Book Review – The Old Toolbox (Why is the Human Mind an Old Toolbox?)

This blog post argues against the claim that evolutionary psychology explains the human mind as a product of evolution, likening it to an old extension cord. This is because while evolutionary psychology may be useful for explaining past events, it’s not good at predicting the future.

 

The metaphor “the human mind is an old toolbox” is a theme throughout the book, implying that the human mind is a toolbox filled with millions of years old traditional tools: drills, saws, hammers, etc. When you read the previous sentence, you may have many questions. From questions about the sentence itself, such as “Why is the mind an old toolbox?” to questions about the details of the sentence, such as “Why are the tools drills, saws, and hammers, rather than pliers or nippers?” or “Why is the toolbox millions of years old, rather than a new toolbox you just bought at the hardware store? I disagree with the claim that the human mind is an old toolbox, and I’ll discuss this in more detail later in the article. For now, let’s discuss the book’s argument and why it makes the claim that the human mind is an old toolbox by exploring some of the questions that arise.
The book claims that the human mind has evolved to solve a number of “adaptive problems” – problems that we face as we try to adapt to the environment and leave offspring. To clarify this statement, let’s define the mind and evolution and explain what they mean. The book says that a mind is a specific output given a specific input. For example, if Chul and Young-hee see a coin that falls and Chul picks it up because he likes it and Young-hee doesn’t pick it up because it doesn’t belong to him, their minds have different outputs for the same input because they have different minds. The term evolution is also used, which means that when an individual with a trait that increases its reproductive success in a particular environment competes with other individuals to produce offspring, the trait is passed on to the offspring, and these traits accumulate in the offspring over time. For example, if there are two puppies in a very cold environment, one with a lot of fur and one with little fur, the furry puppy will have an advantage in resisting the cold and leaving offspring. Eventually, if the hairier puppy leaves offspring, those offspring will be hairier. Cold-resistant traits can be more than just fur, such as a thick layer of fat, and when these traits accumulate over time, a puppy can be said to have evolved a strong resistance to cold.
Based on the previous definition of mind and evolution, we can say that the mind has evolved to change its output in response to certain inputs in order to better survive and reproduce in a particular environment. We humans have lived in the savannahs of Africa for over 95% of our history, so when I say “specific environment,” I mean the savannahs. To give a brief description of the savanna, it is an area that is halfway between a tropical rainforest, with its lush trees and abundant rainfall, and a desert, with its treelessness and low rainfall. In this environment, humans were forced to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and our minds evolved to adapt to this environment. For example, the sweet taste of sugar, which is high in calories, is due to the fact that people who have the trait of tasting sugar sweetly during hunting and gathering reproduced more than people who taste sugar bitter or sour, and the trait was passed on to their offspring. Tasting sugar is the input, and feeling sweet, bitter, or sour is the output, which is a different mindset. Evolution can also explain why humans are more comfortable in the corners of a space than in the center. The savannah was full of predators, and in order to detect and deal with them, it was advantageous to be in the corners of a space where you could easily keep an eye on them rather than in the center. Some people would have felt more comfortable living in the center of a space, while others would have felt more comfortable living in the corners. Of these two groups, those who were vulnerable to predator attacks were those who felt more comfortable in the center, and these individuals would have had lower reproductive rates than those who felt more comfortable in the corners. In the end, the people who were comfortable in the corners passed that trait on to their descendants and it has been maintained to this day. In the book, we see these traits as necessary for survival, and we call them human “instincts,” which together make up the modern human mind.
The reason the human mind is an “old” extension cord is that it is the product of millions of years of evolution, and the reason it is an “extension cord” and not a computer or calculator is that the human mind did not evolve to be good at solving deep, abstract problems like “What is God like?” but rather to be good at solving practical, basic problems related to survival on the savannah grasslands. The reason why the extension of the extension barrel is “traditional” and not modern is that humans spent over 95% of their history as hunter-gatherers in the savannah, so the extension instinct was not developed for the modern industrialized world.
So far, we’ve discussed the book’s argument that the human mind is an ancient extension. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, I disagree with the book’s conclusion that the human mind is a product of evolution because evolutionary psychology explains human psychology in a piecemeal fashion, i.e., if it goes on the nose, it goes on the nose, if it goes on the nose, it goes on the ear. Evolutionary psychologists also claim that evolutionary psychology is very good at predicting the future. However, because evolutionary psychology is a fit-and-forget explanation, it is good at explaining events that have already happened, but not at predicting events that will happen in the future.
