Here's the root of the problem: your definitions are screwy. If you believe that people who create value by work should control a society's economic resources, you accept the fundamental tenet of socialism, the worker's control of the means of production.
I do not accept the fundamental tenet of socialism. After all "worker's" control doesn't exist. Someone decides, not everyone agrees. To call that system "worker's control" is idiotic. To call decisions in a single-party government system "worker's control" is outright dishonest. North Korea is as much a people's republic as Iran is, or any other graveyard for that matter.
Furthermore socialism does not tolerate disagreeing with it's principles. Especially not by those lowly, dumb workers (apparently those "cling" too much to religion and guns, so the state should point bigger guns at them and teach them "how the world really works", right ? No socialist system EVER has put actual workers in control)
So "worker's control" ? No, not at all. Socialism doesn't do that AT ALL. "Ideological control" of the means of production is a much better term, and this is the same as "political control" of them. The workers aren't ever involved in any actual decisions. By contrast, workers in a capitalist society can vote with their feet (refusing to work), or "vote with their dollars". Every last worker affects every last firm in a capitalist society. In the socialist soviet union 8 people affected all others, and that was it. A similar principle is in force in all socialist countries. In practice a socialist country is like Taliban country.
Socialism's fundamental tenet is "100% manu militari political control of everything". Why don't you visit Cuba, China or, if you can, North Korea.
The second distinction I wish to make is what, exactly, creates value. Mere work does not create value (certainly not in a changing world, resources run out, people are born and die, things get built, things collapse or age,...). There is much, much more involved. The truth is that work, actual, manual work, is but one factor in the production of value, and a rather small one at that, certainly these days.
So not all work is equal. Treating it as such is dangerous in the extreme.
Why ? Because the cost, in value, of keeping human beings alive IS NOT ZERO. Make the value drop below a certain threshold, and people start dying.
Capitalists, though, find it essential. What do you think money is, except force? Money is that which I can trade for ownership; ownership is the relation with an object whereby I can call on government guns to enforce my control of it. Property is force -- "first use" of force, even.
Money is a symbol for value, and that's an idealistic definition that is not often achieved in the real world. It is not, at all, essential to capitalism, and there have been capitalist societies without the concept of money. Furthermore, ALL socialist societies use money, further indicating that this is not an essential property of capitalism.
Private ownership is the main thing that's stopping large numbers of people from all making exactly the same mistake, an event that has happened often in history. Socialism is guaranteeing all people make the same mistake, resulting in e.g. famines.
Just to make one absurd suggestion. Suppose that removing co2 from the athmosphere will prevent plants from carrying out photosynthesis (which it will do at extreme levels). Yes there are thousands of holes in this argument, but it's just an absurd suggestion, showing a situation where we might make a very bad mistake. Suppose then, Al Gore is made president of the universe, and enforces CO2 removal on every country. And plants start dying very fast world-wide. In one year 50% of plants disappear. Whoops. This may be rather absurd, but the point is illustrating the disasters that centralized decision making can cause. And there have been huge mistakes in the history of the wo
The parent post was mainly to illustrate that I consider capitalists, even the "less correct ones" like, say Bill Gates and his monopoly, infinitely more moral (even if perhaps not 100% intentional) than even what you'd call "center" socialists.
I'm don't want this discussion. After all, there's nothing that can convince you.
Let's just say that I agree with the point that there are exactly 2 ways to run an economy : 1) rationing : politicians decide, by direct military force, what happens in society 2) capitalism : people who work AND create value decide what happens in society
Those are the only 2 ways to get things done, as has been illustrated so many times in history. Socialism, even moderate amounts, really means the replacement of money by direct (and therefore constant) military force.
And the ugly part of socialism, in all it's forms, is that even with the massive violence necessary to keep such a society from immediatly falling apart, it doesn't work.
Real-life socialism comes down to beating, killing and stealing, resulting in poverty and misery for both the killers (socialists who joined the party at the correct time) and everyone else.
As I said a specific group dominates IQ tests and scientific accomplishment. That group is not racial (as you imply I said), but cultural (as I actually said), hence the "sundays" comment.
And this has been true for a VERY long time, it's just that the racial composition of that culture has shifted in the last 30 or-so years.
Someday I will learn. Criticizing communism or socialism, despite the numbers of corpses it caused, the wars it started, and the decades of repression...
just won't be accepted on slashdot.
Capitalists are greedy, conspiring pigs ! (now at least I can be sure this post will be good. Well and I can be sure you won't mention something like "capitalists are not a homogenous group". I really got to learn which groups can be discriminated against and which must not. Sorry. My apologies)
is why science became unpopular in the first place. Clearly one can see that whatever killed scientific advancement had a good run immediately after WWII. What exactly destroyed science is hardly clear, but it must have been very influential immediately following 1945, and lasting quite a while. Whatever made science unpopular did a lot of it's damage in the 50's.
And, pray tell, becoming a physicist and certainly becoming a radiologist was magnitudes more popular outside the soviet "union" than inside. It seems to me Europe and America were the force pushing Russians to accompolish more, by setting an example, rather than the reverse.
Here you can find one of many Soviet repressive science disasters.
Communists kill scientists, and science. I can't say I understand why, but the Soviets did it. Mao did it. Kim Jong Il does it. Several South American states did it. There can be no real doubt, given history, something in communism (possibly the one-party-system and "necessary" imposed economic science) destroys science and makes people kill scientists.
If there is a difference in IQ tests between different races (and if you manage to genuinely isolate cultural factors from your testing, then I'm gobsmacked), then
So you mean to say that IQ differences are not race-related, but are instead culturally influenced ?
Why don't I ask the obvious question on everyone's lips : why does... one very, very specific cultural group (with only a little racial variation, although certainly more racial variation than cultural variation) dominate both IQ test scores and actual scientific accomplishment ?
We all know which group that is, and most slashdotters would not consider themselves part of it (certainly not of that culture, or at least certainly not on sundays), so what is it about that specific culture that makes them dominate the arts & sciences ?
How about we take the scientific achievement that took place within different cultures. It just happens that's just what this book is about.
