I agree that something being "natural" doesn't make it "right". But "natural" is still a force of nature that you have to include in your predictions... unless you are okay with getting your predictions systematically wrong.
Applying this to the examples you mentioned:
Males are more aggressive in most animals; therefore, male humans should be expected to be more aggressive.
Yes, 100% agree. Notice that this doesn't say anything about aggression being good or otherwise desirable; the statement is positive, not normative.
Do you have an alternative explanation for gender ratios in violent crime statistics?
Females are the natural caregivers in most mammals; therefore, human mothers should primarily raise children.
Okay, we have a "should" here; that is a mistake. But we could make a positive statement out of it, something like "on average, females will be more successful caregivers than males", especially if they are randomly selected from the population (rather than self-selected).
Of course, "more successful" does not automatically translate to "should"; we need to balance it against other interests.
Hierarchies exist in many animal groups; therefore, human social hierarchies and inequality are natural and acceptable.
Here, I would make a statement like "human social hierarchies are a natural attractor, so if you want to avoid them, you need to think really carefully about how to design your group, because it is very unlikely to happen automatically".
Alpha males dominate in many mammal groups; therefore, dominant, assertive men should naturally be leaders.
Similarly, something like "there are many dominant men, so you either need to accept that you will have a leader like this (and maybe focus on figuring out how to choose the best one out of multiple candidates) or you need to think really carefully about how to avoid this outcome".
Animals eat meat; therefore, human meat consumption is natural and morally acceptable.
The positive statement would be something like: "you need to think really carefully about designing a vegetarian diet that will be healthy in long term, because the most likely outcome of 'just don't eat meat, duh' is some kind of nutritional deficiency".
Metaphorically speaking, opposing the nature is like opposing gravity. Yes, you can build airplanes and tall buildings. But you need to design them carefully, otherwise a disaster will happen. Just saying "I hate gravity, it is such an oppressive concept that it should not be allowed to mention in a polite society" is not going to do it.
Thanks you prodded at a real issue I failed to notice in my post.
I claim the article is about: "natural does not mean good" Then I go off and seem to try to make a sneaky second claim: "Natural processes can't be proven/verified easily and should hold no weight"
With the second claim being a lot weaker. But I still stand by it.
If I could try to succinctly rephrase it in the context of your response here:
"Patterns are statistically significant and improbable without some outside force. So if we recognize a pattern, it's LIKELY that there is some attractor or gravity creating this pattern. BUT, the fact that something is naturally occuring or biological in nature should add absolutely no credence or change the nature of how we normally pattern match."
So I agree "male humans are on average more aggressive than females." That is great pattern that needs to be in any social model. But if then someone says "this is because all mammals work that way", that second statement is usually unverifiable and should add no credence to the pattern or model.
Same with "assertive men are often leaders". This is a great pattern that should be considered. To then say "this is because pack animals designate an alpha male" is not verifiable and should not add weight to the claim.
Now to me it feels like the biology bit is added to a LOT of arguments. This could be because any good logical thinker want to also pin down causation and upstream effects. I am concerned"it's biological/natural" is tacked onto arguments in an attempt to artificially strengthen arguments, and this post was my attempt at a response to that.
If you know a fact about humans, then mammals are not important. Humans like stories. Doesn't matter if mammals in general don't.
If you don't know a fact about humans, but somehow you know the fact about mammals, you can use it as evidence (although not as a proof). For example, in a culture with a strong religious taboo against human autopsy they could dissect various mammals, and make probabilistic statements about human anatomy.
Today, a more typical situation is two groups of people, each declaring that they know for a fact that humans are / are not X. In such situation, if you have no way to verify the fact directly, I guess you could use the information about mammals to make a probabilistic estimate about which group is correct.
Also, from a perspective of a scientist, if all mammals are X, then the fact that humans are also X is... not completely guaranteed, but not really surprising. On the other hand, if all other mammals are X but humans don't... that is definitely possible, but it makes me really curious why. What is the difference, and what was the possible reason evolution made it so?
Well-said.
To add to comment:
OP: "Some examples to illustrate the absurdity of this logic: Mammals live outdoors; therefore, homelessness is good."
A positive statement would be that, it may be an evolutionary 'good' even if distasteful. An example might be that homelessness people may have more partners than a high IQ autist that has a mansion. Or we can say, all else being equal, it is healthier for humans to be outside more, much more than in the modern world. Designed housing and modern urban systems need to take this into account.
OP: "Animals are illiterate; therefore, illiteracy is good."
It may be distasteful, but many studies show that years of education means lower fertility; and that sexual selection TODAY actually does select for genes that are less-intelligent* (ADHD or even bad habits like alcohol and smoking.) Nature works in mysterious ways. A good way is that we need to think quite hard about underlying behaviors. Why are literacy rates so low? And persistently so?
*See: Life without sex: Large-scale study links sexlessness to physical, cognitive, and personality traits, socioecological factors, and DNA: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.24.24310943v1.full
I appreciate this. My phrasing of these is unnecessarily negative.
