"Like all psychology books, The Elephant in the Brain examines many quirks of human cognition. But this book also ventures where others fear to tread: into social critique. The authors show how hidden selfish motives lie at the very heart of venerated institutions like Art, Education, Charity, Medicine, Politics, and Religion.Acknowledging these hidden motives has the potential to upend the usual political debates and cast fatal doubt on many polite fictions. You won't see yourself — or the world — the same after confronting the elephant in the brain."
Pardon my skepticism that someone that has a scholarly background in unrelated subject areas and has spent 10 years outside academia is going to do anything but scratch their own itch or vent their own spleen. Nothing wrong with that. But also pardon my false modesty. I'm not what I would consider an expert, but I'm not ignorant about biology, endocrinology, chemistry, evolution, genetics, psychology, history, geology, quantum mechanics, plumbing or any number of other subject areas that any person who wants to be well-rounded in has at their fingertips now.
Anyway, I didn't say (and don't think) the article was written off the cuff, I said it's half-assed pseudo-intellectualism. Fisking this thing is beyond by scope of my interest, but:
1. "If evolution devised to make our bodies do something, then the action is unlikely to be a meaningless side effect. There has to be a point to it." extraordinary claim, arguable merit, completely taken for granted
2. "Modern Western culture portrays sadness and tears as inextricably linked" I don't know anybody that thinks this (everyone is aware of happiness, response to beauty, stress, etc), one example of pattern of over- or misstating status quo to boost heterodox bona fides.
3. "There's an idea that we sometimes cry due to extreme happiness, but I think that's a little off the mark. I would rather say that we cry when we feel humbled by something great — something that would otherwise, if it weren't so humbling, cause unbridled happiness" the rare actual example of begging the question (in context of his later claims)
4. "Unfortunately, "stimulus: response" is the wrong frame to use to analyze crying, mostly because it saps the crier of any kind of intelligent agency." another extraordinary claim of arguable merit used to support later argument
5. "Another misconception is that crying is somehow directly therapeutic. Yes, it can feel good to cry, but no:" this whole line of reasoning is ridiculous, why bother to conduct double blind drug trials with placebos, again? Again, core to his thesis, and very flawed.
6. "The fact that we, as receivers, often feel manipulated by someone else's tears is the giveaway that crying is a signal — i.e., because it aims to change our behavior. When someone's tears are making a "request" that we feel is legitimate (and when our interests overlap with the sender's), we're happy to oblige. But we need to make sure we're not getting jerked around, so we're eager to evaluate the situation, to determine how appropriate an episode of crying is. In other words, we can get really judgmental about tears." I see no citation for this, and it doesn't match my experience, so I can only presume this is the author substituting anecdote/personal feelings for fact. Certainly under-supported.
7. "No one contests that these are, in fact, two of the ways we use tears. " I completely contest that human being utilize tears as signals in they way the author claims. It's only because of the rhetorical structure of the piece that this even seems plausible at this point. If I wrote a single sentence article that said "I believe crying is a signal to others of submission/distress instead of an involuntary reflex" the difference in a readers' reaction should indicate the difference between the degree this article is convincing vs the degree to which it has merit.
8. "Why did we evolve yet another way to signal submission or distress?" Arguable merit, lacking support for thesis this is evolved rather than learned.
9. "Tears, in this theory, are a political act, in the same way that tattling, gossiping, and whistleblowing are political" Did anyone even read to this point? How far are we removed from the practical reality of "I cried when I found out a loved one died" reality most of us experience?
10. "The answer is fairly simple. Humans, unique among all animals, have an instinct to resist aggression even when it's directed toward other members of the group (even non-kin)" Really, this could use a citation.
There are more, but again, my time is finite.
Please don't mistake my prior comment as "I didn't read the article". I read the article and thought it was lacking, an example of someone that starts out with their thesis and backfills with trivia, mediocre citation support, and fancy language to lead you to the intended destination. Since there are presumably actual experts on this out there, though, I was hoping that one of them might read this and volunteer some information about the subject.
This just seems like someone read Harari and took away the wrong lessons about pop soft-science writing.