Now, try the weakened causality argument that I have just emphasized in this chapter: had the bubonic plague killed more people, the observers (us) would not be here to observe. So it may not neccessarily be the property of diseases to spare us humans.
Fortunately, we know plenty about diseases from other species—where we don’t need to be concerned with anthropic bias.
Fortunately, we know plenty about diseases from other species—where we don’t need to be concerned with anthropic bias.
Yes, I think this is an important point. It’s similar to the idea that we can still figure out how lethal car crashes tend to be, if we look at other car crashes rather than the ones we’ve been in.
Interestingly, this sort of thing is perfectly “communicable”. If I have survived several car crashes, I can tell you about it; and you can similarly tell me about events that you have survived. We are all survivors, so it’s not quite like the “quantum immortality” scenario where you perceive yourself to be uniquely immune to death in a world of mortals. (For Taleb, it is an important point: we should not take advice from the “survivors” we will frequently see; we have to work hard to account for the many dead who will unfortunately not be giving us advice based on their experiences.)
We do however have examples of diseases that seem to be doing a decent job at wiping out the species. Look at Tasmanian Devil face cancer for example. It is likely that the primary reason we don’t see diseases wiping out a lot of species right now is that with all the human caused extinctions the ones being caused by disease are being lost in the noise.
DIseases are surely having a field day at the moment—due to humans stirring their ecosystems, and introducing unfamiliar pathogens to hosts with no resistance.
My point was that biologists don’t just depend on sources muddied by selection effects for their knowledge of this subject.
Are you sure? Many diseases cross over from animals, including some famous recent examples...
Or to put it another way, animal diseases are just a step removed from the anthropic filter: if there were more extremely fatal animal diseases, then because they often cross over to humans...
Some species don’t easily cross-over to humans, and in fact most diseases don’t easily cross-over (influenza and SIV are major exceptions but the pattern is that cross-over is itself pretty rare). We could maybe look at species which don’t cross-over to humans due to much different biology, like say in cephalopods. I’m not sure we know enough about disease in such species though, or that they are similar enough to mammals to be a useful comparison.
Fortunately, we know plenty about diseases from other species—where we don’t need to be concerned with anthropic bias.
Yes, I think this is an important point. It’s similar to the idea that we can still figure out how lethal car crashes tend to be, if we look at other car crashes rather than the ones we’ve been in.
Interestingly, this sort of thing is perfectly “communicable”. If I have survived several car crashes, I can tell you about it; and you can similarly tell me about events that you have survived. We are all survivors, so it’s not quite like the “quantum immortality” scenario where you perceive yourself to be uniquely immune to death in a world of mortals. (For Taleb, it is an important point: we should not take advice from the “survivors” we will frequently see; we have to work hard to account for the many dead who will unfortunately not be giving us advice based on their experiences.)
We do however have examples of diseases that seem to be doing a decent job at wiping out the species. Look at Tasmanian Devil face cancer for example. It is likely that the primary reason we don’t see diseases wiping out a lot of species right now is that with all the human caused extinctions the ones being caused by disease are being lost in the noise.
DIseases are surely having a field day at the moment—due to humans stirring their ecosystems, and introducing unfamiliar pathogens to hosts with no resistance.
My point was that biologists don’t just depend on sources muddied by selection effects for their knowledge of this subject.
Are you sure? Many diseases cross over from animals, including some famous recent examples...
Or to put it another way, animal diseases are just a step removed from the anthropic filter: if there were more extremely fatal animal diseases, then because they often cross over to humans...
There’s plenty that don’t cross to huamns.
I don’t think there’s any shortage of data unmuddied by anthropic bais.
Some species don’t easily cross-over to humans, and in fact most diseases don’t easily cross-over (influenza and SIV are major exceptions but the pattern is that cross-over is itself pretty rare). We could maybe look at species which don’t cross-over to humans due to much different biology, like say in cephalopods. I’m not sure we know enough about disease in such species though, or that they are similar enough to mammals to be a useful comparison.