I submit that anyone who knows anything about evolution knows whether or not populations oscillate, and anyone, truly really anyone, knows perfectly well that immune systems are not equal between people.
Btw, given that immune systems are all equal, what happened to the mayas and incas again ? Why don't I let you say it, and I'll let readers decide who's making the ridiculous statements.
There is not really such a thing as a weak or strong immune system.
Unless you make decent points that are at least somewhat believable I will not discuss with you further.
Populations do not rise exponentially in nature, some sort of balance is always found.
Oh great, and I suppose the great gaia is responsible for that with all her little fairies ?
Google "population oscillation" to see how it works in the real world, you know the one with less fairies : exponential population expansion -> disaster (food limits,...) -> goto 1. The best one can hope for, in real life, is that the disaster is local and unconnected. Some studies claim that if the food shortage occurs synchronized over large areas, extinction can result.
Idiot (sorry but you're making such dumb points that this word really is applicable).
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.
The whole point here is that this is not just not true, but that it is never true : we will never have this power, no matter how technologically advanced we become : there will always be some absolute limit to resource availability.
Since evolution tolerates no such limit, and will use up all resources in short order (which is quite frankly what any learning algorithm should do) you are flat out...
wrong.
And quite frankly... it's just an excuse for stealing:
A small minority are hogging all the resources.
No, a small minority is producing all the resources, an important difference. Unless, of course, you can point me to the pizza trees, the ipad orchards and the dell laptop mushroom fields.
How can you call spending OTHER people's money "selfless" ? Are you truly that hypocritical ?
Of course it's just "coincidental" that you demand control over other people's work, money and livelihoods ? Obviously you have zero selfish plans for that money, right ? Of course, you wish for one thing to use this power to "correct" science.
You're not morally good because of this, in fact you're an abomination. You want power over others "for the good of all". Somehow I doubt that VERY much : you're a thief at the very best, a dictator at worst.
For you this is a political discussion ? You disagree with what I say are scientific facts because they disagree with your ideology... and you "fear the consequences" of this science being or becoming popular... great. Is that a threat ?
I think this discussion is over. I have zero intrest in what is popular or what is political, or what is dangerous. The only science that has value is science totally untouched by any and all such considerations.
That you consider it my duty to falsify scientific theory for "the good of man" (as defined, obviously, by you) is deeply dishonest and hypocritical.
So let's just call a spade a spade :
You're exactly the same as these Texans. With the exception of which totalitarian system you're pushing. They'd like people to love and help one another, go to church, marry, not kill unborn infants... "because Jesus says so". You want control over other people's money, work,... "because that's socially just".
So, really, what's the point of discussing this any further ? You lie, cheat, and "correct" science to protect your clearly-not-at-all-scientifically-correct ideology... (because if it was scientifically correct, it wouldn't need protecting). Any specific reason I should want to listen to some more "corrections" and threats ?
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.
Exactly, and devolution occurs because someone artificially makes certain information unnecessary, or all information unnecessary, thereby randomizing it.
If, for example, you were to completely equalize people with a weak immune system with those with a strong one, you will make the genes coding for a good immune system obsolete.
Obviously, doing this requires resources. Given that "equal" also means that the population of the group evolves naturally (ie. rises exponentially), and obviously it requires resources per individual.
So we put 2 and 2 together : it requires exponentially rising resources. So at some point, the resources available for this policy fail.
So now you have a huge (exponentially risen) population and 2 "small details" : 1) the genes coding for their immune system have been scrambled, because evolution thought (wrongly) that the information was unnecessary 2) there is no outside help possible for these people, because all resources are exhausted
And why don't you fill in what happens next.
Btw : before you say how unlikely this is, obviously this is seen very often in nature. Read the tale of the history of yellowstone national park and it's animal populations for example. It contains lots of incidents that are caused by this sort of thing : artificial interference creating unrealistic situations (but more "greenpeace-y"), resulting in too high a burden on park officials and volunteers, resulting in the abandonment of the artificial policy, resulting in a mass-extinction.
Except of course in my story there was nothing "contrived" about the real world that killed the family tree. We're not talking about aliens, solar explosions, black holes, nothing like that. We're talking about a bit of dry weather, and a few animals roaming around. Does that really compare to alien invasions, as your argument requires ? What happened was perfectly predictable and guaranteed to happen.
So again, I don't understand how your totally changing my example proves anything.
The plant in my story had already learned perfectly well how to deal with animals (thorns) and draughts. Yet Jane's "help" erased that knowledge (you seem to agree this erasure does indeed occur... right ?).
Yet somehow you're trying to turn this erasing of known solutions into a good thing. Keeping known solutions around will turn out to be useful as long as there is the possibility of confrontation with the real world.
I really don't understand how, or even why you're trying to make this argument.
P.S. you're still not getting the hint. That I would like to avoid insults does include conspiracy accusations... I am not conspiring against you nor am I accusing you of any kind of conspiracy and you'd frankly have to be a desperate piece of work to read that in my text.
And quite frankly, +5 insightful means that you're pushing a popular viewpoint... and little else. And frankly, popular opinions are rarely correct (it's rare to even find an honest one).
