PerseusWizardry
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User ID: 1815
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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
PerseusWizardry
10mo ago
Like, what is the natural process that results in the probabilistic construction of a jet engine?
Can I not just as easily ask “what is the natural process that results in the probabilistic construction of a self-replicating molecular organism?”
What is the evidence these two things are of similar likelihood?
You seem to think the jet engine is vastly less likely, so apparently you think there is evidence that bears on this question. What is that evidence?
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?
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.
Your first bullet 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.
Should I explain why I find the multiverse hypothesis less plausible than theism as an explanation of fine tuning, or do you already agree with me that it is?
Your second bullet point calls for some subject matter expertise that I obviously don’t have. You mention that RNA can be self-catalyzing. I suppose this raises the question of “just how hard would it be to create RNA by chance circumstances.” How complex is RNA in terms of number of parts and mechanisms?
To your third bullet point, I’m not as surprised that organisms which were already created in such environments can now live in them as I am by the suggestion that they were created in the first place. I agree that this is evidence in favor of their possibly being created in them, though, of course, because if it was impossible for an organism to live in such an environment, it would be impossible for them to be created in them. But anyway, I’m not sure this is a strong item of evidence in favor of abiogenesis and don’t weight it very heavily.
I don’t understand this sentence:
“ of the 402 proteins which have been highly conserved in bacterial metabolism, 380 of them are highly stable at the pressure, temperature, and pH of these mineral-emitting thermal vents.”
What are proteins “which are highly conserved in bacterial metabolism?” And why is this significant?
I would love to chat with your friend, please consider giving me a point of contact. (If it matters, I’m not a Christian, I’m a weak, almost-reserving-judgement-but-not-quite deist with a sense that there is something to the cosmic fine tuning argument for life.)
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.
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?
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.
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.”
PerseusWizardry
10mo ago
Why do you think the multiverse exists?
PerseusWizardry
10mo ago
From the Wikipedia article on abiogenesis:
“The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but a process of increasing complexity involving the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Many proposals have been made for different stages of the process“
That sounds very complicated. Many different parts are involved with many different mechanisms, which had to be in place at the right time in many different stages.
PerseusWizardry
10mo ago
From the Wikipedia article on abiogenesis:
“The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but a process of increasing complexity involving the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Many proposals have been made for different stages of the process“
That sounds very complicated. Many different parts are involved with many different mechanisms, which had to be in place at the right time in many different stages.
PerseusWizardry
10mo ago
From the Wikipedia article on abiogenesis:
“The prevailing scientific hypothesis is that the transition from non-living to living entities on Earth was not a single event, but a process of increasing complexity involving the formation of a habitable planet, the prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis, and the emergence of cell membranes. Many proposals have been made for different stages of the process“
That sounds very complicated. Many different parts are involved with many different mechanisms, which had to be in place at the right time in many different stages. By “A relatively simple reaction that managed to propagate” are you imagining some kind of one-step jump to a self-replicating organism?
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?”
PerseusWizardry
10mo ago
I don’t have a specific number in mind but the reason theism predicts life is that
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it’s (by comparison to the multiverse) simple in terms of number of parts involved,
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it can explain the order of the universe (as god executing a design plan as opposed to it being a lot of arbitrary detail)
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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?
PerseusWizardry
10mo ago
The minimally replicating natural system would need:
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Some way of reproducing dynamically in response to mutations. It can’t just be able to reproduce itself perfectly, but otherwise not at all; it needs an information carrier that can vary the assembly instructions in ways that would result in multiple different possible viable offspring. Otherwise, evolution would’ve never happened, because there would only have ever been one organism, or the one organism would have died very early on.
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Some machinery for assembly of parts,
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a way of reading the instructions,
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An outer membrane that holds all of this stuff together,
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A way to catalyze it’s own chemical processes
How is RNA sufficient for all of the above?
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?”
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.
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?
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:
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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