tribalypredisposed wrote:Please people, if you want to debate with me all I ask is that you keep
your words out of
my mouth. That is not asking a lot, I think.
If I've misinterpreted your meaning then just correct me, there's no need to take it personally. The internet is the place of imperfect communication.
tribalypredisposed wrote:1)I never said anything approaching the bolded and underlined section of your post, where you strongly imply that the opposite is the case by saying I have "gone too far."
You said this:
The idea that there is "no innate connection" between gender and expressed behavior inherently depends on the idea that human behavior is not the product of evolution.
Which appears to be saying that the idea that there is "no innate connection" between gender and expressed behavior must be wrong since it depends on the idea that human behavior is not the product of evolution. I pointed out that this is faulty logic, because a lot of human behavior is not the product of evolution (i.e. selected for). I didn't imply the opposite is the case for the specific case of gender, but most certainly it's true that not all behavior is the product of evolution so it's wrong to discount that idea on the mistaken assumption that human behavior is the product of evolution.
If you didn't mean to imply that all human behaviors are the product of evolution, then why bring up this line of reasoning at all?
tribalypredisposed wrote:If you want to discuss things with me, discuss them with me and not some straw man version of me that you construct. Okay? I am starting to see this as a general feature of the argumentation of the posters here and it pisses me off. If you guys want interesting folks with some smarts and knowledge to stick around here, that needs to stop.
If you feel you are being consistently misrepresented then perhaps in addition to malice or ill-intent, you could entertain the possibility that this misunderstanding could be the result of a) an honest mistake (which only requires you to correct the speaker's understanding), and/or b) an inability of yours to effectively communicate your ideas (after all, if the common denominator in all these situations is you, then it's only natural to assume you may be partly to blame).
tribalypredisposed wrote:2)Your first sentence of your last paragraph can only be written by someone who has not grasped the Theory of Evolution.
You think this sentence is an example of a failure to grasp the ToE:
I don't think anyone is actually arguing that gender is purely a cultural construct (at least not in the sense that biology plays absolutely no part), instead they're just pointing out that when looking at gender, biological sex is not a perfect predictor.
To disagree with that statement is to say that "If the ToE is true, then biological sex must be a perfect predictor of gender". So since people like vombatiformes don't have genders which are perfectly predicted by biological sex, are you suggesting that the ToE has been disproven?
tribalypredisposed wrote:The rest of that paragraph assumes that all types of "behavior" would be equally subject to evolutionary selection, which is a farcical assumption. Clearly behavior that has some relevance to reproduction is more subject to evolutionary selection than a preference to wear one's hair in pony tails instead of a bun, and clearly such behaviors are quite likely to be gender specific. Any claims otherwise require truly astounding empirical evidence, which I now will wait to hear.
Interesting. For someone so concerned with accurate understanding and portrayal of other people's arguments, you haven't applied this same principle to your own posts. You've misunderstood me, I'll point out where.
Of course all behaviors aren't equally subject to evolutionary selection, especially considering some aren't subject to it at all. My point was that in situations where there is no specific evolutionary difference between two (or more) behaviors, like in a standard behavioral choice task, we don't need to consider evolutionary pressures at all as it adds nothing to our understanding of the situation. As such, we can get a range of interesting and intelligent behaviors coming about without a specific evolutionary source.
I'm not sure what you mean by "gender specific", surely you mean "sex specific"? I'd be interested in reading some of the research on those sex differences you think are the result of evolutionary pressures (the burden is yours since you're the one making the claim, I'm simply skeptical of it), but I'm pretty sure you didn't mean to say that gender-specific behaviors are evolutionary?