Reincarnation as a trivial scientific fact

ben m · Mar 28, 2008

wogoga said:
one nevertheless should request at least an explanation of the principle by which the probabilistic nature of QM could result in the rather deterministic duplication of bacteria. If such an explanation is impossible, and I’m sure it is, then the psychon concept becomes a reasonable hypothesis at least for unprejudiced persons.

Such an explanation is not impossible, but in fact very simple. Individual quantum events have a probabilistic nature, but the average behavior over many events approaches being deterministic. This is well-known and well-measured. If I put a sodium atom and a chlorine atom next to one another for 1 femtosecond, will they form a bond? That's a quantum event, say, with 50% probability. If I put them together for 1 nanosecond, will they form a bond? With 10^6 chances to "try again" if it doesn't work the first time, yes it's dead certain that they will form a bond.

That's how biochemistry works. Many individual aspects of the bonding may be uncertain---does this part stick on the first try? which way did the photon go? Which orientation was the water molecule in when it first hit the aquaporin? But these uncertain processes are smoothed out by millions of cycles of averaging, and the main results don't look very uncertain at all. (Keep in mind that the "error rates" of individual biochem processes are known. A biochemist can tell you how often DNA-DNA copying makes a mistake, how often RNA is transcribed wrong, how often the tRNA picks up the wrong amino acid, how often the ribosome picks up the wrong tRNA, etc. Shall we figure out where the fewest errors occur, and direct the psychons there?)

And if you doubt DNA replication because of "quantum uncertainty"---well, the same uncertainty should make you doubt the existence of ice crystals, table salt, laser pointers beams, and gas pressure.

wogoga · Mar 30, 2008

wogoga said:
The reductionist scientific world view as many religious world views is based on the premise that we humans are outside nature. It is admitted that human behaviour depends on objectives, values, intuition and a tendency towards order. However every attempt to admit analogous principles of finality in nature is criticized as anthropomorphism. (…)

wollery said:
That's just hilariously funny. A large part of the criticism that scientists receive from the religious community is precisely because science places humans squarely within nature. You're the one trying to provide a supernatural explanation here.

I already have answered to this question on 12-Mar-1999. An extract:

In this context it may be interesting to look at the history of 'naturalism'. A certainly questionable and maybe subjective simplification is the assumption that there was an evolution from animism to polytheism, to monotheism with God outside the world, to monotheism with God inside the world, to pantheism and finally to atheism. The difference between atheism and pantheism is not big, because in pantheism 'God' is only a synonym for 'world' and 'nature', or means a special aspect of the world.

The basis of modern science was built in the 17th century. One of the first consistent naturalists was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), who explained the world in a panpsychist and panmaterialist way: space or matter is one aspect of the world (or of God or of nature), and thinking or consciousness a second. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) had explained the world in a quite similar way, based on a monotheism with God inside the world.

Both Kepler and Spinoza were fought and ridiculed especially by theologians but also by scientists. The alternative was the philosophy of Descartes: on the one hand was the material world and on the other human souls and God. Animals were considered pure machines without consciousness. The current scientific world view is based on the philosophy of Descartes. The big inconsistency of Cartesianism (animals as pure machines, humans having souls) was removed by removing the concept 'soul' (and 'God').

So why do you consider panpsychism as something supernatural? One main reason for its defeat was that it was a naturalistic explanation of the world not in agreement with theology.

A quote on Spinoza’s psychology from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

"Despite his debts, Spinoza expressed deep dissatisfaction with the views of those who had preceded him. His dissatisfaction reflects the naturalistic orientation that he wished to bring to the subject:

Most of those who have written about the affects, and men's way of living, seem to treat, not of natural things, which follow the common laws of Nature, but of things which are outside Nature. Indeed they seem to conceive man in Nature as a dominion within a dominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather than follows, the order of Nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined only by himself. (III Preface)

In opposition to what he saw as a tendency on the part of previous philosophers to treat humans as exceptions to the natural order, Spinoza proposes to treat them as subject to the same laws and causal determinants as everything else. What emerges can best be described as a mechanistic theory of the affects."

