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Just because you don't want to believe it doesn't mean it isn't true it makes sense that this would have evolved. Men go out at night to hunt they hunt better

Just because you don't want to believe it doesn't mean it isn't true it makes sense that this would have evolved. Men go out at night to hunt they hunt better on moonless nights under the cover of relative darkness they might need to travel far and then get home. If you can sense the Earth's magnetic field you'll be a better navigator and more likely to get home with the food from the hunt more likely to help your tribe and propagate your genes

stretchcat 6y ago
There's a lot more blue light during the day than at night.
bcdarwin 6y ago
I'm not saying it isn't true, just that it's not statistically supported by the evidence presented in the paper. You can invent post hoc justifications for almost any positive conclusion (although this one is weak since the authors admit the effect cannot be detected in individuals, only in aggregate). [edit: you can even p-hack and retroactively justify your way to entire subfields; see famously https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-review/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-rev...]
- f430 6y ago
  I mean just because the statistics don't satiate your standards doesn't exclude the possibility of being sensitive to GMF. In mammals, this is what guides birds to migrate. We really need to stop treating the Earth like its just a magnetic rock. It's far more than that and the earth undergoes these field changes every interval with profound impact on life on earth. You and I are all made out of Earth and the things we eat and breathe are all Earth itself. When you die your body decomposes and it becomes soil and nutrients for plants which in turn feed the ecology which where our food comes from. So its hard pressed to just dismiss this as "spiritual pseudoscience". It is precisely this type of shallow thinking in Western ideology that is responsible for the global climate crisis. Your culture has thoroguhly destroyed earth and the next generation will pay the price because of your ignorance. There's just no way that we can brush off this phenomena with pedantry. edit: HN has a serious pedantry problem. Anything that challenges conventional wisdom is villified and attacked by nitpicking minor details that many only have surface level understanding. There is no p-hacking here, overwhelming portion of the samples shows the said sensitivity described qualitatively and quantitatively.
  - bcdarwin 6y ago
    I am not claiming that the possibility is excluded, just that it is not demonstrated here. > In mammals, this is what guides birds to migrate. It's far more than that and the earth undergoes these field changes every interval with profound impact on life on earth. > You and I are all made out of Earth and the things we eat and breathe are all Earth itself. There's just no way that we can brush off this phenomena with pedantry. I agree that biology is profound, but pseudoscientific generalities like this confuse rather than clarify. [Likely typo: birds are not mammals.]
  - KMag 6y ago
    > HN has a serious pedantry problem. Anything that challenges conventional wisdom is villified and attacked I think you're being downvoted because you've misinterpreted the GP as saying a proposition is untrue ("exclude the possibility"), when the GP is just saying this study isn't evidence either way. Then you went on a pseudoscientific naturalistic tangential rant. You seem to be claiming that denying this study is evidence either way shows an over-reliance on statistics. Furthermore, this over-reliance on statistics is a myopia particular to Western culture. This over-reliance on statistical significance has lead to poor environmental policy (with some thrown in hints toward naturalistic fallacy arguments). Am I understanding your argument correctly? I would argue that the major problem with environmental policy in the U.S. is that it under-values statistically significant studies. Fetishization of non-Western and pre-modern cultures isn't helpful. There are plenty of environmental disasters in both Asia and Africa. Slash-and-burn agriculture predates history, and Rio Tinto shows environmental damage from mining operations 5,000 years ago, so 'reject Western culture" and "just return to the old ways" aren't sufficient as a basis for environmental policy. (My apologies if you weren't hinting at a return to pre-modern practices. I know you didn't mention anything about ancient peoples, but I got a feeling that's where this discussion is headed and wanted to cut one round-trip out of the conversation.) What would you propose as an alternative basis for environmental policy, if not studies of statistical significance?
  - folli 6y ago
    I don't think humans are considered a crepuscular or nocturnal species. Furthermore, birds are not mammals.
- dumpsterdiver 6y ago
  > I'm not saying it isn't true, just that it's not statistically supported by the evidence presented in the paper. I hate to be that guy, but imo practical statistics are a joke. The samples are tainted and biased, and the results have nothing to do with the population at large.
- jolincost 6y ago
  Are you sure about that, tho? Can you prove that it's actually a p-hack? You can level the accusation, but how do you go about substantiating it? I'd like to see the numbers and the data, not bombast.
  - thatcat 6y ago
    It's actually up to the paper to prove that it's not a p-hack. That's done by declaring a null hypothesis and the intended stats analysis to be done before doing the experiment and collecting the data, because otherwise you can just compare arbitrary things until you find that some of them are correlated in the set you have. There's no numerical post-hoc analysis that would be able to prove that.
    - bcdarwin 6y ago
      Exactly - a p-hack is a form of misreporting, so isn't easy to detect at the level of individual studies. However, p-hacking isn't the only threat to replicability: in this case the authors have reported a large set of tests, so we can ask why they didn't control family-wise error via Bonferroni or friends (in which case the reported statistical significance almost certainly disappears). Also, I suspect if you fit Bayesian models (either separately or a hierarchical model) using reasonably narrow priors based on what we know about human sensitivity to magnetic fields, how much other senses are affected by sex differences, hunger, etc., and not starting each test assuming a complete state of ignorance of the world, then the data would be compatible with no effect.
    - jolincost 6y ago
      Is it really tho? Up to the paper to prove it's not something you say it is? I don't think so. The paper is what it is. If you claim it's fake, you need to make evidence for that. Not just launch lazy accusations. Seriously, what is what you said, if not just a lazy dismissal (oh it must be a p-hack)? And you're content with that? That's not science. They went to the trouble. If you're going to just dismiss it, and claim that's valid, you should go to the trouble to do science on that hypothesis you have. Thanks, friend! :P ;) xx
eloff 6y ago
As far as I know people typically hid from predators at night, not hunted. And were more likely to be active during the light of a full moon rather than a dark night. We really rely on our eyes. And in Africa, where we come from, it's very dangerous to be about at night. That's when the big predators are most active. Not to mention, not much blue light at night.
- jolincost 6y ago
  I think you need to read the paper. The blue light they provided was noted as being "similar to a moonless night", and I'd bet that it's a blue kind of light you get under starlight. Were you there tho? How can you substantiate that they hunted in the way you say? In my experience, humans have very good sight on a moonless night, a full moon is basically daylight and provides no cover, so I think your assertion is false, and you need to spend some time outdoors on moonless nights.
  - scoutt 6y ago
    I don't know... A human has no chance alone in the open, under low light conditions, against a big feline...
    - jolincost 6y ago
      Why respond to the weakest possible version of what I say? The version that requires almost a deliberate imagination against the likely interpretation. Besides being against the HN guidelines...Of course humans hunt in packs. What are you even thinking? I'm sure you weren't trying to do that specifically, but this propensity of people to straw man everything to find a gap to then comment against, and pretend that their "successful" comment against a straw man disproves the real comment they're replying to (which of course it doesn't), lets me feel like commenting online is so different to talking in person. Almost like every comment needs to be written like a legal document covering every possible edge case and malicious misinterpretation...Ugh. People seem obsessed with being right and proving others wrong, rather than learning. So often pretending it's binary, rather than nuanced. I guess this is the "game" of commenting online. We pretend it's about learning, but actually it's about "outwitting" others with these malicious misinterpretations (bad faith interpretations), malevolent reframings, ignoring data that contravenes your cherished beliefs (confirmation bias) and other dirty rhetorical tricks. Maybe everyone's day to day sucks so much they need to come online to feel they're finally smarter and more dominant than someone else...maybe it's just an outlet....Of course it's not. There's plenty of good discussions, but the bad discussions happen much more online than in real life. I don't care to get good at such a "game". I want to be able to defend against that balderdash type commentary, rather than just tolerate or ignore it, but I also want to learn. I'm pretty certain I'm guilty of most of this stuff myself......I think this metacomment by me can serve as a reminder to myself to try to get good enough at this game so I can ignore it, but to not make that my focus, with my focus instead being learning. If I do bother to comment, I may as well create and get something good for myself and others.
dumpsterdiver 6y ago
I upvoted you only because you said, "Just because you don't want to believe it doesn't mean it isn't true."
- jolincost 6y ago
  Thanks because I was about to run down the list of upvoters and just make sure they were updating me for "right" reasons. Not, hehe. I think that comment is totally right that you can upvote for, but understand if you and a handful of other people differ. No problem at all.
camjohnson26 6y ago
Evolutionary psychology in action. P hack a result and then backfill hypothetical stories of why the behavior evolved.
- jolincost 6y ago
  Fair enough. But is it a p-hack? Has that been proven? It's an easy dismissal without any data. Backfill hypothetical stories of why is also knows as thinking and theorizing. You ought to try it. It's how science gets done. Understand if you're averse to that, tho :) ;p x
  - camjohnson26 6y ago
    It’s absolutely not. Making testable hypotheses and then running experiments to try to prove them wrong is how science is done. Making untestable hypotheses is by definition the realm of philosophy.

stretchcat 6y ago

There's a lot more blue light during the day than at night.

bcdarwin 6y ago

I'm not saying it isn't true, just that it's not statistically supported by the evidence presented in the paper. You can invent post hoc justifications for almost any positive conclusion (although this one is weak since the authors admit the effect cannot be detected in individuals, only in aggregate). [edit: you can even p-hack and retroactively justify your way to entire subfields; see famously https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-review/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/07/5-httlpr-a-pointed-rev...]

f430 6y ago
I mean just because the statistics don't satiate your standards doesn't exclude the possibility of being sensitive to GMF. In mammals, this is what guides birds to migrate. We really need to stop treating the Earth like its just a magnetic rock. It's far more than that and the earth undergoes these field changes every interval with profound impact on life on earth. You and I are all made out of Earth and the things we eat and breathe are all Earth itself. When you die your body decomposes and it becomes soil and nutrients for plants which in turn feed the ecology which where our food comes from. So its hard pressed to just dismiss this as "spiritual pseudoscience". It is precisely this type of shallow thinking in Western ideology that is responsible for the global climate crisis. Your culture has thoroguhly destroyed earth and the next generation will pay the price because of your ignorance. There's just no way that we can brush off this phenomena with pedantry. edit: HN has a serious pedantry problem. Anything that challenges conventional wisdom is villified and attacked by nitpicking minor details that many only have surface level understanding. There is no p-hacking here, overwhelming portion of the samples shows the said sensitivity described qualitatively and quantitatively.
- bcdarwin 6y ago
  I am not claiming that the possibility is excluded, just that it is not demonstrated here. > In mammals, this is what guides birds to migrate. It's far more than that and the earth undergoes these field changes every interval with profound impact on life on earth. > You and I are all made out of Earth and the things we eat and breathe are all Earth itself. There's just no way that we can brush off this phenomena with pedantry. I agree that biology is profound, but pseudoscientific generalities like this confuse rather than clarify. [Likely typo: birds are not mammals.]
- KMag 6y ago
  > HN has a serious pedantry problem. Anything that challenges conventional wisdom is villified and attacked I think you're being downvoted because you've misinterpreted the GP as saying a proposition is untrue ("exclude the possibility"), when the GP is just saying this study isn't evidence either way. Then you went on a pseudoscientific naturalistic tangential rant. You seem to be claiming that denying this study is evidence either way shows an over-reliance on statistics. Furthermore, this over-reliance on statistics is a myopia particular to Western culture. This over-reliance on statistical significance has lead to poor environmental policy (with some thrown in hints toward naturalistic fallacy arguments). Am I understanding your argument correctly? I would argue that the major problem with environmental policy in the U.S. is that it under-values statistically significant studies. Fetishization of non-Western and pre-modern cultures isn't helpful. There are plenty of environmental disasters in both Asia and Africa. Slash-and-burn agriculture predates history, and Rio Tinto shows environmental damage from mining operations 5,000 years ago, so 'reject Western culture" and "just return to the old ways" aren't sufficient as a basis for environmental policy. (My apologies if you weren't hinting at a return to pre-modern practices. I know you didn't mention anything about ancient peoples, but I got a feeling that's where this discussion is headed and wanted to cut one round-trip out of the conversation.) What would you propose as an alternative basis for environmental policy, if not studies of statistical significance?
- folli 6y ago
  I don't think humans are considered a crepuscular or nocturnal species. Furthermore, birds are not mammals.
dumpsterdiver 6y ago
> I'm not saying it isn't true, just that it's not statistically supported by the evidence presented in the paper. I hate to be that guy, but imo practical statistics are a joke. The samples are tainted and biased, and the results have nothing to do with the population at large.
jolincost 6y ago
Are you sure about that, tho? Can you prove that it's actually a p-hack? You can level the accusation, but how do you go about substantiating it? I'd like to see the numbers and the data, not bombast.
- thatcat 6y ago
  It's actually up to the paper to prove that it's not a p-hack. That's done by declaring a null hypothesis and the intended stats analysis to be done before doing the experiment and collecting the data, because otherwise you can just compare arbitrary things until you find that some of them are correlated in the set you have. There's no numerical post-hoc analysis that would be able to prove that.
  - bcdarwin 6y ago
    Exactly - a p-hack is a form of misreporting, so isn't easy to detect at the level of individual studies. However, p-hacking isn't the only threat to replicability: in this case the authors have reported a large set of tests, so we can ask why they didn't control family-wise error via Bonferroni or friends (in which case the reported statistical significance almost certainly disappears). Also, I suspect if you fit Bayesian models (either separately or a hierarchical model) using reasonably narrow priors based on what we know about human sensitivity to magnetic fields, how much other senses are affected by sex differences, hunger, etc., and not starting each test assuming a complete state of ignorance of the world, then the data would be compatible with no effect.
  - jolincost 6y ago
    Is it really tho? Up to the paper to prove it's not something you say it is? I don't think so. The paper is what it is. If you claim it's fake, you need to make evidence for that. Not just launch lazy accusations. Seriously, what is what you said, if not just a lazy dismissal (oh it must be a p-hack)? And you're content with that? That's not science. They went to the trouble. If you're going to just dismiss it, and claim that's valid, you should go to the trouble to do science on that hypothesis you have. Thanks, friend! :P ;) xx

