Epistemology

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: Epistemology

Several responses of "I'm not gonna play anymore"? Ya just proved Maddie right. Brandon, go take your passive-aggressive little thumb and suck on it in a corner. Come back when you grow up and learn to treat the plebes in the same manner that you should in your college courses: debate the merit, and remember that your sweating the small stuff will only serve to hoist yer ass by yer own petard (Shakespeah, fyi).

But when you come down, there will be an audience here ready to hear you flesh out your great ideas. I will be one of them. As I've several of my own, be prepared to find the gamut of agreements and challenges.

And like the rest of us, learn to multitask. The world demands it.

[hawaiifiveoh]

Re: Epistemology

Several responses of "I'm not gonna play anymore"? Ya just proved Maddie right. Brandon, go take your passive-aggressive little thumb and suck on it in a corner. Come back when you grow up and learn to treat the plebes in the same manner that you should in your college courses: debate the merit, and remember that your sweating the small stuff will only serve to hoist yer ass by yer own petard (Shakespeah, fyi).

But when you come down, there will be an audience here ready to hear you flesh out your great ideas. I will be one of them. As I've several of my own, be prepared to find the gamut of agreements and challenges.

And like the rest of us, learn to multitask. The world demands it.

Thanks Dad.

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: Epistemology

For someone who has all of these great ideas about knowledge, is this little thread turn your display of your abilities to acquire it? Do you listen to your father? Do you credit him for those pivotal epiphanies in your life? Did he impart in you a love and a quest for learning new things?

(((waves a mother's hand, like we all do towards our gifted teenagers)))

come and share with us your brilliance. I mean this seriously.

[Whitepoint3rchum]

Re: Epistemology

Hey, hey, now that this thread is taking up space, let us put it to good use! Evolution: are you accepting?

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: Epistemology

origins of life stuff? The Kumulipo chant is genealogy. The gods are the oldest of our ancestors, which is compatible considering that we are most reverent towards our great-greatgrandparents, treat our grandparents better than we treat our parents, and scrap with our sibilings.

Was that your question? In what paradigm are you discussing evolution?

[Whitepoint3rchum]

Re: Epistemology

Not origins of life, that is at the current juncture a largely metaphysical matter and thus not relavent to a scientific discourse. I'm asking if after the initial impetus, whether divinely inspired or naturally occuring, you believe that evolution took its course and lead to the diversity of species that today populate the globe. Pretty straightforward.

[Whitepoint3rchum]

Re: Epistemology

Actually more accurately I should have asked whether you accept evolution, as opposed to 'believe in it'. As if it was some type of religion LOL.. hehe. Hey, if you've got a better topic with which to breathe some life into this thread I'm cool with that - let's just go!

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: Epistemology

Thanks for correcting the "belief of evolution" statement

Do people really NOT accept evolution? Vaccinations and nylon bugs for starters are the simplest forms of proof that evolution occurs. The rub in discussing evolution seems to be finding that turning point when complex creatures mutates further.

I think about this on a personal level: does the fact that the majority of my ancestors, who did not have any grains in their diet, set me up for developing disease because I eat rice and breads, in whatever minute amount my daily consumption happens to be? If the last three generations of my family succumbed to diabetes because their systems could not tolerate these foods (as Polynesians had never developed a tolerance for them) will my diabetes-free existence prove that *I* evolved past this issue? Or did it take four generations to evolve my race?

[Miulang]

Re: Epistemology

Thanks for correcting the "belief of evolution" statement

Do people really NOT accept evolution? Vaccinations and nylon bugs for starters are the simplest forms of proof that evolution occurs. The rub in discussing evolution seems to be finding that turning point when complex creatures mutates further.

I think about this on a personal level: does the fact that the majority of my ancestors, who did not have any grains in their diet, set me up for developing disease because I eat rice and breads, in whatever minute amount my daily consumption happens to be? If the last three generations of my family succumbed to diabetes because their systems could not tolerate these foods (as Polynesians had never developed a tolerance for them) will my diabetes-free existence prove that *I* evolved past this issue? Or did it take four generations to evolve my race?

And just to make things a scintilla more interesting, consider whether developing something like diabetes is the result of your heredity or your environment--heredity being the genes you inherit from your kupuna, and environment being a change in your diet?

In other words, if you started to eat the same kind of diet that your kupuna did (poi, fish, no refined or sugary foods), would that be enough to keep you from developing diabetes, or should you have genetic testing done before you get married to see if you and your intended both carry dominant genes which might predispose your progeny to chronic, debilitating diseases?

Miulang

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Epistemology

I think about this on a personal level: does the fact that the majority of my ancestors, who did not have any grains in their diet, set me up for developing disease because I eat rice and breads, in whatever minute amount my daily consumption happens to be? If the last three generations of my family succumbed to diabetes because their systems could not tolerate these foods (as Polynesians had never developed a tolerance for them) will my diabetes-free existence prove that *I* evolved past this issue? Or did it take four generations to evolve my race?

