(i would like to point out here, below the fold, that this post was mostly composed for joonas.)

Yeah. Like totally. I mean what about the gay socialist monkeys? No-one ever thinks about what pictures they want to look at. Those monkeys who are striving to do away with old social hierarchies and create a more egalitarian society- and who would would be making more progress too if they didn't have to spend all day looking at stupid pictures and giving up their fluids. I'm keeping my fluids. THEY'RE MINE! I don't know what an ossifying racinating paradigm is, but I KNOW it fucking hurts to be called a 'low status' monkey. It seems to me their value system is fucked. How about judging us on some other criteria like the ability to write a good haiku. And no. Of course you've never seen a monkey write a haiku. That's because we're doing what is expected of us so that we can get more fluids. They can stick their fucking pictures. I'm off. From the monkey that drew a Hitler moustache on the picture of the alpha male (with the biro that I stole from the scientists lab coat pocket.)

wow. science fucking RULES.

this is just an offhand comment, or actually it's no comment really, yet, i don't have the strenght to read the original study right now. i'll do that at some point and come back then, in a few days i hope

as to what you wrote about it: i can't really comment on that, now or later, because i think you're squeezing too much into too little, the result being that i don't really know what you are saying

if i take it bona fide, that is. if i didn't, i would think you're just throwing around/up offhand references in order to appear like you would have something to say, but at the same time implying it's no use really to linger and waste time on this as it's such a boring topic anyway. or somesuch thing

but of course everybody can keep up, right..? hands up, who didn't understand? ok, good, then we can move on..

but please note: i AM willing to take it bona fide

don't take it at face value, dude.. i wrote that bit before reading the study.

i mean it was basically in good faith but i had my cheek implanted with a tongue recently and oh fuck, now i'm thinking about that yoko girl in the grudge and i'm shit, i'm all creeped out.

anyway.

i do kind of have actual issues with the study, though, and your attention here merits actually voicing them and not just fucking around. the beef of the study is (read it if you want, don't sweat it, cos here comes) that in laboratory conditions, test monkeys chose to look at some badass monkeys' mugs or female monkey's bums rather than get an extra sip of juice. that's the long and short of it. sure, it's good FINALLY somebody confirmed it experimentally, yeah, and does it make intuitive sense, meh.

now, this finding has been interpreted through an assumed model of hierarchy and reward and interexchangeable pleasure-currency. that model isn't completely bullshit by any means, but it's commonsensical, zeitgeist-laden, and taken for granted. that part i don't like. it's too clearly a reflection of where our culture is at, when it comes to implicit theories of people (and by extension, monkeys.)

i'm by no means an expert in monkey studies, and it is possible that the model is actually debated, analytically well defined in how it relates to our truth-du-jour, but i suspect, not really. i mean i'm sure someone's researched the shit out of social hierarchies in macaques and whatever but that it doesn't really bear that much to the implied theory here.

i don't want to join the humanist chorus in lambasting the behaviorist school (god knows (as does erik lavoie) they've heard enough of that--posthumously, of course, which is safe for the humanists vis-a-vis not getting ass kicked by skinner et al.), but for its notoriety it's a good example: it seemed obvious to the scientists of the time that, hey, stimuls, response, right, and wtf else if not that? and we can kind of see that and feel superior because we have more sophisticated models nowadays and those dudes seem silly and blind to us because they just saw stuff that way.

so yeah it's really hard to break out of the paradigm of the times and we're no better than pavlov, really, in fact: we're nowhere as smart as individuals, and curiously enough, attempts to point this out are frequently met with some hostility by positivistic halfwits (if any are reading, hi!), and unless you're a total bona fide visionary worthy of future history books--and no, you're not, i'm not, erik lavoie may be--you're left with senseless groping for a better truth and you end up sounding like a foucault at best and a baudrillard at worst, and then the same breed of halfwits (that's us) later on will read your work and half of them will fall at your feet and others will say you got it all wrong. anyway--

i suspect one of the things future scientists will chuckle at when they read our textbooks is our taken-for-granted social model. like us looking back at behaviorists, they'll see we kind of got it right if that's the way you want to look at stuff, but they'll know a better way. and as long as we just measure fluid overpayments (jesus christ..) and take that data to support our elaborate-ass theories about social functioning, we're just patting ourselves on the back.

or, what cheeky monkey said.

disclaimer: i don't mean this as a fuck you to the authors, who i sincerely believe to be not only better informed in the subject matter (motherfucking duh) but also probably more intellectually committed than yours truly and generally unretarded. i'm just basically here giving voice to my paranoia, whom i call Steve.

there is nothing in what you write that i would disagree with, but i'm left wondering as to how you would suggest proper studies should be conducted (in order not be zeitgeist-laden etc, because surely it's no better to put a minus where our times put a plus). yeah it's not a fair question, i couldn't answer it myself, and as you pointed out, you're not even attempting a proper critique, so i won't treat is as such (as if could! :)

where i come from, stuff like this study is usually rejected immediately because it "is" reactionary and reproduces whatever evils you can point to in our ("western") society. yeah it's a caricature, and they do have a point, but you get the picture

to put it dichotomically, my sympathies lie with the folks that do studies like this, and not the people who counter with "but culture is very important as well" or some such thing

why? it's about bending the stick. i think it's clear as day that the culture-emphasising school of though has the upper hand. take ANY book that deals with topics traditionally associated with humanities. you never get any explicit assessment on e.g. how homo sapiens'
evolutionary history might affect whatever form of social life is dealt with. never. at best it's all taken for granted

now, as to taking something for granted, it's impossible to do any research if you don't build on something that you can't question,
i.e. something that you de facto take for granted, no matter how "critical" your pretend your attitude is. (for example, i take for
granted whatever greenpeace says about nuclear power or climate change, because i don't have the time to follow the disputes in
the field and keep up with the newest research.)

