I can't help but chuckle every time someone takes a human feature or habit and then attempts to force it into the massive speculative jigsaw puzzle that is biological Evolution. Not to mention the fact that we're conveniently trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle where we get to continually redefine the picture on the box so it suits our latest jigsaw piece that we just found or made up...
Talk about a self-validating world-view. We have absolutely no way of ever empirically confirming what the real picture on the box is, yet we continue to find and force only the pieces that fit our conjectured "picture on the box".
This article is borderline farcical given that these conjectures are so far into the domain of unempirical "science" I would hardly call it science or even presentable theory.
I'm all for science when it works on the authority of empiricism, but once this authority is borrowed for claims about the unempirical, that's when I get incredibly skeptical. This is an intelligent community and I hate to see such reddit-level "science" passed around here.
Unlike you, I greatly enjoy articles such as this one.
Let me begin with the caveat that I agree that it is more speculation than science, and it is unfortunate that the author presents it as if it were a scientific paper rather than a blog post. But note that it hasn't been published anywhere, so it is not as if the scientific community is accepting it as science.
You seem to have the opinion that anything that is not science is at best not worth doing, and at worst evil. I urge you to re-examine that assumption.
Now, if there were a scientific way of answering the question that the article considers, that would be a very different situation. In the absence of one, it is ridiculous to suggest that no one should think about it. And if people think about it, they will present their attempted answers to the world. Hopefully, their arguments will rest on logic, even if not empirically verifiable. This is an expression of human curiosity, and I think it is natural and wonderful.
I say we should continue to discuss articles like this, but doing our best to keep in mind that they are not proven theories. As our experimental abilities improve, it might turn out that today's speculation is fertile ground for tomorrow's experimentation as a bed of hypothesis to test and accept or discard.
Finally, even if one's sole concern is the dissemination of scientific knowledge, I contend that the article is still useful if it makes people think and learn more about the fascinating, fascinating phenomenon of Fischerian runaway (to give just one example).
-- In the absence of one, it is ridiculous to suggest that no one should think about it.
I'm not saying that no one should think about it, I'm saying we should have a better filter that immediately separates garbage science from good science. It takes about 10 minutes of reading and a few paragraphs to realize that this is absolute garbage and doesn't need to be voted up.
-- but doing our best to keep in mind that they are not proven theories.
Now that I think about it, what really irks me here is that I know people are actually reading stuff like this (which throws around enough scientific terminology and academic quotes to sound reasonable) and then some of those people go on believing that really is the answer to the hypothesis presented.
That is what has happened to a lot of science these days. There's so much semi-believable trash and conjecture like this tossed out in so many different fields of study that I just wish people would get a better sense of what even has a remotely logical basis for validity. It pains me to know that even one person is reading this trash and coming away thinking that "Gee, science has solved another one!" when in fact it has not.
He is speculating, and some of his speculation is interesting. At this point, I think you are rationalizing your intuitional dislike of the article. It seems more likely that some of his speculation just rubs you the wrong way.
We're a long way from being able to tell why animals developed the traits they did through evolution. We're a really long way from being able to empirically prove it. That doesn't mean speculation isn't fun in the meantime.
At this point, I think you are rationalizing your intuitional dislike of the article.
Maybe you're not understanding me, and maybe this is partially because you're new to the community...
But when I visit HN, I don't want to be presented with the 99.99% of speculative trash that fills the internet. I can go to Digg or Reddit for this sort of junk science that gets us intellectually nowhere. I (and everyone else) want to see that quality .01% that presents legitimate scientific inquiry, regardless of whether we agree with it or not.
I think you don't get it. Speculation is not the same as junk science. Speculation can be insightful, interesting and intelligent or it can be the opposite. Obviously you thought it was trash and just as obviously a larger number of HN'ers thought it was good. You seem to arguing that everyone else should use your criteria for what should be on Hacker News.
Actually I had a look at a few of the guy's other articles and it seems he is a little loose with his facts. I love good speculation and I thought that article had some. But the author often does seem to miss the distinction between fact and opinion. Still you (kirse) should be prepared to back yourself up if you are going to label the article as trash.
Wow, you need to relax. This is hacker news, not research news. Why don't you set up a parallel site? The code is open source. Someone already did that for business articles. You're trying to take your personal preferences -- which, as you can see, other people don't seem to agree with -- and decide that HN should follow them.
Besides, initially you said this was about HN, and now it's about saving the average person on the street from their own stupidity? Because surely, people on HN are aware that this is not a theory. If that's your problem, I think this would be the least of your worries -- half the people out there still think "because the Bible said so" is a logical basis for validity.
Use of the word "sexy" 30 times in something purporting to be scientific; reliance on anecdotes rather than research to make points.
In general it sets off the crackpot alarm for me which means that I take anything else said therein with a grain of salt. One so large, as it were, that it wasn't even worth continuing to read after a certain point.
Hm, I did not notice any anecdotes in the article, unless you count stuff like "some societies post boy warriors to guard the women" - sure he does not give the evidence for that in the article, but there might be more extensive studies of it.
Anyway, I don't want to defend it as science - it's an article on the internet. But the flaws in the reasoning definitely are not obvious to me, as they seem to the first commentator. Would be interested to hear more details.
Edit: OK, I counted the "sexy" occurrences, too. Did not bother me much - it is clearly written in "popular science" tone, not "hard science" tone.
"One objection to all this is the claim that men from cultures in which the women habitually go about topless, do not find breasts sexy. I refute this: we do not say that women’s faces are sexy [...]"
That's where I stopped. There's just no rigor in there.
