evolution… Hard-wired 17a: Coincidence and irrational humanity 22 Jul 201917 Jul 2019 In terms of the psychological spandrels we discussed earlier, the tendency to make 'false positive' (type 1) errors is an evolved characteristic. Paranoia, pattern-seeking and agency-detection may well be the…
evolution… Hard-wired 17: Bias and the evolutionary ‘spandrel’ 19 Jul 201915 Jul 2019 In this video we’ll consider three of the most widespread (and misleading) of our evolved mental modules. We’ll look at ‘selective abstraction‘, ‘arbitrary inference’ and ‘confirmation bias’. Each of these…
evolution… Hardwired 16: Pattern recognition 16 Jul 201913 Jul 2019 It’s not hard to see why this obsession with patterns prevailed in the ancestral environment. The early hunter-gatherer who learned to recognise the association between plants and water would have…
evolution… Hard wired 15: The unthinking mental module 15 Jul 201913 Jul 2019 It’s easy to understand how humans and other species evolved physical characteristics as a result of adaptation and natural selection. Helpful variations confer their advantages down through the generations whilst…
evolution… Hard-wired 13: Creationism? Bring it on! 29 Jan 201927 Jan 2019 I was recently challenged to a debate by a creationist who confidently informed me that evolution is a lie, even going so far as to ask me if I knew…
evolution… Hard-wired 12: Know thy enemy 27 Jan 201926 Jan 2019 Nobody seriously can deny that our evolutionary journey, from the simplest chemical compounds to the complex organisms we know as Homo sapiens involved extreme callousness and even casual cruelty. Survival…
evolutionary psychology… Hard-wired 11: Heuristics – our evolved psychological shortcuts 26 Jan 2019 Heuristics are the psychological shortcuts that keep us going in a complex world. They shorten decision-making time and allow us to function without constantly having to stop and think about…
evolution… Selection pressures 2 8 Jan 201929 Dec 2018 Our series on evolutionary psychology continues with the basic 'nuts and bolts' of natural selection and its impact upon speciation, survival and behaviour (flight, hiding, sexual attraction etc). This necessarily…
evolution… Selection pressures part 1 2 Jan 201929 Dec 2018 What do we mean by 'selection pressure'? Doesn't evolution just happen anyway? https://youtu.be/0ewXtxJsV-g
evolution… Hard wired 7: The evolutionary environment 26 Oct 201826 Oct 2018 What do we mean by EEA? The acronym 'EEA' stands for the 'Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation/Adaptiveness', otherwise known as the 'Evolutionary Environment' or the 'Ancestral Environment'. Originally coined by John…
