One of humanity’s biggest mental blocks is a reluctance to admit the functions of fun. Since we are intricately designed highly adapted and successful creatures, all of our major long-established behavior habits must have (had) important adaptive functions. And they must also be intricately designed, with many specific features that match the details of how such functions are best achieved. So, since we are inclined to spend a large fraction of our time on play and fun, such things simply must have important functions. Moreover, the details of our play habits must be intricately matched to good ways to achieve those functions.
I pursue fun to release tension and to be able to function normally. Once I start trying to impress someone, it not fun anymore, or it is a "nervous fun" with hidden tension.
I did provide an answer: we play possibly vg's because of broken evolution just like we eat too much carbohydrates (thanks TerjeP) because of misplaced evolutionary impulses. You could have answered that, instead we have this meta-discussion.
Look analyzing social situations analytically does not mean you don't have intuitive understanding of them. It is like saying analyzing music by cadences, intervals etc. means lack of intuitive understanding of music. It is just people who do those too explicitly signal calculativity, and such people are easily considered untrustable, and for a reason.
If the argument has to stand on its own then why do you accuse the OP of autism?
But as far as truth is concerned, intuition or System 1 is highly biased system. There was a famous book by Daniel Kahneman recently about this. It is wrong all the time.
What people intuitively think they do things for can be completely opposite of what they actually do them for. You don't need to know molecular biology to breath. It doesn't mean intuition isn't useful, intuition has to come from somewhere. And about two hundred years ago suggesting that we're animals was plain unthinkable.
"In Bayesian sense, untestable hypotheses have a posterior probability always equal to their prior, which for any non-trivial hypothesis is typically low."I agree.
"Hanson claims that forming that belief requires great insight and that the human brain is specifically "I don't think he claimed it requires great insight anywhere.
I probably not should have responded anything but your argument about vg's since these kind of debates tend to have inefficient resolution. Thus this will be my last comment. Pardon and bye.
not people who just parrot the typical "these can't be tested" mantra.
Let's throw that pesky scientific method away!
In Bayesian sense, it doesn't really help.
In Bayesian sense, untestable hypotheses have a posterior probability always equal to their prior, which for any non-trivial hypothesis is typically low.
Last sentence of your o.p. didn't really add anything civil to this discussion.
I didn't mean that as name-calling.
Hanson discussed the belief that certain enjoyable activities, like dancing or playing golf with someone's boss, have sexual or social functions.
I claim that most people intuitively form that belief, Hanson claims that forming that belief requires great insight and that the human brain is specifically adapted ("designed" in his words) to avoid forming such kind of beliefs.
If my characterization is correct, Hanson's claim appears to betray a lack of intuitive understanding of social situation and an erroneous model of the beliefs of other people. These are exactly the traits of an autistic person.
I'm not claiming that Hanson is autistic. Anyone can make an occasional reasoning mistake. Maybe I'm the one that is mistaken, in which case Hanson or somebody else might provide a refutation of my point.Just complaining that I used the a-word is not a proper refutation.
Still your counter-example didn't really hold true. If you are going to do a counter-argument, you are not really adding new information if the only remaining valid argument is just broad "these are unfalsifiable stories" . Just because we cannot do a controlled test does not mean we cannot get interference from other facts.
Even these hypotheses tend to be speculative in nature, I'm sure all of these comments are more armchair criticism than the post itself. What are your credentials in this matter? I'd be interested to hear opinion from people who do research about this and not people who just parrot the typical "these can't be tested" mantra. In Bayesian sense, it doesn't really help. I will gladly not have any opinion on this matter. Yeah you are right, every comment here will have some form of status component. I never said mine didn't have one. Just like doing research in say medicine. The real question is are you researching a cure to something or snake oil. Last sentence of your o.p. didn't really add anything civil to this discussion.
In what sense is "silly is serious" even a meaningful statement? What does "serious" mean? Yeah, it's probably "serious" from the perspective of our genes, if you want to anthromophize them. But our genes are just molecular replicators. Who cares what they want?
Honestly, why is that when a evolutionary explanation is presented, bunch of people come at knee-jerk counter-example which does not even hold true.
Because most of armchair evolutionary "explanations" are essentially unfalsifiable just so stories.
I guess the evolutionary trait to raise your status by commenting wins. And then adding a comment about person being autistic is a great way to raise your status even more. In fact labelling or naming people is pretty obvious status move.
Yeah. You know another thing that is a pretty obvious status move? Speaking in Hanson's defense and writing "This is a great post Robin, goes to your best".Vicarious status gain by signalling allegiance to the Alpha. Clearly in the ancestral environment and so on and so forth... see how easy it is?
Fat and protein were not scarce in the diet of traditional hunter gathers. Just look at the food eaten by traditional Aboriginies. In fact fat and protein were staple parts of the human diet for the greater part of our evolution. What was scarce was sugar and carbohydrates. It was not until agriculture started about 10,000 years ago that we started to stuff our faces with cereal, bread, rice and pasta.
