I'll bet you a public "I was wrong and you are right." Heck, I'll post it in my journal if you like. But let me ask you, how many white guys get the same deal? A lot of them. Was your Hispanic partner an idiot who did not deserve the offers she received? Or was she in fact, quite smart, and thus likely to get those same offers whatever her race? Think carefully before you answer that, does she read Slashdot? Maybe some sort of code is in order, refer to her as your "loving genius partner" if you agree, or your "genius loving partner" if you don't.;)
Now, on to what I will accept as evidence: statistics showing that white men have worse social outcomes overall than minorities. Show me minorities making more on average than their white male counterparts. If you can't show that, everything else is moot, because whatever advantage the minorities are receiving has obviously not outweighed the extant racism holding them back. Or do you think minorities are simply less capable than white men?
you actually mean 'merging' with them. galaxies do not consume stellar material to burn. stellar material just merges.
I don't consume Cheetos and Mountain Dew, I merge with them. I don't burn most of them, they simply merge into a nearly circular ring around my midsection.
You know you're in *real* trouble when you genuinely can't lose weight because you got so fat in the first place that your gravitational field has become self-sustaining.
But on the plus side, you get to have some very pretty moons.
Your story involves a person taking every plant of a species and genetically altering them in the course of one human lifetime, then suddenly forgetting their lifelong project and abandoning them. It is a ludicrous example.
I'm not pushing a popular viewpoint, I'm pushing a verifiable, correct viewpoint. There are numerous right wing conservatives and libertarians who hate the thought that perhaps their selfish world views are not justified, and they mod me down all the time. The idea that we live in a dog eat dog world where any atrocity is justified by social Darwinist 'survival of the fittest' is very popular, because it excuses the inexcusable. Selfish people love a theory which tells them their success came from being 'better' than everyone else, and not only that, but helping others is actually detrimental. It is the ultimate theory for narcissists and sociopaths the world over.
I agree that truth is preferred over, well, anything false. Which is why I argue against the falsehoods you spread.
We have more than enough resources to feed, clothe, house, and medically treat everyone on the planet. The problem is resource distribution. A small minority are hogging all the resources.
I'm telling you, you are wrong about genocide and I challenge you to find any evidence to support your claim. You can't and so you simply make your unsupported assertions again, as if asserting them twice makes them any less false.
Look up 'The Continuum Concept' for examples of tribes that are non-hierarchical and do not practice war of any kind. Look up 'Saharasia' for more information on the origins of organized human violence.
Your theories are not just wrong, they are all self serving. I assert that you hold them not because of any evidence, but because believing those theories excuses your basest, most selfish behaviors. I say that because, when pressed for evidence, you simply repeat your conclusions. You have not even built up a chain of reasoning that leads you to those conclusions, you just "know" they must be true.
Of course, all it would take from you would be a little evidence and I would be proven wrong. I'm not holding my breath though.
It points out that there is no such thing as devolution. Loss of genetic material may be adaptive, and I gave examples of such. So a species may evolve to greater fitness by ridding itself of unnecessry information.
All ones, and all zeros are not boring and useless, saying so shows you do not understand basic information theory. Each bit is a yes/no question. All ones means 'yes' to all questions, all zeros means 'no' to all questions. And perfectly random data still has meaning, each bit still answers a question.
Not off topic at all, it's always good for me to get the insight of a professional in the field, as I am no more than an interested amateur. And I see your point, I guess it is poorly defined. But were the artists really starving? Hard to be an artist when you can't lift your arms...
you actually mean 'merging' with them. galaxies do not consume stellar material to burn. stellar material just merges.
I don't consume Cheetos and Mountain Dew, I merge with them. I don't burn most of them, they simply merge into a nearly circular ring around my midsection.
First global warming, now solar system-eating far galaxy monsters. What could possibly be worse?
I'll take a shot at that: How about The Big Rip? Cosmic expansion increasing exponentially quickly so that every atom, no, every point of space time retreats from every other point faster than the speed of light. Everything in the universe ripping apart in an instant. OOoooohhhh! Scary!
I grasped the point of the story. I don't think you did, though. What you give as an example happens in nature all the time. The environment changes. Species adapt. The environment changes back, Species adapt. Or they don't. So what?
