Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
¡Oh! Pues si no me entienden no es maravilla que mis sentencias sean tenidas por disparates.
User ID: 1525
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
Sure. Genetics are not tautologic. Recessive genes are defined as a section of genetic information with a low probability of being expressed in the individual. In this case we are defining recessive genes in a non-tautological way, because we are explaining its relation to the probability of a expressed phenotype. As recessive genes and the expressed phenotype are different entities, it is not tautological. This theory could also be false if recessive genes did not relate to the probability of a phenotype being expressed, because this relation is not implied at all by the definition of these terms.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
Respectfully, you are missing the point. I agree with what you say, this is why I started by saying this is not an anti-psychiatry post. What I'm saying doesn't change anything in clinical practice. I never said psychiatry doesn't work, quite the contrary. I explicitly say that it exists because it works. I think you have the right mindset by thinking of it more as an engineering practice, you are actually agreeing with me there.
If you think this is just semantics then fair enough, but I do believe the way we speak shapes the way we understand things. This is what it's about, our concept of psychopathology. You mentioned geriatrics, but geriatrics is an epistemologically sound specialization of medicine. What comes first, the loss of muscle mass or aging? In this case we can clearly stablish an object of knowledge even if we can't do anything to stop aging. The same happens with dementia: What comes first, the loss of cognitive function or the proteinopathy? Note that we don't know what causes the proteinopathy, but we do know for sure that Alzheimer's is a brain disease. So I ask again, if depression is a brain disease, then what comes first? Until we can confidently answer that, we can't really say that depression is a "disease like any other". The fact that changing someone's brain is a treatment for depression does not mean anything, because we could also make a carpenter change their profession by messing with their brain, and as I said, both being depressed and being a carpenter change your brain in predictable and observable patterns.
Let's see an example: There's a person who went through a break up and a year after that they still can't get over it, they feel sad all the time, they don't enjoy anything, and they think they won't be able to live without the person they love. Of course this is a problem, of course this person needs help, and thankfully we have the means to thelp them, that's wonderful. But are they sick? Is this because of a problem in their brain? We don't know. Unless we do, on which case you'd have to illustrate. This is a question that nobody is asking because they are busy choosing who gets the zap, as we cannot give psychiatric treatment or psychotherapy to everyone in the world, even though most people culd benefit from it at some point in their lives. But I do believe it is a question worth asking, even if it were only out of curiosity for the human condition.
I never implied this is some sort of forbidden knowledge, and this is what baffles me the most. Even though it is evident that there is no such thing as psychopathology, most people act as if there were. I know this doesn't really change anything but I can't understand it, this is what moved me to make this post. I also never implied psychiatrists are witch-doctors, because even though psychiatry has epistemological issues it is still a legitimate branch of medicine because of the fact that it works. Note that I'm saying that psychopathology does not exist, not that psychiatry does not exist, because it seems as one can exist without the other. I would prescribe you a text by Georges Canguilhem called What is Psychology, it is about psychology but many of the issues he points out are also applicable to psychiatry.
Regarding the blog by Dr. Sisskind, I fail to see how his argument changes anything. He's a psychiatrist (I think?) talking about a working definition of mental illness that serves his profession. If there's anything specific you think is relevant then please point it out. But the article does talk about evolutionary psychology and oh boy do I have something to say about that. I will make a post about it soon, but for now let's just say that it tries to explain something we don't understand using something we understand even less. It is another of those things that I feel like everyone's playing a prank on me by believing it's legitimate. The good thing is I can rest assured knowing that I'll have psychiatrists to take care of me.
I'll end with a fun fact: Psychiatrists are called "shrinks" precisely because they were in love with Freud, or as Chesterton and you pronounce it, Fraud. This is of course a translation issue, and the anglicized version of Freud has long been proved to be a flunk.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
It's funny because nowhere in the book does Darwin explain what a species is or how is it originated, but more to the point, Carl Linnaeus would like an amicable word with you, because you seem to ignore the fact that a century before Darwin people were already talking about "A branching Tree of Life". Hell, even Aristotle understood the concept and studied the "Tree of life" of the isle of Lesbos. I won't bother to prove that the rest wasn't new either. What was new, and I'm getting tired of repeating it, is the idea that nature was bound by XIXth century England's economic principles. Why are different species everywhere? I actually don't know, but I do know that Natural Selection explains nothing, because it only says that diverse species exist and copy-pasted species don't. But in fact both exist, and that also proves Natural Selection right. This is both obvious and useless, because it provides no new knowledge. The fact that you ignore history doesn't mean that what's obvious now wasn't obvious before. England's XIXth century ideas weren't obvious, and England's navy, without which Darwin wouldn't have been able to gather evidence from all around the world, was not useless either.
