Death has probably been the leading cause for the inability of an individual to reproduce. So it's not backwards, it's following presumptive causality. Perhaps you see the emphasis as significant because it holds some special emotional connection for you? To take a small tangent, it seems from census statistics that wealthier, better educated, presumably smarter individuals have fewer offspring. Does this mean we are currently breeding for stupidity? I digress.
"the same motivation as anybody else - human compassion / social pragmatism. i find it bizarre that Christians ascribe their innate psychological characteristics and the realities of social dynamics to a set of confused, self contradictory and ill advised pronouncements from one particular medieval scrapbook of bronze age mythology, when the barest piece of objective logic will tell anyone that the fact of the existence of all the decent, socially cohesive people on the earth that don't subscribe to your particular brand of cosmetically modified Ra worship would suggest that decent selfless qualities seem to be perfectly capable of arising innately from humanity itself, rather than requiring proscription from on high."
Wow, way to:
1. not answer the question 2. fling poo
good job. I will do you the favor of extracting your only relevant statement and target my questioning after it. Why is being decent, as you put it, a priority? How does it serve you? How does it increase your chances to breed and pass on your genes? Why does social cohesion necessitate theft (forced charity)? And by the bye, you ascribe morality to mechanistically (evolutionary) developed entities. Given your apparent standpoint, this is kind of like saying "decent selfless qualities seem to be perfectly capable of arising innately from my.net code." It is a non sequitur.
"you are artificially putting a distinction between an environment shaped by man and an environment not shaped by man."
not artificially. There is a legitimate distinction here. I will grant you that the theory will have mutations in any case, but again, it is the sustainability of the environment that would allow a broad set of mutations to survive. When circumstances (economic unsustainability of a minority of healthy, productive people providing for a majority of unhealthy dependents) force a sudden removal of that support system, it is likely that a wide reaching population crash could occur. In fact, this is what I am asserting that "compassionate evolutionists" are setting us up for (or would be setting us up for if I were to grant evolution in large species), probably inadvertently. For those responsible for artificing the environment there are ethical hazards here.
"it becomes a "neutral" mutation."
not quite. it becomes a deferred debt. at a maintenance cost. which when many such are heaped upon one another becomes unsustainable. Thus my question about why evolutionists see this as a desirable state. What are the benefits? How does one resolve the ethical hazard involved? Does one simply say, as you do further down, that there could arise some amorphous "good" (whatever that is to a relativist) and that just the potential for that outweighs all of the unnecessary suffering that came before in pursuit of it? There seem to me to be hazards to your "million apes with a million typewriters" intentional shotgun approach to this thing.
But I digress again. More centrally, maximizing mutations (or lack of mutations) you consider to be neutral seems to be the objective of the public charity. In an ideal universe without resource limits, does this not in effect end evolution as a force on us? Is there an ethical hazard there if one presumes a motivation to have one's offspring do better than oneself? (If I commit an error here, I feel comfortable that I am comiting the same error as Larry Niven in his Ringworld series and Vernor Vinge in his works.)
You ascribe all motivation to evolutionary aims, yet try to
Thank you for the elementary lesson in evolution. I stated that the end point is reproduction, but death is indeed relevant as it places limits (sometimes prohibitive) on the opportunities for reproduction.
You also leave unanswered the dual contradiction in belief systems I raised. What is the motivation of atheists/evolutionists who seem to overwhelmingly support the drain on their resources caused by public charity? Is it aesthetic? Because it seems disproportionately costly versus the potential gain to an individual to be had by the otherwise lacking presence of a small percentage of other individuals. If, on the other hand, it is because they are afraid of their own inadequacy to compete and thrive in a free market, then it seems to be a negative sum game, i.e. a downward spiral for society.
Then there's the dual of this problem, which is Christians who are uncharitable. I have my own overly judgmental opinions as to the largest part of this problem, centering around and permutating from church as a social exercise.
But the points underlying those I made before is that the "cushy" environment is artificial, and in a mechanistic evolution such as you espouse would thus yield mutations that are unsustainable absent that cushy environment. If we evolved intelligence as a survival trait, we are certainly not putting it into service to see that our effects on our evolutionary process yield long term positive results, which ought to be part of the point of good adaptations (which we are led to believe our intellect is).