Let me give you a counter example that is JUST as realistic as your carefully chosen contrivance. We protect our less fortunate, resulting in them losing all intelligence, ability and initiative. Then a warlike alien race comes along and kills everything smart on the planet. Our docile, unintelligent cousins are the only ones that survive the purge, and, millions of years later, re-evolve intelligence and go on to conquer the galaxy. But if we hadn't created that docile, unintelligent group, we never would have had the chance.
Anyone can contrive a special case where their theory holds some water. That is not the point though.
And hey, look, me calling you out for not understanding something is not an ad hominem. It's just a sad fact. I'll say it again: you do not understand the theory of evolution. I've given you plenty of examples. A smarter man would have realized his error and conceded defeat. Everyone here agrees with me, and not you, and trust me, there are plenty of actual scientists who know more about evolution than both of us modding this site, if I was saying anything incorrect, I wouldn't be getting these +5 insightfuls.
Unless, omigawd! A liberal conspiracy to keep the honest conservative down! Oh noes! I'm betting that's how you explain it to yourself.
Ah, yes, having less bits means less information, as long as the compression ratio remains the same, and for DNA, it does. That page shows that cyanobacteria are free living species, but some of them lost the information needed to live independently and became, essentially, organs in another species. Species lose information all the time, in the example I gave, plants on an island lose the information needed to make thorns. We may be in the process of losing the information needed to make an appendix. Evolution is about throwing away the no longer relevant, as much as it is about innovating.
Well, what I meant was, you may have a localized scarcity this week, and a surplus next week. You do need both, obviously, but not at the same time.
Humans have two modes of behavior, feast mode and famine mode. Normally, we operate in feast mode. We are that good at exploiting our environment for resources. But we do have the other mode, for when times are tight, we act selfishly. The problem is that, before agriculture, we just moved on when times were tight. We may have faced some mild population pressures as people moved away from impacted areas, but this was solved with low level warfare, which is more of an extreme sport than real war.
After agriculture, we had settled and couldn't move. We had a complex society and a surplus that enabled us to act differently when famine hit. Instead of moving on,we stayed until the situation was desperate, and then descended in a starving, crazed mass against our neighbors, for the first time ever.
We had an entire generation of post traumatic stress disordered parents raising a whole generation of kids with no myelin sheaths on their nerves. This caused the 'famine' mode to get locked in. Even if a culture rejected this and fought off the invaders, they would face the same consequences. This is the origin of organized human violence. Before this environmental catastrophe, you will find no evidence of walled cities. No weapons made solely for killing humans. No mass graves. After the Sahara dried up, we see all these things spreading out from the epicenter of violence.
So, before we went crazy as a species, what you say was not usually true. Only in the bad times. After we went crazy, yes, what you say is true. But that does not make it right, or even natural (as we could just as easily be cooperative, and should be, given the relative abundance of resources we enjoy now.)
If your ideas are true, I challenge you to find evidence of prehistoric genocide to back it up. Something before agriculture. Shouldn't be too hard to find if we genocided each other all the time for hundreds of thousands of years. Go on, I'll wait while you look for evidence.
You still have not demonstrated how a locked door obviates the need for a search. That locked door is not going to keep a terrorist from blowing up a plane full of passengers and fuel right as it flies over a densely populated area.
The environment is constantly changing. What is a threat today might be an ally tomorrow. This plant obviously had some characteristics that Jane found useful, those characteristics become the fitness criteria. If the plant had not appealed to Jane, it would not have been the one that survived. Now, just like the plant that got blown to a new island, this plant faces a different environment, one dominated by the whims of Jane rather than climate and predation. Evolution still happens. The plants that appeal more to Jane will be selected for.
And then the environment changes again, now the whims of Jane do not matter and the environment does again. First: so what? If the plant was adaptable enough to change genetically in the course of one environmentalist's lifetime, it obviously has a whole host of unexpressed genes just waiting for the right opportunity, and it will have an easy time shifting back as well.
Second, these random mutations combine and recombine in different ways. Even something that is a disadvantage can be an advantage when combined in novel ways with other mutations. Say a species develops a protein pathway that synthesizes a weak poison, which damages the individuals survival rate. Unless it is a guaranteed killer, it won't be selected out entirely, it will remain in a small percentage of the species.
Now, we have another mutation. This one strengthens another protein pathway, making the poison virulent. Guaranteed death for any individual that inherits both. But finally, we add in another mutation, one that protects from the poison. If an individual gets these three mutations, they are now in possession of a very nice defense.
