Do you really not realize that every part of you that has evolved, every tiny little part, every little mechanism of your body which has a function and which has the potential to be harmed, evolved because it helped your ancestors to survive and reproduce and ultimately to produce you?
You keep saying things that are both true and utterly besides the point. You suffer from vast confusions of words.
It’s cooked in by natural selection. But natural selection only cares about reproduction.
No, natural selection doesn’t have a mind, and DOESN’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING.
We care. Natural selection made us to care. But natural selection itself doesn’t give a damn. Thou Shalt Not Anthropomorphize Natural Selection.
Your instincts are what they are because they help you reproduce.
Again irrelevant.
Because natural selection doesn’t care what you think, and natural selection made you.
Gravity also made me, since it held me and my ancestors on the planet, and gravity only cares about mass, by which argument harm must be anything that reduces my mass. Because gravity only cares about mass.
Your argument is nothing but a mishmashed jumble of anthropomorphisms, imaginary duties to the impersonal processes that created, and term confusions.
You’re effectively saying two things: We should redefine “harm” to mean something different than people think when they talk about “harm”, because natural selection intended “harm” to mean something else, and when our human intuitions come in conflict with natural selection’s “intent” we must obediently bow to our creator’s intent.
Well our creator was not just stupid, it was utterly brainless and purposeless and intentionless. So we ought to screw what natural selection thinks, because it DOES NOT THINK.
No, natural selection doesn’t have a mind, and DOESN’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING.
We care. Natural selection made us to care. But natural selection itself doesn’t give a damn. Thou Shalt Not Anthropomorphize Natural Selection.
Now you’re just being obtuse. Talk about what natural selection “cares about” is obviously nonliteral and has an obvious meaning. To say that natural selection “cares about” A and does not “care about” B simply means that A, and not B, is a factor in natural selection.
We should redefine “harm” to mean something different than people think when they talk about “harm”, because natural selection intended “harm” to mean something else,
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that the things that we think of as harms (and I listed a few as examples) actually do interfere with reproduction (with obvious but completely understandable exceptions, such as when they happen to people who have already lost their ability to reproduce), whether or not we are aware of this fact or not. It is not a definition. It is a factual claim about the actual things we consider to be harms.
and when our human intuitions come in conflict with natural selection’s “intent” we must obediently bow to our creator’s intent.
No, I am not saying that at all. I am saying that we can be wrong about whether something that looks like a harm, is a harm. It’s certainly possible. Oh, come on, you have got to admit that it is possible to be wrong about whether someone is harmed.
But please not that I also asserted my confidence that drug addicts really are being harmed. Why am I confident? Because while I accept the theoretical possibility of being wrong, I don’t think I actually am wrong. I trust my perception on this matter. When I look at the photographs of meth heads, I have great confidence that they are harmed by their use of the drug. We can in principle be wrong about whether someone is harmed, but in all likelihood, we are not wrong.
And for this reason, I fully expect that if we were to do a multi-generational study of meth-heads, we would find that they don’t do all that well in the reproduction department in comparison to a control group.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that the things that we think of as harms (and I listed a few as examples) actually do interfere with reproduction (with obvious but completely understandable exceptions, such as when they happen to people who have already lost their ability to reproduce),
Most of the things we think of as harms also interfere one’s heartbeat, with one’s brainwaves, with one’s breathing, with one’s digestive systems, with one’s sleep patterns, etc, since we’re our biologies and every biological function is interconnected with the other.
Depending how you define your terms, your whole argument is either obviously false (we don’t perceive condoms and contraception to be “harm” though it interferes with reproduction, but we do perceive that being enslaved for breeding purposes is harm, even though it increases the probability of our reproduction) or trivially true (as everything done to us, both good and bad, interferes with every biological function in our bodies).
And for this reason, I fully expect that if we were to do a multi-generational study of meth-heads, we would find that they don’t do all that well in the reproduction department in comparison to a control group.
I also don’t expect they do well in the life expectancy or health or prosperity department, which is a more customary method of determining well-being and “harm” than “number of descendants” is.
Most of the things we think of as harms also interfere one’s heartbeat, with one’s brainwaves, with one’s breathing, with one’s digestive systems, with one’s sleep patterns, etc, since we’re our biologies and every biological function is interconnected with the other.
Indeed, and for this reason, we might be able to measure harms indirectly by looking at heartbeat. A doctor actually does this sort of thing—he looks at your vital signs to see how you’re doing.