For the rest, when other people and I say that Natural Selection is an inherent trait of life, we mean to say that it is so only in possible universes. This is of course an arbitrary limitation because we don't actually know for sure what's ultimately possible and impossible, but such arbitrary limits are necessary to have any sort of meaningful conversation, since I can make up an universe where up means down and down means soup and nothing makes sense and you would understand nothing of what I'm saying. So of course you can make up an universe in your mind where Darwinism isn't tautological, but that doesn't prove anything.
And you know, you could take any biology book and change "Natural Selection" by "God" and nothing would change, the meaning of the text would remain the same. The difference being that Natural Selection is a tautology, while God is simply unknowable. Both explain nothing but one is more clever than the other.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
I think you still fail to understand what a tautology is. Natural Selection does not explain the why of anything. Why do we see creatures with fins? Because they have survived. In other words, we see them because they are alive. What does this explain? You are exactly at the same point where you started. A tautology is, by definition, not an useful explanation. We didn't need to wait for Darwin to know that we can preserve and multiply creatures with desirable characteristics by keeping them alive and making them breed. The "why" of this is explained by genetics, not by Darwin's theory.
Now, how can we know that Natural Selection "selects" something? Because it exists. In your example, all this tells us is that people with sickle cells are not dead. Again, Natural Selection doesn't help us at all, we need genetics to understand why and how that happens. It's not true that we need Darwin's theory to notice atypical populations, this is just basic reasoning, and we certainly didn't wait for Darwin to start using it. Compare this to Lamarck's theory. His theory is not correct, ot least hasn't been proven, but it is not tautological because it explains how species acquire new traits, by a mechanism he called "inheritance of acquired traits", meaning that benefitial traits acquired by the parents are inherited by the offspring. So we could say, for instance, that if a car is blue it is because it somehow changed its DNA to be blue when it realized it would be faster, and then genetically passed on this knowledge. All that Darwin could say here is that where there are blue cars red cars did not survive.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
I don't understand why you keep trying to defend psychiatry when nobody's attacking it. I guess you wrote your answer as you read the text because you literally quoted my saying that psychiatry is legitimate. Psychiatry may be quircky and not as epistemologically sound as other branches of medicine, but it is still medicine, still scientific, and still helpful. I would say though that psychopathology is a placeholder. I understand that you have a pragmatic point of view, and you really should. This doesn't really change anything for psychiatrists, and they don't need to worry about this, so I thank you for taking the time to engage in this discussion. But should we really be satisfied by having a placeholder instead of a psychopathology? I don't know if you agree that your belief that depression is a brain disease is just that, a belief, but I believe that's the case because the evidence I've seen is not conclusive. Yes, it's impossible to be depressed without having a brain and depression is something that exists and changes your brain, but here is when it's important to think what comes first. We can agree that treating people with depression should be our first and foremost concern regardless of existential questions, but why stop at that? Why not try to understand what's going on? This shouldn't change the attention and the care we give to depressed people, but it can help us think more acurately about the problem and who knows, maybe even come up with more effective solutions in the future.
Furthermore, I think that believing that psychopathology is something different than a placeholder opens room for all sorts of abuses. Psychiatrists are scientists and know the limitations of their discipline (or at least they should), but psychopathology is being used in all sorts of contexts where it has no business whatsoever, and this is in part because it is an epistemologically bankrrupt concept. Just as a currency undergoes inflation and looses value, concepts that are no rigorous enough are more likely to be overused. Psychologists are the worst offenders here, or maybe it's just my perception because I'm a psychologist myself and of course I know many people in my profession, so I'm surrounded by people who very loudily make all sorts of claims. The best psychologists I know are aware that psychopathology is a placeholder, but most don't or ignore that fact. And as psychologists feel insecure about the scientific status of their discipline they overrely on psychopathology to sell their services.
There is something very funny about the history of psychology, because as you must know computers where made with the specific objective to imitate human thought. But then in the 70's a bunch of psychologists saw computers and were astonished at how much they reasembled human thought, and came to the conclusion that the human mind works like a computer. I'm personally against the expression "Artificial Intelligence" because computers are neither intelligent nor dumb. They do what they are programed to do. An animal, for instance, can be intelligent or dumb because it is directly involved in the outcome of its decissions, and they can be wrong or right. Computers are never wrong, therefore they lack the ability to be implied in their decissions. So even if LLMs resemble human speech, we would be wrong to believe that speaking to an LLM is the same as speaking to a person. In that sense, just the fact that we can treat depression as a brain disease does not mean that it is a brain disease. This is only technically correct because it ignores the problem by fixing over it.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
My argument is that Natural Selection is tautological, so it does not add any new knowledge. It doesn't matter if it's "systemized" or not.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
And what is "the mechanism of selection"?
