The problem is you can't possibly KNOW which traits are good or bad. Not even slightly. It's literally impossible. You can point out all the ways eugenics were wrong in their choices of traits - but the fact, is no matter WHAT they chose they would have been equally wrong- because it's not POSSIBLE to determine good or bad traits, you can't even rationally define 'good' or 'bad' in this context. Evolution favors whatever traits increase the odds of survival at this time, in this place. There are no objectively better or worse traits - all traits that are PRESENT are 'good' to the extent that you can measure it- on the basis that they haven't gone extinct. Any of them could be the cause of extinction tomorrow, and any of them could be the reason for survival. It's not possible to tell which is which ahead of time - because you can never know what the pressures on survival will BE in the future. The same trait that got your species through the last mass extinction intact could be the REASON you go extinct tomorrow.
>Not in the common meaning of the word, but I thought people were familiar with the context.
In NO context is that phrase part of evolutionary theory. You can read Origin and Descent until your eyes bleed you won't find that phrase anywhere - it's not in those books. When origin came out, Darwin hired a journalist to explain the theory to the masses. Basically he was hoping to control the pop-science version of the theory enough to ensure it didn't go TOO far off the rail. That journalist coined the phrase 'survival of the fittest' as part of trying to explain natural selection to the lay public. The benefit of this was that everybody now thought they understood Darwin... the downside was that everybody now thought they understood Darwin.
That claim requires you having a way to predict what is, or is not, good traits - what natural selection would, or would not, have favoured. Since the theory of evolution specifically and explicitly precludes it ever being possible to know this - your claim is, to use the technical term, complete and utter bullshit.
You can identify good traits only AFTER the fact on the basis of "they survived". You CANNOT EVER know what traits are going to be valuable tomorrow, it's literally impossible to predict. A complete and utter mathematically disproven suggestion. Evolution is an emergent phenomenon. Every change in every organisms forces responses in every other organism all of which is sporadically subverted by major catastrophes. Every change anywhere literally changes the rules that determine if traits are good or not for all other living things - the same trait that helped your ancestors through the ice age is about to the weakness that causes the extinction of your species because something else evolved something new. You evolved to lay eggs and gained major advantage over all over creatures at the time... and you barely had time to enjoy it before things evolved that eat eggs.
There is no way to rationally predict what traits will be 'good' or 'bad' prior to the fact, even if you had perfect knowledge (impossible) of all creatures in real time (infinitely more impossible) you STILL couldn't do it because it's an emergent phenomenon. Emergence makes prediction utterly impossible - it can be understood in the past but it can never be predicted into the future.
>Allow me to introduce you to Eugenics. It was perfectly valid and rational system in it's day, backed by what at the time was believed to be hard scientific data.
No. It really wasn't. It was a fundamentally false interpretation of a scientific theory that would have appalled the author of that theory - not least for how absolutely and fundamentally it failed to grasp even the most basic tenets of that theory. Eugenics claimed that evolution proceeds towards improvement over time, favoring superior specimens and that by selective breeding humanity can accelerate this process within itself. Every single one of those claims is flat-out contradicted in origin of species. 1) Darwin observed that natural selection selects for survival enhancing traits - local to current and regional conditions. Rephrasing that as "superior" in any way is a flagrant lie about what it means. This entire misread comes from badly misunderstanding the word "fit" as in 'survival of the fittest' - which itself is not found anywhere in origin - the phrase was coined by a journalist trying to simplify Darwin for the masses, and has probably done far more harm than good. 2) Selective breeding is not advocated for nor supported by evolution - on the contrary, it had been an uncontroversial fact of science accepted by everybody (since they all lived surrounded by the evidence) for many centuries before Darwin was even born. If anything, Darwin argued that selective breeding was counter to his theory. It's existence proved the capacity for animals to change over time, and that was the entire extent of the overlap. There is also, again, no rational way to claim that selective breeding improved any species ever. It enhanced traits desirable to the breeder - an entirely irrational and subjective standard. Evolution enhances traits that increases the likelihood of survival for the species - not the whims of some other species (indeed - nearly all selective breeding has produced animals entirely incapable of surviving in the wild. Wild budgerigars are no more colorful than sparrows - because being too brightly colored in the outback gets you eaten - humanity bred those colors into them, and ours cannot survive a day in the wild). Darwin didn't use the word 'evolution' - that would only be coined later, he spoke of 'natural selection' - and that phrase was specifically chosen to CONTRAST it with the unnatural selection that happens in selective breeding. The same biological process - but not the same mechanism driving it, and that MECHANISM was the heart and soul of his theory.
Eugenics as an exercise in selective breeding therefore was not at all supported by, or defensible on the grounds of, evolutionary theory. It was, in fact, trying farmyard engineering on the human race - with disastrous effects (at least, if you have more compassion for humans than for cows). There was a lot of pointing at and citing Darwin (the problem with a book that big is you can find a quote to mean anything you want if you take it out of context) - but that support didn't go the other way. Unfortunately then, as now, pop science tended to be rather far removed from real science. Anybody with academic training of any sort assumed themselves an expert on every field of science they'd ever read a newspaper article on and believed they understood it without doing any further research.
In the end - eugenics was not science, and almost no real scientists backed it and those that did were almost never evolutionary biologists (still a very new field back then). In fact, most of them were doctors - the engineers of the biological sciences (note how the vast majority of creationists in biological fields today are doctors and not researchers ? Same thing). What it was not was science backed by evidence. There was an evidence based science which they claimed supported their efforts but those claims were flagrantly deceptive at worst, blatantly ignorant at worst.
But you have lots of avoidable fatalities now ! If the long-term result is to greatly reduce the fatalities that's a win - and it's not coming with any ethical quandaries as you suggest because guess what, if you don't go through the avoidable deaths maturing this technology you would STILL have been going through the avoidable deaths that are constantly associated with the CURRENT technology.
A much simpler solution would simply be to put touch sensors in the steering wheel and refuse to engage autopilot if the steering wheel isn't being touched. It also avoids difficulties with say - passengers who are watching a movie (as opposed to the driver). Also throw in a large visual and audible alarmif you let go of the wheel for more than 3 seconds or such and keeps blaring until you take it again.
> If companies can't form a cartel to manipulate a market, why should union's be allowed to?
Now for me, this is easier to answer: because union formation will most likely increase the overall fairness of the market by raising the negotiation power of people who individually have very little or (often) none at all. While cartel formation decreases the fairness of the market by increasing the negotiation power of organisations that already have too much. Since I measure the validity of regulation by outcomes rather than having a principle either way (I don't think it's a matter of principle - economics should be a purely pragmatic exercise and the pragmatism should be focused around giving the best possible outcomes for the largest possible number of people) I can say that. Those who claim that it's an infringement on personal liberty to regulate markets however, cannot be consistent if they are then happy to regulate unions. If anything the latter type reduces individual liberty for a far greater number of people so should violate their principles more.
>There needs to be a balance Now you're starting to sound like a socialist libertarian. Left libertarians say a free and fair contract cannot exist unless everybody involved has equal negotiating power, anything else must inevitably be coercion. The right libertarians on the other hand deny that most forms of coercion are in fact coercive (flying directly in the face of the vast majority of people's life experience - and thus rarely convincing anybody).
>My personal belief is market regulation is acceptable only to monetize some externality [wikipedia.org] for businesses I don't agree that's the only acceptable regulation - but it is in a very needed one. Though externalities are a form of market failure and most libertarians deny that market failures exist (it's amazing how people who pride themselves on their objectivity so frequently deny the existence of things people see happening every day). Externalities are, in fact, one of the worst market failures - it means that contracts have shifted most of their cost onto third-parties who have no consented to being part of the contract. It's actually a far worse and far more illiberal thing than taxes. Being forced to subsidise somebody else's business without my consent is much worse than giving money to the government - because in the latter case at least SOME of that money will be spent on things I benefit from, heck some of it will be given to me (state pensions and such), in the former case it is simply stolen from me and I will never get any of it back.
>What makes you think I fail to realise that? The underlying culture of that nations is very different, as show with the tensions between the USSR and China.
What's that got to do with their economies ? Which is the subject I was discussing.
I don't think anybody seriously thinks everybody should earn the same. But I do think the degree of inequality matters. Too much is just as bad for the economy as too little. You need some, because some people are only motivated by money - so you need the ability to have more as the only way to get those people to do anything. But too much and you end up with severe wealth concentration, which utterly skews the entire economy - and can leave you with productive economies that, nevertheless, fail at their most basic function: distributing goods to where they are needed. It is also (and unsurprisingly) a fact that severe inequality harms both GDP and economic growth - ultimately, the end result of too much wealth concentration is that everybody makes less money than they otherwise would have. Even the rich.
Generally - I think a well functioning society would see the wealthiest person earn roughly twice what the poorest person earns. And by definition a functioning society does not have anybody who earns nothing (even if some people's earnings are from charity or social safety nets). But those figures are debateable. Better economists than me can give better numbers. Currently though the difference is rather larger than that. In most companies the CEO earns roughly 800 times what the lowest paid worker does. I'm sorry - but it's simply mathematically and physically impossible that he could EVER be producing 800 times as much value.
The biggest problem here is that we've let market rates determine wages - which is silly because wages are not like any other goods or services, they are not constrained in the same way or produced in the same way - they are not governed by the same economic rules, and what's worse - this flat out ignores that wages are the ONLY product the vast majority have to sell - so de facto wages are life. It's people's time, their hopes and dreams. It's human beings trading parts of their life for the means to survive - and they don't get limited liability protection. That is simply not the same thing. Yet the fundamentalist free marketeers always call on the market when it suits them to justify inequality, yet pretends it isn't one whenever it suits them. They tend to be anti-union while ignoring what, under their own theory, a union is: a comglomerate of small businesses who found they could be more profitable by merging. Then they call unions evil - because they don't WANT this kind of business to be more profitable, it's profits are costs to the businesses they actually like. Suddenly the market can no longer be trusted to make it's own rules and they advocate for things like so-called "right-to-work" laws that prevent the formation of union-shops. Ignoring that no company in history has ever been forced to be a union shop - becoming a union shop is a contract freely signed between two businesses which, by their own logic, both businesses believed they were better off from. A contract you can actually believe that about since both businesses have fairly equal power to negotiate (but oh they will do everything to prevent workers ever having real power in negotiations - contracts are only supposed to be "free" for the business owners). The greatest example of libertarian hypocrisy is that every libertarian I have ever met opposed anti-trust laws and supported right-to-work laws and didn't even REALIZE that philosophically they regulate exactly the same thing: what type of exclusive supplier arrangements are acceptable. Here, I am on safer ground philosophicallly - I support anti-trust laws and oppose right-to-work, but since I never claimed all market regulations are evil I haven't painted myself into a corner with an overly simplistic ideology. I can state that the former is good and the latter is bad because their effects differ - and I believe that regulation should be measured by it's effects, if the pros outweight the cons it's good regulation, if you can make the pro list longer or the con list shorter it can be better regulation - but it's only BAD regulation is the cons outweigh the pros.
