That was an AWESOME episode!
Stupid Gorns.
Posted on 10/27/2009 12:31:30 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Modern Men Are Wimps
Oct 23, 2009 — Whatever happened to survival of the fittest? Our ancestors were much stronger, says the author of a new book on anthropology. PhysOrg reported on a book by Peter McAllister that says today’s males don’t measure up physically to their counterparts even a century ago, let alone those in the Roman empire and earlier.
According to McAllister humans have lost 40 percent of the shafts of the long bones because they are no longer subjected to the kind of muscular loads that were normal before the industrial revolution,” the article said. “Even our elite athletes are not exposed to anywhere near the challenges and loads that were part of everyday life for pre-industrial people.” Cro-Magnon men were taller, more fit and had bigger brains than the average man of today. Neanderthal women could have easily whipped Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestle, he claims. Records show that even in recorded history men had better overall fitness on average.
Manthropology: The Science of the Inadequate Modern Male blames our inadequacies on our sedentary lifestyles. It’s a good thing we are not competing against ancient people in the Olympics. McAllister says Greek rowers in their trireme ships could outperform today’s world-class rowers. He wrote of “Roman soldiers who completed the equivalent of one and a half marathons a day, carrying equipment weighing half their body weight, and Australian Aborigines who could throw a spear over 10 meters further than the current javelin world record.” Even a century ago Rwandan men and Australian natives could have eclipsed modern track and field records. Today’s champions merely outcompete one another in a bad lot. “Even our elite athletes are not exposed to anywhere near the challenges and loads that were part of everyday life for pre-industrial people.”
McAllister claims modern weaknesses are reversible with the right kind of diet and exercise. The benefits can accrue to individuals as well as populations.
There are still ethnic groups today who show what humans are capable of. Remember the sherpas in the 06/17/2005 entry? (see also 10/31/2007, bullet 4). It’s understandably hard to live optimally with today’s hectic urban lifestyles that subject both men and women to mental stress in a sitting position (e.g., sitting in traffic hurrying to get somewhere, working at a computer all day). Each individual needs to assess their fitness level and improve as opportunity allows. We suggest vigorous walks in nature, up and down hills, carrying a load when possible. Whatever McAllister’s book shows (and it is undoubtedly oversimplified), it is not showing that evolutionary progress is occurring. Read the Old Testament and study ancient civilizations for amazing feats of strength and endurance. It’s startling to think of the extreme ancient monuments around the world that were built without petroleum and electromagnetic power.Darwinian anthropology creates a mindset that we are evolving upward from the apes. That runs diametrically opposed to the Biblical worldview that says creation was perfect at the beginning, but was cursed and is running downhill. Old testament people lived for centuries. It is more credible to think that mutational load over millennia of exposure to cosmic rays and other mutagens is taking its toll. Scientific and engineering knowledge can accumulate to counter these trends, but that’s intelligent design, not evolution. We’d better take care of what we have left.
“I watched him get wooped by a little Japanese dude in Pride. “
Yeah, I did know he had a couple of losses - but that dude seems unstoppable to me. I’d love to see him take on Lidell. Now that would be a good fight.
John Marshall—the future Chief Justice—once took leave from service on Washington’s army in New Jersey or Pennsylvania. He walked the whole way, His clothes were in such a state that his family at first did not recognize him. And Marshall was a gentleman. And we know about Washington’s exploits in the West. He did stuff that movie heroes do. He was an outdoors man and physically powerful, He could take a walnut between thumb and forefinger and crack it open. It was a parlor trick he liked to do. Daniel Boone was away on his own for a year in Kentucky, with just his kit. A famous mountain man, John Colter I think was his name, once was captured by Indians. Instead of killing him, they stripped him naked ,gave him a head start, and then started to chance him down he ran twenty miles to the nearest river to escape. The Indians stopped at river’s edge and let him get away. During the Civil War, Stonewall Jackson’s troops were called foot cavalry because during the Valley Campaign, they marched at the rate of 7 miles per hour. Not every man could maintain that pace, since many were walking barefoot, but they indeed were moving almost as fast as the cavalry. We have troops who can do this, but not, I think, most in the infantry.
Sure it can. A tautology is the simple fallacy of begging the question.
"What it proves may be trivial, but it’s true."
It doesn't prove anything. Not even anything trivial.
"And at one point, it was revelatory."
You have to be pretty dim for tautology and fallacy to be 'revelatory'.
"As for “meaning,” it may not say much, but that’s not the point."
Again, it doesn't say anything. Nothing at all.
"The point is to shoot down fools who write articles about how humans aren’t as strong as they used to be, and imply that somehow evolution isn’t working anymore."
Engaging in tautology and fallacy doesn't shoot any fools except the ones shooting themselves in the foot.
“I’d even go you one better:
Give Johnnie NOTHING but a one-month time to prepare, and the odds are, Johnnie will have some kind of killing machine ready that will make the Neanderthal either A) die or B) Bow down in worship.
Even a sword would kill a Neanderthal..... and most of us know about saltpeter/sulphur/charcoal. Saltpeter can be harvested from any bat cave, sulphur is abundant around any volcanically active area, and it’s a cinch to make charcoal. Not too much after that, you have either a gun or a series of bombs.
“
OK, Captian Kirk, we get your point.
I think you missed the author’s.
