revelarts
02-26-2013, 11:49 AM
'We Have Evolved to Need Coercion'
so says a evolutionary biologist in defense of Bloombergs Sugar ban. the good and wise overseers -who've evolved beyond us i assume- must control the lower undisciplined rabble by coercion or all is lost. It must be done. and you must comply, the state knows better. Trust us, eat what we tell you to... or else.
original article here
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/op...f=opinion&_r=0 (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/opinion/evolutions-sweet-tooth.html?ref=opinion&_r=0)
commentary from reason magazine below Quote:
<tbody>
'We Have Evolved to Need Coercion'
'We Have Evolved to Need Coercion' - Hit & Run : Reason.com (http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/06/we-have-evolved-to-need-coercion)
Jacob Sullum|Jun. 6, 2012 12:56 pm
Writing in The New York Times, Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman defends Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed 16-ounce restriction on soft drink servings, arguing that "we have evolved to need coercion":
Since sugar is a basic form of energy in food, a sweet tooth was adaptive in ancient times, when food was limited....
Humans evolved to crave sugar, store it and then use it. For millions of years, our cravings and digestive systems were exquisitely balanced because sugar was rare....
The food industry has made a fortune because we retain Stone Age bodies that crave sugar but live in a Space Age world in which sugar is cheap and plentiful. Sip by sip and nibble by nibble, more of us gain weight because we can’t control normal, deeply rooted urges for a valuable, tasty and once limited resource.
Lieberman deserves credit for candidly acknowledging that Bloomberg's "paternalistic plan" relies on "coercion." The mayor, by contrast, wants to have it both ways, getting credit for doing something about obesity while denying that he is limiting freedom in any meaningful way. On Friday he told NBC's Matt Lauer:
We're not banning you from getting the stuff. It's just if you want 32 ounces, the restaurant has to serve it in two glasses. That’s not exactly taking away your freedoms. It’s not something the Founding Fathers fought for.
As I said last week, Bloomberg's restrictions cannot possibly work unless the inconvenience they impose leads people to consume less soda than they otherwise would. By insisting that his restrictions will have no real effect on consumers, he is admitting his plan is doomed to fail.
Writing in Slate, Daniel Engbe asks what science tells us about the pint-sized plan's prospects. The focus on soft drinks, he explains, starts with the premise that liquid calories are less filling and that people therefore are less likely to compensate for them by cutting back elsewhere in their diets. While there is some evidence to support that idea, it is not clear that sugar-sweetened beverages are disproportionately responsible for rising obesity rates: Bloomberg may be convinced they are, but the research on that point is equivocal. Even if he is right, that does not mean his plan will have a measurable impact on New Yorkers' waistlines. As Engbe notes, the city unrealistically assumes that 100 fewer soda calories mean a net dietary reduction of 100 calories, ignoring the question of whether and to what extent people will compensate with calories from other sources. It is doubtful that Bloomberg's regulations can even reduce total liquid calories, especially given all the exceptions: for refills and additional containers, for fruit juices and milk-based drinks (which typically have more calories per ounce than soda), and for beverages sold in supermarkets and convenience stores—including 7-Eleven's Big Gulp, the very epitome of the sweet, bubbly excess that Bloomberg decries.
Lieberman, for his part, does not address the issue of whether Bloomberg's plan can accomplish its ostensible goal (a question that some boosters dismiss as irrelevant). If anything, Lieberman suggests that the mayor's pop policy goes too far, saying, "I think we should focus paternalistic laws on children." Still, he writes, "Adults need help, too, and we should do more to regulate companies that exploit our deeply rooted appetites for sugar and other unhealthy foods." Here Lieberman indulges in some Bloombergian dishonesty, since protecting adults from Big Food's sinister plot to sell them food they like actually means protecting them from their own choices—for example, "by imposing taxes on soda and junk food." In short: paternalism, which Lieberman has just said should be limited to children.
Lieberman's justification for treating adults like children has breathtakingly broad implications, since it is self-evident that humans have evolved to enjoy not just sugar but all of the things they like. Hence every pleasure can legitimately be taxed, regulated, restricted, or banned to prevent people from overindulging in it. By arguing that "an evolutionary perspective" shows governments must restrain people's choices for their own good, Lieberman tries to put a modern scientific veneer on an ancient moral argument. Evolutionary pressures clearly gave humans a taste not only for sweets but also for meddling in other people's lives.