>As a result, there were a couple of consequences; firstly, for Israel to unilaterally undo the internationally accepted annexation, declare the territory captured in 1967 liberated from Jordan and Egypt, and declare the new country of Palestine would be somewhat troublesome in international law
Since the UN general council overwhelmingly voted to accept Palestine's membership - which de facto recognizes it as an independent country - I doubt you will see any major attempts to push that angle and if anybody did try to push it - it is unlikely it would succeed since there is overwhelming international agreement that their independence is recognized. One the list of countries not recognizing it the US is literally the only one of any significance (and when the US is the only significant country doing something- invariably it's because it's doing something terrible).
No successful modern state has built itself up out of the rubble of war. Every one that did - had huge help from other states. Look at how much money the US spent in Japan and Germany to rebuild these countries after world war 2. Look at the fortune loaned to Britain for their rebuilding, which was only paid off about 3 years ago. So I think it is understood that a Palestinian country would need international assistance to get to a working state, I think the countries that voted them into the council knows this and are prepared to contribute. A more interesting question is militarily. The current Israeli administration would never do it, but let's assume a future Israeli administration is less fundamentalist and goes for it. This is not that unlikely - 90% of American Jews under 30 are anti-zionist today and strongly critical of Israel, the same pattern is happening elsewhere - I have a very large Jewish friend circle and I don't know a single Jew who is not anti-zionist, in fact they all belong to BDS ! So a similar shift in Israel's own voting patterns is at least a conceivable possibility over time. But what happens next ? What happens if the next government is determined to get the west bank and gaza back ? Radical shifts in elections tend to be followed by equally radically shifts in the opposite direction - so this too is likely. For a Palestinian state to survive in the medium term, it would need defence capabilities that would make an invasion sufficiently risky to make it highly unlikely - even for the American armed Israeli forces. At the same time - establishing such a military in the new state would make it less likely to get the state in the first place. Not even the most liberal Israeli government would agree to establish a Palestine with sufficient military capability to represent an existential threat to themselves.
So the only possibility would be for a Palestine to get not only significant financial assistance from other countries but also defence agreements - foreign countries committing themselves to defending it if it's invaded so that it doesn't need it's own military.
Do that for 30 years or so and it will be new normal, and it could be a long term stable setup.
I don't think so either - frankly I think everybody has a right to live where-ever they want and ALL immigration laws are a flagrant violation of universal human rights since they all, by definition, act against basic rights of freedom of movement and freedom of association.
But the reality is that the people in this mess do believe that heritage determines a right to live somewhere (both sides) and to ignore that is just plain futile.
If nothing else, where you are born SHOULD count - and that means pretty much all of them have an equal say now.
Not to mention that there are distinct problems with your thinking so I don't accept it entirely. For a start it massively benefits those who happen to descent from the last major round of conquest, to the detriment of everybody else, and offers no route to a more equitable world. We decided in the recent path that conquest was not actually an acceptable way to acquire land. Conveniently this was decided by the same people who did the last round of conquering, and so made sure nobody could take what they had conquered away from them. Everybody else got screwed. For the most part - they are still screwed. This is not a stable situation, it is, in fact, a situation that will lead to ongoing violence, unrest and bloodshed. Fixing it isn't just a moral imperative, it's a survival strategy.
Except that you deliberately chose the worst possible example while I generalized over a region that included the Soviet Union and East Germany - both major production centres in the past. And if you think communism is a thin patina on top in China - then what you're failing to realize is that from about 1970 onwards that's exactly how it was in the Soviet Union. The communism you know from American movies and propaganda never actually existed.
How about stealimg 60 million dollars from taxpayers by selling vapourware to the government ? They are both evil but in this case Oracle was the company trying to destroy the entire software industry for all but a few big players. We didnt support google because of who is or isnt evil. We supported google because if they lost we would all lose with them.
Do you think anybody on earth would deny that the Afrikaners are a distinct nation ? Do you know the history of how they became one ? The Dutch created a halfway point for trips to the east at Cape Point in 1652. Among other things they brought in a number of so-called free burghers (free citizens) to build farms there so the supply station would have something to supply. In 1658 these folk sent a letter to the Lords 17 (the directors of the corporation) renouncing their ties to the Netherlands and declaring that they have made Africa their home and calling themselves "Afrikaanders". From that point onward, they were a distinct nation - and they only became moreso over time, even as that nation expanded to include a large number of French refugees (the Huguenots) as well as settlers from various other European nations (most notably Germans - several Afrikaans surnames are of German origin). 300 years later, nobody has any questions about their nationhood. Some firebrand politicians question their claim to this land being their heritage, but their nationhood is never disputed.
So apparently you can become a nation in 6 years if you are white... even if your assertion is correct, why couldn't Palestinians be one in 80 years ? Every nation was once a young nation - every nation on earth was once recently-founded. People develop a shared identity and become a nation, how long ago that happened is utterly irrelevant to that question - but it has nothing to do with the point I was making anyway. My point was that the religious/historical claim of Jews to the land of Israel is no stronger than that of the Palestinians since they clearly have equally ancient roots in the area. What they called themselves or whether they saw themselves as distinct for all that time really doesn't even come into the discussion - it just doesn't affect anything. More importantly though - Arabs were never really one nation. The only thing they really shared was a language and a religion, but there are rather more Arab nations than there are Arab countries - and practically every sect within Islam considers themselves a seperate nation.
A lot of the problems in the Middle East have the exact same root cause as much of the problems in Africa: colonial drawn borders that were done with zero consideration for the historic borders between different nations, tribes and groups. So some nations ended up split over multiple countries, some countries ended up containing multiple (often unfriendly) nations (none of whom are ever happy with a goverment dominated by any of the others).
