0775: "Savannah Ancestry"

[James A. Donald]

James A. McDonald, what you are presenting is dangerously close to trolling. So much so, that if you make further spurious claims without any kind of cite/proof/evidence/back-up ("it's just so obvious I don't need to" is not proof of anything but your own incompetence) you will be dismissed as a troll, and warned/booted/banned/ejected accordingly so. Also, you've lost all rights to even mentioning anything about race; racism is not tolerated on this forum and so help me I will make a case that your quote "Of course, like many blacks, he still expresses himself very well in simple diction" could be construed as racist, if not pure condescending fuckery from a little turd. Even if I can't make a case for it, I think it speaks volumes about your vile little nature.

I would love to be ejected for invoking the scientific method and replicablility - it would reveal once again that the Basically Decent are another theocracy, and that Basic Human Decency is yet another incarnation of the inquisition's prohibited theses of 1277, which banned, among other things, the idea that the scientific method, rather than higher authority, was the way to the truth.

If you eject me, you have lost this debate -again.

As Richard Feynman tells us:

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

“The Pleasure of Finding things out” by Richard Feynman, page 187

We have many studies in teaching, for example, in which people make observations and they make lists and they do statistics, but they do not thereby become established science, established knowledge. They are merely an imitative form of science-like the South Sea Islanders making airfields, radio towers out of wood, expecting a great airplane to arrive. They even build wooden airplanes of the same shape as they see in the foreigners’ airfields around them, but strangely, they don’t fly. The result of this pseudoscientific imitation is to produce experts, which many of you are-experts. You teachers who are really teaching children at the bottom of the heap, maybe you can doubt the experts once in a while. Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

When someone says science teaches such and such, he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach it; experience teaches it. If they say to you science has shown such and such, you might ask, “How does science show it-how did the scientists find out-how, what, where?” Not science has shown, but this experiment, this effect, has shown. And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments (but we must listen to all the evidence), to judge whether a reusable conclusion has been arrived at. . I think we live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television words, books, and so on are unscientific. That doesn’t mean they are bad, but they are unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science.

Genuine science is replicable. And “replicable” does not mean two priests recite the same doctrine, it means they explain what they did in such a fashion that anyone else could do it also.

Thus to invoke what is readily observable, that one theory can explain, and the other theory not explain, is the truest form of science - and yet another thing that is readily observable is that we have higher expectations on female public speakers for fluent, complex, and well structured sentences, and it is difficult to point out this fact without also pointing out that our expectations for black male public speakers are even lower than our expectations for white male public speakers.

The lower expectations for black public speakers might well be explained by racism-colonialism-imperialism-capitalism-blah-blah-blah. The higher expectations for white female public speakers cannot be so explained.

[Belial]

I would love to be ejected

You all heard it.

Someone who's not me want to do the honors?

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

I would, but… well, yeah.

[Gelsamel]

For all the accusations of using a "Higher Authority", which you refer to as being 'priests', to justify our beliefs you sure invoke the scientific authority, or priest as you would call him, Richard Feynman a lot.

As Richard Feynman tells us:

As the bible tells us:

Oh and look a this; http://www.mail-archive.com/alt.atheism ... 00067.html

As Richard Feynman tells us:

HEY, The observation is REPLICATED! That means it's science now.

[gmalivuk]

I would love to be ejected for invoking the scientific method

No. You will be ejected for your gross miscarriage of science, and your abject refusal to back up any of your claims with more than personal observations. That is *not* how science works, because real science depends on *not* trusting individuals. You said this yourself with the Feynman quote. So you're telling us we should assume you as an individual "scientist" are ignorant, and therefore we should demand that you actually back your claims up with evidence.

"this experiment, this effect, has shown. And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments (but we must listen to all the evidence), to judge whether a reusable conclusion has been arrived at."

You have not provided us with any of the evidence found in any of these tests you claim happened. Hell, you have not even provided us with any evidence that most of these tests even happened in the first place!

[SecondTalon]

I would love to be ejected

You all heard it.

Someone who's not me want to do the honors?

Best I can do is remove global posting rights. Which I've done.

[jestingrabbit]

Thus to invoke what is readily observable, that one theory can explain, and the other theory not explain, is the truest form of science

I disagree. The truest form of science is conclusions correctly derived from well designed, repeatable experiments.

You've not cited anything to support your opinions on what people expect from different public speakers, or it seems any other claim that you've made.

What individuals consider to be readily observed might merely be a consequence of confirmation bias. To quote Feynman,

Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of - this history - because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong - and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that.

I believe that the vast majority of the things that you have put forward as "readily observable" are simply those things that agree with your preconceived ideas about people of different genders and races. Absent the evidence of repeatable experiments all you have is claims without supporting evidence, and claims made without evidence may be discarded without evidence.

edit: ninja'd.

[Gelsamel]

We have many studies in teaching, for example, in which people make observations and they make lists and they do statistics, but they do not thereby become established science, established knowledge. They are merely an imitative form of science-like the South Sea Islanders making airfields, radio towers out of wood, expecting a great airplane to arrive. They even build wooden airplanes of the same shape as they see in the foreigners’ airfields around them, but strangely, they don’t fly. The result of this pseudoscientific imitation is to produce experts, which many of you are-experts. You teachers who are really teaching children at the bottom of the heap, maybe you can doubt the experts once in a while. Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

This is the saddest part of all of this.

