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MirariNefas
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Post by MirariNefas »

TallDave wrote: Hunter-gatherer tribes may come up with something useful now and then, but they are vastly inferior overall.
Perhaps this debate would lose some steam if we were a little more careful with wording. The effectiveness of their medical practice is inferior, they are not inferior.

Whether or not they are inferior is very subjective and up to personal opinion. To many people, surviving childhood, living through childbirth, or having a painful method of possibly surviving a bout of cancer are not important. They may feel that lifestyle differences can positively outweigh advantages in medicine. More quality in less time, risk to increase appreciation of payoff, spiritual continuance rendering lifespan irrelevant, or things like that.

IntLibber
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Post by IntLibber »

TallDave wrote:
"A fool cannot even learn from a wise man, but a wise man can learn even from a fool."
Yes, exactly. That's why we have petabytes of medical research, and they have a medicine man dancing around.
That medicine man likely has a far more expansive memory capacity than you or I, given the vast amount of oral history and traditional medicine he must learn without the benefit of written records or writing capabilities. Being an ass and calling him a fool to his face will get you a pitying smile, or maybe an arrow in the back.
I understand it well enough to have a sense of its limitations. Do you?
No, I'm saying you don't seem to understand the basic concept of science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

The whole point of science is to test hypotheses, separate the wheat from the chaff.

The human mind is not really well-adapted to science; we are superstitious because the longest-lasting correlations in our brains are the random ones. That's why it took millennia for the concept to be properly developed. That's why your hunter-gatherers are out there chanting and doing dances and painting their faces in the expectation it will have some sort of medical effect.

Hunter-gatherer tribes may come up with something useful now and then, but they are vastly inferior overall.
The primary limitations are more due to problems in having no written records, thus being unable to keep large stores of external memory.
If you didn't understand what it was, you might dismiss it as a magical incantation.
Assuming you were not an idiot, you could ask "Hey, what's oil pressure?" and it could be explained to you. When you ask about magical incantations, they turn out to be... magical incantations.

We still have the Lord's Prayer, but no one mistakes it for a pre-flight check.
Only because airplanes are a contemporary technology. At one time burning witches at the stake was a recognised method of getting rid of troublesome and meddlesome people. As is today conducting an exorcism done by a checklist procedure by a large number of priests whose activities are believed in by a large percentage of our 'scientific' society.

Take a trip to Tanna island in Vanuatu to visit the cargo cultists there, some continue to pray at mock airfields in mock control towers and mock airplanes, reciting pre-flight checklists and flight control chatter to bring the cargo planes back with their magical technology, food, medicines, etc.

MirariNefas
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Post by MirariNefas »

alexjrgreen wrote:
MirariNefas wrote:
Trepanation (drilling a hole in the skull) is still used as a life saving treatment for relieving cranial pressure.
I wonder if we reviewed this practice in a traditional medicine context, what percentage we would conclude to be "likely to be beneficial"
The evidence of prehistoric trepanned skulls is that the wound healed. So apparently the patient survived.
N value please.

pfrit
Posts: 256
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Post by pfrit »

IntLibber wrote:I myself discovered a cure for headaches that involves torturing myself by violently pinching the piece of skin between my nostrils hard for 30 seconds. This triggers a dopamine response that cures the headache within 5 minutes without any medication. An ignorant medical doctor of the 1950's would claim I am mentally deranged and prone to inflicting pain on myself in response to hallucination.

