MAGIC SOOUULLLSSSS Libertarian

[Occluded Sun]

While you might have tried to wave this away as an abstract truth, the fact is that in practice this is not the case. There are people out there that believe things that are factually wrong.

Yeah. So? People who are wrong about things that impact survival tend not to be wrong for long.

You keep coming back down to this, so let me break it down:

1) The universe is not sapient.

Yep.

2) Only sapient entities make judgments.

Nope. Computers aren't considered sapient, but they can make judgments. Even neural networks make judgments, and they usually don't have the level of capacity to be even a simple Turing machine.

3) The universe does not make judgments.

Wrong.

You've been trying to argue that the universe has some sort of built-in moral imperative

No, I'm arguing that the universe has some sort of built-in principles that render certain moral statements true and others false. These principles include causality.

Well, since you won't give an example, I will: Cannibalism. Most humans consider this an unacceptable activity. From the standpoint of nature, however, it's just one feeding strategy among many. Certainly many animals do it, and many humans have done it. Now, you can argue that cannibalism is bad for the species

Is it? I note that social creatures which can eat meat usually don't engage in cannibalism in nature, although there are of course occasional exceptions. But as a widespread thing? Probably incompatible with social bonding.

Two things here:
Again, you're getting away from your own original argument.

No, I'm not. I don't think you grasp what my original argument was.

I can find a molecule of water, and that'll do for me.

As a concept, 'water' is more complex than mere atoms. As a concept, 'justice' and 'mercy' are more complex than molecules. Doesn't make either of them unreal. Pratchett was making a dumb argument there. He's a very entertaining writer, but not a very good thinker consistently.

But again, this just comes down to humans applying their own subjective context.

No, it doesn't. Put a dolphin down in Death Valley and see how good they are a living there.

Religions die hard, and there are more of them all the time.

Religion dies hard. Religions die all the time.

Ever hear of the Shakers? Incredibly successful for a short time in some senses, but they didn't have kids, and so they've died out. Religions which actually value celibacy don't last long.

I could argue you don't exist; that's a basic shadow-on-the-cave argument. But seriously, morality is a human concept, not an evolutionary one. If morality was evolution, we'd all be selfish bastards.

Nope, nope, nope. Tit-for-Tat is the morality evolution produces. See the Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma.

My argument is that you're assuming a final cause; that's factually incorrect. Bees were not destined to make hexagonal honeycombs.

You're quite wrong. I'm not assuming a final cause. Bees are in fact destined to make honeycombs hexagonal.

No. You can argue that given a particular environment individuals of a given species with a particular mutation may have an evolutionary advantage; that doesn't presuppose that they're going to survive, or become the dominant species, or be able to adapt when the environment changes.

So what? The advantage is objective; it exists. That there's no guarantee they'll actually survive is irrelevant.

I reject that bees are expected to conform to your notions of what the perfect bee cell is supposed to look like.

Quite appropriate. My ideas are irrelevant. However, I'm not arguing that my notions are binding on the bees. So your point is a non-sequitur.

Geometry, however, IS binding on them.

Heaxagonal cells have many advantages. They may be, in some contexts, the best shape for bees. But that doesn't mean that bees were destined to make hexagonal cells, nor that there isn't a better one out there somewhere.

And again, you're wrong about that. There is no better cell for them. And if any organism is going to make cells like that, they're going to end up being hexagonal prisms.

Man, I've never actually seen Marxist thinking applied to natural biology before. It's so delightfully Lysenko-ist!

[Ancient History]

While you might have tried to wave this away as an abstract truth, the fact is that in practice this is not the case. There are people out there that believe things that are factually wrong.

Yeah. So? People who are wrong about things that impact survival tend not to be wrong for long.

Heh. Yeah, that's...not true. People were about washing hands before midwifing for a long time, for example.

2) Only sapient entities make judgments.

Nope. Computers aren't considered sapient, but they can make judgments. Even neural networks make judgments, and they usually don't have the level of capacity to be even a simple Turing machine.