Stop trying to substitute your peice of shit pseudoscience as though it is real science. As an actual scientist it pisses me off to no end. You are a failure as any form of scientist. Your scientific method is, as Feynman puts it, an imitation and sadly it is apparently the best you can manifest since you refuse to cite sources. It's not like you were substituting poorly done, but actual, science with your imitation science. Imitation science is ALL YOU HAD to begin with.

Now if you're done playing "Scientist" may I suggest "Mommy and Daddy" as the more traditional imitation game that one such as yourself would play?

[phlip]

Hey, look at it this way - at least he finally cited something. Even it it was just an opinion piece quoted as an appeal-to-authority that was irrelevant to any of the claims he was actually making.

[Chai Kovsky]

Yes. Let us give the man a damn cookie.

[dedalus]

Yes. Let us give the man a damn cookie.

I vote we give him some bread and butter. After all, considering the trouble he has to go through to find it, he's probably evolved to consider it more of a treat then cookies...

[Karilyn]

Similarly, the fact that people have orgasms over Obama's public speaking skills shows they have low expectations for a black male speech and vocabulary.

No, it's because the last fuck to hold that office couldn't pronounce nuclear.

Observe the outrage when Bush gives a somewhat non standard pronunciation of "nuclear", while no one blinks an eye when Obama pronounces "corpsman" "corpse man". Soft bigotry of low expectations. The non reaction to "corpse man" reveals what you guys really think of black males.

You know, that couldn't have anything to do with the fact that most media outlets in America are every bit as biased towards Democrats as FoxNews is biased towards Republicans. Nope, nope. Absolutely couldn't have anything to do with that.

Is this too subtle for James to understand with his weak male mind which did not evolve social skills?

Oh and look a this; http://www.mail-archive.com/alt.atheism ... 00067.html

You're fucking kidding me right? He's a Satanist? Dude. James. Stop giving Satanists a bad name, like seriously.

EDIT: Er... worse name. We need good publicity, not bad. Like seriously.

[Felstaff]

I would love to be ejected for invoking the scientific method and replicablility - it would reveal once again that the Basically Decent are another theocracy, and that Basic Human Decency is yet another incarnation of the inquisition's prohibited theses of 1277, which banned, among other things, the idea that the scientific method, rather than higher authority, was the way to the truth.

If you eject me, you have lost this debate -again.

You were ejected for not providing a shred of evidence for your own spurious claims. Not once did you invoke anything even remotely scientific, and you were warned that in no certain terms would you cease to be able to post if you continued making claims without any scientific merit.

By the way the debate was who got the last word in. Huh. Guess I win.

[BioTube]

Sorry for taking so long to reply, but I've been fighting a misbehaving filesystem.

Yeah, it's definitely that. It absolutely has nothing to do with the fact that even thinking the word "union" too loudly will get you fired from most jobs where unionization would even start to be a good strategy. Or, you know, all the effort that went into breaking labor unions when they first started becoming a thing.

Yeah, no, it's definitely because workers just don't like unions that much.

Living in a right-to-work state, I don't have much interaction with union workers, so it's entirely possible I got it wrong(though your explanation fails to explain why unionism is up in the government).

Austrian/Chicago school economics

The former gave us anarchocapitalism while the latter advocates nationalized money and the two use very different approaches - I don't think you did the research when you lumped them.

[Karilyn]

Yeah, it's definitely that. It absolutely has nothing to do with the fact that even thinking the word "union" too loudly will get you fired from most jobs where unionization would even start to be a good strategy. Or, you know, all the effort that went into breaking labor unions when they first started becoming a thing. Yeah, no, it's definitely because workers just don't like unions that much.

Living in a right-to-work state, I don't have much interaction with union workers, so it's entirely possible I got it wrong(though your explanation fails to explain why unionism is up in the government).

This may just be me, but I'm not a fan of paying yet ANOTHER group some 10-25% of my income. Goddess knows I'm already overtaxed by the government, I don't need to be taxed by a Union too. It also doesn't help that the Union can chose to spend the money I give them wherever they want, and may be directly using it in opposition to what I want; an example being in support of a political candidate I do not approve of.

IN YET ANOTHER example, I had a friend who was working for a union when she was working in a candy making factory, and she was threatened by the Union that they would make sure she lost her job because she was working too fast, if she didn't slow down, because she was making her coworkers look bad by comparison. Which is an absolutely disgusting abuse of power.

There are legitimate criticisms of the union system from the perspective of the worker. Which largely amounts to that after a union is in place, the union tends to care more about themselves than the workers they were supposed to be protecting. In a way, this is an excellent mirror of national governments, which despite their promises, tend to prioritize increasing their own personal power, instead of protecting citizen's interests.

[dedalus]

Ultimately, any group divides the world up into two groups: 'the people/things we care about', and everyone else. And then puts a specific weighting on the rights and importance of both groups. And unfortunately, the ability to give one group a near-infinite rating and just say 'fuck the rest' is so very human...

[gmalivuk]

Ultimately, any group divides the world up into two groups: 'the people/things we care about', and everyone else. And then puts a specific weighting on the rights and importance of both groups.

It's not that simple, because *individuals* are members of many groups, and may place differing weights on the importance of membership in each one of those groups, so you actually have a great many gradations in how important others are to your own moral decisions.

[Mr. Samsa]

Men talk just as much as women

Though I originally read it in a much more acerbic takedown of the "common wisdom", which I am still trying to find.