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.)
Given that the whole point of this discussion was that the "scientifically true" is to be preferred over any moral system's view of the same... isn't it entirely beside the point what is "right" (in the moral sense), "natural", "cooperative" or "good" ? All of those words denote subjective moral measures...
And frankly, I doubt even my father would agree with your assesment of human resources being "abundant", never mind people who live today in third world countries or people who lived 200 years ago.
And... do you seriously doubt that prehistoric man comitted genocide ? Every tribal society we have ever encountered, from the native American indians, over Aborigines to contemporary African and Latin American tribes commit genocide on a regular basis (due to resource constraints). Which reason could you possibly have to assume that any divergence from this pattern would be more than an exception ?
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,...
I'd claim that that appeal was not, at all, what saved the plant. In fact, appealing to Jane caused the extinction of the plant's entire family tree by making it impossible for the plant to adapt to the threats of tomorrow, and even erasing the defenses against the older threats.
In other words, you failed totally to grasp the point of the story. In order to keep believing in your own argument you claim that the extinction of an entire family tree is somehow a successful adaptation for the plant.
Just so you know, in the rest of our discussion we'll follow this convention for positive and negative things :
dieing - bad lots of dieing - very bad almost everyone dying - very very very bad living - good you & your children surviving - good
Agreed ?
The fact that you make mistakes like this shows just how well you understand evolution, in addition it shows what a sawdust-filled brain you have and what an ugly blowhard you really are. (I've given up on not doing the personal insults. I had hoped that you would take that I don't reciprocate your insults as a hint I would like a reasoned argument, but it seems you cannot catch on to subtlety. So I'll be insulting you in my last paragraph from here on in just like you do to me. It is most unfortunate that you see the need for personal attacks in argument, one might almost say that such is an indication you lack confidence in the reason of your argument. Which brings the question of why that is so)
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.
Actually you're almost flirting with correctness here. If you change the word "or" into "and" you'd be right :
cooperation is the dominant strategy under 2 conditions : 1) trade 2) local scarcity AND (obviously not "or") surplus
In other words, it is the best strategy only if there are still (obvious enough) opportunities to increase the GDP through mutually beneficial trade.
Since I was not talking about this situation, what exactly are you claiming ?
Cooperation can occur between individuals -> family -> group -> tribe -> ideology -> country -> species ->... Every step you make in this list the more adverserial and destructive humans become towards one another. By the time you get to "tribe" genocide clearly is within the realm of possibility, as we're reminded on the news almost daily.
Social-Darwinism is a pejorative term used in criticism of ideologies or ideas concerning their exploitation of concepts in biology and social sciences to artificially create political change that reduces the fertility of certain individuals, races, and subcultures having certain "undesired" qualities
Since "social darwinism" is clearly a term for political opinion advocating certain "eugenics"-type government policies, could you please point out where I advocate such policies ? My argument is merely a statement of fact, and if policy is to follow from it, it seems to me that would be the policy of doing nothing, obviously excluding eugenics policies. What you're advocating, race-based government interference, on the other hand, is (an extremely mild form of a) eugenics policy.
And btw, non-sequitur is a term used to denote that one point does not follow from another. The sun is shining brightly today. See how it works ?
It is not used to do what you're doing here, to dispute the validity of a certain sequence of arguments, or to attack the reasonableness of a specific implication.
Your claim, which imho we can simplify to simply claiming that evolution doesn't apply to humans, nor to human societies...
There is no way to make all information irrelevant to survival.
Of course there is, just copy the dna into a computer and do everything for them.
But we agree that helping the "less fit" ("not necessarily" the same as "less fortunate").
And you would agree that helping the less fit necessarily implies that you make *some* information irrelevant ?
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.
Of course, this is not "helping the less fortunate". Allow me to present another argument.
A plant is not doing so well. But, no worries, ms Jane Greenpeace "saves" the plant : she digs it up, she plants it in her garden. And the plant has offspring. Eventually it fills her garden.
Like in your story, because ms. Jane Greenpeace dutifully removes all threats to the plant, and places a fence to keep out animals, thorns are no longer required and the information to create them is overwritten (in the plant's offspring) by random mutations. Other things are erased : DNA codes that served to retain water, since any shortage was solved by interference from ms. Jane.
Then ms. Jane goes on an extended vacation, moves, or otherwise makes her garden back part of nature.
There were 50 plants, but the passage of 5 wolves and a mild draught later... perfectly normal events...... none of the plants survive...
*sigh* too bad it would utterly destroy your argument if there were two species of mitochondria, some evolving into separate cells, some becoming part of other lifeforms, increasing the total information in both cases.
So anyone who doesn't agree with your political views should "not think that he has anything particularly useful to say" ?
Furthermore you think that only views held by scientists are valid views, and others deserve to get rooted out. (no doubt only the scientists that you agree with, as we will sure as hell won't agree on who gets to be considered a scientist : I'll point out that scientists have differing views just like the rest of us, but let's not fret on the details)
I wonder what methods of "rooting out invalid views" you'd consider appropriate ? For use on me, say ?
