[DoctorOetker]

Clearly everyone possesses the capacity for bitterness, as they are able to agree on its meaning. Otherwise they couldn't possibly know what the word means.

Clearly natural selection has selected for this capacity.

You pretend to disprove the adaptive nature of a trait by trotting forth "fatal cancer in infants" which clearly natural selection would not systematically select for without good reason. Perhaps artificial human doctrines have the capacity to selectively advantage "fatal cancer in infants" but brutal natural selection wouldn't. Natural selection is the abacus of the grim reaper.

You may call it a dark calculation, but do you know whats worse than a "fatal infant cancer"?

Two or more cases of this "fatal infant cancer"!

I know almost no one who has "fatal infant cancer", yet I have never met a person without the capacity for bitterness.

Your argument is devoid of logic.

[robotresearcher]

You haven’t met many people who died of cancer as infants?

Me neither. Perhaps you and I don’t hang out in the same places as those who died in infancy.

[DoctorOetker]

be reasonable, you tried to insinuate that natural selection selects for fatal infant cancer, instead of against it.

the rate of incidence of "fatal cancer in infants" is extremely low compared to the rate of incidence of the capacity to feel bitter.

[robotresearcher]

I didn’t insinuate that at all. If I thought it was adaptive, why would I use it as an example of a non-adaptive property?

[DoctorOetker]

So you then finally agree evolution removes fatal cancers in infants (at least to the point of rare events) instead of producing it as you claimed earlier.

unlike the statistics for "fatal cancer in infants" the capability to feel bitter is essentially universal, so clearly it serves some purpose.

[robotresearcher]

If evolution isn't producing cancer in infants, what is?

Your debate approach of declaring my position to be the opposite of what I say is no fun. I'm not going to continue.

[DoctorOetker]

> If evolution isn't producing cancer in infants, what is?

See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education for one of many contributing causes.

Regardless of the myriads of contributing causes producing such cancers, natural selection eliminates these cancers, especially fatal childhood cancers.

> Your debate approach of declaring my position to be the opposite of what I say is no fun. I'm not going to continue.

The fact that I deduce a statement from your position which contradicts another of your positions is not a bad debate approach but simply an example of the principle of explosion. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion

That is what happens if you build a strawman: you pretend my argument relies merely on "the existence of a property" ignoring that occurence rates and probabilities actually span a spectrum, from marginally close to the impossible 0% to marginally close to a 100% certain. If the capability to emote bitterness is nearly universal among a species then it is a trait, not "existence of a property".