MAGIC SOOUULLLSSSS Libertarian

[Occluded Sun]

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 didn't read that page very well, I see.

[DSMatticus]

Oh. He just dodges entirely. That wasn't as fun as I was hoping.

Anyway, for the record: the two metrics people have settled on for measuring the tendency of children to up and die of horrible diseases and what not are infant mortality and child mortality. The former cuts off at one year old, and the latter at five years old. Both are excluded by the number Frank quoted.

Nothing special happens at five - it is something of an arbitrary cutoff point. You could just as easily justify six or seven (or maybe even four). We chose five because reasons, and five is perfectly acceptable because the leap from five to six doesn't cause a massive change in total life expectancy - it's over the hurdle. That's true today, that's true a hundred years ago, and if I could be assed to find reliable estimates of actuarial tables from before that it'd be true on them too. Five isn't a number Frank picked out of his ass. It's the cutoff that people who want to talk about exactly this actually use, because it's the year by which total life expectancy has clearly stopped rocketing upward.

Occluded Sun fucked up. Either he misread or he is incapable of deviating from his script, and he gave his precanned "infant mortality" response to a statistic that had already excluded infant mortality. And in an effort to save face, he retreated to the notion that the spirit of his complaints held true because what about child mortality, which the statistic also already excludes. The moral of the story is that Occluded Sun is not above flinging random shit at the wall until something sticks and then claiming to be an interior decorator. Hilarious and baffling to watch, endlessly frustrating to be party to, and unlikely to ever result in anything valuable.

[angelfromanotherpin]

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.

I feel like this deserves a formal term. 'Tin Man'? 'Brick Man'?

[Fwib]

Less Wrong tends to use the term Steel Man. There may be another short phrase for 'The Best Possible Version of an Argument' that is common, but I don't know it, and couldn't find it with brief googling.

[Occluded Sun]

A 'Steel Man' is an improved version of an argument. There isn't any alternate version to be called a Steel Man, here.

The Grandmother Hypothesis is currently the best and most widely accepted explanation for why humans outlive their best fertility.

1850 is not really the time you want to be looking at if you want to criticize an evolutionary hypothesis.

It is neither fringe nor controversial to acknowledge that evolutionary success is not arbitrary when the nature of the environment is taken into account. Nor is it especially controversial to acknowledge that evolutionary forces work on both inborn and cultural moral codes and preferences.

And some of you are actually willing to claim that a structure of chambered cells isn't necessarily going to be hexagonal, despite every creature that builds such storage structures doing so and the demonstration of why that's the case being known all the way back to Classical Greece.

You people aren't finding counterarguments and weak points, you're seizing on anything that even remotely resembles an error and claiming it's a complete devastation of your opponent.

[Username17]

The Grandmother Hypothesis is currently the best and most widely accepted explanation for why humans outlive their best fertility.

No. It honestly isn't. You understand that it's called a "hypothesis" right? It's not even a working hypothesis. It's just a proposal that some people think is neat. There have been a few studies that are consistent with it being true, but there are also studies that are not. The evidence for it is actually extremely weak.

In fact, the hypothesis kind of shits on itself, because if extended family was the deciding factor in child rearing, there's no reason to have menopause. People could keep squirting babies out until a few years before they died and rely on the tribe to raise them. The fact that we have menopause one "birth to puberty length of time" before our pre-medically extended lifespans were expected to give out strongly implies that there is no selective advantage in having children any later than a parent could expect to see their own child to adulthood. Even on its own terms the grandmother hypothesis is on extremely thin ice.

1850 is not really the time you want to be looking at if you want to criticize an evolutionary hypothesis.

You want to argue that life expectancy was dramatically higher before 1850? Really? That's the hill you want to die on?

Nor is it especially controversial to acknowledge that evolutionary forces work on both inborn and cultural moral codes and preferences.

Yes. Nothing says "not controversial" better than regurgitating half remembered HBD talking points.

-Username17

[Occluded Sun]

No. It honestly isn't. You understand that it's called a "hypothesis" right?

You understand that a hypothesis can still be widely accepted and the best available explanation, right? It takes a very high standard before something can be a theory.

The evidence for it is actually extremely weak.

Extremely? No, not really. That's a kinda subjective judgment, though. It IS better than the other proposed explanations, though - the evidence against them is pretty good.

In fact, the hypothesis kind of shits on itself, because if extended family was the deciding factor in child rearing, there's no reason to have menopause. People could keep squirting babies out until a few years before they died and rely on the tribe to raise them.

