Re: [FRIAM] FW: Meat

[Steve Smith]

Nick/Glen - I haven't tracked the details of this thread, but the bits I've skimmed have been interesting. My own experience has more to do with "entrainment" than "deference to authority".   Even though I was trained as a Scientist (especially though?) I find it impossible to do enough research on any "popular" topic to even pretend to understand the issue and data well enough to make a "scientific decision".  I think those who "pretend" to do so are rarely being honest.   As those here who have actually *done* science, know, it is far from trivial to really track down all the data and reproduce all of the experiments, etc. to begin to "prove anything" to oneself.    More to the point, I think, is using "scientific thinking" to follow the popular material provided on a given topic and *discount* some of the wilder claims (pro or con) on any given topic.  But I don't think any of us can discount "entrainment" in the memetic flow.   If we hear enough people we respect (or not) rattle on (with psuedo-scientific psuedo-evidence) long enough, we tend to believe (or reject) it.   I think it is very deep in the human psyche to join our "tribe" in it's belief and/or take on an anti-position with "the other tribe"... thus our hugely bifurcated politics, etc. today. To try to answer Nick's question ("how do *I* make decisions on these topics?").   I listen to the "buzz" in the popular literature/media and do some quick "triage" on the outliers... the ideas which are fairly clearly driven by paranoia or wishful thinking, in particular.   The conspiracy theories (positive and negative), as it were.   A "new" idea, rarely piques my interest beyond mild curiosity... I know to give the new idea a few months or even years to shake out.  Let other people get wound up over them for a while before I take them very seriously.  And of course things that are "too good (or bad) to be true" don't really get me wound up very easily.   But watching others get wound up *does* entertain me. Beyond that, I try to operate on as "fundamental" of principles as possible.  Since you used the topic of diet and the eating of meat as an example, I will admit to having chosen to be a vegetarian from age 15-32 when I was essentially "boycotting" the meat *industry* which I saw as an exploitative and abusive industry.   I currently follow the general guidelines of "paleo" living...  entrusting my genetic heritage to define "what is best for me".   With that in mind, I suspect that not only is meat important to my diet, it is probably also important for it to come to me infrequently and in somewhat binging quantities... a good eating strategy *might* be a big juicy steak or three once every couple of weeks and a LOT of green and tuberous vegetables.   I *do* respond to the more complex and well researched ideas that are based in the indigenous diets of various cultures (some eat a LOT Of animal protein/fat while others eat almost none).   I also acknowledge that there is very little survival of the species value to living much past childbearing/childraising age (30-50?), and that short of extreme malnutrition or starvation, my diet as a young person probably wasn't very counter-survival... Sure enough, a diet too rich in red meat/fat/etc.  might well lead to colon cancer or heart disease, etc in my 50's++   but what does evolution care?  Sure wise/capable/skilled "grandparents" carry *some* survival value for the group, but generally not as much as healthy young parents and early middle age folks carrying the heavy end of the groups burdens (literally and figuratively).    There are *myriad* studies indicating a wild array of dietary extremes from pure vegan to nearly pure fat diets...  most sound like "wishful thinking" to me, though (despite my own well-fed physique) I do believe that ultra-lean diets (as long as they aren't missing important nutrients) are probably the best thing for longevity...   Outside of diet, I think the topic of climate change and pollution to be another good example.  I thought the alarm raised before about 1990 on climate change was alarmist whackadoodle talk, but by the early 2000 I had come to hear the right-wing, "drill baby drill" message and "climate denier" talk as yet more evidence that there probably *IS* a real problem.   My current belief in anthropocentric climate change arises partly from the "entrainment" (I hear enough people I want to believe claiming it is true and I too start to act as if it is true) and partly from my general cynicism about human behaviour.  While I once thought it unlikely that humans could actually tilt the earth's climatological axis (metaphor, not literal), I now recognize that if there were to be any significant consequence of our outrageous (post?)industrial behaviour, it would be to bury ourselves in something of biblical proportions (think Great Flood, Plague and Pestilence, Tower of Babel, etc.)   So instead of resisting the not-so-humble idea that we could trash the planet's climate with our "petty" industrial behaviour, I now like believing that we are fouling our own watering hole.   To balance this, however, I believe that even if/as we crash and burn in our own greenhouse gas-heating, we will almost surely survive the consequences, albeit after a huge period of adjustment.   