Cheers, Wolfgang

PixyMisa · Mar 30, 2008

wogoga said:
The duplication time of Escherichia coli is 15-20 minutes in the laboratory. So we can predict that one healthy bacterium in an appropriate culture medium will create a second bacterium. Whether we call this duplication a goal or an unavoidable outcome (like the free fall of a stone), whether we call it purposeful or purposeless, is not important. Important however is that the highly complex process progresses in an efficient and quite deterministic way.

No.

E.g. before fission, the whole genome of around 4.6 million base pairs must have been doubled.

Yes. And it's not deterministic. Some mutations arise via radiation, but others are caused by simple errors in DNA replication.

Even if one accepts the lame excuse that it is much too complicated to actually calculate biochemical behaviour from QM

No such excuse is needed. Scientists actually do this.

one nevertheless should request at least an explanation of the principle by which the probabilistic nature of QM could result in the rather deterministic duplication of bacteria.

Oh, that's easy. There is no such thing.

If such an explanation is impossible, and I’m sure it is, then the psychon concept becomes a reasonable hypothesis at least for unprejudiced persons.

The "psychon" concept is not reasonable in any way. It is not based on any known fact or theory, nor does it lead to any testable predictions. As you yourself have shown, you can fit your conjecture to any dataset whatsoever.

wollery · Mar 30, 2008

wogoga said:
I already have answered to this question on 12-Mar-1999. An extract:

In this context it may be interesting to look at the history of 'naturalism'. A certainly questionable and maybe subjective simplification is the assumption that there was an evolution from animism to polytheism, to monotheism with God outside the world, to monotheism with God inside the world, to pantheism and finally to atheism. The difference between atheism and pantheism is not big, because in pantheism 'God' is only a synonym for 'world' and 'nature', or means a special aspect of the world.

The basis of modern science was built in the 17th century. One of the first consistent naturalists was Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), who explained the world in a panpsychist and panmaterialist way: space or matter is one aspect of the world (or of God or of nature), and thinking or consciousness a second. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) had explained the world in a quite similar way, based on a monotheism with God inside the world.

Both Kepler and Spinoza were fought and ridiculed especially by theologians but also by scientists. The alternative was the philosophy of Descartes: on the one hand was the material world and on the other human souls and God. Animals were considered pure machines without consciousness. The current scientific world view is based on the philosophy of Descartes. The big inconsistency of Cartesianism (animals as pure machines, humans having souls) was removed by removing the concept 'soul' (and 'God').

So why do you consider panpsychism as something supernatural? One main reason for its defeat was that it was a naturalistic explanation of the world not in agreement with theology.

A quote on Spinoza’s psychology from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

"Despite his debts, Spinoza expressed deep dissatisfaction with the views of those who had preceded him. His dissatisfaction reflects the naturalistic orientation that he wished to bring to the subject:

Most of those who have written about the affects, and men's way of living, seem to treat, not of natural things, which follow the common laws of Nature, but of things which are outside Nature. Indeed they seem to conceive man in Nature as a dominion within a dominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather than follows, the order of Nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined only by himself. (III Preface)

In opposition to what he saw as a tendency on the part of previous philosophers to treat humans as exceptions to the natural order, Spinoza proposes to treat them as subject to the same laws and causal determinants as everything else. What emerges can best be described as a mechanistic theory of the affects."

Cheers, Wolfgang

You make the common mistake of equating self-awareness with soul. And no serious scientist today would suggest that humans are the only self-aware animal.

wogoga · Mar 30, 2008

How can the probabilistic nature of QM result in the rather deterministic duplication of bacteria?

ben m said:
Such an explanation is not impossible, but in fact very simple. Individual quantum events have a probabilistic nature, but the average behavior over many events approaches being deterministic.

That’s obvious. A good example is radioactive decay, where the huge number of involved atoms results in a very deterministic half-life period of radioactive matter.

