But the environment isn't changing for humanity, although culture and technology are changing rapidly. And the environment isn't killing people yet.
Woah, serious contradiction there! When discussing evolution, "environment" doesn't just mean trees and rivers and such. It's everything non-genetic that affects an organism. Culture counts. Technology counts. Evolution doesn't depend on killing; it depends on something that happens to normally be associated with killing: the failure to have offspring in the Nth generation. People who avoid sex are selected against just as much as people who avoid eating; neither will leave offspring.
smart people are more likely to reproduce. Nobody finds stupidity attractive
I dearly wish this were true. You're probably a nerd. Many men are in fact attracted to stupid women, particularly when not looking for a long-term relationship. Think of the 1-night-stand concept. Think about all the men who purposely get women drunk in order to get sex.
Greatest reproductive success is had by those who are slightly below normal, with an IQ of about 90.
Even if stupidity were universally unattractive, it could still win out. These are the people who are unable to correctly use birth control. They can have more kids even with less sex. They may be more willing to have sex, being less concerned about the consequences.
Yes, it's an ugly mess no matter what you do. An all-or-nothing consequence makes the situation especially rough.
Maybe we could use a point system, where each rescue costs you a few points. Once you run out, you get spayed/neutered.
Maybe we could make it more like saving throws in Dungeons and Dragons. IIRC, you roll a 20-sided die. The badness you face determines how well you must score to avoid consequences.
It's pretty clear that saving ourselves is entirely theoretical; it is politically impossible to do what must be done.
Only to the extent that people who ever use birth control never reproduce.
No, that is the requirement for perfect 1-generation selection of a simple recessive trait.
For regular selection, a teeny tiny difference will do. Any difference will do, given enough time. Birth control is way more than that. We aren't dealing with 1.999 kids in one case and 2.001 in the other. It's clearly a way bigger difference. It could be 1.7 to 3.5, something like that... in any case the difference is **HUGE** by the normal standards for evolution.
Recent estimates show that the Flynn Effect died about a decade ago in advanced countries like Germany. There is a limit to how much benefit you can get from a nice environment.
Genetic intelligence gets lost two ways. First there is drift, along with the inherently fragile nature of a trait that requires lots and lots of DNA to be in good condition. With out strong selection pressure in favor of intelligence, it goes away. Second there is the evolutionary requirement that humans defeat birth control. There is obviously massive selection pressure for this; from an evolutionary perspective birth control is like a predator or disease getting out of control. The most effective way to defeat birth control is a mental trait that causes people to want children, but a more expedient way (due to the pre-existing content of our gene pool) is to become less intelligent.
If you literally brought ancient people here via time travel, you'd see that they have low IQ. If you then cloned them and raised the clones in a modern environment, you'd see that the clones are more intelligent than regular modern people.
It's hard to see a genetic decline when rapid environmental changes are helping IQ. If you could take out that factor, the genetic change would be measurable.
Sadly, it looks like the Flynn effect is coming to an end. Recent estimates show that it has been dead in Germany for about a decade, and probably also in some other advanced countries.
In the well-developed countries (example: Germany) the Flynn effect died roughly a decade ago. IQ is now going down.
Our genetic slide was being hidden by our comfy environment, but there is a limit to how much we can gain by removing environmental damage like disease, poor nutrition, etc. We've reached that limit, at least in the better parts of the world.
Sorry to bring bad news, but the party is over. There was an article in the BBC news about it, a month or two ago I think. You can say goodbye to the Flynn effect. It was fun while it lasted.
An IQ score has two components, genetic and environmental. We've been enjoying an IQ spike based on a nice environment while our genetic ability has been slowly declining due to lack of selection for intelligence in our comfy environment. A nice environment can only do a limited amount of good, but bad genetics can deliver pretty much unlimited badness.
Condition 1 is when the disability is provably not genetic, including via mental traits. For example, helping a person who got paralysed by a meteor would be fine. No reasonable genetic difference will cause such an injury, so it is not inheritable. We can help this person without causing selection of undesirable traits.