Except that close relatives are more reliable than "the tribe", and the fact that the quality of late-life conceptions is quite low. The rates of serious mutations go way, way up.

Humans are... well, were, and to an increasingly limited degree still are, r-type strategists. Quantity isn't better than quality when it leads to fewer survivors... and studies do suggest that grandmothers assisting with care leads to more surviving grandchildren. At least, if it's the material grandmothers...

The fact that we have menopause one "birth to puberty length of time" before our pre-medically extended lifespans were expected to give out

See, you're getting that wrong again. The expected lifespan for a mature adult goes on far beyond menopause.

strongly implies that there is no selective advantage in having children any later than a parent could expect to see their own child to adulthood.

There has to be a minimum of two surviving children, on average. For obvious reasons. And given the survival rates for human children, it's quite clear that "birth to puberty" wouldn't be nearly enough time even if you got the chances of surviving past that right.

You want to argue that life expectancy was dramatically higher before 1850? Really? That's the hill you want to die on?

What a bizarre conclusion for you to draw! 'Higher' isn't necessary for the argument to work - what's important is to look at the conditions under which humanity developed. In this particular case, it's important to do so because early-life mortality rates are much higher than they became in 1850.

Nor is it especially controversial to acknowledge that evolutionary forces work on both inborn and cultural moral codes and preferences.

Yes. Nothing says "not controversial" better than regurgitating half remembered HBD talking points.

'Human Biodiversity' has nothing to do with evolutionary psychology. The idea that our moral codes are shaped by evolution goes all the way back to Darwin and The Origin of Species; the big D points out that if we were wasps, we'd find it perfectly appropriate for most of us to be born slaves and for members of the reproductive caste to kill each other until there was only one left.

[momothefiddler]

Logic is descriptive, not prescriptive - it can only tell you what follows, not what to aim for.

That's a very common, and an insanely stupid, idea. 'What to aim for' is something that can follow from necessary premises.

But any that aren't are merely logical extensions of the ones that are. I prefer having money to not having money, and that's not arbitrary, but it does logically follow from my desire to have the sense of security I feel when I have money (due to its uses in satisfying other desires I have). And my desires to "be safe" or "continue living" or "see the people around me be happy" are all arbitrary. There's nothing that actually makes those situations objectively better than anything else.

Is a dolphin's physiology objectively better for living in Earth's oceans than a gila monster's, or not? What about the reverse - is a gila monster objectively better at living in deserts (say, Death Valley) than a dolphin, or not?

If we fiddled with the genes of a line honeybees so that they built seven-sided cells instead of six-sided ones, and released them into the wild, would we expect this trait to spread or die out? What objective principles lead to that expectation?

Emphasis added.

Please explain your completely logical not-at-all arbitrary basis for thinking that survival is objectively better than extinction. To refer to your post I first responded to, your 'what to aim for', in this case staying alive, isn't objectively better than the alternative, and logic in no way tells you that you should aim for that.

Whether the design of dolphins is 'good' isn't really a meaningful question. Whether the design of dolphins is 'good for living in Death Valley' is meaningful and objective, and the answer is 'no'.

Thank you for agreeing with the initial point: that 'good' isn't within the realm of logic ("isn't really a meaningful question"), whereas 'good at' is.

I think we're done here.

[Occluded Sun]

Thank you for agreeing with the initial point: that 'good' isn't within the realm of logic ("isn't really a meaningful question"), whereas 'good at' is.

No, certain aspects of goodness ARE within the realm of logic. Physiology can't be evaluated without knowing the environmental context - that's not one of those purely logical aspects.

And there are plenty of times and places where 'good at' is entirely subjective.

Really, you people are terrible at this.

[Username17]

Extremely? No, not really. That's a kinda subjective judgment, though. It IS better than the other proposed explanations, though - the evidence against them is pretty good.

Remember how you're not a biologist or an anthropologist and are not an established authority on this subject? Yeah, you still aren't allowed to make unsourced assertions on this or any other subject until you flash some meaningful credentials.

Before anyone would even begin to take you seriously on the claim that the grandmother hypothesis was a better proposed explanation for menopause than the other proposed explanations, we'd have to see that you actually knew what some of the other proposed explanations were and what the evidence against them was. Here, I'll give you one for free: it's called the "No selection at all hypothesis." This hypothesis holds that the biological structures that lead to menopause were formed before we were humans and that no human has ever had a collection of genes available to them that allows them to skip this menopause business. Thus, there has never, in the entire existence of humanity, been any selective pressure for or against menopause because there has never been an apples to apples comparison of humans that do and do not go through that.