Of course, people who argue for the "equality" of different creeds and ideologies won't like the book, at all. It makes mention of several ancient cultures that did make scientific advances, however as is obvious to see anywhere in the world today, all save 1 failed. ("equality" of creeds strikes me as being such an obvious untruth that it baffles the mind as to think rational people can actually believe it, after all if they're all "equal" then how could it possibly be that there's more than one ? How can people who build upon math, who proclaim math's achievements, believe that the principle of the excluded third is wrong ? Talk about contradictory... but that's just me)
Mayans, Incas, Chinese, Hindus, Japanese, Egyptians, Persians... all made scientific advancements earlier than European civlization. Muslims, Mongols, other Chinese... killed, conquered and massacred their way to richess and scientific knowledge far beyond what contemporary Europeans had. Muslims should really be split up in 3 groups. The original arab conquerors. Then their slaves killed them and took over (the "mamluks") and then they killed themselves while carrying out jihad against Christians and Jews, only to be replaced by invading Ottomans ("Turks" more or less).
And all these civilizations have one thing in common : they all perished. Every last one. Most of these (all except the Chinese) even eradicated their scientific knowledge (esp. the muslims were good at this), and went backward in technological development instead of forward.
The sad truth is, that there is a single ideology whose adherents have produced over 99% of all scientific knowledge, and who are the only ones who rescued the remaining 1% from destruction. There is one person who exemplifies the singular ideology that created our current level of knowledge : Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Why did he learn science ? Why should humans conduct science and improve themselves using it ? To get to know the beauty of God (as in Christ) better. The catholic church followed him (eventually) and we all know the result. This very forum is built upon his legacy, as is nearly everything we have around us.
That's the thesis of this book, and the guy makes a very convincing case. No doubt though, that lots of people, who might be reasonably accused of hating the ideology in question, will deny this.
Quote from the book:
âoeEvidence scattered from Angkor Wat to Machu Picchu attests to the ability of human beings throughout the globe, not confined to the leading civilizations, to achieve amazing technological feats. And yet, and yetâ¦.Modern Europe has overwhelmingly dominated accomplishment in both the arts and sciences. The estimates of the European contribution are robust. They cannot, in any way I have been able to devise, be attenuated more than fractionally.
Unfortunately if you read the book it will become clear just how much the author dislikes this observation. 3 "fields of science and arts" were created with the express purpose of not having any competing Europeans. Arabic literature (dominated by Jews), Indian philosophy (as Europeans dominate what you might call "eastern philosophy" too, certainly up until the 1990's), and Chinese arts (which somehow magically includes the printing press ("invented" by a Chinese emperor, who did nothing with it))
The author concludes the quote above, however, with this remark, even if it's slightly out of scope for the book:
As I write, it appears that Europeâ(TM)s run is over. In another few hundred years, books will probably be exploring the reasons why some completely different part of the
What exactly was irrational about investing in houses between, oh, 1944 and 2008 ? Inquiring minds want to know.
For the record, I think people just aren't rational. People copy one another. It's rather easy to see that leads to bubbles (no matter what economical system you use btw, I think bubbles existed literally within villages in the stone age, and even before), and therefore I think bubbles are here to stay.
The more you know about the concept rationality btw, the more problems you can point out with actually using rationality, and the more insurmountable those problems become (summary : it's theoretically impossible to behave completely rational, and practically it's impossible to behave even vaguely rational. If you succeed in making 1 tiny modification of your behavior to make it slightly more rational yearly, you've done quite well). And yes I think that means that distributed decision making will beat the crap out of centralization until Kingdom come. And no, I don't expect obama to take that into account any time soon. I get the strong impression he "feels" he is sooo much smarter than the rest of us.
*sigh* the "reconstruction was accurate" is a cute, but misleading, statement.
"Consensus" is that the conclusion of the paper was correct, that temperatures have risen in the last 1300 years (which has a great deal of historical precendent : all interglacial periods were periods of slow warming).
BUT the graph, the dataset used *and* the methodology were indeed flawed. But yes, the conclusion stood. The corrected graph is a hell of a lot less steep though. The point being is that the IPCC did not see fit to use the corrected graph, once it was published. And we're not talking 5 days after publication, but a full 1.5 years.
Google Wegman report. But yes, the end conclusion, that there is *some* warming (that started somewhere around WWI) is present, stands.
We all know which side of the argument is trying to force no end of regulations, beliefs and laws on the other.
So it seems a bit of a idiotic question : you can do whatever you want, as far as I'm concerned. The reverse, as is plain to see, is not true.
Why can't YOU leave the rest of us alone ? I'm fucking tempted to move to China these days. One is actually more free there, and the people are actually more tolerant of differing viewpoints, that's how "liberals" have changed America. Heh, perhaps I'll take the middle road and see about Singapore or thereabouts.
Oh and needless to say, the IPCC sponsorship thing is true. And if you count IPCC + it's members you will find that you've accounted for over 80% of all climate research, it's that bad.
It's obvious that there are very serious conflicts of intrest in GW and AGW research.
The primary sponsor of all (A)GW research is the IPCC.
The only reason the IPCC gets money is (A)GW.
Every kid can tell you what is bound to happen next. Obviously the IPCC has been caught several times making propaganda by spreading lies it's own scientists don't agree with (most famous the hokey stick graph). This "somehow" keeps happening, and even today you can find that graph in IPCC materials.
How much do we bet that next month "IPCC scientists find that GW is even worse than thought today" ?
You should be a politician, such blatant and obvious lies told with such comfort.
You claim "physics depends on psychology" is something that supposedly is somehow part of quantum mechanics. Why don't you explain what that DOES mean.
So now you claim that "physics depends on psychology" meant that your mind controls (mostly) your body ?
Do you expect anyone to believe that's what you meant ? You're just trying to wiggle your way out of the obviousness of your message. You believe in magic. You (want to) believe that you're God and whatever you want to happen happens. That's the message that was -VERY clearly- in your original post.
And quantum mechanics does not justify a belief like that. Just because lots of people stupidly misinterpret words that sound familiar quantum mechanics is taken to mean all sorts of things it doesn't -at all mean.
