment; I feel bad, and I apologise. And you are making a better show of your side (with which I still disagree) than I remember seeing on GE. Perhaps things have improved (to my taste) there; I haven't read it in some time.
It seems to me that your (valid) point about the predictive utility of probabilistic analysis misses the point: the gaping hole in the criticisms of Ms Bitch is that her lifestyle doesn't match predictions and rather than re-examine the theory you are (godless is) insisting that there must be something wrong with her. -
"He does? You mean those strawmen are actually clutching studies in their straw hands?"
No, I mean he linked studies that indicate high degrees of sexual jealousy in humans.
It does appear (from the debate in the other thread) that the debate has now shifted to whether or not sexual jealousy is a specialized adaption, or just an application of general-purpose innate jealousy.
Last, when you get hit by a straw man, the best path to take is to just spell out your actual position. Just going "Straw man!" isn't very enlightening.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 09:19 AM - ...misses the larger point, I meant to say.
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Sennoma: Thanks.
Still, this is the internet, and I consider some excess to be "business as usual".
As for the climate on GNXP, it's usually ok, even though we do get flooded by people who could be fairly categorized as "assholes" occationally. (Drawn by the 'edgy' subject matter, and the political aspect of the blog, no doubt.)
"the gaping hole in the criticisms of Ms Bitch is that her lifestyle doesn’t match predictions and rather than re-examine the theory you are (godless is) insisting that there must be something wrong with her."
First off, Godless was wrong in singling one single non-public person out when making his argument - he's apologized for that on the blog.
Second, the prediction of GC was based on the assumption that she (or her partner(s)) were indeed 'normal' in the sense that their relationship would be likely to crack under the pressure of jealousy. I.e, he assumed she, or her partner, was, in fact, deceiving him/herself. Only time will tell if he made the right call.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 09:32 AM - Wow PZ I had no idea you had such controversial views on biology until Godless cleared it all up ...
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B, I'm sorry, but Godless was not making a probablistic statement about a population: he was making a probablistic statement about a case of individual variation. (e.g., that Bitch Ph.D was going to run into trouble because sexual jealousy is hardwired into humans). That's what's insane and unscientific: applying a species-level observation to a probablistic statement about any individual case's likely resolution. If you were talking about a human being at birth, you might be ok saying, "This person is likely to have a psychological inclination to sexual jealousy when they reach sexual maturity". If you were dealing with a person who was already sexually active and that person reports that they experience very low levels of sexual jealousy, you have no business saying, "But there's a species tendency to high levels, so you're eventually likely to experience high levels". That's completely misunderstanding what it means to think probablistically about behaviors: a probablistic map of human behavior encompasses a wide range of individual variations and makes no predictions at the level of individual cases that can override data (even self-reported) on such an individual case.
Second, where you get to the point of human polygamy or polygyny, you demonstrate why I find EP so frustrating, and why the "just-so story" criticism is in my opinion a fair one. (and as an aside, the typical response that such a critic is a pure social constructionist who doesn't believe in the role of genetics really is a straw man, and one that attempts to distract from the specifics of any discussion). The first reasonable predictive hypothesis I can see from the assertion that "sexual jealousy" is strong in human beings and</a> that it serves an adaptive function (e.g., is not a spandrel that results from some other adaptive part of human sexuality and cognition) is that probablistically most human societies should be monogamous. Ok, but they're not: the significant majority of all societies which have existed have been polygynous in some form or another, in fact, in a dizzying array of forms. Even in human societies with strongly enforced norms of monogamy, there's often legal or socially sanctioned forms of reproductive and non-reproductive sexual liason outside of monogamous pair-bonds.
So you say, "Ok, in fact, the sexual jealousy claim doesn't necessarily predict a strong tendency to monogamy. But what it does predict is that polygynous societies might have a tendency to social instablity. And if it doesn't predict that, it does predict that there will be higher levels of 'sexual jealousy' in aggregate in such societies, but this will have no consequences 'as long as a polygamous system can be kept running'." As a hypothesis, this is gobbledygook--it's unfalsifiable and tautological. There will be "higher levels" of sexual jealousy but these will have no observable consequences or predictive meaning "as long as the society can keep it running". Since polygynous societies have a vast array of social and legal arrangements of polygyny (harems, marriages, concubinage), "keeping it running" means nothing. Make a prediction: what specific social consequences should we expect to see as we look back at polygynous human societies? Should we expect to see polygynous relations always guarded by or guaranteed by the threat of violence (e.g., harem guards)? Well, what about polygamous marriages, which are very common? Should we expect to see higher levels of violence against women in such relations? (very, very hard to prove, but based on the many historical examples I know of, I think you have no hope of making such a case).