However, the case we are dealing with is completely different. The genome of a harmless laboratory strain of E. coli was reported in 1997 to consist of a single DNA molecule containing 4,639,221 base pairs with 4288 proteins and 89 RNAs. It is possible to label in a unique way every single atom of the around 110 million atoms of this highly complex DNA molecule (resulting in a few hundreds of millions of clearly specified chemical bonds). Before cell fission, a copy consisting of the same or almost the same number of atoms bonded in exactly the same way is created.

Whereas in the case of radioactive decay, a huge number of different but equivalent configurations all result in the same percentage of decayed atoms, the objective of DNA replication is one single, highly specified and clearly determined configuration.

ben m said:
If I put a sodium atom and a chlorine atom next to one another for 1 femtosecond, will they form a bond? That's a quantum event, say, with 50% probability. If I put them together for 1 nanosecond, will they form a bond? With 10^6 chances to "try again" if it doesn't work the first time, yes it's dead certain that they will form a bond.

In the same way we could explain crocodile behaviour by the probabilistic nature of QM:

If I put a hungry crocodile and a dead rabbit next to one another for 1 second, will they form a unity? That’s a quantum event, say, with 50% probability. If I put them together for 1 day, will they form a unity? With 86400 chances to "try again" if it doesn’t work the first time, yes it’s dead certain that the rabbit will end up in the crocodile.

ben m said:
A biochemist can tell you how often DNA-DNA copying makes a mistake, how often RNA is transcribed wrong, how often the tRNA picks up the wrong amino acid, how often the ribosome picks up the wrong tRNA, etc.

The mutation rate of DNA copying depends on many factors, e.g. on polymerase proofreading ability. Both highly variable DNA regions with high mutation rates and highly conserved regions with almost no mutations exist. A relevant quote from the psychon theory:

DNA mutations do not occur everywhere with the same freqency. Otherwise a fatal mutation in a vital protein would be much more probable than a mutation e.g. having an effect on the length of the neck. Moreover, evolutionarily older sequences (e.g. ubiquitin) are less susceptible to mutations. However, according to reductionism the probability of mutations should not depend on the evolutionary age or on the effects of the mutations. If one explains the different susceptibility to mutations by repair enzymes, the question arises how these enzymes can know which mutations they should tolerate and which they should not.

By the way, that fact that we speak about mistakes implies that there is an objective, a goal. Only a deviation from such a goal can be called a mistake. In the case of radioactive decay or Brownian motion it obviously doesn’t make sense to speak of mistakes.

Cheers, Wolfgang

PixyMisa · Mar 30, 2008

wogoga said:
How can the probabilistic nature of QM result in the rather deterministic duplication of bacteria?

It doesn't. There's no such thing.

Hello? Is this thing on?

That’s obvious. A good example is radioactive decay, where the huge number of involved atoms results in a very deterministic half-life period of radioactive matter.

No. There's a huge difference between statistical probability and determinism.

However, the case we are dealing with is completely different. The genome of a harmless laboratory strain of E. coli was reported in 1997 to consist of a single DNA molecule containing 4,639,221 base pairs with 4288 proteins and 89 RNAs. It is possible to label in a unique way every single atom of the around 110 million atoms of this highly complex DNA molecule (resulting in a few hundreds of millions of clearly specified chemical bonds). Before cell fission, a copy consisting of the same or almost the same number of atoms bonded in exactly the same way is created.

"The same" is not the same as "almost the same".

Whereas in the case of radioactive decay, a huge number of different but equivalent configurations all result in the same percentage of decayed atoms

Approximately.

the objective of DNA replication is one single, highly specified and clearly determined configuration.

No. That's simply what it does. You're arguing that there is some reason for it to do that. You have presented no evidence for this.

In the same way we could explain crocodile behaviour by the probabilistic nature of QM:

If I put a hungry crocodile and a dead rabbit next to one another for 1 second, will they form a unity? That’s a quantum event, say, with 50% probability. If I put them together for 1 day, will they form a unity? With 86400 chances to "try again" if it doesn’t work the first time, yes it’s dead certain that the rabbit will end up in the crocodile.