Science: more people should try *doing it* instead of imagining it.

Edit: Oh right, here we go. It's toward the middle.

And don’t forget: even though multiple studies indicate that women utter something like 0.11% more words per day than men, (and I wonder, tongue-in-cheek, if that extra point-eleven-percent is accounted for by all the times we have to repeat ourselves to men and children who weren’t listening the first time) the myth endures that women talk so much more than men. In 2006, a popular book stated that women talk three times as much as men, with no scientific citations to back up the assertion (the author withdrew the assertion in later editions). Marriage counselors jumped on this “fact” and used it to help wives understand why they needed to be more silent (wow, it’s like Paul’s here in the room with us!). The idea that women talk so much more than men is clearly not founded in reality, and yet it fits with our perception so much that we fell for this bogus number.

I thought Mark Lieberman's discussion of this issue here and here was brilliant. He traces the citation back to a (religious-focused) book written in 1993:

James Dobson wrote in his Focus on the Family column, June 2004:

Research makes it clear that little girls are blessed with greater linguistic ability than little boys, and it remains a lifelong talent. Simply stated, she talks more than he. As an adult, she typically expresses her feelings and thoughts far better than her husband and is often irritated by his reticence. God may have given her 50,000 words per day and her husband only 25,000. He comes home from work with 24,975 used up and merely grunts his way through the evening. He may descend into Monday Night Football, while his wife is dying to expend her remaining 25,000 words.

Apparently this was recycled material, since Christianity Today quotes it from a book first published in 1993:

Dr. James Dobson hits on the wiring problem in his book, Love for a Lifetime. He writes: "Research makes it clear that little girls are blessed with greater linguistic ability than little boys, and it remains a lifelong talent. Simply stated, she talks more than he." Dobson suggests that God may have given Mrs. Cell Phone 50,000 words per day while Mr. Computer may average 25,000.

I don't have access to the 1993 edition of this book (though ads for the current version feature the same quote), so I'm going to be tentative in naming Dobson as one of the two earliest publications of the sex-linked vocabulary allowance idea. And Dobson says that "God may have given" particular lexical allowances to a hypothetical (if prototypical) woman and man, which is fair enough, so we can't blame him for the fact that the quantities are unsourced.

[dedalus]

Ultimately, any group divides the world up into two groups: 'the people/things we care about', and everyone else. And then puts a specific weighting on the rights and importance of both groups.

It's not that simple, because *individuals* are members of many groups, and may place differing weights on the importance of membership in each one of those groups, so you actually have a great many gradations in how important others are to your own moral decisions.

Well yes, but the point is that unions themselves aren't an innately bad thing (in fact they're a very good thing), but people can make them so... The same could be said of many things...

[Karilyn]

Well yes, but the point is that unions themselves aren't an innately bad thing (in fact they're a very good thing), but people can make them so... The same could be said of many things...

Unions are not an innately bad thing. Neither is the government. Neither are big businesses. In fact, all of them, in theory, are very good things. Yes, even Big Businesses, which in theory should be able to produce products more efficiently, more cheaply, at a higher quality, in addition to having more resources to provide better customer support, and they should be able to hire more employees at higher wages.

The reality is though, all three groups fail to provide what they should in theory be able to, because instead of being concerned about us, they are only concerned about themselves. Politicians, business owners, and the union's governance and officers. Not the workers. Unions nowadays just seem to be trading one overlord for another.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[Belial]

There are legitimate criticisms of the union system from the perspective of the worker. Which largely amounts to that after a union is in place, the union tends to care more about themselves than the workers they were supposed to be protecting. In a way, this is an excellent mirror of national governments, which despite their promises, tend to prioritize increasing their own personal power, instead of protecting citizen's interests.

Yeah, no, I'm not saying unions are a perfect system or that they're always implemented well. I'm just scoffing at the idea that the absence of a union is a sign that the workers are perfectly happy and have no reason to unionize. In a world where union-busting tactics of all types exist, that idea is pretty laughable, or would be if it weren't so infuriating.

Also, if I were in a speculating mood (which I am) I would suggest that part of the reason that unions, as currently implemented in the states, are so disproportionately useless is that, in industries where they are or would be useful (and where they aren't backed by/owned by organized crime), great lengths are gone to to destroy them. So the ones that survive are the ones that are either totally ineffective, or totally corrupt.

[webheads]

The alt text is a mish-mash of two separate "your mamma" jokes.

Your mamma's so stupid she thinks a quarterback is a refund.
Your mamma's so stupid she thinks denial is a river in Egypt.

Basically, the mother in question is REALLY stupid.

Thx for this! From now on, I've got to stop going to Googly and Wiki-P, and just head straight for the forums.

And THEN back to that mission-critical project for worky-worky.

[DVC]

It seems fairly obvious to me that if one group of people have a strength advantage over another they would use that to get into power, and then begin to set up social conventions that would keep them and their type in power. Even after society has changed such that physical strength is no longer a significant advantage, the conventions put in place will continue to have an affect. If you start with that as a basis you can explain the vast majority of the different behaviours of men and women in today's societies without having to use evolution at all.

No, you can't, because you still have to explain why modern gender roles ever had anything to do with giving one group of people a strength advantage over another. Getting away from biological evolution doesn't get you out of having to provide evidence for your very own baseless just-so stories...

Yes, you can.