That would be essentially proven if we found that any non-human primates go through menopause. It would not be disproven if we did not find any, since there were really a lot of hominid species that are no longer with us and the invention of menopause could have happened after the Chromosome 2 fusion event but still before modern humans came into existence. The evidence of whether or not any currently living non-human primates undergo menopause is currently inconclusive, so why don't you tell me exactly what the evidence against the No Selection At All Hypothesis is? Because first, second, and third pass observation is that it is almost impossible for there to be any.

But beyond that, let's take a step back to take in how truly epically insane your chain of logic actually is. You are currently arguing that:

---

Despite the fact that few women survived into their fifties in the paleolithic era, the child rearing assistance labor of those that did was so important to the tribe as a whole that the children of literally every woman who did not undergo menopause died. And because that happened back when people had few tools and limited specialization of labor options available to them, that the children of people who smoke enough cigarettes to die in their sixties and seventies will likewise die out today irrespective of the fact that our workers are now literally thousands of times more productive and it's difficult to imagine how much the relative impact of the productive output of a handful of paleolithic 55 year old women might be to the "tribes" of today. And that this massive forward looking die off of the descendants of lung cancer victims will eventually weed out all people who might be tempted to start smoking cigarettes when they are seventeen. And that the ultimate mass annihilation of all the descendants of all one billion smokers in the world today (plus the descendants of every single person who is basically genetically like them but happened to never start smoking) proves that smoking is bad according to the objective universal laws of the universe. And that is how we know that the universe cares whether or not markets are free. And further, that we know that the universe therefore wants markets to be completely liberalized and totally unfettered by the government. And not, for example, sufficiently regulated to limit or ban cigarettes in the first place, thereby saving the lives of all those children that are apparently going to die in your model.

---

Am I missing any steps? Because every part of that chain of assertions is insane. The conclusion is insane. The premises are insane. Every piece of evidence used to back up the premises or the argument is tenuous at best, and almost none of this shit has any evidence for it at all.

-Username17

[nockermensch]

You forgot to include honeycombs in that chain of logic, Frank.

[erik]

Really, you people are terrible at this.

Every time he says this it makes me think he is just a troll and doesn't believe this stupidity. When cornered he either avoids, antagonizes, or adds additional BS.

[Maxus]

I'm taking the view that he's like Psychic Robot or Tzor.

Reading the responses to why he's wrong is interesting.

[Maj]

I think Tzor had better debating skills. I seem to recall better source citing and a distinct lack of dismissal-via-inadequacy. But maybe my memory isn't working well.

[Username17]

I think Tzor had better debating skills. I seem to recall better source citing and a distinct lack of dismissal-via-inadequacy. But maybe my memory isn't working well.

Oh yeah, totally. Tzor would sometimes cite like half a dozen websites from inside the right wing information bubble all supporting his conclusions. you really had to check up on those things to realize that they were all "some guy said" or repeats of a piece of a story taken out of context. Refuting Tzor required like work and shit. You had to check primary sources and alternate data sets.

Winning a debate against Tzor felt like an accomplishment. He clearly put effort into presenting his case. Occluded Sun... not so much. It's like debating a Randroid without his notes. I keep expecting him to announce that we are all Kantians.

-Username17

[John Magnum]

Hopefully he keeps using even more awesome sources. After the Wikipedia article on the grandmother hypothesis and the dictionary definition of "democracy", I hope we start getting declarations about the nature of good taken from greeting cards.

[Shiritai]

Winning a debate against Tzor felt like an accomplishment. He clearly put effort into presenting his case. Occluded Sun... not so much. It's like debating a Randroid without his notes. I keep expecting him to announce that we are all Kantians.

Implying we're all Marxists is close enough, right?

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!

And yeah, at least Tzor could actually communicate his position and keep on topic.

Edit: On a more serious note, I'm not seeing a problem at all with dialectical materialism, especially as applied to science. Looking at the relationships between phenomena and acknowledging that emergent properties exist seems to be a pretty non-controversial stance. I guess Occluded Sun just reflexively hates Marx.

[momothefiddler]

Thank you for agreeing with the initial point: that 'good' isn't within the realm of logic ("isn't really a meaningful question"), whereas 'good at' is.

No, certain aspects of goodness ARE within the realm of logic. Physiology can't be evaluated without knowing the environmental context - that's not one of those purely logical aspects.