One small problem: Your version is meaningless drivel.

By the way, that fact that we speak about mistakes implies that there is an objective, a goal.

Only if you fail to understand the process itself. This is just anthropomorphism; it has no actual physical meaning.

wogoga · Apr 1, 2008

Whack01 said:
Your psychon 'theory' should be called a hypothesis as it is only a guess and cannot be verified by experiment.

In the case of fundamental scientific progress, there can be a continuous transition from an absurd hypothesis to a scientific fact. And what still seems as an absurdity to the majority can have become a scientific fact to someone else. From my own experience I know that it can be very difficult to change one’s position e.g. from believing in the impossibility of reincarnation to believing in its reality.

However, the impression of you and others that my psychon theory has no predictive power and that it cannot be verified by experiments is so obviously wrong that such an impression can only be explained by a kind of psychological repression.

You start with the premise that I cannot be right. Under this premise you conclude that relevant arguments for panpsychism and reincarnation are impossible, and thus you feel entitled to simply discard and ignore them. That’s your right. However, if one makes arguments disappear for oneself by ignoring them, one should not claim to others that such arguments do not exist.

Apart from counterarguments like I cannot imagine the existence of psychons or only material things can exist, not one single substantial argument against the psychon concept has been brought forward in the whole discussion. If you know such an argument, let me know.

In my posts and other texts I’ve presented several experiments ranging from physics over biochemistry and biology to demography.

Word War II was a huge and (as cynical as it may sound) very successful experiment of increasing fertility by increasing mortality.

Also the much higher mortality of men with respect to women in e.g. China leading to a higher proportion of male newborns can be considered an experiment. Another example: "The Paraguayan war at the end of the 19th century, for example, destroyed most of the male population and was followed by a spontaneous increase in male births". (See)

Domestication and aquaculture represent experiments by which the predictions of evolution by reincarnation can be verified.

By the way, a decline in the number of domesticated animals leads to a fertility increase in the corresponding wild populations. Because horses more and more have been replaced by modern means of transport, "the wild horses’ extraordinary reproductive potential, which can sometimes exceed 20% growth in a single year" (source) becomes understandable.

We can reduce pests in the wild by breeding them in special places and use them e.g. in order to create biological fuels. Normally only useful species are bred by humans, leading to a dwindling of the corresponding wild stocks (e.g. in the case of bees).

If the experiment of a worldwide ban on codfish aquaculture is performed then the wild stocks which have "never recovered from the overfishing of over three decades ago" will recover quickly.

Or let us find an animal species with a very low number of individuals and a low fertility. Then let us kill two thirds of its male population. A male baby boom will be the result. Then let us also kill two thirds of the female population and thereafter reduce mortality as much as possible. Fertility will become extremely low when the last baby boomers reach fertile age.

The actual very rapid mortality decline in many regions of the world also represents such an experiment, leading by logical necessity to extremely low fertility.

A quote from Mideast fertility rates plunge from January 2008:

Something dramatic is happening to fertility rates in the Middle East. For many years, most analysts and observers have focused on the remarkably high proportion of young people in Arab countries; those under the age of 25. This has provoked some crude commentary on the implications for birth rates and thus for the role of women in those countries. A great deal of that commentary now appears to be wrong-headed, according to new data from the Demographic and Social Statistics unit of the U.N. Statistical Division. Released last month, its findings were largely ignored in the holiday season.

Cheers,
Wolfgang

Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464): "When we say that the earth does not move, we mean simply that the earth is the point with reference to which man makes his observations of celestial phenomena."

six7s · Apr 1, 2008

wogoga said:
In the case of fundamental scientific progress, there can be a continuous transition from an absurd hypothesis to a scientific fact.

Maybe... but this is hardly relevant as you are promoting fundamental woo, piled high with superstition, topped off with wishful thinking

wogoga said:
From my own experience I know that it can be very difficult to change one’s position e.g. from believing in the impossibility of reincarnation to believing in its reality.

