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Uh, no. The premise (and this is how the GP comment put it) was that humans around Homer's time had fundamentally different brain structures, and that differen

Uh, no. The premise (and this is how the GP comment put it) was that humans around Homer's time had fundamentally different brain structures, and that differences in poetry and thinking processes could be explained by looking at how brains changed over the last few thousand years. That's not "overzealous comment section policing". It's rejecting a premise that is completely infeasible with everything we know about human evolution (or relative lack thereof) during that timespan.

glenstein 8d ago
Uh, yes. It's overzealous because personally disagreeing with something doesn't mean that it's outside the scope of the subject matter that the article is speaking to. If anything, you're reaffirming the commonalities between the theory and what's proposed in the article because what they have in common is a proposed difference in brain structures followed by a convergence. The fact that you disagree with the truth of the theory has literally nothing to do with whether it's on point in response to an article that's about the same subject matter. I would have hoped that me saying multiple times that I disagreed with it would have made clear already that there's more going on here than just a matter of whether you do or don't disagree with it. Declaring that it's "not overzealous" mirrors my language back at me but without attaching an actual argument to it.
graemep 7d ago
What could plausibly cause that change in just a few thousand years? I cannot see how this could be true without it following that not everyone will have this change as it is far too recent to have spread to everyone every where. Where are these people who lack it?
- glenstein 7d ago
  My read was that they were also disagreeing with it (and I personally disagree with it too for exactly the reasons you mention). But the problem in this case isn't just that it's right or wrong, it's that it at least belongs to a related family of arguments that are fair game to explore in response to the article. Some of the best conversations take the form of knowing something is wrong but powering through the struggle of putting the why into words, and all the associated conversational branching that can happen along the way.

glenstein 8d ago

Uh, yes. It's overzealous because personally disagreeing with something doesn't mean that it's outside the scope of the subject matter that the article is speaking to. If anything, you're reaffirming the commonalities between the theory and what's proposed in the article because what they have in common is a proposed difference in brain structures followed by a convergence. The fact that you disagree with the truth of the theory has literally nothing to do with whether it's on point in response to an article that's about the same subject matter. I would have hoped that me saying multiple times that I disagreed with it would have made clear already that there's more going on here than just a matter of whether you do or don't disagree with it. Declaring that it's "not overzealous" mirrors my language back at me but without attaching an actual argument to it.

graemep 7d ago

What could plausibly cause that change in just a few thousand years? I cannot see how this could be true without it following that not everyone will have this change as it is far too recent to have spread to everyone every where. Where are these people who lack it?

glenstein 7d ago
My read was that they were also disagreeing with it (and I personally disagree with it too for exactly the reasons you mention). But the problem in this case isn't just that it's right or wrong, it's that it at least belongs to a related family of arguments that are fair game to explore in response to the article. Some of the best conversations take the form of knowing something is wrong but powering through the struggle of putting the why into words, and all the associated conversational branching that can happen along the way.