PerseusWizardry's profile

PerseusWizardry 9mo ago

Life offers a Better "Minimum Deal" to Women than to Men - Change my Mind?

Men are vastly more likely to be victims of the worst kind of violent crime: murder. In the US, 82% of total homicide victims are male, 18% are female. Women probably endure more sexual violence, but men definitely endure more violence overall given the 4:1 murder ratio.
Men do the overwhelming majority of the nasty, dangerous work, such as roofing in the summer, oil rig operation, management of sewers, garbage collection, etc.
Men are much more likely to be homeless (70%:30%) or imprisoned (93%:7%). I think this speaks to the greater competitiveness of the male world: If a man fails in life, he's judged a complete fuckup, and ends up a homeless low-status loser. If a woman fails, she can almost always just get married.
Men are much more likely to kill themselves (4:1). Although women attempt suicide more than men, men use dramatically more lethal means (hanging, gunshots, jumping). Because I'm not so sexist as to claim that women are too stupid to know how to actually succeed in killing themselves, I conclude that the difference in suicide methods reflects a difference in willingness to die. (And in any case, even when controlling for method, men manage to kill themselves more effectively than women.)
Men spend much more time on the job than women (41weekly hrs:36.3hrs/week). (This remains true well after the children leave the nest. And no, I'm not persuaded that childcare is harder than conventional employment.)
The law heavily favors women in child custody and child support disputes, and the institution of alimony transfers far more male wealth to women than female wealth to men.
Men are much more likely to die in combat; in fact, during serious military conflicts, they face military slavery (“the draft”). (In Iraq, women were 2.9% of all American combat deaths, men the other 97.1%; in WWII, of the 292,000 members of the US military who were killed by enemy fire, only sixteen were female. Women made up only 0.1 percent of the military's 405,000 war-related deaths.)
Our culture automatically cares more about female suffering and wellbeing than male suffering: "The ship is sinking! Save the women and children first!" Male job candidates are significantly more penalized for crying than women; subjects express that it appears that a woman in distress is taken more seriously than a man in distress.
The dating market is more competitive for men than for women; women are far more selective than men about sex partners. Imagine an attractive person of the opposite sex walking up to you on a college campus and saying, “Hi, I’ve been noticing you around town lately, and I fnd you very attractive. Would you have sex with me?” How would you respond? If you are like 100 percent of the women in one study, you would give an emphatic no. You might be ofended, insulted, or just plain puzzled by the request. But if you are like the men in that study, the odds are good that you would say yes— as did 75 percent of those men (Clarke & Hatfeld, 1989). As a man, you would most likely be flattered by the request.
Women are more likely to be superficially treated as mere "sex objects" by men. That said, men are more likely to be superficially treated as mere "success objects" by women.
Women now comprise nearly 60 percent of enrollment in universities and colleges and men just over 40 percent.

The "minimum deal" of life for men is worse than for women. The "minimum deal" for women seems to be "get married." The minimum deal for men seems to be: become homeless and kill yourself, if you aren't murdered first. Yes, men make more money and enjoy greater prestige because men are overrepresented at both the top and the bottom levels of society. But the degree to which being at the bottom of society hurts you is greater than the degree to which being at the top helps you. That is, it's so much more bad to be at the bottom than it is good to be at the top. Just ask yourself: would you rather experience the greatest amount of pleasure possible for 20 seconds, followed by the greatest amount of suffering possible for 20 seconds? Our response tells us that there is not a 1:1 ratio of pleasure to suffering. How about 30 seconds of the greatest possible amount of pleasure for 20 seconds of the worst possible amount of pain? 40:20? 50:20? I think this is why men kill themselves more.

According to Christian legend, God told Adam and Eve before their ouster from the garden of eden: "man shall live by the sweat of his brow, and woman shall suffer the pain of childbirth." Modern technology has greatly minimized the pain of childbirth, but has it equally lightened the burden on men's shoulders?

I won't deny that men do much less childcare and housework than women, and non-custodial fathers provide little financial or parental support for their children. Also, men are the perpetrators, and women are the victims, of the vast majority of sexual violence. (Although I'm not sure what the stats at prisons do to this balance; apparently rape in male prisons is a huge epidemic and is vastly greater than rape in female prisons. Considering the ridiculously disproportionate number of men in prisons, it's possible that this balances out.)