Also, many who have mutations that would never have allowed them to survive childhood to reproduce are today doing so, which means that the power of evolution to produce the utility in the environment at large is diminished. Again, this is purely mechanistic.
Personally, I look at evolutionary and genetic determinists in the same way as I do religions that endorse some form pre-destination, fate, or inevitability: with a great deal of skepticism.
I'd say that's supposed to be true in an unconstrained evolution. It seems our society is bent on stopping evolution in its tracks with all of the social and safety improvements. There is some degree of irony that many who are in favor of increased government regulation of safety and redistribution of wealth are people who are very much on the evolution bandwagon theoretically. However, when confronted with the fact that in order for selection to work people have to die (or at least not reproduce) they quail. It's self defeating.
On the other hand, as a Christian I find it ironic and depressing that so many who call themselves Christian seem to have very little in them that is Christian. Meaning that they are against the programs those not in their political party have promulgated. Moreover, taken from another view, it encourages evolution if it isn't already present to begin, or to begin anew. (This leaves aside those who are against the government doing it and are in favor of (and actually contribute to) personal charity.)
powerful weapons, particularly early in their history are invariably clumsy and prone to lots of collateral damage.
i'm not sure society would accept the cost of that damage in exchange for the benefit. Even if you claimed it would only be for a transition period. Heck, i'm not sure you could convince me any such transition period would ever end.
So how does this acceptance of the professional responsibility of researchers change when one acknowledges that at any moment homeland security or the like can issue a national security letter to obtain access to the dataset? They could use it to identify potential troublemakers, and moreover to uncover people's secrets to blackmail them with. Or they could uncover minor crimes and selectively enforce the laws on people they suspect of whatever they aren't able to prove. Worse, they could employ these tactics on political enemies. Imagine a McCarthy with access to such a cheap wealth of actionable information.
"Innovation is possible in politics too. Look at the monarchies of 400 years ago and the democracies of today (with all their faults). I like to think there is a progress in that field too."
I almost agree with you, but i still think there is enough to draw a significant distinction between technology and social behavior.
In the same way as I would distinguish between science and engineering versus social "sciences." Social scientists rarely apply the scientific method and more importantly those who do, do so at the macro level without the ability to know, much less consider the relevant conditions involved.
Therefore most anthro- socio- and paleo-anthro- is supposition and at times rank speculation.
I believe that the bio/physicist/engineering approaches to understanding our low-level functioning are more likely to eventually lead to correct understanding of macro human properties, etc than the conventional socio- etc. pseudo science efforts.
Of course, sometimes hard science and engineering runs into these issues, like the particle physicists in NY who did an experiment some thought had a chance of ending the world (literally).
But this is usually rarer and more clear-cut. The issues are usually easier to examine relatively dispassionately. And more importantly, hard scientists (usually) work at the level of the current technology and make a list of the questions that arise out of their work that they were unable to address. These questions are part of what leads other investigators to discover the next finer level of granularity in the world, characterize it, and extrapolate useful abstractions for higher levels of granularity.
"But forms of government, economical systems can also be viewed as tools."
Yes, but not without giving away the rationale for their construction. Whereas technologies can have vastly different applications, both good and ill, not all of which are obvious on inspection. Thus innovation.
"However I cannot escape the suspicion that the direction of technological and scientific progress is also heavily influenced by human motivations."
I would generally give credit for a greater diversity of motivations than you seem willing to. I also see the greed, but it has occurred that individuals with (at least partly) altruistic motivations have managed to harness the efforts of the greedy effectively in the past. See Cadbury (the British chocolatier) for an example. (Quaker family bent on beating the mercantilist robber barons at their own game all while providing education, health care, and other amenities for their workforce.)
Also, the greedy can get nowhere without people with other motivations. Big Pharma rides on the back of researchers and research universities whose grad students and even PhDs make not much (esp. given the work conditions and mental strain for the salary). You could easily make more in a career in sales, but some people have a calling. Maybe their parents died unnecessarily of a condition. Maybe their work is fun to them. You lose a lot of visibility in to the reality of the economy when you dehumanize everyone involved.
"Tyranny relies on a specific form of human social organization- i.e. enough food and social organization to allow a specialization of labor- a ruling class and an enforcement class (i.e. soldiers and police) to support the rulers."
not really. All it takes is a bully and one to infinity number of subjects where the number of subjects is limited by scope of information and ability to control information. Or "alpha male" or whatever veneer you care to put on it. And your mumbo-jumbo about specialization is just that. specialization is what happens as a result of a division of labor (meaning that most or all people actually work, just at different things) for efficiency's sake. The motivation at all technological levels is first to increase the group's margin of safety from environmental factors (famine, drought, etc.) and eventually to provide for and maximize time for recreational pursuits. This can be and has been severable from social structure.
As to your sig, what allows evil people to do evil? Or evil people to do good? What allows (or defines) good and evil?
Tyranny has been around since before the stone age. What has technology got to do with it other than increasing the tyrant to subject ratio? The desire to oppress is inherently a human social one. Some will claim (neocons for instance) that we can use tyranny to make things better, but it doesn't work that way. Technology, on the other hand is much more legitimately separable from human motivation (there are a variety of motivations that can lead to most technologies.) Moreover, unlike tyranny, we have a chance of using a given technology only(or at least predominately) for good. Technology is a double edged sword, in part because it and its fruits are actually tools, not motivations unto themselves.
To Six million dollar man Stephen Hawking to the point that there are two Chuck Norrises in the world, asymptotically, of course. Because the only thing better than Chuck Norris is a geek Chuck Norris i guess.
Just look at the geek rants it's inspired. Who cares if it's a bit under power. It's a PC for $200, running Linux, carried by the largest retailer in the country. I'd say this is good.
this is certainly a contestable claim. esp. since i'm sure most of the party attendees are upper management and thus haven't contributed scientific knowledge in years.
how about fixing copyright? (Neutering the Disney lobby) How many innovative derivative works will never be because the term of copyright is so long that works in the public domain are no longer (due to colloquial language of the era, at least, if not thematically) relevant? [btw: there's as much ground as I'm willing to cede to relativist linguists.]:P
Thank you for the ad hominem attack and for skirting the actual issues involved. To use your flavor of logic, chances are that you are a neocon.
I am quite aware that money can buy a group of people who can churn out 1400+ pages of uncoordinated writing in two weeks. What are the chances that this was good writing? We are lucky that there wasn't language expanding executive power more than was present. As it was, several long standing principles of law that had good reason for existence were thrown out by it.
The issue I raised is that we expect our representatives to, umm... represent us. Part of this entails understanding and applying individual members' principles to make an informed, reasoned decision on whether to vote for or against a piece of legislation.
And who said anyone planned 9/11 other than the terrorists. Not me. The furthest the available facts support is opportunism on the part of those favoring big government and enhanced executive power. That used to be the Democrats, but nowadays the Republicans have joined the crowd.
Yes, there's no history of the US intervening to topple governments in that region in order to enforce mercantilistic hegemonies.
We didn't topple Iran's democracy for the British in the 50's because they wanted control over their oil wealth. We didn't claim that oil would pay for the current debacle.
Yes, my claim has to be absurd.
There goes that sarcasm again. I'll have to work harder to keep it out of my posts, especially with fine debaters like yourself.
There it goes again! This really is a deep personal failing of mine.
but there was and is also a lot of opportunism. 1400+ pages of patriot act materialized in like two weeks? i don't think so. somebody had something on a shelf they dusted off and pushed on the congress all the while questioning the patriotism of any members who actually wanted to *gasp* read the legislation they were voting on.
There's not "no right to transport." There's a dent in the constitutional protection of the right to travel predicated on the availability of alternative means of travel.
the gist of the opinion of the court is that because there are alternate means of travel, you can choose one of those rather than submit to searches and id checks.
Gilmore mentioned in his complaint having heard that similar measures were put in place for train travel, but these were rejected as hearsay. i guess he ought to have tried to travel by train and sued the TSA and both Amtrak and the airline. He didn't. Anyways, even if he had, it seems fairly clear that the court would have ignored reason yet again.
basically it's a cop-out and yet another instance of the courts turning a blind eye to the government's depredations.
Slashdot Mirror
Death has probably been the leading cause for the inability of an individual to reproduce. So it's not backwards, it's following presumptive causality. Perhaps you see the emphasis as significant because it holds some special emotional connection for you? To take a small tangent, it seems from census statistics that wealthier, better educated, presumably smarter individuals have fewer offspring. Does this mean we are currently breeding for stupidity? I digress.