I'd be interested in how exactly having a view not validated by your view of science invalidates one's viewpoint ?
Since there are countless examples of scientists that believe God created man, for every religion on record, historical and contemporary, your view isn't even consistent (hell just a week ago slashdot published how North korean scientists believe Kim Jong Il had something to do with it, if I'm not mistaken). It just boils down to "you will find me correct or I'll insult you with big words".
Incidentally, you might want to look up what non-sequitor means. You know, just so you don't make a fool of yourself.
"less fit" != "less fortunate" (look at all the different letters !)
So you agree that helping the "less fit" will bring disaster for everyone ?
There is no such thing as "de-evolution." The only information that gets erased is that which is no longer relevant to survival.
Exactly !
Unfortunately what you're trying to do with social programs, obviously, is to make ALL (gene and meme) information irrelevant to survival, which will, obviously, erase all information.
"Devolution" is a word. Since evolution generally increases the information available in the living system, decreasing the information available in the system is said to "de-evolve" a system.
Would you consider yourself "tolerant" ? If so, it might help to refrain from words like "sick", "selfish", "twisted" and so on when referring to viewpoints differing from your own.
Unfortunately, this is not true in a general sense. It is specifically only true insofar that resource availability expands exponentially. In other words, it is only true, approximately, as long as GDP keeps growing a few percentage points per year, and only as long as this actually represents a growth in resource availability, not just inflation.
When it no longer does, for whatever reason, the economy becomes a "Nash-balance" : you can only gain what another loses. The only useful social groups become the ones that manage to steal from larger groups on a continuous basis.
You see this in tribal groups. Humans, like every other group animal, do cooperate. However, direct cooperation stops when the group exceeds a certain size (not much bigger than a few hundred individuals at most). Once the group exceeds this population limit, it will split into several groups, who will start to compete by different rules. Specifically :
1. you do not get to take any action which you know will damage another in your own group (intra-group, pareto-efficient behavior is the norm) 2. when outside the group, you're only interested in how it affects both groups relative to eachother. E.g. eventually it becomes acceptable to blow up a shop that contains 80% members of the other group and 20% of your own.
There is a smooth transition between these two, and as long as everyone always advances people frown on purposefully damaging other groups. When that stops... it doesn't take long.
It is the exact same view that some of the worst monsters in history have used to excuse some of the worst atrocities ever committed.
So has everything from "Jesus loves us all", "Allah hates us all", "there is no God(s)", to the view that the atom can be splitted. Your point ?
Whether something was used for good or evil, historically, does not influence the truth in it.
And, frankly, atheism has a poor track record in that department too (the Soviet genocides, excuse me "engineered famines", some of which were comitted to destroy religious beliefs, all of which were comitted to promote the atheist view of the Soviets (specifically the communist view, which saw atheism as a very important component of it. Rooting out the old opium, you see))
The whole point of the story is that one should ignore one's own convictions and accept the "accepted scientific theory".
So everyone should not just believe in evolution, but also believe that bank account balance, in absence of government intervention, approximately determines your "fitness", and therefore determines how "useful" it would be, for the species (and thus for other people in a very general sense, e.g. a government), to keep you alive.
Then obviously a lower bound would be set, either by reality, below which you're considered dangerous for the species and... well "removed from the gene pool".
It seems to me that evolution leads to such a view. The whole point is that one cannot place other viewpoints (specifically "Jesus loves us all") above this evolutionary view of reality.
Do you honestly believe the nonsense you're spouting ? Do we really have to go through the exercise of showing in an actual simulation what happens when you "help the less fortunate" ?
When you "help the less fortunate" (your words, not mine), your resource utilization curve becomes exponential. That must be trivial to see, right ? You see, the less fortunate have kids, and due to copying problematic genes (*and* memes), they will have a strong tendency to be less fortunate themselves.
But that's not the end of it. "Helping" does something else, something far, far worse than merely causing mass-casualty famines through resource exhaustion and the total environmental destruction that preceeds it. In normal evolution you have mutations. Group A has mutation A, group B has mutation B. Either group A dies, or group B does, depending on which mutation is best adapted to the real world. Obviously the other group would be considered a lot "less fortunate".
So what happens when you help the "less fortunate" group ? Well, obviously, if you succeed, 50% of the population will have mutation A, 50% will have mutation B. Then a second mutation occurs. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...
The end result, obviously, is that for any gene (any allel would be more correct, but hey), it will be randomly and universally distributed throughout the population.
This effect is sometimes called "de-evolution" since it erases the information evolution has placed into our genes, it erases it by randomizing it.
It might even be compared to a species-wide "death". You see what happens at death is that your "soul" (as expressed by amplification factors on neuronal connections) becomes randomized. At death, all the physical representation of the information that defines who you are is randomized, and therefore erased. This process then repeats for your individual cells until your entire body is metabolized by something else.
Well "helping the less fortunate" randomizes all the physical representation of the information that makes us human. It randomizes the human DNA, to no benefit, towards no goal.