This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection
But
This statement is true but it’s useless as an explanation because it doesn’t give any information other than what is implied by its terms. Darwin’s critics accuse him of crafting a tautological statement because in his definition “favourable” or “beneficial” traits are defined as those that are preserved, and traits that are preserved are of course those that are favourable or beneficial.
So yes, Darwin did say that "traits that are benefitial are preserved", or in other words "those who survive, survive". Therefore, it is a tautology.
Your complaint seems to be that whenever...
No it isn't. My complaint is what I said it is, it's in the title of the post. As I said in another comment, if you wanna say that Darwin's theory is true and correct then go right ahead, but it is also trivial and useless.
And did you read the quote I cited? Here it is again:
The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, allowed Augustine to argue that species emerged sequentially in historical time rather than all at once.
In other words, Augustine argued that God selected some species to be born at specific points in time. This of course means that some other species where chosen to disappear in the same manner.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
Before Darwin people made all sorts of predictions about population growth and the proliferation of benetial traits. They learned, for instance, that after a flood certain species of plants were more plentiful. They then copied this process to create agriculture, etc.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
Yes of course, if you turn my initial tautological statement into something completely different that's no longer tautological then yes, it's not a tautology anymore, but it's also not my initial statement.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
I think you still don't understand what a tautology is. All evidence in the known universe points at the fact that every red car is not green. Is that statement true and correct? Well yes, if that's what you wanna call it why not. But it's also dumb and useless, unless you want to use it as an example in a logic lecture. There's this common trend on this thread, where people mention Newton for the dullest of examples. For the hundreth time no, Newton did not discover that things fall down when you drop them. But Newton is a good example of a scientific theory that is not tautologic, so you can look that up.
You also seem to have quite a childish idea of religion, where religion = dumb. I guess it's because you like Richard Dawkins, or as I like to call him, Dick Dorkins. No, people didn't believe that praying was a solution to everything, the Angelic Doctor didn't wrote his Summa Theologica exploring the relation between faith and reason just to conclude that reason = big bad. I mean, there have been people who believed that but they still exist today, so being dumb has nothing to do with being religious. Furthermore, there are plenty of biologists and scientists who are religious, I'd say that most have been. For instance, Mendel was a catholic monk, but did he just sit down and pray waiting for the tastiest peas known to man to magically appear? Absolutely not, he went and invented genetics, the absolute madman.
And yes of course, I do have sources for that. It's not a polemic claim at all, there's nothing incompatible between the idea of evolution and creationism. For instance:
If the origin of species was attributed to divine action, the temporal emergence of these species was not necessarily instantaneous. Such a doctrine was the basis of Augustine of Hippo’s (354–430) theory of the original creation of primordial seeds (rationes seminales) of each species at an original moment in time, but with the emergence of species in historical time a possibility (Augustine, VI.13.23–25, [GL, 175–76]). This theory of a temporalized creation, put forth explicitly in detail in his treatise The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, allowed Augustine to argue that species emerged sequentially in historical time rather than all at once.
Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolution-before-darwin/#MediRevi
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
You made two claims:
It’s not a tautology when viewed from a human scale perspective of time.
I rebutted this.
it is obvious that natural selection happens. There is no logical alternative, you cannot not accept it.
This is literally what I said, you are siding with me here. This is the definition of tautology, a claim that is true in every possible interpretation. Unless you meant to say that the only logical thing to do is accept Darwin's theory, on which case I'd say that's not the case at all. Even no explanation at all is better than a tautological explanation.
So which one is the "thrust" of your comment?
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
I mean, if you are going to mix up taxology and taxidermy at least be a good sport about it. The difference is not trivial, and there's a minimum of knowledge required to understand the history of biology. You don't have to believe me, go ahead and check Wikipedia again, it clearly says taxonomy. You can also look up the definition of it while you are at it. Taxidermy is only mentioned once on Linnaeus' page, and it's only a reference to a trip bro took to Hamburg where he was shown the taxidermied remains of a seven-headed hydra by the mayor of the town. Wild stuff.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
Lol, that's cute. You meant to say TAXONOMY not taxidermy. Of course neither Linnaeus nor Aristotle spoke about evolution or natural selection, I never said they did. I said they knew about the branching tree of life, because that's what taxonomy is. But don't worry, there are also a bunch of people who spoke about the evolution of species before Darwin. Would you like me to list them? And just so you know, Aristotle was a huge nerd and spent his free time studying and collecting mussels in the Mediterranean.
