luketych

Well then you are getting better at applying logic blindly.

Again, you are cherrypicking any flaw you see and then attacking. For a logically-trained person you are misusing it. Being overly logical can become a negative when it is used to justify your already-held beliefs.

I do not care what you think at this point, this has already blossomed into a 1 vs 1, so anything said will just make both sides more justified in their position.

This is about onlookers. Hacker News is flawed in the same way that elections are flawed. Every user is given the same power of opinion. A losing strategy that will eventually begin to conform to the middle of the pack, condemning any opinions falling too far from the centre.

Apathy, I have to ask you. If you are getting all the votes, all the +1's, all the likes, would you ever think that maybe that is not a good sign?

Very correct.

Cooking also breaks down starches into sugars. And we are the cooking species. It helped drive our evolution forward.

It all seems to be about balance.

What I am trying to say is that if we close our minds right away then we will miss obvious answers. We will tend to overcomplicate things and reach for our most-expensive tools.

I've read "scientific" articles that make use of the most cutting-edge statistical models in order to "prove" that something like "emotional intelligence does not correlate with success."

Ok, poor example, and I made it up. But there are many research articles out there that look impressive because of all the tools they throw at the problem. Under the surface these studies are bunk.

The French also don't snack all the time, and also cook many of their own meals.

I get annoyed when people stop a discussion dead in its tracks by asking for references like this, especially when they can easily look it up themselves if they actually cared about the answer rather than winning.

If you think about it, any molecule that isn't sugar but tastes like sugar will have a similar molecular shape to sugar. Hmmmm I wonder if this will fit into receptors in other places in the body, not just on the tongue. Maybe it will affect gut bacteria. Maybe even trigger other events within our bodies.

If we would stop and think with an open mind, many of these arguments would become discussions, and we wouldn't need to play the baby card by asking for proof.

Remember how long it took to finally get enough proof in order to show others how wrong our mainstream religions are? And even with all the evidence we have accumulated, still people say, "show me the proof. I'm a reasonable man." Bullshit.

Let's not fall into this trap again. Many of these questions can be answered without slow, hard science. We don't need to hit everything with the biggest hammer in our toolbox before we can move forward.

We evolved near the equator. There are more sweet things there year-round. Don't forget about honey.

Fiber, fiber, fiber. Sugar seems to be okay when it is packaged together with its copartner, fiber.

"People basically evolved without any sugar (fructose) except what they could get in fruit"

What about honey?

Edit: don't forget that sugar is in every plant that makes use of photosynthesis.