Condition 2 is when the person getting help is willing to give up the reproductive advantage that help would normally provide. This gets complicated when dependent children exist, but the situation for people without kids is simple: get neutered/spayed and you can go on welfare.
Most mental deficiencies are caused by environmental factors, not heredity.
This does not matter much; it is random noise. In the long term, across generations, only the inheritable component matters.
That said, people sure seem stupider than they were when I was young -- but that's not nearly a long enough time for evolutionary pressures.
Actually it is long enough, given two facts: you are old enough to have generations younger than yourself, and the selection pressure is huge enough. Evolution is normally slow because the environment changes very little. You don't tend to have high selection pressure when nothing special is happening. From an evolutionary perspective, the human population is being devastated by birth control. (it can only be overcome via mental changes, and evolution dictates that this will happen) We also face selection pressure related to diet changes, new diseases, prison (it prevents reproduction normally), and the changing value of menopause.
Consider two components for intelligence, genetics and environment. A better environment, such as provided by nice welfare, makes an individual more intelligent. It doesn't alter that individual's genetic predisposition toward intelligence. By allowing the individual to more successfully reproduce, the makup of the population changes. Uh oh...
So imagine a society (culture, continent, race, species, country, whatever...) that has never had welfare. You add welfare. There is a sudden initial increase in intelligence, followed by a slow decline. Some ballpark estimates for the timescale would be 1 to 3 generations (15 to 150 years) for the increase, and 2 or more for the decrease.
We face a horrible choice. We can choose to have a more intelligent population in the short term, but having it will result in a less intelligent population in the long term. We are in fact making that choice.
OK, but AS borders don't exist in some theoretical world where everybody plays nice. They exist in our normal world.
International borders aren't just map borders. They are legal jurisdiction borders. Unfortunately, a corporation or AS can span an international border. This means an insider threat. Portions of your corporation may be acting against each other, and you can't make them stop.
Maybe it could be **you** being ordered by your government to do something sneaky. Perhaps you will even eagerly volunteer, seeing it as patriotic duty.
I'll just give you a personal example. My brother lost his job. As a result, he was unable to pay child support. This means he can't register his car or have a professional license. (think "home contractor" or "termite services" or "lock smith" or "welder", depending on the state) OK, so how exactly is he supposed to get a job? Was the intent to prevent him from ever recovering?
Furthermore, why does she get to decide anyway? I don't know if he wanted an abortion, but why wouldn't he get equal rights? The playing field is not remotely level here. Fairness demands that she accept full financial responsibility if she chooses to keep the child.
Unfairness in the courts is self-evident when you look at who tends to get custody and who tends to file for divorce. It's nearly all women. Men don't often file for divorce, even when they hate the lady, because men know they will lose and lose and lose. Women file because they know they will win.
If this problem hasn't already hit somebody you care about, consider yourself lucky... for now. Your blissful ignorance is unlikely to last a lifetime.
If I'm properly filtering at the border, I don't need to filter in the middle
You absolutely have to filter when crossing an international border. National security requires it. Maliciousness can be of a military nature, and you'd better be expecting it. The network admin on the other side may be coerced, an eager participant, or unaware. You ever can't trust what he does or what he says.
If Huawei (and all equipments from all Chinese companies) are suspicious, what makes you think that equipments from Germany or Japan or Britain or Korea or Canada or USA aren't?
If I'm running a business in Australia, each of the listed non-Chinese countries is a minor concern. All have strong intellectual property protection. They mostly don't have a reputation for cloning foreign products. China is a different matter entirely.
If I'm running a business in any of the listed countries, China or otherwise, obviously my own country is preferred. They'd kick in my door if they wanted something; it's easier and more fun than hacking. I'd like protection from the others.
If I'm running a business in Iran, I probably want Korea or Japan. China is trying to pry into my finances for trade negotiation, and everybody else just hates Iran.
Qubes OS, previously seen on Slashdot, ought to do nicely.