eloff 6y ago

As far as I know people typically hid from predators at night, not hunted. And were more likely to be active during the light of a full moon rather than a dark night. We really rely on our eyes. And in Africa, where we come from, it's very dangerous to be about at night. That's when the big predators are most active. Not to mention, not much blue light at night.

jolincost 6y ago
I think you need to read the paper. The blue light they provided was noted as being "similar to a moonless night", and I'd bet that it's a blue kind of light you get under starlight. Were you there tho? How can you substantiate that they hunted in the way you say? In my experience, humans have very good sight on a moonless night, a full moon is basically daylight and provides no cover, so I think your assertion is false, and you need to spend some time outdoors on moonless nights.
- scoutt 6y ago
  I don't know... A human has no chance alone in the open, under low light conditions, against a big feline...
  - jolincost 6y ago
    Why respond to the weakest possible version of what I say? The version that requires almost a deliberate imagination against the likely interpretation. Besides being against the HN guidelines...Of course humans hunt in packs. What are you even thinking? I'm sure you weren't trying to do that specifically, but this propensity of people to straw man everything to find a gap to then comment against, and pretend that their "successful" comment against a straw man disproves the real comment they're replying to (which of course it doesn't), lets me feel like commenting online is so different to talking in person. Almost like every comment needs to be written like a legal document covering every possible edge case and malicious misinterpretation...Ugh. People seem obsessed with being right and proving others wrong, rather than learning. So often pretending it's binary, rather than nuanced. I guess this is the "game" of commenting online. We pretend it's about learning, but actually it's about "outwitting" others with these malicious misinterpretations (bad faith interpretations), malevolent reframings, ignoring data that contravenes your cherished beliefs (confirmation bias) and other dirty rhetorical tricks. Maybe everyone's day to day sucks so much they need to come online to feel they're finally smarter and more dominant than someone else...maybe it's just an outlet....Of course it's not. There's plenty of good discussions, but the bad discussions happen much more online than in real life. I don't care to get good at such a "game". I want to be able to defend against that balderdash type commentary, rather than just tolerate or ignore it, but I also want to learn. I'm pretty certain I'm guilty of most of this stuff myself......I think this metacomment by me can serve as a reminder to myself to try to get good enough at this game so I can ignore it, but to not make that my focus, with my focus instead being learning. If I do bother to comment, I may as well create and get something good for myself and others.

dumpsterdiver 6y ago

I upvoted you only because you said, "Just because you don't want to believe it doesn't mean it isn't true."

jolincost 6y ago
Thanks because I was about to run down the list of upvoters and just make sure they were updating me for "right" reasons. Not, hehe. I think that comment is totally right that you can upvote for, but understand if you and a handful of other people differ. No problem at all.

camjohnson26 6y ago

Evolutionary psychology in action. P hack a result and then backfill hypothetical stories of why the behavior evolved.

jolincost 6y ago
Fair enough. But is it a p-hack? Has that been proven? It's an easy dismissal without any data. Backfill hypothetical stories of why is also knows as thinking and theorizing. You ought to try it. It's how science gets done. Understand if you're averse to that, tho :) ;p x
- camjohnson26 6y ago
  It’s absolutely not. Making testable hypotheses and then running experiments to try to prove them wrong is how science is done. Making untestable hypotheses is by definition the realm of philosophy.