Climate Change - increasingly horrible disasters loom

Does anyone else from the peanut gallery want to step up and join CRD in his renunciation of adaptability to larger forces being an essential aspect of survival ?

God only knows what kind of childhood indoctrination would yield such an outlook. I pray for his healing.

I never, ever, ever said or suggested that Greta should be silent. Now you're just plain lying.

Huh??????

This is what I get from online search.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

It's essentially a pivot from substance to personal traits. If you disagree, then you are free to post a link to a competing source.

Were you named in the post ? No. It was not about you, it was about lozen.

You can apologize when you recognize your false accusations.

But first .... try to calm down. You're obviously triggered.

So, an ad hominem is what you've doing most of this afternoon in this thread?

Since it was immediately below your response to me, I assumed it was directed to me based on the wording of your post:

It was reasonable for me to assume that 'your' referred to me, right? Lozen was nowhere in sight.

Do you consider supporting the legitimacy of Greta's Thunberg's fear and anger to be evidence of an ad hominem attack?

Do you consider the logical pathway to a natural evolutionary judgement in which prevailing attitudes (specifically those which enable pollution) will be eliminated to be an example of an ad hominem attack ?

When I was a child, my father had a little gimmick about the word "assume" to provide me counsel against doing it.

He said it made an ass of u and me.

I forgive you. I'm not into holding grudges.

No.

Who knows? I don't even understand the sentence.

You're too funny!!

In the future I won't make the assumption that you know how language works.

So provide an example of the ad hominem argumentation that you accuse me of.

Who here is trying to present a substantive argument which I am avoiding by pivoting to character attacks on them? What substantive argument might that be?

In the early days of the American Republic, the custom of dueling was made available to rivals in the event of an attack on one's honor.

The most famous duel was probably the one in which Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton.

I'm feeling dueling energy geezerchess. You accuse me of being disingenuous and engaging in ad hominem attacks. I challenge you to support your claims.

You defined “survival of the fittest” as “the ability to adapt to larger forces which dictate survival outcomes”

That’s just plainly not what “survival of the fittest” means.

If you want to say that when there are larger forces that enact on biological organisms, that those species survive will be determined by the survival of the fittest, that is correct but tautological. You’re saying those that survive, survive.

Loaded question.

Suggesting CRD stupid is for sure an ad hominem attack.

n.b. But not an Argumentum ad hominem. DUCY?

Another logical fallacy that Nutterbutter is apparently unfamiliar with.

Shocking, ain't it?

I am saying that. But I'm saying more than that.

Those that survive .... they survive for a reason. And that reason is that their traits are in comformity with the larger forces.

In the case of humans, we have the unique potential to adapt to the larger forces which are the result of our own industry. We have the potential to stop doing the thing which is awakening the larger force which will consume us.

There is no historical example of a species which had the intelligence to understand that it was proceeding upon an apocalyptic path and continued forward. Others may have done so as a result of runaway metabolism, but they were not sentient beings with the ability to reason.

We can all bend the knee together in appreciation of those larger forces or we can all get crushed under the boot of those larger forces.

CRD made the substantive argument that adaptability to larger forces is irrelevant to survival.

An objectively stupid argument which no one else is going to support.

What does "fittest" mean in survival of the fittest.

It means that they fit the conditions which survival demands. It's not about strength or intelligence or virtue.

The world is dynamic and constantly changing. Humans have nearly gone extinct in the past. Nearly 75k years ago, our ancestors were reduced to a few thousand breeding pairs.

In the last few thousand years, the attributes of fitness were much different than they will be going forward. In steeply hierarchical societies which arose with the agricultural revolution, we became domesticated sheeple where most survived by not challenging authority and a small subset struggled for control. Historical fitness involved unquestioning tribal loyalty and treating those outside the tribe as enemies which rationalizes their subjugation or extermination. Historical fitness placed on a premium on short-term power vis a vis one's human opposition. Historical fitness involved an inclination to consume at unustainable levels.

We simply live in an unusual moment when a host of long beneficial traits are morphing into non-beneficial traits. We are running into a larger force which is presenting us with an evolutionary bottleneck.

Nature is going to do some weeding.

No I didn’t. I said your definition of survival of the fittest was bad and the one you gave had nothing to do with how it is understood in biology.

If I ask you for the definition of a book and you said “a book is that which gives you knowledge” I’d also say that the being a book has nothing to do with whether it gives you knowledge. Books can give you knowledge or not, they could be fictional. And things that give you knowledge are not always books.

So to say that the definition of survival of the fittest is the ability to adapt to large scale change is a bad definition, because there will be times where conditions are static and therefore the “fittest” genes may remain static over that time. Yet in the classical sense, survival of the fittest is still ongoing.

You are tweaking my words in a manner which distorts them.

I never wrote the words "large scale change" which you are attributing to me. I wrote the words "larger forces".

Those larger forces do indeed remain relatively static for long periods of time as you indicate. I never argued otherwise. But survival is perpetually in a state of being adapted to and subordinate to larger forces.

It's an interesting argumentative tactic. Create a straw man and attribute it to your opponent without being troubled by the fact that he never said the thing which you argue against.

Do you have a conscience which provides behavioral boundaries?