If your only goal is maximizing inclusive genetic fitness, then the “instrumental value” of a trait that only one species on Earth possesses is indeed unlikely to be very high.
Are humans the only species on Earth that have curiosity?
Cats presumably have a reputation for having nine lives because they are observed in situations where they appear to narrowly escape dying, by a hair’s-breadth chance.
I was comparing this to quantum immortality, while making an indirect reference to Schrodinger’s cat as well… implying that Schrodinger’s cat always turns up alive, due to cats’ quantum immortality-based nine-lives capability. ;-)
Can you show some research on that claim? Specifically, you seem to be claiming that theres a difference in kind (rather than just degree) between my own curiosity and that of other creatures.
Having observed a puppy gleefully searching new stuff found in his territory, or new people and places that he’s just been introduced to and similar-seeming behaviour in other animals—I’m uncertain that we could claim they were non-curious.
I personally see little difference in kind between that and the similar actions seen in baby humans. The fact that a human is far better able to direct their curiosity, I think is based on our different quantity, or capacity for intelligent curiosity.
Can you show some research on that claim?...Having observed a puppy gleefully searching new stuff found in his territory...I’m uncertain that we could claim they were non-curious.
Number of species according to Wikipedia: at least 7 million, of which:
at least 5 million (71%) are bacteria
1,203,375 (17%) are invertebrate animals
297,326 (4%) are plants
59,811 (0.8%) are vertebrate animals, of which 5,416 (0.07%) are mammals (the category that includes humans, chimpanzees, dogs, and every other species to which the emotion of “curiosity” might conceivably be attributed).
While this is true (and I’ve upvoted your remark) I’d be curious if there are many examples of smart species that don’t exhibit curiosity. As far as I can tell, pretty close to all species which are fairly intelligent and raise their young exhibit curiosity. Canines, felines, most primates, corvids and many other species of birds, and elephants all seem to do this.
Some invertebrates, such as octopi and mantis shrimp, appear to exhibit curiosity. And some bird species are intelligent enough to be capable with basic communication with humans. Mammals may contain the most intelligent species known, but that doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on intelligence or curiosity.
The “a few other species may have primitive analogues” disclaimer was supposed to cover things like this.
See above. This is not about human or mammalian chauvinism. This is about the fact that, whatever neat things some species can do, there also exist numerous biological niches that do not in fact involve higher-level cognitive functions such as “curiosity”. Most organisms don’t even have brains, for goodness’ sake.
5,416 species is a LOT. Even if only 20, or 10, of these species have ‘curiosity’, that’s still a very different thing from ONLY humans having curiosity.
I personally see little difference in kind between that and the similar actions seen in baby humans. The fact that a human is far better able to direct their curiosity, I think is based on our different quantity, or capacity for intelligent curiosity.
Precisely what I thought. A dog’s curiosity doesn’t get it as far as a human’s does, since a dog has much less capacity for symbolic thought (but probably still some capacity) and no way to record its thoughts or share the thoughts of other dogs.
Interesting list… but the counter-claim does not require that 100% of all species on the earth have curiosity, but that curiosity exists in some non-human species.
Therefore only a single example (eg a cute puppy) will destroy that claim.
Actually listing the numbers of non-cute species does not in any way help the original claim.
Therefore only a single example (eg a cute puppy) will destroy that claim.
This kind of nitpicking is a form of logical rudeness, not to mention being a violation of the principle of charity.
Let me remind you again what I said, with emphasis added:
Are humans the only species on Earth that have curiosity?
Yes, approximately. A few other species may possess primitive analogues, but even if you throw those in the proportion of species is extremely low.
(For some utterly bizarre reason this entirely reasonable and completely correct comment is currently sitting at −2.)
It is perfectly clear from the literal wording, never mind the context, that the statement is approximate, not absolute. Furthermore, the approximate claim was all that was necessary for the argument I was making—so that even if I had made an absolute claim (in the sense of literal wording), you still should have interpreted it as an approximate or probabilistic claim by the principle of charity (as well as the principle of sticking-to-the-point-of-the-discussion-and-not-derailing-the-flow-of-discourse-with-an-attempt-to-gain-status-points-by-showing-off-your-knowledge-of-how-to-form-the-logical-negation-of-a-statement).