Here's an example: There is apparently one (1) very dubious study that says that women are better multi-taskers (here is an article on the study: http://www.physorg.com/news198940410.html)*. It's been established (sorry I don't have a link to this, but you can search for it) that concentrating on just one task is far more efficient for humans than attempting to do many things at the same time. So, why do we believe that women are better multi-taskers? Here's a plausible explanation: getting others to do all your small mundane tasks for you gives you more time to devote to difficult tasks, achieving results in difficult tasks makes you more valuable to society, and reinforces your status in the community.

*They say this, "[...] although the sexes performed equally when they multitasked on simple maths and map reading tasks, women far excelled men when it came to planning how to search for a lost key, with 70 per cent of women performing better than their average male counterparts." It appears what they have done is determine multi-tasking ability based on the plan each respondent comes up with for searching for a missing key. They acknowledge that men and women have different skills when it comes to spatial awareness (they navigate in different ways), so why wouldn't we expect that they plan/perform differently when it comes to laying out a route on a map? How does the different abilities of men and women in this one task, given the finding of their relative multi-tasking ability on other tasks, result in a conclusion that women are better at multi-tasking?

That might indeed be a plausible explanation, but explanatory power is not enough. For something to be science, it has to be able to make testable predictions based on that story, and it needs to be falsifiable. This is (apparently) really hard for evolutionary psychologists to do, judging from the state of the literature.

Ok, here is another example. This time I will make a prediction based on my theory, which someone can go and do the research for to see if it pans out.

Here is the text of a recent article at: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaki ... 5906994472

GIRLS with younger brothers become sexually active later than those who have only younger sisters or older siblings, research suggests.

Scientists at the University of Western Australia found girls with a younger brother have sex an average 14 months later than those without. Girls with both younger brothers and sisters become sexually active 23 months later.

The explanation could be that older sisters are preoccupied with looking after their younger brothers because sons require more care from their families than daughters do - a theory supported by evidence from other mammals.

Boys tend to be born later than girls, weigh more at birth, and be weaned at a later age. Other evidence suggests that girls tend to help to care for their younger siblings more than boys do.

The study also found that girls with older brothers first menstruated 11 months later than those who did not.

“Elder brothers delay physiological maturation, while younger brothers delay behavioral maturation,” the team said.

The study, which questioned 273 adults about the age when they had become sexually active, is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

With regard to boys needing more care, this only applies very early in life, so I don't think their explanation is a good one. On the other hand I think if a girl has a younger brother, who isn't too much younger, she's more likely to be playing with him more. Basically playing more sport and other boyish activities. Which means less play designed to develop interest in mothering and dating. Thus less of a drive to get into romantic or sexual relationships early.

So what is my prediction? I'd like to see the inverse study. Do boys with older sisters become sexually active earlier? If they did it would strengthen my theory. I expect the affect to be less pronounced because there is more stigma attached to boys doing girly things than the other way around, but we should still see an affect if socialisation is a real phenomenon.

I have no association with the research I cited, and have no knowledge of any study like that I suggested. I will simply wait until something shows up. If you know of something, post it.

[SocialSceneRepairman]

I'm sorry it's been so long, but I was wondering how to put this best.

Yes, I do mean to deny women agency, because it was wrested from them. What I'm saying has some similarities to Engels' Origin, which, with some correction for what more is known of biology and anthropology, I understand to still largely drive mainstream thought.

All life is female, mothers and daughters. There are methods of sharing bits of genetic material between lines other than sexual reproduction, but sexual reproduction, the creation of simulacra of life to test genetic material and to carry useful strains, has come to hold a huge part of life on Earth, due to the efficiency of testing life through these simulacra, which have come to be known as "males." They take on other purposes as organisms come to form societies (helping to raise children, protecting relatives, etc.), but ultimately, the reason for the institution's perseverance is these simulacra's function to roleplay and to face in actuality the threats that might face their daughters. Their purpose is to die, or to prove their own worthlessness to potential mates, so that the daughters will get the right genes. The mothers would be best served to choose the right males, but their purpose is to continue their line, even if they themselves have fractal genes. (Sorry if that sounds nasty, but lesser animals mostly aren't big on "self-actualization.")

Eventually, the success of this institution led to a primate, one that had previously evolved a social structure of males as (among other non-beta-tester duties) protectors of possible mothers with more physical strength, gaining in both males and females the cognitive ability for males to realize what we've all made ourselves forget, the cruel joke of a trickster goddess they truly were. That men, as these simulacra called themselves, were effectively mockeries of life to exist as canaries. Certainly life "in a state of nature" wasn't perfect for women, either, but the fact is that under the earliest civilizations, in every part of the world, it didn't get much better, and in many places got worse. Men, who had been cursed with a sense of self-preservation, a genetic imperative, and the intelligence to realize that these two flew in the face of one another, did they only thing they could do: settled down, whether women liked it or not.

That's why civilization is misogynistic: it allows the robots created by women to walk among them as though they were truly alive. A society not misogynistic would be one in which the only concern of males were for potential mates, potential offspring, female relatives, and potential mates and potential offspring of male relatives. Any society in which a man can call himself "selfish" is misogynistic.

What you have to ask yourself: is that a bad thing?

[The Great Hippo]

That's why civilization is misogynistic: it allows the robots created by women to walk among them as though they were truly alive. A society not misogynistic would be one in which the only concern of males were for potential mates, potential offspring, female relatives, and potential mates and potential offspring of male relatives. Any society in which a man can call himself "selfish" is misogynistic.