Computers don't make judgments, they carry out operations. The outcome of those operations can affect other operations, but it's only a judgment at a very high level of complexity and abstraction - humans can make judgments, computers cannot (yet).

3) The universe does not make judgments.

Wrong.

...and so you're full of shit.

You've been trying to argue that the universe has some sort of built-in moral imperative

No, I'm arguing that the universe has some sort of built-in principles that render certain moral statements true and others false. These principles include causality.

Morality is a human construct, and it's not even a universal set of principles across the spectrum of human culture. How the fuck could causality make a true/false judgment on morality? Causality predates morality, because it predates humans. The best you could argue is that morality is predicated on causality, but even then you're wrong because a lot of moral principles were created back before humans had any knowledge of causality. What the fuck. That's like saying people decided fucking sheep was bad because it reduced the number of human births back before humans knew that fucking led to babies.

Is it? I note that social creatures which can eat meat usually don't engage in cannibalism in nature, although there are of course occasional exceptions. But as a widespread thing? Probably incompatible with social bonding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism_%28zoology%29

Two things here:
Again, you're getting away from your own original argument.

No, I'm not. I don't think you grasp what my original argument was.

I'm beginning to think you don't grasp what your original argument was; you're certainly not trying to argue it anymore.

As a concept, 'water' is more complex than mere atoms.

You're trying to prove that the physical laws of the universe support your abstract truths. Disregarding physics is not making your point here.

No, it doesn't. Put a dolphin down in Death Valley and see how good they are a living there.

I'd like to put you down in Death Valley and see how good you are at living there.

Ever hear of the Shakers? Incredibly successful for a short time in some senses, but they didn't have kids, and so they've died out. Religions which actually value celibacy don't last long.

You know there are still Shakers, right?

If morality was evolution, we'd all be selfish bastards.

Nope, nope, nope. Tit-for-Tat is the morality evolution produces. See the Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma.

Evolution doesn't have moral lessons, but if it did symbiosis isn't the ultimate moral fable, or else we wouldn't be living in a world swarming with parasites.

My argument is that you're assuming a final cause; that's factually incorrect. Bees were not destined to make hexagonal honeycombs.

You're quite wrong. I'm not assuming a final cause. Bees are in fact destined to make honeycombs hexagonal.

Then please explain the large number of bees that don't make honeycombs.

No. You can argue that given a particular environment individuals of a given species with a particular mutation may have an evolutionary advantage; that doesn't presuppose that they're going to survive, or become the dominant species, or be able to adapt when the environment changes.

So what? The advantage is objective; it exists. That there's no guarantee they'll actually survive is irrelevant.

Just because it exists doesn't give it moral force.

Heaxagonal cells have many advantages. They may be, in some contexts, the best shape for bees. But that doesn't mean that bees were destined to make hexagonal cells, nor that there isn't a better one out there somewhere.

And again, you're wrong about that. There is no better cell for them. And if any organism is going to make cells like that, they're going to end up being hexagonal prisms.

Man, I've never actually seen Marxist thinking applied to natural biology before. It's so delightfully Lysenko-ist!

Bitch, please. There is no law that says that bees will naturally gravitate toward hexagonal honeycombs. At best, you can argue why hexagonal honeycombs have an advantage over non-hexagonal honeycombs, but there can be no certainty about it. Hell, do you see Honey ants fiddling with combs at all?

The truth is there are many different ways to achieve the same end, and there is not always one that is obviously and objectively better than the other. Fuck, that's what the whole process of specialization and ecological niches is about.

[DSMatticus]

Well, this is moving fast. Anyway, it's the exact same argument that Occluded Sun has been making all along plus some new stupid:

1) "The enactment of ideas carries consequences, and these consequences necessarily demonstrate that those ideas are either objectively right or wrong." This argument presupposes a framework by which you can declare consequences to be objectively good or bad without proving its existence, and is essentially just another formulation of the circular argument Occluded Sun has been making all along. It's just shifting the burden of proof from one leg to the other without ever meeting it. It discounts the possibility that the evaluation of consequences is completely subjective, and as such ideas can only be good or harmful with respect to that subjective framework of evaluation. I.e.: the fact that humans give a shit does not actually imply that the universe does - existence does not imply objective moral superiority.