.net code." It is a non sequitur.
"the same motivation as anybody else - human compassion / social pragmatism. i find it bizarre that Christians ascribe their innate psychological characteristics and the realities of social dynamics to a set of confused, self contradictory and ill advised pronouncements from one particular medieval scrapbook of bronze age mythology, when the barest piece of objective logic will tell anyone that the fact of the existence of all the decent, socially cohesive people on the earth that don't subscribe to your particular brand of cosmetically modified Ra worship would suggest that decent selfless qualities seem to be perfectly capable of arising innately from humanity itself, rather than requiring proscription from on high."
Wow, way to:
1. not answer the question
2. fling poo
good job. I will do you the favor of extracting your only relevant statement and target my questioning after it. Why is being decent, as you put it, a priority? How does it serve you? How does it increase your chances to breed and pass on your genes? Why does social cohesion necessitate theft (forced charity)? And by the bye, you ascribe morality to mechanistically (evolutionary) developed entities. Given your apparent standpoint, this is kind of like saying "decent selfless qualities seem to be perfectly capable of arising innately from my
"you are artificially putting a distinction between an environment shaped by man and an environment not shaped by man."
not artificially. There is a legitimate distinction here. I will grant you that the theory will have mutations in any case, but again, it is the sustainability of the environment that would allow a broad set of mutations to survive. When circumstances (economic unsustainability of a minority of healthy, productive people providing for a majority of unhealthy dependents) force a sudden removal of that support system, it is likely that a wide reaching population crash could occur. In fact, this is what I am asserting that "compassionate evolutionists" are setting us up for (or would be setting us up for if I were to grant evolution in large species), probably inadvertently. For those responsible for artificing the environment there are ethical hazards here.
"it becomes a "neutral" mutation."
not quite. it becomes a deferred debt. at a maintenance cost. which when many such are heaped upon one another becomes unsustainable. Thus my question about why evolutionists see this as a desirable state. What are the benefits? How does one resolve the ethical hazard involved? Does one simply say, as you do further down, that there could arise some amorphous "good" (whatever that is to a relativist) and that just the potential for that outweighs all of the unnecessary suffering that came before in pursuit of it? There seem to me to be hazards to your "million apes with a million typewriters" intentional shotgun approach to this thing.
But I digress again. More centrally, maximizing mutations (or lack of mutations) you consider to be neutral seems to be the objective of the public charity. In an ideal universe without resource limits, does this not in effect end evolution as a force on us? Is there an ethical hazard there if one presumes a motivation to have one's offspring do better than oneself? (If I commit an error here, I feel comfortable that I am comiting the same error as Larry Niven in his Ringworld series and Vernor Vinge in his works.)
You ascribe all motivation to evolutionary aims, yet try to
Thank you for the elementary lesson in evolution. I stated that the end point is reproduction, but death is indeed relevant as it places limits (sometimes prohibitive) on the opportunities for reproduction.
You also leave unanswered the dual contradiction in belief systems I raised. What is the motivation of atheists/evolutionists who seem to overwhelmingly support the drain on their resources caused by public charity? Is it aesthetic? Because it seems disproportionately costly versus the potential gain to an individual to be had by the otherwise lacking presence of a small percentage of other individuals. If, on the other hand, it is because they are afraid of their own inadequacy to compete and thrive in a free market, then it seems to be a negative sum game, i.e. a downward spiral for society.
Then there's the dual of this problem, which is Christians who are uncharitable. I have my own overly judgmental opinions as to the largest part of this problem, centering around and permutating from church as a social exercise.
But the points underlying those I made before is that the "cushy" environment is artificial, and in a mechanistic evolution such as you espouse would thus yield mutations that are unsustainable absent that cushy environment. If we evolved intelligence as a survival trait, we are certainly not putting it into service to see that our effects on our evolutionary process yield long term positive results, which ought to be part of the point of good adaptations (which we are led to believe our intellect is).
Also, many who have mutations that would never have allowed them to survive childhood to reproduce are today doing so, which means that the power of evolution to produce the utility in the environment at large is diminished. Again, this is purely mechanistic.
Personally, I look at evolutionary and genetic determinists in the same way as I do religions that endorse some form pre-destination, fate, or inevitability: with a great deal of skepticism.
