Thanks you prodded at a real issue I failed to notice in my post.
I claim the article is about: “natural does not mean good”
Then I go off and seem to try to make a sneaky second claim: “Natural processes can’t be proven/verified easily and should hold no weight”
With the second claim being a lot weaker. But I still stand by it.
If I could try to succinctly rephrase it in the context of your response here:
“Patterns are statistically significant and improbable without some outside force. So if we recognize a pattern, it’s LIKELY that there is some attractor or gravity creating this pattern. BUT, the fact that something is naturally occuring or biological in nature should add absolutely no credence or change the nature of how we normally pattern match.”
So I agree “male humans are on average more aggressive than females.” That is great pattern that needs to be in any social model. But if then someone says “this is because all mammals work that way”, that second statement is usually unverifiable and should add no credence to the pattern or model.
Same with “assertive men are often leaders”. This is a great pattern that should be considered. To then say “this is because pack animals designate an alpha male” is not verifiable and should not add weight to the claim.
Now to me it feels like the biology bit is added to a LOT of arguments. This could be because any good logical thinker want to also pin down causation and upstream effects. I am concerned”it’s biological/natural” is tacked onto arguments in an attempt to artificially strengthen arguments, and this post was my attempt at a response to that.
If you know a fact about humans, then mammals are not important. Humans like stories. Doesn’t matter if mammals in general don’t.
If you don’t know a fact about humans, but somehow you know the fact about mammals, you can use it as evidence (although not as a proof). For example, in a culture with a strong religious taboo against human autopsy they could dissect various mammals, and make probabilistic statements about human anatomy.
Today, a more typical situation is two groups of people, each declaring that they know for a fact that humans are / are not X. In such situation, if you have no way to verify the fact directly, I guess you could use the information about mammals to make a probabilistic estimate about which group is correct.
Also, from a perspective of a scientist, if all mammals are X, then the fact that humans are also X is… not completely guaranteed, but not really surprising. On the other hand, if all other mammals are X but humans don’t… that is definitely possible, but it makes me really curious why. What is the difference, and what was the possible reason evolution made it so?
Thanks you prodded at a real issue I failed to notice in my post.
I claim the article is about: “natural does not mean good” Then I go off and seem to try to make a sneaky second claim: “Natural processes can’t be proven/verified easily and should hold no weight”
With the second claim being a lot weaker. But I still stand by it.
If I could try to succinctly rephrase it in the context of your response here:
“Patterns are statistically significant and improbable without some outside force. So if we recognize a pattern, it’s LIKELY that there is some attractor or gravity creating this pattern. BUT, the fact that something is naturally occuring or biological in nature should add absolutely no credence or change the nature of how we normally pattern match.”
So I agree “male humans are on average more aggressive than females.” That is great pattern that needs to be in any social model. But if then someone says “this is because all mammals work that way”, that second statement is usually unverifiable and should add no credence to the pattern or model.
Same with “assertive men are often leaders”. This is a great pattern that should be considered. To then say “this is because pack animals designate an alpha male” is not verifiable and should not add weight to the claim.
Now to me it feels like the biology bit is added to a LOT of arguments. This could be because any good logical thinker want to also pin down causation and upstream effects. I am concerned”it’s biological/natural” is tacked onto arguments in an attempt to artificially strengthen arguments, and this post was my attempt at a response to that.
If you know a fact about humans, then mammals are not important. Humans like stories. Doesn’t matter if mammals in general don’t.
If you don’t know a fact about humans, but somehow you know the fact about mammals, you can use it as evidence (although not as a proof). For example, in a culture with a strong religious taboo against human autopsy they could dissect various mammals, and make probabilistic statements about human anatomy.
Today, a more typical situation is two groups of people, each declaring that they know for a fact that humans are / are not X. In such situation, if you have no way to verify the fact directly, I guess you could use the information about mammals to make a probabilistic estimate about which group is correct.
Also, from a perspective of a scientist, if all mammals are X, then the fact that humans are also X is… not completely guaranteed, but not really surprising. On the other hand, if all other mammals are X but humans don’t… that is definitely possible, but it makes me really curious why. What is the difference, and what was the possible reason evolution made it so?