2) There's an assumption that "negative consequences (for some definition of negative) always meaningfully impact the ability of bad ideas (for some definition of bad) to proliferate," which is probably based on the fundamentally flawed notion that human beings are rational actors with access to the collected wealth of human knowledge. Faith healing is alive and well today, despite the fact that it kills the people who believe in it. The anti-vax movement is alive and well today, despite the fact that it kills the people who believe in it. Smoking survived for some time despite killing the people who did it simply because advertising convinced people it didn't do that and plus it's so cool anyway and its recent decline probably owes quite a bit to big bad gubment stepping in and violating the property rights of various actors by forcing them to say things they did not want to say (because they were true) and not say the things they wanted to say (because they were lies).

3) "Property rights are an inherent aspect of human nature." This is just a blind assertion of things which even casual research demonstrates to not be true. I suspect Occluded Sun is aiming to set himself up for a deeply deceitful argument hinging on an overly broad definition of the "concept of property." The reality is that modern property rights are just that - modern. The idea that anyone and everyone could own anything and everything and that that ownership confers on it certain rights which are inviolable by both neighbor and state is only a couple hundred years old and not even global. He keeps saying it, but it's not actually becoming any less bullshit.

4) "Oh no! Not the bees! NOT THE BEES! AAAHHH!!!" Unsurprisingly, Occluded Sun has no idea what he's talking about here. The honeycomb conjecture is the assertion that the best way to divide a two-dimensional space into regions of equal area with the least total perimeter (i.e., using the least material) is a hexagonal grid. Nitpick: the conjecture itself is two thousand years old, but the proof of the conjecture is only fifteen years old.

Of course, none of that actually matters, because honeycombs aren't two-dimensional. They're three-dimensional, in that they are two layers of hexagonal cells stacked back to back - and it was proven forty-nine years ago that the method by which the bees join these two hexagonal sheets is inoptimal, with at least one more optimal method demonstrated and no proof of an optimal method in sight. We know that the honeycomb built by bees is inoptimal, but we only have a handwavy idea of how inoptimal it actually is (to their credit, not very). And all of that is based on theoretical ideal designs - actual honeycombs are full of peculiar imperfections of chance and design.

The full story is even less interesting still: the bees don't actually build hexagons. They build circles, and the surface tension between adjacent cells causes them to collapse into hexagons. There is very little reason to believe there ever existed multiple competing honeycomb tiling patterns upon which natural selection operated, and every reason to believe bees are using the same rudimentary tiling method they always have and it just happens to be the most two-dimensionally efficient tiling method for the reason the soap bubbles in your dishwater make interestingly geometric shapes.

Again: evolution is not magic. It's a particular algorithm people have studied, and its limitations are well-documented. Worshipping it as the One True Authority on all that ever was and will be is insane. But worshipping your own personal misconceptions of what it is and can do is both insane and fucking stupid. Go forth and read some actual literature on genetic algorithms. Learn what they are, what they can do, and what they can't. And then hopefully you will abandon your religious pseudoscience.

[Occluded Sun]

Heh. Yeah, that's...not true. People were about washing hands before midwifing for a long time, for example.

Midwives were much better at the job than physicians, who sucked. (And in many ways still do, but that's another story.)

Human beings are actually pretty good at interacting with the world. To the point that we take it for granted, and many people don't really grasp the idea that our experiences and the world aren't the same thing.

Computers don't make judgments, they carry out operations. The outcome of those operations can affect other operations, but it's only a judgment at a very high level of complexity and abstraction - humans can make judgments, computers cannot (yet).

This is just wrong. 'Making a judgment' is the sort of thing that computers can be programmed to do - consider expert systems. Or any situation where the computer must make a response when presented with external data. That's a judgment call.

...and so you're full of shit.

