

Few Allergies in Unstressed Babies - remyric
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111212092747.htm

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Jem
Actual study:
[http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2811%2901159-6/...](http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2811%2901159-6/abstract)

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Egregore
Again the correlation vs causation question? May be higher stress levels are
caused by allergies?

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scott_s
Notice that they never said _caused_. Finding correlation is the first step
towards establishing causation. I don't see any problems with this research.

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ars
"And now we've found the same link in infants from families that follow
anthroposophic lifestyles, and that they have relatively low levels of
cortisol"

anthroposophic apparently means religious.

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swombat
Actually, antroposophy is a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner. To bring
that into perspective, Steiner and Hermann Hesse shared many ideas, and
Michael Ende (author of Neverending Story and Momo) was raised in a Waldorf
school (based on Steiner's philosophy).

I'm only halfway through Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom book (it's pretty
fucking heavy, to use the technical term), but by my best guess it appears to
be an (impressive) attempt to derive eastern philosophies' conclusions from
western premises. While there's certainly a strong sense of respect for the
abstract and the mind (as you'd expect from any philosopher), I wouldn't call
it "religious" in the typical sense of the word.

~~~
VMG
I wouldn't call it "philosophy" in the typical sense of the word. It's
esoteric gobbledygook.

~~~
swombat
Are you making an informed judgement? (you may be, I'm just checking)

As I said, I'm halfway through that book, and although its direct usefulness
is not clear, I wouldn't call it gobbledygook. Steiner is directly opposing
some philosophical movements which were popular or beginning to get popular at
the time (like nihilism), and making a pretty strong case for why they're
nonsensical. As far as I've read, he seems to be drawing towards a practical,
human-centric approach to life which seems pretty healthy and balanced on the
whole.

One thing is abundantly clear from reading it, too: Steiner is a very smart
guy.

~~~
VMG
I'm judging it from a rationalist perspective.

~~~
swombat
That's not saying much (and it sounds like you are indeed _not_ making an
informed judgement). I'm judging it from a rationalist perspective too. (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism> : "any view appealing to reason as
a source of knowledge or justification")

In fact, if you bother to actually read the guy's books instead of dismissing
him based on a wikipedia entry (hardly a rationalist behaviour), you'll see
he's very much a rationalist too.

He arrives at conclusions with "spiritual" consequences by starting from the
perspective that the only thing we can know directly is our thoughts, and
building a model of the world from that, piece by piece, using reason and
thinking. I'd argue that compared to Steiner, you and I are mostly irrational.

So, explaining your dismissal of anthroposophism (literally translated as
"love of man") as being "from a rationalist point of view" is a completely
empty statement.

~~~
scott_s
_instead of dismissing him based on a wikipedia entry (hardly a rationalist
behaviour)_

I see no problem with it if the Wikipedia entry is accurate. Is it?

~~~
swombat
It's hard for an intelligent expert in the domain to accurately summarise a
philosophy, let alone for a wikipedia editor to do so. Complex arguments tend
to require a fair amount of patience and understanding on the reader's side.

Anyway, that being said, the entry is not terrible (at least if you know a bit
about what it's talking about). Quoting:

> Anthroposophy postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually
> comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner
> development. More specifically, it aims to develop faculties of perceptive
> imagination, inspiration and intuition through cultivating a form of
> thinking independent of sensory experience, and to present the results thus
> derived in a manner subject to rational verification. In its investigations
> of the spiritual world, anthroposophy aims to attain the precision and
> clarity attained by the natural sciences in their investigations of the
> physical world.

Considering this description, I hardly think you can call it anti-rationalist.
On the contrary, anthroposophy is an attempt to apply rationalism to
spirituality. It is only dismissed as irrational gobbledygook by those who
(irrationally) dismiss all of spirituality and anything connected to it as
gobbledygook.

~~~
scott_s
Then we need to agree on a definition of "spirituality", since by my
definition, any assumption of spirituality is irrational. I consider
"spirituality" to be the assumption of the super-natural, and an individual's
personal connection to the super-natural. How do you define it?

~~~
swombat
On a fundamental level, I define it as the stuff in the world that's beyond
the purely material, that transcends physicality. Things like Mathematics,
Love, Beauty, etc. Things that I believe will continue to "exist" (in some
sense) beyond the existence of the universe around us.

As Steiner puts it, "science, religion and art" all try to bridge this
dichotomy of the physical vs the spiritual.

So, no, it's nothing to do with ghosts and stuff.

~~~
scott_s
I think of those as consequences of the universe existing, not things that
transcend the existence of the universe.

~~~
swombat
You can choose to think of those however you want - and so can others.

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Tichy
So anthroposophic lifestyles are less stressful than "normal lifestyles"? That
seems to be an interesting result in itself.

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jvdh
Be careful there, they have done a study where they have concluded that lower
stress levels are related to fewer allergies. And in a different study they
have shown that kids following an antroposophic lifestyle also have fewer
allergies than regular kids. Both results are correlation, which don't mean
causation. And there is also no specific reason (yet) to say that low stress
and antroposophy are correlated.

~~~
Tichy
I thought at the end of the article it said that they did the allergy study on
anthroposophic kids, that is, again they compared anthroposophic kids to other
kids.

Otherwise of course combining the two studies into that conclusion would be
invalid.

