Hi prof Stewart Williams. I did a metaphorical double take at the point where you said there was no obvious evolutionary biology explanation for the “things vs people explanation”. I went to my other favourite evolutionary biologist (ChatGPT 😏) and it came up with a few albeit with the usual caveats that these are contested and their relative weight undetermined. One being division of labour in our ancestral environments. Am I missing something?
What I meant is that the differences aren’t immediately and obviously predicted by foundational theories in evolutionary biology - unlike, for instance, sex differences in sexual behavior and aggression.
So, while plausible explanations have been posited for the differences, I don’t think we should be too confident in them yet. It’s too easy to come up with plausible-sounding adaptationist hypotheses and then accept them without adequate demonstration.
Hi prof Stewart Williams. I did a metaphorical double take at the point where you said there was no obvious evolutionary biology explanation for the “things vs people explanation”. I went to my other favourite evolutionary biologist (ChatGPT 😏) and it came up with a few albeit with the usual caveats that these are contested and their relative weight undetermined. One being division of labour in our ancestral environments. Am I missing something?
What I meant is that the differences aren’t immediately and obviously predicted by foundational theories in evolutionary biology - unlike, for instance, sex differences in sexual behavior and aggression.
So, while plausible explanations have been posited for the differences, I don’t think we should be too confident in them yet. It’s too easy to come up with plausible-sounding adaptationist hypotheses and then accept them without adequate demonstration.