From an evolutionary standpoint there are two things that play into this. The first is medicine, every time a medical advance saves a child from sickness and that child goes on to breed we bring down the strength of the gene pool. The second is that we just have a different world where big strong men are no longer a primary necessity, most labor now is intellectual not physical, so the men that are obvious good providers tend to be the guys with glasses not the ones with shoulders. Evolution works in an ever changing world.
Yeah, I didn’t think you could work with that.
You’re dismissed.
Natural selection isn't about anything.
"Organisms aren’t always getting stronger, faster, smarter, more complex, or whatever it is we obsess about."
Not even occassionally.
"Things do evolve from “lower” to “higher” forms, but lower forms persist, and often are more reproductively successful than their more complex alternatives."
Evolution is not teleological.
"The thing is, evolution is about what makes it through to the next generation."
This too is tautology. What makes it through? That which made it through.
"It’s about the genes, not the organism. Whatever genes survive were the best at surviving, for whatever reason."
Still engaging in tautology I see. Whatever survives are the survivors.
"There’s no more “meaning” in this than there needs to be."
There is no meaning at all.
"What sort of meaning are you looking for, anyway, in a world where humans and slugs live side by side, each perpetuating their type about as effectively as the other?"
Evolution has no meaning. Natural selection has no meaning. Survival of the survivors has no meaning.
How true! LOL!
So, you deliberately proposed a fallacy as argument because you knew your fallacy had no answer?
And you think that meant something?
That was an AWESOME episode!
Stupid Gorns.
Yup - after 2million years, you guys finally get to use those opposable thumbs the way God intended - on your lap tops;)
Of course, what else would GGG post?
That reminds me of one of my ancestors was building a log cabin, hard enough physical work in itself but it was in below freezing weather. They slept out in the open, next to the cabin, and during the night were covered by snow. They woke up the next morning laughed at being stupid enough to get all covered in snow and kept building until done. I will concede that people were mentally tougher and more conditioned to hardship in centuries past. In size though people are getting larger due to improved availability of food and perhaps what is in the food.
I find them best for holding beer.
Oh, and by the way, I sorta went along with your characterization of an integral part of the theory of Natural Selection (though not all of it) as a tautology, which it by no means is. In this case defining a “tautology” as a statement which, though true, is obvious and meaningless.
Simple? Yes. But so is the Special Theory of Relativity. So is all of science. People tend to think that the best theories are ones that explain the most with the fewest words. Not true. The best scientific theories are ones that make sense of the world and stand up to repeated testing. They usually have extremely limited scope, since the more you say, the less likely you are to be right.
Anyway, “survival of the fittest” is not a mere self-referential loop. If it seems so today, that is because it has been so successful. As coined by Herbert Spencer, the phrase was a popularization and encapsulation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which, to put it as simply as possible, argued that races favored in the struggle for life are preserved. That is, the organisms that survive get to pass on their characteristics.
So it’s not just all about “Whoever’s the fittest survives, so whoever survives was fit” “Why were they fit?” “Oh, because they survived.” It’s more a matter of “Why does this creature have so-and-so characteristic?” “Because it allowed its ancestor to survive long enough to pass it on.”
“Survival of the fittest” helps us understand the mechanism of evolution (i.e. the preservation of favored genes through the struggle for existence and reproduction), which was not always so obvious. I’d like to see the look on the face of a Lamarckian if you went back in time and told him the underlying mechanism of natural selection was tautological.
Thanks for the ping, but I’ll pass on this one.
Strikes too close to home, does it? d:op
When I was in high school sixty years ago, and we had more than 600 students, the biggest guy on our football team weighed 230 pounds. Then it dropped down to about 190. Looking at the annuals, few girls were over 140. Even among adults, there were few fat people. It has only been during the past thirty years or so, I swear, that there have been so many fat people.
what is d:op?
No, in this case a tautology is an empty or vacuous statement that is logically true no matter the outcome.
"Simple? Yes. But so is the Special Theory of Relativity. So is all of science. People tend to think that the best theories are ones that explain the most with the fewest words. Not true. The best scientific theories are ones that make sense of the world and stand up to repeated testing. They usually have extremely limited scope, since the more you say, the less likely you are to be right."
Fallacy of equivocation noted. Equating the tautology of 'survival of the fittest equal those who survive' to GR and 'all of science' is quite mindless.
"Anyway, “survival of the fittest” is not a mere self-referential loop. If it seems so today, that is because it has been so successful. As coined by Herbert Spencer, the phrase was a popularization and encapsulation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which, to put it as simply as possible, argued that races favored in the struggle for life are preserved. That is, the organisms that survive get to pass on their characteristics."
Of course it is a self-referential loop. You've demonstrated that several times. No matter how you slice it, survival of the survivors is a tautology and the fallacy of begging the question.
"So it’s not just all about “Whoever’s the fittest survives, so whoever survives was fit” “Why were they fit?” “Oh, because they survived.” It’s more a matter of “Why does this creature have so-and-so characteristic?” “Because it allowed its ancestor to survive long enough to pass it on.”"
You're begging the question again.
"“Survival of the fittest” helps us understand the mechanism of evolution (i.e. the preservation of favored genes through the struggle for existence and reproduction), which was not always so obvious."
You are engaging in the fallacy of equivocation again. 'Preservation' is not "Things do evolve from “lower” to “higher” forms".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.