Actually, if you survived long enough to reproduce and pass your genes on to your children, then clearly the susceptibility to diabetes wasn't a severe enough disadvantage to get you weeded out of the gene pool. But have *you* evolved? I don't think so, at least not in the biological evolution sense of the word. Individuals don't evolve; populations of individuals do.

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: Epistemology

And just to make things a scintilla more interesting, consider whether developing something like diabetes is the result of your heredity or your environment--heredity being the genes you inherit from your kupuna, and environment being a change in your diet?

In other words, if you started to eat the same kind of diet that your kupuna did (poi, fish, no refined or sugary foods), would that be enough to keep you from developing diabetes, or should you have genetic testing done before you get married to see if you and your intended both carry dominant genes which might predispose your progeny to chronic, debilitating diseases?

Miulang

If my kupuna above four generations ago didn't eat rice and didn't have diabetes, and their subsequent three generations of mo'opuna did eat rice and did develop diabetes by age 35, my educated guess is that these three unlucky generations included into their diets something for which they had no immunity (I don't know if immunity is the optimal word, but you get the drift). However, I have not developed diabetes by age 35, and ethically speaking, my kupuna and parents didn't deviate too much. By weeding out the inclusion of additional ancestors who would have been able to pass on the "rice immunity" gene, can I hazard a guess that it took four generations to acclimate?

Anyway, fun stuff I think about from time to time...

oh yeah, and Glen is right.

[Miulang]

Re: Epistemology

If my kupuna above four generations ago didn't eat rice and didn't have diabetes, and their subsequent three generations of mo'opuna did eat rice and did develop diabetes by age 35, my educated guess is that these three unlucky generations included into their diets something for which they had no immunity (I don't know if immunity is the optimal word, but you get the drift). However, I have not developed diabetes by age 35, and ethically speaking, my kupuna and parents didn't deviate too much. By weeding out the inclusion of additional ancestors who would have been able to pass on the "rice immunity" gene, can I hazard a guess that it took four generations to acclimate?

Anyway, fun stuff I think about from time to time...

oh yeah, and Glen is right.

Actually, you still could develop Type II diabetes (adult onset), and you don't have to be obese to be stricken...just the luck of the gene pool. Docs used to see it generally in middle aged people, but now because of crappy diets and lack of exercise, kids in elementary school are being diagnosed with it.

Miulang

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Epistemology

The problem with thinking about evolution on the human scale is that:

(1) It takes too long. Most evolutionary changes take many, many generations. If each human generation is 20 years, it takes 200 years before you can see ten generations' worth of change and get the data you need for your PhD thesis. It's much easier to work with fruit flies or, even better, bacteria.

(2) You need statistically significant numbers. One person, or one family, generally isn't enough. You need an entire nation of people.

(3) It's often unethical to do experiments on people, depending on the nature of the experiment.

(4) Until recently, it wasn't really feasible to do detailed genetic studies, so researchers had to make do with measuring physiological markers instead (like skin color or height), which don't seem to be caused by single genes.

(5) "Natural selection" in humans is drastically altered by modern developments like agriculture, technology, sanitation, and medicine. There are lots of people in our world today who, back in the Really Old Days, probably would have died in childhood and never gotten to have kids of their own.

So for example, selectively killing every child who is more than 5 feet tall at age 10 would probably eventually result in a population of short people. But it would take too long to demonstrate, and nobody would actually try it in the first place. But this is very much like what hunting and fishing regulations are doing to game animal populations.

[Whitepoint3rchum]

Re: Epistemology

And just to make things a scintilla more interesting, consider whether developing something like diabetes is the result of your heredity or your environment--heredity being the genes you inherit from your kupuna, and environment being a change in your diet?

In other words, if you started to eat the same kind of diet that your kupuna did (poi, fish, no refined or sugary foods), would that be enough to keep you from developing diabetes, or should you have genetic testing done before you get married to see if you and your intended both carry dominant genes which might predispose your progeny to chronic, debilitating diseases?

Miulang

I assume when you say dominant you are refering to homozygous dominant as opposed to codominance. If my assumption is indeed correct it would be helpful to know the chances of your child inheriting the coding for Huntington's disease or Sickle cell anemia. If it is codominance then alleles coding for half of the genome to carry sickle shaped blood cells but not the other half, then this is advantagious. Most genetic disorders that arise from homozygous dominants confer a great advantage in heterozygotes and are the reason for their not being selected out of a population.

Also Pua, the scariest thing, and answer to your initail question, is yes! Some people willfully reject the theory of evolution. They claim that such things as the hardiness of new strains of bacteria and the evolution of the nylon bug are merely 'change within a kind' or microevolution. They say this type of change doesn't necessarily lead to speciation. The real truth though is that the differentiation between between micro- and macroevolution is a false dichotomy.

[Glen Miyashiro]

Re: Epistemology

So for example, selectively killing every child who is more than 5 feet tall at age 10 would probably eventually result in a population of short people. But it would take too long to demonstrate, and nobody would actually try it in the first place. But this is very much like what hunting and fishing regulations are doing to game animal populations.

Whoops, that was a bad example -- most kids aren't that tall at that age. Let's say, "more than 4 foot 6 inches" instead.