We can only thank God (heh) that we're not all that good at "helping the less fortunate" yet. Or we'd long have destroyed ourselves. It might even be argued that several huge historical disasters occured because people tried -and failed- to "help the less fortunate", but they did not fail before they created a huge number of "less fortunate", resulting in massive civil war when they did fail. Evolution theory says that such failure is unavoidable without infinite resources (and not just any infinite will do, it does not merely expand linearly into infinite, it expands exponentially into the infinite).
I have no problem with this as long as evolution teaching includes the "inconveniences" for everyone :
1) evolution means that there is an alternative explanation to "God created man". Freedom of religion, however, means that this can only ever be an alternative. It can NEVER be a replacement, no matter how well proven it is, without turning the US into a single-state-religion state (and yes, there have been single-state-religion atheist states, e.g. the Soviet Union to name just one) 2) evolution means that all social programs are going to fail, even if it doesn't specify when they'll fail. Moreover social programs will result in LESS people surviving than without them, except in the very short term. The more successfull they are, the bigger the disaster their failure will bring (famine due to resource exhaustion). Anyone who says "but people will choose to have less kids" should be taken out and shot : 99% of people might choose to have fewer kids, 1% will not (or any > 0 amount). Next generation, those 99% become 80% and that 1% becomes 20%, you can see where this is going. 3) evolution means that without constant technological adaptations on the part of humans (constantly searching new medicines, insecticides, even paints, and obviously we'll make mistakes along the way), we're all... dead. 4) any attempt to prevent famine without killing humans needs exponentially rising resource availability (in other words : GDP). ANY policy that might result in anything less than x% GDP growth per year (x ~ between 3 and 4) will lead to famine and mass casualties at speeds that will amaze Usain Bolt.
I have zero tolerance for "evolution means Jesus doesn't exist, and has nothing to do with death or economics. We can all get along without any form of competition".
Unfortunately... guess how it's taught... baffling stupidity on both sides.
Great declaration of faith in postmodernism. Of course, it's seriously misguided.
So you're here seriously arguing that birthrate and evolutionary advantage are unrelated ?
1) Less chance of being exterminated by natural or artificial causes.
That will result in DE-evolution. Your point boils down to disabling selection. Do you really need to run a genetic algorithm simulation to realise what it will do ?
It will randomize the genes. Which information do you think is better : a) random b) selected ?
2) Less chance of becoming a functional slave to another human being.
Which has what, exactly, to do with evolution ?
There are 1000-year stretches of history that basically boil down to :
1) slaves kill their masters 2) become masters, take slaves themselves 3) goto 1
Seems to me that being a slave (and remaining a slave) was evolutionary more interesting than being master in the better part of human history.
And do you seriously believe that textbooks, and/or teachers are neutral ?
How about teaching the truth about evolution ? Not just "it means Jesus is dead", but the real, full truth :
1) you have babies 2) a significant portion of them die* 3) successfull mutations "on average" do better
Somehow I doubt that point 2 is "correctly" represented in those Californian textbooks. The "kill or be killed" part of evolution... always curiously absent in any such discussion. And the P.S. especially will be considered herecy by democrats :
* any (successfull) attempt to reduce or eliminate the dying part of evolution will immediately cause the population to eat up every last resource. This will in short order (certainly less than 5-10 generations, so perhaps a century) result in the mass-consumption of non-renewable resources, which will, at some point, exhaust anyway, resulting in a mass famine.
How about making it extra super juicy ?
Discuss how this "P.S." detail applies to unemployment benefits and/or national health care, or any form of interference, including government interference, that "equalizes opportunity regardless of genes" ? (ie. discuss how it will affect any population that attempts to equalize opportunity regardless of race)
And the real "burn him at the stake" discussion :
Discuss the ability of congressional laws, or other government policy to change the effects of evolution ? Discuss what will be the consequence of the "... will in very short time exhaust any and all available resources..." on any population that attempts to follow such laws that attempt to interfere with evolution.
Your point, unless I seriously misunderstand it, is that because pro-evolutionists are racists (discriminate against creationists) they will get an evolutionary advantage ? I think you're in for a rude awakening... especially as to which of those 2 groups will get the evolutionary advantage over time (as non-discrimination gives access to more genetic material, chances are that the non-discriminatory group will get better genes over time).
And in reality :
How does a group get an evolutionary advantage ? 1) more children... that will do it. 2) more people dying as a result of their actions (as opposed to getting old and depedant) (in short : more selection)
Now let's see who's winning : 1) creationists... no doubt about it (by a factor 2 or 3 at least) 2) creationists... no doubt about it (again by a factor)
Furthermore, given how the world looks today and how will look tomorrow as to population (ie. 3rd world and mexican immigration), I'd say that all major population growth in the US is going to be creationist population growth.
I'm against creationism, but with arguments like yours chances are we'll lose.
Slashdot Mirror
I submit that anyone who knows anything about evolution knows whether or not populations oscillate, and anyone, truly really anyone, knows perfectly well that immune systems are not equal between people.
Btw, given that immune systems are all equal, what happened to the mayas and incas again ? Why don't I let you say it, and I'll let readers decide who's making the ridiculous statements.
*sigh* crawl back into your marxist fantasy world, and by all means keep crying about how terribly unfair it all is.
There is not really such a thing as a weak or strong immune system.
