Trivers mapped the evolutionary algorithms, but modern network neuroscience maps the actual hardware running those algorithms right now. When Trivers talks about "self-deception for social advantage," he's describing a highly weighted survival prior that was genetically selected for over millennia. But he doesn't have the real-time mechanics. Today, Friston’s predictive processing and the tri-network model show us exactly how that prior executes in the tissue: the Default Mode Network simply ignores contradictory sensory data from the insula because updating its rigid self-model costs too much metabolic energy. Humans are not running elaborate plots, our brain is just minimizing free energy and avoiding prediction errors in the present moment.

Trivers work is not useful for explaining psychological suffering or real time behavior in a local family environment. We know a lot more than we did in the past. He basically could not separate out what our DMN is and used an elaborate narrative that fit at some macro level but falls apart when looked at closely. He gets the cost right. But we can now say with confidence the mind is not divided in the way he proposes. The narrative creates this division in the reader’s mind, but it is not real. Illusion.

Pinker is really falling for the narrative and ideas here and spends a lot of words in a topic that modern neuroscience pretty easily explains. To push back at Pinker’s conclusion: A rigid self identity with priors that are not updated also explains Triver’s many conflicts and social outcomes. The dude (Trivers) ended up being a creep FWIW.

S

  From: Robert Trivers {>
  To: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation@gmail.com>
  Subject: Trans
  Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2018 04:52:10 +0000

  it is very simple—i will compare male to female with female to male

  with greater molecular control over development we are increasingly capable of producing novel phenotypes—
  more feminine men, by blocking testosterone receptors (or castration) and, at the same time, increasing estrogen
  production—the one bocks male features, the second encourages female features

  more masculine women—heavy testosterone dosage—incredible external effects, heavily bearded men, you
  would never guess they had a female bone in their body

  first kind—male -> female is 4 times more frequent than female -> male

  the first is attractive—he is a woman with a cock, so that if your fantasy is to suck a man's dick, otherwise you
  are completely heterosexual, it would be much nicer if the rest of the organism is female, then you get the best of
  both worlds

  so many transsexual women are very attractive and easily make money which in turn they assert promotes their
  prostitution since they have to pay hefty fees for injections every week, but they are sexually happy,--once you
  have reached manhood even castration does not prevent the sensation of organism

  contrast the poor female to male versions, they are unhappy and lonely—they are men with mum-pums, the
  worst of both worlds

  if you like smelly masculine men, you want that hard cock that comes with the show—you do not want one of
  nature's more complex and variable structures, the pum-pum—that is an acquired tasted—and not with a man

  there are 100's of female Trans videos and websites, i have never seen a male one

  BTW we are now pushing the intervention earlier--so you notice your 3-year old son has trans tendencies, so
  now you intervene with hormones—i would be frightened to do that—but who knows ?

> Trivers was no ordinary academic. He was privileged in upbringing but louche in lifestyle, personally endearing but at times obstreperous and irresponsible, otherworldly brilliant but forehead-slappingly foolish.

I'm struggling to understand the use of the word "but" in this last sentence.

This strikes me as a very ordinary academic.

NB: I'm an academic.

Wow! This was a fantastic read! Not only well written, it's all brand new to me, something to share with my better half who would love it, and describes new viewpoints I had no idea were around.

Sometimes hn is on fire. Thanks for posting.

I had always heard "lush". This was my first encounter with "louche" in print.

In some way, this is as striking as Trivers himself.

'Trivers said Epstein is a person of integrity who should be given credit for serving time in prison and for settling civil lawsuits brought by women who said they were abused.

"Did he get an easy deal? Did he buy himself a light sentence? Well, yes, probably, compared to what you or I would get, but he did get locked up," Trivers said. He said he got about $40,000 from Epstein to study the relationship between knee symmetry and sprinting ability.

Trivers also said he believes girls mature earlier than in the past. "By the time they're 14 or 15, they're like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don't see these acts as so heinous," he said.'

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-epstein-charity-idUSKBN0L...

Trivers hasn't been relevant since the 70s.

I hadn't even seen the details of the Epstein emails and related comments of his, that are objectively pretty awful.