Now throw the usual politicking on top of that mess and you get the world today. Eritrea for example was a distinct country at least 3000 years ago. It's inhabitants are Coptic Christians who consider their brand of Christianity the oldest extant church in the world - with roots traced directly to the first church in Jerusalem and their first church established by St. Paul himself - and they are still practising the same religion. Yet Britain basically gave Eritrea to their neighbour Ethiopia for a long time. Ethiopia was very happy about this because it meant that they had a port - the Eritreans were not happy however to be ruled by a massive country with a completely different religion (Ethiopia is the birthplace of Rastafarianism) and culture and language. Eventually in 1994 Eritrea became independent again (the last colony in Africa to regain independence) and the country is doing well. Ethiopia has been threatening to invade and conquer them ever since, which has not helped, but at least so far the international community has managed to dissuade Ethiopia from actually doing so, and ironically this appears to have benefitted both countries. Ethiopia is now the fastest growing economy in the world and will, if they can maintain what they did in the last decade, be the largest economy in Africa within 15 years surpassing both Nigeria and South Africa. This is the same country that was the poster-child for starvation in the 1980's and early
Here you go, now that I'm not at work and have time, it took me all of 5 seconds on google to find and article that references pretty much all the research on the topic and confirms my conclusion: Palestinians are descended from the same group as Jewish people.
Not really, I live in South Africa, we were able to end the cycle. What I am saying is that you can't end a cycle of death and hate with the same thinking that caused it, before you can end it, you have to be willing to change how you think about the issue and what outcomes you would accept.
Well I dont have links for studies I read sporadically over the past two decades.
The short summarry of the Tel Aviv study however contained a line I will never forget. "With biology we have answered one of the greatest mysteries in history. What happened to the 10 lost tribes of Israel ? The answer is: they stayed right here and are known as Palestinians"
In fact, it's WORSE than South African appartheid. Appartheid actually gave black people their countries with their own governments. It was mostly for show (and the world wasn't buying tickets) as the white South African government constantly interfered in the homeland country's elections to ensure pro-appartheid governments were elected.
But there were enough whites who sincerely believed the propaganda of "a country for every nation" that they actually created self-governing countries for the various black tribes. Post 1994 all but two of those countries (Lesotho and Swaziland) voluntarily became part of South Africa again.
On the other hand you have the west bank and Gaza strip. Land that under a UN resolution Israel has no jurisdiction or rights over. Land that has been de facto recognized by almost all the countries on the UN as being the independent state of Palestine - which is under illegal military occupation by a foreign invader. So the local citizens cannot claim rights from their own government (as that is in exile) and have no rights from the invaders either. They are effectively a stateless people despite living on the land the world has recognized as being theirs.
A two-state solution could, conceivably work, but only if it's done sincerely. None of those "puppet governments in a puppet country we only created to make ourselves feel better" bullshit South Africa pulled. Israel actually proposed stuff like that in the past and it got rejected (which was exactly as expected) because what Israel in past decades called a "two-state solution" actually made the Palestinian "state" basically an Israeli colony where the government would be effectively constrained to do whatever Tel Aviv said.
To work - it would need to be given true and genuine independence. A border agreed on and respected by both sides. The withdrawal of the Israeli military to inside the border and the cessation of attacks across that border by Palestinians including a firm commitment (which they must be seen to hold to) by the Palestinian government that any future attackers be brought to justice and the more egregious ones extradited to face justice in Israel. This would need to be a tit-for-tat agreement as well. If Israelis attack Palestinians, they should also face extradition and sentencing in Palestinian courts as a result. A completely fair and evenhanded deal is the only one that can work. It would leave both sides with aspects they deem quite unfair in light of current events - but if you do anything else than you will simply breed another generation with something to be angry about. A feeling of unfairness today in a fair law, is better than genuine unfairness for years in an unfair one.
>There never was a country called Palestine in history
Erm... yes there was. It existed until 1948 (for the last part of it's existence it was a British colony).
There is also such a country today. It consists of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and it's capital city is Jerusalem. This was recognized by the world at large as a de facto country when they were granted membership of the UN in 2012. Israel is illegally occupying land that is officially considered a different country by virtually all the governments of the world.
That is actually rather important. A key reason appartheid failed is because the "countries" it created for black people (the so-called homeland states) were never recognized as independent countries by the UN or any other countries. The lack of international recognition was a flat-out refusal to accept these forced resettlement locations as a human rights compliant policy and these puppet-states as "giving people their own country". The inverse is also true. When the world recognizes a country as existing, it exists and if a different government is occupying it that is an act of war.
>To the Palestinian yes, but isn't the basis of the establishment of israeli settlement is that on their magic book, they are the rightful owner of the land, since their $deity told them so?
Except of course that gene studies have proven that the Palestinian people are the descendents of the Jews who stayed behind during the diaspora (contrary to the folktales of European Jews - a lot of them had not left). They changed religion over the centuries, but they are the same people. If the magic book was to be the guideline their claim would be STRONGER since they are the SAME people it was promised to - and they are the ones who never abandoned it.
Granted, this was not even a theory in 1948, we didn't have gene studies then and nobody believe the local records. But we know better today.
For a start - they are a different race. They are not Arabs ethnically. They are semmites. The exact same race as the Jews. Numerous genetic studies have proven over and over again: the Palestinians ARE Jews, they just changed religion. They are the jews that stayed behind when the diaspora was happening.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is you can't possibly KNOW which traits are good or bad. Not even slightly. It's literally impossible. You can point out all the ways eugenics were wrong in their choices of traits - but the fact, is no matter WHAT they chose they would have been equally wrong- because it's not POSSIBLE to determine good or bad traits, you can't even rationally define 'good' or 'bad' in this context.
