I'm genuinely interested in the distinction. Humans "breeding" animals is the same as any other environmental factor that affects evolution of a species.
I'm sorry, are you saying something like french bulldogs would have evolved just the same without human intervention? It seems like you are reforming the idea in a really obtuse manner in order to paper over the obvious distinction.
Where do you dream this stuff up? What continues to be asked is of what relevance the topic of breeding is to the subject at hand. Nobody is surprised that selective breeding is a thing, denies that it happens, or pretends that it hasn't shaped the animals. What nobody seems to want to answer is why it was brought to the discussion, especially when it was already, and explicitly, established that the exact mechanism for the animal's behaviour is irrelevant to said discussion.
No doubt it was posted for good reason, but so far nobody has been able to figure out what that reason is. To the rest of us laymen, an environmental factor is an environmental factor is an environmental factor. What makes breeding so different that it justifies violating the discussion that was taking place?
>What nobody seems to want to answer is why it was brought to the discussion, especially when it was already, and explicitly, established that the exact mechanism for the animal's behaviour is irrelevant to said discussion.
Who said that? As far as I can tell the discussion was the difference between domesticated cows and bison, and I didn't see anyone say breeding is irrelevant except you.
> What makes breeding so different that it justifies violating the discussion that was taking place?
What exactly are you talking about? You are being obtusely vague
>Where do you dream this stuff up?
No need to be rude, it's not helping anything. You are being rude to the other poster too, when it's your fault for not communicating clearly and just insisting everyone made the same assumptions as you when it's clear they didn't. Rather than make things clear, you just keep insulting people on top of things.
> As far as I can tell the discussion was the difference between domesticated cows and bison
The discussion was about how domesticated animals prefer to stick around humans even when they don't need to, negating the idea that all animals are of the opinion that "humans suck". It was established that the exact reason for why these animals behave that way is irrelevant to the topic, but then the comment about bison introduced the idea that it is relevant. After all, why would we see a post that is irrelevant? But there is no indication of where the relevance lies. Is selective breeding not an environment pressure like any other? What is noteworthy about it that justifies the violation?
> No need to be rude, it's not helping anything.
Intriguing. It would be interesting to hear the logic behind considering text spit out by a piece of software to be rude. Does rudeness not require human intent? Indeed, a human giving another human the middle finger might be considered rude (human intent) by a human observer, but a monkey giving the middle finger (non-human intent) is not traditionally considered so despite being an identical act. This seems to imply that you assign human-like qualities to software. But at the same time software is well understood to not be human-like. It operates using very different mechanisms. Which, then, seems like software should be treated more like the monkey than like the human, but clearly that is not the case.
Tell us more about your take! The other commenter does not seem to recall why he posted the comment about the bison, leaving that topic to be a dead-end, so let's entertain your tangent.
Why would I have any reason to believe your post was written by a piece of software? What a horrible "conversation" this has been. The point is to give fair readings to other posters here. Not whatever it is you are doing here.
I'll take that to mean that you see software, but okay, let's agree that appearances are not always what they seem.
What ultimately sets humans apart from the monkeys, to make the difference between human intent and non-human intent significant, is identity. Indeed, a human in a costume that is unrecognizable from an actual monkey, thus having no identity, would not conjure rudeness feelings when giving the middle finger any more than an actual monkey would. It is fair to say that identity is not necessarily one's outer appearance. Signing one's name is another way humans confer identity, for example.
Do you recognize a human identity here? If so, describe it for us.
If rude is an identity, that means when a human witnesses a crime, describing the perpetrator as "rude" to the police office on duty will be sufficient to track down and nab the criminal.
Ha. Not going to happen. "Rude" can describe anyone. It does not serve to provide an identity.
And this is how you want us to come to believe that software is human?
To be insufferable may be a quality of humans, but is decidedly not an identity. I suppose your message here is that there is no discernible identity, surprising no one? So, for what logical reason are we considering software to be human again?
I genuinely ask what is noteworthy about breeding that separates it from any other mechanism with respect to the topic at hand. There is no indication in the comment of how breeding actually violates the unnecessariness of the exact mechanics. I suspect it was posted without having read the thread that came before it, but we shall see when clarification is revealed, if the original commenter ever follows up.
I've read your comment above and the one above that multiple times.
I still don't understand what you are asking.
If you don't understand that breeding something for a certain trait will impact that animal, I suggest you go look at pugs or dash-hounds and the medical problems they now have as a result of very specific breeding.
It was established that the exact mechanics don't matter. But then you introduced an exact mechanic. This means that there must be something incredibly interesting or noteworthy about said mechanic to violate the notion that the exact mechanics don't matter.
But you have not yet shared what is notable about it. Breeding for a certain trait is farming 101. There is absolutely nothing interesting about that. So what have we missed?
I am still not following you at all. I honestly feel like either you or I are replying to the wrong comment chain.
> It was established that the exact mechanics don't matter
Please show me what was established and where. I genuinely don't know what you are talking about.
> But then you introduced an exact mechanic
Again, please show what I introduced and where.
>This means that there must be something incredibly interesting or noteworthy about said mechanic to violate the notion that the exact mechanics don't matter
Ahhh, really lost now.
> But you have not yet shared what is notable about it.
Notable about what?
Either one of us is staggeringly confused, or I'm having this conversation with an AI in training.
Yes, I am the one who is confused, which is why I started asking questions all those comments ago in a hopeful effort to try and become unconfused. But at this point you don't seem to even be aware of why you posted the comment, so I suppose we'll just chalk it up to an arbitrary thought crafted while in the middle of a somnambulism.
Based on your conversation with me, and the tangent one going sideways with freejazz, I have to assume you are actually a bot, and this is all just going around and around.
That is the beauty of Hacker News. It abstracts the content creation such that it doesn't matter if the content is created by a bot, a human, or an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters. How the content is created is just an implementation detail that is not visible to the user, nor does it affect the user. The user only interacts with the software. The software is why the user is here.
So, I say: Who cares? You already went into this knowing that it could be a bot and it didn't brother you one bit. Nor should it, because, again, it only being an implementation detail of the software means that it affects you in no way. A bot, a human, space alien, or an infinite number of monkeys are all just as good as each other. It makes no difference. No difference at all. So, what compels you to bring this up now?
But, getting back to the topic at hand, we'd still love to know how your comment at the top is significant enough to justify violating the established premise. If it is simply that you didn't bother to take time to understand the thread before replying, and that it doesn't fit the discussion, that's a perfectly acceptable answer. Although, admittedly, we cling to the hope that you actually have an interesting nugget hidden in there that will blow our minds when you finally get around to telling us about it!
Logically, the comparison is with comparable output of software in other instances, not people. To compare software with people here is like asserting that a cow is mooing in what seems like an excessive manner because people don't make that much noise. It does not serve as a useful point of comparison. Cows may simply moo excessively. In order to provide a meaningful frame of reference, you would compare the moos of said cow with other cows to make such a comparison.
What is significant about this specific mechanism that makes it noteworthy enough to violate what was already established?