To do what you have done here is simply to create a communication barrier where none need have existed. As a result of this tangential argument-over-nothing, the original point has gotten completely lost, and I am now feeling a sensation of acute irritation despite having no idea whether you or any of the other nitpickers who have flocked to this subthread actually have a substantive disagreement with me or not.
Here, for the record, is my argument:
(1) Only a small minority of Earth’s species have curiosity.
(2) Therefore, curiosity is not necessary for maximizing inclusive genetic fitness.
(3 Therefore, we should not be surprised by results such as that cited by lix.
If anyone actually has anything interesting to say against this argument, let them say it. Otherwise, let’s not bother.
Wow, this is a really strong comment over something that I hadn’t realised was so important to you.
Sure thing—if what I said was not relevant to the main point of your conclusion—tell me that… but accusing me of status-seeking, purposeful-derailment and showing-off is a bit strong for a simple question about your claim.
...and I still have to point out that earlier, you did claim that humanity was the only species with curiosity [emphasis added by me] :
If your only goal is maximizing inclusive genetic fitness, then the “instrumental value” of a trait that only one species on Earth possesses is indeed unlikely to be very high.
It’s fine if you then changed that point in your argument, and maybe I missed it due to miscommunication…
but I’d rather you point out “oops, you got my argument wrong” than “you’re purposefully trying to create barriers to communication”.
I find it ironic that you have brought up the principle of charity at this point...
you see, you’ve assumed that I was trying to derail your argument… which is particularly uncharitable about my intentions.
Actually, I’ll be honest: I really couldn’t care less about your argument—I’m actually (still) interested in what I originally asked…
You claimed to know something about curiosity in non-human species… and I’m curious about curiosity in non-human species.
So as I originally asked: do you have any actual research on that subject?
Wow, this is a really strong comment over something that I hadn’t realised was so important to you.
I can understand how it might seem that way, but you have to realize that this was in the context of a perfectly fine comment being downvoted to −3 (!), in addition to what felt like a flurry of comments suggesting I was displaying zoological ignorance and underestimating the intellects of puppies and octopi.
This particular subtopic isn’t important to me at all; what’s important to me is being able to efficiently have discussions on a high level of sophistication, without having to spend time and effort plugging status leaks resulting from someone’s misunderstanding (willful or not) of my words.
you’ve assumed that I was trying to derail your argument… which is particularly uncharitable about my intentions.
No, I didn’t assume that you were trying to derail the argument (read the comment again, carefully!); I just noted that you had, in fact, derailed it.
And, of course, I don’t think the status-seeking/showing-off was deliberate or conscious on your part. It’s what we’re always doing, all the time, mostly unconsciously. We can’t stop it, and nor should we; status is a basic need for neurologically normal humans (and yes, that category includes readers of LW). What we have to do is learn to recognize when it’s interfering with our other aims, and make adjustments to reduce this interference.
For example, before making a correction to someone’s comment (by default, an aggressive status move), ask yourself whether you will be communicating new information to the person—something relevant to the discussion that they genuinely didn’t know. If so, then—especially in a setting like this, where information is highly valued—it will usually be worth the tradeoff, and the person may even be grateful for the correction, willing to pay the status cost in exchange for the info. Otherwise, however, unless you’re careful to signal that you’re not making a status challenge (generally accomplished by packing your correction full of deferential language), you will most likely just end up provoking a verbal battle that won’t actually produce anything of intellectual value.
The latter is basically what happened in this instance. I’m a pretty regular reader and commenter on this site, where knowledge of the basics of logic tends to be taken as a matter of course. As such, I can be assumed to be well-versed in the fact that the negation of a statement of the form “for all x, P(x)” is a statement of the form “there exists x such that not-P(x)”. Consequently, pointing out to me that, as you put it,
the counter-claim does not require that 100% of all species on the earth have curiosity, but that curiosity exists in some non-human species.
is not informative. Instead, it’s more like you “caught” me making a “mistake” in the “debate game”, and are now seizing upon it to “score a point”—as if we were playing chess, and I made a blunder that you were going to exploit.
Now, it’s true that I did originally say that “only one” species possessed curiosity. However, somebody before you actually asked whether I meant that literally—and I responded with a comment that should have made it clear (albeit implicitly) that my remark had been mainly an allusion not to human superiority over other intelligent mammals, but to the fact that most living species are things like bacteria. I then made that point explicit when you commented with your puppy anecdote. At this stage there should have been no room for misunderstanding about what my point was: even if we completely grant the strongest claims of animal enthusiasts, curiosity is still rare among life on Earth.
