Peter Turchin on Steven Pinker’s “Grand Deception” hypotheses

Social Evolution Forum “The ‘Big Mistake’ and ‘Grand Deception’ Hypotheses: Alternatives to CMLS?”

These are flaws in Pinker’s arguments that I failed to identify in my own critique, and Turchin prevents some valuable insights. This idea that the human mind can be so easily parasitized or ‘cuckolded’ by ideas is strange, casting ideas and culture as some sort of freeloader on the backs of human biology. One would think that if being parasitized by pro-social ideas was so bad for one’s fitness that such a vulnerability would have been purged from the human population by now.