Anticipated objection: "But men are often the primary perpetrators of the issues facing men." This is irrelevant to the post title, but in any case, I think this is like saying "it's not bad that humans are victims of murder because, after all, all of the perpetrators of murder are also humans." The identity group to which the perpetrators belong is irrelevant to whether an individual was treated unjustly if the perps and victims are different individuals. This simple-minded identity-politics is like saying "someone with red hair beat me up when I was 12. Therefore, it's okay for me to beat someone up today, so long as they also have red hair (regardless of whether they are the same person)."

For some reason copy/pasting my post over to this website deleted all of the hyperlinks. It would be a big time waster to fix that so I'm just going to suffer the blow to credibility that may or may not cause. (For what it's worth, a simple google search should give you all of the same ratios above.) I originally drafted this for CMV on reddit, but the mods took it down.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

Do you think the seeming improbability of the origin of life is evidence for theism?

I don’t mean with respect to so-called cosmic "fine tuning." I refer to the fact that even with our potentially finely tuned cosmos it’s still incredibly unlikely that life would emerge. I took an earth science course in college, and our prof said that Abiogenesis is still the main theory: namely, non living matter gave rise to living matter through a combination of exquisitely improbable events. A bunch of chemicals mixed with other chemicals and were struck by lightning or something, creating the first self-replicating molecule. If you protest “but that’s about as likely as a fighter jet being assembled out of chance collisions,” he says “given the law of large numbers, given enough opportunities a fantastically unlikely event will eventually happen. And the observable universe is just so so vast.

I just realized this might imply that, actually, there probably is a fighter jet somewhere in the universe that arose from chance collisions of matter, or at least that this result wasn't any less likely than life arising from nonliving matter. If you say no to the fighter jet thing, but yes to a self-replicating molecular machine finding a stable enough environment in which to proliferate for millions of years, then presumably you would need to explain the asymmetry in your expectations.

Maybe the chance fighter jet is just… even more unlikely than that? Based on what? The fact that there are many more optimally arranged parts involved in a fighter jet? Maybe, but if that’s actually true, why have we been able to create fighter jets, but not engineer a self-replicating molecular organism from inorganic matter?

About cosmic "fine tuning":

If you buy any of the typical objections to cosmological fine tuning, there is a concern about whether your view "proves too much" by failing to admit of scenarios that would intuitively serve as compelling evidence for Christianity. For instance, in a universe in which the words "made-by-Jesus-Christ" were written into every square inch of matter as a direct result of the way the initial parameters of the universe were ordered, you would have to conclude that we had absolutely zero evidence in favor of Christianity.

Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #1: "But we don't know how to weight the prior probabilities of alternative universes. At best, we can only assume that the life-permitting parameters are unlikely given all of the non-life-permitting alternatives."

This is equally true of the made-by-Jesus world, but do you really want to say that that world would offer no evidence in favor of Christianity? Isn't that just an unreasonably high degree of skepticism?

Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #2: "According to the anthropic principle, we wouldn't be in a position to ask about how we appeared in a life-permitting universe if it hadn't been life-permitting to begin with, so fine-tuning requires no explanation/is explained by the fact that it had to happen from our POV."

It's not always clear what is being proposed by the objector making the anthropic principle argument, but on one interpretation the objection is saying something like "any phenomenon which presupposes an explainer requires no explanation/is automatically explained by the fact that it allows for an explainer to exist and wonder about it."

So, for instance, we needn't explain the complexity of life via evolution because had it not occurred, we wouldn't be in a position to wonder about it. Or a falling man who prays for a parachute and is saved when one spontaneously materializes out of thin air needn't explain this miracle because, had it not occurred, he wouldn't be alive to consider candidate explanations.

But notice that the anthropic principle objection can also be posed to the "made-by-Jesus" world, and even still, the "made-by-Jesus" world would be compelling evidence in favor of Christianity.

Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #3: God could have any number of purposes. Why assume that he wants life to evolve?

This equally applies to the "Made-by-Jesus" world. I can imagine any number of deities who don't want to create a made-by-Jesus world. So in the "made-by-Jesus" world would we have absolutely zero indication that Christianity is true?

Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #4: Maybe the fine-tuning is just necessary and had to be that way. Since God is supposed to be a necessary being, is it any better to suppose that an explanation that proposes a necessary God + a contingent universe is better than simply a necessary universe all on its own?

This equally applies to the "Made-by-Jesus" world. Maybe the initial parameters of the universe just had to be set up so that the words "made-by-Jesus-Christ" were written into every square inch of matter everywhere. So is the "made-by-Jesus" world not strong evidence for Christianity?

Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #5: If the multi-verse hypothesis is true, then a finely tuned universe is due to chance. Given enough opportunities, a life permitting arrangement of the parameters will eventually come about, no matter how unlikely one is.

This equally applies to the "Made-by-Jesus" world. So is the "made-by-Jesus" world not strong evidence for Christianity?

Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #6: There's no telling whether the other parameters of the universe would be life-permitting.

The typical response to this objection is to point out that the features of the universe on which the parameters depend are extremely broad, so that changes would result in a world where, say, all we would have is a distribution of matter in a pattern of random TV static, or each particle being separated from the other by so much space that complex structures could never form, or a giant undifferentiated lump of matter, etc.

But anyway, why couldn't the same objection be made to the "made-by-Jesus" world? For all we know, most arrangements of the parameters of the universe result in a "made-by-Jesus world." We haven't observed those universes, so who is really to say otherwise?

Typical Objection to Fine-Tuning #7: The fine-tuning argument is just an appeal to our ignorance, or a "god-of-the-gaps"-style inference.

Is this also true of saying that the truth of Christianity is a good explanation for the made-by-Jesus universe?

TL;DR: If you buy any of the typical objections to cosmological fine tuning, there is a concern about whether your view "proves too much" by failing to admit scenarios that would intuitively serve as compelling evidence for Christianity. For instance, in a universe in which the words "made-by-Jesus-Christ" were written into every square inch of matter as a direct result of the way the initial parameters of the universe were ordered, you would have to conclude that we had absolutely zero evidence in favor of Christianity.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

What do you think of the medical claims of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an American environmental attorney and activist, has recently announced his candidacy for the presidency and appeared on the Jordan B Peterson Podcast, where I encountered him for the first time. He makes the, um, interesting claim that endocrine disruptors are "everywhere to be found" in our daily lives, and that because they can sexually feminize frogs, they must be responsible for the apparent explosion of gender dysphoria and transgender identity that has taken place over the last 5-10 years.

Some more claims I did a double-take on, having never heard them before: He claims also that a Cochraine collaboration report has declared Pharma drugs are the third leading cause of death in the US after cancer and heart attacks, and that masks are entirely ineffective in preventing the transmission of COVID-19? 70% of advertising on the news is from pharmaceutical companies? Big Pharma gives twice as much as the next biggest industry to congress in lobbying efforts? Most drug research has been corrupted by bad incentives and cannot be trusted?

If you don't know Kennedy, Chat GPT summarizes his "distinctive policy positions and views" as:

Environmental Advocacy: Kennedy is well-known for his advocacy and activism on environmental issues. He has been a strong proponent of environmental conservation, fighting against pollution, climate change, and the use of harmful chemicals. He has advocated for sustainable energy solutions, conservation of natural resources, and protection of ecosystems.
Vaccine Safety Concerns: Kennedy has been vocal about his concerns regarding vaccine safety, particularly the potential risks associated with certain vaccine ingredients. He has criticized the vaccine industry and called for further research into the safety and efficacy of vaccines, emphasizing the importance of informed consent and transparency.
Opposition to Industrial Agriculture: Kennedy has expressed opposition to industrial agriculture practices and the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). He has advocated for organic farming methods, sustainable agriculture, and the promotion of healthier food options.
Corporate Influence in Politics: Kennedy has been critical of the influence of corporations on politics and policy-making. He has highlighted the need for campaign finance reform and has called for increased transparency in political donations to reduce the impact of corporate interests on policy decisions.
Energy Policy and Fossil Fuels: Kennedy has been a strong advocate for renewable energy sources and a critic of fossil fuel dependence. He has supported the development and implementation of clean energy technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change.
Civil Liberties and Privacy: Kennedy has expressed concerns about the erosion of civil liberties and privacy rights. He has opposed government surveillance programs and the infringement of individual rights in the name of national security.

