Don’t worry, just a little bump - $70 is just around the corner. Short traders just keep making those margin calls, mortgage the house if you have to. Fortunes await you! PO is for pansies and doomers. At $70 short some more ..... it is going back to $22 .... the world is awash with oil ........ reality has nothing to do with it, its all in those charts!!!!!!!!!!
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 566 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 1:13 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
muon wrote:
Jenab6 wrote:
So, like it or not, the nations that survive will be those that keep a high birthrate. Breed and suffer, breed and starve if necessary, but breed until no one else can possibly outbreed you, because there will be only one victor wherever more than one group is within reach of resources necessary for survival.
My belief is that cooperation is a better long term strategy than hate and war. Lets say you have two groups, A and B and they are competing for the same resource which is now scarce due to overpopulation in both groups... what if they both depopulate until they live sustainably with that resource? Then they don't need to go to war.
I'm surprised that I must explain the tragedy in the commons to anyone here, since it is a generally well-understood idea. On the other hand, I've studied the way political correctness works on the minds of those afflicted with it, and I've observed that people who can understand a principle when it is applied to a "safe" subject matter suddenly have difficulties when considering it beyond a taboo of their own culture.
First, people are what they are. Not what you and Aunt Nellie would like them to be. Any argument that begins, or that might as well begin, with the words "if people would..." is likely to be a waste of breath. People, in their masses, either do or they do not, and not all the wishful thinking in the world will change them. That is, more or less, why tragedies in the commons occur, much as we might prefer otherwise.
Group A and Group B both live in a region in which food has become scarce. We may appreciate the following fact: if either of these groups decides to fight over control of the resource, then the other side will be obliged to fight as well, however reluctantly and no matter the odds of victory, since choosing not to fight is the same as choosing death by starvation.
Since it is unlikely that both groups will be evenly matched in martial strength, the stronger of the two will have the choice of whether to share the resource, proportionately or otherwise, with the weaker, or whether to fight in order to secure the entire supply for itself. Let us say that the resource is so scarce that the stronger side will be stressed even if it were to use the entire resource.
What is the likelihood that the parents of children, on the stronger side, will choose to let their children go hungry, when that hunger can be ameliorated if their group would use its military power to take possession of all the resources? If I understand human nature at all, the odds are not very high. Certainly, the parents of children on the stronger side are not going to agree to let some of their sons and daughters starve so that some of the sons and daughters of those aliens over there can survive.
So the war is on.
Again, I'm somewhat amazed that I had to be this explicit. It's simply the Overcrowded Lifeboat Scenario in another form.
muon wrote:
I think you need to consider what your ultimate "win" scenario is. If it's solely to wipe out races that look different from you on the surface, you will lose. After a few thousand years, the races will be bred back in because the victors will expand back into those areas that encourage certain attributes, that have become racial differences, for survival.
Nature's struggles are never finished. As a tactical matter, you must either recognize the rules correctly and obey them, or else you lose to a competitor whose understanding and will were superior to your own. In a few thousand years, the question might well be, once again, who will live and who will die. The "horror" of it all is beside the point. Nature never asked us for our approval. This will occur, whether we like it or not, and those who do not compete with all their determination probably will become extinct.
muon wrote:
If your win is to wipe out 3 billion people who are different from you, so that your tribe can thrive, and then you double your population in the same doubling time you had before, you gained ten years or so until you have to do it all over again, but this time you have to wipe out people who are genetically much closer to you than the last lot were. That's just not a good solution for a lot of reasons.
That's not quite true. The wiping out does not have to be done in pulses. It can be done without war, though it cannot be done without forcefulness. After Group A destroys Group B, but before Group A evolves into Groups C and D, it will apply to itself a eugenic policy whose aim would be to increase the superiority of its members in a general way, enhancing those factors known to be heritable virtues: strength, intelligence, dexterity, agility, stamina, and so on. The population size will be kept within sustainable limits though policies and laws that ensure that only the best members will breed.