Nothing I wrote should be interpreted as excluding these other ways of measuring harms. I was talking about one measure, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others.
your whole argument [could be read as] trivially true...
Indeed, and I expected it to be read as trivially true, and therefore as the claim I was responding to as trivially false. I wasn’t expecting any pushback on such an obvious point. If drug addicts really are harmed by drugs, we should expect this to show up in lower reproduction. It’s really quite a trivial point.
I also don’t expect they do well in the life expectancy or health or prosperity department, which is a more customary method of determining well-being and “harm” than “number of descendants” is.
Indeed, but these other respects aren’t relevant to the claim I was addressing, which concerned the reproduction of drug addicts.
Okay, you seem to be claiming something and then claiming that you’re not, so just answer me this: if meth addicts systematically out-breed not-meth-addicts, is it still possible their meth addiction is harming them?
Recall that I referred to reproduction to several generations, the point being that the meth addicts need not only produce babies but also raise them well enough that the babies grow up to reproduce—and so on, for many generations.
If meth addicts really did better than the rest of us in that department, then yes, I would seriously question whether meth addicts weren’t actually a superior breed of human. I mean, really, take this very seriously and extrapolate out many generations. After, I don’t know, a hundred generations, the whole planet is populated with meth heads, with just small pockets here and there of non-meth-heads. It’s a bit like the planet of the apes scenario, but with meth heads instead of apes. In this scenario, yes, I would have to seriously question whether meth heads’ addiction is harming them.
But an argument can still be made. For example, it might be that meth-heads, however much better they do than the rest of us, would do even better if they kicked the habit. In that case, they would be better than the rest of us despite their addiction, not because of it. In this case, the addiction would be, possibly, some negative side-effect of an otherwise superior genetic makeup.
Well, now it seems once again that you’re using reproductive success as your criteria for whether or not somebody is being harmed, but you say that’s not what you believe. Maybe it’s better to go full thought-experiment on this, so:
There is a drug called Reproductene. Taking it causes extreme pain, permanently disables your ability to feel happiness, damages your memory, destroys your imagination, and causes you to have strong cravings for more Reproductene. It also creates a new human being with 50% of your genetic code every time you take it. This human being is created an adult already addicted to Reproductene. After taking a hundred doses of the drug and creating a hundred half-copies of you you die. Reproductene is in large supply. Is taking Reproductene harmful?
There is a drug called Reproductene. Taking it causes extreme pain, permanently disables your ability to feel happiness, damages your memory, destroys your imagination, and causes you to have strong cravings for more Reproductene.
Is it awful that that makes me burst into giggles?
But natural selection only cares about reproduction.
No, natural selection doesn’t have a mind, and DOESN’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING.
Anthropomorphic terminology for natural selection is standard and well understood. Darwin used it, explicitly making the analogy between conscious breeding and natural. Those who use it correctly demonstrate that they read Darwin. Those who fuss about it inappropriately demonstrate that they did not read Darwin.
Those who fuss about it inappropriately demonstrate that they did not read Darwin.
I fussed over it appropriately, as Constant seemed to have kept forgetting that natural selection, being blind deaf and stupid, isn’t obliged to result in our intuitions of harm coincide with direct influence on reproductive capacity.
And also, indeed I’ve not read Darwin (Other significant scientists I’ve not read: Galileo, Copernicus, Newton). Why does it matter for the purposes of this argument whether I’ve read Darwin or not? You seem to be playing status games (i.e. “haha, I’ve read Darwin and you have not”) instead of focusing on the merits or demerits of the argument itself.
But it will make our intuitions about harm correspond to diminished capability to survive and reproduce well enough. Our intuitions about harm were formed as if for the purpose of ensuring we would avoid impairment to our capability to survive and reproduce, in the sense that our eyes were formed as if for the purpose of seeing.
Darwin then, after explicitly explaining the “as if”, made the analogy with a human breeder consciously breeding to a purpose, and then proceeded with anthropomorphic language.
Downvoted for...oh, so many reasons—insults, generic nastiness, worship of authority, trying to argue about words instead of about meanings, mind-projection fallacy… Your level of discourse is miles beneath what I’ve come to expect and want from LessWrong in all possible metrics.
Thou Shalt Not Anthropomorphize Natural Selection.