What you have to ask yourself: is that a bad thing?

While fairly well-written from a technical perspective, your narrative remains vague and incoherent, involving meaningless moral platitudes, arbitrary labels, and craven examples of the Naturalistic Fallacy. 2/10. Please (don't) try again.

PS: Defining men as robots and women as actual living organisms just because women can bare a parasitic lifeform in their bellies for 9 months is stupid. Either we're all robots who exist for the purpose of passing on genetic material (unless I missed something, men are required to create children too--a woman's status as the incubator for such life does not merit her elevation above the worth of men), or we're all living organisms. I also like how you're trying to justify misogyny as being somehow in the best interests of women by devaluing male worth ("Men are just robots, ladies! You are the real heroes! So the misogyny is totally justified!").

And by 'like', I actually mean 'hate'.

[SocialSceneRepairman]

While fairly well-written from a technical perspective, your narrative remains vague and incoherent, involving meaningless moral platitudes, arbitrary labels, and craven examples of the Naturalistic Fallacy.

If you consider any part of that the Naturalistic Fallacy, you were picking out keywords, not reading it as a whole. The good and the natural are nothing alike, and I'm quite certain I made that very clear.

[The Great Hippo]

If you consider any part of that the Naturalistic Fallacy, you were sleepwalking through.

You mean the part where you assign women elevated status (and define men as robots) on the utterly arbitrary point that women can bare children? That's pretty much a standard example of the Naturalistic Fallacy: "Women can bare children, therefore they are good! Men can't bare children, therefore they are just self-perpetuating machines!"

The funny thing is, you're probably not even aware of the fact that you're espousing a bullshit ploy that's been done to death--you paint oppressors as helpless brutes caught in a system they can't control and elevate the oppressed as long-suffering victims who we should admire for gritting their teeth and baring through said oppression. And in this manner, you justify the oppression as tragic, but wholly necessary.

Basically, you fail. Miserably, utterly, and completely.

[SocialSceneRepairman]

If you consider any part of that the Naturalistic Fallacy, you were sleepwalking through.

You mean the part where you assign women elevated status (and define men as robots) on the utterly arbitrary point that women can bare children? That's pretty much a standard example of the Naturalistic Fallacy: "Women can bare children, therefore they are good! Men can't bare children, therefore they are just self-perpetuating machines!"

The funny thing is, you're probably not even aware of the fact that you're espousing a bullshit ploy that's been done to death--you paint oppressors as helpless brutes caught in a system they can't control and elevate the oppressed as long-suffering victims who we should admire for gritting their teeth and baring through said oppression. And in this manner, you justify the oppression as tragic, but wholly necessary.

Basically, you fail. Miserably, utterly, and completely.

You did not read my post at all. You just saw the part where I said "life is female," took it to mean "women are just better," and viewed the rest of the post through that lens.

Females - not women, females - are self-perpetuating machines. Males - not men, males - are disposable vectors for genetic information. The revelation of this in the human mind is the raison d'etre of society.

[The Great Hippo]

You did not read my post at all. You just saw the part where I said "life is female," took it to mean "women are just better," and viewed the rest of the post through that lens.

Yeah, fine. Cross out all the parts where I said you assign elevated status to women (because referring to men as robots and women as life itself is not at all a value assessment), everything I said still applies.

Oh, and how does male homosexuality fit into this narrative of yours? Oh, shit! The robots are fucking each other!

[gmalivuk]

Males are disposable vectors for genetic information.

No. Male anglerfish are more or less such, but in most species males serve quite a bit more purpose than that.

The funny thing about stupid conclusions from broad misunderstandings of how sexual reproduction works is that they're stupid conclusions based on broad misunderstandings of how sexual reproduction works.

[The Great Hippo]

Females - not women, females - are self-perpetuating machines. Males - not men, males - are disposable vectors for genetic information. The revelation of this in the human mind is the raison d'etre of society.

Okay, I beg pardon, and apologize if that's your actual point--to define all of us as self-perpetuating machines, and men as serving a specific function within this relationship--but go back and read your post yourself. Carefully, this time. Notice something: You only refer to men as robots and simulacra--never women. Can you see why I might have responded the way I did?

The narrative is also still bullshit, and what I said still absolutely applies. This is an example of romanticizing a system of oppression, not discussing it in actual useful terms. I also think your whole notion that society was founded to protect women's status as breeders is horseshit--we formed societies for a lot of reasons, and by simplifying it into one thing you're doing a gross disservice to a lot of actual history.

Basically, this shit is complex, and you are slapping down some oversimplified and factually inaccurate veneer that serves little other purpose beyond justifying oppression. Hence my calling bullshit.

[SocialSceneRepairman]

(because referring to men as robots and women as life itself is not at all a value assessment)

You're right. It isn't. To think it is is the Naturalistic Fallacy writ large.

Oh, and how does male homosexuality fit into this narrative of yours? Oh, shit! The robots are fucking each other!

Where does male homosexuality, or female homosexuality, fit into any narrative of common descent? The next logical step to your argument is creationism.

There are plenty of theories, but the idea of "homosexuality" is abstract enough that any one of them can make sense, and they all fit well enough into "my" narrative (which is basically a less gently-worded version of everyone's narrative). As I said, males do have secondary functions in many, many animals.

Notice something: You only refer to men as robots and simulacra--never women.

