site banner
ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   5186 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 18, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

8
Top Bottom New Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Two reasons this doesn't seem plausible: frequent migration and frequent changes of diet. We find wheat cultivated 10k years ago, and that's obviously just a lower bound, it might've been so before that without evidence. But - "and Germany and Spain by 5000 BC". 5k years is enough time for some evolution, but how much? And humans and ancestors, over a million years of evolution, would've had to adapt to many different kinds of food, leading to all humans today being able to survive on a wide range of diets.

There certainly are adaptations to different foods among different people - but how significant are these, and adaptations to what, and do they have much to do with modern diets? not sure.

If you look at skin colour, it is clear that, over a few thousand years, we can adapt to local conditions despite migration. We don't need to keep adaptations for conditions from millions of years ago. We can just be adapted to the conditions of the last few thousand years.

Natural selection takes a long time to bring a new mutation to significant frequency in the population, but if a genetic variant is already common in a population - as it would be if two populations have recently mixed together and the variant was common in one of the populations - it wouldn't take long to spread to nearly everyone if there is strong selection.

Yes, but - if the variant was already present, and if there was strong selection. This is going to be true for some variants - but which variants, and what effect they have, is a question! Humans lived in europe for a long time before skin color adapted. So concluding 'if you are from the mediterranean historically, then eat what they eat there' is not going to work well.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats