3 ms·

There's a tremendous amount of baggage in the loaded term "natural". But I think there might be a shred of reason to underlying the naturalistic fallacy if you

by ericb 14y ago

There's a tremendous amount of baggage in the loaded term "natural". But I think there might be a shred of reason to underlying the naturalistic fallacy if you interpret natural to mean "previously present in our evolutionary environment and therefore has previously exhibited evolutionary selective pressure on the development of our immune system and biochemistry." In other words, novel, isolated chemicals and processes have more opportunity to present our bodies with circumstances their evolution has not "tuned" them for.

papsosouid 14y ago
That is a lovely hypothesis, but it has failed to stand up to testing. You go ahead and eat all natural poison ivy salads.
- ericb 14y ago
  What I am stating is limited in scope, and your response is as disingenuous as it is snarky. Your example likely demonstrates selective pressure within species--specifically urushiol in plants as a protective mechanism against herbivores. But you are arguing against the relevance of selective pressure. So you have beat up a straw man in which all things natural are better, but of course, I never argued that. Do you believe in selective pressure? Do you think digesting cow milk conferred no evolutionary advantage? There ARE studies on the prevalence of the genes for digesting dairy milk, and I think they back me up. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/science/11evolve.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/science/11evolve.html?_r=0
  - papsosouid 14y ago
    >But you are arguing against the relevance of selective pressure. No, I am arguing against pretending there is a correlation between "natural" and "good" when there is not. Like I very clearly said.
    - ericb 14y ago
      On a different note. I'm interested in a link to the study where where they studied my hypothesis and disproved it like you say. I've never seen a serious study attempt to disprove this. So, citation please?

by ericb 14y ago

papsosouid 14y ago

That is a lovely hypothesis, but it has failed to stand up to testing. You go ahead and eat all natural poison ivy salads.

ericb 14y ago
What I am stating is limited in scope, and your response is as disingenuous as it is snarky. Your example likely demonstrates selective pressure within species--specifically urushiol in plants as a protective mechanism against herbivores. But you are arguing against the relevance of selective pressure. So you have beat up a straw man in which all things natural are better, but of course, I never argued that. Do you believe in selective pressure? Do you think digesting cow milk conferred no evolutionary advantage? There ARE studies on the prevalence of the genes for digesting dairy milk, and I think they back me up. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/science/11evolve.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/science/11evolve.html?_r=0
- papsosouid 14y ago
  >But you are arguing against the relevance of selective pressure. No, I am arguing against pretending there is a correlation between "natural" and "good" when there is not. Like I very clearly said.
  - ericb 14y ago
    On a different note. I'm interested in a link to the study where where they studied my hypothesis and disproved it like you say. I've never seen a serious study attempt to disprove this. So, citation please?