Thank you for saying this! I find it even more frustrating when someone twists the truth in order to make a point I agree with because it takes away from credibility in a major way. For example, .yesterday I read this article talking about transgender surgeries.
The author quite rightly talks about the horrors of such surgeries. At some point he says "Device loss at 9 months was 21% overall."
And then the he makes a statement :
"If the device “loss” was 20% at nine months, that appears to imply that the failure rate within five years is 100%!"
Um... No, if the event rate is 20% a year you will not end up with 100% in 5 years. It's just a mathematically incorrect conclusion which surprised me coming from an experienced researcher.
Such statement can make an observant reader suspicious of everything else in the paper , which is a shame because gender surgeries are awful and need to stop.
Really enjoying your posts! Please don't mistake my comments for negativity.
Are you also doing a little cultural gaslighting when you attach Shark's Fin Soup to "hipsters" instead of its actual origin? A good percentage of hipsters are vegetarian or vegan, so it's an unlikely menu item. I live in a heavily hipster AND Asian region, and everyone knows that this is squarely (triangularly?) a Chinese dish. Even your link makes clear that it's Chinese in origin and in reality. Are you avoiding political incorrectness; or you're just not a "foodie"?
I loved the truncated conversation with the huffy feminist neurobiologist. (I'm ex-left and itinerant Second Wave feminist.)
You may be overthinking the line... You remember E.B. White's point that "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process"? It was just a whimsical joke.... as in a "hipster" being someone "who follows the latest trends and fashions." It seemed funnier than saying "Don't order shark fin soup in a trendy restaurant that just opened in your neighborhood and is catering to people who have the disposable income to order unusual foods that they wouldn't normally eat." Oh my, I think the frog has escaped this vale of tears!
I've certainly enjoyed your comments.... I'll give your condolences to the frog. LOL
Loved the essay, the ending is especially exquisite. But I have to guess you know this: There are some good reasons to believe sharks at least sometimes mistake humans on surfboards for seals.
Yes, I would agree with you in principle and you make a great point.
There are two issues here. First, you can't really tell what's in the mind of another organism. So, it's always a bit speculative. The second is this: Does the human on a surfboard look like a seal, or do seals look like a human on a surfboard, or — more probably — do both humans on surfboards and seals match the computational algorithm that sharks use to identify prey? You see, the shark doesn't have a list of prey items in its head (tuna, mackerel, human leg dangling in the water), to which it is trying to match things that it senses in the environment. It has computational decision strategies based on a variety of sensory inputs including electroreception. Both the person on the surfboard and the seal fall into the category "acceptable meal." The person on a surfboard can only be labeled as a mistake from a very human centric point of view. Imagine you had a shark in an aquarium and, instead of fish, you fed it terrestrial animals. Let's say you put cats in the tank. The shark would eat them. Is it making mistakes or is it capturing things that fit the algorithm defining "acceptable prey item?" Based on what I know about how brains work, these are not mistakes. When I went to school in India, I ate food that was very different than any of the food I grew up with. Was that a mistake because the food wasn't what you would have expected me to be eating? (I don't think so. It was all pretty darned good!) I've written quite a lot about this in terms of praying mantises and how they choose prey. Make any sense?
I thank you very much for the thoughtful, intellectually challenging comment. I appreciate it!
Bravo!!!
THANKS!
"But sharks aren’t really nice and you shouldn’t kill them for soup.
Male and female brains aren’t biologically identical, and you shouldn’t be a domineering chauvinist."
Exactly - it should be easy to understand. It is as if Hume's old instruction that one should distinguish between 'is' and 'ought' is being forgotten.
Science cannot bear to give up that distinction - we are not born into the Garden of Eden - we live on Earth.
I find it sad and serious that in recent years also science has taken on a role as moral educators of the people.
Well said. I agree completely!
Thank you for saying this! I find it even more frustrating when someone twists the truth in order to make a point I agree with because it takes away from credibility in a major way. For example, .yesterday I read this article talking about transgender surgeries.
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/transgender-surgery-common-sense
The author quite rightly talks about the horrors of such surgeries. At some point he says "Device loss at 9 months was 21% overall."
And then the he makes a statement :
"If the device “loss” was 20% at nine months, that appears to imply that the failure rate within five years is 100%!"
Um... No, if the event rate is 20% a year you will not end up with 100% in 5 years. It's just a mathematically incorrect conclusion which surprised me coming from an experienced researcher.
Such statement can make an observant reader suspicious of everything else in the paper , which is a shame because gender surgeries are awful and need to stop.
Really enjoying your posts! Please don't mistake my comments for negativity.
Are you also doing a little cultural gaslighting when you attach Shark's Fin Soup to "hipsters" instead of its actual origin? A good percentage of hipsters are vegetarian or vegan, so it's an unlikely menu item. I live in a heavily hipster AND Asian region, and everyone knows that this is squarely (triangularly?) a Chinese dish. Even your link makes clear that it's Chinese in origin and in reality. Are you avoiding political incorrectness; or you're just not a "foodie"?
I loved the truncated conversation with the huffy feminist neurobiologist. (I'm ex-left and itinerant Second Wave feminist.)
You may be overthinking the line... You remember E.B. White's point that "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process"? It was just a whimsical joke.... as in a "hipster" being someone "who follows the latest trends and fashions." It seemed funnier than saying "Don't order shark fin soup in a trendy restaurant that just opened in your neighborhood and is catering to people who have the disposable income to order unusual foods that they wouldn't normally eat." Oh my, I think the frog has escaped this vale of tears!
I've certainly enjoyed your comments.... I'll give your condolences to the frog. LOL
I hear you! It's a POV issue. (Because one Substacker telling another Substacker that s/he "overthinks" IS a joke!)
Shark Fin Soup is decidedly not hipster or trendy. It's never been a 'trend'. It's a traditional dish of/for ethnic Chinese and Chinese nationals.
(I did previously live where frog legs and snails were a common item , though...so your condolences are accepted!)
All in good fun! :-)
Loved the essay, the ending is especially exquisite. But I have to guess you know this: There are some good reasons to believe sharks at least sometimes mistake humans on surfboards for seals.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/doi/10.1098/rsif.2021.0533.
This doesn't invalidate the great points in your essay, but the aquarium's statement about "may mistake..." doesn't seem completely wrong either.
Yes, I would agree with you in principle and you make a great point.
There are two issues here. First, you can't really tell what's in the mind of another organism. So, it's always a bit speculative. The second is this: Does the human on a surfboard look like a seal, or do seals look like a human on a surfboard, or — more probably — do both humans on surfboards and seals match the computational algorithm that sharks use to identify prey? You see, the shark doesn't have a list of prey items in its head (tuna, mackerel, human leg dangling in the water), to which it is trying to match things that it senses in the environment. It has computational decision strategies based on a variety of sensory inputs including electroreception. Both the person on the surfboard and the seal fall into the category "acceptable meal." The person on a surfboard can only be labeled as a mistake from a very human centric point of view. Imagine you had a shark in an aquarium and, instead of fish, you fed it terrestrial animals. Let's say you put cats in the tank. The shark would eat them. Is it making mistakes or is it capturing things that fit the algorithm defining "acceptable prey item?" Based on what I know about how brains work, these are not mistakes. When I went to school in India, I ate food that was very different than any of the food I grew up with. Was that a mistake because the food wasn't what you would have expected me to be eating? (I don't think so. It was all pretty darned good!) I've written quite a lot about this in terms of praying mantises and how they choose prey. Make any sense?
I thank you very much for the thoughtful, intellectually challenging comment. I appreciate it!
thanks....