Evolution favors whatever traits increase the odds of survival at this time, in this place. There are no objectively better or worse traits - all traits that are PRESENT are 'good' to the extent that you can measure it- on the basis that they haven't gone extinct. Any of them could be the cause of extinction tomorrow, and any of them could be the reason for survival. It's not possible to tell which is which ahead of time - because you can never know what the pressures on survival will BE in the future.
The same trait that got your species through the last mass extinction intact could be the REASON you go extinct tomorrow.
>Not in the common meaning of the word, but I thought people were familiar with the context.
In NO context is that phrase part of evolutionary theory. You can read Origin and Descent until your eyes bleed you won't find that phrase anywhere - it's not in those books. When origin came out, Darwin hired a journalist to explain the theory to the masses. Basically he was hoping to control the pop-science version of the theory enough to ensure it didn't go TOO far off the rail. That journalist coined the phrase 'survival of the fittest' as part of trying to explain natural selection to the lay public.
The benefit of this was that everybody now thought they understood Darwin... the downside was that everybody now thought they understood Darwin.
That claim requires you having a way to predict what is, or is not, good traits - what natural selection would, or would not, have favoured. Since the theory of evolution specifically and explicitly precludes it ever being possible to know this - your claim is, to use the technical term, complete and utter bullshit.
You can identify good traits only AFTER the fact on the basis of "they survived". You CANNOT EVER know what traits are going to be valuable tomorrow, it's literally impossible to predict. A complete and utter mathematically disproven suggestion. Evolution is an emergent phenomenon. Every change in every organisms forces responses in every other organism all of which is sporadically subverted by major catastrophes. Every change anywhere literally changes the rules that determine if traits are good or not for all other living things - the same trait that helped your ancestors through the ice age is about to the weakness that causes the extinction of your species because something else evolved something new. You evolved to lay eggs and gained major advantage over all over creatures at the time... and you barely had time to enjoy it before things evolved that eat eggs.
There is no way to rationally predict what traits will be 'good' or 'bad' prior to the fact, even if you had perfect knowledge (impossible) of all creatures in real time (infinitely more impossible) you STILL couldn't do it because it's an emergent phenomenon. Emergence makes prediction utterly impossible - it can be understood in the past but it can never be predicted into the future.
>Allow me to introduce you to Eugenics. It was perfectly valid and rational system in it's day, backed by what at the time was believed to be hard scientific data.
No. It really wasn't. It was a fundamentally false interpretation of a scientific theory that would have appalled the author of that theory - not least for how absolutely and fundamentally it failed to grasp even the most basic tenets of that theory.
Eugenics claimed that evolution proceeds towards improvement over time, favoring superior specimens and that by selective breeding humanity can accelerate this process within itself.
Every single one of those claims is flat-out contradicted in origin of species.
1) Darwin observed that natural selection selects for survival enhancing traits - local to current and regional conditions. Rephrasing that as "superior" in any way is a flagrant lie about what it means. This entire misread comes from badly misunderstanding the word "fit" as in 'survival of the fittest' - which itself is not found anywhere in origin - the phrase was coined by a journalist trying to simplify Darwin for the masses, and has probably done far more harm than good.
2) Selective breeding is not advocated for nor supported by evolution - on the contrary, it had been an uncontroversial fact of science accepted by everybody (since they all lived surrounded by the evidence) for many centuries before Darwin was even born. If anything, Darwin argued that selective breeding was counter to his theory. It's existence proved the capacity for animals to change over time, and that was the entire extent of the overlap. There is also, again, no rational way to claim that selective breeding improved any species ever. It enhanced traits desirable to the breeder - an entirely irrational and subjective standard. Evolution enhances traits that increases the likelihood of survival for the species - not the whims of some other species (indeed - nearly all selective breeding has produced animals entirely incapable of surviving in the wild. Wild budgerigars are no more colorful than sparrows - because being too brightly colored in the outback gets you eaten - humanity bred those colors into them, and ours cannot survive a day in the wild). Darwin didn't use the word 'evolution' - that would only be coined later, he spoke of 'natural selection' - and that phrase was specifically chosen to CONTRAST it with the unnatural selection that happens in selective breeding. The same biological process - but not the same mechanism driving it, and that MECHANISM was the heart and soul of his theory.
Eugenics as an exercise in selective breeding therefore was not at all supported by, or defensible on the grounds of, evolutionary theory. It was, in fact, trying farmyard engineering on the human race - with disastrous effects (at least, if you have more compassion for humans than for cows). There was a lot of pointing at and citing Darwin (the problem with a book that big is you can find a quote to mean anything you want if you take it out of context) - but that support didn't go the other way. Unfortunately then, as now, pop science tended to be rather far removed from real science. Anybody with academic training of any sort assumed themselves an expert on every field of science they'd ever read a newspaper article on and believed they understood it without doing any further research.
In the end - eugenics was not science, and almost no real scientists backed it and those that did were almost never evolutionary biologists (still a very new field back then). In fact, most of them were doctors - the engineers of the biological sciences (note how the vast majority of creationists in biological fields today are doctors and not researchers ? Same thing). What it was not was science backed by evidence. There was an evidence based science which they claimed supported their efforts but those claims were flagrantly deceptive at worst, blatantly ignorant at worst.
But you have lots of avoidable fatalities now ! If the long-term result is to greatly reduce the fatalities that's a win - and it's not coming with any ethical quandaries as you suggest because guess what, if you don't go through the avoidable deaths maturing this technology you would STILL have been going through the avoidable deaths that are constantly associated with the CURRENT technology.