I was trying to exemplify patterns that human shouldn't push towards. To backup my claim that "biological does not mean good"
"Animals live outside" is the pattern. If I had one button that keeps everything the same and another that made all people live outside, I wouldn't push the button. Lots of people would die from exposure.
As you point out, the fact that animals live outside does contain some biological truth. Outside is healthy in a lot of ways. But living outside isn't "good" for humans because it's what our biological similars do.
I think this is relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-meritocracy/ . 'Prevalence and tendency implies morality' - I don't think that's an argument that people gestured at here try to make.
In an interview, Erica Komisar discusses parenting extensively. I appreciate anyone who thinks deeply about parenting, so I mostly value Erica's contributions. However, I believe she is mistaken on many points.
One claim she makes follows a broader pattern that I find troubling. To paraphrase:
"Fathers can take on the primary caregiver role, but they would be fighting biology. It goes against what all mammals do."
I see this kind of reasoning frequently-arguments that begin with "From an evolutionary standpoint..." or "For mammals..." But this argument is nonsense. Not only is it incorrect, but I suspect that most people, when pressed, would find it indefensible. It often functions as a stand-in for more rigorous reasoning.
Disclaimer: Erica makes more nuanced claims to support her perspective. Here, I am only critiquing one specific piece of "evidence"-her appeal to mammalian behavior. She referenced it multiple times (three by my count). I am not attempting to refute her entire viewpoint, only this particular claim.
If we strip this argument down to its core, it amounts to: Other mammals do this, therefore it is natural and acceptable.
I've seen this line of reasoning used to justify claims such as:
And the list goes on.
The classic parental retort comes to mind: "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?" Even if we accept these comparisons between humans and mammals, that does not make them morally right.
For instance, all animals experience suffering to some extent. Does that mean suffering is good? Absolutely not. Even if every mammal shares a common trait, that does not prove it is desirable or something we should strive for.
Some examples to illustrate the absurdity of this logic:
Clearly, just because something is common among mammals does not mean it is an ideal we should pursue.
This reminds me of the concept of referential tennis that rationalists discuss. One person might argue, "Most mammals are territorial, therefore humans should be," while another rebuts, "Ah, but among highly intelligent animals, most are not territorial." A third might respond, "Wouldn't you agree that we are most socially similar to prairie dogs, who are territorial?"
The joke here is that comparisons between humans and other animals often involve more dissimilarities than similarities. If your Bayesian baseline is 50/50 (i.e., you have no prior knowledge), then choosing analogous groups can help you update your beliefs-but only to the extent that the similarities are meaningful.
Given this, comparing humans to any other animal ignores millions of years of evolutionary divergence. A rational approach would be to update our beliefs only marginally-if at all-based on such comparisons.
This is perhaps the strongest counterargument. If a trait is present in nearly all mammals, then there must be an evolutionary advantage to it. The argument that follows is: Because this trait is strongly selected for, resisting it is futile.
One flaw in this reasoning is that mammals are not a randomly selected sample. They share many traits simply due to common ancestry, not necessarily because those traits are beneficial.
Another flaw is that correlation does not imply causation. For instance, all mammals have lungs. This might suggest that lungs confer a strong survival advantage. However, gills also work-the reason mammals have lungs is largely due to their evolutionary history, not necessarily because lungs are universally superior.
Some examples to illustrate this point:
Correlation can, with additional data, suggest causation-but merely pointing to a pattern among mammals is insufficient. I have never heard anyone say something like:
"Animals don't practice monogamy universally, so humans shouldn't either. Now, if you look at Figure 2, you'll see my causal diagrams where I explore the relationship between evolutionary tendencies and preferred behaviors..."
No one actually defends the "all animals do this" argument in depth. People simply state it and expect it to be self-evident. But arguments that seem self-explanatory often deserve the most scrutiny.
I don't think this argument holds any weight. Often, when people say, "It's not what mammals do," what they actually mean is, "This doesn't feel natural to me." But since "It doesn't feel natural" is not a persuasive argument, they dress it up in scientific language.
This works because it signals to like-minded people: "This is unnatural," in a way that sounds more authoritative.
But that does not make it true.
This is an excerpt from the YouTube video. You can skip this if you like:
"I'm going to say when men stay home to nurture their children-now remember, as mammals, we have defined roles. It is not instinctual for men to stay home and nurture their young. It's a reversal of something, and the issue there is that there's an inverse relationship between oxytocin and testosterone. The higher the oxytocin, the lower the testosterone. Yes, so if we're staying at home bonding, there are reasons for that. Mammals, when they are nurturing their young, they don't want somebody mating with them-go away, right? So the idea is that when a female nurtures, she doesn't want to..."
[...]
"So there's a whole debate in society about this idea of gender neutrality-that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. But actually, from an evolutionary perspective, as mammals, they're not interchangeable. They serve different functions, and those roles and behaviors are connected to nurturing hormones. So mothers are really important for what we call sensitive, empathic nurturing. When children are infants and toddlers, that means that when children are in distress, mothers soothe babies and therefore regulate their emotions from moment to moment. Every time a mother soothes a baby with skin-to-skin contact, eye contact, and the soothing tone of her voice, she..."