I can think of two primary beer objectors–the late Dr.Atkins (and his crazy low-carb diet) and Christian (therefore European) religious Teetotalers. So why this then?
The gene pools of human settlements became progressively dominated by the survivors — by those genetically disposed to, well, drink beer. "Most of the world's population today," Johnson writes, "is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their genetic tolerance for alcohol."
Johnson suggests, not unreasonably, that this explains why certain of the world's population groups, such as Native Americans and Australian Aborigines, have had disproportionately high levels of alcoholism: These groups never endured the cruel culling of the genetically unfortunate that town dwellers endured. If so, the high alcoholism rates among Native Americans are not, or at least not entirely, ascribable to the humiliations and deprivations of the reservation system. Rather, the explanation is that not enough of their ancestors lived in towns.
But that is a potential stew of racial or ethnic sensitivities that we need not stir in this correction of Investor's Business Daily. Suffice it to say that the good news is really good: Beer is a health food. And you do not need to buy it from those wan, unhealthy-looking people who, peering disapprovingly at you through rimless Trotsky-style spectacles, seem to run all the health food stores.
Doesn't Whole Foods, a kind of health food store, sell beer? Nice bit of paralipsis also about racial "sensitivities."
jcasey, make sure it’s not this Whole Foods:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1048346,wholefood070908.article
I see we’re back to drinking in the morning.
Feeling charitable during the summer, I’d like to read this column as mostly tongue-in-cheek, or perhaps as a light-hearted paen to beer. But, beer needs little recommendation or defense from Mr. Will.
And it certainly doesn’t need bad arguments in favor of it. The fact that we have a gene that enables us to metabolize alcohol more effectively than we would otherwise does not suggest that we should make use of said capacity, or that all other things being equal, or perhaps, just not living in a stinking sewer in the 17th century, it wouldn’t be better for us to avoid alcohol altogether.
Now, if we lived in a stinking sewer, then perhaps beer would be a health food. But I suspect the sewage treatment and water supply that Will enjoys while watching his Montreal Expo’s play at National Park (O.K. I’m being very unfair with that last innuendo, he is at least a Cubs fan I believe) is more than adequate to make beer superfluous for his health.
Though this sort of argument seems to be fairly common and probably deserves it’s own name: x attribute was adaptive at some time in the past, therefore, x attribute is good now. There’s a sort of confusion somewhere in there between the explanatory account and a prescriptive conclusion. The reason we have x attribute now is that x was adaptive at some time in the past, would be the evolutionary explanation of our beer tolerance. But the claim that it is healthy now seems obviously unsupported by that explanation.
I’ve come across versions of pop-media evolutionary psychology that imply this sort of conclusion especially when it concerns gender roles more than a few times.
Or the dreaded “we needed to eat meat in order to develop big brains, therefore eating meat is good/desirable/necessary now” argument.
he is at least a Cubs fan I believe
We don’t claim him. Well, at least I don’t, but I don’t get to be the Platonic legislator of Cub fandom. Damn.
Though this sort of argument seems to be fairly common and probably deserves it’s own name: x attribute was adaptive at some time in the past, therefore, x attribute is good now.
Isn’t it just a variation of the post hoc ergo propter hoc ? I think that’s how I receive these claims. I agree that the misperception of evolutionary biology, namely that all genetic adaptions are progressive and therefore beneficial, that seems to operate in these sorts of claim makes it a bit difficult to diagnose this claim and others like it as propter hoc arguments, but that would seem to me to be the most apt of the classifications we have now.
Well, he grew up outside of St. Louis I believe, and was the only Cubs fan amongst all of the liberal, protestant Cards fan when he was a kid–or so I hear that he wrote somewhere. So he may be a Cub’s fan wanna-be. I don’t know whether he spent any time on the northside, or just decided to be a Cubs fan out of some sort of counter-cultural perversity. (If anyone knows where he tells this story please post the reference).
I think it might be generally classified as a type of post hoc, but it seems that it is a more specific than this. This fallacy seems like it ignores or suppresses the contextual nature of evolutionary adaptation. A trait is only adaptive relative to a particular environment. If the environment remains the same then presumably the trait remains beneficial. That something was an adaptation does not mean that it currently enhances reproductive fitness, it might even be detrimental in a new environment. So it’s really the mistake of confusing adaptation with being currently adaptive.
There are a couple of other interesting aspects to it. It looks like it might be the old “naturalistic fallacy” or what goes by that name, i.e., inferring an ought from an is. But, I think I’m persuaded that that isn’t really a fallacy at all, or when it is, it seems to really be something like begging the question or just an enthymeme.
Finally, in some versions, arguments like this run the danger of confusing “good for the species” and “good for the individual”–even if something enhances our reproductive fitness it doesn’t mean that it is beneficial for the individuals that comprise the species. Perhaps an example, (but it doesn’t seem exactly apropos of this): It may be good for women to bear children in the 20’s (from the perspective of our genes), but it is not necessarily a good thing for society or for said 20-something women.
Will’s argument doesn’t fail in the latter two ways as far as I can see. But its failure is colossal in the first way.
So he may be a Cub’s fan wanna-be. I don’t know whether he spent any time on the northside, or just decided to be a Cubs fan out of some sort of counter-cultural perversity. (If anyone knows where he tells this story please post the reference).
You, sir are a seer of some sort. From a commencment address given in 1998:
“I grew up in Champaign, Ill., midway between Chicago and St. Louis. At an age too tender for life-shaping decisions, I made one. While all my friends were becoming Cardinals fans, I became a Cub fan. My friends, happily rooting for Stan Musial, Red Schoendienst and other great Redbirds, grew up cheerfully convinced that the world is a benign place, so of course, they became liberals. Rooting for the Cubs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, I became gloomy, pessimistic, morose, dyspeptic and conservative. It helped out of course that the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908, which is two years before Mark Twain and Tolstoy died. But that means, class of 1998, that the Cubs are in the 89th year of their rebuilding effort, and remember, any team can have a bad moment. So fellow members of the Class of 1998, my last piece of advice is – Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be Cub fans.”
It figures that Will would near completetly transpose the political allegiances of these respective fanbases to fit his own odd version of these events.
I agree that it’s close to begging the question, as well.
Maybe, however, as you say, it isn’t really fallacious, just factually incorrect in it’s presuppositions,.