To demonstrate that evolutionary psychology cannot make any psychological predictions about future phenomena, let’s look at a couple of examples of evolutionary psychologists’ explanations of human psychology in terms of fits and starts. The first explanation is that humans prefer the corners of a space to the center. Evolutionary psychologists believe that humans evolved this way because to survive on the savannah, we need to be better prepared for attacks from animals, and it’s easier to monitor their movements in the corners than in the center. The second explanation is that women prefer taller men and men prefer women with larger pelvises. Evolutionary psychologists believe that women like taller men because they’re bigger, which may have given them an advantage over shorter men in the past when it came to subduing predators on the savannah grasslands. Another reason men prefer women with larger pelvises is that women with larger pelvises are better able to give birth than women with smaller pelvises, thus passing on more of their male genes to the next generation. The third is why people have a tendency to show off to others. This is because people who show off are more likely to be noticed by the opposite sex, which can increase their reproductive success. Finally, there’s the question of why men are more aggressive than women. Evolutionary psychologists believe that the likelihood of a man passing on his genes to the next generation is proportional to the number of times he has sex, whereas for women, it’s more important that they find a competent husband and raise the children they have. So while men are more aggressive about getting laid, women are less aggressive and believe they have evolved to be less aggressive and more deliberate than men because they are more concerned about choosing a man who can raise their babies well than the number of times they have sex.
Let’s set up a situation based on these four fit-and-forget examples and apply them, and see how illogical and fit-and-forget evolutionary psychology can be with the ridiculous results that follow. A person walks into a cafe and tries to find a seat. Should this person sit in the center of the cafe? Or in the corner? The evolutionary psychology explanation is that it depends on who the person is. Imagine that the person who walks into the cafe is a tall man, and he has four “instincts. First, he wants to avoid the center of the table (first example). However, he might prefer to sit in the center, where he can be seen, because he knows that women will like him because he’s tall, so he’ll want to show it off (second and third examples). And since men tend to be aggressive, he’ll want to show off his aggressiveness (last example). So, would a man rather sit in the center or in the corner? Now imagine that the person who walks into the cafe is a woman with a small pelvis, who would want to avoid the front and center seats (first example). She doesn’t want to show off her small pelvis because she thinks men don’t like it, and she doesn’t want to sit in the center of the room where she’ll be noticed (second, third, and last example). But is this woman really going to sit in the corner? In fact, if you observe, the book says that people generally prefer the edges of a cafe. What can we learn from this situation? Evolutionary psychology cannot predict what will happen in the future because it is a plausible fit-for-fit explanation of different situations that have happened in the past without any criteria: it has no criteria for which nature prevails, or even which is nature.
Evolutionary psychologists might argue that it’s hard to have a standard because evolutionary psychology hasn’t been studied in earnest for a long time, and we don’t have a complete understanding of human nature yet. In relation to the example above, it could be argued that future research will tell us whether men are naturally inclined to sit in the corner or to show off their height. But is that really possible when there are only one or two human natures, when it is unclear which psychological mechanisms are inherent or acquired, and when there are thousands, hundreds of millions, or even an infinite number of them, how can we prioritize them?
I am opposed to evolutionary psychology because it can explain phenomena that have already occurred, but it cannot predict future phenomena. Evolutionary psychologists might ask, how is the human mind made? I believe that human psychology is shaped by the environment. Since the purpose of this article is to argue against evolutionary psychology and not to defend environmentalists, I will not go into a detailed argument. The reason for this is Song Joong-ki’s appearance in the Korean movie “Wolf Boy”. Song Joong-ki was raised by wolves and has all the habits of a wolf. You might be thinking, “It’s a movie, so it’s possible to have such a setting,” but in fact, a boy who was raised in the jungle in the past showed similar habits to Song Joong-ki, so I think it can be an example of how human psychology is shaped by the environment. In order for evolutionary psychologists to claim that the nature of human psychology is a product of evolution, I think it is necessary to establish a clear standard of human nature, otherwise evolutionary psychology will remain only a story of evolutionary psychology.