More on Bloomberg's campaign against big sodas here.
</tbody>
From National review Denis Prager
Science Demands Big Government - Dennis Prager - National Review Online (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302471/science-demands-big-government-dennis-prager)
Quote:
<tbody>
The quotation of the week goes to Harvard professor Daniel E. Lieberman, for a statement he made in an opinion piece for the New York Times.
Mr. Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology, was among those who publicly defended New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to ban the sale of sugared soft drinks in cups larger than 16 ounces.
And he did so using, of all things, evolution.
Now, we all know that humans have always needed — or evolved to need — carbohydrates for energy. So how could evolution argue for Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on sugar, a pure carbohydrate?
“We have evolved,” the professor concluded his piece, “to need coercion.”
In order to understand both how silly and how dangerous this comment is, one must first understand the role evolutionary explanations play in academic life — and in left-wing life generally. The Left has always sought single, non-values-based explanations for human behavior.
It was originally economics. Man was Homo economicus. Rather than dividing the world between good and evil, the Left divided the world in terms of economics. Economic classes, not moral values, explained human behavior. Therefore, to cite a common example, poverty, not one’s moral value system, or lack of it, caused crime.
Recently, however, the economic explanation for human behavior has lost some of its appeal. Even many liberal professors and editorial writers have had to grapple with the “surprising” fact that violent crime has declined, not increased, in the current recession.
In the words of Scientific American, “Homo economicus is extinct.”
But the biggest reason for the declining popularity of economic man is that science has displaced economics — which is not widely regarded as a science — as the Left’s real religion. Increasingly, therefore, something held to be indisputably scientific — evolution — is offered as the Left’s explanation for virtually everything.
Evolution explains love, altruism, morality, economic behavior, God, religion, intelligence. Indeed, it explains everything but music. For some reason, the evolutionists have not come up with an evolution-based explanation for why human beings react so powerfully to music. But surely they will.
Now, along comes Professor Lieberman not merely to use evolution to explain human behavior, but to justify coercive left-wing social policy.
In other words, not only is the Left progressive when it coerces citizens to act in ways the Left deems appropriate, science itself — through evolution — inexorably leads to government coercion on behalf of such policies.
</tbody>
so says a evolutionary biologist in defense of Bloombergs Sugar ban. the good and wise overseers -who've evolved beyond us i assume- must control the lower undisciplined rabble by coercion or all is lost. It must be done. and you must comply, the state knows better. Trust us, eat what we tell you to... or else.
original article here
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/op...f=opinion&_r=0 (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/opinion/evolutions-sweet-tooth.html?ref=opinion&_r=0)
commentary from reason magazine below Quote:
<tbody>
'We Have Evolved to Need Coercion'
'We Have Evolved to Need Coercion' - Hit & Run : Reason.com (http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/06/we-have-evolved-to-need-coercion)
Jacob Sullum|Jun. 6, 2012 12:56 pm
Writing in The New York Times, Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman defends Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed 16-ounce restriction on soft drink servings, arguing that "we have evolved to need coercion":
Since sugar is a basic form of energy in food, a sweet tooth was adaptive in ancient times, when food was limited....
Humans evolved to crave sugar, store it and then use it. For millions of years, our cravings and digestive systems were exquisitely balanced because sugar was rare....
The food industry has made a fortune because we retain Stone Age bodies that crave sugar but live in a Space Age world in which sugar is cheap and plentiful. Sip by sip and nibble by nibble, more of us gain weight because we can’t control normal, deeply rooted urges for a valuable, tasty and once limited resource.
Lieberman deserves credit for candidly acknowledging that Bloomberg's "paternalistic plan" relies on "coercion." The mayor, by contrast, wants to have it both ways, getting credit for doing something about obesity while denying that he is limiting freedom in any meaningful way. On Friday he told NBC's Matt Lauer:
We're not banning you from getting the stuff. It's just if you want 32 ounces, the restaurant has to serve it in two glasses. That’s not exactly taking away your freedoms. It’s not something the Founding Fathers fought for.
As I said last week, Bloomberg's restrictions cannot possibly work unless the inconvenience they impose leads people to consume less soda than they otherwise would. By insisting that his restrictions will have no real effect on consumers, he is admitting his plan is doomed to fail.