Unless you make decent points that are at least somewhat believable I will not discuss with you further.
Populations do not rise exponentially in nature, some sort of balance is always found.
Oh great, and I suppose the great gaia is responsible for that with all her little fairies ?
Google "population oscillation" to see how it works in the real world, you know the one with less fairies : exponential population expansion -> disaster (food limits, ...) -> goto 1. The best one can hope for, in real life, is that the disaster is local and unconnected. Some studies claim that if the food shortage occurs synchronized over large areas, extinction can result.
Idiot (sorry but you're making such dumb points that this word really is applicable).
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.
The whole point here is that this is not just not true, but that it is never true : we will never have this power, no matter how technologically advanced we become : there will always be some absolute limit to resource availability.
Since evolution tolerates no such limit, and will use up all resources in short order (which is quite frankly what any learning algorithm should do) you are flat out ...
wrong.
And quite frankly ... it's just an excuse for stealing :
A small minority are hogging all the resources.
No, a small minority is producing all the resources, an important difference. Unless, of course, you can point me to the pizza trees, the ipad orchards and the dell laptop mushroom fields.
How can you call spending OTHER people's money "selfless" ? Are you truly that hypocritical ?
Of course it's just "coincidental" that you demand control over other people's work, money and livelihoods ? Obviously you have zero selfish plans for that money, right ? Of course, you wish for one thing to use this power to "correct" science.
You're not morally good because of this, in fact you're an abomination. You want power over others "for the good of all". Somehow I doubt that VERY much : you're a thief at the very best, a dictator at worst.
For you this is a political discussion ? You disagree with what I say are scientific facts because they disagree with your ideology ... and you "fear the consequences" of this science being or becoming popular ... great. Is that a threat ?
I think this discussion is over. I have zero intrest in what is popular or what is political, or what is dangerous. The only science that has value is science totally untouched by any and all such considerations.
That you consider it my duty to falsify scientific theory for "the good of man" (as defined, obviously, by you) is deeply dishonest and hypocritical.
So let's just call a spade a spade :
You're exactly the same as these Texans. With the exception of which totalitarian system you're pushing. They'd like people to love and help one another, go to church, marry, not kill unborn infants ... "because Jesus says so". You want control over other people's money, work, ... "because that's socially just".
So, really, what's the point of discussing this any further ? You lie, cheat, and "correct" science to protect your clearly-not-at-all-scientifically-correct ideology ... (because if it was scientifically correct, it wouldn't need protecting). Any specific reason I should want to listen to some more "corrections" and threats ?
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.
Exactly, and devolution occurs because someone artificially makes certain information unnecessary, or all information unnecessary, thereby randomizing it.
If, for example, you were to completely equalize people with a weak immune system with those with a strong one, you will make the genes coding for a good immune system obsolete.
Obviously, doing this requires resources. Given that "equal" also means that the population of the group evolves naturally (ie. rises exponentially), and obviously it requires resources per individual.
So we put 2 and 2 together : it requires exponentially rising resources. So at some point, the resources available for this policy fail.
So now you have a huge (exponentially risen) population and 2 "small details" :
1) the genes coding for their immune system have been scrambled, because evolution thought (wrongly) that the information was unnecessary
2) there is no outside help possible for these people, because all resources are exhausted
And why don't you fill in what happens next.
Btw : before you say how unlikely this is, obviously this is seen very often in nature. Read the tale of the history of yellowstone national park and it's animal populations for example. It contains lots of incidents that are caused by this sort of thing : artificial interference creating unrealistic situations (but more "greenpeace-y"), resulting in too high a burden on park officials and volunteers, resulting in the abandonment of the artificial policy, resulting in a mass-extinction.
Except of course in my story there was nothing "contrived" about the real world that killed the family tree. We're not talking about aliens, solar explosions, black holes, nothing like that. We're talking about a bit of dry weather, and a few animals roaming around. Does that really compare to alien invasions, as your argument requires ? What happened was perfectly predictable and guaranteed to happen.
So again, I don't understand how your totally changing my example proves anything.
The plant in my story had already learned perfectly well how to deal with animals (thorns) and draughts. Yet Jane's "help" erased that knowledge (you seem to agree this erasure does indeed occur ... right ?).
Yet somehow you're trying to turn this erasing of known solutions into a good thing. Keeping known solutions around will turn out to be useful as long as there is the possibility of confrontation with the real world.
I really don't understand how, or even why you're trying to make this argument.
P.S. you're still not getting the hint. That I would like to avoid insults does include conspiracy accusations ... I am not conspiring against you nor am I accusing you of any kind of conspiracy and you'd frankly have to be a desperate piece of work to read that in my text.
And quite frankly, +5 insightful means that you're pushing a popular viewpoint ... and little else. And frankly, popular opinions are rarely correct (it's rare to even find an honest one).
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.)
Given that the whole point of this discussion was that the "scientifically true" is to be preferred over any moral system's view of the same ... isn't it entirely beside the point what is "right" (in the moral sense), "natural", "cooperative" or "good" ? All of those words denote subjective moral measures ...
