That said, since I can’t resist responding to random comments: are horses really being bred for sprinting as fast as they can for 20-30 seconds?
Yes, they were, and they still are. Cavalry charges are not that long*, and even if you want to absurdly nitpick on this exact basis where 20-30 seconds counts but 30-40s doesn’t, well, as it happens, 20-30s is exactly about how long quarter horse races last. (Quarter horses, incidentally, now reach the low end of cheetah top speeds: 55mph, vs ~60mph. So depending on which pair of horses & cheetahs you compare, we did succeed in breeding a better cheetah, because you can’t ride a cheetah at any speed and they have much worse endurance etc. I’m not going to insist on this point, however, because I think it’s unnecessary, even if it should make you a little more humble in your assertions about what humans have and have not done.)
Who cares other than horse racers?
First, what’s wrong with horse racers? It’s the sport of kings. (The causality in that phrase going both directions.) Horse racers are real, they do in fact exist, I have met them in the flesh and will testify that they are not “no one”. You disdained the existence of any organized large human investments into making extremely fast animals. The millions of quarter horse owners dating back to the 1600s, as well as all the horse breeders and horse racers throughout human history, beg to differ, as they are just as valid an example as any other human would be of such things existing—quite aside from reasons everyone else might care like minor things like “civilizations rose and fell on how well they did this”.
at is the military/agricultural/trade context in which that is relevant?
I dunno. Since you didn’t specify, apparently the relevance of the context wasn’t relevant to your point.
* They don’t need to be. Think about how far accurate arrow fire goes, and how long it takes a horse to cover that distance if it’s sprinting at 30MPH+.
I was saying that natural selection is not a human investor and behaves differently, responding to Eliezer saying “not as a metaphor but as simple historical fact, that’s how it played out.” I’m sorry if the exchange was unclear (but hopefully not surprising since it was a line of chat in a fast dialog written in about 3 seconds.) I think that you have to make an analogy because the situation is not obviously structurally identical and there are different analogies you could draw here and it was not clear which one he was making.
I’m sorry I engaged about horse breeding (I think it was mostly a distraction).
Yes, they were, and they still are. Cavalry charges are not that long*, and even if you want to absurdly nitpick on this exact basis where 20-30 seconds counts but 30-40s doesn’t, well, as it happens, 20-30s is exactly about how long quarter horse races last. (Quarter horses, incidentally, now reach the low end of cheetah top speeds: 55mph, vs ~60mph. So depending on which pair of horses & cheetahs you compare, we did succeed in breeding a better cheetah, because you can’t ride a cheetah at any speed and they have much worse endurance etc. I’m not going to insist on this point, however, because I think it’s unnecessary, even if it should make you a little more humble in your assertions about what humans have and have not done.)
First, what’s wrong with horse racers? It’s the sport of kings. (The causality in that phrase going both directions.) Horse racers are real, they do in fact exist, I have met them in the flesh and will testify that they are not “no one”. You disdained the existence of any organized large human investments into making extremely fast animals. The millions of quarter horse owners dating back to the 1600s, as well as all the horse breeders and horse racers throughout human history, beg to differ, as they are just as valid an example as any other human would be of such things existing—quite aside from reasons everyone else might care like minor things like “civilizations rose and fell on how well they did this”.
I dunno. Since you didn’t specify, apparently the relevance of the context wasn’t relevant to your point.
* They don’t need to be. Think about how far accurate arrow fire goes, and how long it takes a horse to cover that distance if it’s sprinting at 30MPH+.
I was saying that natural selection is not a human investor and behaves differently, responding to Eliezer saying “not as a metaphor but as simple historical fact, that’s how it played out.” I’m sorry if the exchange was unclear (but hopefully not surprising since it was a line of chat in a fast dialog written in about 3 seconds.) I think that you have to make an analogy because the situation is not obviously structurally identical and there are different analogies you could draw here and it was not clear which one he was making.
I’m sorry I engaged about horse breeding (I think it was mostly a distraction).