You claimed to know something about curiosity in non-human species
This is where you misunderstood. My claim was not about whether the animal enthusiasts are correct or not. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. (I tend to think that even if they are, human curiosity is still an exceptional outlier of a phenomenon, if only quantitatively.) But regardless, the only thing I claimed to know was that if a species isn’t human it probably doesn’t have curiosity. Given that 71% of species are bacteria I regard that claim as trivially true.
Sure thing—looks like I misunderstood your reply to my first comment… But I think you have also misunderstood my intent. let me try to explain.
For example, before making a correction to someone’s comment (by default, an aggressive status move), ask yourself whether you will be communicating new information to the person—something relevant to the discussion that they genuinely didn’t know
I think this may be where you misunderstood me.
I wasn’t trying to add to your ongoing discussion (which looks like it’s something about genetic fitness as it relates to curiosity).
In fact I was merely skimming the comments and happened to notice your first claim about curiosity being only in humans. I happened to be intrigued by that claim and asked if you had more information about the subject (and gave a counter-example).
I wasn’t interested in what came before that comment of yours—which is why I said above that I couldn’t care less about the argument you were making…
I also wasn’t reading other people’s comments, or your replies to the other comments—I in fact had no idea that you had already replied to some other person’s comment that should have somehow made it all clear. I happened to be reading your replies to my comments only (which you do when you get the little orange mail-icon).
When you make comments—please be aware that not everybody is actually following the full discussion.
Therefore I think you have assumed a negative overtone that really wasn’t intended… ever in my comments. I really was just interested in hearing if you had any research on curiosity in other species.
Sure thing—I can absolutely see your point about proportions of species that are curious… now that you’ve made it clear to me in a thread that I’m actually following.
Instead, it’s more like you “caught” me making a “mistake” in the “debate game”
hmmm—I don’t play the debate game so well. You’re quite right that I seized upon what I saw as a mistake of yours… but again, you assume my intent.
Can you tell me, from speaking to me, how much of the sequences I have read? Is it a little? is it a lot? am I a brand new newcomer to the site? Or have I been secretly lurking here for years without posting until recently? I can tell you that I’m not very good at guessing that kind of thing… and clearly, here I made a mistake.
I thought I’d spotted you making a “rookie mistake” and corrected it… assuming (incorrectly as it turns out) that maybe you didn’t know and that it therefore might have a bearing on the rest of what you were trying to say. Go back and check my language and this time assume a charitable intent… and you’ll see that I was not trying to tear you down… but just to explain something that I happened to know...
My apologies for that—clearly I messed up, but I can say that I was genuinely trying to correct an error… not trying to score a point in an argument that I wasn’t even following.
you still should have interpreted it
In my experience, it’s a very bad idea to assume how people should interpret things.
You have misinterpreted me just as much as I think I’ve misinterpreted you here… that is why I’m trying to explain my thinking to you now to explain why I came to the interpretation that I did.
before making a correction to someone’s comment (by default, an aggressive status move), ask yourself whether you will be communicating new information to the person—something relevant to the discussion that they genuinely didn’t know.
I’d like to point out that this site is about learning from mistakes… I’d go so far as to say that correcting errors in people’s comments is a good part of the raison detre of this site… (if not of it’s sister site OB)
I clearly made a mistake about what you were trying to claim… that led me to think you must have made a mistake about how the logic worked.
I apologise again for my own misinterpretations
However, you have also misinterpreted my own intentions in a very uncharitable fashion.
I may well have completely misunderstood that you were making a different point to that which I had at first thought… but I am not making a mistake when I say that on this site—we are allowed to point out errors, and we aren’t going to get very far if pointing them out is considered an act of aggression… rather than an act of help.
So lets talk about aggressive:
This kind of nitpicking is a form of logical rudeness
According to the page you linked-to I was not being logically rude. That page seems to imply that a logically rude person is deliberately trying to derail or win an argument by throwing curveballs or moving the goalposts. As I was not doing either of those things, I think I can say that I was not being logically rude.
I am sorry that your argument became derailed and that what I said may have helped in that… but I really was actually interested in the side-point… not just bringing it up to derail your argument.
