Steamrollin' the Ice Age
Joe wrote:
- Lord Norton wrote:
- Male flies are not doing any thinking. They are acting on what is traditionally referred to as instinct. It's a survival mechanism. Whether you want to mix up this jargon of preference with human behavior is your problem.
We should have the intellectual maturity to accept what experimental biologists have demonstrated for over 140 years: that Sexual Selection (SS) is driven by mate preferences in sexually reproducing species. We should not take it upon ourselves to privately rework scientific terminology into mentalistic farce, pretending that the redefinition "proves" that SS has never operated in the mating-systems of insect species.
Had a Pleistocene human believed that - with his mind alone - he could make the world behave as he wished it to behave, he (almost inexorably) would have run-across a direct refutation of his thinking-cramp in the form of bodily damage or extinction - as humans were (for most of our existence as a species) continually subject to the severe constraints in our environments.
Those in this cult convince themselves that they have the luxury of sliding into the rubbish-notion that reality is solely dependent on their minds without any possibility of being checked by counter-pressures. However - had our ancestors embraced the idiocy constantly on parade here - they would have experienced an immediate correction, and they probably would have died-out.
Assume that an "out-of-the-world idea", comparable to those entertained by the cultists, took possession of a human 100K years ago - say - that he redefined the word "hand axe":
- hand axe
- a non-sharp, non-heavy object that cannot crack skulls
If our archaic friend tested the above redefinition by konking himself on the noggin with his hand-axe, he would have suffered brain damage and/or perished as a result of his misadventure.
The counter-real claim that - by redefining science-words, the phenomena which they range-over do not exist in the universe is an "out-of-the-world-idea" - because it's in direct collision with the fundamental features of reality with which science deals.
The pro-real claim made by evolutionary biologists that non-human organisms show mate preferences for reproductive traits, displayed by members of the opposite sex, is an "of-the-world-idea". Scientists routinely observe these facts in experiments and nature.
Khuno's, Norton's, Jerry's, JoshingThySelf's and Nate's mind-dependence slop almost seems to almost work on a Myspace group, but it would absurdly fail should these imbeciles come face-to-face with the consequences of it - by testing their belief-claims in the external world. Suppose that the cultists redefined the word "steamroller":
- steamroller
- an ultra-light vehicle composed of ultra-soft material which cannot crush anything beneath it
In order to test their redefinition, should the above jolly-lot lie down in the path of an on-rushing steamroller, testing it would squash them into puddles of goo - instantly.
Myspace creepos cannot redefine the mate preferences out of insects - anymore than they can redefine the capacity to crush out of a steamroller. If they wish to contend - against science - that SS (hence evolution) does not occur in non-human species, that's just delightful. But, they're not entitled to insist that accepting SS data as low-level facts of nature is a "problem" - because a problem festers within them, and they have become carriers of the worst problem imaginable - a stubborn aversion to reality.