That's not an argument. If you can't rebut the point, at least have the guts to admit it.

Morality is a human construct, and it's not even a universal set of principles across the spectrum of human culture.

Bridges are also human constructs - and likewise, have varied widely in their design across cultures. The laws of physics have some pretty serious implications for bridges.

How the fuck could causality make a true/false judgment on morality?

The same way physics has implications for the correctness of human models of it. Of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism_%28zoology%29

Doesn't contradict the point.

I'm beginning to think you don't grasp what your original argument was; you're certainly not trying to argue it anymore.

I've never argued the ideas that you people keep claiming I am. If you're finally starting to catch onto that, good. But that doesn't reflect on me at all.

You're trying to prove that the physical laws of the universe support your abstract truths. Disregarding physics is not making your point here.

Water IS more complex than atoms. You have to go up to the molecule level of analysis at the very least. Don't lecture me on physics when your own grasp of the principles is a bit dodgy.

I'd like to put you down in Death Valley and see how good you are at living there.

Attempted evasion of the argument. Just admit you're wrong and move on.

url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbathda ... er_Village]You know there are still Shakers, right?[/url]

Three members. Ha! Do you have any idea of how many there used to be?

Evolution doesn't have moral lessons, but if it did symbiosis isn't the ultimate moral fable, or else we wouldn't be living in a world swarming with parasites.

This is a complete non-sequitur in regards to the Iterated Prisoners' Dilemma and the Tit-for-Tat strategy.

Then please explain the large number of bees that don't make honeycombs.

I didn't say they were destined to make honeycombs. But when they do, they're going to be hexagonal. Because the hexagon is the shape that tiles the plane with the smallest ratio of sides-to-volume. As even the ancient Greeks knew.

Just because it exists doesn't give it moral force.

The existence of logical principles which restrict the systems of morality which can be made to sustain themselves across time doesn't give them 'moral force'? What a peculiar idea of yours there.

Bitch, please. There is no law that says that bees will naturally gravitate toward hexagonal honeycombs.

As opposed to any other style of honeycomb? Yes, there are several such laws.

The truth is there are many different ways to achieve the same end, and there is not always one that is obviously and objectively better than the other.

But it is NOT the case that there are never objectively better ways of doing things. Which is the point I've been making for pages now. There ARE objective truths about things like morality and the definitions of which things are desirable.

Really, man, you're so confused as to the ideas in play here that you're arguing in my favor at points. Are you sure you don't want to take some time off, think things through a little?

[Kaelik]

Smoking survived for some time despite killing the people who did it simply because advertising convinced people it didn't do that and plus it's so cool anyway and its recent decline probably owes quite a bit to big bad gubment stepping in and violating the property rights of various actors by forcing them to say things they did not want to say (because they were true) and not say the things they wanted to say (because they were lies).

Point of fact. Smokers still outnumber Faith Healing advocates. People still read the signs that tell them they are killing themselves, and then do it anyway.

And those people still exist, and have children. Because you can have a lot of condomless sex with women who think you are cool because you smoke before you die of lung cancer at 43.

[Occluded Sun]

Point of fact. Smokers still outnumber Faith Healing advocates. People still read the signs that tell them they are killing themselves, and then do it anyway.

Addiction is powerful. Given time, though, people who are most vulnerable to a drug are selected out. Which is why Europeans are far more able to cope with alcohol use than Native Americans.

Eventually I'd expect people to become resistant to tobacco - either because they cope with its negative effects better, or have no interest in starting. It will take quite a while, especially in a modern-style society.

Evolution isn't prior restraint.

[DSMatticus]

Point of fact. Smokers still outnumber Faith Healing advocates. People still read the signs that tell them they are killing themselves, and then do it anyway.

Addiction is powerful. Given time, though, people who are most vulnerable to a drug are selected out. Which is why Europeans are far more able to cope with alcohol use than Native Americans.

Eventually I'd expect people to become resistant to tobacco - either because they cope with its negative effects better, or have no interest in starting. It will take quite a while, especially in a modern-style society.

