El Borak's Myopia

El Borak's Myopia

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Green Cars and Evolution

The Telegraph explains how evolution explains everything:

An all-male team of psychologists at Edinburgh University has discovered that there are twice as many males as females in the brightest two per cent of the population.

The research, however, also points out that there are twice as many males as females in the least intelligent two per cent of the country...

One theory put forward to explain the results is that men have evolved to boost their intelligence as a way of making themselves more attractive to the opposite sex. Women, however, do not need to be clever in order to reproduce.

Timothy Bates, professor of psychology at Edinburgh University, who led the research said: "The female developmental programme may be tilted more towards ensuring survival and enjoying the safety of the middle ground."

A very clever creationalist years ago explained to me the fallacy of the green car. If our scientific theory is, "All cars are green," all that is necessary to prove* that is to go out where there are a lot of cars and very scientifically count the green ones - while studiously ignoring every car that does not fit the theory, of course. I laughed at the time, but I note that he is very clever not because he ate my lunch so to speak (which he did - it was a heck of a lesson in the confusion of familiarity with expertise), but because the fallacy he pointed out is as ubiquitous as it is unnoticed. And not simply in science**.

I'm reminded of that by the above scientifically-sounding theory put forward "to explain the results" of this statistical endeavor because it doesn't remotely explain what it claims to explain: it simply explains the part of the results that happen to fit it.

The first fact noted is that men are overrepresented*** on the highest end of the intelligence scale, which fact is explained by the theory. Fact 1 is a green car. The second fact is that men are overrepresented on the lowest end of the intelligence scale. Fact 2 is a white car and therefore completely ignored by our theorist.

Of course, none of this proves or disproves whether evolution explains these particular facts - the theory, explaining nothing, is worth nothing. But it is a fine example of the intellectually sloppy way in which every fact is claimed to be explained by evolution among people who are trying to make their counting appear scientific.

Except facts that don't fit the theory, that is.

* He also explained that a scientific theory is neven really proven, it can only be disproved. If after many attempts we fail to disprove the theory, we are probably on safe ground to provisionally accept it as correct. That was something never explained in my high school science classes, but illustrates very well the difference between science and propaganda.

** As I illustrated in a post on Green Car Liberalism, the tactic might work even better - it is certainly more prevalent - in politics.

*** If we assume, as I don't, that intelligence ought to be equally distributed regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, medical condition, citizenship, ancestry, or marital status.

Labels: science

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