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 2:40 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
Jenab6 wrote:
Nature's struggles are never finished. As a tactical matter, you must either recognize the rules correctly and obey them, or else you lose to a competitor whose understanding and will were superior to your own. In a few thousand years, the question might well be, once again, who will live and who will die. The "horror" of it all is beside the point. Nature never asked us for our approval. This will occur, whether we like it or not, and those who do not compete with all their determination probably will become extinct.
Individuals always go extinct, and sexuality assures no one individuals genes remain intact for long. Only life survives. This is one of the ideas behind sexuality - unforseen and hard to predict traits, enhancing fitness, can readily emerge. It also means nothing is static, including species.
Jenab6 wrote:
That's not quite true. The wiping out does not have to be done in pulses. It can be done without war, though it cannot be done without forcefulness. After Group A destroys Group B, but before Group A evolves into Groups C and D, it will apply to itself a eugenic policy whose aim would be to increase the superiority of its members in a general way, enhancing those factors known to be heritable virtues: strength, intelligence, dexterity, agility, stamina, and so on. The population size will be kept within sustainable limits though policies and laws that ensure that only the best members will breed.
This is rubbish.Those 'heritable virtues' you laud are the reason we're in this mess. Do you understand? Nature will decide what attributes are 'superior', and it's often very arbitrary. For the early anaerobic organisms on Earth oxygen was very toxic. It was only through a symbiotic relationship with mitochondria that oxygen based metabolism became possible for the older ATP based cellular machinery. Who would have guessed this would open the door to complex oxygen consuming life, burning bright? It's not possible, nor desirable, to have someone determine what's good or bad. Who decides?
Yours is a sterile idea, already leading to a sterile world.
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 5:24 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
Jenab6 wrote:
Actually, there is wisdom in continuing to breed during resource crunches. In the absence of high-tech war machines, military victories usually go to the side with the biggest armies.
umm, NO. history is replete w/examples of the more numerous force losing. larger numbers are absolutely no guarantee of military victory at all.
you'd think that since you were of a 'superior' race, you'd know this already.
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 566 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 6:27 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
eric_b wrote:
Jenab6 wrote:
Nature's struggles are never finished. As a tactical matter, you must either recognize the rules correctly and obey them, or else you lose to a competitor whose understanding and will were superior to your own. In a few thousand years, the question might well be, once again, who will live and who will die. The "horror" of it all is beside the point. Nature never asked us for our approval. This will occur, whether we like it or not, and those who do not compete with all their determination probably will become extinct.
Individuals always go extinct, and sexuality assures no one individuals genes remain intact for long. Only life survives. This is one of the ideas behind sexuality - unforseen and hard to predict traits, enhancing fitness, can readily emerge. It also means nothing is static, including species.
It's not always obvious whether the word "you" is being used in its singular or its plural form. But the very obviousness that individuals die should have led you to assume that I was speaking not of "you" the individual, but of "you" the group.
Likewise, eugenics has its primary concern with raising the average in the distribution of positive traits and reducing the average frequency of negative traits. Eugenics can lead to a gradual rise in the average IQ, average muscular strength, average visual acuity, and so on, but it can't guarantee that any particular member of a given generation will have a more favorable set of traits than his parents' generation did. Only the averages in the distributions rise with time, which means that the heritable qualities of children in subsequent generations result from a progressively more favorable set of genetic dice.
Don't ask of eugenics what it never promised. It has a purpose, and it is a good science that gives reliable results if it is properly and consistently practiced.
There are characters whose possession might be adaptively favorable, adverse, or neutral in relation to the environment, or to changes in the environment. There are also characters that may be depended to be favorable in almost any environment. It's difficult to imagine what sort of environment would make greater strength or higher intelligence or better dexterity maladaptive.
Likewise, it's difficult to think of environmental conditions that would make a genetic tendency toward hemophilia, diabetes, or myopia beneficial.
Eugenics would focus mostly on improving the traits that have application in a broad range of environments, and on eliminating those that are harmful regardless of environmental circumstances. And, by and large, the traits whose advantageousness might come or go unpredictably would be left unaffected.
eric_b wrote:
Jenab6 wrote:
That's not quite true. The wiping out does not have to be done in pulses. It can be done without war, though it cannot be done without forcefulness. After Group A destroys Group B, but before Group A evolves into Groups C and D, it will apply to itself a eugenic policy whose aim would be to increase the superiority of its members in a general way, enhancing those factors known to be heritable virtues: strength, intelligence, dexterity, agility, stamina, and so on. The population size will be kept within sustainable limits though policies and laws that ensure that only the best members will breed.