The other problem that the range of variation between the great apes raises is with the term itself. Studies show that "sexual jealousy" is common among humans, but <b> what exactly is meant by that term? Among gorillas, "sexual jealousy" means something very different in terms of actual behaviors than it does among bonobos, even though both species may have behaviors that we might choose to call "sexual jealousy". If sexual jealousy is a plastic, adaptible "essence" that you see as playing an equal and universal role in polygynous and monogamous human societies, and in all human beings regardless of their reported state of mind or behaviors, what is it? If it's something as general as "I feel possessive towards my sexual partner of the moment", that's almost worthless as a description of a specific behavioral module. To be a meaningful descriptor of a common human behavioral module that has been adaptively selected for, you've got to get more specific than that.#: Posted by Timothy Burke on 09/07 at 10:11 AM -
Whoops, sorry about the tags there.
#: Posted by Timothy Burke on 09/07 at 10:12 AM
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Is godless EP's answer to the Postmodernism Generator?
#: Posted by on 09/07 at 12:22 PM
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Does anybody else hate long back-and-forth point-by-point arguments? It often seems the overall point gets lost when you spend all your time going over every little statement the other guy/gal made. Losing the forest for the trees, as it were.
#: Posted by on 09/07 at 12:39 PM
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I clearly need to set aside a larger period of time in the morning before going to classes in which to restate all my various positions for the benefit of those who didn't read them the last time. Sorry. I'm going to beg off due to pain and fever from possible gallstones or gastritis, and since I'm not feeling well enough to wade through the straw crowd, please give me the links to studies kthxbye.
#: Posted by on 09/07 at 03:25 PM
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Tim:
1) I do think both me and Godless realize that information regarding the individual case can (if good enough) override generalized information regarding the average case. Still, you have to judge the quality of the data. In this case, GC (for better or worse) made the judgement call that bitchphd was mistaken. He therefore proceeded to apply the prediction of the general case to the individual one.
Furthermore, when deciding on a set of rules for society, (I.e, morality) there are large gains in not using tailor-made morality for each person. I.e, blanket disapproval of open relationships when children are present is likely to be more effective as a deterrent, compared to having to go through each case on the merits.
1,5) And no, I don't think most people here are hardcore post-modern deconstructionists.
2) True - it's a just-so-story, not really a testable hypothesis (Even though, with some work, perhaps it could be turned into one...) Still, that was not the point - rather, I wanted to illustrate a possible alternative to another just-so-story, i.e. the notion that the presence of sexual jealousy must lead to the development of monogamy. (And that, conversely, the non-universality of monogamy disproves the presence of sexual jealousy)
2,1) As for the "sexual jealousy as a spandrel" thesis, it's worth remembering that sexual jealousy doesn't need to be an independent adaption in order not to be a spandrel. After all, development of general-purpose jealousy could just as well have been partially driven by, well, the benefits of sexual jealousy.
3) Finally, what's the best definition of sexual jealousy? Well, first, I'll settle for a description that suits humans well enough. And, as stated above, it need not be an independent adaption (or "module") in order not to fall into the abyss of spandreldom.#: Posted by on 09/07 at 03:38 PM -
Wowee, I'm doing a research essay on this very thing. I'd like to ask though - where does this argument leave the 8% (or so) of the world's population that is born with ambiguous sex (either males without a Y chromosome, or babies with ambiguous genitals)? How do they fit into this narrow definition of sex and gender? Like Tim, I don't think that generalisations based on deterministic biology can be used to explain cultural institutions like marriage, or apply universal morals. Yes, some of us are hardcore postmodern deconstructionists.
#: Posted by on 09/08 at 08:58 PM
- Ah, so this is where it was. Way overdue, but still I'd like to offer an apology to Dr Bitch for referring to her as "Ms Bitch" above. Female academics (and, I guess, medicos) get that all the time, all too often because of petty passive aggression (not it! I plead simple carelessness). Sorry about that.