Why don't you cut straight to the chase and claim magic exists. You see, quantum mechanics describes something that is called a "magical field". Such a thing can only mean Harry Potter is non-fiction, right ? Better watch out for those little wooden sticks...
You said "physics depends on psychology". That's the absurdity I refer to, which basically means that what you think makes things happen. Funny how you retract the obvious meaning of your words when called out on their meaning.
And you keep going wrong:
The person who opens the box with Schroedinger's cat in it doesn't decide whether the cat is alive or dead, they observe it.
A person ? What, pray tell, did we said constitutes an observation ?
You see you have all these little changes. By themselves they can be perfectly modeled and you can predict them 100%. You cannot, however measure them without affecting them.
Why not ? The problem is that you do not have mass-less neutral particles you can fire at them. The only way to determine the presence of an electron is to... throw electrons at the location, see if any are missing on the other side.
Suppose you did the same with elephants. You throw 8 elephants at a crossroads. If, on the other side, you count 8 elephants (by throwing yet more elephants at them) you "know fairly certain" that there was nothing on the crossroads. Needless to say, if there was an elephant on the crossroads, he knows damn well he's been observed and he probably "has changed velocity" rather drastically.
The point of a superposition or entanglement, or schodinger's cat, is that you can delay the moment when the changes avalanche into the surrounding environment due to the quantized nature of energy exchange. Sometimes you can delay it for a pretty long time.
In other words, from the beginning of the experiment schrodinger's cat is either alive or dead, you simply do not know which. It (the cat) is not alive and dead (although you should model it that way, since you cannot exclude either situation), nor is it neither. It is not a combination of both.
And "the person who opens the box" IS NOT A PERSON, but a photon, or an electron. I understand that this little thing called "metaphor" is really, really hard for you "sophisticated" pseudoscientists to comprehend, but it really does not have any connection whatsoever to anything human.
You confuse idiotically simple concepts, yet the truth is so very very simple: 1) the laws of nature affect you 2) you do NOT affect them 3) we do not actually know the laws of nature, not exactly 4) you DO affect (in some tiny, tiny way) ideas humans hold about the laws of nature 5) I repeat, since this is so very hard for you to comprehend, this DOES NOT affect the actual laws of nature
And now for the slightly harder ones
6) despite the inexactness of our knowledge of the laws of nature, it's pretty fucking precise. 7) any sufficiently large system on earth is, in reality, modeled using a subset of newtonian physics. A tiny subset. Examples : buildings are modeled as collections of springs that stand on the equivalent of the discworld. Gravity simply points down, without variation. There are no magnetic fields, nor any temperature variations in these models. Nevertheless, they allow us to build things like the world trade center 8) any biological system is, in our most precise models modeled using a tiny subset of our chemical knowledge : there are zero magnetic fields involved, electricity just doesn't exist, and neither do nuclear effects, photons, or even free electrons. Temperature variations are strictly limited to between just below 0 and 100 degrees celcius. Acids and bases are magical things that spread their influence instantly through any volume of water. This goes very, very far : in protein folding, all of quantum mechanics is modeled as essentially 3 (newtonian) springs. These models are precise enough to simulate living, working tissue in the computer.
And you know what ? If you can simulate living cells ignoring nuclear effects, modeling all of quantum mechanics as a few springs, modeling loose protons as a global property of water,... then it's good en
I can hardly believe my eyes. Someone is arguing that whatever you imagine happens (literally "physics is dependent on psychology").
If you think I'm going to waste further energy on defending that physics don't care in the slightest what we think about them, you're wrong.
And yes, that means that your other assesment "You don't actually have an argument, then? All you can resort to is abuse.". I do not intend to defend the very concept of science, that events are inherently predictable and repeatable no matter what anyone does, to idiots who have idiotic fantasies of omnipotence, yet can't spread their viewpoints in more effective ways than on slashdot posts (why not use your "psychology", after all that should be much more effective, no ?). Surely someone with such psychological power of physics must be able to do better than this carpenter's son who got himself executed, no ?
And by the way I'm imagining, by way of test, that you are dead now. Let's see if you reply despite you obviously having died (painfully) in my psychological world.
You assume that humans have an actual motivation at all, which is, especially within AI, very much in doubt.
Humans imitate one another. Yes once they grow up, they do it at a very high level, but nevertheless you'll see this very, very clearly in both the development of young infants and in just about all successfull AI's (e.g. one of the main ways financial AI's work is by attempting to imitate large amounts of traders, then use those programs imitating live traders to predict their actions in events). It is a very effective way to design AI's that does not preclude, as one might think, that such AI's come up with very original and creative solutions to very hard problems.
Imitation, by means of copying around genes in various ways, is after all how evolution works. As well all know, there is hardly an end to the number of flexible, creative, and sometimes wondrous solutions it's found to all sorts of problems.
Of course, if this is true, there is nothing in the "physical" infrastructure of the human mind that creates free will. That, of course, means that free will is a part of human ideology, rather than a hardware mechanism. Which leads us into the rat's nest of observing that that means that free will is not a universal property of humans. There are humans running around who do not have an ideology that includes what you'd call free will. They would not miss this, they would not care, they simply will not make choices for themselves. This brings up interesting questions : what to do about ideologies that do not allow for free will in it's members. What if such an ideology were to grow, and would forcibly try to "convert" outsiders (as obviously any non-free-will ideology that grows will do).
But it seems like we need a true definition of free will, which is useful (ie. non-magical like quite a few of the above ones). Some of the above speakers will only accept a definition of free will that basically means that we can make choices outside of the bounds of the laws of physics. That's not free will to me, and since such doesn't exist, it's not for anyone. Obviously any useful definition of free will would have to fit within a Newtonian model of the mind. This does not make free will predictable, or at least not in any useful way.