If it's difficult for you with your overwhelming confirmation bias, imagine how unlikely it is that any sceptic will even begin to swallow your half-baked fancy - especially when you fail to provide any evidence for the 'souls' that underpin your so-called hypothesis

wogoga said:
However, the impression of you and others that my psychon theory has no predictive power and that it cannot be verified by experiments is so obviously wrong that such an impression can only be explained by a kind of psychological repression.

If you want to be taken seriously, you'll need to get that confirmation bias under control

Consider the alternative: if you started with observed reality and then posited an idea supported by evidence from verifiable experiments, then sceptics might be less inclined to dismiss the 'predictive power' as nothing more than post-hoc cherry picking

And STOP calling it a theory!

wogoga said:
You start with the premise that I cannot be right.

How do you know?

Oh, right... you don't.... So why pretend that you do?

I suspect that you start with the premise that you cannot be wrong.

I suggest that, before assuming that reincarnation is anything other than a purely fantasy-based notion, you go back to the start provide some evidence to support what you call 'souls'

PixyMisa · Apr 2, 2008

wogoga said:
However, the impression of you and others that my psychon theory has no predictive power and that it cannot be verified by experiments is so obviously wrong that such an impression can only be explained by a kind of psychological repression.

If it can be verified by experiment then all you have to do is propose such an experiment (in detail) and explain (in detail) exactly how it would falsify your "hypothesis".

Your time starts... now.

In my posts and other texts I’ve presented several experiments ranging from physics over biochemistry and biology to demography.

No you haven't.

Word War II was a huge and (as cynical as it may sound) very successful experiment of increasing fertility by increasing mortality.

Nonsense.

Even if you had predicted the post-war baby booms before they happened (an important thing about predictions: they are supposed to come before the event) it would not distinguish your "hypothesis" from any other that also predicted a post-war baby boom.

Also the much higher mortality of men with respect to women in e.g. China leading to a higher proportion of male newborns can be considered an experiment.

No. Not only is it again not a prediction, but you are assuming causation without any evidence.

If the experiment of a worldwide ban on codfish aquaculture is performed then the wild stocks which have "never recovered from the overfishing of over three decades ago" will recover quickly.

Two points: This does not confirm the existence of "psychons" in any way. Second, are you saying that if we ban cod fishing and cod numbers do not quickly recover, this falsifies your theory?

How, exactly?

Or let us find an animal species with a very low number of individuals and a low fertility. Then let us kill two thirds of its male population. A male baby boom will be the result. Then let us also kill two thirds of the female population and thereafter reduce mortality as much as possible. Fertility will become extremely low when the last baby boomers reach fertile age.

Now that is actually a testable prediction. At least in theory. In practice, no-one is going to let you wipe out two thirds of a naturally occurring species. Will an artificially-created species do?

The actual very rapid mortality decline in many regions of the world also represents such an experiment, leading by logical necessity to extremely low fertility.

No it doesn't, for all the reasons cited previously.

zosima · Apr 2, 2008

wogoga,
I've got a question and a request.

1. It is a trivial scientific fact that resource saturation always places a fundamental upper limit on population growth, even if we take your spurious cherry picking of statistics as fact, how would we distinguish the depletion of tangible resources from the depletion of soul resources?

2. Can you please put present some sort of formal model, with equations or some geometry, something that we can plug numbers/data into, and independently verify your results?

Words are cheap and there is imho no way to objectively evaluate a result that is described in vague language. The calculations that you do are completely unpersuasive because I have absolutely no idea why you picked the numbers you did and applied them in the way you chose.

bruto · Apr 2, 2008

Wogoga, I am curious about your take on male-female birthrates in China. China has long had a reputation for female infanticide, and more recently for abortion of females. According to at least some sources, this practice has increased in recent years, as a result of the "one child" policy. Do you have some other data that demonstrate that such allegations are untrue, and that there is actually a natural imbalance toward male births in China, or are you just misreading population statistics? It would be useful here if you could come up with a citation written by someone other than yourself.

wogoga · Apr 2, 2008

wogoga said:
If the experiment of a worldwide ban on codfish aquaculture is performed then the wild stocks which have "never recovered from the overfishing of over three decades ago" will recover quickly.