If anyone actually has anything interesting to say against this argument, let them say it. Otherwise, let’s not bother.
I have to say I was actually quite upset that you were so dismissive of what I was trying to say. I find that quite aggressive.
as well as the principle of sticking-to-the-point-of-the-discussion-and-not-derailing-the-flow-of-discourse-with-an-attempt-to-gain-status-points-by-showing-off-your-knowledge-of-how-to-form-the-logical-negation-of-a-statement
I find this quite an aggressive claim. As you are now aware—I was not trying to be rude, I was not trying to point-score, I was not even disagreeing with you… as I was not actually involved in your argument.
Can you please retract these rather aggressive claims of yours?
Are humans the only species on Earth that have curiosity?
Yes, approximately. A few other species may possess primitive analogues, but even if you throw those in the proportion of species is extremely low.
Anecdotally, he fitness pressure of curiosity on cats appears to be negative.
Also anecdotally, fulfilled curiosity has made catkind among the first species to perfect resurrection.
Or at least quantum immortality.
This one I don’t get. Explain?
Cats presumably have a reputation for having nine lives because they are observed in situations where they appear to narrowly escape dying, by a hair’s-breadth chance.
I was comparing this to quantum immortality, while making an indirect reference to Schrodinger’s cat as well… implying that Schrodinger’s cat always turns up alive, due to cats’ quantum immortality-based nine-lives capability. ;-)
(Cat-thropic principle, perhaps?)
Ailuric principle. (anthropos = human, ailouros = cat)
Can you show some research on that claim? Specifically, you seem to be claiming that theres a difference in kind (rather than just degree) between my own curiosity and that of other creatures.
Having observed a puppy gleefully searching new stuff found in his territory, or new people and places that he’s just been introduced to and similar-seeming behaviour in other animals—I’m uncertain that we could claim they were non-curious.
I personally see little difference in kind between that and the similar actions seen in baby humans. The fact that a human is far better able to direct their curiosity, I think is based on our different quantity, or capacity for intelligent curiosity.
Number of species according to Wikipedia: at least 7 million, of which:
at least 5 million (71%) are bacteria
1,203,375 (17%) are invertebrate animals
297,326 (4%) are plants
59,811 (0.8%) are vertebrate animals, of which 5,416 (0.07%) are mammals (the category that includes humans, chimpanzees, dogs, and every other species to which the emotion of “curiosity” might conceivably be attributed).
“Species” != “things like cute puppies”.
While this is true (and I’ve upvoted your remark) I’d be curious if there are many examples of smart species that don’t exhibit curiosity. As far as I can tell, pretty close to all species which are fairly intelligent and raise their young exhibit curiosity. Canines, felines, most primates, corvids and many other species of birds, and elephants all seem to do this.
Some invertebrates, such as octopi and mantis shrimp, appear to exhibit curiosity. And some bird species are intelligent enough to be capable with basic communication with humans. Mammals may contain the most intelligent species known, but that doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on intelligence or curiosity.
The “a few other species may have primitive analogues” disclaimer was supposed to cover things like this.
See above. This is not about human or mammalian chauvinism. This is about the fact that, whatever neat things some species can do, there also exist numerous biological niches that do not in fact involve higher-level cognitive functions such as “curiosity”. Most organisms don’t even have brains, for goodness’ sake.
5,416 species is a LOT. Even if only 20, or 10, of these species have ‘curiosity’, that’s still a very different thing from ONLY humans having curiosity.
Precisely what I thought. A dog’s curiosity doesn’t get it as far as a human’s does, since a dog has much less capacity for symbolic thought (but probably still some capacity) and no way to record its thoughts or share the thoughts of other dogs.
I’d say “what about birds?”, but that wouldn’t increase things much.
Interesting list… but the counter-claim does not require that 100% of all species on the earth have curiosity, but that curiosity exists in some non-human species.
Therefore only a single example (eg a cute puppy) will destroy that claim.
Actually listing the numbers of non-cute species does not in any way help the original claim.
This kind of nitpicking is a form of logical rudeness, not to mention being a violation of the principle of charity.
Let me remind you again what I said, with emphasis added:
(For some utterly bizarre reason this entirely reasonable and completely correct comment is currently sitting at −2.)