It looks like Linux, but it isn't. It's more like VMWare ESX Server. It's a tiny kernel that provides a desktop consisting of composited windows from guest VMs. Each window is labled according to the VM it runs in, with window borders colored according to security compartment.
Tux Paint can treat all mouse buttons the same. This used to be the default; currently the default is to pop up an animation that shows you how to use the left button.
There is a config program to restore the original behavior. You could also just edit the config file.
There is also an option to make Tux Paint fullscreen, and one to disable the Quit button. Until the kid learns the multi-key exit sequence, he's not going to escape from Tux Paint.
Put a boy in front of a paint program, and what will he draw? Yeah... Mine 5-year-old immediately drew things getting killed. Tux Paint even has stamps (clip art) of military equipment, emergency services stuff, a cross, fire, mushroom cloud, and various tools for beating people to death.
It's fairly easy to make new stamps (clip art) for the kid. You can add an AK-47, RPG-7, iron maiden, rack, breaking wheel, etc.
Tux Paint isn't even limited to violence. The stamps include a hypodermic needle. The line tool makes it very easy to draw a swastika. The text tool lets you add the mark of the beast ("666") to your drawing. You can add stamps for pot plants, pills, sex toys... the possibilities are endless!
So now for my work I'm learning to master the Microsoft suite.
This you at the mercy of surprises that Microsoft might have in store for you. (for example, ActiveX developers are not happy with the direction Microsoft is taking with Windows 8) It also means you are supporting an abusive company that has far too much control over the computer industry.
You're getting greedy. Make do with less. Each moment on the surface is less valuable than the preceeding moment. An hour on the surface, without even moving, is pretty damn useful. It probably gets you 90% of the value of spending a year roving around.
You really need to get those development machines disconnected from the internet. A firewall is not enough. OTOH, less-restricted internet access is very useful for a developer. The solution is separate computers on separate networks.
Yes, it is an expense, but only the development machine needs to be nice hardware. For example you could use a Pentium II with 512 MB RAM for the internet, but use the latest Core i7 with 16 GB RAM on the development network. (adjust both as required for the budget) The internet equipment might get 100 megabit ethernet or worse, while the development equipment gets gigabit ethernet or better.
On the internet side, make a policy of frequently (randomly) doing clean OS installs. This keeps people from leaving company-proprietary stuff on them. Don't allow network services there except printers and external email. (No shares!) Don't allow email that could be sent on the internal network.
If I can't get to the internet while I work (and access the source code), I won't work for you. Call that entitled, call it childish, but I call it normal business in 2012.
For security, this is FAIL. You should have two computers at your desk.
One is purely for the internet. The only services are network fundamentals (DHCP, DNS, etc.), printers, and external email. Email between employees should be blocked to reduce temptation.
The other is purely internal. It gets continuously monitored to detect an accidental or illicit connection to the internet. If an internet connection happens, an alarm goes off and/or power to the internet router is cut. You run all sorts of servers on this network: email, irc, wiki, slashcode, voip, etc. For this network, NO WIRELESS.
If you need to move data, burn a DVD. Normally, data should only move from the internet to the secure network.
Plenty of things do fine without solar, nuclear, or air. The obvious example is the Space Shuttle, using fuel cells. Swedish submarines use cryogenic liquid oxygen with diesel fuel to heat a Stirling engine. German submarines use hydrogen fuel cells.
If you wanted to bet that the lake really is liquid methane/ethane, you could just bring an oxidizer. You could even run a very fuel-rich piston engine.
Non-RTG nuclear is also possible. You have an entire lake of cooling fluid. You can use it as cooling for a traditional reactor or even make a nuclear jet engine.
(not that an RTG is exotic in 2012, nor that you couldn't just purchase that one part)
Plain old alkaline batteries work pretty well too, as long as you don't intend to do all that much work. Get some measurements, send them home, done!
Slashdot Mirror
But the environment isn't changing for humanity, although culture and technology are changing rapidly. And the environment isn't killing people yet.