He has a lot of "big if true" claims and I would be grateful to know if there is any substance to them or what I need to say in order to efficiently discredit him in the future to anyone who may believe what he says.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago · Edited 9mo ago

I thought Wolfers conceded to Caplan on his blog that the effect size is ridiculously small (like, you would need a million dollars in yearly income to actually raise your happiness by 1 SD). Wolfers responds to Caplan: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/02/wolfers_respond.html Caplan: http://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/02/the_wolfers_equ.html

Not convinced? Consider: Wolfers’ result implies that to raise happiness by one standard deviation, you have to raise income by 1/.35=2.86 log points. How much is that exactly? In percentage terms, that’s (e^2.86)-1 – an increase of 1,640%. So if you currently earn $50,000, Wolfers’ coefficient implies you’d need an extra $820,585 per year to durably increase your happiness by one lousy standard deviation. In math, that’s not “zero effect of income on happiness.” But in English, it basically is.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

Moonshot Personal Growth Idea

There are a lot of smart, hyper-informed people on here (don't be bashful). Each probably have 1-5 topics they know A LOT about, who could deliver a knowledgable spiel over voice or text without much effort and intelligently field any number of follow-up questions. So it occurs to me there might be a big educational opportunity for me here if I can capture some of this low-hanging fruit.

I don't know much about American politics, health, business, etc., but eagerly want to know more, and I'm happy to talk over discord/phone/voice or text depending on your preferences. Some topics to jog your brain; if it strikes you that "hey, I actually got obsessed with topic 23 one time and learned everything you could possibly know about it over a 6 month period," please consider reaching out to me. I'll adopt a position indicated by either "pro" or "con" provisionally just to inspire engagement (my actual views here are very low-confidence and "pro/con" means something more like "I've heard interesting arguments for this side of the issue that I want an intelligent person who knows more than I do to explain the merits of to me" than "this is what I believe.")