It is perfectly clear from the literal wording, never mind the context, that the statement is approximate, not absolute. Furthermore, the approximate claim was all that was necessary for the argument I was making—so that even if I had made an absolute claim (in the sense of literal wording), you still should have interpreted it as an approximate or probabilistic claim by the principle of charity (as well as the principle of sticking-to-the-point-of-the-discussion-and-not-derailing-the-flow-of-discourse-with-an-attempt-to-gain-status-points-by-showing-off-your-knowledge-of-how-to-form-the-logical-negation-of-a-statement).
To do what you have done here is simply to create a communication barrier where none need have existed. As a result of this tangential argument-over-nothing, the original point has gotten completely lost, and I am now feeling a sensation of acute irritation despite having no idea whether you or any of the other nitpickers who have flocked to this subthread actually have a substantive disagreement with me or not.
Here, for the record, is my argument:
(1) Only a small minority of Earth’s species have curiosity.
(2) Therefore, curiosity is not necessary for maximizing inclusive genetic fitness.
(3 Therefore, we should not be surprised by results such as that cited by lix.
If anyone actually has anything interesting to say against this argument, let them say it. Otherwise, let’s not bother.
Wow, this is a really strong comment over something that I hadn’t realised was so important to you.
Sure thing—if what I said was not relevant to the main point of your conclusion—tell me that… but accusing me of status-seeking, purposeful-derailment and showing-off is a bit strong for a simple question about your claim.
...and I still have to point out that earlier, you did claim that humanity was the only species with curiosity [emphasis added by me] :
It’s fine if you then changed that point in your argument, and maybe I missed it due to miscommunication…
but I’d rather you point out “oops, you got my argument wrong” than “you’re purposefully trying to create barriers to communication”.
I find it ironic that you have brought up the principle of charity at this point...
you see, you’ve assumed that I was trying to derail your argument… which is particularly uncharitable about my intentions.
Actually, I’ll be honest: I really couldn’t care less about your argument—I’m actually (still) interested in what I originally asked…
You claimed to know something about curiosity in non-human species… and I’m curious about curiosity in non-human species.
So as I originally asked: do you have any actual research on that subject?
I can understand how it might seem that way, but you have to realize that this was in the context of a perfectly fine comment being downvoted to −3 (!), in addition to what felt like a flurry of comments suggesting I was displaying zoological ignorance and underestimating the intellects of puppies and octopi.
This particular subtopic isn’t important to me at all; what’s important to me is being able to efficiently have discussions on a high level of sophistication, without having to spend time and effort plugging status leaks resulting from someone’s misunderstanding (willful or not) of my words.
No, I didn’t assume that you were trying to derail the argument (read the comment again, carefully!); I just noted that you had, in fact, derailed it.
And, of course, I don’t think the status-seeking/showing-off was deliberate or conscious on your part. It’s what we’re always doing, all the time, mostly unconsciously. We can’t stop it, and nor should we; status is a basic need for neurologically normal humans (and yes, that category includes readers of LW). What we have to do is learn to recognize when it’s interfering with our other aims, and make adjustments to reduce this interference.
For example, before making a correction to someone’s comment (by default, an aggressive status move), ask yourself whether you will be communicating new information to the person—something relevant to the discussion that they genuinely didn’t know. If so, then—especially in a setting like this, where information is highly valued—it will usually be worth the tradeoff, and the person may even be grateful for the correction, willing to pay the status cost in exchange for the info. Otherwise, however, unless you’re careful to signal that you’re not making a status challenge (generally accomplished by packing your correction full of deferential language), you will most likely just end up provoking a verbal battle that won’t actually produce anything of intellectual value.
The latter is basically what happened in this instance. I’m a pretty regular reader and commenter on this site, where knowledge of the basics of logic tends to be taken as a matter of course. As such, I can be assumed to be well-versed in the fact that the negation of a statement of the form “for all x, P(x)” is a statement of the form “there exists x such that not-P(x)”. Consequently, pointing out to me that, as you put it,
is not informative. Instead, it’s more like you “caught” me making a “mistake” in the “debate game”, and are now seizing upon it to “score a point”—as if we were playing chess, and I made a blunder that you were going to exploit.
