Falsehoods
gregladen | April 28, 2016Voting is not party involvement.
We hear a lot of talk these days about "voters" being repressed in their attempt to be involved in the Democratic primary process. There may be something to that, and it might be nice to make it easier for people to wake up on some (usually) Tuesday morning and go and vote in a Democratic or Republican primary or visit a caucus. But there is a difference between a desire for a reform and the meaningful understanding of that reform -- why we want it, how to do it, and what it will get us -- that makes it important to do what we Anthropologists sometimes call…
gregladen | September 23, 2009This is the third of three parts of this particular falsehood. (Here is the previous part)
I previously noted that to survive as a Westerner, you can get away with participating in a culture that asks of you little more than to understand the "one minute" button on the microwave, while to survive in a foraging society you needed much much more. Moreover, I suggested that the level of complexity in an individual's life was greater among HG (Hunter-Gatherer) societies than Western societies.
However, this is not to say, in the end, that one form of economy and society is more complex than…
gregladen | September 22, 2009In the first part of this discussion, I reminded you that we are talking about "falsehoods." "Falsehood" is a term I and others have co-opted and have used for well over a decade in courses across the land on evolutionary biology and related topics. The idea is to identify a statement that, when uttered in some particular demographic or sociocultural context, invokes a relatively consistent set of meanings in the minds of those present, such that those meanings are at least iffy, probably wrong, and often (but certainly not always) offensive and destructive in some way. Such a construct…
gregladen | September 21, 2009This is yet another in a series of posts on falsehoods. To refresh your memory, a falsehood is a belief held by a number of people that is in some way incorrect. That incorrectness may be blatant, it may be subtle, it may be conditional, it may be simple, it may be complex. But, the unraveling of the falshoodosity of the belief is a learning experience, if it is accomplished in a thoughtful manner and without too much sophistry. In order for a falsehood to "work" as a learning opportunity it is important to define the statement in terms of the thoughts the falsehood invokes in the target…
gregladen | September 8, 2009I'm an anthropologist and a biologist, so really, I have no problem with the idea of a "placebo effect" in which people become convinced that they are being given an effective treatment and thus, because of that thought in their mind, improve.
Editorial Note: I'm classifying this post as a "falsehood" because it does fit nicely with that series, though this was not on the original list of falsehoods. Also note, this is a hastily dashed off first draft, so please be ruthless in your comments so I may move ever towards the unattainable perfection.
I doubt very much that this works for many…
gregladen | September 3, 2009At issue here is the idea that "biology" is slow and ponderous, glacial, even geological, in its rate of change, while culture is quick and snappy and makes rapid adjustment. Connected to this is a subtly different but very important idea: Culture actually makes sensible adjustments to compensate for changes in the biological realm.
Surely, it is true that culture can change more quickly than biology, and surely it is true that culture can make adjustments for biological effects or alterations. Indeed, the very essence of humanity is culture's effects on human capacities. We tropical ex-…
gregladen | September 2, 2009Today's falsehood is the idea that individual animals act for the benefit of their own species.
Let me give you an example. When I was a kid, I watched a nature show about cougars. The show 'documented' a single female cougar going about doing cougar-things and being generally cougar-like. At one point she had cute little baby cougar kittens.
Then a flood came. The stream near her chosen lair swelled its banks and threatened to drown the kittens. So, she carried one of the kittens up the hill to a new lair. She went back to get the second kitten, and the flood waters were even higher…
gregladen | August 31, 2009Good morning and welcome to another installment of "The Falsehoods." Today's falsehood is the assertion that the poor have more babies than the rich, or that the poor just have more babies to begin with. In comparison to ... whatever.