“The current level of military spending is justified.” Pro
“The typical white male is utterly blameless for the circumstances of the African American community” Pro
"The growth of transgender identity and bisexuality have the character of a social contagion" Pro (Is bisexuality created or only revealed by the environment? Is anyone bisexual because of encouragement, or is the absence of discouragement the only environmental factor that does anything to affect rates of ID?) (Caplan)
“Asian romantic preferences are morally permissible.” Pro
“De facto interrogational torture by the US is justified.” Pro
"Extraterrestrial life is the best explanation of some UFO sightings" Con
“Any minimum wage fails a purely utilitarian cost benefit test due to disemployment effects.” Pro
"Joe Biden's Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Would Be Disastrous," (Or: Cost benefit analysis puts several other environmental causes ahead of climate change.)
"Feminism is bad for women." (a la Bryan Caplan)
"Conventional medicine barely makes us healthier" (as seen in Robin Hanson's case for radical medical skepticism, from the RAND Health insurance experiment to the replication crisis http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/feardie.pdf)
"Dietary research is of such poor quality that we know almost nothing about whether any given major diet fad is truly the ideal diet." (Pro) (I would be willing to take the even stronger position that we don't even know ANYTHING about the right diet just to see what a smart, informed person would say in response to better calibrate my reasoning on this issue)
"Most of life is a prestige-signaling game./Social status is the closest thing to a one-variable explanation for everything, and does far better than the traditional rival models like sex or money."
"Diversity is our strength." Pro
"Society does not clearly treat one sex more unfairly than the other." (Pro)
"IQ is real and a major determinant of social outcomes" Pro
"Racial groups differ in socially relevant ways for genetic reasons." Con
“Capitalists deserve their success.” Pro
"Money doesn't really buy happiness." Pro
“The solution to traffic is congestion pricing (tolls)” Pro
"Actions taken by the Biden Admin during the Covid pandemic were generally justified." Not enough info to sway either way
“We should deregulate construction completely.” Pro
“Workers are not underpaid in competitive business environments.” Pro
Question: How do taxes work, and how SHOULD they work?
“Affirmative action is immoral/harmful.” Pro
“State-mandated wealth redistribution is immoral./Wealth inequality is not a serious social problem” Pro
“Abortion is morally permissible.” Pro
“We should put America First” pro
“It is not possible to be a good criminal defense lawyer AND a good person.” Pro
“We should privatize everything.” Pro
“The poor generally deserve to be poor.” “American wealth inequality is generally fair.” (as seen in remarks made by Caplan re: the so-called "success sequence")
“Gender is essentially biological.” Pro (Tomas Bogardus, Alex Byrne)
“We should remove confederate monuments.” Con
“We should not provide trigger warnings/safety culture actually harms mental health.” Pro (Jonathan Haidt)
“We Should Stop Talking about Privilege” pro
“Immigration is Not a Human Right.” Con
“The Death Penalty is Immoral” pro
“The typical meat eater does nothing wrong.” Pro
“Political correctness is just politeness.” Con
“There are no positive rights; There is no right to healthcare or education.” Pro
“Utilitarianism is a bad moral theory.” Pro
“It isn’t morally wrong to misgender a trans person.” Pro
“Artificial intelligence is not an existential risk.” Pro
“We should not have gun control.” Pro
“We should segregate intimate public spaces by biological sex.” Or: “it is not morally wrong to do so.” Pro
“It’s morally wrong for the average voter to vote; we should try to decrease voter turnout.” Pro
“It’s morally permissible to racially profile.” Pro
“Psychological egoism is false.” Pro or con
“Ethical egoism is false.” Pro
“Racial discrimination is not inherently immoral.” Pro
“Businesses may racially select their customers.” Pro
“Equality of opportunity is morally undesirable.” Pro
“Mixed martial arts don’t violate anyone’s rights.” Pro
“We are morally obligated to tip servers.” Pro
“Hazing should be permitted on college campuses.” Pro
“It is just to punish criminals for the sake of causing suffering to people who deserve it.” Pro or con, preferably con
“If we ought to be taxed more, we ought to donate our excess income.” (“Rich socialists/distributive egalitarians are hypocrites.”) pro
“It’s morally permissible to sell oneself into permanent slavery.” Pro
“There is no duty to hire the most qualified applicant.” Pro
“We should completely deregulate the provision of healthcare services.” Pro
“We should not require occupational licensing by law (for doctors, plumbers, or lawyers).” Pro
“Workplace quality and safety regulations are bad for workers.” Pro
“We should not dispense racial reparations to the black community.” Pro
Con “alcoholics (and drug addicts in general) are nonresponsible victims”
Pro: “Race is biologically real”
Pro:“The rich pay their fair share”
“Exploitation isn’t wrong.” Pro
“Free market pricing is a better distributor than queuing” Pro
“Price gouging is fine.” Pro
“The casting couch is just prostitution” Pro
“Affirmative Action is systemically racist” Pro
“Colleges are guilty of negligent advertising” pro
"We should we abolish civil rights law" (Richard Hanania)
“Gender is essentially biological” pro

TL;DR Looking for someone to explain American politics to me, preferably over discord voice. Especially interested in topics like happiness, relationship success, American public policy (esp. healthcare and the budget)

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PerseusWizardry 9mo ago

Even on utilitarianism, meritocracy is useful. The erosion of meritocratic norms and increasing resentment may cause more harm in the long run than it benefits a few black Harvard students.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

I do believe in evolution, but my understanding is that evolution is only intended as an explanation of the diversity of life but not its initial origins. For that, the abiogenesis story is the only serious naturalistic candidate of which I’m aware, aside from the “panspermia” idea that life evolved somewhere more favorable to life and traveled to the earth in a stable vehicle.

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PerseusWizardry 9mo ago

Even on utilitarianism, meritocracy is useful. The erosion of meritocratic norms and increasing resentment may cause more harm in the long run than it benefits a few black Harvard students.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

The universe is heading toward a state of maximal entropy; when it reaches that state, known as “thermal equilibrium”, all life processes will be impossible. If you imagine all the possible ways of arranging stuff in the universe, an extremely high proportion of them would put the universe in thermal equilibrium immediately. Life is only possible (for a while – it will eventually run down) because our universe luckily started out very far from thermal equilibrium, with extremely low entropy, 14 billion years ago, for some unknown reason.

