Fight Like An Animal Revolutionary Biology pt. 1: Nature vs. Nurture vs. Synthesis
Mar 6, 2023
03:28:44
Hopelessness and Biology
- Hopelessness about humanity's future, especially in social movements, often stems from a lack of understanding of human behavioral biology.
- This lack of grounding leads to crude hypotheses and assimilation of bad evolutionary theory, fueling despair.
Innate Reasoning and Biophobia
- Humans possess innate tendencies to reason about innateness and environmental influences, even without formal scientific training.
- Biophobia in radical politics hinders a full understanding of human potential due to a fear of biological determinism.
Process Hopelessness
- Acknowledge and process feelings of hopelessness, recognizing they can be rooted in trauma and depression, not logic.
- Accepting the "full scope" of horror allows for a clearer view of agency and possibilities.
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Introduction
00:00 • 2min
What's Happening in the World?
02:21 • 2min
Is Biophobia a Fad?
03:56 • 5min
Is There a Greater Range of Behaviors and Perceptions Than We Have Ever Seen So Far?
08:49 • 4min
Adaptive Plasticity and Evolutionary Biology
12:25 • 3min
Is There a Difference Between Developmental Plasticity and Evolutionary Development?
15:22 • 3min
The Ideological Implications of Evolutionary Biology
18:24 • 4min
Hope and Denial Have a Very Intimate Relationship
22:35 • 1min
It's Important to Let Your Hope Die
24:03 • 3min
Is There a Lot of Uncertainty About Humanity?
27:14 • 3min
A Type of Biology That Is Useful for Understanding the World and What's Possible in It
30:02 • 3min
The Evolutionary Theorists and the Evolutionary Psychopathology
33:09 • 3min
Evolutionary Psychology and Developmental Plasticity
35:57 • 4min
The Developmental Polyphenism of the Human Genome
39:55 • 2min
The Biophobia of Social Sciences and Egalitarian Political Thought
41:44 • 3min
The Moralistic Fallacy Manifests in Leftist Political Thought
44:56 • 2min
Are Humans Likely to Have Dominance Hierarchies?
47:19 • 4min
The Biology of Human Behavior
51:04 • 3min
Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
54:09 • 3min
Moral Knowledge Comes From Nature
57:08 • 3min
The Standard Social Science Model and Its Improving Moral Importance
59:59 • 2min
Adaptionist Evolutionary Biology and Behavior Genetics
01:02:21 • 5min
Is Godwin Sacrificing Coherence?
01:06:52 • 2min
Is There a Deep Conviction to Dominance Hierarchies?
01:08:46 • 3min
The Evolution of Human Evolution - A Synthesis of the Execution Hypothesis
01:11:35 • 3min
Is There a Dominance Hierarchy?
01:14:20 • 3min
The Biophobic Social Sciences in Egalitarian Political Theory
01:17:00 • 3min
The Evolution of Human Nature by Avi Tushman
01:19:59 • 3min
The Denial of Biology of Liberalism
01:23:02 • 3min
Marxism and the Nateness of the Individual in Society
01:25:58 • 4min
The Nature vs. Nurture Dichotomy
01:29:35 • 2min
Is There a Difference Between the Standard Social Science Model and the Integrative Causal Model?
01:31:59 • 4min
Is There a Like Infinite Potential for Combinatorial Variation?
01:35:52 • 4min
The Evolutionary Constraints of Group Psychology
01:40:17 • 4min
Aspects of Affective Empathy
01:44:12 • 3min
Is There a Specificity of Evolved Mechanisms?
01:47:00 • 3min
Is There a Difference Between Biological Potentials and Human Behavior Potentials?
01:49:41 • 3min
The Infinite Range of Behavioral Potentials
01:52:40 • 3min
Is There a Limit Between Infinity and Plausible Infinity?
01:55:43 • 3min
Understanding Human Nature and the Dynamics of Our Behavior Is the Only Realistic Hope
01:58:58 • 3min
The Adapted Mind and the Generation of Culture
02:01:49 • 2min
Biologically Averse Social and Behavioral Scientists
02:04:04 • 4min
Evolutionary Psychology and the Machine Metaphors
02:07:57 • 4min
The Genetic Theory of Evolution
02:11:30 • 2min
Evolutionary Biology and the Evolution of Adaptive Design
02:13:41 • 3min
Adaptive Plasticity and Evolutionary Biology
02:16:35 • 3min
The Loss of Developmental Phenomenon Plasticity
02:19:17 • 3min
The Evolution of Genetics in the West
02:22:36 • 3min
Genetics and Developmental Plasticity
02:25:40 • 3min
Theoretical Physicists Are More Esteemed Than Experimental Physics
02:28:48 • 3min
The Rowers in a Boat
02:31:39 • 3min
Evolutionary Biology and Metaphors
02:34:31 • 3min
The One Gene One Phenotype Problem
02:37:27 • 3min
Modularity in Behavioral Psychology
02:40:17 • 2min
Evolutionary Development Biology - How Does the Friendship Module Exist?
02:42:03 • 4min
Adaptive Adaptation of the Human Eye
02:46:10 • 3min
Adaptational Biology
02:48:57 • 4min
Is Complex Functional Organization the Signature of Selection?
02:52:33 • 2min
The Phenotypic Plasticity of Individual Difference
02:54:57 • 3min
The Social Revolution in the Human Species
02:58:17 • 3min
Chimpanzees - Dominance Hierarchy
03:01:32 • 3min
What Is Phenomenal Plasticity?
03:04:51 • 3min
The New Man of Socialism Is Simply Dead Right?
03:08:15 • 3min
The Politics of the Internet Is Not Just for the People It's for the Elites
03:11:12 • 6min
The Alpha Male Right Conflating Status Hierarchies and Dominance Hierarchy and Primate Behavior
03:17:24 • 3min
Leftism Is More Backaged Than It's Worth
03:20:25 • 3min
The Politics of Resistance to Change Versus Acceptance of Change
03:23:23 • 3min
Are You an Anarchist Among Anarchists?
03:26:24 • 2min
Nature vs. nurture thinking simply makes no sense: an entity can only respond to its environment via evolved capacities. Nonetheless, this binary reasoning is persistently attractive to the human mind, and is present in the theoretical foundations of all the major political tendencies. In this episode, we explore the persistent harm to our politics caused by an inability to reason about biology, and the many forms our confusion takes, particularly focusing on the eternally recurrent assumption that the more unvarying a behavior is, the more “biological” it is. We examine the Cold War ideological conflicts that pushed theorists on both sides of nature-nurture controversies to rigid—and not infrequently absurd—extremes, and see how phenotypic plasticity is reasserting itself in biology after decades of suppression, replacing outdated forms of evolutionary theory that involve genes “for” behaviors and ignore the means by which traits develop. In so doing, we assert the biology of social revolution: a description of the human capacity for behavioral variability that exists because of, rather than in opposition to, evolution.