This seems to already third post about video games. I already commented about them. In fact, if I were to met younger myself, I'd tell him not ever to play video games. Fun but waste of time. Honestly, why is that when a evolutionary explanation is presented, bunch of people come at knee-jerk counter-example which does not even hold true.
I guess the evolutionary trait to raise your status by commenting wins. And then adding a comment about person being autistic is a great way to raise your status even more. In fact labelling or naming people is pretty obvious status move. It is like moralizing someone's bad clothing. It does not really help anything but shows that you are not X but they are X, where X is something negative.
Yeah evolutionary explanations are cheap, but there's way too much evidence for signalling. I understand why people have negative feelings towards these kind of explanations; to protect our societies from going amoral and making a whole bunch of new coordination problems.
Also I recommend John's post below for your second to last paragraph.
People use a lot of drugs and alcohol too. I remember that butter is tasty because fat was scarce when our body biology was shaped. Thus people eat too much junk food nowadays. These evolutionary traits don't serve a purpose anymore. Playing video games or watching TV is just false signal except maybe in South Korea with Starcraft. There does not have to be anything more to it.
Yeah I played video games competitively, and was great at one of them, also did a lot of community stuff but I don't anymore. Terrible waste of time even though challenging and a whole lot of fun.
ps. This is a great post Robin, goes to your best.
Watching TV or playing video games on your own isn't terribly efficient for making friends or mating, and yet there are people who spend a sizeable fraction of their time on such activities because they find them fun. So there must be something more to it.
Since we are intricately designed highly adapted and successful creatures, all of our major long-established behavior habits must have (had) important adaptive functions.
No. Beware of the adaptationist fallacy.
We dance because its fun, not to meet mates. We aren’t trying to get a promotion, no, when playing golf with our boss; golf is just fun.
And we play videogames alone or with strangers over the internet who we'll never interact with in any other situation because?
But my experience suggests that this is just much harder and more dangerous than you think. Give up and accept that, for the most part, you are human and humans are designed not to consciously understand such things.
Is that so? I'm under the impression that most people realize, and often openly discuss the fact that doing fun activities is useful to improve and maintain social relationships and attract mates.
Please don't take offense, but this posts seems to be written by an autistic person.
More and more I'm getting the feeling that this whole rationality thing is going to come full circle and we're just going to end up deriving common sense from first principles. I'm going out for lotto tickets. See you at church.
Well, no, they're about dance.
I pursue fun to release tension and to be able to function normally. Once I start trying to impress someone, it not fun anymore, or it is a "nervous fun" with hidden tension.
I did provide an answer: we play possibly vg's because of broken evolution just like we eat too much carbohydrates (thanks TerjeP) because of misplaced evolutionary impulses. You could have answered that, instead we have this meta-discussion.
Look analyzing social situations analytically does not mean you don't have intuitive understanding of them. It is like saying analyzing music by cadences, intervals etc. means lack of intuitive understanding of music. It is just people who do those too explicitly signal calculativity, and such people are easily considered untrustable, and for a reason.
If the argument has to stand on its own then why do you accuse the OP of autism?
But yes credentials matter. I don't trust DIY physicists either. http://www.overcomingbias.c...
But as far as truth is concerned, intuition or System 1 is highly biased system. There was a famous book by Daniel Kahneman recently about this. It is wrong all the time.
What people intuitively think they do things for can be completely opposite of what they actually do them for. You don't need to know molecular biology to breath. It doesn't mean intuition isn't useful, intuition has to come from somewhere. And about two hundred years ago suggesting that we're animals was plain unthinkable.
"In Bayesian sense, untestable hypotheses have a posterior probability always equal to their prior, which for any non-trivial hypothesis is typically low."I agree.
"Hanson claims that forming that belief requires great insight and that the human brain is specifically "I don't think he claimed it requires great insight anywhere.
I probably not should have responded anything but your argument about vg's since these kind of debates tend to have inefficient resolution. Thus this will be my last comment. Pardon and bye.
Still your counter-example didn't really hold true.
It doesn't seem that you provided a refutation.
What are your credentials in this matter?
Irrelevant. My argument stands or falls on its own merits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
not people who just parrot the typical "these can't be tested" mantra.
Let's throw that pesky scientific method away!
In Bayesian sense, it doesn't really help.
In Bayesian sense, untestable hypotheses have a posterior probability always equal to their prior, which for any non-trivial hypothesis is typically low.
Last sentence of your o.p. didn't really add anything civil to this discussion.
I didn't mean that as name-calling.
Hanson discussed the belief that certain enjoyable activities, like dancing or playing golf with someone's boss, have sexual or social functions.
I claim that most people intuitively form that belief, Hanson claims that forming that belief requires great insight and that the human brain is specifically adapted ("designed" in his words) to avoid forming such kind of beliefs.
