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I mean this is why Nassim Taleb got extremely controversial with his via negativa approach during his Antifragile and Skin in the Game period (I am a huge fan o

by scoofy 2y ago

I mean this is why Nassim Taleb got extremely controversial with his via negativa approach during his Antifragile and Skin in the Game period (I am a huge fan of his writing). >Drink no liquid that isn’t at least a thousand years old (wine, water, coffee). Eat nothing invented or re-engineered by humans. The argument is straightforward, that human beings are a wildly complex multi-variate system and that throwing wrenches into a complex multi-variate system is generally a horrible idea (this heuristic is inverted and encouraged when the that system is breaking down). Is there a bit of a naturalistic fallacy here? I think sort of, but not significant one. The idea that we could screw up our bodies is obviously there. The flip side of this coin is that I see something as trivial as depression and/or most other non-fatal ailments as completely independent of the evolutionary process, such that experimenting on ourselves to improve our life (again, quality of life over time should not be directly related to probability of genetic reproduction success, as is made obvious from the gay uncle hypothesis). The implications of this extend to where you live, so a bunch of genetically German hippies living in California, pretending to be one with nature, really are being dishonest about the health benefits they pretend to have, when the argument pretty much insists that the region of evolutionary development occurs will be crucial to the benefits of that evolution. Taleb himself lives in NYC, not his genetic homeland of Lebanon. We really just need to be more honest about how little we know about health... especially health outside of the highly reproductive window (13-45).

ajb 2y ago
I agree with your major points, but depression is far from trivial. People sometimes refer to feeling a bit down as depression, but in medical terminology depression is specifically a disorder which has severe impact on your life, as well as being one of the main causes of suicide. As such it will be a factor in evolution, both as a cause of death and a cause of failure to reproduce.
- scoofy 2y ago
  The inverse of via negativa is that when the for potential death is there, interventions should be used without hesitation. Insofar as death removing someone from the gene pool, again this is exactly the reason I bring up the gay uncle hypothesis. The idea being that the reproduction problems of gene for an individual may be outweighed by the reproductive benefits of the genetic family. The other idea is that it may be caused by a common error like genetic disease.

by scoofy 2y ago

ajb 2y ago

I agree with your major points, but depression is far from trivial. People sometimes refer to feeling a bit down as depression, but in medical terminology depression is specifically a disorder which has severe impact on your life, as well as being one of the main causes of suicide. As such it will be a factor in evolution, both as a cause of death and a cause of failure to reproduce.

scoofy 2y ago
The inverse of via negativa is that when the for potential death is there, interventions should be used without hesitation. Insofar as death removing someone from the gene pool, again this is exactly the reason I bring up the gay uncle hypothesis. The idea being that the reproduction problems of gene for an individual may be outweighed by the reproductive benefits of the genetic family. The other idea is that it may be caused by a common error like genetic disease.