Writing in Slate, Daniel Engbe asks what science tells us about the pint-sized plan's prospects. The focus on soft drinks, he explains, starts with the premise that liquid calories are less filling and that people therefore are less likely to compensate for them by cutting back elsewhere in their diets. While there is some evidence to support that idea, it is not clear that sugar-sweetened beverages are disproportionately responsible for rising obesity rates: Bloomberg may be convinced they are, but the research on that point is equivocal. Even if he is right, that does not mean his plan will have a measurable impact on New Yorkers' waistlines. As Engbe notes, the city unrealistically assumes that 100 fewer soda calories mean a net dietary reduction of 100 calories, ignoring the question of whether and to what extent people will compensate with calories from other sources. It is doubtful that Bloomberg's regulations can even reduce total liquid calories, especially given all the exceptions: for refills and additional containers, for fruit juices and milk-based drinks (which typically have more calories per ounce than soda), and for beverages sold in supermarkets and convenience stores—including 7-Eleven's Big Gulp, the very epitome of the sweet, bubbly excess that Bloomberg decries.
Lieberman, for his part, does not address the issue of whether Bloomberg's plan can accomplish its ostensible goal (a question that some boosters dismiss as irrelevant). If anything, Lieberman suggests that the mayor's pop policy goes too far, saying, "I think we should focus paternalistic laws on children." Still, he writes, "Adults need help, too, and we should do more to regulate companies that exploit our deeply rooted appetites for sugar and other unhealthy foods." Here Lieberman indulges in some Bloombergian dishonesty, since protecting adults from Big Food's sinister plot to sell them food they like actually means protecting them from their own choices—for example, "by imposing taxes on soda and junk food." In short: paternalism, which Lieberman has just said should be limited to children.
Lieberman's justification for treating adults like children has breathtakingly broad implications, since it is self-evident that humans have evolved to enjoy not just sugar but all of the things they like. Hence every pleasure can legitimately be taxed, regulated, restricted, or banned to prevent people from overindulging in it. By arguing that "an evolutionary perspective" shows governments must restrain people's choices for their own good, Lieberman tries to put a modern scientific veneer on an ancient moral argument. Evolutionary pressures clearly gave humans a taste not only for sweets but also for meddling in other people's lives.
More on Bloomberg's campaign against big sodas here.
</tbody>
From National review Denis Prager
Science Demands Big Government - Dennis Prager - National Review Online (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/302471/science-demands-big-government-dennis-prager)
Quote:
<tbody>
The quotation of the week goes to Harvard professor Daniel E. Lieberman, for a statement he made in an opinion piece for the New York Times.
Mr. Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology, was among those who publicly defended New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to ban the sale of sugared soft drinks in cups larger than 16 ounces.
And he did so using, of all things, evolution.
Now, we all know that humans have always needed — or evolved to need — carbohydrates for energy. So how could evolution argue for Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on sugar, a pure carbohydrate?
“We have evolved,” the professor concluded his piece, “to need coercion.”
In order to understand both how silly and how dangerous this comment is, one must first understand the role evolutionary explanations play in academic life — and in left-wing life generally. The Left has always sought single, non-values-based explanations for human behavior.
It was originally economics. Man was Homo economicus. Rather than dividing the world between good and evil, the Left divided the world in terms of economics. Economic classes, not moral values, explained human behavior. Therefore, to cite a common example, poverty, not one’s moral value system, or lack of it, caused crime.
Recently, however, the economic explanation for human behavior has lost some of its appeal. Even many liberal professors and editorial writers have had to grapple with the “surprising” fact that violent crime has declined, not increased, in the current recession.
In the words of Scientific American, “Homo economicus is extinct.”
But the biggest reason for the declining popularity of economic man is that science has displaced economics — which is not widely regarded as a science — as the Left’s real religion. Increasingly, therefore, something held to be indisputably scientific — evolution — is offered as the Left’s explanation for virtually everything.
Evolution explains love, altruism, morality, economic behavior, God, religion, intelligence. Indeed, it explains everything but music. For some reason, the evolutionists have not come up with an evolution-based explanation for why human beings react so powerfully to music. But surely they will.
Now, along comes Professor Lieberman not merely to use evolution to explain human behavior, but to justify coercive left-wing social policy.
In other words, not only is the Left progressive when it coerces citizens to act in ways the Left deems appropriate, science itself — through evolution — inexorably leads to government coercion on behalf of such policies.
</tbody>