PixyMisa said:
Two points: This does not confirm the existence of "psychons" in any way. Second, are you saying that if we ban cod fishing and cod numbers do not quickly recover, this falsifies your theory?

At first, we must distinguish between fishing and aquaculture. That a ban on cod fishing entails a recovery of cod numbers agrees with neo-Darwinian biology. Evolution-by-reincarnation however, assuming a limited number of codfish souls, leads to this conclusion: Despite a ban on cod fishing, the numbers of wild codfish cannot fully recover as long as a substantial amount of codfish is harvested in aquaculture.

If we ban aquaculture however, all the cod souls detained in such artificial environments again will be born as wild codfish, leading to a full recovery of the wild codfish population. If such a ban does not lead to a recovery in the absence of obvious other reasons (such as overfishing or disappearance of food or habitat), then such a non-recovery falsifies my theory.

With the question of how empirical data can confirm or refute the existence of psychons I’ve dealt in post #189.

zosima said:
It is a trivial scientific fact that resource saturation always places a fundamental upper limit on population growth, even if we take your spurious cherry picking of statistics as fact, how would we distinguish the depletion of tangible resources from the depletion of soul resources?

The simplest way to test the predictions of a gravitation theory is to choose empirical or experimental situations where other (e.g. electromagnetic) effects are not relevant. So the simplest way to test the effect of limited soul numbers on population growth is to choose empirical and experimental situations, where apart from the limited soul number no other effects prevent the population from growing (for instance).

It is obvious that every population is limited by the availability of resources. Nevertheless, the lower the percentage of souls incarnated at the same time, the higher is fertility (of the strong healthy individuals) and as a consequence also mortality. In the long run, a decrease in resources can also lead to dwarfism instead of a lower proportion of souls incarnated at the same time.

Cheers, Wolfgang

zosima · Apr 2, 2008

Wogoga:
So let me get this right, dwarfs have less soul than a normal person? I guess James Brown would be worth at least two John Kerry's,right?

No but seriously, nothing you have said has disproved the possibility that the Japanese are facing an economic, a physical(spatial), and a social limitation. I'm not going to believe in something completely without evidence and clearly paranormal unless you can eliminate these other more mundane limitations. (I site your oft sited Occam's Razor)

Also, I noticed you answered one of my questions but not the other. You must have read it. That silence confirms that you have no formal model. Therefore I must conclude you are just picking the statistics you perceive to support your hypothesis and combining them to suit whatever whim strikes you.

IMHO: no model -> you=pile of woo.

ben m · Apr 2, 2008

Wogoga, can I ask for a prediction? I'm thinking of a small, isolated population of trees, of a genus with no close relatives. The population was apparently small and static for millennia upon millennia---it's possible you would have called it "saturated". After an encounter with humans, can you predict whether the population of this tree species went up or down? Does demographic saturation forbid one or the other?

I'm also thinking of an organism whose population was *large* and stable for many millennia---I dare say you would have called it "saturated". After an encounter with humans, this population got either (a) even larger or (b) very small. Can you predict which one it was, using Demographic Saturation Theory?

billydkid · Apr 2, 2008

Gord_in_Toronto said:
So is the number of souls limited by "race", by geographic location, or globally? The OP claims all three. They can't all be correct.

How are the new born children of "mixed race" or who's parents move to another country or leave the planet assigned their souls?

Just asking questions.

I was thinking the same thing - why just the Japanese? Maybe souls are nationalistic. Just one of countless, annoying glitches in this theory.

wogoga · Apr 3, 2008

bruto said:
Wogoga, I am curious about your take on male-female birthrates in China.

Read the chapter China's missing girls. An extract:

According to the 2006 revision data, the sex ratio at death (SRD) of China has been continuously increasing from 104 (males per 100 females) in 1975-1980 to 123 in 2000-2005.

