This topic is somewhere to move off-topic posts to. If you want your post to have its own topic, reply as linked topic in the first place.
I don’t think it makes sense to call milk a good (or bad) food without additional context. If you don’t have a goal in mind for the food, you can’t say whether it would be good or bad at meeting that goal.
I think that milk was designed (by evolution) to be a good food for baby/infant cows. It might or might not be a good food source for an adult cow (ignoring the problems with efficiency loss for now). Baby and adult cows might want different ratios of protein or fat in their diet. Eating mainly milk might be optimal for a baby, while eating mainly grasses/legumes might be optimal for an adult.
(source: https://youtu.be/sXj76A9hI-o?t=1999)
I took this screenshot from a lecture on YouTube. I remember the presenter mentioned that carnivore milks have higher protein content because their babies grow more rapidly. And that human milk has more lactose because we have a larger brain relative to the size of our bodies.
I don’t think we should assume that food evolved under a certain set of conditions (growing rapidly, different brain to body size ratio, etc.) will still be “good” when those conditions are no longer present. It might be trying to succeed at a goal that is no longer relevant. Does that make sense?
I think you might have made a similar mistake in this article: Curiosity – Health “Experts” Betrayed America
algae has a lot of n3, and is eaten by fish, so fish are a good n3 source
Fish can accumulate pesticides or other chemicals in their bodies, in addition to n3. Our goal for eating n3 is to help our bodies and the presence of dangerous chemicals could make us fail at that goal. We shouldn’t consider fish only as a source of n3, but how it relates to our overall goals for nutrition.
We could form a goal like “obtain a source of n3 that is low in mercury” which might mean that certain types of fish are no longer a good source. Depending on our goal, the only solution might be to get the n3 directly from the algae, instead of using the fish as a “middleman”.
I hope the tone of this post isn’t combative. I think reading your speculation is very valuable. I also considered that you might be writing this post knowing that the audience is familiar with evolution, yes/no philosophy etc. and so you didn’t feel the need to go into detail. And that it wasn’t an error, just something you were aware of and had a good reason behind.
I disagree. I also think you’re posting off-topic stuff that’s about you and your own (undisclosed) agendas, not an attempt to engage with what I was talking about. I also take it that, like several previous times, you don’t want to debate or try to discuss to a conclusion. I don’t see the benefit, for me, of explaining your errors to you.
I think you were talking about whether milk was a good food, or a basic interim food. I think my post was relevant to that topic.
I don’t have an agenda related to eating plant foods. I want to get better at Objectivism. I’d like to quote something I remember you saying, but I don’t have a good way to find the source. I think it was that if you could meet someone who was really good at one topic, you would want them to be good at Objectivism.
I also take it that, like several previous times, you don’t want to debate or try to discuss to a conclusion.
That doesn’t sound like something I would do. But it’s my fault if you have that impression of me. Or I could be misremembering and giving myself too much credit.
I won’t ask you for an explanation.
“If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.”
Read your post history and note down what discussions you had and how they ended.
Thanks for your suggestion.
The main error I noticed was the long gaps between my posts/responses. I don’t think there were times I didn’t want to debate an idea, or refused discussing a specific idea to a conclusion. Regardless, I was making a serious error either way. And it would be reasonable to interpret leaving the forum as not wanting to debate an idea.
For example, after the first gap in my posts you replied:
My next activity was in the “Gender Identity” topic I made. That discussion ended with this comment:
I didn’t respond because I ended up agreeing with the criticism. I put too much unnecessary content in that essay which distracted from my message.
It would have been polite to reply and thank the user for their feedback. I did that elsewhere in the thread, but I wasn’t consistent. I also repeated the error of leaving a long gap between my responses:
I don’t blame you for not putting your valuable effort into explaining an error I made. I think my past actions would lead any rational person to that same conclusion.
I feel like I accidentally found Atlantis before, and didn’t realize what it was. I took it for granted. I don’t intend to make that mistake again.
Huh. I was wrong twice in a row. Your previous post was worse than I expected, but your post that I’m replying to was better than I expected. I also did not expect MetaCreation to rage(?) quit(?) in the way that he appears to have after his sustained, regular posting for months. To me it looked abrupt after not enough happened for me to expect it.
Since you took reviewing your post history positively, I’ll make some more comments related to it.
It’s not just about time gaps in discussions but also switching topics when returning, rather than continuing previous discussions. (IIRC you did continue some discussions later, but only temporarily, and sometimes only after being prompted by someone else about it.) So the overall result is that I don’t recall any of your (non-tiny) discussions reaching clear, satisfying conclusions.
Also, I have a debate policy. You (like most others) have never tried to use it. I purposefully engage with people less than I used to unless they do something explicitly CF-related, like using CF ideas about how to structure discussion, debate or learning, or discussing my policy itself. You also (like others) have not requested an informal debate or informal extended discussion or otherwise shown interest in debate, and also just haven’t written much.
My personal experience is that virtually no one wants to debate me for years now – ever since I started using debate methodology (like impasse chains or debate trees) more. I think people are scared of debates where they can’t easily escape (without admitting weakness and error – without losing) or keep things disorganized and inconclusive. And I think people deal with rules poorly and want to avoid discussion rules. I think almost everyone is unable to handle effective, rational debates (but also people don’t want to admit to that or view themselves as scared of debate).
I think people’s unwillingness to talk with me is also related to my use of meta criticisms that get at their methodological errors, their irrationalities and dishonesties. But I generally don’t consider it productive to ignore those things – I think they’re often dealbreakers/bottlenecks for the main discussion.
I also find many people are hostile to reading or citing literature instead of writing their own half-baked arguments, and they don’t want to talk about or do things like analyzing expert literature to understand the current state of the debate. Most people don’t even want to use quotes appropriately in order to avoid talking past each other, which I fear is ultimately because their reading comprehension and logic skills aren’t good enough to really clearly and accurately understand a lot of what they read (they read in an approximate way, not a precise way, which means e.g. they sometimes ignore some words instead of understanding all the words. similarly their own writing only kinda approximately says what they mean but some parts of it don’t make sense and weren’t thought through. and yes ~everything we say is approximate in some sense but I mean people are way too approximate – like from my pov they’re perpetually skimming instead of reading).
Anyway those are some thoughts on how I see people’s availability to debate.
That’s a really good point, thanks. In hindsight, I’m not surprised at my frequent topic switching. I never had any organized plan that detailed what I wanted to accomplish, and how I intended to accomplish it.
I would love to have a video chat with you. I assume your video would be off, but I could keep mine on, so it’s more engaging for you. (grammar note: at first I didn’t have a comma after “on” - I added it because I think “I could keep mine on” and “It’s more engaging for you” are independent clauses)
I’m also happy to keep engaging via text. A video call could be a long-term goal.
I think people would be more likely to debate (in a structured format) if the topic was selected at random. I think people are especially scared of a structured debate when they feel very strongly about the topic.
Moving forward, this is a high-level plan for my near-term activities:
1-Write a post about why I want to receive unbounded criticism.
2-Re-read ch. 2 of Atlas Shrugged and make a post with detailed notes similar to these:
https://www.learnobjectivism.com/atlas-shrugged-chapter-1
3-Make a post comparing my notes to Elliot’s notes for ch. 2
4-Repeat for ch. 3
5-Make a post on the topic of Eddie Willers being left behind when Dagny flies back to the valley.
Any feedback or thoughts on my plan is appreciated.