A much simpler solution would simply be to put touch sensors in the steering wheel and refuse to engage autopilot if the steering wheel isn't being touched. It also avoids difficulties with say - passengers who are watching a movie (as opposed to the driver). Also throw in a large visual and audible alarmif you let go of the wheel for more than 3 seconds or such and keeps blaring until you take it again.
> If companies can't form a cartel to manipulate a market, why should union's be allowed to?
Now for me, this is easier to answer: because union formation will most likely increase the overall fairness of the market by raising the negotiation power of people who individually have very little or (often) none at all. While cartel formation decreases the fairness of the market by increasing the negotiation power of organisations that already have too much.
Since I measure the validity of regulation by outcomes rather than having a principle either way (I don't think it's a matter of principle - economics should be a purely pragmatic exercise and the pragmatism should be focused around giving the best possible outcomes for the largest possible number of people) I can say that. Those who claim that it's an infringement on personal liberty to regulate markets however, cannot be consistent if they are then happy to regulate unions. If anything the latter type reduces individual liberty for a far greater number of people so should violate their principles more.
>There needs to be a balance
Now you're starting to sound like a socialist libertarian. Left libertarians say a free and fair contract cannot exist unless everybody involved has equal negotiating power, anything else must inevitably be coercion. The right libertarians on the other hand deny that most forms of coercion are in fact coercive (flying directly in the face of the vast majority of people's life experience - and thus rarely convincing anybody).
>My personal belief is market regulation is acceptable only to monetize some externality [wikipedia.org] for businesses
I don't agree that's the only acceptable regulation - but it is in a very needed one. Though externalities are a form of market failure and most libertarians deny that market failures exist (it's amazing how people who pride themselves on their objectivity so frequently deny the existence of things people see happening every day). Externalities are, in fact, one of the worst market failures - it means that contracts have shifted most of their cost onto third-parties who have no consented to being part of the contract. It's actually a far worse and far more illiberal thing than taxes. Being forced to subsidise somebody else's business without my consent is much worse than giving money to the government - because in the latter case at least SOME of that money will be spent on things I benefit from, heck some of it will be given to me (state pensions and such), in the former case it is simply stolen from me and I will never get any of it back.
>What makes you think I fail to realise that? The underlying culture of that nations is very different, as show with the tensions between the USSR and China.
What's that got to do with their economies ? Which is the subject I was discussing.
I don't think anybody seriously thinks everybody should earn the same. But I do think the degree of inequality matters. Too much is just as bad for the economy as too little.
You need some, because some people are only motivated by money - so you need the ability to have more as the only way to get those people to do anything. But too much and you end up with severe wealth concentration, which utterly skews the entire economy - and can leave you with productive economies that, nevertheless, fail at their most basic function: distributing goods to where they are needed.
It is also (and unsurprisingly) a fact that severe inequality harms both GDP and economic growth - ultimately, the end result of too much wealth concentration is that everybody makes less money than they otherwise would have. Even the rich.
Generally - I think a well functioning society would see the wealthiest person earn roughly twice what the poorest person earns. And by definition a functioning society does not have anybody who earns nothing (even if some people's earnings are from charity or social safety nets). But those figures are debateable. Better economists than me can give better numbers.
Currently though the difference is rather larger than that. In most companies the CEO earns roughly 800 times what the lowest paid worker does. I'm sorry - but it's simply mathematically and physically impossible that he could EVER be producing 800 times as much value.
The biggest problem here is that we've let market rates determine wages - which is silly because wages are not like any other goods or services, they are not constrained in the same way or produced in the same way - they are not governed by the same economic rules, and what's worse - this flat out ignores that wages are the ONLY product the vast majority have to sell - so de facto wages are life. It's people's time, their hopes and dreams. It's human beings trading parts of their life for the means to survive - and they don't get limited liability protection. That is simply not the same thing.
Yet the fundamentalist free marketeers always call on the market when it suits them to justify inequality, yet pretends it isn't one whenever it suits them. They tend to be anti-union while ignoring what, under their own theory, a union is: a comglomerate of small businesses who found they could be more profitable by merging. Then they call unions evil - because they don't WANT this kind of business to be more profitable, it's profits are costs to the businesses they actually like. Suddenly the market can no longer be trusted to make it's own rules and they advocate for things like so-called "right-to-work" laws that prevent the formation of union-shops. Ignoring that no company in history has ever been forced to be a union shop - becoming a union shop is a contract freely signed between two businesses which, by their own logic, both businesses believed they were better off from. A contract you can actually believe that about since both businesses have fairly equal power to negotiate (but oh they will do everything to prevent workers ever having real power in negotiations - contracts are only supposed to be "free" for the business owners).
The greatest example of libertarian hypocrisy is that every libertarian I have ever met opposed anti-trust laws and supported right-to-work laws and didn't even REALIZE that philosophically they regulate exactly the same thing: what type of exclusive supplier arrangements are acceptable.
Here, I am on safer ground philosophicallly - I support anti-trust laws and oppose right-to-work, but since I never claimed all market regulations are evil I haven't painted myself into a corner with an overly simplistic ideology. I can state that the former is good and the latter is bad because their effects differ - and I believe that regulation should be measured by it's effects, if the pros outweight the cons it's good regulation, if you can make the pro list longer or the con list shorter it can be better regulation - but it's only BAD regulation is the cons outweigh the pros.