So, even 'bad' mutations, when combined in all the trillions and trillions of combinations possible in each generation, may form something good. You can not even say what is good and bad until you see the results. By removing one set of selective pressures, all you are doing is letting another set of criteria come to the fore. It is simply not possible to remove all selection pressures.
You see, your "Jane" story happens all the time in the real world. Environments change, fitness criteria change, things adapt, and then have to adapt again as the environment shifts back. There is nothing wrong with that. It is entirely natural.
Again, all you have demonstrated here is how little you understand about evolution. Unfortunately, you are just repeating hoary old arguments that were debunked hundreds of years ago. It makes responding to you like shooting fish in a barrel. So... did you read that site yet? Here, just in case you missed it before, and to make sure no one reading this becomes confused by your fantasy of evolution: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/evolit/s05/web1/mheeney.html
Wrong, and the wiki page you link to shows it. God damn it, man, you should at least read the pages you link to. Evolution does not increase the total information available in the genome. Holding on to all that information comes at a cost, and so, when it is advantageous to let go of useless information, that is what happens. Evolution does not have a direction, sorry.
You could make your argument more persuasive with some kind of statistics or citations to back it up. What you've got now doesn't even qualify as anecdotal, it's just bald faced assertion.
Look, I can make bald faced assertions, too: Our society stacks the deck for white men. Anyone who thinks the deck is stacked for minorities is a lunatic who can't be trusted to make simple, fact based observations. White men have power and privilege. Affirmative action hasn't even put a dent in the inequalities. For proof, I call your attention to the CEOs and board members of our fortune 500 corporations; our local, state, and federal elected officials; and our prisons. Oops, now I've gone and actually backed up my assertions with evidence. Looks like your argument is pretty well debunked. You could have at least tried to make it a challenge.
I am not a doctor, but have had lots of doctors like the one he described. I almost died in an ER before they found out that stress was not what was causing my hands, legs and face to go numb and become confused. The cardiologist ordered a simple blood test and lo an behold the answer was right there.
Doctors tend think they are artists when they would be better served being engineers and scientists. Not ordering tests and just guessing does not make you a better doctor.
I hate it when my hands, legs and face get confused. My hands put on shoes, my legs try to talk, and my face tries to type.
Sorry, I couldn't help it. But here's a doctor joke to help you forget what I jerk I am.
So this doctor dies and goes to heaven. There's a huge long line at the pearly gates, but the doctor doesn't want to wait. He goes up to St. Peter and say, "Hey, I'm a doctor. Don't I deserve to go ahead of all these schlubs?" And St. Peter says, "First come first server, go wait in line." SO the doctor is waiting, when he sees another doctor walk right up to the front of the line, wave to St. Peter, and stroll on in to heaven. Well, now the first doctor is really pissed, and he runs up to St. Peter, yelling, "I thought you said first come first served, how come that other doctor got in ?" And St. Peter just laughs and says, "That wasn't a doctor. That was God. He just likes to play doctor some times."
Self actualization is actually well defined in psychological theory, but yes, it has been co-opted by pop-psychology.
It is very possible for anyone who has their lower order needs met to be self actualized. That is the point of Maslow's Heirarchy of needs. The theory is, once one has one's basic physiological needs like food and water met, one can focus on the sociological needs, like status and love, and only once those are met, can one focus on being the person one wants to be.
And here is the thing, for me. I would have no problem with some folks making millions of times what other folks met, as long as everyone had their basic physiological needs met. It is only when some are starving and others make millions that I have a problem.
It is very possible to be self actualized in our current work force. But remember, in order to be self actualized, on has to have met one's sociological needs. One can not become truly self actualized unless one has met the need for social status and acceptance. Our society maintains an economic condition where a certain percentage of people will not be allowed to contribute, and thus not meet their sociological need to contribute. It is our stated policy not to let unemployment fall too low, lest the evil inflation rear its ugly head. Which means we are saying, a certain percentage of Americans will NOT be able to meet their sociological need to contribute. That sad truth is inherent in our economic system.
No, evolution does not increase the information available to species. Look at mitochondria, they have lost all the information they needed to live as separate individuals and are now simply part of other creatures, although they still have their own DNA. Yet they are among the most successful organisms on the planet, living in every cell of nearly every organism.
I am tolerant. I'm just not tolerant of intolerance. Intolerance is sick, selfish, and twisted, and I will call it such.
There is no way to make all information irrelevant to survival. Helping the less fit simply changes the fitness criteria. It means that they are not less fit anymore.