This is rubbish.Those 'heritable virtues' you laud are the reason we're in this mess. Do you understand? Nature will decide what attributes are 'superior', and it's often very arbitrary. For the early anaerobic organisms on Earth oxygen was very toxic. It was only through a symbiotic relationship with mitochondria that oxygen based metabolism became possible for the older ATP based cellular machinery. Who would have guessed this would open the door to complex oxygen consuming life, burning bright? It's not possible, nor desirable, to have someone determine what's good or bad. Who decides?
For that very reason, eugenicists would not seek to alter unknown heritable factors. But contrary to what you believe, some heritable virtues are always virtues, whatever the environment might be or however it might change. The strong are always advantaged with respect to the weak, since a strong person does not have to exert himself fully: his range of muscular power covers every bit of the range a weaker person has... and then extends further up the scale. A strong man can handle a task requiring gentleness. A weak man cannot handle a task requiring great strength.
And likewise, intelligence is always better than stupidity.
And likewise, dexterity is always better than clumsiness.
And likewise, a person with much stamina is always better off than a person who poops out more quickly.
Do you understand the pattern here? Some traits that are adaptive in one environment are not adaptive in another. But not all traits are in that class. There is another class of traits, which remain adaptive in almost any environment, and it is those traits that eugenics would primarily seek to improve.
eric_b wrote:
Yours is a sterile idea, already leading to a sterile world.
As I hope I've demonstrated, eugenics is an idea that should have been practiced with rigor these past two millennia, but generally hasn't been. The inbreeding of certain royal families, which resulted in a propagation of hemophilia, was not eugenics, but merely careless incest, with the offspring valued simply because of their family line, and not because of their overall genetic quality. Eugenics culls the bad seed to prevent the propagation of negative characters. When this culling is not done, eugenics is not being done.
The breeding of certain thoroughbred animals might be considered eugenics; however, these animal breeders were trying to achieve an elegant conformity to a breed standard in appearance, or else they were trying to maximize a narrow spectrum in performance. In every case, these eugenic practices yield results that approach what the breeders were aiming for. But, alas, the overall genetic health of the animal was not a priority for the breeders, and as a result certain dogs have hip joint troubles, etc.
The bottom line is: eugenics works. As generations go by, it gets closer to the results that the eugenicists are striving for. Whether the eugenicists are striving for all that they should be is another question entirely.
Jerry Abbott
Last edited by Jenab6 on Sun Jun 15, 2008 7:15 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 566 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 7:01 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
nobodypanic wrote:
Jenab6 wrote:
Actually, there is wisdom in continuing to breed during resource crunches. In the absence of high-tech war machines, military victories usually go to the side with the biggest armies.
umm, NO. history is replete w/examples of the more numerous force losing. larger numbers are absolutely no guarantee of military victory at all. you'd think that since you were of a 'superior' race, you'd know this already. :lol:
"Usually," I said. Numerical superiority is an advantage, other things being equal. Of all military encounters in which a numerically superior force met a smaller force, did the smaller force win more than half of the time? Actually, I don't really know, but I suspect not. I think the larger force won most of the time. When the numerical advantage is overwhelming - say 10 to 1 or more - even clever tactical advantages or castle walls and fortifications can be swarmed and overcome.
Why, I wonder, does everybody want to carp over exceptions, when it is clear what the main rule of events is?
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 7:03 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
You completely missed the point I was trying to make.
Intelligence is not always better than stupidity - look where we are now. It takes a lot of energy to articulate stupid points so well. From an evolutionary POV our large brains may well prove a liability - not an asset. Large brains require a lot of energy to run, as well as years of training to get beyond a larval state.
And all for what - the verge of another great extinction.
Joined: Apr 12, 2007 Posts: 1162 Location: Central NC
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 7:08 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
eric_b wrote:
Intelligence is not always better than stupidity - look where we are now. It takes a lot of energy to articulate stupid points so well. From an evolutionary POV our large brains may well prove a liability - not an asset. Large brains require a lot of energy to run, as well as years of training to get beyond a larval state.