Evolution isn't prior restraint.

For someone who spends so much time fapping to the power of evolution, your misunderstandings of it are so... routine.

Natural selection operates through the mechanism of reproduction. If a deleterious effect does not impact reproductive success, it isn't actually a deleterious effect - it just sucks to be you. Lung cancer kills a lot of people, but it doesn't become a significant statistical risk until you're in your forties - at which point the vast majority of people are done spitting out babies.

You can't even have a meaningful social darwinism argument about smoking, because the effect of smoking on reproductive fitness is negligible and as such natural selection will never give a fuck about whether or not you are tobacco resistant. If the name of the game is darwinism then there are no tools in your toolbox for things that kill people who are no longer reproducing.

[Occluded Sun]

For most of human existence, losing your parents early substantially reduced your chances of survival. And humans live long enough to be grandparents because having grandparents made it possible for them to help with childcare, itself something which increased the probability of your babies growing up.

The idea that because tobacco kills after people have probably had children, it can exert no selection pressure, is both remarkably ignorant and remarkably foolish.

See what I mean about the low quality of trolls here, people? This isn't meeting even basic standards of quality assurance.

[Username17]

Point of fact: bees don't make hexagonal cells. I don't just mean that they make cells with rounded corners and sides that aren't the same size, I mean that they are not, when bees produce them, six sided things. The cells begin as rectangles that are off center, and they are deformed into vaguely hexagonal shapes under the weight of gravity because they are made of fucking wax.

It's just a really really weird argument.

And smoking? Really? A hundred thousand years of human generations where the average life expectancy was considerably less than the age at which smoking starts killing people, and this jackass thinks that smoking is going to have an effect based on natural selection? No.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

For most of human existence, losing your parents early substantially reduced your chances of survival. And humans live long enough to be grandparents because having grandparents made it possible for them to help with childcare, itself something which increased the probability of your babies growing up.

The idea that because tobacco kills after people have probably had children, it can exert no selection pressure, is both remarkably ignorant and remarkably foolish.

See what I mean about the low quality of trolls here, people? This isn't meeting even basic standards of quality assurance.

Except of course that tobacco use was not selected against at any point during the hundreds if not thousands of years that was true. And now that that is less true than it ever was in history there is even less reason for it to be selected against now.

This thing where you whine as an aside about how this forum is filled with bad trolls is pathetic, because no one reads this forum but the people you are insulting, and you are plainly doing it to distract from the tremendously poor arguments you have to make now that you have said another stupid thing based on your failure to understand evolution, and are forced to defend it because you refuse to ever admit fault.

[DSMatticus]

Both the average and median age for lung cancer are the early 70's. The gap between typical child-bearing age and death by lung cancer is long enough that, even in the case of relatively early deaths, you are basically full of shit and the increased mortality of those partially orphaned in maybe their mid teens is minimal - especially in the context of the modern world, where we try not to let people die because their parents are incapable of supporting them. Sins of the father and all that. No one is impressed by your efforts to post hoc explain away all the stupid shit you say and then pretend you weren't a dumbass all along - it's incredibly transparent and you suck at it to boot.

But I am deeply amused that you chose to argue that the death of smoker's children is the proper and goodly mechanism by which the universe will selecively filter out the deleterious effects of harmful and addictive substances on humanity. Not only is that an answer worthy of flunking highschool biology, it's a surprisingly honest insight into the morality you are defending - "everything will be okay, because children will die. It's the kind of problem that solves itself."

[Occluded Sun]

Except of course that tobacco use was not selected against at any point during the hundreds if not thousands of years that was true.

Roughly ten thousand. And yes, it was. Which was one of the reasons why the Native Americans had social rules limiting use of tobacco to old people, and the young people generally didn't use it for recreation. Definite social evolution, probable biochemical as well.

The Europeans had no social defenses against tobacco and had no selection against nicotine addiction. So they were all over it like ugly on rice when they went to the Americas.

And now that that is less true than it ever was in history there is even less reason for it to be selected against now.

