In response to my objection to the 'tude displayed by one Crooked Timber poster toward evolutionary psychology, Daniel Davies says:

Thornhill and Palmer are not outliers; they're favourably cited by Cosmides & Tooby. An example of an "outlier" would be that guy who's written three books on the Jews, although even he's not such an outlier that he wasn't allowed on the editorial board of important ev.psych journals.

I don't get this. Tooby has pissed on MacDonald several times. Why bring this up? Especially in light of the fact that Daniel has used the Lewontin and Sober paper several times over at Crooked Timber, the same Elliott Sober who co-authored a book with David Sloan Wilson, a man who defended Kevin MacDonald a few years back (Judith Shulevitz notes that Sober & Wilson list Kevin MacDonald as an "evolutionary psychologist" in a scholarly article, giving him at least their legitimacy). Most evolutionary psychologists work within the individual/gene selectionist paradigm of W.D. Hamilton, Kevin MacDonald does not, and instead uses the "group selection" which men like Sober, Wilson & Gould have espoused (or more properly, "hierarchical selection"). Kooks will use any tools they can get their hands on [1]. The Camp of Evil and Camp of Good are not as clear cut as Davies & The Crooked Timber clan would like to think. I would be getting political if I wondered if those who favored communitarian/altruistic congenial views of human nature might not have it blow up in their face when the dark beasts of ethno-activists hijack it-but I won't go there [2]....

[1] My view of KMD has shifted from "controversialist" to "kook" in the past year as he seems to be intent on extrapolating politics from theories, instead of being "above it all" (like Arthur Jensen). See his output over at The Occidental Quarterly.

[2] Reading Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, one must remember that the altruism that Sober & Wilson argue for emerges in the context of inter-group dynamics. There is no moral free lunch. There's a reason that Unto Others can be found in a bibliography at the "Neoeugenics" site.