And all for what - the verge of another great extinction.
_________________ "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…"
Sir Winston Churchill
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 7:37 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
Jenab6 wrote:
I'm surprised that I must explain the tragedy in the commons to anyone here, since it is a generally well-understood idea. On the other hand, I've studied the way political correctness works on the minds of those afflicted with it, and I've observed that people who can understand a principle when it is applied to a "safe" subject matter suddenly have difficulties when considering it beyond a taboo of their own culture.
I've noticed in your posts you have a tendency towards false conclusions. The shame of it is when you use those false conclusions to talk down to people, either individuals or entire groups.
I don't have difficulties with the theories, I have difficulties with the conclusions and what you're using them for.
Quote:
First, people are what they are. Not what you and Aunt Nellie would like them to be. Any argument that begins, or that might as well begin, with the words "if people would..." is likely to be a waste of breath. People, in their masses, either do or they do not, and not all the wishful thinking in the world will change them. That is, more or less, why tragedies in the commons occur, much as we might prefer otherwise.
People can be manipulated. They can be manipulated into war. If they are the attacking side where they don't perceive personal threat, they almost always have to be manipulated into it. People normally choose peace over war. That is not wishful thinking, it's how societies develop, by choosing peace and cooperation over war. If you want to build an army in a democracy during peacetime, you can go out and try to find people with violent tendencies to join, or you can advertise the army as an opportunity to travel the world, but you don't normally put an ad on TV saying "if you want to bomb innocent civillians, Join The Army". If we choose to, we can take advantage of the tendency to fight when perceiving a threat, or we can choose to take advantage of the tendency to prefer peace and cooperation, it's a choice. Play down the perception of threat, and you automatically reduce the likelihood that you're populace will support war. Sometimes that is as simple as telling the truth, rather than pushing an agenda because you want war, even to the extent of telling lies or misinformation or purposely drawing false conclusions and then releasing them as propaganda.
Quote:
Group A and Group B both live in a region in which food has become scarce. We may appreciate the following fact: if either of these groups decides to fight over control of the resource, then the other side will be obliged to fight as well, however reluctantly and no matter the odds of victory, since choosing not to fight is the same as choosing death by starvation.
Since it is unlikely that both groups will be evenly matched in martial strength, the stronger of the two will have the choice of whether to share the resource, proportionately or otherwise, with the weaker, or whether to fight in order to secure the entire supply for itself. Let us say that the resource is so scarce that the stronger side will be stressed even if it were to use the entire resource.
First paragraph, it's still not necessarily going to be simple to go to war with a group who are willing to choose peace. You're making your group make a choice to be the agressor, and most people bring up their kids to only use violence as a defence, not as aggression. If they are offered a peaceful solution, and there's no prejudices against the other group, and no pro-war propaganda, what is the likelihood they will want to agress. I don't think it will be 100% as you seem to be trying to say. Agressing through non-violent means is probably going to be easier in this situation, and that is how a lot of trade is done currently in the world where one party has a resource that another wants and they are not evenly matched.
Second paragraph, what happens if the people in Group A are told that the resource will still be stressed even if they have total control over it? What will they choose then? Present them with options and see what they take. Again here is a choice, we can choose to be honest and clean, or we can choose to dissemble and propagandise in favour of war and build up prejudice and hatred to make war more likely to be chosen, and thus agression more acceptable.
You can say it's human nature to choose to dissemble and propagandise to make the group go to war, but that doesn't make it the best survival strategy.
Quote:
What is the likelihood that the parents of children, on the stronger side, will choose to let their children go hungry, when that hunger can be ameliorated if their group would use its military power to take possession of all the resources? If I understand human nature at all, the odds are not very high. Certainly, the parents of children on the stronger side are not going to agree to let some of their sons and daughters starve so that some of the sons and daughters of those aliens over there can survive.
So the war is on.
