Reply #109: And yet "social network" and "fixation on close relationships"

[Igel]

are very different things.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/social-networking-amygdala/

In both cases we see a correlation. In the case where the evidence would favor conservatives and say that perhaps we liberals aren't the ones we've been waiting for, we ardently point out that correlation is not causation. In the case where the evidence serves to show how wonderful we are, well then, correlation most certainly is causation.

Let's have a rousing round of applause for confirmation bias.

This is more likely to be the case: Both of the consequences result from some set of primitives that result from the structure of the amygdala, and both are emergent. Social networking and fear avoidance may both be tied into the same root behavior, they may not be. Networks can be simple and have a lot of very interesting and divergent properties. In any event, neither, given their prevalence, are likely to be strongly selected out by evolution. Since it's false that every property needs to contribute positively to survival it's best to view evolution as usually involving negative constraints. Phrase in those terms, either property is driven to extermination (even if it should be there may be some other emergent property that is more important for survival).

Moreover, while social networking can mean a lot of different things so can "conservativism." If you have a factor that selects for 20 divergent criteria (most of which, to be honest, are also present in liberalism but just differently ranked) then you really have a really powerful explanation. The problem with really powerful explanations is that they *over* explain: They do not just account for the original observed data, but they easily account for replacement when that data is shown to be in error, and account for data that contradicts the second set of data. At first it explains just what the researchers like (usually also a give-away that the theory or explanation is suspiciously convenient.) Such theories are like God: It explains everything--and therefore explains nothing, but usually the explanation is just what we always believed they would be, even when we were in high school. This kind of research yields explanation that aren't all-powerful, and most researchers are smart enough (even if science reporters aren't), but it still often explains too much and the limits are imposed not by the structure of the explanation but by the willingness of the explainer to exploit the theory.