>As a result, there were a couple of consequences; firstly, for Israel to unilaterally undo the internationally accepted annexation, declare the territory captured in 1967 liberated from Jordan and Egypt, and declare the new country of Palestine would be somewhat troublesome in international law
Since the UN general council overwhelmingly voted to accept Palestine's membership - which de facto recognizes it as an independent country - I doubt you will see any major attempts to push that angle and if anybody did try to push it - it is unlikely it would succeed since there is overwhelming international agreement that their independence is recognized. One the list of countries not recognizing it the US is literally the only one of any significance (and when the US is the only significant country doing something- invariably it's because it's doing something terrible).
No successful modern state has built itself up out of the rubble of war. Every one that did - had huge help from other states. Look at how much money the US spent in Japan and Germany to rebuild these countries after world war 2. Look at the fortune loaned to Britain for their rebuilding, which was only paid off about 3 years ago. So I think it is understood that a Palestinian country would need international assistance to get to a working state, I think the countries that voted them into the council knows this and are prepared to contribute.
A more interesting question is militarily. The current Israeli administration would never do it, but let's assume a future Israeli administration is less fundamentalist and goes for it. This is not that unlikely - 90% of American Jews under 30 are anti-zionist today and strongly critical of Israel, the same pattern is happening elsewhere - I have a very large Jewish friend circle and I don't know a single Jew who is not anti-zionist, in fact they all belong to BDS ! So a similar shift in Israel's own voting patterns is at least a conceivable possibility over time.
But what happens next ? What happens if the next government is determined to get the west bank and gaza back ? Radical shifts in elections tend to be followed by equally radically shifts in the opposite direction - so this too is likely. For a Palestinian state to survive in the medium term, it would need defence capabilities that would make an invasion sufficiently risky to make it highly unlikely - even for the American armed Israeli forces.
At the same time - establishing such a military in the new state would make it less likely to get the state in the first place. Not even the most liberal Israeli government would agree to establish a Palestine with sufficient military capability to represent an existential threat to themselves.
So the only possibility would be for a Palestine to get not only significant financial assistance from other countries but also defence agreements - foreign countries committing themselves to defending it if it's invaded so that it doesn't need it's own military.
Do that for 30 years or so and it will be new normal, and it could be a long term stable setup.
I don't think so either - frankly I think everybody has a right to live where-ever they want and ALL immigration laws are a flagrant violation of universal human rights since they all, by definition, act against basic rights of freedom of movement and freedom of association.
But the reality is that the people in this mess do believe that heritage determines a right to live somewhere (both sides) and to ignore that is just plain futile.
If nothing else, where you are born SHOULD count - and that means pretty much all of them have an equal say now.
Not to mention that there are distinct problems with your thinking so I don't accept it entirely. For a start it massively benefits those who happen to descent from the last major round of conquest, to the detriment of everybody else, and offers no route to a more equitable world. We decided in the recent path that conquest was not actually an acceptable way to acquire land. Conveniently this was decided by the same people who did the last round of conquering, and so made sure nobody could take what they had conquered away from them. Everybody else got screwed. For the most part - they are still screwed. This is not a stable situation, it is, in fact, a situation that will lead to ongoing violence, unrest and bloodshed. Fixing it isn't just a moral imperative, it's a survival strategy.
Except that you deliberately chose the worst possible example while I generalized over a region that included the Soviet Union and East Germany - both major production centres in the past. And if you think communism is a thin patina on top in China - then what you're failing to realize is that from about 1970 onwards that's exactly how it was in the Soviet Union. The communism you know from American movies and propaganda never actually existed.
How about stealimg 60 million dollars from taxpayers by selling vapourware to the government ?
They are both evil but in this case Oracle was the company trying to destroy the entire software industry for all but a few big players. We didnt support google because of who is or isnt evil. We supported google because if they lost we would all lose with them.
Do you think anybody on earth would deny that the Afrikaners are a distinct nation ? Do you know the history of how they became one ? The Dutch created a halfway point for trips to the east at Cape Point in 1652. Among other things they brought in a number of so-called free burghers (free citizens) to build farms there so the supply station would have something to supply.
In 1658 these folk sent a letter to the Lords 17 (the directors of the corporation) renouncing their ties to the Netherlands and declaring that they have made Africa their home and calling themselves "Afrikaanders".
From that point onward, they were a distinct nation - and they only became moreso over time, even as that nation expanded to include a large number of French refugees (the Huguenots) as well as settlers from various other European nations (most notably Germans - several Afrikaans surnames are of German origin). 300 years later, nobody has any questions about their nationhood. Some firebrand politicians question their claim to this land being their heritage, but their nationhood is never disputed.
So apparently you can become a nation in 6 years if you are white... even if your assertion is correct, why couldn't Palestinians be one in 80 years ? Every nation was once a young nation - every nation on earth was once recently-founded. People develop a shared identity and become a nation, how long ago that happened is utterly irrelevant to that question - but it has nothing to do with the point I was making anyway.
My point was that the religious/historical claim of Jews to the land of Israel is no stronger than that of the Palestinians since they clearly have equally ancient roots in the area. What they called themselves or whether they saw themselves as distinct for all that time really doesn't even come into the discussion - it just doesn't affect anything.
More importantly though - Arabs were never really one nation. The only thing they really shared was a language and a religion, but there are rather more Arab nations than there are Arab countries - and practically every sect within Islam considers themselves a seperate nation.
A lot of the problems in the Middle East have the exact same root cause as much of the problems in Africa: colonial drawn borders that were done with zero consideration for the historic borders between different nations, tribes and groups. So some nations ended up split over multiple countries, some countries ended up containing multiple (often unfriendly) nations (none of whom are ever happy with a goverment dominated by any of the others).