Look at plants that make it to a new island. The thorns they had are no longer useful, because there are no large herbivores. In fact, making thorns then becomes a net loss. The plants lose the ability to do so. Are they 'less fit' becasue they have no thorns? Nope, they are more fit, even though having no thorns would make them less fit in a different environment.
What you forget in your analysis is local scarcity and surplus. Pure competition is only the optimal strategy when resources are universally scarce or universally abundant. When you may face localized scarcity or surplus of resources, then cooperation becomes the dominant strategy.
This has been shown in games theory experiments. You may want to look up the results of such experiments as the dictator game, the public goods game, the prisoner's dilemma game, and, well, any of the games described in games theory. The fact is, human beings are more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than self interest. People will harm themselves in order to punish unfairness. We are not rational, self interested actors. Cooperation is what evolution lead to in humans, because that strategy is more efficient.
There are many reasons for individuals to cooperate, and not all of them benefit the individual, because evolution does not just work on the individual level. If you can help three or four close relatives succeed and breed, then you have passed on your genes (statistically speaking) to the next generation, even if you don't breed. Also, there is cooperation of the form, "I scratch your back, you scratch mine," or mutual benefit. Then there is the handicap principle: giving away resources proves your fitness to potential mates. It works like the peacock's tail, a decided handicap to survival, but a useful marker for fitness. Obviously, if a peacock can survive and thrive with such a gaudy tail, he must be pretty fit.
Fortunately for us as a species, we are not wired the way you think we are.
I do believe the sense I am spouting. Your definition of the theory of evolution is incorrect. You assume that the less fortunate are less fit, but part of our fitness as a species is our ability to cooperate. By helping the less fortunate, we put them in a position to help us.
There is no such thing as "de-evolution." The only information that gets erased is that which is no longer relevant to survival. The fitness criteria have changed, and what was fit is no longer, what wasn't fit, now is. In fct, for any trait you care to name as being 'fit' I can give you a counter example where it isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll bet you a public "I was wrong and you are right." Heck, I'll post it in my journal if you like. But let me ask you, how many white guys get the same deal? A lot of them. Was your Hispanic partner an idiot who did not deserve the offers she received? Or was she in fact, quite smart, and thus likely to get those same offers whatever her race? Think carefully before you answer that, does she read Slashdot? Maybe some sort of code is in order, refer to her as your "loving genius partner" if you agree, or your "genius loving partner" if you don't. ;)
Now, on to what I will accept as evidence: statistics showing that white men have worse social outcomes overall than minorities. Show me minorities making more on average than their white male counterparts. If you can't show that, everything else is moot, because whatever advantage the minorities are receiving has obviously not outweighed the extant racism holding them back. Or do you think minorities are simply less capable than white men?
you actually mean 'merging' with them. galaxies do not consume stellar material to burn. stellar material just merges.
I don't consume Cheetos and Mountain Dew, I merge with them. I don't burn most of them, they simply merge into a nearly circular ring around my midsection.
You know you're in *real* trouble when you genuinely can't lose weight because you got so fat in the first place that your gravitational field has become self-sustaining.
But on the plus side, you get to have some very pretty moons.
Your story involves a person taking every plant of a species and genetically altering them in the course of one human lifetime, then suddenly forgetting their lifelong project and abandoning them. It is a ludicrous example.
I'm not pushing a popular viewpoint, I'm pushing a verifiable, correct viewpoint. There are numerous right wing conservatives and libertarians who hate the thought that perhaps their selfish world views are not justified, and they mod me down all the time. The idea that we live in a dog eat dog world where any atrocity is justified by social Darwinist 'survival of the fittest' is very popular, because it excuses the inexcusable. Selfish people love a theory which tells them their success came from being 'better' than everyone else, and not only that, but helping others is actually detrimental. It is the ultimate theory for narcissists and sociopaths the world over.
I agree that truth is preferred over, well, anything false. Which is why I argue against the falsehoods you spread.
We have more than enough resources to feed, clothe, house, and medically treat everyone on the planet. The problem is resource distribution. A small minority are hogging all the resources.
I'm telling you, you are wrong about genocide and I challenge you to find any evidence to support your claim. You can't and so you simply make your unsupported assertions again, as if asserting them twice makes them any less false.
Look up 'The Continuum Concept' for examples of tribes that are non-hierarchical and do not practice war of any kind. Look up 'Saharasia' for more information on the origins of organized human violence.