(btw, this is not how it -currently- works, it's something that might, theoretically, someday be possible. You cannot just say a*b is 15, but you must find a way to amplify the a and b registers based on the desired outcome)
(oh, and you'll have to repeat the execution a few thousand times, since the chance for a wrong answer will be nonzero. Small, but nonzero. Also there might be multiple distinct answers)
(and btw, this is assuming it's possible at all. Yes, the current theory's equations predict this will work, but it has not actually been experimentally verified in non-trivial cases. E.g. the physician Gerard 't Hoofd, who carried a significant part of the work that led to the standard model (and got a Nobel prize for it) seems to think it won't work. More generally speaking, if any of the hidden-variable theories turn out to be true, this won't work)
(the algorithm "really works" by repeating a specifc calculation "infinite" number of times in one step. It allows one to find the period of the permuation that is created by (a^x mod N), or the order r of a in Z(N). If a is well chosen (it must not be 0, 1, or -1 mod N, and must divide ), then N can be factored into a^(r/2) - 1 and a^(r/2) + 1 (both mod N, so they can be very different numbers). The public key of an rsa key can be the input, and it will give you either p or q, making the other one trivial to compute)
*sigh* I do not have that information "on purely religious grounds". Does that info look like it's from the bible ?
I learned this as part of an AI course. The brain starts up (and takes control of at least the heart muscle, even though that control is not exactly accurate at that point).
Apparently wikipedia counts days from the development of the yellow body, 2 weeks before fertilization.
So here's the "relevant entry" : # A neural groove (future spinal cord) forms over the notochord with a brain bulge at one end. Neuromeres appear. (day 18 of fert.[2])
These neurons form suddenly, and immediately start processing information (it is critical for neural growth that the brain is active, because without activity the brain has to allow all connections to form, instead of the "relevant" ones. Problem is, there are a few million times as much theoretically possible connections versus "relevant" connections. How to determine the relevant connections ? Simple : only form possible connections that the baby's brain is trying to use, which is something that is a total bitch to simulate). It will take control of the first muscle within minutes, and it receives it's first external stimulus within seconds of forming.
And yes, the baby is very, very tiny at this point and is not recognizably human in looks. The neural tube, however *is* distinctly human, and it *is* processing information.
In fact, before the 18th day ends that information processing will grow to the level that a normal computer cannot reasonably simulate it anymore (though the problem is also that simulating a growing brain is much more complex than simulating one that has stopped all significant growth). The neural system of a 19 day (19 days since fertilizatino) old cannot "reasonably" be simulated with anything less than a supercomputer.
Or totally inaccurately put : a human brain grows more complex than that of a full-grown dog in the first day of it's existence, in fact in less than 16 hours (and a dog has a much more complex brain than a cow). The fun thing about early development of a child is that you can literally set your watch according to the child's development. In fact, the first 10 days or so it will probably be more accurate than your watch.
Before the baby is born, by the way, it's brain will grow more complex than yours or mine (since we've already have parts die off). A newborn's brain is very near the peak of it's total information processing capacity. Once the baby becomes 2 weeks old, it's all downhill from there.
And yes I realize that looking at it this way would be considered problematic by pro-abortionists. I don't give a shit. I merely point out the absurdity of protecting cows from pain while not caring about a 19 day old baby.
The truth is that the only real difference is that you cannot see a 19 day old baby suffer. And what is not seen, nobody cares about. And what is seen and is politically inconvenient is declared unreliable. Of course it's more or less equally unreliable as, say, global warming models. And apparently they're describing people who raise even reasonable doubts about them as psychologically ill.
I find it funny, really. When I was young the criticism of catholics in school and such pertained mostly to their hypocrisy. It's funny, because I find those people a lot less hypocritical as those criticizing them, even if I'll fully agree they're a lot less than perfect.
Let's just put this in perspective, right ? A feutus, 2 months after conception, is capable of more complex reasoning (and feels pain) than a cow. Yet abortion... that's no problem, right ? A child's brain starts up and starts learning and feeling the 18th day after conception, long before even the most perceptive of women realizes she's pregnant. Yet we allow abortion, but feel sorry for animals which will never attain the intellectual capacity a human feutus develops before it even connects blood vessels to the mother.
Something is a bit... well, stupid, about this idiocy.
And don't worry about this plan : it's a non-starter. Animals who feel no pain for whatever reason are born all of the time. So are humans who feel no pain. You might think this is a blessing, right ? Think again... In case you're wondering why there are so few of them : most of these people die from idiotic accidents (like biting off critical body parts, I shit you not) at a young age.
I seriously doubt that once these cows turn out to have zero feedback between tongue and teeth, then bite of their tongue, and refuse to eat any more until they die, this idiocy will have lost all appearance of either relieving pain or being economically interesting. Or they refuse to turn back at the edge of the meadow, no matter how much barbed wire they get wrapped around them or how much blood they lose (actually bulls have serious problems with that even with perfectly functioning pain nerves)
Besides growing meat directly, without animal involvement at all, is getting underway. Just google it. That will presumably be cheaper and will present zero ethical issues. And it will get rid having to cut nerves or blood vessels out of steaks. Hurray. Also it will be more efficient. The sad truth is that plants are very inefficient solar panels, and animals are utter disasters at turning biomatter into meat. There is no existing plant that has 2% efficiency at photosynthesis, and there is no animal that has a 2% efficient digestive system (humans are actually just about the most efficient animals on the planet, and while everyone thinks it's intelligence that allows us to spread, it might very well be that we have, by far, the most efficient metabolism (measured by testing energy intake versus movement performance)). And as we all know 2%*2% = 0.4% efficiency solar energy -> meat (and that's only for animals captured in the wild, farmed animals are less efficient). The most efficient amongst humans are about 2%^3 or they use about 1 watt from around 8 million delivered by the sun.
As population rises this 8 million solar watts to give 1 human 1 watt (which will allow a california resident to maintain body temperature in the summer for about 3 minutes) will have to get better. We can't modify humans, so we'll have to eat more efficiently produced foods.
You need to read the parent post again... was I talking about India's independance ? No, I wasn't... Partition is a word you might want to look up.
First off, this makes no logical sense. As you so aptly described, capitalism is a means to organize civilization... the supply of actual richnes does not change with this.
If you truly believe that, then why don't you go to North Korea, after all "the supply of richess" is the same there, now isn't it ?
