 All right I want to switch then to evolutionary psychology now just just to be clear again not my field I'm not an expert don't know much about this but I know enough to ask the right kind of questions and what I want to do is ask some questions because I know a lot of you for examples of fans of Jordan Peterson and fans of other people out there who are who use evolutionary psychology all the time I see it on YouTube videos I see it on Facebook I see it on Twitter I see it everywhere everybody just assumes evolutionary psychology is true I watched the video of Steven Pinker debating this woman and I forget the woman's name but about the difference between men and women and again using kind of the evolutionary psychology what I take to be the evolutionary psychology methodology to do that and you know and I have a lot of questions so I'm mostly going to be asking questions I mostly want to suggest to you this idea that this is another one of those fields that is young new that we know very little about and when people come out and say definitive things oh men behave this way because they evolved in this way I don't know men tend to want to have many sexual partners because they're promiscuous because they generate lots of sperm and they need to distribute that sperm because what's important evolutionarily is having children right and and that drives men to have the inclination to have affairs and to sleep with many women right right I mean I've heard this this is not this is not unusual this is a common claim women on the other hand can only can only have you one baby at a time they are weaker therefore they need to latch on to the one man that impregnates them they need to keep him around so they are much more likely to be monogamous women also attracted to wealthy guys because this is all stuff that comes out of evolutionary psychology some of it's pop evolutionary psychology some of it's real evolutionary psychology whatever that means now what is evolutionary psychology now this is a definition this is from the science daily but they but I'm sure there are others evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts so first of all it's in the field of psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits useful mental and psychological traits such as memory perception or language as adaptations as the functional products of natural selection so the idea is natural selection has selected certain mental and psychological traits all right so I want to ask a simple question I don't expect a I don't expect an answer but these are the kind of questions I would ask do we understand in psychology in psychology that that's the field that does evolution in psychology do we have a good understanding in psychology on what are right what are traits capabilities and behaviors right what are they does psychology have a good understanding or perception is or do you think you would come to different conclusions about perception if you held different philosophical views within evolutionary psychology do the psychologists have good understanding of emotions and where they come from and the relationship between emotions and ideas and thoughts do they understand what thoughts are and you know the basis for thought do they understand the idea of rationality and what rationality is do they value reason do they believe in free will and what is the role of free will vis a vis whatever psychological traits we might have received through evolution right through through natural selection so these are the kind of questions I would ask and I don't think from everything I've read and from all the videos I've watched that there is what I see in in even in the best thinkers even in the talk call it the Jordan Peterson's of the world and and the Stephen Pinkers of the world and the woman he debated is almost no mention of free will no mention of human reason no mention of rationality no mention of what they mean by traits what is the border of trait do they think for example you know where does where does uh and now you can even go deeper what is psychology actually studying is psychology science yet how much knowledge do we have in psychology notice that the evolutionary psychologists often ignore cognitive psychology which from the little I understand is probably most interested in thinking and in ideas and in concepts and the impact that ideas and concepts have on emotions so you know so you know I don't know I don't know again this is not my field so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna pretend to have answers but I would just say beware beware of of these definitive answers that they come across men are different than women because here's the list now I am convinced unequivocally without any question that men are different than women and that there is a biological basis for them I'm convinced of that a biological basis and a psychological basis that men are different than women how in what ways in particular again above my pay grade but the very fact that men and women are biologically so different is going to make them different in other in the way they relate to reality the very fact the men or women uh have have uh you know different biological experiences men don't have a menstrual cycle I think a menstrual cycle has an impact on a woman now what the impact I don't know but it's an experience a man will never have you know the experience of thinking men and women have the same right the experience of uh I don't know having an ale into the physical experience of of having to walk of having to think of it all of those experiences are similar are the same between men and women and therefore I don't think there's any cognitive difference between men and women in that sense but there are differences and how they manifest themselves in emotion or in behavior or you know it's interesting it's interesting in values and values they seek is interesting the fact that the male penetrates the female is significant that's not irrelevant it can't be irrelevant psychologically the fact that for the most part men rape women women don't rape men women don't rape men that is significant so all of that plays into the differences between men and women and all of that should should be studied now there is a legitimate question and that is what traits and I don't even know exactly what traits are but what traits are genetic so I can tell you that my two sons were completely different from minute one in what way were they different um in how how aware they were of their surroundings how much sleep how much they slept um you know whether the eye movements um the level in which they engaged with the environment around them the amount of crying so there are all these things now do we understand those differences those are pretty simple so those are pretty simple and I don't think we have a full understanding on them so I look I'm not saying evolutionary psychology is determinism is deterministic necessarily although I think many evolutionary psychologists are determinists but even to ask the questions of what are traits what are inherited traits what are learned habits maybe traits of by definition inherited what are habits what what influence the traits have on our cognitive functioning what influences do our traits have on our emotions on our habits on you know our psychology on our capabilities and ultimately on our behavior I think that evolution psychology is way too dependent on statistics way too dependent on storytelling that is a making up story evolutionary stories that explain what they want to explain they've got a theory they've got a and then they go back and they find a story in evolution to explain it eh you know it's it's very very questionable as a science and and you know Einrann said that in her lifetime she said psychology was in its infancy it was just beginning as a science they were just starting to think about what were the relevant questions and I think to some extent that is true I think to some extent that is true and if that's true if psychology is still very early then evolutionary psychology is even earlier and evolutionary psychology won't be a fully fledged science until it has those psychological foundations built until we understand more of what we are talking about what are the core scientific questions we have to ask what is psychology so my suspicion is that much of what you hear in evolutionary psychology is just is is just not true it's it's it's statistics and correlations and and and correlate and I saw this with Stephen Pickers presentation correlations on a correlation is not causality and they try to attribute causality and they and they they come up with biological evolutionary stories to to make the causal attribution but look I know a little bit about evolution and I you know and I've studied some biology and I think most people let me rephrase it I think most intelligent people I think most intelligent educated people don't really understand biology sorry don't really understand evolution evolution is not trivial what natural selection is is not trivial so beware of becoming a amateur psychologist beware of becoming an amateur evolutionary psychologist because I think the professionals are on shaky ground I think the amateurs don't know what they're talking about and I see too many out there way too many amateur evolutionary psychologists so I'm not saying it's an illegitimate field I'm just saying it's young it's new there's a lot of questions to ask and without the right philosophical framework it's very difficult to ask the right questions and since they don't have the right philosophical framework they're not asking the right questions right what we need today what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason by the intellect not by feelings wishes wins or mystic revelations any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the spare cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broads