Quote from Alphagruis on July 19, 2010, 05:02:01 AM This is my final comment on instincto. The subject desserves no further comment as far as I'm concerned.
After the points on which Alphagruis built its anti-instincto theory fell into decline and now that the stream of insults and jeers seemingly ended up by wearying the moderators, a single solution remained at his disposal: a great unverifiable demonstration to definitely shelve instinctotherapy. Let us examine his arguments one by one, and we’ll see they are once again bogus.
Instincto is one of the best examples, I know of, of what physics Nobel price winner Robert Laughlin calls an antitheory or ideological thinking.
The instincto theory is founded on a fundamental assumption: the incomplete genetic adaptation to food processed by the culinary or agricultural artifices. Progress of epigenetics and theories on self-organized complex systems evoked by Alphagruis don’t change anything to the fact that the adaptability of any system, whatever it is, has limits: it is thus a matter of knowing if processed foodstuff, compared to what they were initially, can be absorbed by the organism of modern man without harmful effects. This argument has nothing to do with an ideological way of thinking. On the opposite, it is ideology to start from the idea that the alimentary instinct is not a viable concept, without being able to show it.
A key symptom of ideological thinking is that it is stated and re-stated at will in such a way that it cannot be tested. By no means.
The starting assumption and its various corollaries perfectly lend to empirical checks.
Example: this assumption results in raising questions about the adequacy of animal milk in human consumption. The removal and experimental reintroduction of milk in the diet, especially when milk is in addition close to its natural state (few or no culinary artifices), causes symptoms that would not take place if the human organism were genetically adapted to it. I undertook this experiment with cow and goat milk for the first time in the Sixties, and everyone can reproduce it. In the same way, my observations on the alliesthesic mechanisms can be reproduced and checked, for example those on very young babies. Each point induced by the starting assumption could and can always be tested in the same manner.
What cannot be tested, and which undoubtedly annoys Alphagruis, is his assertion according to which the alimentary instinct does not exist or is unusable. One can admire his art to turn over reality according to his personal beliefs.
It’s a logical dead end called antitheory because it has exactly the opposite effect of real theories namely to stop thinking rather than stimulate it.
On the contrary, the instincto theory opens the way to numerous questions that could not be asked without the assumption of the genetic maladjustment to traditional diet (SAD or SWD).
The raw paleo concept, for example, results directly from this assumption. As a matter of fact, it is perhaps the hypothesis causing the largest number of questions concerning diet, metabolism operation, immune system operation, role of viruses and bacteria, genetic degeneration, operation of the endocrine and nervous system, psychosocial consequences of a diet, statute of sexuality, environmental pollution and so on. All those questions can receive answers the classical theories are unable to provide.
Instincto stance functions as a typical antitheory called upon to « explain away » the occurrence of the complex emerging phenomenon of health or alimentary balance in nature as well as any related embarrassing experimental shortcoming or observation and legitimize at best highly questionable statements and at worse not even wrong ones.
Ridiculous! There is no incompatibility at all between my assumptions or my various theories and those of integrative levels and complex systems. Alphagruis exploits the ignorance of those he scorns, quite conscious of the impossibility for non-specialists to know who’s wrong and who’s right. For example, he affirms that the instinct is incompatible with the concept of “
complex emerging phenomenon of health or alimentary balance in nature”, ascribing me a stupidly deterministic concept of the instinct, which is his own one! By doing that, he shuns the fact that innate and acquired characteristics are not dissociable and that my concept of instinct presupposes innate tendencies which the proper exertion depends basically on training: it is this interaction between genetic and environmental data which is at the base of my reasoning. Otherwise the instinct’s rehabilitation and that about the reading of its signals, something I recommend as an essential condition to a suitable nutritional balance, would be totally meaningless.
The examples given by Alphagruis are foolish caricatures of my way of thinking:
Wild animals perfectly balance their diet ? Instinct does it !
It is plainly verifiable that animals select the type, quality and quantity of their food by their instinct (of course, it does not exclude the role of training and environment).
My diet doesn’t cure me or makes me ill ? Wicked or denaturated instinct is at work !
Why conditionings due to cooked and processed food shouldn't prevent the instinct from working correctly? Alphagruis himself insists on the importance of training: he is therefore in a perfect position to know that a deficient training can compromise an instinctive function.
Our organism’s nutritional needs are complex and hardly known ? Instinct manages it!
I never trusted anything else than empirical observations to determine the limits of operation of the alimentary instinct. It is even what constitutes the instinctotherapy.
Our organism needs a specific herb to cure it ? Instinct makes him to find it etc etc
There also, observations show the capacity of the sensory smell and gustatory alliesthesic mechanisms to indicate in many cases the utility of a usually nonfood plant. I have never pretended these capacities are omniscient or omnipotent: here again Alphagruis distorts and caricatures my point of view in order to make up arguments.