According to the same source, China's SRBirth was 115 in 2000-2005, thus substantially lower than the SRD of 123. In light of the homeostatic link between deaths and births, even this question arises: why is the proportion of girls at birth higher than the proportion of females at death?

So if the UN data are correct, then a dwindling in the female proportion in China simply does not occur.

bruto said:
China has long had a reputation for female infanticide, and more recently for abortion of females.

At least in the poorer social groups and in remote regions, antenatal sex determination should not have been very widespread.

Infanticide has a long tradition, not only in East Asia. An example from Infanticide - Changing views of the nature of the child:

"However, as a result of hard times and a high illegitimacy rate, infanticide was the most common crime in Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century."

If we assume that a sex ratio at birth of around 105 boys per 100 girls is a natural law, then in the case of a sex ratio of registered newborns of around 115 we have no other choice than to assume that almost 10% of the females have been liquidated. And the hypothesis of killing innocent little girls is certainly suitable for headlines. (Maybe the spread of the whole story has even been fostered by anti-Chinese political interests.)

bruto said:
According to at least some sources, this practice has increased in recent years, as a result of the "one child" policy.

On the efficiency of the one child policy in general see post #104.

The highest SRB of China in 2000 was in Hainan with 138 boys per 100 girls. However, if you look at table 4 of Low Fertility in China, UN, 2006, you will find that policy fertility of this province in 2000 was as high as 2.14 and actual fertility was 1.8 children per woman. Yet Shanghai with the lowest policy fertility (1.06) had a SRB of 'only' 116 boys per 100 girls.

So the decisive question is: Does any evidence of female mass infanticide and abortion in China exist which is not logically deduced from seemingly impossible sex ratios of children? And here we must not confuse single cases with a systematic killing of millions of 'missing girls' before or after birth.

Imbalances in sex ratios exist in both directions (e.g. substantially more women than men in Russia and Ukraine) and do not represent a new phenomenon. Case, Kinship and Sex Ratios in India, 2008:

"In India and probably elsewhere in Asia, however, the case of 'missing woman' has deep historical roots. While it is difficult to identify when the problem of 'missing woman' first arose in India, British officials were well aware of the problem in North India during the mid-nineteenth century."

Cheers, Wolfgang

zosima · Apr 4, 2008

Bah
I want my model, Wogoga!

Your answers mean nothing if you just pick them out of a hat. Even without making any predictions, a rational description needs to explain how the rules applied in one situation are the same as those applied in another one, or why you use different rules in different situations.

I know you've read my request because you answered my other question in the same post. You should at least explain why you think its better to make ad-hoc explanations up as you go along rather than have an explicit hypothesis, if you don't care to have one.

wogoga · Apr 5, 2008

ben m said:
Wogoga, can I ask for a prediction? I'm thinking of a small, isolated population of trees, of a genus with no close relatives. The population was apparently small and static for millennia upon millennia---it's possible you would have called it "saturated". After an encounter with humans, can you predict whether the population of this tree species went up or down? Does demographic saturation forbid one or the other?

I assume that a tree is different from an animal insofar as a tree as a whole has no psychon, in the same way as a living and growing city has no city-soul. This entails that in the case of plant species in general, what remains constant should rather be the weight of the whole species or subspecies than the number of individuals. The question of how easily one tree species can grow at the expense of related tree species can only be decided by empirical research. Because the complexity of trees is smaller than the complexity of animals, it should be easier for tree species than for animal species to grow at the expense of related species.

Whether the population of your tree species went up or down, depends on the interaction with the humans and on other factors. If such a tree species actually is so different from all other tree species that it represents a distinct genus, then a growth at the expense of other tree species is improbable.

But how can we know that a population of trees was constant over many thousand years? At least in times of extreme climatic conditions (e.g. droughts) a decline in the population is very probable. And I actually do not know whether saturation values near 100% or much lower values are more widespread. Despite a huge population growth in the recent past, mankind for instance is still a not yet saturated species.