Your theories are not just wrong, they are all self serving. I assert that you hold them not because of any evidence, but because believing those theories excuses your basest, most selfish behaviors. I say that because, when pressed for evidence, you simply repeat your conclusions. You have not even built up a chain of reasoning that leads you to those conclusions, you just "know" they must be true.
Of course, all it would take from you would be a little evidence and I would be proven wrong. I'm not holding my breath though.
It points out that there is no such thing as devolution. Loss of genetic material may be adaptive, and I gave examples of such. So a species may evolve to greater fitness by ridding itself of unnecessry information.
All ones, and all zeros are not boring and useless, saying so shows you do not understand basic information theory. Each bit is a yes/no question. All ones means 'yes' to all questions, all zeros means 'no' to all questions. And perfectly random data still has meaning, each bit still answers a question.
Not off topic at all, it's always good for me to get the insight of a professional in the field, as I am no more than an interested amateur. And I see your point, I guess it is poorly defined. But were the artists really starving? Hard to be an artist when you can't lift your arms...
The neutrino! Massless and fast. Folks, this should be quite a match.
Neutrinos have mass.
you actually mean 'merging' with them. galaxies do not consume stellar material to burn. stellar material just merges.
I don't consume Cheetos and Mountain Dew, I merge with them. I don't burn most of them, they simply merge into a nearly circular ring around my midsection.
First global warming, now solar system-eating far galaxy monsters. What could possibly be worse?
I'll take a shot at that: How about The Big Rip? Cosmic expansion increasing exponentially quickly so that every atom, no, every point of space time retreats from every other point faster than the speed of light. Everything in the universe ripping apart in an instant. OOoooohhhh! Scary!
I grasped the point of the story. I don't think you did, though. What you give as an example happens in nature all the time. The environment changes. Species adapt. The environment changes back, Species adapt. Or they don't. So what?
Let me give you a counter example that is JUST as realistic as your carefully chosen contrivance. We protect our less fortunate, resulting in them losing all intelligence, ability and initiative. Then a warlike alien race comes along and kills everything smart on the planet. Our docile, unintelligent cousins are the only ones that survive the purge, and, millions of years later, re-evolve intelligence and go on to conquer the galaxy. But if we hadn't created that docile, unintelligent group, we never would have had the chance.
Anyone can contrive a special case where their theory holds some water. That is not the point though.
And hey, look, me calling you out for not understanding something is not an ad hominem. It's just a sad fact. I'll say it again: you do not understand the theory of evolution. I've given you plenty of examples. A smarter man would have realized his error and conceded defeat. Everyone here agrees with me, and not you, and trust me, there are plenty of actual scientists who know more about evolution than both of us modding this site, if I was saying anything incorrect, I wouldn't be getting these +5 insightfuls.
Unless, omigawd! A liberal conspiracy to keep the honest conservative down! Oh noes! I'm betting that's how you explain it to yourself.
Ah, yes, having less bits means less information, as long as the compression ratio remains the same, and for DNA, it does. That page shows that cyanobacteria are free living species, but some of them lost the information needed to live independently and became, essentially, organs in another species. Species lose information all the time, in the example I gave, plants on an island lose the information needed to make thorns. We may be in the process of losing the information needed to make an appendix. Evolution is about throwing away the no longer relevant, as much as it is about innovating.
Well, what I meant was, you may have a localized scarcity this week, and a surplus next week. You do need both, obviously, but not at the same time.
Humans have two modes of behavior, feast mode and famine mode. Normally, we operate in feast mode. We are that good at exploiting our environment for resources. But we do have the other mode, for when times are tight, we act selfishly. The problem is that, before agriculture, we just moved on when times were tight. We may have faced some mild population pressures as people moved away from impacted areas, but this was solved with low level warfare, which is more of an extreme sport than real war.
After agriculture, we had settled and couldn't move. We had a complex society and a surplus that enabled us to act differently when famine hit. Instead of moving on,we stayed until the situation was desperate, and then descended in a starving, crazed mass against our neighbors, for the first time ever.
We had an entire generation of post traumatic stress disordered parents raising a whole generation of kids with no myelin sheaths on their nerves. This caused the 'famine' mode to get locked in. Even if a culture rejected this and fought off the invaders, they would face the same consequences. This is the origin of organized human violence. Before this environmental catastrophe, you will find no evidence of walled cities. No weapons made solely for killing humans. No mass graves. After the Sahara dried up, we see all these things spreading out from the epicenter of violence.
