Is There Anything Good About Men? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#231

Post by EGreg » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 11:51 AM UTC

saturn wrote: post #225

EGreg wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I read that already, but what I said doesn't necessarily imply creationism. What arguments do you have to show that everything we see today came about SOLELY through mutation and natural selection?

Unless you have some truly spectacular competing theory, with plenty of hard evidence to back it up, there is only one conceivable reason for your attempted nitpicks at evolutionary biology and that is religious conviction. I'm pretty sure you don't have the former, so changing away from this very repetitive channel..

I don't know why you'd think religion is the only conceivable reason. I think both religious people and others start to see enemies where there aren't any (I guess it's an evolutionary psychology instinct, right? Because the human brain evolved to find tigers better, at the expense of false positives, etc.)

To be honest I didn't remember a lot of my gripes off the bat when I wrote it, but a big one is the gratuitous use of evolutionary psychology by all armchair theorists and their book writing moms these days. How is that religious? They take any sort of human behavior and start speculating evolutionary reasons for it purely in terms of reproductive fitness, because in essence they are saying it all boils down to mutation and natural selection + it must be super simple. WHY?

Science doesn't work this way. "Unless you have some truly spectacular competing theory, I'm just gonna use empty speculation to explain why people have non-advantageous trait X, because we know that mutation and natural selection take place". It works by making falsifiable predictions. What falsifiable predictions do armchair speculators about tiny human behavior make? Do they test them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv7b-KPg9hY :P

Here is one that I remember was posted by a friend of mine on facebook. Note the empty speculation at the end. Really, narrator? Just because you have a British accent we should implicitly accept that assertion?

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#232

Post by samyzee » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 2:43 PM UTC

chakde wrote: post #191

nagrom wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not for a second claiming that Britain didn't exploit India - I'm merely refuting the idea that all of the British acts were purely negative. 1. Well, I don't necessarily agree that your point c. is the most difficult and I would guess (without knowing) that in many countries the proportion of British-made goods increased dramatically during the 19th century. Is it possible to explain any of the growth in manufac…

1. yes it's not the sole cause. the bigger cause perhaps was the discovery of the americas - an entire continent almost the size of asia lying undiscovered right next to the europeans for 15000 years since the last ice age, until Islam's kick led the europeans to search for new routes to India, ultimately leading to the discovery of the Americas. with a discovery like that anyone can become powerful if they put their…

> Nehru in his biography penned the feeling of loss that Indians feel when they visit America and see how rich it is- and wondered if India would not today have had a sunnier disposition if the British had not turned things so much upside down once they gained political control.

That pain is indeed real and I have felt it on numerous occasions.

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#233

Post by bergie » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 3:16 PM UTC

ohashi wrote: post #222

westicle wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those examples don't necessarily refute grandparent's point. See link below regarding "two speed economies" in which resource booms can actually have a negative structural impact on production. http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1421/HTML/docshell.asp?...

I am aware that natural resources have caused trouble for a lot of countries. Just stating that it isn't an automatic death sentence to have them.

Australia, Canada and USA had reasonably well functioning economies to start with. And many of the resources were discovered outside the scope of globalization or colonialism, allowing much of it to feed back into the local ecosystem.

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#234

Post by tel » Tue, Jul 19, 2011, 9:07 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #230

tel wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the true form (generalization) of the old "new proposals require evidence" catchall. The space of possible ways things could happen and be in accordance with our ignorance is enormous. If you want the best chances of being right, you keep you guesses maximally simple! If you create a more complex model that includes more factors than mutation and natural selection and it is able to predict reality better than on…

What makes it fantastic, though? What is the hypothesis / theory exactly that they are espousing, when they talk about evolutionary psychology for example? Isn't it the fact that our behaviors all have an evolutionary basis, including e.g. the desire for a human male to sleep after sex? Each of these gets its specially concocted rendition of the narrator's fantasy -- e.g. "so that the women could get away more often…

Nobody ever claims that evolution explains everything. The claim is something closer to "Of all theories of equivalent or lesser complexity as evolution, no other one yet discovered has better predictive power".

I'm not sure of my scientific history here, but I believe one extraordinary falsifiable prediction drawn from evolution in its earlier days is that there should be some common structure of generational information between almost all living things, a prediction which the discovery of DNA clearly validated.

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#235

Post by tomelders » Thu, Jul 21, 2011, 1:24 PM UTC

jordan0day wrote: post #223

tomelders wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Saturn made two very salient points that contributed greatly to this converstaion. 1. jordan0day was wrong and Saturn expanded on Silverstorms rebuttal in a meaningful way. 2. It would be nice if people owned up to being wrong. Especially when they're "that" wrong.

What was I wrong about? I shouldn't expect humans to be capable of overcoming instinct? I don't think I can ever apologize for having that sort of expectation. I wasn't disagreeing with silverstorm's comment, in fact my comment implies that I agree with silverstorm's point (that human behavior can be heritable). I'd really like you to tell me what I am "that" wrong about. (Not sure why "that" is quoted?) Additionally…

"The amazing thing about being human is that we can overcome instinct"

That's not unique to humans, which is fairly obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a minute. I'd even argue that it is, in itself, an instinct.

When anything overcomes instinct, it's never just for the fun of it. Animals (and we are animals, pure and simple) will often override their instinct to attack with their instinct to survive. I won't try to seduce the wife of a man twice my size, despite my primal urge to get laid because the risk outweighs the reward. Nor will a pack animal copulate with the Alpha Males females for the same reason.

There is nothing that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Humans may have superior intelligence, but we don't have a monopoly on intelligence, we just have the best kind. Arguing that humans are distinct because of our mental faculties hold as much water as saying birds are superior because they can fly. If we point to our dominance in the world as a distinguishing factor, we must then concede that we rank well below insects, bacteria, viruses etc.

Humans are pretty cool animals, but we're still animals.

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#236

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 25, 2011, 9:12 PM UTC

chakde wrote: post #168

untog wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, no-one was disagreeing that the British did many bad things in their colonies. But the point lionhearted is making is that they did more good, overall. Picking a specific example of bad doesn't counter that argument effectively.

There are entire generations of british historians since WW2 dedicated to the PR propaganda of how good the british were for the colonies and until very recently the western opinion has been entirely shaped by this propaganda - almost any book written by a British historian of which you'll find countless in your library have the same basic point of view. Opposing viewpoints are not hard to find if you actually take t…

[deleted]

Re: Is There Anything Good About Men?

#237

Post by samyzee » Mon, Jul 25, 2011, 9:12 PM UTC

chakde wrote: post #168

untog wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, no-one was disagreeing that the British did many bad things in their colonies. But the point lionhearted is making is that they did more good, overall. Picking a specific example of bad doesn't counter that argument effectively.

There are entire generations of british historians since WW2 dedicated to the PR propaganda of how good the british were for the colonies and until very recently the western opinion has been entirely shaped by this propaganda - almost any book written by a British historian of which you'll find countless in your library have the same basic point of view. Opposing viewpoints are not hard to find if you actually take t…

Hey I just got the book late victorian holocausts by Mike Davis from amazon...have only read the preface in the last hour and I think its a really good read ....just wanted to thank you for the suggestion and some other very good points throughout this thread!!...will read RC Dutt's book next but I think I wont be able to take him that seriously as he is Indian and will probably have an Indian bias.