Distractible Males, Virtual Freud, and Why Your Pet Might Be Worth More Than Your Car
The Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche Linkfest for April 2025
Welcome to the April edition of the N3 Newsletter Linkfest - your monthly dose of science, psychology, and subversion.
This time around: why men are more distracted by sexual images (shocking, I know), how Freud is making a comeback in virtual reality, and why your pet might be worth more than your car. Also on the menu: the gender orgasm gap, political tribalism, meditation myths, and the growing rebellion against academic censorship.
If you’re intellectually curious, mildly contrarian, and have a high tolerance for spice, you’ve come to the right place. And if you’re not yet a paid subscriber… well, that’s like watching the trailer but skipping the movie. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription - your brain will thank you for it!
You can access the full collection of Linkfests here.
1. The Evolutionary Hand-Me-Down: We Didn’t Gain Hands – We Lost Them
According to a fascinating 2016 paper by primatologist Tetsuro Matsuzawa, we didn’t evolve two hands from four feet; we evolved two feet from four hands. Excerpt below. [Link.]
There is a commonly held naïve belief regarding human evolution: that quadrupedal animals began to stand up, liberating two of their limbs from the task of locomotion, thus creating two hands for manipulating objects, resulting eventually in skilled tool use and cerebral enlargement. This is incorrect in terms of primate evolution. The correct interpretation is as follows. The common ancestors of all mammals today were small terrestrial mammals with four legs. The shared ancestor of primates moved into the treetops and developed four hands from the four feet possessed by the terrestrial ancestor. This was an adaptation to arboreal life; enabling the efficient grasping of branches and tree-trunks. Subsequently, early human ancestors left the trees to start walking long distances across the land, bipedally. Thus, we created two feet from four hands during the course of evolution from our early primate ancestor.
2. The New Censorship and the Fight for Academic Freedom
I was quoted recently in an excellent Quillette piece by Abhishek Saha, titled “The Fight for Academic Freedom in the UK.” Saha argues that science can’t thrive if heretics are punished. [Link.]
When universities punish researchers for pursuing “problematic” lines of inquiry, we all lose. The censorship and self-censorship of scientists damages public trust in science and harms society. As evolutionary biologist Steve Stewart-Williams put it, “Censoring science blunts our ability to understand the world… By blunting our ability to understand the world, we also blunt our ability to make the world a better place.”
The Freedom of Speech Act was designed to protect the contrarians, the heretics, the offensive, the foolish, the Galileos. It was intended to strike a blow against scientific censorship and help to make the world a better place.
3. Sex on the Brain: Why Men Are More Distracted by Erotic Imagery
A new study confirms what your intuition (and experience) might already have told you: that men are more distracted by sexual images than women. Sexual images slow decision-making in both sexes, but the effect is stronger in men. Interestingly, whereas men are more distracted by images of women, women are about equally distracted by images of both sexes. [Link.]