This is true. Perhaps "robot" was the wrong word, but on some level, males (not men) are "created" in females' (not women's) image to perform a service for them, and that's why I only used the word for them. It only applied to them.

[Gelsamel]

Why does this bullshit always come in the form of unfalsiable claims about other people's consciouses or thoughts or opinions? It's even worse when those unfalsifiable claims are claimed to then be the direct cause of the emergent property of a chaotic system.

"You have this revelation"
"Uh, no, I don't"
"Yes you do, even if you don't know it, you do"

Fuck off. Unfalsifiable claims require no evidence to dismiss.

"In fact, the reason that society is exhibits this effect is BECAUSE individuals like you have this revelation"
"So you're saying without evidence that a certain behavior, thought, or action is the direct causal force of an emergent property of our chaotic social system?"
"Yes"

Fuck off x2. Show us a predictive model based off hard evidence (Of which you cannot possibly have any, because your claim is both unfalsifiable and unverifiable) that predicts succesfully the nature of the social system throughout all cultures and history and then you might have my ear about whether your hypothesis might be worth a damn.

You are dismissed now, go play with your fairies.

[The Great Hippo]

You're right. It isn't. To think it is is the Naturalistic Fallacy write large.

What, did words become magically inconsequential when I wasn't looking or something? Referring to a set of organisms as 'robots' and another set as 'all life itself' is not an intrinsic value judgment? Naturalistic Fallacy is a justification for a belief, not a reference to the fact that words mean things, and you are using them to say things that are not value-neutral.

Or, what--can I call people shit-fuckers now? "What? Shit-fucker isn't a value judgment! Shit-fuckers aren't intrinsically bad, stop employing the Naturalistic Fallacy!"

This is true. Perhaps "robot" was the wrong word, but on some level, males (not men) are "created" in females' (not women's) image to perform a service for them, and that's why I only used the word for them. It only applied to them.

I specifically referred to the Naturalistic Fallacy because I felt you were creating a system of values based on arbitrary designations--which was based on a misunderstanding of your original post--but I still see a variant of the Naturalistic Fallacy here--one wherein labels (but not necessarily value judgments) are assigned arbitrarily. This is why I am calling your narrative bullshit:

One of the big problems you encounter with evolution is that people insist on anthropomorphizing everything. Even our terminology reveals it--'Natural Selection'--the fuck are you talking about? Nature doesn't select things. Things just work out really well and end up flourishing because of that.

That's what you're doing here. Males are not created in the image of females to perform a service--that is completely arbitrary and a denial of a very complex interdependent relationship. You might as well just reverse it and argue that females are created in the image of males to perform a service (carry on our genetic material and serve as incubators for our children)--the argument would carry the same amount of weight. Males and females exist in a complex relationship wherein both are required for reproduction, and both work together to perpetuate each other's genetic material--both sides are integral, both sets of DNA get something out of it, neither side is 'servicing' the other.

Edit: The reason I am coming down like a fucking lightning storm on this--and I suppose I should apologize for that--is because your narrative reads like just another one of those 'Just So' stories that are unverifiable and ultimately serve as a moral justification for oppression (the question you asked at the end of your post--"Is that a bad thing"--is deeply troubling, and not a question I think ever belongs in a discussion wherein biology and oppression intersect. Yes, oppression is a bad thing, regardless of the biology involved in its justification).

[Gelsamel]

Males and females exist in a complex relationship wherein both are required for reproduction, and both work together to perpetuate each other's genetic material--both sides are integral, both sets of DNA get something out of it.

Aha, I fucking get it now, I think. I understand how this fucking idiot kind of thinks, maybe. The only possible way I could understand how he can describe males as a simulacra is because Male chromosomes, could, in a way, be thought of as a simulacrum of female chromosomes. But that confers, arbitrarily, the status of some kind of 'original' (Female chromosomes could, in a way, be thought of as a simulacrum of male chromosomes too).

Ie; Naturalistic fallacy all over that shit. OUR CHROMOSOMES JUSTIFY OPRESSION!

Males are simulacra because the Y chromosome is a simulacrum of the X chromosome. The XY paradigm clearly evolved out of the XX paradigm (because that is totally how evolution works... wait why are apes still around again?) and not out of some previously established split or shared chromosomal paradigm.

Evolution fail. Once you've totally failed biology and evolutionary theory you then heap on a whole fuckton of unfalsifiable claims that are biased to justify your worldview and BANG you have yourself a steaming pile of bullshit.

[SocialSceneRepairman]

Males and females exist in a complex relationship wherein both are required for reproduction, and both work together to perpetuate each other's genetic material--both sides are integral, both sets of DNA get something out of it.

Aha, I fucking get it now, I think. I understand how this fucking idiot kind of thinks, maybe. The only possible way I could understand how he can describe males as a simulacra is because Male chromosomes, could, in a way, be thought of as a simulacrum of female chromosomes. But that confers, arbitrarily, the status of some kind of 'original' (Female chromosomes could, in a way, be thought of as a simulacrum of male chromosomes too).

Hang on, I want to get to your other points, but first off: you're joking, right? It's not remotely arbitrary. I'm not arguing chicken-or-egg here: some proto-eukaryote, probably with some other faculty of sharing genetic information, created a mutant duplicate of itself that could only contribute genes to others, not reproduce on its own. That was the first male, and the offsprings of the asexuals to which it contributed genetic information, including to some its own maleness, are the ancestors of every sexually reproducing organism in history. (Although it may well have happened multiple times.) Eventually, and importantly, later, some of the asexuals lost the capacity to reproduce alone, and the greater diversity "forced" from them increased their children's fitness. You could argue semantics, but the first females after certainly more closely resembled the asexuals before than did the first males, much less the males contemporary to the first females.