Woah, serious contradiction there! When discussing evolution, "environment" doesn't just mean trees and rivers and such. It's everything non-genetic that affects an organism. Culture counts. Technology counts. Evolution doesn't depend on killing; it depends on something that happens to normally be associated with killing: the failure to have offspring in the Nth generation. People who avoid sex are selected against just as much as people who avoid eating; neither will leave offspring.
smart people are more likely to reproduce. Nobody finds stupidity attractive
I dearly wish this were true. You're probably a nerd. Many men are in fact attracted to stupid women, particularly when not looking for a long-term relationship. Think of the 1-night-stand concept. Think about all the men who purposely get women drunk in order to get sex.
Greatest reproductive success is had by those who are slightly below normal, with an IQ of about 90.
Even if stupidity were universally unattractive, it could still win out. These are the people who are unable to correctly use birth control. They can have more kids even with less sex. They may be more willing to have sex, being less concerned about the consequences.
Yes, it's an ugly mess no matter what you do. An all-or-nothing consequence makes the situation especially rough.
Maybe we could use a point system, where each rescue costs you a few points. Once you run out, you get spayed/neutered.
Maybe we could make it more like saving throws in Dungeons and Dragons. IIRC, you roll a 20-sided die. The badness you face determines how well you must score to avoid consequences.
It's pretty clear that saving ourselves is entirely theoretical; it is politically impossible to do what must be done.
Only to the extent that people who ever use birth control never reproduce.
No, that is the requirement for perfect 1-generation selection of a simple recessive trait.
For regular selection, a teeny tiny difference will do. Any difference will do, given enough time. Birth control is way more than that. We aren't dealing with 1.999 kids in one case and 2.001 in the other. It's clearly a way bigger difference. It could be 1.7 to 3.5, something like that... in any case the difference is **HUGE** by the normal standards for evolution.
Recent estimates show that the Flynn Effect died about a decade ago in advanced countries like Germany. There is a limit to how much benefit you can get from a nice environment.
Genetic intelligence gets lost two ways. First there is drift, along with the inherently fragile nature of a trait that requires lots and lots of DNA to be in good condition. With out strong selection pressure in favor of intelligence, it goes away. Second there is the evolutionary requirement that humans defeat birth control. There is obviously massive selection pressure for this; from an evolutionary perspective birth control is like a predator or disease getting out of control. The most effective way to defeat birth control is a mental trait that causes people to want children, but a more expedient way (due to the pre-existing content of our gene pool) is to become less intelligent.
If you literally brought ancient people here via time travel, you'd see that they have low IQ. If you then cloned them and raised the clones in a modern environment, you'd see that the clones are more intelligent than regular modern people.
It's hard to see a genetic decline when rapid environmental changes are helping IQ. If you could take out that factor, the genetic change would be measurable.
Sadly, it looks like the Flynn effect is coming to an end. Recent estimates show that it has been dead in Germany for about a decade, and probably also in some other advanced countries.
In the well-developed countries (example: Germany) the Flynn effect died roughly a decade ago. IQ is now going down.
Our genetic slide was being hidden by our comfy environment, but there is a limit to how much we can gain by removing environmental damage like disease, poor nutrition, etc. We've reached that limit, at least in the better parts of the world.
Sorry to bring bad news, but the party is over. There was an article in the BBC news about it, a month or two ago I think. You can say goodbye to the Flynn effect. It was fun while it lasted.
An IQ score has two components, genetic and environmental. We've been enjoying an IQ spike based on a nice environment while our genetic ability has been slowly declining due to lack of selection for intelligence in our comfy environment. A nice environment can only do a limited amount of good, but bad genetics can deliver pretty much unlimited badness.
In the long term, we're screwed.
Condition 1 is when the disability is provably not genetic, including via mental traits. For example, helping a person who got paralysed by a meteor would be fine. No reasonable genetic difference will cause such an injury, so it is not inheritable. We can help this person without causing selection of undesirable traits.
Condition 2 is when the person getting help is willing to give up the reproductive advantage that help would normally provide. This gets complicated when dependent children exist, but the situation for people without kids is simple: get neutered/spayed and you can go on welfare.
