From Sigrid Rausing
Baumard's “life history theory”, like sociobiology before it, seems to fail to distinguish between cause and effect – the two merge into “strategy”. Distressed starlings lose weight – an effect of distress, not a “fast life strategy”. Affluent women have fewer babies not because they have “switched” to “slow life”, but because they usually have careers.
The claim that disapproving of behaviour that threatens your interest is a “general principle of human moral cognition” does not take seriously the idea of holding principles. These may benefit us in the long term, but quite often disadvantage us in the short term.
You could build a plausible evolutionary theory on that. But to argue that morality is only a means by which elites hold down the masses, to deny them sexual opportunity, revenge, and having “fun” sounds like the old stories about what the poor would get up to if “we” don't stop them.
London, UK