Admittedly (obviously), it's not my subject, but this is what I learned.

(Apes are still around because they're sexual creatures already, and don't reproduce in a line! Also, the apes that are around today probably don't bear a whole lot of resemblance to the apes in our direct ancestry.)

[The Great Hippo]

Hang on, I want to get to your other points, but first off: you're joking, right? It's not remotely arbitrary. I'm not arguing chicken-or-egg here: some proto-eukaryote, probably with some other faculty of sharing genetic information, created a mutant duplicate of itself that could only contribute genes to others, not reproduce on its own. That was the first male, and the offsprings of the asexual females to which it contributed genetic information, including to some its own maleness, are the ancestors of every sexually reproducing organism in history. (Although it may well have happened multiple times.)

Admittedly (as I think is rather obvious), it's not my subject, but this is what I learned.

Though I'm unfamiliar with the full scope of evolutionary history between men and women--and the evolution of the sexes--I'm aware that, in many organisms (including primates), the default is female--with male being a result of certain things happening at certain times--and therefore simple logic and reason dictate that females were first.

Nevertheless, this is again just an arbitrary designation--whether or not males evolved from females does nothing to inform us about the nature of the relationship as it stands now. We can make factual statements about evolution ("Males originally evolved from females") without creating arbitrary labels ("Therefore, males service females, and are a simulacra of females") which lead us to broken conclusions.

[Gelsamel]

Thing is, that is a convention of labeling. When the branch that evolved into what we know as XX/XY today "happened" (I use this word losely because it's not as though genetic paradigms shift in single events) both points on the paths leading to XX and XY were equally similar to what ever came before. This is, afterall, the definition of a branch, the function is continuous. The convention of calling what came before "female" is simply that, convention. "Female" has exactly zero meaning in the absence of the XX/XY paradigm and it's likely that one calls what came before "female" on the basis that it was capable of baring "daughters" (the fact we call them daughters is also convention).

That is why I said my sarcastic comment about apes. It's the same mistake creationists make. Apes and humans at the time of the genetic split were equally similar to our non-ape-non-human predecessor. Apes do not evolve into humans and XX did not evolve into XY, humans are not simulacra of apes. Something else evolved into the XX/XY paradigm in the exact same way that something else evolved into the Ape/Human paradigm. The labeling of our predecessor as "less evolved" and apes as "less evolved" and thus the "trunk" is a fallacy. The branch is a 'Y' not a 'Ψ.

Edit: Not that any of this matters given that Mr. Social's claims are totally unfalsifiable even if the core of the idea wasn't rotten.

[SocialSceneRepairman]

Why does this bullshit always come in the form of unfalsiable claims about other people's consciouses or thoughts or opinions? It's even worse when those unfalsifiable claims are claimed to then be the direct cause of the emergent property of a chaotic system.

"You have this revelation"
"Uh, no, I don't"
"Yes you do, even if you don't know it, you do"

You? Who said anything about you, or anyone else alive today?

Fuck off. Unfalsifiable claims require no evidence to dismiss.

I make no claims at all. Everything I've said has been mainstream theory camouflaged with loaded words. Everything everyone's been arguing has been semantics.

"In fact, the reason that society is exhibits this effect is BECAUSE individuals like you have this revelation"
"So you're saying without evidence that a certain behavior, thought, or action is the direct causal force of an emergent property of our chaotic social system?"
"Yes"

Fuck off x2. Show us a predictive model based off hard evidence (Of which you cannot possibly have any, because your claim is both unfalsifiable and unverifiable) that predicts succesfully the nature of the social system throughout all cultures and history and then you might have my ear about whether your hypothesis might be worth a damn.

I'm not sure what claim you think I'm making. The argument I'm making regards the scope of concepts. Of course it makes no predictions, but it is rooted in falsifiable objective claims.

You're right. It isn't. To think it is is the Naturalistic Fallacy write large.

What, did words become magically inconsequential when I wasn't looking or something? Referring to a set of organisms as 'robots' and another set as 'all life itself' is not an intrinsic value judgment?

Of course it isn't. Life is better than simulacra? Why? Because it's more natural?

When I hear people talk about "the search for intelligent life," or science fiction authors introducing "intelligent life," I'm amazed at their strange kind of... I guess "vital chauvinism." (..."chauvinism" is probably a really bad word for me to be using right now, but there's no real way around it...) Even those who pride themselves on leaving "carbon chauvinism" in the dust seem to be imagining that a process similar to life will spring up, just with different chemicals. I see no reason why "intelligent" needs to be followed by "life." It's accepted that humans can possibly create artificial intelligence that will match us without meeting any meaningful definition of "life" in the way cats, trees, or bacteria are alive, so, in such a large and chaotic universe, why can't it happen somewhere some other way? I imagine that if we ever do find an extraterrestrial intelligence with which we can communicate meaningfully, it will in only the absolute broadest sense be "life."

One of the big problems you encounter with evolution is that people insist on anthropomorphizing everything. Even our terminology reveals it--'Natural Selection'--the fuck are you talking about? Nature doesn't select things. Things just work out really well and end up flourishing because of that.