Most mental deficiencies are caused by environmental factors, not heredity.
This does not matter much; it is random noise. In the long term, across generations, only the inheritable component matters.
That said, people sure seem stupider than they were when I was young -- but that's not nearly a long enough time for evolutionary pressures.
Actually it is long enough, given two facts: you are old enough to have generations younger than yourself, and the selection pressure is huge enough. Evolution is normally slow because the environment changes very little. You don't tend to have high selection pressure when nothing special is happening. From an evolutionary perspective, the human population is being devastated by birth control. (it can only be overcome via mental changes, and evolution dictates that this will happen) We also face selection pressure related to diet changes, new diseases, prison (it prevents reproduction normally), and the changing value of menopause.
Consider two components for intelligence, genetics and environment. A better environment, such as provided by nice welfare, makes an individual more intelligent. It doesn't alter that individual's genetic predisposition toward intelligence. By allowing the individual to more successfully reproduce, the makup of the population changes. Uh oh...
So imagine a society (culture, continent, race, species, country, whatever...) that has never had welfare. You add welfare. There is a sudden initial increase in intelligence, followed by a slow decline. Some ballpark estimates for the timescale would be 1 to 3 generations (15 to 150 years) for the increase, and 2 or more for the decrease.
We face a horrible choice. We can choose to have a more intelligent population in the short term, but having it will result in a less intelligent population in the long term. We are in fact making that choice.
OK, but AS borders don't exist in some theoretical world where everybody plays nice. They exist in our normal world.
International borders aren't just map borders. They are legal jurisdiction borders. Unfortunately, a corporation or AS can span an international border. This means an insider threat. Portions of your corporation may be acting against each other, and you can't make them stop.
Maybe it could be **you** being ordered by your government to do something sneaky. Perhaps you will even eagerly volunteer, seeing it as patriotic duty.
I'll just give you a personal example. My brother lost his job. As a result, he was unable to pay child support. This means he can't register his car or have a professional license. (think "home contractor" or "termite services" or "lock smith" or "welder", depending on the state) OK, so how exactly is he supposed to get a job? Was the intent to prevent him from ever recovering?
Furthermore, why does she get to decide anyway? I don't know if he wanted an abortion, but why wouldn't he get equal rights? The playing field is not remotely level here. Fairness demands that she accept full financial responsibility if she chooses to keep the child.
Unfairness in the courts is self-evident when you look at who tends to get custody and who tends to file for divorce. It's nearly all women. Men don't often file for divorce, even when they hate the lady, because men know they will lose and lose and lose. Women file because they know they will win.
If this problem hasn't already hit somebody you care about, consider yourself lucky... for now. Your blissful ignorance is unlikely to last a lifetime.
If you will fuck anything that moves and says yes - well you are engaging in risky behavior.
Definitely. The low-risk choice is to find something that says no, then make it stop moving.
If BGP abuse lets China detect a previously-unknown site that communicates with a known US spy agency, China has learned something valuable.
If I'm properly filtering at the border, I don't need to filter in the middle
You absolutely have to filter when crossing an international border. National security requires it. Maliciousness can be of a military nature, and you'd better be expecting it. The network admin on the other side may be coerced, an eager participant, or unaware. You ever can't trust what he does or what he says.
If Huawei (and all equipments from all Chinese companies) are suspicious, what makes you think that equipments from Germany or Japan or Britain or Korea or Canada or USA aren't?
If I'm running a business in Australia, each of the listed non-Chinese countries is a minor concern. All have strong intellectual property protection. They mostly don't have a reputation for cloning foreign products. China is a different matter entirely.
If I'm running a business in any of the listed countries, China or otherwise, obviously my own country is preferred. They'd kick in my door if they wanted something; it's easier and more fun than hacking. I'd like protection from the others.
If I'm running a business in Iran, I probably want Korea or Japan. China is trying to pry into my finances for trade negotiation, and everybody else just hates Iran.