Now, it’s true that I did originally say that “only one” species possessed curiosity. However, somebody before you actually asked whether I meant that literally—and I responded with a comment that should have made it clear (albeit implicitly) that my remark had been mainly an allusion not to human superiority over other intelligent mammals, but to the fact that most living species are things like bacteria. I then made that point explicit when you commented with your puppy anecdote. At this stage there should have been no room for misunderstanding about what my point was: even if we completely grant the strongest claims of animal enthusiasts, curiosity is still rare among life on Earth.
This is where you misunderstood. My claim was not about whether the animal enthusiasts are correct or not. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. (I tend to think that even if they are, human curiosity is still an exceptional outlier of a phenomenon, if only quantitatively.) But regardless, the only thing I claimed to know was that if a species isn’t human it probably doesn’t have curiosity. Given that 71% of species are bacteria I regard that claim as trivially true.
Sure thing—looks like I misunderstood your reply to my first comment… But I think you have also misunderstood my intent. let me try to explain.
I think this may be where you misunderstood me.
I wasn’t trying to add to your ongoing discussion (which looks like it’s something about genetic fitness as it relates to curiosity).
In fact I was merely skimming the comments and happened to notice your first claim about curiosity being only in humans. I happened to be intrigued by that claim and asked if you had more information about the subject (and gave a counter-example).
I wasn’t interested in what came before that comment of yours—which is why I said above that I couldn’t care less about the argument you were making…
I also wasn’t reading other people’s comments, or your replies to the other comments—I in fact had no idea that you had already replied to some other person’s comment that should have somehow made it all clear. I happened to be reading your replies to my comments only (which you do when you get the little orange mail-icon).
When you make comments—please be aware that not everybody is actually following the full discussion.
Therefore I think you have assumed a negative overtone that really wasn’t intended… ever in my comments. I really was just interested in hearing if you had any research on curiosity in other species.
Sure thing—I can absolutely see your point about proportions of species that are curious… now that you’ve made it clear to me in a thread that I’m actually following.
hmmm—I don’t play the debate game so well. You’re quite right that I seized upon what I saw as a mistake of yours… but again, you assume my intent.
Can you tell me, from speaking to me, how much of the sequences I have read? Is it a little? is it a lot? am I a brand new newcomer to the site? Or have I been secretly lurking here for years without posting until recently? I can tell you that I’m not very good at guessing that kind of thing… and clearly, here I made a mistake.
I thought I’d spotted you making a “rookie mistake” and corrected it… assuming (incorrectly as it turns out) that maybe you didn’t know and that it therefore might have a bearing on the rest of what you were trying to say. Go back and check my language and this time assume a charitable intent… and you’ll see that I was not trying to tear you down… but just to explain something that I happened to know...
My apologies for that—clearly I messed up, but I can say that I was genuinely trying to correct an error… not trying to score a point in an argument that I wasn’t even following.
In my experience, it’s a very bad idea to assume how people should interpret things.
You have misinterpreted me just as much as I think I’ve misinterpreted you here… that is why I’m trying to explain my thinking to you now to explain why I came to the interpretation that I did.
I’d like to point out that this site is about learning from mistakes… I’d go so far as to say that correcting errors in people’s comments is a good part of the raison detre of this site… (if not of it’s sister site OB)
I clearly made a mistake about what you were trying to claim… that led me to think you must have made a mistake about how the logic worked.
I apologise again for my own misinterpretations
However, you have also misinterpreted my own intentions in a very uncharitable fashion.
I may well have completely misunderstood that you were making a different point to that which I had at first thought… but I am not making a mistake when I say that on this site—we are allowed to point out errors, and we aren’t going to get very far if pointing them out is considered an act of aggression… rather than an act of help.
So lets talk about aggressive:
According to the page you linked-to I was not being logically rude. That page seems to imply that a logically rude person is deliberately trying to derail or win an argument by throwing curveballs or moving the goalposts. As I was not doing either of those things, I think I can say that I was not being logically rude.
I am sorry that your argument became derailed and that what I said may have helped in that… but I really was actually interested in the side-point… not just bringing it up to derail your argument.
I have to say I was actually quite upset that you were so dismissive of what I was trying to say. I find that quite aggressive.
I find this quite an aggressive claim. As you are now aware—I was not trying to be rude, I was not trying to point-score, I was not even disagreeing with you… as I was not actually involved in your argument.
Can you please retract these rather aggressive claims of yours?