The Golden Age Fallacy, Sex

When people make the Golden Age fallacy, they just show that they don't know any history. The golden age fallacy is basically "i wish we could return back to the past when X was better." Most often, they are talking about times when X was not better. they are just assuming, because they know little about the past, that things must have been better.

People often make the Golden Age Fallacy around sexual issues.  let's go back to when sex was sacred.  This ignores the fact that throughout present and ancient times, sex has been both celebratory and problematic and some of the worst times, such as the ravage of Europe by syphillis and London's huge problem with child prostitutes were during some of the most religious and conservative times.

Might as well end a few race myths.

Might as well end a few race myths.

Ancient DNA reveals 'into Africa' migration - BBC News

"Every single population for which we have data in Africa has a sizeable component of Eurasian ancestry," said Dr Andrea Manica, from the University of Cambridge, who carried out the research.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34479905

"Quite remarkably, we see in Ethiopia about 20% - so a fifth - of the genome of people living there right now is actually of Eurasian origin, it actually comes from these farmers," explained Dr Manica.
"But it goes further than that, because if you go to the corners of Africa, all the way to West Africa or South Africa, even populations that we really thought were purely African have 5-6% of their genome that dates back to these western Eurasian farmers."

Study Finds Africans More Genetically Diverse Than Other Populations

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/…/04/30/AR2009043002485.html

Europeans Less Genetically Diverse Than Africans
Amitabh Avasthi
for National Geographic News
February 20, 2008

"European-American populations are less genetically diverse and have more potentially harmful genetic variations than African-American populations, according to an international team of researchers."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/…/080220-dna-evolution.h…

"Modern humans and Neanderthals 'interbred in Europe'
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33226416'

Why do East Asians have 20% more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans?

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/…/why-do-asians-have…/

· Reply · 8 hrs

this is recent and they predict as many as 25% of African dna could be traced back to this particular Eurasion migration. However, this was not the first wave back to Africa. Africa was never closed off as is the common assumption.

http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article...

This article demonstrates earlier back to Africa migration, pre-agricultural. "With these data, we demonstrate that most non-African ancestry in the HOA cannot be the result of admixture within the last few thousand years, and that the majority of admixture probably occurred prior to the advent of agriculture. These results contribute to a growing body of work showing that prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations were much more dynamic than usually assumed."

This is one reason why we say race is a cultural construct. If we study genetics, we see this. If we study history, we also see that Mediterranean immigrants to America were not initially considered 'white'. Irish immigrants initially experienced discrimination also and the effects of segration and exclusion have a legacy on crime in these populations that extends to today with the Irish and Italian mafias forming around ghettos, just as in black populations, who due to a darker appearance experience marked discrimination for a longer period of time. The exclusion and isolation of Appalachian whites also has a legacy on intelligence test scores, as they have lower scores, greater poverty, and greater impacts of drug use (most studies show whites use drugs more often than blacks, but blacks are checked and punished for sale and possession at far higher frequency, thus the greater impact is not due to greater frequency of usage). The causes are fairly practical, not genetic. 

The genetic diversity among people considered 'black' or 'African' in particular make the concept of race far more socially constructed than biological.

Facts and Objectivity

 I would say first, that we generally don't know what we mean by 'objective'. From my viewpoint, I would say when people agree on a means to discovering a truth, a program and algorithm, then their is an objectively correct solution. Most maths are based on this idea, for example 1+1= 2. If you agree to use the same rules of mathematics I am using, a digital type system, where we are talking about discrete units, at least ordinal, not tied to any particular matter or dimension, then there is an objective correct answer. However 1+1=2 is not just objectively true regardless of agreement on method and substance. For example, one atom plus one atom isn't just two atoms. i might insist it should be counted by molecular weight or that you cannot add atoms that could never combine, etc. Or i might suggest any two items which are visible have 8 additional unseen dimensions and when considered together, 16 or whatever, in which case we are not agreeing on method or substance.
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6. "intent upon or dealing with things external to the mind rather than with thoughts or feelings, as a person or a book.
7.
being the object of perception or thought; belonging to the object of thought rather than to the thinking subject (opposed to subjective ).

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/objective

I have studied the development of language and I can assure you that all metaphysical and epistemological and physics have not been so solved that we then created a language that correlates perfectly with reality and 'objective' is one of those atoms of the universe perfectly defined. This is true of all words, they are tools and works in progress, often depending on context. The 'picture' theory of language, that each word is one settled thing is not taken seriously by linguists.



Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon People throw around 'facts' and 'objective' and what they essentially mean is "what someone who thinks they know everything (the person making the
assertion) thinks is the case". And that's pretty much how it is used. In the past,people thought that god had made language and that he made it perfectly and settled all meanings and they all correspond perfectly to reality. This is a seriously flawed view even when you take god out of it.

Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon "Objectivity is a central philosophical concept, related to reality and truth, which has been variously defined by sources. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)


It's a literary essentialism and naieve belief that such nebulous terms are rigidly defined. Rather it's associated with a family of uses and contexts. Some later Wittgenstein reading can provide some understanding of this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)
Daryl TechnoSavage Seldonhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_theory_of_language

"Wittgenstein's later practice-based theory of meaning laid out in the First Part of Philosophical Investigations refuted and replaced his earlier picture-based theory."

Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon Most people would agree that part of our human context is that we understand what we call reality through senses that produce a coherent representation of a small quantity of data in our sensory vicinity. If in fact, no human is born outside of this frame, then clearly we do not perceive anything in it's entirety. What there is, if anything, beyond our perception can be called objective if we agree to use this method of determining what is objective. But not everyone has the same epistemology or ontology so we cannot pretend there is one settled meaning for 'objective'. It's a word that can be used for many purposes, but becomes impoverished when we just use it to add false confidence to our assertions.

"Fact' is also used this way. When someone says emphatically, this is a settled fact! They are almost always talking about something on which there is not full agreement on substance or method, and normally it's some kinda assertion from social science with a low information resolution, arrived at by psuedo-scientific and largely political means. The might as well be saying "this is not a fact!" In other words, people rarely say, "Two hydrogen can bond with oxygen to produce water, and this is a fact!" The tend to say something like "Gays are more likely to behave sensuously around children, and this is a fact!" It is precisely not a fact of course, and that's how they reveal it.


I think numbers are just practical descriptors. I generally consider the only things to have existence to be space, matter, and energy, pretty simple. There are no numbers floating around in space or in the atom. There is just the limited amount of matter, space, and energy out there. We have various ways of determining quantities of matter, energy, or space. Yet space can be curved. If there is a limited amount of space and energy in the universe, then infinity though a number is not real. Of course, many numbers and most theoretical mathematics admit to having no application to anything real. So no, numbers aren't objective to me. They are an agreed upon method of description that we use. We even have to say whether we are talking about cardinal, ordinal, or nominal numbers. If I say there is 5, i might need to say if that includes 4.5, 4.6 and everything in between 0 and 5, or am I just talking about 5 discreet units.


Morality

One could have a method of not making such an assumption that something exists that is not a simulation. I was pointing out that most people would agree that our brains produce reality, not that I would consider that to be objective truth. I have no need of being that certain. I also point out most people 'intuit' a reality outside our perceptions, not that I am certain of it. I am pointing out the methods that most western thinkers agree to follow, some are objectivists, others subjectivists or other. Science tends to function on objectivism. But for me to need to be certain of it is just a kind of delusion, one that is not necessary to function in the world. We are 'doers' not knowers.

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Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon I'm not saying there is no objective world, I'm saying I don't know for sure. I operate under the assumption that their is and that works fine, without me having illusions of absolute knowledge.

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Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon Also, illusions of objectivity does nothing to make one's morals absolute. We fight for morals and try to convince others precisely because the universe is not forcing morals on any matter.

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Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon Claiming ones ethics are absolute is just another means of trying to convince others to your viewpoint.

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Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon The less close something is to certainty, the more we try to convince people that it is. You don't have to spend very much time convincing people you can't walk through walls, because it's very close to certain that no matter what anyone believes, it won't happen. However, it takes time to convince people that being gay is absolutely is wrong or that people should eat mostly insects and plants. This is how objectivity functions among beings who obviouisly don't have it.

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Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon When something just is the case, you don't really have to convince anyone or yourself of it to make it so. It takes care of itself.

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Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon Again, I'm not saying there is no objective reality, I'm saying I can't know for certain, and never has that been possible or necessary, unless what I experience is the entirety of reality, then you might call it objective, but you might very well call it subjective.

It's kinda myth that one could or would just 'do anything' without certainty of objectivity and reality of objectivity. I've tried just 'doing anything', and I can't do it. Another way of defining objectivity or evidence of objectivity or externality of reality is precisely the fact that you can't just do anything. Kant points to this as how we discover or intuit objectivity, simply because you can't warp a chair into a horse with your mind. You intentions become irrelevant to things considered 'external'. Kant couldn't know this but the mind uses this fact as one way to discover what is me and not me. Some people with paralyzed appendages become convinced it's not theirs, it's a strange syndrome. You can also convince a person that false hand is theirs by creating the illusion you are feeling what happens to that hand, so Kant's discovery is valid even in some biological ways.

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Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon Einstein kinda suggested something similar when he said, what does a fish know of the water in which it swims, if quoted correctly. The water is such an objective and inescapable reality to the fish, he needs no means of even knowing it's there. He needs no representation of it. These are all useful methods to see objectivity. But if we take a leap of faith to use objectivity or if we simply have no opinion on it, the result is the same. Life is as it is. Sometimes our representations fail and reveal the simulation-like nature of our perception, as in our blindspot which we can't even tell is there unless we intentionally move an object to just that spot and see it dissappear. What's left is not a whole in our perceptual fabric, but just a lack of perception, not noticeable no matter how hard you look.

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Daryl TechnoSavage Seldon Many religious people feel that without their belief in absolute morality, they, and irreligious persons, would just do anything, with no morals. This does not happen in atheists or anyone without significant brain damage or severe psychopathy. We behave with morals whether we believe they are absolute or not. Even people who believe they have no morals or who lose their religious morals are rarely able to just go and behave without morals. It's just not how we function. We think our morals are just some list of values we got from our parents, our religion, or our logical thinking. It's way more complicated and extensive than that. Most of our morals are the same as those of the people around us, even if they are christian and we are atheist. We have many practical reasons to fit into society and get along with people, and much of it is not really in the forms of 'reasons' but rather emotions and biology.

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