Capitalism, theoretically perfectly implemented is exactly as efficient as communism. That's because capitalism converges to the optimum with pareto efficient actors (meaning, people "don't do unto others as they would not have done on themselves"). Communism, by contrast requires absolute obedience in order to even approach efficiency. Communism efficiency requires that "normal" people are reduced to automatons, incapable of independant decision making AND requires that the state successfully manages the complexity of EVERYTHING that happens within it's borders.
So yes, I suppose you're right. There is nothing inherently more efficient about capitalism versus communism. "Actors" in the theory does however, mean you and me. Any person living in a communist system that expects to have any efficiency must be totally oppressed by the state (the state must literally be involved in the decision to use leaves or toilet paper). There are required rules to be followed in a capitalist society too, of course, but a capitalist society can be much more flexible.
Furthermore, a communist society is de-facto frozen in practice by it's own complexity, for no state (or large company) has ever shown to fully master it's own complexity. China did so best, but -surprise- allowing large-scale privatisation increased efficiency enormously, so I guess they too never attained the level of efficiency that even half-assed capitalism attains.
In a capitalist society decision making is distributed, so it can deal with any level of complexity, limited only by total population size.
They call it "survival of the fittest", but that's figurative. It's like saying the guy with the biggest muscles is the most likely to reproduce (see effects of steroids on balls). Pacifism is a way of co-existing, there are other ways of doing it, but there isn't one that tends to evolution any more than the other.
Name 2 even reasonably similar species that cooperate without involving violence (ie, members of these species must not be capable of reproducing with a member of the other species, but otherwise they must compete for the same resources).
These don't exist. (yes there are 2 or 3 exceptions, but those are all cases where this is temporary, where one species is fast gaining ground. E.g. rabbits versus all manner of creatures is Australia, or a type of seaweed in the Mediterranean,...).
Refusing to compete, or even refusing to expand your resource base (whether that means land, people, or whatever...), for whatever reason, is suicide (at best it's slow suicide). That's one effect of how evolution works.
If you're saying pacifists are disadvantaged in evolution? Say that to every Indian today that isn't (involuntarily) under the rule of the Queen of England.
Okay, let's ask these indians. Oops, we can't, they're dead.
Ever since the partition there have been millions of Hindu and Sikh disappearances in both territories (both territories of Pakistan that is). They're dead. Ever since then attacks within India itself have also done nothing but risen.
The pacifists, gandhi's co-religionists are all but extinct in both colonies were pacifism was tried. There are literally more catholics in Pakistan and in Bangladesh than Hindus. For a nation that was 100% Hindu less than 300 years ago,
Slashdot Mirror
Here's the root of the problem: your definitions are screwy. If you believe that people who create value by work should control a society's economic resources, you accept the fundamental tenet of socialism, the worker's control of the means of production.
I do not accept the fundamental tenet of socialism. After all "worker's" control doesn't exist. Someone decides, not everyone agrees. To call that system "worker's control" is idiotic. To call decisions in a single-party government system "worker's control" is outright dishonest. North Korea is as much a people's republic as Iran is, or any other graveyard for that matter.
Furthermore socialism does not tolerate disagreeing with it's principles. Especially not by those lowly, dumb workers (apparently those "cling" too much to religion and guns, so the state should point bigger guns at them and teach them "how the world really works", right ? No socialist system EVER has put actual workers in control)
So "worker's control" ? No, not at all. Socialism doesn't do that AT ALL. "Ideological control" of the means of production is a much better term, and this is the same as "political control" of them. The workers aren't ever involved in any actual decisions. By contrast, workers in a capitalist society can vote with their feet (refusing to work), or "vote with their dollars". Every last worker affects every last firm in a capitalist society. In the socialist soviet union 8 people affected all others, and that was it. A similar principle is in force in all socialist countries. In practice a socialist country is like Taliban country.
Socialism's fundamental tenet is "100% manu militari political control of everything". Why don't you visit Cuba, China or, if you can, North Korea.
The second distinction I wish to make is what, exactly, creates value. Mere work does not create value (certainly not in a changing world, resources run out, people are born and die, things get built, things collapse or age, ...). There is much, much more involved. The truth is that work, actual, manual work, is but one factor in the production of value, and a rather small one at that, certainly these days.
So not all work is equal. Treating it as such is dangerous in the extreme.
Why ? Because the cost, in value, of keeping human beings alive IS NOT ZERO. Make the value drop below a certain threshold, and people start dying.
Capitalists, though, find it essential. What do you think money is, except force? Money is that which I can trade for ownership; ownership is the relation with an object whereby I can call on government guns to enforce my control of it. Property is force -- "first use" of force, even.
Money is a symbol for value, and that's an idealistic definition that is not often achieved in the real world. It is not, at all, essential to capitalism, and there have been capitalist societies without the concept of money. Furthermore, ALL socialist societies use money, further indicating that this is not an essential property of capitalism.
Private ownership is the main thing that's stopping large numbers of people from all making exactly the same mistake, an event that has happened often in history. Socialism is guaranteeing all people make the same mistake, resulting in e.g. famines.
Just to make one absurd suggestion. Suppose that removing co2 from the athmosphere will prevent plants from carrying out photosynthesis (which it will do at extreme levels). Yes there are thousands of holes in this argument, but it's just an absurd suggestion, showing a situation where we might make a very bad mistake. Suppose then, Al Gore is made president of the universe, and enforces CO2 removal on every country. And plants start dying very fast world-wide. In one year 50% of plants disappear. Whoops. This may be rather absurd, but the point is illustrating the disasters that centralized decision making can cause. And there have been huge mistakes in the history of the wo
The parent post was mainly to illustrate that I consider capitalists, even the "less correct ones" like, say Bill Gates and his monopoly, infinitely more moral (even if perhaps not 100% intentional) than even what you'd call "center" socialists.
I'm don't want this discussion. After all, there's nothing that can convince you.
