From: I William Wiser (will@wiserlife.com)
Date: Wed Apr 23 2003 - 15:40:57 MDT
No offense Eliezer but I think people respond to gts because his arguments
are more interesting. To me you are mostly saying go read the literature.
At this point go read the literature is my personal next step but it was
gts's
less rigorous arguments that got me to that step. It is my feeling that gts
is
not mounting a convincing scientific argument but I don't expect him to. I
don't really see a point to further discussion (other than having fun, which
I may)
because I assume that scientific papers and books will make better arguments
than gts. Don't get me wrong your voice adds weight to the Paleodiet idea
but the point of discussion here is to raise interest and suggest that there
is
proof to be had. I don't expect anyone to fully replicate the arguments
here.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 12:55 PM
Subject: Re: evolution and diet
> gts wrote:
> >
> > I'm glad to see another paleo-guy in this thread. I think that makes
about
> > 2.5 of us, where Eliezer seems to be the .5 :) (I'm still not clear
about
> > what Eliezer really thinks, given that he keeps disagreeing with me even
> > while I keep trying to agree with him :-)
>
> Don't mind me. Just being precise. I count the right conclusion for the
> wrong reasons as a loss. Specifically, I object to the way you are
> attempting to claim the paleodiet is an a priori null hypothesis, rather
> than an experimentally supported *new* null hypothesis. A priori, there
> is nothing in particular to distinguish "eat what your ancestors ate" and
> "eat what tastes good" as evolutionarily motivated hypotheses. However,
> extensive research has shown that violation of ancestral invariants is bad
> for you, such as, e.g., eating ice cream, which mixes sugar and fat and
> messes up your insulin appetite regulation mechanism. You can't eat a
> whole stick of margerine. Your body will scream "Enough!" But mix lots
> of fat with lots of sugar - which you almost never find in ancestral foods
> - and you can eat a whole quart of ice cream. It tastes good, but it
> breaks the engineering assumptions. Is it bad for you? Yes. Does it
> taste good? Yes. Is it in the ancestral dietary range? No. So if you
> accumulate enough examples like these, you eventually conclude from
> *investigation*, and not a priori argument, that the paleodiet is a good
> null hypothesis.
>
> I've also noted a disturbing tendency for responders in this thread to
> attack the weakest arguments for the paleodiet - that means *yours*, gts -
> rather than the strongest arguments, or those arguments which appear in
> the literature. In other words, gts, you're using an argument which is
> much weaker than necessary - I'm not sure why - and people who, for some
> odd reason, want to argue about this, are responding to you, instead of
> reading the literature. Note that nobody is bothering to respond to my
> posts, only yours. This is because your posts are easy and fun to attack,
> because they use the weakest possible argument for a correct conclusion.
>
> > In my view the paleodiet is, however, still the base diet upon which we
> > should formulate an optimal diet. Again, it's a question of
burden-of-proof.
> > As I see it, any deviation from the paleodiet needs to be justified by
solid
> > scientific evidence.
>
> Because of the empirical regularity with which past deviations have turned
> out to be negative. *Not* because of a priori considerations. The
> paleodiet took its fair turn in the burden-of-proof barrel *and now it is*
> a good null hypothesis.
>
> Trying to argue the a priori plausibility of paleodiet theory, without
> citing the supporting evidence, is, in fact, a worthless argument. If you
> go on providing a worthless argument for paleodiet theory, the skeptics in
> this thread will go on arguing it to the exclusion of all other points
raised.
>
> Accept that the burden of proof rests on paleo, then answer it.
>
> --
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
> Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
>
>
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