But Darwin did anthropomorphize natural selection:
If man can by patience select variations useful to him, why, under changing and complex conditions of life, should not variations useful to nature’s living products often arise, and be preserved or selected? What limit can be put to this power, acting during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and habits of each creature,- favouring the good and rejecting the bad? I can see no limit to this power, in slowly and beautifully adapting each form
to the most complex relations of life.
So, anthropomorphizing natural selection is scientific terminology with well understood meaning among the educated. When using this terminology to the less educated it is necessary to qualify, explain, and clarify, but such qualification and clarification should not be needed among the intelligent and educated.
Metaphorical anthropomorphizing is fine so long as everyone is on the same page about what the metaphor is and it doesn’t lead to any equivocations or confusions. Constant’s use of anthropomorphizing language seems to have lead to him making a very troubling equivocation between what ‘harms’ genes and what harms human beings. One good strategy for clearing up such confusions is moving away from metaphorical language.
You keep saying things that are both true and utterly besides the point. You suffer from vast confusions of words.
No, natural selection doesn’t have a mind, and DOESN’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING.
We care. Natural selection made us to care. But natural selection itself doesn’t give a damn. Thou Shalt Not Anthropomorphize Natural Selection.
Again irrelevant.
Gravity also made me, since it held me and my ancestors on the planet, and gravity only cares about mass, by which argument harm must be anything that reduces my mass. Because gravity only cares about mass.
Your argument is nothing but a mishmashed jumble of anthropomorphisms, imaginary duties to the impersonal processes that created, and term confusions.
You’re effectively saying two things: We should redefine “harm” to mean something different than people think when they talk about “harm”, because natural selection intended “harm” to mean something else, and when our human intuitions come in conflict with natural selection’s “intent” we must obediently bow to our creator’s intent.
Well our creator was not just stupid, it was utterly brainless and purposeless and intentionless. So we ought to screw what natural selection thinks, because it DOES NOT THINK.
Now you’re just being obtuse. Talk about what natural selection “cares about” is obviously nonliteral and has an obvious meaning. To say that natural selection “cares about” A and does not “care about” B simply means that A, and not B, is a factor in natural selection.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that the things that we think of as harms (and I listed a few as examples) actually do interfere with reproduction (with obvious but completely understandable exceptions, such as when they happen to people who have already lost their ability to reproduce), whether or not we are aware of this fact or not. It is not a definition. It is a factual claim about the actual things we consider to be harms.
No, I am not saying that at all. I am saying that we can be wrong about whether something that looks like a harm, is a harm. It’s certainly possible. Oh, come on, you have got to admit that it is possible to be wrong about whether someone is harmed.
But please not that I also asserted my confidence that drug addicts really are being harmed. Why am I confident? Because while I accept the theoretical possibility of being wrong, I don’t think I actually am wrong. I trust my perception on this matter. When I look at the photographs of meth heads, I have great confidence that they are harmed by their use of the drug. We can in principle be wrong about whether someone is harmed, but in all likelihood, we are not wrong.
And for this reason, I fully expect that if we were to do a multi-generational study of meth-heads, we would find that they don’t do all that well in the reproduction department in comparison to a control group.
Most of the things we think of as harms also interfere one’s heartbeat, with one’s brainwaves, with one’s breathing, with one’s digestive systems, with one’s sleep patterns, etc, since we’re our biologies and every biological function is interconnected with the other.
Depending how you define your terms, your whole argument is either obviously false (we don’t perceive condoms and contraception to be “harm” though it interferes with reproduction, but we do perceive that being enslaved for breeding purposes is harm, even though it increases the probability of our reproduction) or trivially true (as everything done to us, both good and bad, interferes with every biological function in our bodies).
I also don’t expect they do well in the life expectancy or health or prosperity department, which is a more customary method of determining well-being and “harm” than “number of descendants” is.
Indeed, and for this reason, we might be able to measure harms indirectly by looking at heartbeat. A doctor actually does this sort of thing—he looks at your vital signs to see how you’re doing.
Nothing I wrote should be interpreted as excluding these other ways of measuring harms. I was talking about one measure, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others.
Indeed, and I expected it to be read as trivially true, and therefore as the claim I was responding to as trivially false. I wasn’t expecting any pushback on such an obvious point. If drug addicts really are harmed by drugs, we should expect this to show up in lower reproduction. It’s really quite a trivial point.
Indeed, but these other respects aren’t relevant to the claim I was addressing, which concerned the reproduction of drug addicts.
Okay, you seem to be claiming something and then claiming that you’re not, so just answer me this: if meth addicts systematically out-breed not-meth-addicts, is it still possible their meth addiction is harming them?