This is very true. However, the phenomenon that's described as "natural selection" is very real, and most people who aren't busy reading about an invisible sky wizard and his self-important son understand no one's actually "selecting" but the pressures of the environment.

That's what you're doing here. Males are not created in the image of females to perform a service--that is completely arbitrary and a denial of a very complex interdependent relationship.

A denial of a very complex interdependent relationship that well postdates sexual reproduction, varies wildly from species to species and even within species, and is always, with rare exceptions, alongside the essential function productive behavior of males to fail to mate without harming the next generation's size, thus allowing more positive traits to be passed on. There are exceptions, but not of the primates.

You might as well just reverse it and argue that females are created in the image of males to perform a service (carry on our genetic material and serve as incubators for our children)--the argument would carry the same amount of weight.

It would not. Life is nothing more than a self-replicating chemical process, and as bad as it sounds, the female body, across species, is a reproductive factory surrounded by self-preservation and line-preservation mechanisms of various levels of abstraction. In a few species (such as seahorses) a true synergy has evolved, but it's done just that.

Males and females exist in a complex relationship wherein both are required for reproduction, and both work together to perpetuate each other's genetic material--both sides are integral, both sets of DNA get something out of it, neither side is 'servicing' the other.

Both are required for reproduction. Both work together to perpetuate each other's genetic material. Both are integral. Both sets of DNA get something out of it.

The male services the female. Females have the egg, which does require sperm to grow, but the rest of the male's sperm can do what it likes, while the rest of the eggs (there are often multiple eggs, but it's not all at once) are sitting out for a bit. The egg is the constant, the element of continuity.

They do not, generally, work together. Because the male has no investment in the sperm itself, in a large number of species, males are "promiscuous," "competitive," and "jealous," whereas females are "cautious" and often more likely to mate with a male based on his number of partners. I don't mean to say that this is or should be human behavior on any level, but it does create a "conflict of interest" such that males and females cannot be said to work together.

Edit: The reason I am coming down like a fucking lightning storm on this--and I suppose I should apologize for that--is because your narrative reads like just another one of those 'Just So' stories that are unverifiable and ultimately serve as a moral justification for oppression (the question you asked at the end of your post--"Is that a bad thing"--is deeply troubling, and not a question I think ever belongs in a discussion wherein biology and oppression intersect. Yes, oppression is a bad thing, regardless of the biology involved in its justification).

That's understandable. To be honest, what inspired this was a friend of a friend mocking a lecture someone gave him that language and deductive logic were tools to oppress women, to which my reaction, from what little I knew of biology, Marxism, and feminist theory was "of course they are!" Then my more scientific part led, slowly, to "...and is that so wrong?" And then came this comic, an R.G.O.O.M.H. moment, my earlier posts, and then that mini-rant explaining them.

So yes, I am trying to justify oppression, because oppression encompasses enough that it needs to be justified. Certainly there is unjustifiable oppression, but I'm trying to make the case that there is justifiable oppression that fits under the broad umbrella of "oppression," in any real sense other than as pure invective.

Thing is, that is a convention of labeling. When the branch that evolved into what we know as XX/XY today "happened" (I use this word losely because it's not as though genetic paradigms shift in single events) both points on the paths leading to XX and XY were equally similar to what ever came before. This is, afterall, the definition of a branch, the function is continuous. The convention of calling what came before "female" is simply that, convention. "Female" has exactly zero meaning in the absence of the XX/XY paradigm and it's likely that one calls what came before "female" on the basis that it was capable of baring "daughters" (the fact we call them daughters is also convention).

If that were the case, why would the convention be "female" and "daughters"? Male is the default in this culture, isn't it? By what convention do we call animals or buds male or female? Seahorses? It's who supplies the bulk of the resources in the earliest stages of the offspring's growth. It's not precisely the same, with the necessity of a male, but the female is closer to the asexual ancestors in mode of reproduction. It's convention, but there's a reason for it.

That is why I said my sarcastic comment about apes. It's the same mistake creationists make. Apes and humans at the time of the genetic split were equally similar to our non-ape-non-human predecessor. Apes do not evolve into humans and XX did not evolve into XY, humans are not simulacra of apes. Something else evolved into the XX/XY paradigm in the exact same way that something else evolved into the Ape/Human paradigm. The labeling of our predecessor as "less evolved" and apes as "less evolved" and thus the "trunk" is a fallacy. The branch is a 'Y' not a 'Ψ.

...that's true because of sexual reproduction!

Edit: Not that any of this matters given that Mr. Social's claims are totally unfalsifiable even if the core of the idea wasn't rotten.

Falsifiability is a punchline outside of the hard sciences. The idea of falsifiability is as thoroughly drummed out of your head in the social sciences as rigor is drummed in in math. I've had professors who've gone so far as to try to convince me that it's an obsolete concept in science; of course, I know better than that, but I don't present my claims as falsifiable, although they're based on falsifiable truths. What do you even think I'm claiming? I'm claiming only that a sufficiently, not unreasonably, broad definition of "oppression" or "misogyny" can encompass things that would generally be recognized as good.

[phlip]

I'm claiming only that a sufficiently, not unreasonably, broad definition of "oppression" or "misogyny" can encompass things that would generally be recognized as good.

A sufficiently broad definition of "toilet paper" can include cactuses, too. Doesn't mean it's a useful definition, or the commonly-used definition, or a definition that's unlikely to cause misunderstandings.