And yes, I'm only criticizing Darwin for his theory of Natural Selection.
You know, there's really no proof that we don't live in the whacky god-controlled universe, so the discussion is not over. I'm noy saying Darwin had an economic agenda, but the implications of his theory are economic. That's why I said that there were conscious and unconscious consequences for Darwin's theory.
You say:
Creatures survive because they can reproduce and survive in the environments where they live.
And why is that? Well, because of Natural Selection of course! Now change Natural Selection for "God", and how does that change anything? If this is a popularity contest then yes, Darwin is winning by a landslide. But Darwin wasn't arguing against the idea of a watchmaker God, that was Dorkins. Darwin was agnostic, and never meant to refute the idea of God. I honestly don't care about winning any debates here, who cares if I'm right and some XIXth century fella was wrong.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
Fleming mentioned that AFTER bacteria started becoming resistant to antibiotics, which had already happened by 1945. Not to the scale it happens now, but enough to be observed. Again, not a prediction.
Before Darwin people thought God was nature, and they belived He perfomed his own "selection" of living beings. How does this differ from Darwin's explanation? You'd say that God is an intelligent subject and nature isn't, but in any case God's intelligence is unintelligible to humans, so in practical terms is the same. People didn't think everything propsers equally.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
We could also predict the change in coat lenght without the theory of natural selection...
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
Darwin didn't make this distinction between different time perspectives, but even then Darwin's explanation would be: They didn't survive because they don't exist anymore. It doesn't matter what time perspective you use, this holds true in every possible scenario.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
It may be an emergent effect but it is a tautologic. Like, every red car being red could also be understood as an "emergent effect", but why would you?
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
The predictions argument has already been addresed multiple times elsewhere, so I won't respond to it. But c'mon, "our domain knowledge of animals tells us that eyes are generally very useful things"?? Really? You don't say.
You say that mankind was humilliated by Darwin but I would claim the opposite is true. Before Darwin humans had a secondary place in the universe, they were created by something bigger and more powerful. After Darwin humankind has no rivals, and they supposedly hold the secret to explain all possible life in the universe. If anything, humans are more proudful and entitled now that ever before.
And you are wrong about the idea of exponential grows in subexponential resources being known before. Before Malthus people lacked the mathematical models necessary to understand the behavior of populations. One thing is making an empiric observation and another is describing a common pattern in all populations. There's also the idea, quite characteristic of the modern age, that mathematics alone explains the growth of populations. This led to some strange conclusions, like that war is good because it quells an overgrowth population. Once more, Darwin's work just expanded upon this idea.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
Firstly, I don't believe I've misunderstood Darwin's terminology, since Darwin's definition is quite clear and I quoted it literally on my original post, if I remember correctly. If you believe I'm misunderstanding anything please do point it out.
However, I would turn the accusation on you. Evolution and Natural Selection are not the same. Evolution is the fact that animals change during time. Natural Selection is the mechanism that supposedly explains it. I'm not saying anything against evolution, I'm saying that Natural Selection is a tautology. You don't seem to understand that we can't "fuck with evolution". It's literally impossible. Because humans are part of nature, and everything they do is, supposedly, bound by the contrains of Natural Selection. So even if we went extint, that wouldn't be contrary to the principle. In fact, there's nothing contrary to Natural Selection, which is why it is a tautology.
Now, these stories about obscene implications and the collapse of the first world are all very charming, but if you are part of the bunch who are in love with Darwin then think of it this way: If everything fails then cool, Natural Selection triumphed and you won't be around to mess with other species' happiness. But it you as an individual succeed, then cool, Natural Selection has triumphed and you have something to show for it. It is not our task to stop society from "fucking with evolution", and it is better to take care of your own garden
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
Lol, you were the one bringing up examples that actually undermined your point, don't blame me for it. Secondly, I haven't gotten myself into any corners. I did respond to your other example, I literally said that there are things we can predict (remember the shark example?) - just that we don't need to read Darwin to predict them. But that doesn't change the fact that there are things that we can't predict. Would the brown rats still be as likely to survive in one thousand years? How about in one million years? Of course, you can predict that a predator will affect the population of a species, but there are things we cannot predict in nature, that's how it works. If you could control all the variables of the evolution of a species then it wouldn't be natural selection would it? On the other hand Natural Selection does not gain any predictive power from stating the obvious, that individuals who get devoured won't pass on their genes. The facade would be believing that anything is explained by this circular argument.
I guess that if you are satisfied by such truisms then there's nothing for you to worry about, besides being a bore.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
Well, no. If Lamarck were proved to be correct that wouldn't make Darwin wrong. In fact, modern synthesis uses both darwinian and lamarckian ideas. So please explain how Natural Selection could be proved wrong in a possible universe.
The theory of Natural Selection is not just language, but that's the only useful part of it. What you call "core metaphysical assumptions" we could do without and nothing would change. Of course, there are metaphysical assumptions that are necessary, but Natural Selection is not one of them.
There's no such framework. Reverse-engineering is that, reverse engineering. It wasn't invented by Darwin. Everything we can do with Natural Selection we can do without it. I'm quite clear about arguing that the theory of Natural Selection is a tautology, so I don't see how you would be confused about my intentions. It may be that I don't understand this subject well enough, but you certainly haven't proven me wrong. Now, if you could prove that Natural Selection may be false, then my argument would be dead.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
I'm not saying evolution is a tautology, I'm saying the theory of Natural Selection is. People think that the theory of Natural Selection = The theory of evolution, but they are two different things. In fact, there's no "theory of evolution". What you say is true but it says nothing about the subject at hand, the theory of Natural Selection.
I won't get into the mathematics argument because I've already addresed it in other comments.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
¡Oh! Pues si no me entienden no es maravilla que mis sentencias sean tenidas por disparates.
Gregor
Fuge, late, tace.
1mo ago
You know, when people started using antibiotics they didn't really predict that bacteria would become resistant to it. And they had Darwin's theory by that time. But now that resistant bacteria exists, you tell me that's proof of Natural Selection? You see how it works? No matter what example you give me, Natural Selection will always be the correct explanation, because it is no explanation at all. If bacteria hadn't become resistant then you would tell me that it lacked the traits for its survival, and so on. That's not a prediction, that's hindsight.
As I've said, there are things that are random (as far as we know) in nature and things that aren't. Natural Selection explains all, which means it explains nothing because it cannot meaningfuly distinguish randon and non random events. Right now you would predict that if a human being ingests arsenic they would die, but what if this human had a benefitial trait that made him inmune to arsenic? Natural Selection cannot discriminate what outcome is more likely, you'd have to look at genetics and physiology, none of which have any need for the theory of Natural Selection.
I recently made a post about Darwin related to this. Since there are many definitions of "human being", people usually refer to biology as the "objective" definition, but Darwinian biology can only define mankind by the mere fact that it survives. Insofar as being alive means not being dead, human dignity relies on the conservation of the means by which existence is preserved. The problem is that existence itself becomes condition not only necessary, but sufficient, to human dignity. This is where the prejudice of caring about the welfare of human beings qua human beings comes from. From this perspective human life is sacred, but only the objective share of human life, that which relies on nourishment, breathing, reproduction and defecation - all things that human beings can control. To paint a rather gross picture, this is like changing the definition of "human being" to "poop-making machine", and then congratulating ourselves with big parades to celebrate that we've solved the human mistery by inventing a more efficient way to ingest food and excrete it. Your conclusion is absolutely on point: This not only does not solve anything, it also clouds our vision and that of the future generations from the heart of the problem.
The divinization of mere life has also an impact at a social level, and I believe this was the aim from the beginning. The objective of utilitarism was to be a foundation for law that was objective and did not depend on religion or tradition. A universal law everyone could agree with, and if any disagreements did arise then a simple calculation would suffice to solve it. This allowed the State to take complete control over the life of its citizens. In ancient times there was a divine randonmess to life: Death, disease, famine, love, they were all regarded as private affairs over which the State did not directly intervene. But through the divinization of mere life, the State could take over the management of health, food, marriage, funerary services, etc. Every aspect of objective existence has come under scrutiny of the State in order tu secure the existence of its subjects, and as the subjects need to be alive regardless of their personal convictions or beliefs, they need the State. So when a person decides to invest is his dog rather than in a random person, they can justify their behavior by stating the fact that they pay taxes, which is precisely the fee an individual pays to guarantee the common good. So if you need help, if you suffer ill-fortune and look for a loving neighbor, ask the State. But on the other hand, the State is -supposedly- justified to intervene over the existence of any individual in order to secure the common good. The modern State is a devilish trap: The more it fulfills your needs the more you give up your freedom, until there's nothing but mindless, soulless satsifaction.
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