I'm not 'dismissing' anything. The fact that pin-guy exists (not to mention people with a lot of other weird sexual predilections) is certainly a significant reality.Giest4life said:I apologize for overlooking the ubermensch reference, in truth, it's a really complicated thing. But it's kind of the ideal, an "overman" a person who conquers man.RebellionXXI said:No, the point of my post WAS NOT that modern medicine works ALL THE TIME (and you'd probably have a hard time finding any doctors who would make that claim. I DID say that some treatments don't work for some people (If you had actually bothered to read my post carefully, you would have noticed that I mentioned some people are allergic to aspirin - an excellent example of that fact).Giest4life said:Basically, your post leads up to the explanation: modern medicine works. Does it? It has a higher percentage of "success" than ancient medicine. But it doesn't work--not to it's 100% claim. Name one pill, surgery, therapy, medicine, treatment, diagnosis for, forget 100% of the population--a hundred percent of people it's applied to.RebellionXXI said:I have one problem with what you are saying.Giest4life said:You have superbly demonstrated the all-too-human folly: "they" are the exception, you are the rule. There are no "anomalies," it is only your ignorance that fails to see what really is. The human brain fears that which it cannot understand--and label--thus we label these as "exceptions" to the rule to prove a point. The fact is, you and nor any science cannot "prove" anything. There will always be "exceptions."dathwampeer said:Ever heard the expression. 'The exceptions that prove the rule.' It is of course going to be true that there are anomalies, we're talking about biology here. Not factory crafted beings. For 99% of the population hormones are going to have the exact same effect. There may be slight differences in the process and length of time involved. But they all do the same thing.Giest4life said:Again, there is no single biological phenomenon that is universal. Every hormone secreted, every brain function, every twitch of the muscle, every beat of the heart is different in every single one of us. You know, the inconvenient word we use to describe everything that doesn't fit our narrative: mutation.dathwampeer said:*woosh* right over your head.Giest4life said:If you must know, statistically, nothing is true, because nothing can really be tested to it's fullest. Name me a study in which the sample is the whole human population. A quick search of "statistics" on wikipedia should have yield you the results you need.dathwampeer said:you're not observant for pointing out the fact that I'm not every human to have ever existed. Is it also right to say that you don't know that every human is born with blood because you haven't tested every human to prove this? I think I choose to believe in hormones over inane philosophical prattle.Giest4life said:Again, sir. Do you know if it's true for the 100% of those--even males--that have yet to be, those that are, and those that were? It's a disturbing trend that I've seen amongst humans: the trend to state their observations as the "truth."dathwampeer said:It's human nature to be at the very least curious about having sex with other people. Even if someone doesn't cheat, there is a 100% chance that at some point during any relationship they've had. That they have looked at another prospective mate in sexual way. whether or not they act upon it is another matter.Giest4life said:Monogamy is the last vestiges of a dying human race--the race of the "last men," as Nietzsche called them. There is nothing good, noble, and praiseworthy about monogamy. Just as there is nothing special with polygamy.
Be careful with that, sir. When you say "we" how sure are you that you speak for 100% of the human populace, the dead, the living, and those that are not yet conceived? I'd be careful with generalizations like that....dathwampeer said:If we were meant to be monogamous we wouldn't have any desire to cheat.
Simple as.
Penguins don't cheat, in-fact most of the time when one's partner dies. It will simply never mate again. Some die soon after, thoughts are from grief. Wanna know why? Because they were born to be monogamous.
What I am sure of is that monogamy, especially as far as males are concerned, is counter intuitive as far as survival of the species goes. Atleast in a primitive situation. Spreading your genes to as many mates as possible gives you a greater chance of special survival.
That's not so important now. But old habits are hard to kick. Especially ones that are ingrained on you at a genetic level.
I generalise because it's true.
Just because you can't prove something to be statistically true doesn't mean it isn't.
Only the ignorant call it "inane philosophical prattle." I guess, you need to fill in the hole in your, so called, "knowledge."
That was kind of my point.
And biologically speaking.... yes... what I'm saying is true.
You don't stop being attracted to other people once you're in a relationship. There is no biological proof to suggest anything to that nature. In-fact oxytocin (the chemical linked with human bonding) begins to fade dramatically after only a few years. And rises once again when you find a new partner.
So yes. I'm going to continue calling what you're saying inane philosophical prattle. Because it doesn't mean anything. It's just a blatant fact that has no relevance to my point, dressed up as something poignant.
The fact that I'm not every human to have ever existed doesn't mean that what we know human biology is wrong. Again. Simply because I can't statistically prove something doesn't mean it's wrong... :/
To prove my point, I heard it on npr, last week, this recorded mental patient who would reach orgasm at the sight of pins---yes, pins!
Though I regret I can't remember the exact name of the patient or the therapist who attended, and recorded that guy.
There are bound to be those who are considered mentally retarded. And/or haven't reached sexual maturity. They won't have the desire for sex atall. I thought it was clear that I was talking about normal humans. Not the handicapped exceptions.