Now throw the usual politicking on top of that mess and you get the world today. Eritrea for example was a distinct country at least 3000 years ago. It's inhabitants are Coptic Christians who consider their brand of Christianity the oldest extant church in the world - with roots traced directly to the first church in Jerusalem and their first church established by St. Paul himself - and they are still practising the same religion. Yet Britain basically gave Eritrea to their neighbour Ethiopia for a long time. Ethiopia was very happy about this because it meant that they had a port - the Eritreans were not happy however to be ruled by a massive country with a completely different religion (Ethiopia is the birthplace of Rastafarianism) and culture and language.
Eventually in 1994 Eritrea became independent again (the last colony in Africa to regain independence) and the country is doing well. Ethiopia has been threatening to invade and conquer them ever since, which has not helped, but at least so far the international community has managed to dissuade Ethiopia from actually doing so, and ironically this appears to have benefitted both countries. Ethiopia is now the fastest growing economy in the world and will, if they can maintain what they did in the last decade, be the largest economy in Africa within 15 years surpassing both Nigeria and South Africa.
This is the same country that was the poster-child for starvation in the 1980's and early
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/e...
Here you go, now that I'm not at work and have time, it took me all of 5 seconds on google to find and article that references pretty much all the research on the topic and confirms my conclusion: Palestinians are descended from the same group as Jewish people.
Not really, I live in South Africa, we were able to end the cycle. What I am saying is that you can't end a cycle of death and hate with the same thinking that caused it, before you can end it, you have to be willing to change how you think about the issue and what outcomes you would accept.
Well I dont have links for studies I read sporadically over the past two decades.
The short summarry of the Tel Aviv study however contained a line I will never forget. "With biology we have answered one of the greatest mysteries in history. What happened to the 10 lost tribes of Israel ? The answer is: they stayed right here and are known as Palestinians"
In fact, it's WORSE than South African appartheid. Appartheid actually gave black people their countries with their own governments. It was mostly for show (and the world wasn't buying tickets) as the white South African government constantly interfered in the homeland country's elections to ensure pro-appartheid governments were elected.
But there were enough whites who sincerely believed the propaganda of "a country for every nation" that they actually created self-governing countries for the various black tribes. Post 1994 all but two of those countries (Lesotho and Swaziland) voluntarily became part of South Africa again.
On the other hand you have the west bank and Gaza strip. Land that under a UN resolution Israel has no jurisdiction or rights over. Land that has been de facto recognized by almost all the countries on the UN as being the independent state of Palestine - which is under illegal military occupation by a foreign invader. So the local citizens cannot claim rights from their own government (as that is in exile) and have no rights from the invaders either. They are effectively a stateless people despite living on the land the world has recognized as being theirs.
A two-state solution could, conceivably work, but only if it's done sincerely. None of those "puppet governments in a puppet country we only created to make ourselves feel better" bullshit South Africa pulled. Israel actually proposed stuff like that in the past and it got rejected (which was exactly as expected) because what Israel in past decades called a "two-state solution" actually made the Palestinian "state" basically an Israeli colony where the government would be effectively constrained to do whatever Tel Aviv said.
To work - it would need to be given true and genuine independence. A border agreed on and respected by both sides. The withdrawal of the Israeli military to inside the border and the cessation of attacks across that border by Palestinians including a firm commitment (which they must be seen to hold to) by the Palestinian government that any future attackers be brought to justice and the more egregious ones extradited to face justice in Israel. This would need to be a tit-for-tat agreement as well. If Israelis attack Palestinians, they should also face extradition and sentencing in Palestinian courts as a result.
A completely fair and evenhanded deal is the only one that can work. It would leave both sides with aspects they deem quite unfair in light of current events - but if you do anything else than you will simply breed another generation with something to be angry about. A feeling of unfairness today in a fair law, is better than genuine unfairness for years in an unfair one.
A father of 10 ?
As a father of one, I'm pretty sure he was begging them to pull the trigger. Mark that one down as a mercy killing.
Can I shout "Theater!" in a crowded firehouse ?
Google it. The university of Tel Aviv study is perhaps the most enlightening.
>There never was a country called Palestine in history
Erm... yes there was. It existed until 1948 (for the last part of it's existence it was a British colony).
There is also such a country today. It consists of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and it's capital city is Jerusalem. This was recognized by the world at large as a de facto country when they were granted membership of the UN in 2012. Israel is illegally occupying land that is officially considered a different country by virtually all the governments of the world.
That is actually rather important. A key reason appartheid failed is because the "countries" it created for black people (the so-called homeland states) were never recognized as independent countries by the UN or any other countries. The lack of international recognition was a flat-out refusal to accept these forced resettlement locations as a human rights compliant policy and these puppet-states as "giving people their own country". The inverse is also true. When the world recognizes a country as existing, it exists and if a different government is occupying it that is an act of war.
Neither. They are the descendants of Jews who stayed behind during the diaspora.
>To the Palestinian yes, but isn't the basis of the establishment of israeli settlement is that on their magic book, they are the rightful owner of the land, since their $deity told them so?
Except of course that gene studies have proven that the Palestinian people are the descendents of the Jews who stayed behind during the diaspora (contrary to the folktales of European Jews - a lot of them had not left). They changed religion over the centuries, but they are the same people. If the magic book was to be the guideline their claim would be STRONGER since they are the SAME people it was promised to - and they are the ones who never abandoned it.
Granted, this was not even a theory in 1948, we didn't have gene studies then and nobody believe the local records. But we know better today.
For a start - they are a different race. They are not Arabs ethnically. They are semmites. The exact same race as the Jews. Numerous genetic studies have proven over and over again: the Palestinians ARE Jews, they just changed religion. They are the jews that stayed behind when the diaspora was happening.