So, given that almost all ways of assigning values to the universe’s parameters would be unfriendly to life, why does the universe in fact have life-friendly parameters?

The initial entropy of the universe was ridiculously low. According to the traditional Big Bang theory, the universe originated in a giant explosion about 14 billion years ago. At its beginning, the universe had an incredibly low entropy. According to one estimate, if you randomly picked a possible initial state for a universe, the probability of picking one with such a low entropy is about 1 in ten to the power of ten to the power of 124. The low initial entropy, in turn, is crucial to explaining life and everything else in the universe that we care about.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

I didn’t intend this as an argument for Christianity and am not myself religious. Obviously the probability of Christianity is greater given deism, though, and I guess fine tuning suggests a god with an interest in our lives. But it’s indifferent with respect to Christianity vs some other religion like Islam, and I don’t think it’s strong enough evidence that it implies that “one of the world religions must be true.” A Christian would have to use it in a cumulative case for their religion that also invoked some more specifically pro-Christianity evidence. Supposedly they have done so in the form of historical support for the resurrection of Jesus, but I am very skeptical.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

I would like to request an effort post in which all of the dubious medical claims made by Robert F Kennedy Jr. in his recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience are examined, if false, refuted.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

I wasn’t arguing against evolution, which doesn’t address the origin of life. Evolutionary theory explains how life became diverse/descent with modification happened, but it’s not even an attempt to explain life’s origins. Abiogenesis is still the leading explanation.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

This is question begging. You observed the naturalistic origin of life? You can’t say “I know life originated naturalistically because I observe the existence of organic life but not its initial origin.”

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

People mean different things by “the anthropic principle” so let me clarify what you have in mind. Sometimes the idea is supposed to challenge the fine tuning argument by pointing to the multiverse and invoking the law of large numbers. That argument works if you have some reason to think the multiverse exists and is more probable and theoretically virtuous than theism.

But I also hear much more naive and confused sounding appeals to the anthropic principle. For example, sometimes people seem to be suggesting that because a phenomenon involves the creation of observers, the phenomenon requires no explanation, which is silly. Imagine if I prayed for a parachute while falling from a plane, one spontaneously manifested out of thin air and deployed to save my life, and I reflected afterwards about why that happened. I conclude, “well, I wouldn’t be here to ask the question in the first place if that didn’t happen, so there must be no explanation needed.”

Or imagine saying the theory of evolution is dispensable because “if it didn’t happen we wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t be here to wonder about it if not, so what is there to explain?”

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

Your point only functions as an explanation of fine tuning if we assume in advance that the (or “a”) multiverse hypothesis is true. It’s unlikely that I would result from my parent’s act of conception, but billions of acts of conception were happening before I was conceived. But we don’t have an analogous knowledge of there being billions and billions of universes with different parameters and physical laws, exhausting enough of the possibilities to eventually create life.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

To get evolution started, you need a self-replicating molecular organism and a stable incubation environment in which it can proliferate for a long time. How complex do you think such a thing would be? Why haven’t we been able to recreate this from non living matter with modern technology? I suspect such a self-replicating organism would have to be unbelievably complicated.

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PerseusWizardry 1yr ago

Are my philosophy professor's objections to the biological definition of race sound?

My philosophy of race class has considered and dismissed the biological definition of race. We've explored five objections to race-as-biological:

Objection 1: It isn't possible to locate the boundaries between racial types with any precision. The biological definition of race aims to divide humanity into distinct categories on the basis of physiological traits that don't admit of clean divisions. but this is hopelessly arbitrary given the absence of differences of kind between purported racial groups (there are only differences of degree). Skin color, for instance, varies along a continuum without discrete segments that perfectly track racial distinctions. "Short" and "tall" aren't good enough for anatomy or basketball, and neither can the imprecise idea of "races." Race attempts to bracket "lumps" apart from each other, but this is a vain effort because there are only continuua.

Objection 2: Scientific authority: Scientists don't talk of "races" but instead prefer to speak of "populations." As John H. Relethford says in his introduction to biological anthropology:

Until the 1950s, much of biological anthropoloigy was devoted to racial description and classification. Most sciences go through a descriptive phase, followed by an explanatory phase... Today biological anthropologists rarely treat race as a [scientifically useful] concept. It has no utility for explanation, and its value for description is limited.