In general, plants and trees bred or fostered by humans tend to grow at the expense of related strains. And at least in principle, it should be possible to exterminate any species.

I do not know whether since the advent of agriculture the quantity of e.g. cultivated wheat has grown only at the expense of wild wheat strains or also at the expense of other related species. Nevertheless, I’m quite optimistic that future research will be able to clear up such questions.

Cheers, Wolfgang

bruto · Apr 5, 2008

wogoga said:
Read the chapter China's missing girls. An extract:

According to the 2006 revision data, the sex ratio at death (SRD) of China has been continuously increasing from 104 (males per 100 females) in 1975-1980 to 123 in 2000-2005.

According to the same source, China's SRBirth was 115 in 2000-2005, thus substantially lower than the SRD of 123. In light of the homeostatic link between deaths and births, even this question arises: why is the proportion of girls at birth higher than the proportion of females at death?

So if the UN data are correct, then a dwindling in the female proportion in China simply does not occur.

At least in the poorer social groups and in remote regions, antenatal sex determination should not have been very widespread.

Infanticide has a long tradition, not only in East Asia. An example from Infanticide - Changing views of the nature of the child:

"However, as a result of hard times and a high illegitimacy rate, infanticide was the most common crime in Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century."

If we assume that a sex ratio at birth of around 105 boys per 100 girls is a natural law, then in the case of a sex ratio of registered newborns of around 115 we have no other choice than to assume that almost 10% of the females have been liquidated. And the hypothesis of killing innocent little girls is certainly suitable for headlines. (Maybe the spread of the whole story has even been fostered by anti-Chinese political interests.)

On the efficiency of the one child policy in general see post #104.

The highest SRB of China in 2000 was in Hainan with 138 boys per 100 girls. However, if you look at table 4 of Low Fertility in China, UN, 2006, you will find that policy fertility of this province in 2000 was as high as 2.14 and actual fertility was 1.8 children per woman. Yet Shanghai with the lowest policy fertility (1.06) had a SRB of 'only' 116 boys per 100 girls.

So the decisive question is: Does any evidence of female mass infanticide and abortion in China exist which is not logically deduced from seemingly impossible sex ratios of children? And here we must not confuse single cases with a systematic killing of millions of 'missing girls' before or after birth.

Imbalances in sex ratios exist in both directions (e.g. substantially more women than men in Russia and Ukraine) and do not represent a new phenomenon. Case, Kinship and Sex Ratios in India, 2008:

"In India and probably elsewhere in Asia, however, the case of 'missing woman' has deep historical roots. While it is difficult to identify when the problem of 'missing woman' first arose in India, British officials were well aware of the problem in North India during the mid-nineteenth century."

Cheers, Wolfgang

All that does not seem to answer my question, or to reinforce your idea that more boys are born in china because of the higher mortality of men. I see nothing in the above citations to suggest that there is any natural tendency for more boys than girls to be born - rather the opposite. In addition, of course, we have yet to see any other evidence to suggest that there is any aspect of gender that is not physical and that psychons, if they exist at all, are sexed.

wogoga · Apr 5, 2008

wogoga said:
According to the 2006 revision data, the sex ratio at death (SRD) of China has been continuously increasing from 104 (males per 100 females) in 1975-1980 to 123 in 2000-2005.

bruto said:
All that does not seem to answer my question, or to reinforce your idea that more boys are born in china because of the higher mortality of men.

So I cannot help.

bruto said:
In addition, of course, we have yet to see any other evidence to suggest that there is any aspect of gender that is not physical and that psychons, if they exist at all, are sexed.

A substantial part of the information needed for the ontogenetic development of a men or a woman comes from the soul. It is reasonable to assume that human souls being able to change gender have appeared during biological evolution. Yet such a gender change entails a tendency to hermaphroditism, non-heterosexuality, transvestism and similar.

Could the threads Reincarnation Is A FACT!!!!!!!! of Space_Ed and Reincarnation is going to happen to you be an attempt of guilt by association?

Cheers, Wolfgang

Reincarnation as a trivial scientific fact

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