And there are plenty of times and places where 'good at' is entirely subjective.

Really, you people are terrible at this.

Ah, I misunderstood, then. Dolphin physiology is Good if and only if it leads to the dolphin surviving, because survival is Good, and we know this because things that exist exist, so existing is good because existing is good.

I apologize for thinking you had moved on from assuming your conclusion and using it to prove itself. Whatever that's called.

[fectin]

Guys. He's posting here and only here.

[schpeelah]

Ah, I misunderstood, then. Dolphin physiology is Good if and only if it leads to the dolphin surviving, because survival is Good, and we know this because things that exist exist, so existing is good because existing is good.

I apologize for thinking you had moved on from assuming your conclusion and using it to prove itself. Whatever that's called.

No, actually he did move on from circular thinking into the realm of ordinary batshit insanity. Not surviving is when the universe judges you, finds you wanting and kills you for that. He acknowledges that the universe isn't sentient, we don't know whether he understands that it's therefore not aware of the existence of dolphins or their physiology, but nonetheless believes the universe has opinions on dolphin physiology, beehives and morality.

Which is the point: the universe is not neutral about moral positions.

[momothefiddler]

Ah, I misunderstood, then. Dolphin physiology is Good if and only if it leads to the dolphin surviving, because survival is Good, and we know this because things that exist exist, so existing is good because existing is good.

I apologize for thinking you had moved on from assuming your conclusion and using it to prove itself. Whatever that's called.

No, actually he did move on from circular thinking into the realm of ordinary batshit insanity. Not surviving is when the universe judges you, finds you wanting and kills you for that. He acknowledges that the universe isn't sentient, we don't know whether he understands that it's therefore not aware of the existence of dolphins or their physiology, but nonetheless believes the universe has opinions on dolphin physiology, beehives and morality.

Which is the point: the universe is not neutral about moral positions.

I think the justification behind those claims still falls into the general "using something to substantiate itself" category. You might be right that there's some movement in position and/or tactics, though. I'm not sure. Still seems like it boils down to "'cuz 'cuz", or that other term upthread. Which it's definitely not. 'Cuz 'cuz.

[schpeelah]

I think the justification behind those claims still falls into the general "using something to substantiate itself" category. You might be right that there's some movement in position and/or tactics, though. I'm not sure. Still seems like it boils down to "'cuz 'cuz", or that other term upthread. Which it's definitely not. 'Cuz 'cuz.

I'd say shifting to an appeal to authority is different enough to note. A nonsentient authority. Though admittedly you don't get more ultimate than the totality of existence.

[momothefiddler]

I think the justification behind those claims still falls into the general "using something to substantiate itself" category. You might be right that there's some movement in position and/or tactics, though. I'm not sure. Still seems like it boils down to "'cuz 'cuz", or that other term upthread. Which it's definitely not. 'Cuz 'cuz.

I'd say shifting to an appeal to authority is different enough to note. A nonsentient authority. Though admittedly you don't get more ultimate than the totality of existence.

Perhaps. Maybe I didn't get that part of the argument. I don't really even know what the current claim is. If "Not surviving is when the universe judges you, finds you wanting and kills you for that", but the universe isn't sentient, well, I don't even know what that means enough to label it with a given fallacy/argument/whatever. I dunno. Whatever.

[nockermensch]

What irks me more about Occluded Sun's thinking is that it really looks like crude social darwinism dressed in a flimsy disguise. If good = survival, then whatever people or corporations do to maximise their own fitness can be justified as "good".

Sure, Occluded Sun can weasel out of that by saying that "the Universe won't reward all courses of action taken "for survival" equally. Some of these are true and good and will survive. Others are false and will eventually perish." but this is untestable wish-wash and doesn't actually inform decisions now. In the now, people with that philosophy can justify making monopolies and paying wages that are less than their employees need to survive as "this is to ensure the Company survival".

In other words, Occluded Sun can be a dumbass who still thinks like Aristotle (as shown in the honeycomb example, where he claims that bees work along a high concept, while ignoring the actual physical evidence), but the people who write the texts he's failing to comprehend are following a disgusting political agenda.

[Occluded Sun]

I'd say shifting to an appeal to authority is different enough to note. A nonsentient authority. Though admittedly you don't get more ultimate than the totality of existence.

There's a difference between being 'an authority' on a matter, and being the source of the facts of the matter.

An authority makes claims that are considered to be evidence. Facts don't make claims, they simply are.