There are a lot of things discovered by trial and error in traditional medicine along with a lot of superstitious hooey. I suspect a lot of traditional treatments that don't work today may have worked at some time in the past but became ineffective as disease organisms evolved defenses against them.
You have just disproven your point. "Trial and error" is the heart of science and was the basis of Galenic medicine. This is modern medicine, not tribal. If you had a world view that included the source of headaches in the nasal septum and you pinched it to cure headaches regardless of whether it worked or not, this would be non-modern science. To do it because you think it will release endorphins and only continue to do it if it works is modern science.
What is the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

alexjrgreen
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Post by alexjrgreen »

MirariNefas wrote:
alexjrgreen wrote:
MirariNefas wrote: I wonder if we reviewed this practice in a traditional medicine context, what percentage we would conclude to be "likely to be beneficial"
The evidence of prehistoric trepanned skulls is that the wound healed. So apparently the patient survived.
N value please.
A trepanned skull found in France was dated at about 3,500 BCE: Natural History Museum, Lausanne.

About 1,000 trepanned skulls from Peru and Bolivia date from 400 BCE to the 16th century: The skull doctors.
Ars artis est celare artem.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Not the best example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanation
Evidence of trepanation has been found in prehistoric human remains from Neolithic times onwards. Cave paintings indicate that people believed the practice would cure epileptic seizures, migraines, and mental disorders.[1] The bone that was trepanned was kept by the prehistoric people and probably worn as a charm to keep evil spirits away
Not exactly sophisticated diagnosis and treatment. Or perhaps they had some secret knowledge we've lost, and our medical science will someday advance to the point where we too can comprehend the value of wearing a charm to keep evil spirits away.

alexjrgreen
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Post by alexjrgreen »

TallDave wrote:
I understand it well enough to have a sense of its limitations. Do you?
No, I'm saying you don't seem to understand the basic concept of science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

The whole point of science is to test hypotheses, separate the wheat from the chaff.
The bedrock of the scientific method is curiosity. Assuming the result before you look at the data isn't a very effective way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
TallDave wrote:The human mind is not really well-adapted to science; we are superstitious because the longest-lasting correlations in our brains are the random ones. That's why it took millennia for the concept to be properly developed.
Perhaps you should study flint-knapping...
TallDave wrote:That's why your hunter-gatherers are out there chanting and doing dances and painting their faces in the expectation it will have some sort of medical effect.

Hunter-gatherer tribes may come up with something useful now and then, but they are vastly inferior overall.
You're very quick to make assumptions about why hunter-gatherers are dancing. Since you raise it, though, tribal dancing has well attested effects on brain wave rhythm, some of which are known to have therapeutic value.

Persistently asserting someone else's inferiority may say more about you than it says about them.
Ars artis est celare artem.

alexjrgreen
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Post by alexjrgreen »

TallDave wrote:Not the best example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanation
Evidence of trepanation has been found in prehistoric human remains from Neolithic times onwards. Cave paintings indicate that people believed the practice would cure epileptic seizures, migraines, and mental disorders.[1] The bone that was trepanned was kept by the prehistoric people and probably worn as a charm to keep evil spirits away
Not exactly sophisticated diagnosis and treatment. Or perhaps they had some secret knowledge we've lost, and our medical science will someday advance to the point where we too can comprehend the value of wearing a charm to keep evil spirits away.
You need to widen your research.

Understanding cave paintings after so many years is controversial, and your quote is probably an exercise in fantasy. Basing your conclusion on it is shaky at best.
Ars artis est celare artem.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

That medicine man likely has a far more expansive memory capacity than you or I, given the vast amount of oral history and traditional medicine he must learn without the benefit of written records or writing capabilities.
I doubt it, we all have pretty much the same capacity. Regardless, his memory holds far less useful information due to the lack of available useful information to put in it.
Assuming the result before you look at the data isn't a very effective way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
No, it isn't. Are you saying our medical science does this?
You need to widen your research. Understanding cave paintings after so many years is controversial, and your quote is probably an exercise in fantasy.
Merely saying "widen your research" is meaningless. Do you have some evidence they were doing something more sophisticated? No, you do not.

