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Any discussion of scientific studies of this kind of sensitive subject should be understood with the appropriate disclaimers. In particular, the is-ought fallac
by a3_nm 10y ago
Any discussion of scientific studies of this kind of sensitive subject should be understood with the appropriate disclaimers. In particular, the is-ought fallacy: if experimental studies find out, backed with experimental explanations, that men and women tend to behave differently, it does not follow that discriminating them (by law or by social customs) is desirable or acceptable. It's very hard to avoid falling in the trap, but any factual thing that science tells us about humans cannot, in itself, be the justification of any kind of policy.
- s_q_b 10y ago"The Naturalistic Fallacy": Simply because something is natural does not make it good. Lava is natural, and food coloring is synthetic. Of which would you prefer to eat a pound? Version 1.2
- danieltillett 10y agoIt depends on the amount - dose maketh the poison.
- s_q_b 10y agoPatched
- danieltillett 10y agoLol. Actually if it is a choice between a lb of uranium and a lb of some food colourings you might be better off going for the uranium. If it is in metallic form it should pass straight through your gut while the food colouring will get absorbed. The human LD50 of soluble uranium salts is around 5g [1], but metallic uranium is not very soluble. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18188051 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18188051
- rosser 10y agoWhen Ralph Nader called plutonium "the most toxic substance known to man", physicist Bernard Cohen challenged him thusly: "I'll eat as much pure plutonium as you do caffeine, and we'll see who dies first." (Paraphrased.) Nader declined. Also, a man named Albert Stevens was injected with 131kBq of Pu. He died 20 years later of heart disease, having accumulated a lifetime dose of some 64 Sv. It's not just the dose that makes the poison, it's the method of administration.
- XorNot 10y agoSadly it took me a while to realize how you could possibly make this challenge, but of course - it's all about bioavailability. Plutonium isn't actually all that dangerous radioactively (gamma emitters aren't very harmful internally).
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoInteresting question: could you survive swallowing a 1mL plutonium ball? Because the LD50 of a 200lb/91kg human is about that amount of caffeine (20g).
- danieltillett 10y agoWhy we don't have any human data on the LD50 of plutonium, it is not likely to be any more toxic than uranium which has a LD50 of around 5g for the soluble salts. A 20g plutonium ball should be harmless if swallowed. 20g of caffeine on the other hand won't be pleasant.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- verroq 10y agoNice strawman.
- eivarv 10y agoDo you mean "Appeal to nature"? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
- s_q_b 10y agoNope. [0] [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
- eivarv 10y agoI'm sorry, but from what I read in the Wikipedia article you linked to, "Simply because something is natural does not make it good" doesn't really match Moore's definition. I've always seen the fallacy in question used as it is in the article, e.g. that one can't claim that something is good (in the ethical sense) because it is pleasurable. Is there something I'm missing?
- s_q_b 10y agoNope, you're right. I've conflated the two.
- eanzenberg 10y agoOf course! When studies compare 2 distributions and see a significant difference in a summary statistic, that says nothing of the distributions or their overlap. The distributions themselves are rarely Gaussian and usually have significant long-tailed behavior. For example, a study may find group A is better at math than group B. A lay-person, usually a journalist, will take it to mean ALL group A's are better at math than ALL group B's, when that's clearly wrong. Because of the usual long-tailed behavior of these kinds of metrics, discriminating against group B because of the study will be inefficient.
- verroq 10y agoWhat about studies showing that discrimination against a particular group yields a better outcome?
- emmab 10y agoBetter is relative to a utility function.