It probably won't be clean nor easy, but it probably *will* be exciting for our children and grandchildren, one way or the other.  I figure I have another 20-30 years to watch all this unfold and will see some very significant events/changes in that time, but probably not a total wipeout, at least not of the industrialized world... I might see the island nation of Tuvalu be too drowned to be habitable, and maybe our coastal cities battered by high seas and hurricanes... and our produce and/or grain belts maybe go "dust bowl" and our rich fishing waters become too polluted by mercury or radioactive isotopes to be healthy to eat from... maybe wipe out all the large mammals we want to identify with (elephants, whales, gorillas, etc.)   but as a very resilient species, we will probably find a way to continue to increase our population and energy/pollution footprint.   <ramble off> - Steve Hi, Glen,   Interesting response.  As I get older, I see the asymptote on which I am converging is that by the time I die I will know nothing.  Thus, it's quite possible that I am just being inconsistent.  But let's look into it.  See below.   Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/     -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Monday, November 02, 2015 9:45 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] FW: Meat     I really like the idea of virtuous argumentation. [NST==>I think this is my Deweyish upbringing asserting itself.  I can’t really defend it.  It just seems to me that if we don’t have ways to converge (other than raw power) we are doomed to live by the sword.  I am not very good at swordplay.    <==nst]   It seems to highlight the state vs. behavior duality. [NST==>Do I know that duality?  I am guessing that I think of them in terms of levels of organization.  Can you say more?  <==nst]  But, this seems right in line with my tendencies against (naive) realism. [NST==>Glen, how familiar are with Peirce’s weird form of [idealistic] realism.  And how it leads both to tough scientism and blousy postmodernism, in different hands. <==nst]  You tend to spend quite a bit of time trashing relativist positions (including the more extreme postmodernism), yet argue in favor of face 2 face teaching, apparently on the grounds that social context is at least somewhat powerful.  Do you admit a full spectrum of power: realism <-> constructivism?  Or is the rant against MOOCs just a "get off my lawn" and, deep down, you stick with hard-line realism? [NST==>I am sure there is a contradiction in here somewhere, but I don’t yet see it.  Couldn’t I believe that conversation with other well-informed people is the best way to arrive at the real?  Or, at least, one of several methods, all of which make a contribution?  Could you say  a bit more?  <==nst]   RE: Cowspiracy -- Before chemo, I was approaching vegetarian.  I ate meat once a week, fish once a month or so, eggs maybe twice/month. [NST==>Again, I have not very coherent feelings about this domain.  I recently read THE BIG FAT SURPRISE and decided to believe it hook line and sinker.  I think there is an awful lot “food witness” going on, where people express their individuality by not eating this and that. More of the narcissism of the IMac and the You-tube generation.   As the family cook, I find it’s just a pain in the ass.  But just about the time I get on my high horse about “people like that”, I encounter somebody with Crohn’s Syndrome, and such like, and am completely humiliated.  Not much of philosophical interest in all of that.  <==nst]   I admit I ate quite a bit of cheese, though, perhaps thrice per week.  During chemo, I craved meat so much, it seemed crazy to avoid it.... and after eating it, I felt like a god (comparatively, anyway).  T rebuild after treatment, I started eating ~4-6 eggs per week.  Now that I've mostly recovered from the treatment, though, I've been lazy about returning to my low-animal diet.  Cowspiracy is just the rhetorical stimulus I need.  But it's not the climate impact that drives me so much as the water footprint.  If my math is right, this site: http://waterfootprint.org/en/resources/interactive-tools/product-gallery/ lists 3-4x higher waterprint rates for beef, cheese, and eggs.  The consistency of the difference implies the relative amounts are about the same between the movie and the website.     On 10/30/2015 08:06 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > You saw the question I asked and got to the question I really wanted to ask.  I was a professor for years and in that role I tried to foster face to face conversation on tricky, intricate, issues.  WHY?  Face to face education is under a tremendous attack these days.  Why not 32 MOOKS followed each by an objective test.  Save on dormitories.  Save on the whole /in loco parentis/ thing.  Who cares if they drink too much, take drugs, and rape each other if it's not on OUR watch?  Higher ed could be so much more efficient.  Do we really need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to teach kids how to GROOM?   -- ⇔ glen   ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

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