but i think the kind of attitude (conscious or, more likely, otherwise) in social sciences, that you don't (need to) pay attention
to what implications the 500.000 years of evolution might have on the structure of our mind and perception, is a non-starter. just take
into account the last 500 or so years of social history, and maybe a few references to the ancient greeks, and you'll be fine etc. (not
that you couldn't, in many cases, get a good approximation of what is going on without such references.)

that's why i think studies like this are much more important than "the usual" social sciences stuff. it's about time their citadel
gets stormed. at some point they will have to start responding with more than just offhand dismissals

--

so. even though i share your views here, i think i would emphasise the other side of it (at least as far as the gist of your present message
in concerned): if you keep saying "well you can't know anything for sure" etc, you never get anything done (at least i'm striving very hard to get myself to the state of being able to at least TRY to have something done, so that perhaps explains my emphasis here). instead you should commit yourself consciously into a paradigm and work within and through it, because that's what you're doing anyway

(and is it just me or has something happened to the original 'current biology' post?)

this is becoming the same discussion we're having in that other place, isn't it?

don't read my 'critique' as an anti-anything statement.

i didn't write a critique *against* the study, nor was i pointing out failures. i have nothing against that study having been conducted, methodologically, politically, or paranoiacally. i want to make this absolutely clear.

i'll postpone tearing the Man a new asshole until i have a positively framed draft for a better paradigm.

what i attempted to describe was a very vague, and--this is essential--negative; a hunch of _omission_ or at most, bias, in the underlying discourse. i do think our shared understanding of social structures and processes is very strongly a certain way that's an open door for critique for someone with the insight to do it.

this bit i just didn't get:

"culture-emphasising school of though has the upper hand"
- as opposed to those who emphasize what?
- in what field?
- in what forum?

i'll have to add:

"to put it dichotomically, my sympathies lie with the folks that do studies like this, and not the people who counter with "but culture is very important as well" or some such thing"

you're referring to an existing conflict, and since it's nothing i was talking about, i have a hard time following. what are the sides?

to your first: "take ANY book that deals with topics traditionally associated with humanities", i.e. history, politics, arts etc. how often do you find any explicit reflections on how the structure of our mind might affect how we perceive things? that's my point. i doubt very much that those fields i mention are informed by this. (no doubt there IS such literature around)

personally i encounter this attitude in left-wing politics, where the culture-side of our society and how it shapes us as individuals is stressed, and inquiries into genetic stuff is rejected as bourgeois crap trying to justify inequality etc, because in reality all oppression will disappear once we establish socialism etc.

personally i can't take that for granted. it feels more like idealism where oppression is explained away by saying "we're just not reached 'full' socialism yet" or whatever, and so other than sociocultural roots of problems will remain enveloped in mist

to your second: i thought it was obvious (or then you're just being socratic). e.g. standard social science model versus integrated causal model

aa

yes

stuff you said now makes sense when i know the conflict you refer to. dude, you brought that thing in here, you can play with it but it's up to you to make sure it doesn't mess the place up, ok? i'm not a cultural/scientific paradigm conflict hata but that thing is NASTY.

nah. i want to play with it too.

there is no culture-emphasizing school despite pinker's attempt to postulate one into existense. from a structure-of-the-mind perspective, it's our culture that seems culture-based.

while the 'SSSM' does (by definition) kind of prevail, it's not like blank-slaters are The Establishment and neo-darwinists are basically a ragtag group of rebels fighting the good fight. in this like every other scientific debate i know: how about if everyone stopped taking sides (culture! nurture! nature! god! genes! erik lavoie! blank slate!) cos the sides are always both magnificently brilliant when it comes to applying their paradigm where it works and absolute crap when it comes to telling the other side why they're idiots.

seriously, i'm getting a bit sick of the great ego wars. if nature-siders (broadly speaking) are so sure they've got their shit together in a way unaccessible to culture-siders, great: go ahead and rock some theory, give me statements that blow my mind about how my mind works (and is blown).

as per the muoviromu discussion: i REFUSE ABSOLUTELY to refuse any theorist or view, cos, i hate to sound so obvious, but ain't nobody got a monopoly on the truth, and where the evolution dudes have theories that blank-slaters' world-view can't handle, more power to them! but the pinkers of this world would not be where they're at now without the intellectual culture they grew up in and now hate. pinker's basically a rebelling teen (and rebelling teens always have some good ideas.)

instead of burning effigies of complementary paradigms, how about working to produce insight? i'm currently trying to work out, for myself, e.g. what humor is about (in a social and psychological sense), and in trying to achieve that understanding i'd be an idiot to choose what seems to me the best paradigm beforehand, then fuck the rest--the best work i've found so far on the topic (from admittedly little research) was not a late 20th C anthropologist or a cognitive scientist or a brain man or darwin, but henri bergson, who thought about shit and basically pulled a theory out of a hat in 1900, and it's explosively insightful--and it's exactly the kind of thing that i could imagine some tooby critiquing as not taking into account evolutionary pressures or something.

(i'm turning into a total pluralist--------weird.)

oh and btw:
> if you keep saying "well you can't know anything for sure" etc, you never get anything done

that was not fair man

if i say don't stick to your guns, it means "use other guys' guns too" not "put the gun down"

"support our elaborate-ass theories about social functioning"

Do those theories have elaborate female-monkey perinea in them? Cuz if they do, I'll take a look at them right now, without the juice.