Evolution Prefers Blondes (And Believers)

While I tend to have my doubts about evolutionary psychology, I nevertheless find it fascinating and worth thinking about, even in spite of the difficulty in confirming such hypotheses. The subject becomes even more interesting when used to explain the lack of skeptical thinking in human beings, as Acinonyx Scepticus has done in a recent post. If we could somehow work in a discussion of boobs this would then become the most profound, orgasmic entanglement of enjoyable subjects known to history, but I suppose I can settle for two out of three. (You may now sigh in relief, dear reader, knowing that what follows won’t include any further descriptions of my writhing, lustful throes of sexual pleasure.)

Basically, Acinonyx argues that skeptical thinking may not have been particularly adaptive back in human prehistory, when we were living in caves and apparently had to use our own feet, placed through a hole in the floor, to convey our wooden vehicles from place to place. The idea appears to have merit. And, forgoing the jargon regarding type 1 and type 2 errors that will only befuddle and confuse my monkey mind (though you should read the post I’ve linked to above if you prefer the more eloquent description), the problem is basically that skeptical thinking will get you eaten by tigers, whereas believing any little thing is true will more likely preserve your life.

This makes intuitive sense. It is hard to imagine the scientific cavemen having significant survival advantages if they are continually testing and attempting to falsify hypotheses about man-eating tigers lurking in the bushes. One can just imagine the hapless caveman scientist: “I hear the sound of rustling leaves and see the bushes moving, but I can’t be certain it is a tiger. Perhaps it is a lemur, as my colleague Borak posits. I shall test this lemur hypothesis by investigating, hoping to gather data inconsistent with whatever the hell a lemur looks like.” Upon having a tiger pounce on him and rip him apart, the caveman scientist would no doubt die with a sort of perverse satisfaction in having disconfirmed his colleague’s hypothesis.

But one can imagine the hopeless believer or conspiracy theorist caveman in a similar situation. He sees a bush, and doesn’t really see any rustling, nor does he really hear anything, but he cowers in his cave and refuses to leave because he just knows that a tiger (perhaps planted there by the CIA at the command of our alien overlords) awaits in the underbrush. Naturally, nine times out of ten a nonrustling bush won’t contain a tiger, but being wrong that one time sure is a bitch, and it sure makes the conspiracy theorist caveman look good to the ladies when he’s successful (which perhaps explains why the ladies love all that talk of astrology and spiritual crap and abhor my own presence—I refuse to believe it is simply the fact that I refuse to bathe).

So with that context in mind, it is perhaps the fault of evolution that humans are so prone to unwavering belief and so wary of skepticism. The believer is perhaps preventing death, and the skeptic is perhaps rushing headlong into the jaws of tigers trained by the CIA. Besides, should the skeptic walk by a bush and not be eaten by a tiger, it is much easier to explain that away from the believer perspective—”Oh, the tiger was there but he just wasn’t hungry, and he doesn’t like the bitter taste of soulless skeptics, anyway!”—than for the skeptic to explain away being eaten by a tiger—”Oh, that’s not a tiger, but instead my mom dressed in stripes … And this missing limb? T’is but a flesh wound!” Thus, our natural history has primed us for believing implausible nonsense, to be better safe than sorry, and so on. It’s the evolutionary form of Pascal’s wager: Oh, there’s not so much evidence for it … but what if you’re wrong!?

In the end, though, the caveman scientist has been vindicated. Because even though the failures of the scientific and skeptical mindset are that much more disastrous, it also has to be pointed out that the successes are that much more successful. Once in a while the scientist gets devoured, it is true, but most of the time the bushes were just moving from the wind, and the scientific caveman who ventures outward is able to gather more food, meet more women, invent the wheel, and so on, while his believer brethren are playing it safe in the dark.

Strangely, because the modern context only rarely includes scenarios involving man-eating predators, what we find today is that the benefits of skepticism and a careful analysis of the evidence greatly improve outcomes without the attendant life-ending predation! The situation is now reversed, and unqualified belief is officially more dangerous, provided a sustained absence of tiger scenarios. And even worse, the believers of the world are now peddling the greatest harms because so many of these historical risks are no longer relevant. We won’t all die a horrible death if we investigate and attempt to refute claims that vaccines cause autism, unlike the poor fellow investigating potential tigers in bushes. But we COULD all die if we all listened to various well-meaning idiots and stopped vaccinating our children for fear of autism by perhaps causing an outbreak of small pox.

It’s science! So difficult, a caveman can’t do it! Fortunately, we can!

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