I'd say that's supposed to be true in an unconstrained evolution. It seems our society is bent on stopping evolution in its tracks with all of the social and safety improvements. There is some degree of irony that many who are in favor of increased government regulation of safety and redistribution of wealth are people who are very much on the evolution bandwagon theoretically. However, when confronted with the fact that in order for selection to work people have to die (or at least not reproduce) they quail. It's self defeating.
On the other hand, as a Christian I find it ironic and depressing that so many who call themselves Christian seem to have very little in them that is Christian. Meaning that they are against the programs those not in their political party have promulgated. Moreover, taken from another view, it encourages evolution if it isn't already present to begin, or to begin anew. (This leaves aside those who are against the government doing it and are in favor of (and actually contribute to) personal charity.)
Transmission line loss. This will kill this idea.
powerful weapons, particularly early in their history are invariably clumsy and prone to lots of collateral damage.
i'm not sure society would accept the cost of that damage in exchange for the benefit. Even if you claimed it would only be for a transition period. Heck, i'm not sure you could convince me any such transition period would ever end.
So how does this acceptance of the professional responsibility of researchers change when one acknowledges that at any moment homeland security or the like can issue a national security letter to obtain access to the dataset? They could use it to identify potential troublemakers, and moreover to uncover people's secrets to blackmail them with. Or they could uncover minor crimes and selectively enforce the laws on people they suspect of whatever they aren't able to prove. Worse, they could employ these tactics on political enemies. Imagine a McCarthy with access to such a cheap wealth of actionable information.
"Innovation is possible in politics too. Look at the monarchies of 400 years ago and the democracies of today (with all their faults). I like to think there is a progress in that field too."
I almost agree with you, but i still think there is enough to draw a significant distinction between technology and social behavior.
In the same way as I would distinguish between science and engineering versus social "sciences." Social scientists rarely apply the scientific method and more importantly those who do, do so at the macro level without the ability to know, much less consider the relevant conditions involved.
Therefore most anthro- socio- and paleo-anthro- is supposition and at times rank speculation.
I believe that the bio/physicist/engineering approaches to understanding our low-level functioning are more likely to eventually lead to correct understanding of macro human properties, etc than the conventional socio- etc. pseudo science efforts.
Of course, sometimes hard science and engineering runs into these issues, like the particle physicists in NY who did an experiment some thought had a chance of ending the world (literally).
But this is usually rarer and more clear-cut. The issues are usually easier to examine relatively dispassionately. And more importantly, hard scientists (usually) work at the level of the current technology and make a list of the questions that arise out of their work that they were unable to address. These questions are part of what leads other investigators to discover the next finer level of granularity in the world, characterize it, and extrapolate useful abstractions for higher levels of granularity.
"But forms of government, economical systems can also be viewed as tools."
Yes, but not without giving away the rationale for their construction. Whereas technologies can have vastly different applications, both good and ill, not all of which are obvious on inspection. Thus innovation.
"However I cannot escape the suspicion that the direction of technological and scientific progress is also heavily influenced by human motivations."
I would generally give credit for a greater diversity of motivations than you seem willing to. I also see the greed, but it has occurred that individuals with (at least partly) altruistic motivations have managed to harness the efforts of the greedy effectively in the past. See Cadbury (the British chocolatier) for an example. (Quaker family bent on beating the mercantilist robber barons at their own game all while providing education, health care, and other amenities for their workforce.)
Also, the greedy can get nowhere without people with other motivations. Big Pharma rides on the back of researchers and research universities whose grad students and even PhDs make not much (esp. given the work conditions and mental strain for the salary). You could easily make more in a career in sales, but some people have a calling. Maybe their parents died unnecessarily of a condition. Maybe their work is fun to them. You lose a lot of visibility in to the reality of the economy when you dehumanize everyone involved.
"Tyranny relies on a specific form of human social organization- i.e. enough food and social organization to allow a specialization of labor- a ruling class and an enforcement class (i.e. soldiers and police) to support the rulers."
not really. All it takes is a bully and one to infinity number of subjects where the number of subjects is limited by scope of information and ability to control information. Or "alpha male" or whatever veneer you care to put on it. And your mumbo-jumbo about specialization is just that. specialization is what happens as a result of a division of labor (meaning that most or all people actually work, just at different things) for efficiency's sake. The motivation at all technological levels is first to increase the group's margin of safety from environmental factors (famine, drought, etc.) and eventually to provide for and maximize time for recreational pursuits. This can be and has been severable from social structure.