And frankly, I doubt even my father would agree with your assesment of human resources being "abundant", never mind people who live today in third world countries or people who lived 200 years ago.
And ... do you seriously doubt that prehistoric man comitted genocide ? Every tribal society we have ever encountered, from the native American indians, over Aborigines to contemporary African and Latin American tribes commit genocide on a regular basis (due to resource constraints). Which reason could you possibly have to assume that any divergence from this pattern would be more than an exception ?
Ah, yes, having less bits means less information, as long as the compression ratio remains the same, and for DNA, it does
Yet somehow I doubt you will find these bits less information-full than an equivalent length of real information :
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Btw : all ones, all zeroes, and totally random data are all equally boring and useless.
DNA compresses data. Obviously. It compressed all of my magnificent brain in barely one human genome, which is a lot less than science can do.
And .. what point are you making ? What does it have to do with either de-evolution occuring or randomization of DNA being a bad thing ?
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, ...
I'd claim that that appeal was not, at all, what saved the plant. In fact, appealing to Jane caused the extinction of the plant's entire family tree by making it impossible for the plant to adapt to the threats of tomorrow, and even erasing the defenses against the older threats.
In other words, you failed totally to grasp the point of the story. In order to keep believing in your own argument you claim that the extinction of an entire family tree is somehow a successful adaptation for the plant.
Just so you know, in the rest of our discussion we'll follow this convention for positive and negative things :
dieing - bad
lots of dieing - very bad
almost everyone dying - very very very bad
living - good
you & your children surviving - good
Agreed ?
The fact that you make mistakes like this shows just how well you understand evolution, in addition it shows what a sawdust-filled brain you have and what an ugly blowhard you really are. (I've given up on not doing the personal insults. I had hoped that you would take that I don't reciprocate your insults as a hint I would like a reasoned argument, but it seems you cannot catch on to subtlety. So I'll be insulting you in my last paragraph from here on in just like you do to me. It is most unfortunate that you see the need for personal attacks in argument, one might almost say that such is an indication you lack confidence in the reason of your argument. Which brings the question of why that is so)
HOW does the linked page shows this ?
P.S. Just because you have more or less bits available to store the information does not mean you actually have more information.
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.
Actually you're almost flirting with correctness here. If you change the word "or" into "and" you'd be right :
cooperation is the dominant strategy under 2 conditions :
1) trade
2) local scarcity AND (obviously not "or") surplus
In other words, it is the best strategy only if there are still (obvious enough) opportunities to increase the GDP through mutually beneficial trade.
Since I was not talking about this situation, what exactly are you claiming ?
Cooperation can occur between individuals -> family -> group -> tribe -> ideology -> country -> species -> ... Every step you make in this list the more adverserial and destructive humans become towards one another. By the time you get to "tribe" genocide clearly is within the realm of possibility, as we're reminded on the news almost daily.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism
Social-Darwinism is a pejorative term used in criticism of ideologies or ideas concerning their exploitation of concepts in biology and social sciences to artificially create political change that reduces the fertility of certain individuals, races, and subcultures having certain "undesired" qualities
Since "social darwinism" is clearly a term for political opinion advocating certain "eugenics"-type government policies, could you please point out where I advocate such policies ? My argument is merely a statement of fact, and if policy is to follow from it, it seems to me that would be the policy of doing nothing, obviously excluding eugenics policies. What you're advocating, race-based government interference, on the other hand, is (an extremely mild form of a) eugenics policy.
And btw, non-sequitur is a term used to denote that one point does not follow from another. The sun is shining brightly today. See how it works ?
It is not used to do what you're doing here, to dispute the validity of a certain sequence of arguments, or to attack the reasonableness of a specific implication.
Your claim, which imho we can simplify to simply claiming that evolution doesn't apply to humans, nor to human societies ...
Quite frankly, it is very obviously invalid.
There is no way to make all information irrelevant to survival.
Of course there is, just copy the dna into a computer and do everything for them.
But we agree that helping the "less fit" ("not necessarily" the same as "less fortunate").
And you would agree that helping the less fit necessarily implies that you make *some* information irrelevant ?
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.
Of course, this is not "helping the less fortunate". Allow me to present another argument.
A plant is not doing so well. But, no worries, ms Jane Greenpeace "saves" the plant : she digs it up, she plants it in her garden. And the plant has offspring. Eventually it fills her garden.
Like in your story, because ms. Jane Greenpeace dutifully removes all threats to the plant, and places a fence to keep out animals, thorns are no longer required and the information to create them is overwritten (in the plant's offspring) by random mutations. Other things are erased : DNA codes that served to retain water, since any shortage was solved by interference from ms. Jane.
Then ms. Jane goes on an extended vacation, moves, or otherwise makes her garden back part of nature.
There were 50 plants, but the passage of 5 wolves and a mild draught later ... perfectly normal events ... ... none of the plants survive ...
*sigh* too bad it would utterly destroy your argument if there were two species of mitochondria, some evolving into separate cells, some becoming part of other lifeforms, increasing the total information in both cases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria *cough*
So anyone who doesn't agree with your political views should "not think that he has anything particularly useful to say" ?