Keyword: aliens. You've presumed they are aliens. What if they're not aliens? What if they are all the same tribe? You keep making assumptions that don't hold up 100%. A lot of humans feel like they are part of the same tribe, regardless of their colour, language, culture. Currently, these tribal hatreds can win out with use of propaganda, but my theory is that will have to end if humanity wants long term, peaceful survival with long-term, sustainable prosperity, rather than repeated overshoot and die-off with wars acting as population control.
Quote:
Nature's struggles are never finished. As a tactical matter, you must either recognize the rules correctly and obey them, or else you lose to a competitor whose understanding and will were superior to your own. In a few thousand years, the question might well be, once again, who will live and who will die. The "horror" of it all is beside the point. Nature never asked us for our approval. This will occur, whether we like it or not, and those who do not compete with all their determination probably will become extinct.
If we live sustainably with proper risk management, we don't have to see others of our own species as competitors. During times of plenty we don't do that, so by living sustainably we keep the times of plenty and find alternatives to war in all but the most extreme scenarios. Those who do not recognise there is a need to live sustainably have not understood the rules correctly, they continue to repeat the pattern of overshoot and die-off which could ultimately lead to the die-off of the entire species more prematurely than the alternative. You're totally right that the horror of it is beside the point, but you're missing the point that it's not necessary or desirable for long term survival.
Quote:
That's not quite true. The wiping out does not have to be done in pulses. It can be done without war, though it cannot be done without forcefulness. After Group A destroys Group B, but before Group A evolves into Groups C and D, it will apply to itself a eugenic policy whose aim would be to increase the superiority of its members in a general way, enhancing those factors known to be heritable virtues: strength, intelligence, dexterity, agility, stamina, and so on. The population size will be kept within sustainable limits though policies and laws that ensure that only the best members will breed.
What happened to the last lot who tried eugenics? I guess they didn't die out entirely... But you've ended up saying the population must be kept within sustainable limits and that was my point anyway, that that is the best survival strategy. The hate stuff and eugenics is beside the point, you're just talking about one subset of the whole tribe surviving, a subset that is arbitrarily chosen not for it's positive aspects but for it's negative aspects and you're arguing effectively that those negative aspects are positive survival traits, then you finish by accidentally admitting that it's not those that are the survival traits, but the ability to recognise that the species must live sustainably within the limits given by nature.
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 7:44 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
eric_b wrote:
Yours is a sterile idea, already leading to a sterile world.
It does lead to sterility. Genetic and cultural sterility, the world would be 2 dimensional and boring! What is this, the Monstanto method of population control?
Diversity is a positive survival strategy and it happens to be one of the best things about humankind that make the world such a wonderful place. Who'd want to travel if everywhere was the same, with the same people, doing the same things, the same way? Who'd come up with new ways of making music, different art styles, different cultural wonders, in this world Jenab6 seems to want?
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 566 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 7:51 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
eric_b wrote:
You completely missed the point I was trying to make.
Intelligence is not always better than stupidity - look where we are now. It takes a lot of energy to articulate stupid points so well. From an evolutionary POV our large brains may well prove a liability - not an asset. Large brains require a lot of energy to run, as well as years of training to get beyond a larval state.
And all for what - the verge of another great extinction.
You're blaming intelligence for the evils of individualism. Intelligence enables people to solve problems, to foresee difficulties. Obviously, intelligence in sufficient degree would have shown us the post Peak Oil troubles in 1930, or sooner. We either lacked the necessary intelligence, or else there was an impediment to acting intelligently, and I suspect that both might be partly true.
An IQ of 100 isn't all that smart. No non-human animal approaches it, but it's not sufficient for good performance in many of the activities that humans engage in. To most of us here, I think, someone with a 100 IQ would seem dull. Emotionally animated, perhaps, but lacking in mental up-take speed, needing complex ideas explained to him carefully, several times, by a very patient smarter person.
So most people did not have the intelligence necessary to see the danger of betting the continuance of his civilization on fossil fuels. Uncomprehendingly, he shrugged his shoulders and drove his car and didn't become too bothered by the fact that his residence was now separated from his workplace by further than he could walk in a day.
A few people foresaw the post Peak Oil troubles, but many of them worked for the oil industry, and it was against their individual interests to sound the alarm. A very few saw and did try to spread the word, but they were derided as kooks, and, though they were right, they were "discredited" in the eyes of the masses.