Now, before you rush off to the Internet and find some table or graph that shows higher fertility in women of lower SES than higher SES, or a high birth rate among Nigerians, I want to acknowledge right away that such evidence is easy to find, and it is easy to take that evidence and construct the obnoxious sentence that titles this post. Yes, that is all…
gregladen | August 28, 2009This is another falsehood, but a tricky one. Remember the point of falsehoods: They are statements that are typically associated with meanings or implications that are misleading or incorrect, and in some cases downright damaging. "Humans evolved from apes" is an excellent example of a falsehood because it is technically correct, yet the implied meanings that arise from it are potentially wrong. Even more importantly, you can't really analyze the statement "Humans evolved from apes" without getting into an extended analysis and discussion of what an ape is and what a human is.
When…
gregladen | August 27, 2009
There is a lot of evidence that nature is in balance. An invasive species throws off the balance of nature in a given region by out-competing some similar indigenous form. When something destructive happens there is a return to status quo, eventually. A few cold years are followed by a few warm years, or a few dry years are followed by a few wet years. So, why is "Nature maintains a balance" a falsehood?
Remember what makes a statement a falsehood (refer back to our earlier discussions on this issue). By now you realize that some falsehoods are better than others. "How can a falsehood…
gregladen | August 26, 2009Let me remind you of what we mean by "falsehood." A falsehood is not merely a statement that is factually untrue or logically flawed. Rather, it is a statement that when uttered in certain company rings true; It is a statement that sounds right to people; It is a statement that may be made frequently in reference to some body of knowledge, in this case, evolution or a related topic. But, the meaning that statement comes with is flawed. The statement is wrong in a way that requires explanation, and the explanation opens up the opportunity for new learning on the topic. So, the statement "…
gregladen | August 24, 2009Another look at falsehoods about evolution.
We previously addressed the falsehood "Evolution has stopped for humans" and concluded that background change in allele frequency independent of natural selection does not just stop for any viable, continuing population. So, no, saying that "evolution has stopped for humans" is tantamount to saying that "gravity has stopped for my coffee cup" (which is sitting here on my desk minding its own business).
But this question is a falsehood at another level. In reality, there are two additional questions that are actually being asked when this…
gregladen | August 21, 2009In my initial list of Falsehoods, I included these two closely related items:
Evolution has stopped for humans; and
Serious scientists often entertain the question: "Has evolution stopped for humans?"
I'll make the distinction between them clear eventually. For now, let's focus on the first: Has evolution stopped for humans or not?
The reason we bring up these falsehoods to begin with is because examining them exposes assumptions or requires the investigation of knowledge that is worth talking about. In this case, the deeper question is this: What is evolution exactly? So, this is a…
gregladen | August 19, 2009I've decided to address the falsehood "An adopted baby is not the biological offspring of the mother" next. That was not my original intention, but for various reasons this is appropriate.
Before I give the very straight forward reason for this, which I attribute, by the way, to Sarah Hrdy, I want to make note of a few different variants of mother/baby relationships.
A woman becomes pregnant, carries the fetus full term, gives birth to it, and raises it up, together with her husband who is the father of the child.
A woman has an offspring with artificial insemination.
A woman has a…
gregladen | August 18, 2009A falsehood is an incorrect or muddled belief widely enough held to be notable, and possibly dangerous. A falsehood is also a potentially powerful teaching tool. Evolution generally, and human evolution in particular, is loaded with them.
[Previous post: "The Falsehoods"]
"False Pearls before Real Swine" ... I won't tell you who said that, but when he did say it it was in front of a classroom of several hundred Harvard freshmen, and he was referring to the idea of telling little white lies to the unwashed masses in order to achieve the dissemination of greater truth. No one in the room…
gregladen | August 17, 2009Biology is harder to learn than quantum physics. Why? Because most people think they totally get biology, but everyone knows nobody gets quantum physics. Therefore, any effort to explore quantum physics will result in new learning, but people rarely learn new biology. The bottom line is that our brains are full of biology, which would be good if most of it did not consist of falsehoods.
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The things that people know already often need to be removed from the brain prior to teaching new stuff. This may seem a little offensive to some, but really, it is easier to just admit it. I'm not…