Furthermore you think that only views held by scientists are valid views, and others deserve to get rooted out. (no doubt only the scientists that you agree with, as we will sure as hell won't agree on who gets to be considered a scientist : I'll point out that scientists have differing views just like the rest of us, but let's not fret on the details)
I wonder what methods of "rooting out invalid views" you'd consider appropriate ? For use on me, say ?
I'd be interested in how exactly having a view not validated by your view of science invalidates one's viewpoint ?
Since there are countless examples of scientists that believe God created man, for every religion on record, historical and contemporary, your view isn't even consistent (hell just a week ago slashdot published how North korean scientists believe Kim Jong Il had something to do with it, if I'm not mistaken). It just boils down to "you will find me correct or I'll insult you with big words".
Incidentally, you might want to look up what non-sequitor means. You know, just so you don't make a fool of yourself.
Your point boils down to :
"less fit" != "less fortunate" (look at all the different letters !)
So you agree that helping the "less fit" will bring disaster for everyone ?
There is no such thing as "de-evolution." The only information that gets erased is that which is no longer relevant to survival.
Exactly !
Unfortunately what you're trying to do with social programs, obviously, is to make ALL (gene and meme) information irrelevant to survival, which will, obviously, erase all information.
"Devolution" is a word. Since evolution generally increases the information available in the living system, decreasing the information available in the system is said to "de-evolve" a system.
Would you consider yourself "tolerant" ? If so, it might help to refrain from words like "sick", "selfish", "twisted" and so on when referring to viewpoints differing from your own.
Better cooperators make better survivors.
Unfortunately, this is not true in a general sense. It is specifically only true insofar that resource availability expands exponentially. In other words, it is only true, approximately, as long as GDP keeps growing a few percentage points per year, and only as long as this actually represents a growth in resource availability, not just inflation.
When it no longer does, for whatever reason, the economy becomes a "Nash-balance" : you can only gain what another loses. The only useful social groups become the ones that manage to steal from larger groups on a continuous basis.
You see this in tribal groups. Humans, like every other group animal, do cooperate. However, direct cooperation stops when the group exceeds a certain size (not much bigger than a few hundred individuals at most). Once the group exceeds this population limit, it will split into several groups, who will start to compete by different rules. Specifically :
1. you do not get to take any action which you know will damage another in your own group (intra-group, pareto-efficient behavior is the norm)
2. when outside the group, you're only interested in how it affects both groups relative to eachother. E.g. eventually it becomes acceptable to blow up a shop that contains 80% members of the other group and 20% of your own.
There is a smooth transition between these two, and as long as everyone always advances people frown on purposefully damaging other groups. When that stops ... it doesn't take long.
It is the exact same view that some of the worst monsters in history have used to excuse some of the worst atrocities ever committed.
So has everything from "Jesus loves us all", "Allah hates us all", "there is no God(s)", to the view that the atom can be splitted. Your point ?
Whether something was used for good or evil, historically, does not influence the truth in it.
And, frankly, atheism has a poor track record in that department too (the Soviet genocides, excuse me "engineered famines", some of which were comitted to destroy religious beliefs, all of which were comitted to promote the atheist view of the Soviets (specifically the communist view, which saw atheism as a very important component of it. Rooting out the old opium, you see))
The whole point of the story is that one should ignore one's own convictions and accept the "accepted scientific theory".
So everyone should not just believe in evolution, but also believe that bank account balance, in absence of government intervention, approximately determines your "fitness", and therefore determines how "useful" it would be, for the species (and thus for other people in a very general sense, e.g. a government), to keep you alive.
Then obviously a lower bound would be set, either by reality, below which you're considered dangerous for the species and ... well "removed from the gene pool".
It seems to me that evolution leads to such a view. The whole point is that one cannot place other viewpoints (specifically "Jesus loves us all") above this evolutionary view of reality.
Do you honestly believe the nonsense you're spouting ? Do we really have to go through the exercise of showing in an actual simulation what happens when you "help the less fortunate" ?
When you "help the less fortunate" (your words, not mine), your resource utilization curve becomes exponential. That must be trivial to see, right ? You see, the less fortunate have kids, and due to copying problematic genes (*and* memes), they will have a strong tendency to be less fortunate themselves.
But that's not the end of it. "Helping" does something else, something far, far worse than merely causing mass-casualty famines through resource exhaustion and the total environmental destruction that preceeds it. In normal evolution you have mutations. Group A has mutation A, group B has mutation B. Either group A dies, or group B does, depending on which mutation is best adapted to the real world. Obviously the other group would be considered a lot "less fortunate".
So what happens when you help the "less fortunate" group ? Well, obviously, if you succeed, 50% of the population will have mutation A, 50% will have mutation B. Then a second mutation occurs. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat ...
The end result, obviously, is that for any gene (any allel would be more correct, but hey), it will be randomly and universally distributed throughout the population.
This effect is sometimes called "de-evolution" since it erases the information evolution has placed into our genes, it erases it by randomizing it.
It might even be compared to a species-wide "death". You see what happens at death is that your "soul" (as expressed by amplification factors on neuronal connections) becomes randomized. At death, all the physical representation of the information that defines who you are is randomized, and therefore erased. This process then repeats for your individual cells until your entire body is metabolized by something else.