Let's just say that I agree with the point that there are exactly 2 ways to run an economy :
1) rationing : politicians decide, by direct military force, what happens in society
2) capitalism : people who work AND create value decide what happens in society
Those are the only 2 ways to get things done, as has been illustrated so many times in history. Socialism, even moderate amounts, really means the replacement of money by direct (and therefore constant) military force.
And the ugly part of socialism, in all it's forms, is that even with the massive violence necessary to keep such a society from immediatly falling apart, it doesn't work.
Real-life socialism comes down to beating, killing and stealing, resulting in poverty and misery for both the killers (socialists who joined the party at the correct time) and everyone else.
As I said a specific group dominates IQ tests and scientific accomplishment. That group is not racial (as you imply I said), but cultural (as I actually said), hence the "sundays" comment.
And this has been true for a VERY long time, it's just that the racial composition of that culture has shifted in the last 30 or-so years.
Someday I will learn. Criticizing communism or socialism, despite the numbers of corpses it caused, the wars it started, and the decades of repression ...
just won't be accepted on slashdot.
Capitalists are greedy, conspiring pigs ! (now at least I can be sure this post will be good. Well and I can be sure you won't mention something like "capitalists are not a homogenous group". I really got to learn which groups can be discriminated against and which must not. Sorry. My apologies)
multiple independent analyses have been performed, all of which agree that the hockeystick shape is accurate.
and the point is, obviously, that it is clear why : even random data, without temperature rise, is accurately represented by the hockeystick graph.
That's the big "oops".
is why science became unpopular in the first place. Clearly one can see that whatever killed scientific advancement had a good run immediately after WWII. What exactly destroyed science is hardly clear, but it must have been very influential immediately following 1945, and lasting quite a while. Whatever made science unpopular did a lot of it's damage in the 50's.
The Soviets successfully made becoming a Physicist or Radiologist desirable and even "sexy" objectives for several decades.
You mean when they weren't killing people for disagreeing with "approved" science ?
And, pray tell, becoming a physicist and certainly becoming a radiologist was magnitudes more popular outside the soviet "union" than inside. It seems to me Europe and America were the force pushing Russians to accompolish more, by setting an example, rather than the reverse.
Here you can find one of many Soviet repressive science disasters.
Communists kill scientists, and science. I can't say I understand why, but the Soviets did it. Mao did it. Kim Jong Il does it. Several South American states did it. There can be no real doubt, given history, something in communism (possibly the one-party-system and "necessary" imposed economic science) destroys science and makes people kill scientists.
If there is a difference in IQ tests between different races (and if you manage to genuinely isolate cultural factors from your testing, then I'm gobsmacked), then
So you mean to say that IQ differences are not race-related, but are instead culturally influenced ?
Why don't I ask the obvious question on everyone's lips : why does ... one very, very specific cultural group (with only a little racial variation, although certainly more racial variation than cultural variation) dominate both IQ test scores and actual scientific accomplishment ?
We all know which group that is, and most slashdotters would not consider themselves part of it (certainly not of that culture, or at least certainly not on sundays), so what is it about that specific culture that makes them dominate the arts & sciences ?
How about we take the scientific achievement that took place within different cultures. It just happens that's just what this book is about.
Of course, people who argue for the "equality" of different creeds and ideologies won't like the book, at all. It makes mention of several ancient cultures that did make scientific advances, however as is obvious to see anywhere in the world today, all save 1 failed. ("equality" of creeds strikes me as being such an obvious untruth that it baffles the mind as to think rational people can actually believe it, after all if they're all "equal" then how could it possibly be that there's more than one ? How can people who build upon math, who proclaim math's achievements, believe that the principle of the excluded third is wrong ? Talk about contradictory ... but that's just me)
Mayans, Incas, Chinese, Hindus, Japanese, Egyptians, Persians ... all made scientific advancements earlier than European civlization. Muslims, Mongols, other Chinese ... killed, conquered and massacred their way to richess and scientific knowledge far beyond what contemporary Europeans had. Muslims should really be split up in 3 groups. The original arab conquerors. Then their slaves killed them and took over (the "mamluks") and then they killed themselves while carrying out jihad against Christians and Jews, only to be replaced by invading Ottomans ("Turks" more or less).
And all these civilizations have one thing in common : they all perished. Every last one. Most of these (all except the Chinese) even eradicated their scientific knowledge (esp. the muslims were good at this), and went backward in technological development instead of forward.
The sad truth is, that there is a single ideology whose adherents have produced over 99% of all scientific knowledge, and who are the only ones who rescued the remaining 1% from destruction. There is one person who exemplifies the singular ideology that created our current level of knowledge : Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Why did he learn science ? Why should humans conduct science and improve themselves using it ? To get to know the beauty of God (as in Christ) better. The catholic church followed him (eventually) and we all know the result. This very forum is built upon his legacy, as is nearly everything we have around us.
That's the thesis of this book, and the guy makes a very convincing case. No doubt though, that lots of people, who might be reasonably accused of hating the ideology in question, will deny this.
Quote from the book :
âoeEvidence scattered from Angkor Wat to Machu Picchu attests to the ability of human beings throughout the globe, not confined to the leading civilizations, to achieve amazing technological feats. And yet, and yetâ¦.Modern Europe has overwhelmingly dominated accomplishment in both the arts and sciences. The estimates of the European contribution are robust. They cannot, in any way I have been able to devise, be attenuated more than fractionally.
Unfortunately if you read the book it will become clear just how much the author dislikes this observation. 3 "fields of science and arts" were created with the express purpose of not having any competing Europeans. Arabic literature (dominated by Jews), Indian philosophy (as Europeans dominate what you might call "eastern philosophy" too, certainly up until the 1990's), and Chinese arts (which somehow magically includes the printing press ("invented" by a Chinese emperor, who did nothing with it))
The author concludes the quote above, however, with this remark, even if it's slightly out of scope for the book :
As I write, it appears that Europeâ(TM)s run is over. In another few hundred years, books will probably be exploring the reasons why some completely different part of the
Exactly. Not that this (or any other) administration is about to stop doing that.
What exactly was irrational about investing in houses between, oh, 1944 and 2008 ? Inquiring minds want to know.
