Hahaha!, or, On the Fallacy of Worshipping the Norm

[nuranar]

I'm sitting back and enjoying the current war controversy opinionated discussion over at little_details .  The original poster's question is, basically, If a guy back on a hypothethical earth roughly equivalent to 10,000 B.C. gets his legs mauled by a Big Nasty Animal, will his wounds get infected, and how likely/survivable is amptuation?

Until comment #10, the consensus of most people - particularly #5 and on - was NO! He's as dead as a doornail!  THOSE STUPID PEOPLE back then did't know squat about infection or surgery or amputation or stopping bleeding or anything!!!! And I know this because I know infection is life-threatening because it happened to ME in the 21st century!!!!1

...because no one who ever got even cut back then ever escaped infection or failed to die of it.  HA.

I do hate statements of this nature.  Especially when cited without actual evidence of any kind. O hai, archeaology? Exists.

Which is what commenter #10 proceeded to point out. Finally.


It's not as if I really even care about the subject at all. But I like truth, which includes getting a true picture of How Things Were, in all its variety and strangeness.  But people extrapolate freely from the specific to the general (Citing one's own hospitalization is evidence of what, please? Your failure to use soap and water?), and more heinously, state even a fairly accurate norm as the no-exceptions rule.  It's like the thing with weather, and temperature averages: An average is made up of a whole lot of below-averages and above-averages.  You can't take an average and then ignore everything outside like it didn't exist.

And you know what? little_details is about getting help for writing, not about researching for papers. Some of the best stories involve some of the wildest chances out there.  If it could happen, go ahead and write it!

Comments

[fancyfrocks.livejournal.com]

HA!
Because everything anyone ever writes has to be absolute truth, even though there is no such thing as absolute truth

I was actually thinking of picking up a pen again and attempting to write an Austenesque novel. I haven't written in a good five years at least. But I don't think I'll run ideas by that forum.

[fancyfrocks.livejournal.com]

Um. so I wrote sarcasm in code <> in that entry and it didn't write it out. heh. Little did I know LJ has a sarcasm tag for html.
Obviously you know I believe in Truth and was being silly.

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

Hehe, no worries. I know exactly what you meant. ;)

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

I know, the irony is killing me! :D

Ooh, run it by me! :D Seriously, it's a great forum. Every once in a while people lose perspective and make it sound like something's always the case; and there are a couple people who tend to respond to others' comments, disagreeing either politely or not, and rarely volunteering their own comments. But that happens not nearly enough to make me even consider dropping it. It's really one of my favorite comms.

[suededsilk.livejournal.com]

Heh. The post is locked now, but I can well imagine! Brings to mind some of my college classes. I generally don't comment (too much opportunity for me to stammer, stutter, and put my foot in my mouth), but some of the dumb statements and illogical extrapolations uttered by students (and teachers!) amaze me.

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

Locked? You mean friends-locked? A lot of the posts on that comm are if they're sensitive subjects. Sorry, I didn't think of that when linking!

[suededsilk.livejournal.com]

Yup. But that's all right - I got the gist of it. :)

[beloved-tree.livejournal.com]

*sighs* I run into this so much with Medievalism stuff, let me tell you what. And just the general attitude of "oh, those stupid people from the DARK AGES, clearly they all were idiots for [these modern reasons]". >:(

[msmcknittington.livejournal.com]

Well, obviously in the Dirt Ages, nobody would have survived double amputation, because we all know that they never took baths. Ever. And like slathered open wounds with goat dung. So yeah! Take that, people who have been dead for a thousand years! We are so much smarter than you!

_{Something like that, right?}

[beloved-tree.livejournal.com]

Aaargh, YES. Also, nobody could, like, READ, right? So obviously everyone was totally dumb, and thought the earth was flat and stuff! And so on, ad nauseum, until I just want to bludgeon them all into unconsciousness with a copy of the Bede.

[ramblin_rosie]

Drop the Summa Theologica on them instead. Much faster concussion, and might knock some common sense into them at the same time. (Bede's commentaries are BRILLIANT, though. <3)