"An exercise in fantasy" is a perfect description of your hunter-gatherer worship.
Since you raise it, though, tribal dancing has well attested effects on brain wave rhythm, some of which are known to have therapeutic value.
Yes, I imagine they will replace antibiotics any day now. Or, they chanted because chanting makes them feel a little better but doesn't actually accomplish anything significant.
Persistently asserting someone else's inferiority may say more about you than it says about them.
Yes, it says I am a reasonable, logical person who has assessed the evidence. The fact you seem to think evaluating the evidence and coming to the obvious conclusion is merely some sort of prejudice on my part says a lot about you, as does persistently asserting someone else's superiority in the face of massive evidence to the contrary.
Last edited by TallDave on Sun Nov 29, 2009 8:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

alexjrgreen
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Location: UK

Post by alexjrgreen »

MirariNefas wrote:
Trepanation (drilling a hole in the skull) is still used as a life saving treatment for relieving cranial pressure.
I wonder if we reviewed this practice in a traditional medicine context, what percentage we would conclude to be "likely to be beneficial", what percentage would be "likely to be harmful", what percentage would have evidence that "did not support either benefit or harm", and what percent would recommend further research.
Statistics here: Trepanation - History, Discovery, Theory.
MirariNefas wrote:Oh, wait, that sort of analysis comes from experts with advanced medical knowledge and statistical methods, not from tribal medicine men. So left alone, the tribes would never know and never advance.

Modern medicine is better because it can advance. To deny that it is good is to say that it can't get better, that nothing can get better, and that we might as well stop trying and cut all funding to medical research.
Treatment outcomes improved with time and local skill.
Ars artis est celare artem.

alexjrgreen
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Post by alexjrgreen »

TallDave wrote:
Persistently asserting someone else's inferiority may say more about you than it says about them.
Yes, it says I am a reasonable, logical person who has assessed the evidence. The fact you seem to think evaluating the evidence and coming to the obvious conclusion is merely some sort of prejudice on my part says a lot about you, as does persistently asserting someone else's superiority in the face of massive evidence to the contrary.
I don't assert their superiority. I insist on their equality as human beings.
Ars artis est celare artem.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

Take a trip to Tanna island in Vanuatu to visit the cargo cultists there, some continue to pray at mock airfields in mock control towers and mock airplanes, reciting pre-flight checklists and flight control chatter to bring the cargo planes back with their magical technology, food, medicines, etc.
But have you ruled out all possible positive effects?

Perhaps they only built the mock airport knowing it would seem very strange to us, and we would send tourists. Perhaps this was their plan all along and they've outsmarted us poor modern fools with our diminished brain capacity.

Or perhaps they are acting out of incredible ignorance. But surely only a bigot would believe that.

TallDave
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Post by TallDave »

I don't assert their superiority. I insist on their equality as human beings.
No, you're claiming their culture is equal or superior, which is a very different claim indeed. I don't think anyone has argued any kind of genetic inferiority, or inferiority of rights, etc. They just haven't produced anything remotely resembling the towering glorious wonder of incredible prosperity and knowledge that is modern civ.

alexjrgreen
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Post by alexjrgreen »

TallDave wrote:
I don't assert their superiority. I insist on their equality as human beings.
No, you're claiming their culture is equal or superior, which is a very different claim indeed. I don't think anyone has argued any kind of genetic inferiority, or inferiority of rights, etc. They just haven't produced anything remotely resembling the towering glorious wonder of incredible prosperity and knowledge that is modern civ.
You have a strange way of understanding language.

I say that hunter-gatherers have knowledge that we don't. For a recent example, look up Hoodia. There are many others.

You interpret that as a statement that their culture is superior.

Cultures are, and have always been, different. Trying to rank them is a pointless exercise.
Ars artis est celare artem.

Helius
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Post by Helius »

alexjrgreen wrote: I don't assert their superiority. I insist on their equality as human beings.
We know. You romanticize illiterates such that they are the intellectual equal of the most advanced individuals of the most advanced and complex civilization the world has ever seen, so long as such illiterates are ancient enough to not be actually interviewed.

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