Well "helping the less fortunate" randomizes all the physical representation of the information that makes us human. It randomizes the human DNA, to no benefit, towards no goal.
We can only thank God (heh) that we're not all that good at "helping the less fortunate" yet. Or we'd long have destroyed ourselves. It might even be argued that several huge historical disasters occured because people tried -and failed- to "help the less fortunate", but they did not fail before they created a huge number of "less fortunate", resulting in massive civil war when they did fail. Evolution theory says that such failure is unavoidable without infinite resources (and not just any infinite will do, it does not merely expand linearly into infinite, it expands exponentially into the infinite).
I have no problem with this as long as evolution teaching includes the "inconveniences" for everyone :
1) evolution means that there is an alternative explanation to "God created man". Freedom of religion, however, means that this can only ever be an alternative. It can NEVER be a replacement, no matter how well proven it is, without turning the US into a single-state-religion state (and yes, there have been single-state-religion atheist states, e.g. the Soviet Union to name just one) ... dead.
2) evolution means that all social programs are going to fail, even if it doesn't specify when they'll fail. Moreover social programs will result in LESS people surviving than without them, except in the very short term. The more successfull they are, the bigger the disaster their failure will bring (famine due to resource exhaustion). Anyone who says "but people will choose to have less kids" should be taken out and shot : 99% of people might choose to have fewer kids, 1% will not (or any > 0 amount). Next generation, those 99% become 80% and that 1% becomes 20%, you can see where this is going.
3) evolution means that without constant technological adaptations on the part of humans (constantly searching new medicines, insecticides, even paints, and obviously we'll make mistakes along the way), we're all
4) any attempt to prevent famine without killing humans needs exponentially rising resource availability (in other words : GDP). ANY policy that might result in anything less than x% GDP growth per year (x ~ between 3 and 4) will lead to famine and mass casualties at speeds that will amaze Usain Bolt.
I have zero tolerance for "evolution means Jesus doesn't exist, and has nothing to do with death or economics. We can all get along without any form of competition".
Unfortunately ... guess how it's taught ... baffling stupidity on both sides.
Great declaration of faith in postmodernism. Of course, it's seriously misguided.
So you're here seriously arguing that birthrate and evolutionary advantage are unrelated ?
1) Less chance of being exterminated by natural or artificial causes.
That will result in DE-evolution. Your point boils down to disabling selection. Do you really need to run a genetic algorithm simulation to realise what it will do ?
It will randomize the genes. Which information do you think is better : a) random b) selected ?
2) Less chance of becoming a functional slave to another human being.
Which has what, exactly, to do with evolution ?
There are 1000-year stretches of history that basically boil down to :
1) slaves kill their masters
2) become masters, take slaves themselves
3) goto 1
Seems to me that being a slave (and remaining a slave) was evolutionary more interesting than being master in the better part of human history.
And do you seriously believe that textbooks, and/or teachers are neutral ?
How about teaching the truth about evolution ? Not just "it means Jesus is dead", but the real, full truth :
1) you have babies
2) a significant portion of them die*
3) successfull mutations "on average" do better
Somehow I doubt that point 2 is "correctly" represented in those Californian textbooks. The "kill or be killed" part of evolution ... always curiously absent in any such discussion. And the P.S. especially will be considered herecy by democrats :
* any (successfull) attempt to reduce or eliminate the dying part of evolution will immediately cause the population to eat up every last resource. This will in short order (certainly less than 5-10 generations, so perhaps a century) result in the mass-consumption of non-renewable resources, which will, at some point, exhaust anyway, resulting in a mass famine.
How about making it extra super juicy ?
Discuss how this "P.S." detail applies to unemployment benefits and/or national health care, or any form of interference, including government interference, that "equalizes opportunity regardless of genes" ? (ie. discuss how it will affect any population that attempts to equalize opportunity regardless of race)
And the real "burn him at the stake" discussion :
Discuss the ability of congressional laws, or other government policy to change the effects of evolution ? Discuss what will be the consequence of the "... will in very short time exhaust any and all available resources ..." on any population that attempts to follow such laws that attempt to interfere with evolution.
Your point, unless I seriously misunderstand it, is that because pro-evolutionists are racists (discriminate against creationists) they will get an evolutionary advantage ? I think you're in for a rude awakening ... especially as to which of those 2 groups will get the evolutionary advantage over time (as non-discrimination gives access to more genetic material, chances are that the non-discriminatory group will get better genes over time).
And in reality :
How does a group get an evolutionary advantage ? ... that will do it.
1) more children
2) more people dying as a result of their actions (as opposed to getting old and depedant) (in short : more selection)
Now let's see who's winning : ... no doubt about it (by a factor 2 or 3 at least) ... no doubt about it (again by a factor)
1) creationists
2) creationists
Furthermore, given how the world looks today and how will look tomorrow as to population (ie. 3rd world and mexican immigration), I'd say that all major population growth in the US is going to be creationist population growth.
I'm against creationism, but with arguments like yours chances are we'll lose.