For the record, I think people just aren't rational. People copy one another. It's rather easy to see that leads to bubbles (no matter what economical system you use btw, I think bubbles existed literally within villages in the stone age, and even before), and therefore I think bubbles are here to stay.
The more you know about the concept rationality btw, the more problems you can point out with actually using rationality, and the more insurmountable those problems become (summary : it's theoretically impossible to behave completely rational, and practically it's impossible to behave even vaguely rational. If you succeed in making 1 tiny modification of your behavior to make it slightly more rational yearly, you've done quite well). And yes I think that means that distributed decision making will beat the crap out of centralization until Kingdom come. And no, I don't expect obama to take that into account any time soon. I get the strong impression he "feels" he is sooo much smarter than the rest of us.
*sigh* the "reconstruction was accurate" is a cute, but misleading, statement.
"Consensus" is that the conclusion of the paper was correct, that temperatures have risen in the last 1300 years (which has a great deal of historical precendent : all interglacial periods were periods of slow warming).
BUT the graph, the dataset used *and* the methodology were indeed flawed. But yes, the conclusion stood. The corrected graph is a hell of a lot less steep though. The point being is that the IPCC did not see fit to use the corrected graph, once it was published. And we're not talking 5 days after publication, but a full 1.5 years.
Google Wegman report. But yes, the end conclusion, that there is *some* warming (that started somewhere around WWI) is present, stands.
We all know which side of the argument is trying to force no end of regulations, beliefs and laws on the other.
So it seems a bit of a idiotic question : you can do whatever you want, as far as I'm concerned. The reverse, as is plain to see, is not true.
Why can't YOU leave the rest of us alone ? I'm fucking tempted to move to China these days. One is actually more free there, and the people are actually more tolerant of differing viewpoints, that's how "liberals" have changed America. Heh, perhaps I'll take the middle road and see about Singapore or thereabouts.
Oh and needless to say, the IPCC sponsorship thing is true. And if you count IPCC + it's members you will find that you've accounted for over 80% of all climate research, it's that bad.
It's obvious that there are very serious conflicts of intrest in GW and AGW research.
The primary sponsor of all (A)GW research is the IPCC.
The only reason the IPCC gets money is (A)GW.
Every kid can tell you what is bound to happen next. Obviously the IPCC has been caught several times making propaganda by spreading lies it's own scientists don't agree with (most famous the hokey stick graph). This "somehow" keeps happening, and even today you can find that graph in IPCC materials.
How much do we bet that next month "IPCC scientists find that GW is even worse than thought today" ?
You should be a politician, such blatant and obvious lies told with such comfort.
You claim "physics depends on psychology" is something that supposedly is somehow part of quantum mechanics. Why don't you explain what that DOES mean.
Hey if Barack Obama can claim this, so can I !
So now you claim that "physics depends on psychology" meant that your mind controls (mostly) your body ?
Do you expect anyone to believe that's what you meant ? You're just trying to wiggle your way out of the obviousness of your message. You believe in magic. You (want to) believe that you're God and whatever you want to happen happens. That's the message that was -VERY clearly- in your original post.
And quantum mechanics does not justify a belief like that. Just because lots of people stupidly misinterpret words that sound familiar quantum mechanics is taken to mean all sorts of things it doesn't -at all mean.
Why don't you cut straight to the chase and claim magic exists. You see, quantum mechanics describes something that is called a "magical field". Such a thing can only mean Harry Potter is non-fiction, right ? Better watch out for those little wooden sticks ...
You said "physics depends on psychology". That's the absurdity I refer to, which basically means that what you think makes things happen. Funny how you retract the obvious meaning of your words when called out on their meaning.
And you keep going wrong :
The person who opens the box with Schroedinger's cat in it doesn't decide whether the cat is alive or dead, they observe it.
A person ? What, pray tell, did we said constitutes an observation ?
You see you have all these little changes. By themselves they can be perfectly modeled and you can predict them 100%. You cannot, however measure them without affecting them.
Why not ? The problem is that you do not have mass-less neutral particles you can fire at them. The only way to determine the presence of an electron is to ... throw electrons at the location, see if any are missing on the other side.
Suppose you did the same with elephants. You throw 8 elephants at a crossroads. If, on the other side, you count 8 elephants (by throwing yet more elephants at them) you "know fairly certain" that there was nothing on the crossroads. Needless to say, if there was an elephant on the crossroads, he knows damn well he's been observed and he probably "has changed velocity" rather drastically.
The point of a superposition or entanglement, or schodinger's cat, is that you can delay the moment when the changes avalanche into the surrounding environment due to the quantized nature of energy exchange. Sometimes you can delay it for a pretty long time.
In other words, from the beginning of the experiment schrodinger's cat is either alive or dead, you simply do not know which. It (the cat) is not alive and dead (although you should model it that way, since you cannot exclude either situation), nor is it neither. It is not a combination of both.
And "the person who opens the box" IS NOT A PERSON, but a photon, or an electron. I understand that this little thing called "metaphor" is really, really hard for you "sophisticated" pseudoscientists to comprehend, but it really does not have any connection whatsoever to anything human.
You confuse idiotically simple concepts, yet the truth is so very very simple :
1) the laws of nature affect you
2) you do NOT affect them
3) we do not actually know the laws of nature, not exactly
4) you DO affect (in some tiny, tiny way) ideas humans hold about the laws of nature
5) I repeat, since this is so very hard for you to comprehend, this DOES NOT affect the actual laws of nature
And now for the slightly harder ones
6) despite the inexactness of our knowledge of the laws of nature, it's pretty fucking precise.
7) any sufficiently large system on earth is, in reality, modeled using a subset of newtonian physics. A tiny subset. Examples : buildings are modeled as collections of springs that stand on the equivalent of the discworld. Gravity simply points down, without variation. There are no magnetic fields, nor any temperature variations in these models. Nevertheless, they allow us to build things like the world trade center
8) any biological system is, in our most precise models modeled using a tiny subset of our chemical knowledge : there are zero magnetic fields involved, electricity just doesn't exist, and neither do nuclear effects, photons, or even free electrons. Temperature variations are strictly limited to between just below 0 and 100 degrees celcius. Acids and bases are magical things that spread their influence instantly through any volume of water. This goes very, very far : in protein folding, all of quantum mechanics is modeled as essentially 3 (newtonian) springs. These models are precise enough to simulate living, working tissue in the computer.