Modern civilization spares people most of the negative consequences of their choices, at least as far as biological survival is involved. Which is why humanity is moving from r-type to k-type. That should be very interesting.

you are plainly doing it to distract from the tremendously poor arguments you have to make now that you have said another stupid thing based on your failure to understand evolution, and are forced to defend it because you refuse to ever admit fault.

I admit fault. Only when I'm actually at fault. It's like you people are stabbing blindly at anything you think vaguely resembles an error. Or maybe using a ouija board to pick your arguments.

For example, some of you have decided to argue that I don't understand evolution by taking famous and well-known examples and saying they're ridiculous errors. Am I really to believe that the posters failed high school biology and are totally ignorant of the subject? It seems to beggar belief.

[Username17]

Dude, I'm a biologist and medical doctor. Your claims to understand the true meaning of evolution are ridiculous. It's just a bunch of crazy just-so stories. You're talking a bunch of famous examples, but you're getting the facts and the conclusions wrong. It's like everything you learned about biology was from a pop-psych book.

Smoking is literally the classic example of a social ill that evolution will not and cannot ever get rid of. Because it kills people after their children reach adulthood. It's extremely cut and dried, a perfect example of something which is unquestionably bad but which will not under any circumstances be eliminated from society by natural selection alone.

The very moment the conversation turned to smoking you instantly and forever lost the argument. Smoking can only be removed as a source of death through strong government interventions. In a libertarian world, people would keep smoking and keep dying younger than they should but still older than is physically necessary to propagate the species forever. Because people profit from using Joe Camel to get kids addicted to cigarettes and then they are addicted and it doesn't much matter how much wiser they get as they age.

-Username17

[Occluded Sun]

Dude, I'm a biologist and medical doctor.

That's genuinely frightening.

Smoking is literally the classic example of a social ill that evolution will not and cannot ever get rid of. Because it kills people after their children reach adulthood.

You're not aware of why humans live so long after losing much of their capacity for reproduction? And you're excluding the possibility that tobacco use can have effects on reproductive success beyond caring for children - such as putting them at a disadvantage attracting mates or competing for the best mates. Addiction itself can be a serious disadvantage in the right circumstances.

You're not aware of the health problems tobacco use causes long before it leads to lethal cancers and emphysema? Even relatively mild breathing problems can be lethal to a young man if he's on a raid - because it will make him more vulnerable to his enemies.

It's extremely cut and dried, a perfect example of something which is unquestionably bad but which will not under any circumstances be eliminated from society by natural selection alone.

The moment you said "not under any circumstances", you lost the argument. Because there's always a set of circumstances where natural selection would hypothetically matter.

In a libertarian world, people would keep smoking and keep dying younger than they should but still older than is physically necessary to propagate the species forever.

If resistance to tobacco propagates itself more effectively than vulnerability to it, it doesn't matter if the vulnerable could propagate the species indefinitely. The proportion of resistance to vulnerability would still change over time. And that's evolution.

It seems your attachment to your political beliefs is screwing up your comprehension of what you claim is your field.

[Username17]

You're not aware of why humans live so long after losing much of their capacity for reproduction?

I'm going to take "Modern Medicine" for $500, dumbass. Because the life expectancy at age 5 in 1850 was 55. Which is coincidentally exactly the amount of time between menopause and a child born just before menopause set in reaching adulthood. The "grandmothers babysit" hypothesis is just a story. There's no real evidence for it. Before the invention of modern medicine and pasteurization, life expectancy really was just long enough to have kids and see them to adulthood.

Before you get to make any more biological arguments, I'm going to have to see some fucking credentials from you. Because so far, everything you say sounds like a half remembered anecdote from a Steve Sailer book. Here, I'll give mine: Bachelor's in Biology from University of California at Santa Cruz, Medical Doctorate from Charles University in Prague. When I make an argument from authority on this subject, I actually have authority on this subject. So when I make an unsourced assertion, I am sourcing myself. And since I have authority on this subject, I can do that. You on the other hand, are apparently just some fucking guy who read a book or two intended for public consumption. You have no authority, and if you make assertions you have to fucking source them.