If ones tries to put on test of logical consistency any of Burger’s specific « theoretical » considerations such as the existence of « an original biotope our genetics had supposedly adapted to » or the nature of his so-called « alimentary instinct » and then argues that it doesn’t work actually one is told that either this concept is in fact not necessary and instincto is a fact-based method that doesn’t need any theory or/and the « theory » is readily re-stated at will in contradiction with its previous form and usually in a form of the « not even wrong » kind, i.e ; wishful thinking and unsupported statements that cannot be put to test in any way. Of course even the first alternative is utterly vain and useless because it is false to believe that there is any experiment, instincto included, that does not need theory to formulate it. This is thus itself nothing but a cleverly disguised antitheory intended to evade the requirement of logical consistency.
Congratulations to Alphagruis for his supreme art to muddle the minds! He’s method consists to take quotations out of their context, to let imply elements contrary to my own presumptions, to present my queries as peremptory assertions and so on:
Burger’s specific « theoretical » considerations such as the existence of « an original biotope our genetics had supposedly adapted to »
I specified that
this presupposition is not necessary to build the theory. Alphagruis seemingly fails to understand or don’t want to understand that our genome is the heir of an incalculable number of situations where our ancestors were confronted with such or such stuff, and that it can consequently program the alliesthesic mechanisms as to ensure nutritional balance with a food range ways more extended than that of a single and specific “original paradise”.
In other words, I always regarded the idea of an original environment as an
heuristic , hence a postulate without other interest than leading us to ask questions about our actual culinary and industrial biotope. The fact that it either existed or never existed doesn’t changes anything here: the alliesthesic mechanisms and those of assimilation apparently work with all the natural unprocessed stuff one can find on the planet – some rare exceptions aside. And if we find someday a natural environment as that where the orang-outangs still live today, that simply let’s think that this heuristics is not too far from reality. But, once again, it changes nothing to this point.
If one tries to put to independent experimental test the method itself and happens to report results at odds with the guru’s claims, one is systematically told that it’s bad experiment or practice and an endless string of pretexts are invoked to dismiss these observations.
False: if one wants to test any assumption or theory, it should be done by carrying out the experimental conditions correctly, which is far from being the case when Alphagruis or some other detractors build on some visual observations randomly done at meetings and stripped of any quantization to declare that the theory does not hold true. The most than they could draw from such subjective verdict, it is that
the practice as done by the observed persons would not lead to convincing results. It’s up to them to take into account the cases where the practice is assumed in accordance with the theory and with its correct application, most convincingly ever since birth and even before birth by the mother. But that requires a little more enquiries and seriousness.
In other words only the guru himself can actually « test experimentally » his method and do good experiments.
Utterly wrong and deceitful: ever since thirty years ago, I’ve never ceased to urge scientists to try out the various facets of the instincto theory within the framework of conventional protocols. The researchers who risked their reputation in doing so have butted against serious obstacles of social sort: one does not find master's thesis directors nor scientific refereed journals willing to support a research project effectively calling into question the entire system of current supposed knowledge in this field, for example the utility of milk rich in calcium, the utility of cereals, basis of the world’s food supply and trade, or the art of cooking to which six billions greedy mouths are attached… in short: all the bases of the existing socio-economic system.
This situation is of course deadly for instincto’s status as a sound scientific matter. For it means that instinctobabble cannot be independently tested in any way and is therefore definitely sheer bullshit from a scientific point of view.
Here is what Alphagruis would like to prove:
that the instincto theory is not viable from a scientific point of view. But he’s seriously mistaken because each point of the theory can perfectly enter into a conventional research protocol. Besides, several of its essential aspects already found confirmation during the last decades: the presence of antigenic molecules in animal milk (ABBOS peptide), the pathogenic role of AGEs and ALEs, and even the failure of the alliesthesic mechanisms confronted with processed foodstuff. In other words, even the instinctive aspect of the theory already received some first confirmations. Some of these scientific studies are already accessible on the page
"Recherches scientifiques" of my website “
INSTINCTOTHERAPIE”.
In conclusion, I can’t resist the pleasure of quoting a translation of the flabbergasting and praising words about me that Alphagruis himself wrote on April 17, 2007 (previously posted somewhere on this forum by Iguana):
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Ecologie-Alimentaire/message/5553 Thank you Francois, I am glad that you perceive my critiques as constructive and I hope that GCB will perceive them as such. But even if his reaction were to be more irritated I will understand very well and that would not remove in any way the respect, admiration and thankfulness I have for him. I do not forget he provided me the means of getting definitively rid of my damned recurrent renal calculus in a few months thanks to his instinctotherapy, whereas the ignoramus full of themselves, pretentious and narrow-minded of the medical institution had been taking me for a ride during 10 years.
By the way, I wont’ be able in the next weeks or even months to write up such long answers, as it takes too much of my time.