Qubes OS, previously seen on Slashdot, ought to do nicely.
It looks like Linux, but it isn't. It's more like VMWare ESX Server. It's a tiny kernel that provides a desktop consisting of composited windows from guest VMs. Each window is labled according to the VM it runs in, with window borders colored according to security compartment.
Tux Paint can treat all mouse buttons the same. This used to be the default; currently the default is to pop up an animation that shows you how to use the left button.
There is a config program to restore the original behavior. You could also just edit the config file.
There is also an option to make Tux Paint fullscreen, and one to disable the Quit button. Until the kid learns the multi-key exit sequence, he's not going to escape from Tux Paint.
Put a boy in front of a paint program, and what will he draw? Yeah... Mine 5-year-old immediately drew things getting killed. Tux Paint even has stamps (clip art) of military equipment, emergency services stuff, a cross, fire, mushroom cloud, and various tools for beating people to death.
It's fairly easy to make new stamps (clip art) for the kid. You can add an AK-47, RPG-7, iron maiden, rack, breaking wheel, etc.
Tux Paint isn't even limited to violence. The stamps include a hypodermic needle. The line tool makes it very easy to draw a swastika. The text tool lets you add the mark of the beast ("666") to your drawing. You can add stamps for pot plants, pills, sex toys... the possibilities are endless!
So now for my work I'm learning to master the Microsoft suite.
This you at the mercy of surprises that Microsoft might have in store for you. (for example, ActiveX developers are not happy with the direction Microsoft is taking with Windows 8) It also means you are supporting an abusive company that has far too much control over the computer industry.
As a .Net programmer, you contribute to the power Microsoft holds over the computer industry. Please stop.
You're getting greedy. Make do with less. Each moment on the surface is less valuable than the preceeding moment. An hour on the surface, without even moving, is pretty damn useful. It probably gets you 90% of the value of spending a year roving around.
You really need to get those development machines disconnected from the internet. A firewall is not enough. OTOH, less-restricted internet access is very useful for a developer. The solution is separate computers on separate networks.
Yes, it is an expense, but only the development machine needs to be nice hardware. For example you could use a Pentium II with 512 MB RAM for the internet, but use the latest Core i7 with 16 GB RAM on the development network. (adjust both as required for the budget) The internet equipment might get 100 megabit ethernet or worse, while the development equipment gets gigabit ethernet or better.
On the internet side, make a policy of frequently (randomly) doing clean OS installs. This keeps people from leaving company-proprietary stuff on them. Don't allow network services there except printers and external email. (No shares!) Don't allow email that could be sent on the internal network.
If I can't get to the internet while I work (and access the source code), I won't work for you. Call that entitled, call it childish, but I call it normal business in 2012.
For security, this is FAIL. You should have two computers at your desk.
One is purely for the internet. The only services are network fundamentals (DHCP, DNS, etc.), printers, and external email. Email between employees should be blocked to reduce temptation.
The other is purely internal. It gets continuously monitored to detect an accidental or illicit connection to the internet. If an internet connection happens, an alarm goes off and/or power to the internet router is cut. You run all sorts of servers on this network: email, irc, wiki, slashcode, voip, etc. For this network, NO WIRELESS.
If you need to move data, burn a DVD. Normally, data should only move from the internet to the secure network.
Plenty of things do fine without solar, nuclear, or air. The obvious example is the Space Shuttle, using fuel cells. Swedish submarines use cryogenic liquid oxygen with diesel fuel to heat a Stirling engine. German submarines use hydrogen fuel cells.
If you wanted to bet that the lake really is liquid methane/ethane, you could just bring an oxidizer. You could even run a very fuel-rich piston engine.
Non-RTG nuclear is also possible. You have an entire lake of cooling fluid. You can use it as cooling for a traditional reactor or even make a nuclear jet engine.
(not that an RTG is exotic in 2012, nor that you couldn't just purchase that one part)
Plain old alkaline batteries work pretty well too, as long as you don't intend to do all that much work. Get some measurements, send them home, done!