Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by robotresearcher 1062 days ago
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?
1 comments

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.

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.

> 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".