If my characterization is correct, Hanson's claim appears to betray a lack of intuitive understanding of social situation and an erroneous model of the beliefs of other people. These are exactly the traits of an autistic person.
I'm not claiming that Hanson is autistic. Anyone can make an occasional reasoning mistake. Maybe I'm the one that is mistaken, in which case Hanson or somebody else might provide a refutation of my point.Just complaining that I used the a-word is not a proper refutation.
Still your counter-example didn't really hold true. If you are going to do a counter-argument, you are not really adding new information if the only remaining valid argument is just broad "these are unfalsifiable stories" . Just because we cannot do a controlled test does not mean we cannot get interference from other facts.
Even these hypotheses tend to be speculative in nature, I'm sure all of these comments are more armchair criticism than the post itself. What are your credentials in this matter? I'd be interested to hear opinion from people who do research about this and not people who just parrot the typical "these can't be tested" mantra. In Bayesian sense, it doesn't really help. I will gladly not have any opinion on this matter. Yeah you are right, every comment here will have some form of status component. I never said mine didn't have one. Just like doing research in say medicine. The real question is are you researching a cure to something or snake oil. Last sentence of your o.p. didn't really add anything civil to this discussion.
And for all their serious studying, those professions have higher-than-average rates of depression and suicide.
How silly.
http://www.huffingtonpost.c...
In what sense is "silly is serious" even a meaningful statement? What does "serious" mean? Yeah, it's probably "serious" from the perspective of our genes, if you want to anthromophize them. But our genes are just molecular replicators. Who cares what they want?
Honestly, why is that when a evolutionary explanation is presented, bunch of people come at knee-jerk counter-example which does not even hold true.
Because most of armchair evolutionary "explanations" are essentially unfalsifiable just so stories.
I guess the evolutionary trait to raise your status by commenting wins. And then adding a comment about person being autistic is a great way to raise your status even more. In fact labelling or naming people is pretty obvious status move.
Yeah. You know another thing that is a pretty obvious status move? Speaking in Hanson's defense and writing "This is a great post Robin, goes to your best".Vicarious status gain by signalling allegiance to the Alpha. Clearly in the ancestral environment and so on and so forth... see how easy it is?
Dance clubs are not about music. (Emphatically!)
Fat and protein were not scarce in the diet of traditional hunter gathers. Just look at the food eaten by traditional Aboriginies. In fact fat and protein were staple parts of the human diet for the greater part of our evolution. What was scarce was sugar and carbohydrates. It was not until agriculture started about 10,000 years ago that we started to stuff our faces with cereal, bread, rice and pasta.
This seems to already third post about video games. I already commented about them. In fact, if I were to met younger myself, I'd tell him not ever to play video games. Fun but waste of time. Honestly, why is that when a evolutionary explanation is presented, bunch of people come at knee-jerk counter-example which does not even hold true.
I guess the evolutionary trait to raise your status by commenting wins. And then adding a comment about person being autistic is a great way to raise your status even more. In fact labelling or naming people is pretty obvious status move. It is like moralizing someone's bad clothing. It does not really help anything but shows that you are not X but they are X, where X is something negative.
Yeah evolutionary explanations are cheap, but there's way too much evidence for signalling. I understand why people have negative feelings towards these kind of explanations; to protect our societies from going amoral and making a whole bunch of new coordination problems.
Also I recommend John's post below for your second to last paragraph.
People use a lot of drugs and alcohol too. I remember that butter is tasty because fat was scarce when our body biology was shaped. Thus people eat too much junk food nowadays. These evolutionary traits don't serve a purpose anymore. Playing video games or watching TV is just false signal except maybe in South Korea with Starcraft. There does not have to be anything more to it.
Yeah I played video games competitively, and was great at one of them, also did a lot of community stuff but I don't anymore. Terrible waste of time even though challenging and a whole lot of fun.
ps. This is a great post Robin, goes to your best.
And anyway... what do people want to impress people, meet mates, or get a promotion *for*?
Watching TV or playing video games on your own isn't terribly efficient for making friends or mating, and yet there are people who spend a sizeable fraction of their time on such activities because they find them fun. So there must be something more to it.
Since we are intricately designed highly adapted and successful creatures, all of our major long-established behavior habits must have (had) important adaptive functions.
No. Beware of the adaptationist fallacy.
We dance because its fun, not to meet mates. We aren’t trying to get a promotion, no, when playing golf with our boss; golf is just fun.
And we play videogames alone or with strangers over the internet who we'll never interact with in any other situation because?
But my experience suggests that this is just much harder and more dangerous than you think. Give up and accept that, for the most part, you are human and humans are designed not to consciously understand such things.
Is that so? I'm under the impression that most people realize, and often openly discuss the fact that doing fun activities is useful to improve and maintain social relationships and attract mates.
Please don't take offense, but this posts seems to be written by an autistic person.
More and more I'm getting the feeling that this whole rationality thing is going to come full circle and we're just going to end up deriving common sense from first principles. I'm going out for lotto tickets. See you at church.