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Adam Gopnik is critical of a book that suggests that storytelling is adaptive, evolutionarily speaking. I have not yet read the book, and for all I know the book itself is bubble-headed. But it supports a view to which I am sympathetic. Of course, whenever you are doing theoretical psychology, you must be careful not to fall into the trap of telling just-so stories. Or at least try. You have a limited ability to determine what psychological factors might be adaptive and what might not. But there are educated guesses you can make. Gopnik is not dismissive of all speculative evolutionary psychology – he praises a book on the evolutionary origins of gossip. He just thinks the idea that storytelling is adaptive is BS.