-Username17

[Occluded Sun]

I'm going to take "Modern Medicine" for $500, dumbass. Because the life expectancy at age 5 in 1850 was 55. Which is coincidentally exactly the amount of time between menopause and a child born just before menopause set in reaching adulthood. The "grandmothers babysit" hypothesis is just a story.

You DO understand that life expectancy is an average across all people born, yes? And that a lot of children died early in the past? And that, once you made it beyond a certain age, you could reasonably expect to live to your 70s at least, even at the dawn of recorded history?

The greatest effects on life expectancy aren't a result of people living longer in old age, but follow from reductions in the infantile death rate.

You're a doctor, huh? I wish I could say I'm shocked at your level of understanding... but you know what they call the person who graduates med school last in their class.

[Kaelik]

I'm going to take "Modern Medicine" for $500, dumbass. Because the life expectancy at age 5 in 1850 was 55. Which is coincidentally exactly the amount of time between menopause and a child born just before menopause set in reaching adulthood. The "grandmothers babysit" hypothesis is just a story.

You DO understand that life expectancy is an average across all people born, yes? And that a lot of children died early in the past? And that, once you made it beyond a certain age, you could reasonably expect to live to your 70s at least, even at the dawn of recorded history?

The greatest effects on life expectancy aren't a result of people living longer in old age, but follow from reductions in the infantile death rate.

If only the thing you were specifically quoting was the life expectancy after all the infant deaths stopped because it is the age expectancy at 5 not zero. Oh wait.

[Username17]

I'm going to take "Modern Medicine" for $500, dumbass. Because the life expectancy at age 5 in 1850 was 55. Which is coincidentally exactly the amount of time between menopause and a child born just before menopause set in reaching adulthood. The "grandmothers babysit" hypothesis is just a story.

You DO understand that life expectancy is an average across all people born, yes? And that a lot of children died early in the past? And that, once you made it beyond a certain age, you could reasonably expect to live to your 70s at least, even at the dawn of recorded history?

The greatest effects on life expectancy aren't a result of people living longer in old age, but follow from reductions in the infantile death rate.

Did you just not notice that I quoted the life expectancy at age 5 and not the life expectancy at birth? Because I totally did that. I used the measurement which excludes infant mortality entirely and is therefore unaffected by the thing you're talking about. Your objection is totally meaningless. A canned response that I anticipated and responded to before you even made it. I'd say you're embarrassing yourself, but we've already well established how superficial your understanding of pretty much everything is, so I guess you can't be even more embarrassed by being demonstrably wrong on yet another topic. You already reached "peak obviously full of shit" long ago.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

I'm going to take "Modern Medicine" for $500, dumbass. Because the life expectancy at age 5 in 1850 was 55. Which is coincidentally exactly the amount of time between menopause and a child born just before menopause set in reaching adulthood. The "grandmothers babysit" hypothesis is just a story.

You DO understand that life expectancy is an average across all people born, yes? And that a lot of children died early in the past? And that, once you made it beyond a certain age, you could reasonably expect to live to your 70s at least, even at the dawn of recorded history?

The greatest effects on life expectancy aren't a result of people living longer in old age, but follow from reductions in the infantile death rate.

You're a doctor, huh? I wish I could say I'm shocked at your level of understanding... but you know what they call the person who graduates med school last in their class.

I want you to read the words "life expectancy at age 5" very carefully and answer a multiple choice question. Alright, you ready? Here goes.

Life expectancy at age 5 is defined as:
A) The average life expectancy across all people born.
B) The average life expectancy across all people who survive to five years of age.
C) It's B, you fucking dumbass.

Now, here's a fun experiment: can Occluded Sun ever actually fuck up so bad that he will admit he fucked up, or is it ego-driven denial all the way down? Let's find out!