As to your sig, what allows evil people to do evil? Or evil people to do good?
What allows (or defines) good and evil?
Tyranny has been around since before the stone age. What has technology got to do with it other than increasing the tyrant to subject ratio? The desire to oppress is inherently a human social one. Some will claim (neocons for instance) that we can use tyranny to make things better, but it doesn't work that way. Technology, on the other hand is much more legitimately separable from human motivation (there are a variety of motivations that can lead to most technologies.) Moreover, unlike tyranny, we have a chance of using a given technology only(or at least predominately) for good. Technology is a double edged sword, in part because it and its fruits are actually tools, not motivations unto themselves.
can do this too. A constant stream of anti-depressants. Zoloft, etc. Yuck.
To Six million dollar man Stephen Hawking to the point that there are two Chuck Norrises in the world, asymptotically, of course. Because the only thing better than Chuck Norris is a geek Chuck Norris i guess.
should have been the subject. Because at the end of the day, why do it if it's not fun.
That and subjects ought to be memetically correct, dammit.
Just look at the geek rants it's inspired. Who cares if it's a bit under power. It's a PC for $200, running Linux, carried by the largest retailer in the country. I'd say this is good.
this is certainly a contestable claim. esp. since i'm sure most of the party attendees are upper management and thus haven't contributed scientific knowledge in years.
and germane to the subject matter. it's called context. :P
The voting machine chooses you.
how about fixing copyright? (Neutering the Disney lobby) How many innovative derivative works will never be because the term of copyright is so long that works in the public domain are no longer (due to colloquial language of the era, at least, if not thematically) relevant? [btw: there's as much ground as I'm willing to cede to relativist linguists.] :P
Thank you for the ad hominem attack and for skirting the actual issues involved. To use your flavor of logic, chances are that you are a neocon.
I am quite aware that money can buy a group of people who can churn out 1400+ pages of uncoordinated writing in two weeks. What are the chances that this was good writing? We are lucky that there wasn't language expanding executive power more than was present. As it was, several long standing principles of law that had good reason for existence were thrown out by it.
The issue I raised is that we expect our representatives to, umm... represent us. Part of this entails understanding and applying individual members' principles to make an informed, reasoned decision on whether to vote for or against a piece of legislation.
And who said anyone planned 9/11 other than the terrorists. Not me. The furthest the available facts support is opportunism on the part of those favoring big government and enhanced executive power. That used to be the Democrats, but nowadays the Republicans have joined the crowd.
Yes, there's no history of the US intervening to topple governments in that region in order to enforce mercantilistic hegemonies.
We didn't topple Iran's democracy for the British in the 50's because they wanted control over their oil wealth.
We didn't claim that oil would pay for the current debacle.
Yes, my claim has to be absurd.
There goes that sarcasm again. I'll have to work harder to keep it out of my posts, especially with fine debaters like yourself.
There it goes again! This really is a deep personal failing of mine.
thank you.
and apologized. he's now a legit member of the international community or some such rubbish.
but there was and is also a lot of opportunism. 1400+ pages of patriot act materialized in like two weeks? i don't think so. somebody had something on a shelf they dusted off and pushed on the congress all the while questioning the patriotism of any members who actually wanted to *gasp* read the legislation they were voting on.
http://www.papersplease.org/gilmore/
There's not "no right to transport." There's a dent in the constitutional protection of the right to travel predicated on the availability of alternative means of travel.
the gist of the opinion of the court is that because there are alternate means of travel, you can choose one of those rather than submit to searches and id checks.
Gilmore mentioned in his complaint having heard that similar measures were put in place for train travel, but these were rejected as hearsay. i guess he ought to have tried to travel by train and sued the TSA and both Amtrak and the airline. He didn't. Anyways, even if he had, it seems fairly clear that the court would have ignored reason yet again.
basically it's a cop-out and yet another instance of the courts turning a blind eye to the government's depredations.
feh!
we're giving that part of the franchise away. call it a loss leader.
and we all know they're not mercenaries. they're a security firm. with weapons illegal to possess in the US.