Should Evolutionary Pscyhology Be Taught Instead of Philosophy?

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Evolutionary Psychology :facepalm:

having a marxism class would be time better spent than that...

[Nostromo]

No one should ever waste educational time on something as useless as philosophy. I actually have an acquaintance who is studying philosophy and he is 35, still lives at home with his parents (he's never once moved out), and hasn't had a job in 10 years. He sits around all day smoking pot, spending his student aid money on drugs and hookers, and generally whining that the government hasn't given him enough money to sit on his ass for decades at a time. This is totally true. Anyone who can't graduate in 17 years is a loser and probably is studying philosophy because every other department kicked his ass out. I know this is true with the guy I know.

Wow, awesome reasoning skills.

[Nostromo]

Evolutionary Psychology = How to make your racism and sexism sound "sciency"

So, no.

Not necessarily so. That said, most of what I read isn't very good. Some of it even pseudoscience, IMO: the authors demonstrating a feeble understanding of evolutionary theory.

[RGBVideo]

should anything be taught instead of filosofy

the answer is yes

philosophy professors and teachers are parasites feeding on taxpayer money. the "science" of philosophy actually did matter to something ... 2000 years ago when it practically meant considerations of physics and politics. these days all the useful stuff has been taken over by other (newer) fields. there's nothing useful left in the academic field of philosophy, it's even less useful than psychology (psychology at least has potential, altough it's also populated by pseudo-scientists without biological knowledge or an empirical concept of scientific progress).

I have yet to hear a useful thing or an invention discovered during the past 100 years which was invented thanks to philosophy. the only counter overpaid filosofy majors have for this is "well of course it seems useless if you don't understand it" and similar worthless explanations demonstrating their smug sense of superiority.

[C0ckney]

err how would that be any different to someone saying that physics is useless because they don't understand it? just because YOU can't see a use for something, doesn't mean it's useless.

[Thoth]

He sits around all day smoking pot, spending his student aid money on drugs and hookers,

Nice work if you can get it.

[aneeshm]

Should Evolutionary Psychology Be Taught Instead of Philosophy?

Simple question. Elaborate if you have to.

In my country, certain demographics (kids in high-schools that don't
teach you a trade but are preparing you for university instead) are
taught philosophy for a year or two.

It's waste of time in my opinion. Simply too abstract and obscure for
kids to understand. Teaching philosophy should be abolished and
the time slot allotted to these two things:

1. Teaching kids principles of anarchy
2. Teaching kids evolutionary psychology

Agree?

The epic literature of the classical world. In translation, if the time is too short to learn the language. But these works need to be taught.

[Elok]

I'm generally in agreement with much of what VJ says, except for the slamming-psychology bit. However, I'm aware that the liberal arts in general are vulnerable to such attacks; my studies of Shakespeare are pretty damned useless in a practical sense too.

[VetLegion]

People really don't understand evolution for the most part. Sure they can memorize ape like creatures over time "evolved"

What I think should be done is show kids documentaries about monkeys & apes
and explain how much of what we do is hardwired adaptation to an environment
similar to theirs.

[VetLegion]

1. What are "principles of anarchy"?

Well, I don't really know. But I wish kids got some sort of education
that would not turn them into statists. The state should do this, the state
should do that, the state is omnipotent, good, benevolent... approximately
90% of the people around here expect the state to do everything. I'm tired
of that crap.

Kids should be taught, at least for a while, that there are self-organizing
solutions to many, in fact most, problems of a society. They should exit
the educational system with knowledge about the alternatives to Big State.

They are not taught that at all.

This ties into evolutionary psychology. Humans have evolved to be communists,
it's in our genes. So if you let kids develop their own instinct-based political
convictions, they end up statists.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Vet you need to go to UK, have a kid there, stay at least 10 years, it will be a revelation

[VetLegion]

Vet:

I meant to ask you... what is up with your posts and how they don't go across the screen? Are you typing your posts in Notepad or something first then copy and pasting them here?

Take the book nearest to you, open it, it has approximately 60-80
characters per line of text. This was arrived at through experimentation
as the upper limit for usability of text. Newspaper articles are divided
into columns that are even narrower. This aids reading. Today's monitors
are very wide and browsers tend to stretch forum posts from side to
side. I break up the lines of my posts on purpose, to make them easier
to read.

[VetLegion]

Vet you need to go to UK, have a kid there, stay at least 10 years, it will be a revelation

I'll be in London for five days at the end of June. I don't plan having
kids in that period, but we can grab a beer if you're nearby

[OneFootInTheGrave]

he he... I am back here, so I think we will meet before when I go to Zagreb, (not very often though)...

in any case EP

[Al B. Sure!]

Wow. Actually I have noticed since I got a new laptop last week (1920x1080 resolution) that it is a lot harder to read forum postings than it used to be on my ancient old computer.

Good thinking. Thanks for the consideration.