[Occluded Sun]

Life expectancy at age 5 is defined as:
A) The average life expectancy across all people born.
B) The average life expectancy across all people who survive to five years of age.
C) It's B, you fucking dumbass.

Yes, it is. So? Which of the things I've said are rendered invalid by your emphasis on life expectancy at 5?

Be specific, now. (Can DSMatticus make an actual argument, or can he merely handwave?)

[Kaelik]

Denial all the way down confirmed.

[DSMatticus]

Aaand we have our answer! No fuck up is too large for his ego to shrug off. Now let's see what happens when we poke his cognitive dissonance with a stick.

The greatest effects on life expectancy aren't a result of people living longer in old age, but follow from reductions in the infantile death rate.

Was this or was this not a correct complaint with respect to Frank's use of life expectancy at age 5?

[Occluded Sun]

Age 5 isn't the cutoff for common, early death. Not in 1850, and certainly not in the Paleolithic. Which is a rather better time period to look at when evaluating evolutionary arguments. Not least because the "high early death rates" extend farther beyond 5 the earlier in the human past we look.

But then we're dealing with people who think the Grandmother Hypothesis is "just a story", so...

Seriously, Kaelik: which of the statements I made is incorrect?

[Ancient History]

I'm done with this one. This is worse than Zak S.

[/edit]I'm going to clarify! Not only is Occluded Sun blisteringly ignorant of modern science, he's unable to produce any examples to support his position and ignores any examples or sources that disprove his position. What's worse, either he's unable or unwilling to understand the implications of his arguments or how he's reiterating tired ideas that were popped a long time ago. It's exhausting trying to argue with him because he literally refuses to do any of the work of proving his own position or clarifying his points.

[Username17]

Age 5 isn't the cutoff for common, early death. Not in 1850, and certainly not in the Paleolithic. Which is a rather better time period to look at when evaluating evolutionary arguments. Not least because the "high early death rates" extend farther beyond 5 the earlier in the human past we look.

But then we're dealing with people who think the Grandmother Hypothesis is "just a story", so...

Seriously, Kaelik: which of the statements I made is incorrect?

This is awesome. Well, you started linking to actual sources, which is a step in the right direction. In the future, when defending your fringe theories, you probably shouldn't link to wikipedia entries that admit that your fringe theories are controversial and have little evidence in their favor. You especially shouldn't link to wikipedia entries that say things like:

One study that calculated grandmaternal assistance to both offspring and grandchildren did not find appreciable effects to warrant termination of fertility as early as 50.
...
In addition, all variations on the mother, or grandmother effect, fail to explain longevity with continued spermatogenesis in males. It also fails to explain the detrimental effects of losing ovarian follicular activity, such as osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, Alzheimer's disease and coronary artery disease.

Seriously man, you're wrong. More importantly, you're so obviously wrong that you're a laughingstock. You have bizarre, easily debunked fringe theories that you are attempting to prove are universal laws. You would have your work cut out for you trying to demonstrate that your ideas were plausible enough that they should be taken seriously and subjected to further testing, arguing that they are the immutable laws of the universe is like infinity steps more ridiculous than that.

And the thing is: you're not actually good at this. There are real arguments for your positions, but you don't seem to know them. That's why I always seem to be several steps ahead of you in this fucking discussion: because I am several steps ahead of you in this discussion. I've seen all your arguments put together by people who were better with words and more knowledgeable about the studies being fudged than you are, and they still weren't all that good. To the extent that even after seeing the exact arguments you make before you were able to try to remember enough of them to regurgitate them onto the Gaming Den, I was not convinced. I persuaded by the counter arguments to arguments that are exactly the same as yours but better.

I checkmated your "infant (not infantile) mortality is lower" argument before you even made it because I knew you were going to try to make that argument and you're still wrong. Get that through your head: I know the arguments for your position better than you do. I can make and dismantle strawmen of your argument that are stronger than the things you are actually going to say. You would do better to just shut the fuck up and allow me to present the case for your beliefs because I can do it better than you can. I mean, you'll still lose, but it will be much less of an embarrassing route for your side.

-Username17