When someone is talking about the absolute in a discussion like this. They don't mean (including the anomalies.) If I rephrase 'Everyone' To 'Every healthy (mentally and physically) human.' Will you STFU?
I thought that would have been blatantly obvious and readily available to anyone reading. Clearly not.
You, your mentality rather, is the reason man is not yet the "ubermensch."
If biology works so differently for every person on the planet, why do most people bond, mate, and reproduce in roughly the same way?
If significant differences in biology and arousal were the rule, rather than the exception, it seems to me that mating just wouldn't work. There wouldn't be any reliable way for any one human to attract any other human as their mate.
Keep in mind, in terms of the evolutionary history of human beings, metal pins are a relatively recent invention. If that guy was only aroused by pins in 80,000 BC, would he have been able to find a mate and reproduce?
What dathwampeer is trying to say is not that everyone should be the same, or that everyone is the same. He's saying that human beings fit on a bell curve. Most people's anatomy works the same way, and most people respond predictably to biological impulses. Some people are not 'average' or 'normal', in that their biology works slightly differently.
In other words, pin guy may get aroused by unusual stimuli, but the actual feelings of arousal he experiences are probably not too different than anybody else's.
Try thinking about it this way. If everybody's biology was radically different, then how does modern medicine work? How can aspirin be succesfully marketed as an anti-inflammatory if it only works for a very small portion of the population, because only their biology is specifically tuned to allow aspirin to work? How can doctors routinely administer anesthesia, if the anesthetics they use only work for a small group of individuals?
Clearly, this is not the case. Most people's biology works about the same. There are variations (some men like tits, and some men prefer asses), ther are people who fall outside the mean (some people are allergic to aspirin; good luck with that headache), and some people who are outliers (like the guy who can only get it up if he gets stabbed with a sharp object, or whatever).
As for man becoming the "ubermensch", doesn't that involve the creation of a superior race by ELIMINATING all of the outliers, and bringing mankind into a state of consistent perfection? How does that philosophy jive with accepting the outliers as normal? Maybe you can explain that to me.
The point of my post is that most people are about the same in terms of their biology, and that bringing up one random guy who blows his load whenever someone stabs him with a pointy stick doesn't prove that such extreme variances in sexual behavior are the rule and not the exception.
I was using the capabilities of modern medicine to demonstrate this point; if radical biological differences were the rule and not the exception, modern medicine WOULD NOT WORK AT ALL, because it would be impossible to predict what a particular chemical's effects would be on even a small portion of the population.
In reality, most people respond to common drugs in about the same way, and most people have their vital organs in about the same relative locations on their body. Human beings, biologically speaking, fit on a bell curve. Most people are in the middle. Only a small percentage of the population has radically different biology, and that also applies to sexual behavior.
And you didn't answer my question about the ubermensch. I've never read Nietzsche, so I don't know anything about his philosophy other than the very basic tenets.
Also, again, I'm taking about proof. The point that something doesn't work for everything--so you admit--is proof that we really don't have knowledge. We have fragments what resembles knowledge, which we use to replenish our bruised ego. Since modern science is fallible, all I'm saying is that don't hold too much faith in it--there will be a time when people wiser than us will, too, cast it down and write about us in history books as we do of the Greek mythos.
We should not dismiss these things as mere "technicalities," because nothing remains proven while there is a contradiction. Because we then progress on things based on assumptions, which only take us further away from the "truth." But yes, I do agree: Suum Cuique. To each his own.
Still, sometimes we don't need all the details about reality to have a functional understanding of it.
Think about a road map. All it has on it are roads, locations, and major landmarks. You can navigate just fine by it. It doesn't matter if it's missing the individual bushes, trees, stop signs, and the names of all the families that live in every house, it's still a good map.
Of course, we should always strive to learn more about reality, and figure out how all the deviations fit into the big picture. Still, sometimes you don't need a perfect understanding to get things done and make predictions that work most of the time. I don't need to know about all the little quantum fluctuations that occur in my laptop's CPU as it cranks out operations; I just need to know what buttons to press to make it do what I want it to do.
The same holds true for the monogamy discussion. Maybe you can't say monogamy is good or bad for everyone, but most people know enough about human relationships from watching other people interact, and from their own experiences, to think about what might work best for most people.
Of course, it's entirely possible that, even with such experiences, a person might not have enough information to make a decision that would actually work in reality, just like a city map from 1950 probably wouldn't do you much good when navigating in the present day. But even then, just because a person doesn't know enough right now to come up with a good idea, doesn't mean they can't get to that point eventually.
The concept of there being an absolute truth isn't really a practical concept, because we'll never know all the facts about anything. We usually just have to make due with what understanding we have. When our understanding is adequate, we get good results. When it isn't, we get bad results, and start learning more until our understanding improves.
And yes, a lot of the time, bad results come out of bad assumptions, and we have to revise those assumptions before we can start going towards better understanding. It's a constant process.
But once again, just because you don't have a perfect understanding about how something works doesn't mean your understanding is invalid. Sometimes saying something is "generally true" when it's true for 90% of cases isn't invalid, so long as you recognize the other 10% and take it into consideration when making decisions.