“Paul once said to me 'the immune competition between all kinds of pathogens is what shapes us'. What is free will- the in-between of all our biological drives?” -@rivatez
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Replying to @rivatez
Would replace “pathogens” with “implicitly believed ideologies and metaphysical doctrines” (eg views on death, god, power, world-self relation). Probably these have a strong interaction with pathogens - would just be surprised if pathogens are no1 for relative effect size.
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Replying to @TylerAlterman
I think in the context of which he said it - which was looking at how viruses affect personality traits - his point was it is hard to distinguish perceived ideologies from biological causation. What is an implicit belief if not dependent on your mental and biological state?
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Replying to @rivatez
Likely a strong positive feedback-like effect between the two, but implicit ideologies are way too complex and nuanced to be attributed to a single category of biological drivers.
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Replying to @TylerAlterman @rivatez
Paul enters in a cloud of smoke and speaketh: “look up correlation between use of spices in food, parasites, and measures of cultural obedience” - used to have a pdf looking into this. Essential thesis is that lots of culture is alternate defense against disease spreading.
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When you consider the necessarily only temporary effectiveness of antibiotics and such, old-testament medicine makes more sense: antibiotics exploit specific weakness, but handwashing, food prep, and quarantine make whole classes of pathogen impossible.
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Replying to @wolftivy @paulsbohm and
19th century Europe and 20th century Middle East show that Germ Theory outperformed traditional cleanliness in terms of lives saved and pathogens eliminated.
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Replying to @SamoBurja @wolftivy and
Practice alone is defeated by Practice + Knowledge. When you have both knowledge and practice design rather than repetition becomes possible.
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You guys might be interested in this piece I wrote on loss and preservation of knowledge. (Lays out my theory of tradition as well.)https://medium.com/@samo.burja/on-the-loss-and-preservation-of-knowledge-66e4a6b4d27d …
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