So, before we went crazy as a species, what you say was not usually true. Only in the bad times. After we went crazy, yes, what you say is true. But that does not make it right, or even natural (as we could just as easily be cooperative, and should be, given the relative abundance of resources we enjoy now.)
If your ideas are true, I challenge you to find evidence of prehistoric genocide to back it up. Something before agriculture. Shouldn't be too hard to find if we genocided each other all the time for hundreds of thousands of years. Go on, I'll wait while you look for evidence.
You still have not demonstrated how a locked door obviates the need for a search. That locked door is not going to keep a terrorist from blowing up a plane full of passengers and fuel right as it flies over a densely populated area.
The environment is constantly changing. What is a threat today might be an ally tomorrow. This plant obviously had some characteristics that Jane found useful, those characteristics become the fitness criteria. If the plant had not appealed to Jane, it would not have been the one that survived. Now, just like the plant that got blown to a new island, this plant faces a different environment, one dominated by the whims of Jane rather than climate and predation. Evolution still happens. The plants that appeal more to Jane will be selected for.
And then the environment changes again, now the whims of Jane do not matter and the environment does again. First: so what? If the plant was adaptable enough to change genetically in the course of one environmentalist's lifetime, it obviously has a whole host of unexpressed genes just waiting for the right opportunity, and it will have an easy time shifting back as well.
Second, these random mutations combine and recombine in different ways. Even something that is a disadvantage can be an advantage when combined in novel ways with other mutations. Say a species develops a protein pathway that synthesizes a weak poison, which damages the individuals survival rate. Unless it is a guaranteed killer, it won't be selected out entirely, it will remain in a small percentage of the species.
Now, we have another mutation. This one strengthens another protein pathway, making the poison virulent. Guaranteed death for any individual that inherits both. But finally, we add in another mutation, one that protects from the poison. If an individual gets these three mutations, they are now in possession of a very nice defense.
So, even 'bad' mutations, when combined in all the trillions and trillions of combinations possible in each generation, may form something good. You can not even say what is good and bad until you see the results. By removing one set of selective pressures, all you are doing is letting another set of criteria come to the fore. It is simply not possible to remove all selection pressures.
You see, your "Jane" story happens all the time in the real world. Environments change, fitness criteria change, things adapt, and then have to adapt again as the environment shifts back. There is nothing wrong with that. It is entirely natural.
Again, all you have demonstrated here is how little you understand about evolution. Unfortunately, you are just repeating hoary old arguments that were debunked hundreds of years ago. It makes responding to you like shooting fish in a barrel. So... did you read that site yet? Here, just in case you missed it before, and to make sure no one reading this becomes confused by your fantasy of evolution: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/evolit/s05/web1/mheeney.html
Wrong, and the wiki page you link to shows it. God damn it, man, you should at least read the pages you link to. Evolution does not increase the total information available in the genome. Holding on to all that information comes at a cost, and so, when it is advantageous to let go of useless information, that is what happens. Evolution does not have a direction, sorry.
Ah, yes, the Penguin, Sister Mary Stigmata. Looks like she's really up shit creek!
You could make your argument more persuasive with some kind of statistics or citations to back it up. What you've got now doesn't even qualify as anecdotal, it's just bald faced assertion.
Look, I can make bald faced assertions, too: Our society stacks the deck for white men. Anyone who thinks the deck is stacked for minorities is a lunatic who can't be trusted to make simple, fact based observations. White men have power and privilege. Affirmative action hasn't even put a dent in the inequalities. For proof, I call your attention to the CEOs and board members of our fortune 500 corporations; our local, state, and federal elected officials; and our prisons. Oops, now I've gone and actually backed up my assertions with evidence. Looks like your argument is pretty well debunked. You could have at least tried to make it a challenge.
I am not a doctor, but have had lots of doctors like the one he described. I almost died in an ER before they found out that stress was not what was causing my hands, legs and face to go numb and become confused. The cardiologist ordered a simple blood test and lo an behold the answer was right there.
Doctors tend think they are artists when they would be better served being engineers and scientists. Not ordering tests and just guessing does not make you a better doctor.
I hate it when my hands, legs and face get confused. My hands put on shoes, my legs try to talk, and my face tries to type.
Sorry, I couldn't help it. But here's a doctor joke to help you forget what I jerk I am.