Objection 3: There are no reliable lumpings/clusters of characteristics for "race" to track. For example, skin color is supposed to go with a certain hair texture and with certain facial features, consistently, but racial traits just don't hang together this way: many dark skinned people have straight hair, aquiline noses, thin lips, and many light skinned people have curled hair, full lips, and wide noses.

Objection 4: Modern dictionaries do not define race biologically.

The last objection makes very little sense to me, but here goes:

Objection 5: Human heredity is much more complicated than the transmission of racial essences. It involves a myriad of environmental factors, to produce the traits that distinguish humans from each other. Biological race-thinking is incapable of producing an adequate scientific account of this complexity.

Do you find these objections convincing? If not, why not?

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

What do you think of my example of the “made by God” world? Wouldn’t your argument be equally applicable in such a world, so that it wouldn’t be evidence of theism?

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

I’m not a Christian, just weakly committed to deism based on the fine tuning argument. (Or at least I think the probability of deism is greater than maybe 30%, maybe greater than 50%)

But anyway, yes, if I think something is evidence in favor of something, then its absence is evidence against it.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago · Edited 10mo ago

Wait, do you think it’s physically impossible for a fighter jet to arise from natural processes, like random quantum fluctuations and collisions? I thought it was just unlikely. Don’t most physicists agree that with enough chance events this could occur? Sean Carroll has given weirder examples of things he thinks happen due to the multiverse existing, such as that there must be a universe somewhere where unembodied human brains just appear in the middle of a tiny space due to random fluctuations of “something something quantum mechanics”, with a supportive environment that allows them to live.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

large-scale forces would be disrupting any intermediate stages of genesis,

Why wouldn’t forces work to disrupt intermediate stages of the genesis of a microorganism? You don’t think it would happen spontaneously, in one step, do you?

and it needs more diverse environments to assemble its different parts

A self-replicating molecular organism has very different parts assembled in a very specific way. Why wouldn’t it need a diverse range of assembly environments, if a fighter jet would?

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

Thank you for this thoughtful point-by-point response. It's exactly what I was looking for. About 2: even if these effects are real in humans, who is to say the dosages we are exposed to make a difference? I take your point that the "suddenness" and recency of the increase in transgender ID is not consistent with the endocrine disruptor hypothesis.

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

Suppose you were sentenced to death by firing squad but a thousand marksmen ten feet away missed their shot. Would you say you don’t have to explain how this happened (by design, presumably—a conspiracy not to kill you), because being in a position to ask it requires already existing?

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

I don’t have a specific number in mind but the reason theism predicts life is that

it’s (by comparison to the multiverse) simple in terms of number of parts involved,
it can explain the order of the universe (as god executing a design plan as opposed to it being a lot of arbitrary detail)
life would be preferred by god because life is necessary for most, if not all, good things to exist, and a rational being would prefer the good. (This part involves value realism, but if you don’t like that then you can just add it into the hypothesis alongside theism and, as long as you don’t think the prior probability of moral realism is prohibitively low, it wouldn’t cancel out the explanatory benefits of theism with respect to fine tuning)

What do you think the probability of life given non-theism is, and why?

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PerseusWizardry 10mo ago

People mean different things by “the anthropic principle” so let me clarify what you have in mind. Sometimes the idea is supposed to challenge the fine tuning argument by pointing to the multiverse and invoking the law of large numbers. That argument works if you have some reason to think the multiverse exists and is more probable and theoretically virtuous than theism.

But I also hear much more naive and confused sounding appeals to the anthropic principle. For example, sometimes people seem to be suggesting that because a phenomenon involves the creation of observers, the phenomenon requires no explanation, which is silly. Imagine if I prayed for a parachute while falling from a plane, one spontaneously manifested out of thin air and deployed to save my life, and I reflected afterwards about why that happened. I conclude, “well, I wouldn’t be here to ask the question in the first place if that didn’t happen, so there must be no explanation needed.”

Or imagine saying the theory of evolution is dispensable because “if it didn’t happen we wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t be here to wonder about it if not, so what is there to explain?”

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