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The past is not true

sive.rs

361–362 of 362 posts

Re: The past is not true

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you then finally agree evolution removes fatal cancers in infants (at least to the point of rare events) instead of producing it as you claimed earlier. unlike the statistics for "fatal cancer in infants" the capability to feel bitter is essentially universal, so clearly it serves some purpose.

If evolution isn't producing cancer in infants, what is? Your debate approach of declaring my position to be the opposite of what I say is no fun. I'm not going to continue.

> If evolution isn't producing cancer in infants, what is?

See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education for one of many contributing causes.

Regardless of the myriads of contributing causes producing such cancers, natural selection eliminates these cancers, especially fatal childhood cancers.

> Your debate approach of declaring my position to be the opposite of what I say is no fun. I'm not going to continue.

The fact that I deduce a statement from your position which contradicts another of your positions is not a bad debate approach but simply an example of the principle of explosion. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion

That is what happens if you build a strawman: you pretend my argument relies merely on "the existence of a property" ignoring that occurence rates and probabilities actually span a spectrum, from marginally close to the impossible 0% to marginally close to a 100% certain. If the capability to emote bitterness is nearly universal among a species then it is a trait, not "existence of a property".

Re: The past is not true

#362
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are interested in images' role in public perception of events--particularly suffering and tragedy--you might look to read Susan Sontag's essay collection "Regarding the Pain of Others," published in 2003: > To the militant, identity is everything. And all photographs wait to be explained or falsified by their captions. During the fighting between Serbs and Croats at the beginning of the recent Balkan wars, the…

> A photograph is supposed not to evoke but to show. That is why photographs, unlike handmade images, can count as evidence. While this is mostly a good piece of writing, in the real world handmade images (and handwritten notes) are, like photographs, potentially evidence, and the issues raised with photographs are the reasons both photographs and hand-written/hand-drawn items (and all other physical items) as eviden…

That's a fair critique. One might ask "supposed by whom, exactly?"

In English, supposition too frequently implements the unforgivable passive voice.

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