So this doctor dies and goes to heaven. There's a huge long line at the pearly gates, but the doctor doesn't want to wait. He goes up to St. Peter and say, "Hey, I'm a doctor. Don't I deserve to go ahead of all these schlubs?" And St. Peter says, "First come first server, go wait in line." SO the doctor is waiting, when he sees another doctor walk right up to the front of the line, wave to St. Peter, and stroll on in to heaven. Well, now the first doctor is really pissed, and he runs up to St. Peter, yelling, "I thought you said first come first served, how come that other doctor got in ?" And St. Peter just laughs and says, "That wasn't a doctor. That was God. He just likes to play doctor some times."
QQ more, n00b.
Fail. You don't need to reach the cockpit. You just need the message, "I have a bomb" to reach the cockpit.
Self actualization is actually well defined in psychological theory, but yes, it has been co-opted by pop-psychology.
It is very possible for anyone who has their lower order needs met to be self actualized. That is the point of Maslow's Heirarchy of needs. The theory is, once one has one's basic physiological needs like food and water met, one can focus on the sociological needs, like status and love, and only once those are met, can one focus on being the person one wants to be.
And here is the thing, for me. I would have no problem with some folks making millions of times what other folks met, as long as everyone had their basic physiological needs met. It is only when some are starving and others make millions that I have a problem.
It is very possible to be self actualized in our current work force. But remember, in order to be self actualized, on has to have met one's sociological needs. One can not become truly self actualized unless one has met the need for social status and acceptance. Our society maintains an economic condition where a certain percentage of people will not be allowed to contribute, and thus not meet their sociological need to contribute. It is our stated policy not to let unemployment fall too low, lest the evil inflation rear its ugly head. Which means we are saying, a certain percentage of Americans will NOT be able to meet their sociological need to contribute. That sad truth is inherent in our economic system.
No, evolution does not increase the information available to species. Look at mitochondria, they have lost all the information they needed to live as separate individuals and are now simply part of other creatures, although they still have their own DNA. Yet they are among the most successful organisms on the planet, living in every cell of nearly every organism.
I am tolerant. I'm just not tolerant of intolerance. Intolerance is sick, selfish, and twisted, and I will call it such.
There is no way to make all information irrelevant to survival. Helping the less fit simply changes the fitness criteria. It means that they are not less fit anymore.
Look at plants that make it to a new island. The thorns they had are no longer useful, because there are no large herbivores. In fact, making thorns then becomes a net loss. The plants lose the ability to do so. Are they 'less fit' becasue they have no thorns? Nope, they are more fit, even though having no thorns would make them less fit in a different environment.
Here it is again, in case you missed it: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/evolit/s05/web1/mheeney.html
What you forget in your analysis is local scarcity and surplus. Pure competition is only the optimal strategy when resources are universally scarce or universally abundant. When you may face localized scarcity or surplus of resources, then cooperation becomes the dominant strategy.
This has been shown in games theory experiments. You may want to look up the results of such experiments as the dictator game, the public goods game, the prisoner's dilemma game, and, well, any of the games described in games theory. The fact is, human beings are more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than self interest. People will harm themselves in order to punish unfairness. We are not rational, self interested actors. Cooperation is what evolution lead to in humans, because that strategy is more efficient.
There are many reasons for individuals to cooperate, and not all of them benefit the individual, because evolution does not just work on the individual level. If you can help three or four close relatives succeed and breed, then you have passed on your genes (statistically speaking) to the next generation, even if you don't breed. Also, there is cooperation of the form, "I scratch your back, you scratch mine," or mutual benefit. Then there is the handicap principle: giving away resources proves your fitness to potential mates. It works like the peacock's tail, a decided handicap to survival, but a useful marker for fitness. Obviously, if a peacock can survive and thrive with such a gaudy tail, he must be pretty fit.
Fortunately for us as a species, we are not wired the way you think we are.
I do believe the sense I am spouting. Your definition of the theory of evolution is incorrect. You assume that the less fortunate are less fit, but part of our fitness as a species is our ability to cooperate. By helping the less fortunate, we put them in a position to help us.
There is no such thing as "de-evolution." The only information that gets erased is that which is no longer relevant to survival. The fitness criteria have changed, and what was fit is no longer, what wasn't fit, now is. In fct, for any trait you care to name as being 'fit' I can give you a counter example where it isn't.
But, as I said, you are espousing a theory that has been debunked time and time again. In fact, I'll give you the top page on google for 'social darwinism debunked' http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/evolit/s05/web1/mheeney.html