Fair enough, and thanks for being the first to actually point to a real example.
This point did not bother me much, because it seems unlikely to me that there are actually such cultures (where men don't find breasts sexy). Would be interested to learn more about one such culture. For all I know, there might even be cultures where women don't have breasts? I also just remembered those women that put rings around their neck to elongate them - clearly there are a lot of subtle points to consider...
I also don't take issue if people decide they are not interested in that particular subject. However, I take issue with people claiming evolution theory is nonsense, as the original commentator did.
Use of the word "sexy" 30 times in something purporting to be scientific
Well, he's using the word "sexy" to mean what it means. That is, marked by or tending to arouse sexual desire or interest. I found it rather refreshing that someone was using sexy to mean "sexy", rather than to mean popular, or cool, or useful, or profitable.
How does the article "purport to be scientific"? I read it as interesting speculation. It doesn't claim to be based on rigorous empirical evidence; it just claims to be interesting. And clearly a bunch of HN readers agreed.
"I say we should continue to discuss articles like this, but doing our best to keep in mind that they are not proven theories."
Isn't that true for all science? Still at one point we have to take the one or other theory and work with it, because it is the best we have. People built the Eiffel tower before Einstein came along and relativized physics (I think - did not look up the dates).
Not that I disagree with you, but I think "remember they are not proven theories" is still a bit of a cop out. Would you say that Evolution is not a proven theory? I think it is more accurate to assume we have not yet gotten every nano detail right, but the big picture seems very, very likely. (Of course the article in question, as you say, is just an article on a web site, not a peer reviewed thing).
Sure, this "evolution-x.com" stuff is just someone's personal writings, but the academic and peer-reviewed study of how human features were produced by evolution is definitely a valid field. Yeah, it's hard to arrive at any definite conclusions since we can't make direct observations of our own evolution, but it's still the right paradigm to use in thinking about these questions.
It's the mark of a very bad writer, to take several sources of respectable ideas and use them to get to a conclusion worse than the original.
It would be like an engineer taking the finer points of concrete and steel and making something weaker than wood. I believe it takes talent to be that talentless.
"It would be like an engineer taking the finer points of concrete and steel and making something weaker than wood."
That's a bit antisocial to bring that metaphor up around programmers... that's uncomfortably close to what we do all the time.
Just this week I was examining a project built on Java and Struts and a couple of other rock solid Java technologies, and the end result... well, you name the problem and it had it, inconsistency, no conceptual integrity, bad performance, terrible code... 'twas horrible what they did to Java. I don't like Java, but it doesn't actually have to be this bad...
(I found myself making this metaphor: It was like the team was situated in front of a bulging dam, armed with a firehose that sprays Java code. Every time a crack appears, they shoot the hose at it and spray out a few more hundred gallons of code. Eventually you're left with nothing but a mess.)
lmao, for whatever it's worth, the guy or gal has taken his/her time to go through the studies and present the information. To compare abstract thought with concrete objects is perhaps talentless :P
What is your proposed way of doing things then, just never think about anything at all? What about those people who wondered if the earth is flat? Doesn't it always start with a theory, that people then try to disprove or validate?
Also I don't understand why you think there is no empirical evidence? There is a lot of empirical evidence, namely, there are billions of people to observe, as well as lots and lots of animals.
So people create models that they think explain things - then they can compare those models to reality. That they are not perfect does not make them 100% wrong (is Newtonian physics wrong? Kind of, but would you say it is stupid? At least it lead the way in the right direction).
OK, trying agin: "We have absolutely no way of ever empirically confirming what the real picture on the box is, yet we continue to find and force only the pieces that fit our conjectured "picture on the box"."
What do you mean by that? If you have an observation that contradicts the theory exposed in the article, then publish it, and the theory will have to be amended/discarded/whatever. Before you chuckle, present the observation/evidence.
I suppose you think that maths is no science, then?
After all, there's no empirical proof that any mathematical statement is true. Even simple statements like, for example, C/r = Pi cannot be verified empirically. Following your argument, maths is just "pseudo science".
But, of course, you would not say that, would you?
However, if you accept maths to be a science, why not any other field that uses deductive logic? For biological evolution -- at least, the part you seem to find disgusting -- basically uses deductive logic: It makes a few basic assumptions, and then deduces its conclusions, using logical arguments. There's quite a lot of game theory in evolutionary biology.
Your argument, on the other hand, is based on a false assumption. Namely, that there are no empirical proofs for statements in evolutionary biology.
Because there is, sometimes.
Yes, we cannot make experiments with humans, especially not with ones we consider extinct.
We can, however, argue "by analogy". And guess what? Arguments by analogy are made all the time in empirical science. Whenever you use a bridge, you bet your life that the mathematical model of the bridge correctly reflected all the important attributes of the real bridge. All sciences using mathematical models are based on the argument by analogy.
You complain about "pseudo science". Your comment, however, lacks signs of quality as well. You seem to be ignorant about scientific reasoning and yet you dare to judge someone else's article. Why not start by fixing your own ignorance, first?
Talk about a self-validating world-view. We have absolutely no way of ever empirically confirming what the real picture on the box is, yet we continue to find and force only the pieces that fit our conjectured "picture on the box".
This article is borderline farcical given that these conjectures are so far into the domain of unempirical "science" I would hardly call it science or even presentable theory.
I'm all for science when it works on the authority of empiricism, but once this authority is borrowed for claims about the unempirical, that's when I get incredibly skeptical. This is an intelligent community and I hate to see such reddit-level "science" passed around here.
Another example of pseudo science from this website: http://www.evolution-x.com/dumbgirls.htm