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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The rape analogy is misplaced because humans, unlike say ducks, do not primarily reproduce through rape.

Also, appeal to nature fallacy is not applicable because I'm not making a "good" versus "bad" conclusion. I'm thinking of "mental illness" in terms of whether it's an evolutionary mal-adaptation, not in moral terms.

And while it is true that loners, outliers, and dropouts often contribute great value to society, it is also true that they also often do great harm to society (the bell curve is a bitch). Moreover, the bulk of collective social value is produced by people following the pack/tribe. What happens to the total productivity of society if everyone acts like the loners, outliers, and dropouts?

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Appeal to nature fallacy, not moralistic fallacy:

Appeal to nature: an argument or rhetorical tactic in which it is proposed that "a thing is good because it is 'natural', or bad because it is 'unnatural'" -- the word 'natural' here has no notion of morality

Moralistic fallacy: a fallacy of assuming that what is desirable is found or inherent in nature. It presumes that what ought to be—something deemed preferable—corresponds with what is or what naturally occurs. What should be moral is assumed a priori to also be naturally occurring.

Though, you may also be confusing appeal to nature fallacy with the naturalistic fallacy (I made that mistake myself, and corrected it in an edit 3-4 minutes of my having posted the above comment).

Anyway though, getting back to the topic at hand: is it really a worthwhile exercise identifying these non-severe mental disorders as a real problem? The latest revision of DSM identifies a good few many hundred disorders, the average individual has 5-20 mental disorders as they would be identified by the DSM. At this point an individual with no disorders at all whatsoever is the strange individual ('in a world where everyone is special, no-one is').

> the word 'natural' here has no notion of morality

But the words "good" and "bad" do. Appeal to nature would be if I said: "following the pack is good because that's what happens in nature." What I said was: "in a species that depends on pack behavior to survive, being unable to follow the pack is a maladaptation." Not that it's "bad" but that one would imagine that 5,000 years ago if in a tribe that became the modal outlook, the tribe would quickly die out.

"...the bulk of collective social value is produced by people following the pack/tribe"

This is stated as fact, but is the most contentious statement you could possibly make. In fact, I would argue that nearly every 'hero' character from both real history and mythology/fiction (which speaks to our cultural 'beliefs' sometimes better than our actions which are as guided by fear as belief) are quite the antithesis. Our heroes are heroes because it takes something more to innovate than it does to join.

You also use the hyperbolic phrase 'loners, outliers, and dropouts', well if we're playing the word game, I say that what happens to the total productivity of society if everyone acts like an 'innovator, an inventor, an individual' is that we have a lot less waste, and we have people who move things forward rather than fill seats.

The thing that kills me about the path-followers isn't that they don't offer value, because they do, especially the smart ones. But most of the path followers aren't happy just following the path, they angrily defend the path as the 'one and only true way'. The rest of us are just 'doing something wrong'

> Our heroes are heroes because it takes something more to innovate than it does to join.

"Heroes" have vastly greater impact on the imagination than they do on the GDP.

> You also use the hyperbolic phrase 'loners, outliers, and dropouts'

That was click's phrase, not mine.

> innovator, an inventor, an individual

None of those things are coextensive with anti-authoritarian/anti-establishment, which is what this thread is about. Most innovators and inventors are nonetheless perfectly happy to work within the established power structure and take orders when necessary. Picking a random example, Tim Breners-Lee. You think a guy who has spent his life in government-funded research and academia is in any way anti-authoritarian?

You think anyone in in research and academia has a clue what real 'authoritarianism' is?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_urvjCXg6c

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