Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up?

Post by ConceptJunkie » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 4:56 PM UTC

plorkyeran wrote: post #139

Sleeep wrote: post #118

Why does the author's wife think that chewing meat causes choking? This seems like a rather bizarre belief - does this have any basis in reality? If anything I'd think that learning to chew your food well from a young age would make you less likely to choke. (and more likely to moderate your food intake) It seem like the equivalent of "don't let them walk, they will just fall and get a concussion"

She believed that their children would try to swallow without chewing their meat enough, and thus choke if the meat was in too big of pieces.

Post by digi_owl » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #135

anon1253 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a larger truth hidden in here: experts disagree. It was one of the things that took me by surprise when building Machine Learning systems, but it makes sense if you think about it. For all but the most trivial matters, it's the job of the expert to exercise personal judgement. It's why they're experts, not because they have a solid understanding of the "knowns", but because they have developed methods and int…

There is a corollary prediction: AIs will disagree. Too many people imagine AIs are somehow "perfectly rational" and therefore will never disagree, they'll just tap into a unified decision making engine and automatically integrate all of their knowledge. In order to integrate knowledge you need more knowledge. And in order to integrate that you need more still. It's turtles all the way down. If anything, AIs are at a…

Post by wahern » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 7:08 PM UTC

wahern wrote: post #144

dredmorbius wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you happen to have a reference on that?

A quick Google Books search found, Tosefta Berachot: Translated Into English with a Commentary https://books.google.com/books?id=ronqNAPipaEC&pg=PA189

  Lieut.-Colonel Allan Cunningham desired to contrast the
  highly scientific process of grinding in use at the present
  day in all civilised counties with the unscientific process
  of grinding on a very large scale amongst the huge
  population of North-West India, which was essentially a
  wheat-eating population. The wheat was ground there in hand
  stone mills; the grinding was coarse, and separation of the
  bran very imperfect, there being a good deal of bran in the
  so-called flour. The bread was unleavened bread, whereas the
  bread eaten in this country was leavened bread, which made
  in immense difference in its effect on the constitution. The
  native flour was simply kneaded with water, and quickly
  heated over a griddle. With the addition of a little milk,
  butter, and salt, that was the staple food of the
  population.  The effect of the diet was that the population
  were inferior on the whole in physique to Europeans, but it
  must remembered that they did not have a varied diet. The
  people had extremely beautiful teeth which they carefully
  cleaned. One very curious effect, which was always ascribed
  to the eating of the native ground what, was that the
  natives were extraordinarily subject to stone, even little
  children frequently having bigs stones in the bladder.

  Journal of the Society of Arts, December 21, 1906.

  https://books.google.com/books?id=DfpFAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA127

Post by Flott » Tue, Aug 01, 2017, 9:18 PM UTC

matt_morgan wrote: post #138

Sleeep wrote: post #118

Why does the author's wife think that chewing meat causes choking? This seems like a rather bizarre belief - does this have any basis in reality? If anything I'd think that learning to chew your food well from a young age would make you less likely to choke. (and more likely to moderate your food intake) It seem like the equivalent of "don't let them walk, they will just fall and get a concussion"

Do you have kids? Everybody thinks everything causes choking. People stop you on the street to tell you how to feed your toddlers. Grapes were particularly suspect in our neighborhood. People cut them in half, believing it was safer. You are right, I'm sure, about chewing being important to learn; and it would have to be a tiny piece in order for it to be hard to choke on it, anyway, so cutting it small certainly won…

Post by sn9 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 12:24 AM UTC

synicalx wrote: post #25

It always struck me as funny that if you want to get into Medicine you can either do the normal MD course that covers 95% of the body (obviously, you may be able to specialize much later on) OR you can do the other 5% as a Dentist (and again, you may chose to specialize later). Teeth suck, I'm hanging out for "I can't believe they're not teeth" implants so I can stop worrying about the damn things.