Recall that I referred to reproduction to several generations, the point being that the meth addicts need not only produce babies but also raise them well enough that the babies grow up to reproduce—and so on, for many generations.
If meth addicts really did better than the rest of us in that department, then yes, I would seriously question whether meth addicts weren’t actually a superior breed of human. I mean, really, take this very seriously and extrapolate out many generations. After, I don’t know, a hundred generations, the whole planet is populated with meth heads, with just small pockets here and there of non-meth-heads. It’s a bit like the planet of the apes scenario, but with meth heads instead of apes. In this scenario, yes, I would have to seriously question whether meth heads’ addiction is harming them.
But an argument can still be made. For example, it might be that meth-heads, however much better they do than the rest of us, would do even better if they kicked the habit. In that case, they would be better than the rest of us despite their addiction, not because of it. In this case, the addiction would be, possibly, some negative side-effect of an otherwise superior genetic makeup.
Is that enough of an answer or do you want more?
Well, now it seems once again that you’re using reproductive success as your criteria for whether or not somebody is being harmed, but you say that’s not what you believe. Maybe it’s better to go full thought-experiment on this, so:
There is a drug called Reproductene. Taking it causes extreme pain, permanently disables your ability to feel happiness, damages your memory, destroys your imagination, and causes you to have strong cravings for more Reproductene. It also creates a new human being with 50% of your genetic code every time you take it. This human being is created an adult already addicted to Reproductene. After taking a hundred doses of the drug and creating a hundred half-copies of you you die. Reproductene is in large supply. Is taking Reproductene harmful?
Is it awful that that makes me burst into giggles?
I am taking it as evidence that I may be mistaken.
Sorry, I really have no time to continue.
Anthropomorphic terminology for natural selection is standard and well understood. Darwin used it, explicitly making the analogy between conscious breeding and natural. Those who use it correctly demonstrate that they read Darwin. Those who fuss about it inappropriately demonstrate that they did not read Darwin.
I fussed over it appropriately, as Constant seemed to have kept forgetting that natural selection, being blind deaf and stupid, isn’t obliged to result in our intuitions of harm coincide with direct influence on reproductive capacity.
And also, indeed I’ve not read Darwin (Other significant scientists I’ve not read: Galileo, Copernicus, Newton). Why does it matter for the purposes of this argument whether I’ve read Darwin or not? You seem to be playing status games (i.e. “haha, I’ve read Darwin and you have not”) instead of focusing on the merits or demerits of the argument itself.
But it will make our intuitions about harm correspond to diminished capability to survive and reproduce well enough. Our intuitions about harm were formed as if for the purpose of ensuring we would avoid impairment to our capability to survive and reproduce, in the sense that our eyes were formed as if for the purpose of seeing.
Darwin then, after explicitly explaining the “as if”, made the analogy with a human breeder consciously breeding to a purpose, and then proceeded with anthropomorphic language.
Your argument similarly condemns Darwin.
Downvoted. I’m sure it condemns lots of people, that’s not an argument against it.
You seem to have misunderstood how this community functions in regards to historical figures of the past. We strive to do better than them.
Words mean what the great used them to mean. If you fail to recognize that meaning in context, you are stupid and ignorant.
Downvoted for...oh, so many reasons—insults, generic nastiness, worship of authority, trying to argue about words instead of about meanings, mind-projection fallacy… Your level of discourse is miles beneath what I’ve come to expect and want from LessWrong in all possible metrics.
But Darwin did anthropomorphize natural selection:
So?
So, anthropomorphizing natural selection is scientific terminology with well understood meaning among the educated. When using this terminology to the less educated it is necessary to qualify, explain, and clarify, but such qualification and clarification should not be needed among the intelligent and educated.
Among the many things Darwin did, some could be called science. Anthropomorphizing natural evolution is not one of the science-things he did.
Language means what the great use it to mean. You can disapprove of that usage, but misunderstanding the meaning is not a sign of superiority.
Misunderstanding indeed isn’t a sign of superiority, but neither is being misunderstood.
Metaphorical anthropomorphizing is fine so long as everyone is on the same page about what the metaphor is and it doesn’t lead to any equivocations or confusions. Constant’s use of anthropomorphizing language seems to have lead to him making a very troubling equivocation between what ‘harms’ genes and what harms human beings. One good strategy for clearing up such confusions is moving away from metaphorical language.