Why we are, as we are

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12795581

by flavio87 • 18 years ago

32 10 18 years ago

economist.com

jbert• 18 years ago

Interesting stuff, but I'm surprised by the observation that number of children correlates positively with income.

I would have guessed the opposite. Does anyone have the data?

rokhayakebe• 18 years ago

Whenever I ask my friends aged above 25 if they want kids they usually answer "Yes but I can't afford one".

graemep• 18 years ago

People in richer countries have fewer children and the birth rate falls with economic growth.

My personal observation is that people in Salford (not a nice area at all) have more children and MUCH earlier than those in Wimbledon (fairly affluent).

The study also found that education is negatively correlated to number of offspring: http://www.scientificblogging.com/rationally_speaking/so_muc...

DanielBMarkham2• 18 years ago

This is pseudo-science, and I don't mean that as an insult. It takes general scientific principles and expounds on them in a "suppose X is linked to Y" manner.

The problem, of course, is that X can be linked to Y, Z, and Theta. Nobody knows for sure. But you can use general theories and general statements to connect the dots to make a pretty picture. It's speculative.

It was a good, entertaining read. I liked it. I would just caution to take it as it was meant: fun.

mynameishere• 18 years ago

It's an overview of sociobiology in a popular magazine. That it doesn't provide proofs for its assertions doesn't make the whole thing "pseudo-science".

The fact that wolves hunt in packs and that falcons hunt alone is probably not due to different styles of elementary schooling. It's probably due to evolutionary forces, and studying such things in an appropriate manner is scientific, even if it's in political defiance of your own (and my own) elementary schooling.

DanielBMarkham2• 18 years ago

All I meant is that the style of the article was conversational, the material was presented in commentary format, and the use of hypothesis and reproduced proof was lacking.

There's a lot of probabalies in there. I could see where different conclusions could be made with the same observations.

"Psedo-science" has gotten a really bad name lately. It just means talk with the air of science. It doesn't imply falsehood or defectiveness in any way. SETI, for instance, is full of a lot of pseudo-science, simply because there are so many unknowns we take what science we have and creatively speculate what might be. In that way, pseudo-science is abduction -- the formulation of possible rules around a given set of data -- a critical part of the scientific process.

The danger with evolutionary explanations to everything is that we lose track of just what it is that we're talking about. For instance, in the conversation about morality, the article makes a case that crime is _not_ a result of a lack of morality but the evolutionary desire for low-status people to compete for genes. I could make the case that morality was in itself an evolved abstract set of codes to do the same thing -- it's all in your perspective. You can "evolve out" higher concepts like morality, or you can "evolve in" those concepts. Without empirical data and reproducible results, it's speculative. Nothing wrong with that. I enjoy scientific-based speculation.

This is getting into the question of "are the soft sciences really science?" That's out of my pay grade. All I want to know is that given an initial set of reproducible conditions, can an idea give me a consistent set of results? If so, that's science to me. I freely acknowledge that the definition gets a lot looser for other folks. I'm definitely not the person to ask about any of that.

greg• 18 years ago

This is not pseudo-science. It is article reporting on real science. Suppose X is linked to Y... suppose male aggression is linked to reproductive competition. Wouldn't you expect to see a graph like: http://media.economist.com/images/20081220/CXM534.gif http://media.economist.com/images/20081220/CXM534.gif ? How else would you explain it? What are your Y, Z and Theta? Science is all about fitting theories to facts. You can have your doubts but you can't just write it all off as "fun".

sjs382• 18 years ago

Completely off-topic, but I really enjoyed the illustrations in this article.

Why we are, as we are

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