Now that we are at, or just past, Peak Oil, now that the prices of fuels and commodities requiring fuels to make, or to transport, are rising sharply, now that the evidence is coming in that the "kooks" were right all along... still, many people are slow to recognize what that evidence means. They're average IQ 100ish people who can't really think all that well, and they've fallen, furthermore, into the habit of waiting for Someone In Authority (like the news anchorman) to tell them when Trouble Has Arrived.
Until his "Authorities" give the Proper Signals, you could show the Common Man all the evidence in the world, and he simply isn't going to realize what it means. If you explain it to him, he won't believe you. He'll do to you what people do to me when I start talking about the differences between the races: carp, bullshit, presume to know what he does not, cite as authorities people who have a vested interest in keeping him in the dark, demand you provide him with documents that you just don't carry around in your wallet, which he couldn't understand even if you had them, meanwhile offering no evidence or documents whatsoever in support of his own beliefs, and so forth.
The problem with Man was that his intelligence was not great enough to overcome his individual selfishness. His stupidity was his assumption that his resources were infinite, when a better mind would know that they were not. Stupidity was not his only flaw, of course. The other flaw was rapacity, his individual preference to have other people, including his great-grandchildren (or someone else's) be encumbered with the costs of his materialism, his good times.
But Man's intelligence might have overcome his rapacity, if he had had enough intelligence. He did not. He generally could not reason his way to Peak Oil during the upsweep of industrialization. By the time he got things figured out, it was much too late: Man's civilization was addicted to oil, and the supplies were going to run out.
On the other hand, you do have a point. It was a degree of intelligence that let Man get himself into this trouble. As Nietzsche said, Man is a bridge, a dangerous crossing, a dangerous looking back. He was smart enough to make paint, but not smart enough not to paint himself into a corner, so to speak.
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 566 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 8:09 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
muon wrote:
eric_b wrote:
Yours is a sterile idea, already leading to a sterile world.
It does lead to sterility. Genetic and cultural sterility, the world would be 2 dimensional and boring! What is this, the Monstanto method of population control? 8O
Diversity is a positive survival strategy and it happens to be one of the best things about humankind that make the world such a wonderful place. Who'd want to travel if everywhere was the same, with the same people, doing the same things, the same way? Who'd come up with new ways of making music, different art styles, different cultural wonders, in this world Jenab6 seems to want?
There would continue to be all the diversity that you may wish for in a race improved through the generations by eugenics. Eugenics would do nothing more than shift upward the averages in the distributions for characters that are positively correlated with survival prospects, while shifting downward the averages in the distributions for characters that are negatively correlated with survival prospects.
Neutral traits and traits of unknown adaptive impact would not be altered. The heritable qualities that make some people create unique culture would be left alone. Nobody would try to blend one race with another in a worse-than-useless attempt to achieve a raceless homogeneity in mankind. That's not eugenics, quite the opposite.
So unless you WANT to see weak, stupid, clumsy, disease prone, amoral, legally blind people as your "diversity contingent," eugenics ought to rest easy on your mind.
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 8:26 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
Jenab6 wrote:
An IQ of 100 isn't all that smart. No non-human animal approaches it, but it's not sufficient for good performance in many of the activities that humans engage in. To most of us here, I think, someone with a 100 IQ would seem dull. Emotionally animated, perhaps, but lacking in mental up-take speed, needing complex ideas explained to him carefully, several times, by a very patient smarter person.
Intelligence is not so easily quantifiable as you think. IQ tests seem wonderful when you have a high IQ, but all they really say is that you're good at doing IQ tests. I have met some very intelligent and thoughtful people who scored very poorly on IQ tests.
There are some very intelligent people in the world who don't believe in peak oil, or who have a cornucopian view of what will happen even if peak oil is real. Its not their IQ that determines whether they see it *now* or as a major problem for humanity.
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 8:45 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
Jenab6 wrote:
muon wrote:
eric_b wrote:
Yours is a sterile idea, already leading to a sterile world.
It does lead to sterility. Genetic and cultural sterility, the world would be 2 dimensional and boring! What is this, the Monstanto method of population control?
Diversity is a positive survival strategy and it happens to be one of the best things about humankind that make the world such a wonderful place. Who'd want to travel if everywhere was the same, with the same people, doing the same things, the same way? Who'd come up with new ways of making music, different art styles, different cultural wonders, in this world Jenab6 seems to want?
There would continue to be all the diversity that you may wish for in a race improved through the generations by eugenics. Eugenics would do nothing more than shift upward the averages in the distributions for characters that are positively correlated with survival prospects, while shifting downward the averages in the distributions for characters that are negatively correlated with survival prospects.
Neutral traits and traits of unknown adaptive impact would not be altered. The heritable qualities that make some people create unique culture would be left alone. Nobody would try to blend one race with another in a worse-than-useless attempt to achieve a raceless homogeneity in mankind. That's not eugenics, quite the opposite.
So unless you WANT to see weak, stupid, clumsy, disease prone, amoral, legally blind people as your "diversity contingent," eugenics ought to rest easy on your mind.
You just described Group A wiping out other races and then using eugenics before it changes into Groups C and D. Now you are saying they would use eugenics to breed back in the traits they just wiped out? But when they do this, they're going to breed back in the traits they want to see, through their warped view of what's good and what's not. Nature has done a brilliant job of helping us specialise to fill almost every niche on the planet. What you're describing is like the music made by a computer program, the notes are all correct, but it has no soul.
I can see you're not talking about blending, but if you want a white super-race to colonise Africa, you'd be best to breed back in dark skins as a survival trait. By this time, what have you achieved but splitting your super-race into black and white?
Some people with enormous IQs are very stupid. The ideas you are presenting are stupid, misguided, ill-informed, based on bad conclusions and not looking properly at all the data and they are pretty amoral to many people.
What about conditions like sickle cell anaemia? It developed through the emergence of a positive survival trait, yet it's a disability. How is your eugenics plan going to deal with issues like that? I sincerly doubt that it will have the roundedness required to do a better job than nature has done. If it's going to be fully rounded, then you might as well stick with what nature has done and work with that rather than trying to supercede it through eugenics. How are you going to breed in the intelligence to avoid doing things like breeding dogs that have heads so large that they need human intervention to give birth when you don't even recognise what intelligence IS? In some situations being short is a survival trait over being tall, we already have short and tall people, we already have black and white, fat and thin, people who think in different ways and are good at different things. We don't need to file down the diverse and successful human race down to one narrow sub-set and then try to rebuild it in a way that we 'think' is going to be better.
We are just not qualified to make the kind of decisions you are talking about (and in case there's any misunderstanding about the word 'we', neither are you).
Joined: Dec 25, 2005 Posts: 566 Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 8:47 pm Post subject: Re: 6,000,000,000 die-off
muon wrote:
Jenab6 wrote:
An IQ of 100 isn't all that smart. No non-human animal approaches it, but it's not sufficient for good performance in many of the activities that humans engage in. To most of us here, I think, someone with a 100 IQ would seem dull. Emotionally animated, perhaps, but lacking in mental up-take speed, needing complex ideas explained to him carefully, several times, by a very patient smarter person.
Intelligence is not so easily quantifiable as you think. IQ tests seem wonderful when you have a high IQ, but all they really say is that you're good at doing IQ tests. I have met some very intelligent and thoughtful people who scored very poorly on IQ tests.
No, sorry. That's not true. General intelligence is so well correlated with IQ that, for non-technical purposes, they can be considered the same thing. IQ is a very reliable index of general intelligence, and also a reliable predictor of success in academia, in a profession, or in business. The challenge of performing well on an IQ test involve the same set of mental faculties that are used when dealing with life in general.
There have been defective intelligence tests, of course. But psychologists are usually able to tell the good ones from the bad ones.
On the other hand, the fashionable notion that intelligence is some multifactor phenomenon does have the same predictive success that the "general intelligence" IQ theory has. Attempts to split up intelligence so that it means lots of different things is probably motivated by the wish to share warm-and-fuzzy feelings, or advance the "noble" cause of racial egalitarianism. But in the real world, these multifactor ideas are not very useful.
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