And you know what ? If you can simulate living cells ignoring nuclear effects, modeling all of quantum mechanics as a few springs, modeling loose protons as a global property of water, ... then it's good en
I can hardly believe my eyes. Someone is arguing that whatever you imagine happens (literally "physics is dependent on psychology").
If you think I'm going to waste further energy on defending that physics don't care in the slightest what we think about them, you're wrong.
And yes, that means that your other assesment "You don't actually have an argument, then? All you can resort to is abuse.". I do not intend to defend the very concept of science, that events are inherently predictable and repeatable no matter what anyone does, to idiots who have idiotic fantasies of omnipotence, yet can't spread their viewpoints in more effective ways than on slashdot posts (why not use your "psychology", after all that should be much more effective, no ?). Surely someone with such psychological power of physics must be able to do better than this carpenter's son who got himself executed, no ?
And by the way I'm imagining, by way of test, that you are dead now. Let's see if you reply despite you obviously having died (painfully) in my psychological world.
You assume that humans have an actual motivation at all, which is, especially within AI, very much in doubt.
Humans imitate one another. Yes once they grow up, they do it at a very high level, but nevertheless you'll see this very, very clearly in both the development of young infants and in just about all successfull AI's (e.g. one of the main ways financial AI's work is by attempting to imitate large amounts of traders, then use those programs imitating live traders to predict their actions in events). It is a very effective way to design AI's that does not preclude, as one might think, that such AI's come up with very original and creative solutions to very hard problems.
Imitation, by means of copying around genes in various ways, is after all how evolution works. As well all know, there is hardly an end to the number of flexible, creative, and sometimes wondrous solutions it's found to all sorts of problems.
Of course, if this is true, there is nothing in the "physical" infrastructure of the human mind that creates free will. That, of course, means that free will is a part of human ideology, rather than a hardware mechanism. Which leads us into the rat's nest of observing that that means that free will is not a universal property of humans. There are humans running around who do not have an ideology that includes what you'd call free will. They would not miss this, they would not care, they simply will not make choices for themselves. This brings up interesting questions : what to do about ideologies that do not allow for free will in it's members. What if such an ideology were to grow, and would forcibly try to "convert" outsiders (as obviously any non-free-will ideology that grows will do).
But it seems like we need a true definition of free will, which is useful (ie. non-magical like quite a few of the above ones). Some of the above speakers will only accept a definition of free will that basically means that we can make choices outside of the bounds of the laws of physics. That's not free will to me, and since such doesn't exist, it's not for anyone. Obviously any useful definition of free will would have to fit within a Newtonian model of the mind. This does not make free will predictable, or at least not in any useful way.
It's more something like this :
int a = 0..65535
int b = 0..65535
a*b = 15
printf("a = %d, b = %d", a, b);
(btw, this is not how it -currently- works, it's something that might, theoretically, someday be possible. You cannot just say a*b is 15, but you must find a way to amplify the a and b registers based on the desired outcome)
(oh, and you'll have to repeat the execution a few thousand times, since the chance for a wrong answer will be nonzero. Small, but nonzero. Also there might be multiple distinct answers)
(and btw, this is assuming it's possible at all. Yes, the current theory's equations predict this will work, but it has not actually been experimentally verified in non-trivial cases. E.g. the physician Gerard 't Hoofd, who carried a significant part of the work that led to the standard model (and got a Nobel prize for it) seems to think it won't work. More generally speaking, if any of the hidden-variable theories turn out to be true, this won't work)
(the algorithm "really works" by repeating a specifc calculation "infinite" number of times in one step. It allows one to find the period of the permuation that is created by (a^x mod N), or the order r of a in Z(N). If a is well chosen (it must not be 0, 1, or -1 mod N, and must divide ), then N can be factored into a^(r/2) - 1 and a^(r/2) + 1 (both mod N, so they can be very different numbers). The public key of an rsa key can be the input, and it will give you either p or q, making the other one trivial to compute)
*sigh* I do not have that information "on purely religious grounds". Does that info look like it's from the bible ?
I learned this as part of an AI course. The brain starts up (and takes control of at least the heart muscle, even though that control is not exactly accurate at that point).
Apparently wikipedia counts days from the development of the yellow body, 2 weeks before fertilization.
ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_development#Week_5
So here's the "relevant entry" :
# A neural groove (future spinal cord) forms over the notochord with a brain bulge at one end. Neuromeres appear. (day 18 of fert.[2])
These neurons form suddenly, and immediately start processing information (it is critical for neural growth that the brain is active, because without activity the brain has to allow all connections to form, instead of the "relevant" ones. Problem is, there are a few million times as much theoretically possible connections versus "relevant" connections. How to determine the relevant connections ? Simple : only form possible connections that the baby's brain is trying to use, which is something that is a total bitch to simulate). It will take control of the first muscle within minutes, and it receives it's first external stimulus within seconds of forming.
And yes, the baby is very, very tiny at this point and is not recognizably human in looks. The neural tube, however *is* distinctly human, and it *is* processing information.
In fact, before the 18th day ends that information processing will grow to the level that a normal computer cannot reasonably simulate it anymore (though the problem is also that simulating a growing brain is much more complex than simulating one that has stopped all significant growth). The neural system of a 19 day (19 days since fertilizatino) old cannot "reasonably" be simulated with anything less than a supercomputer.
Or totally inaccurately put : a human brain grows more complex than that of a full-grown dog in the first day of it's existence, in fact in less than 16 hours (and a dog has a much more complex brain than a cow). The fun thing about early development of a child is that you can literally set your watch according to the child's development. In fact, the first 10 days or so it will probably be more accurate than your watch.
Before the baby is born, by the way, it's brain will grow more complex than yours or mine (since we've already have parts die off). A newborn's brain is very near the peak of it's total information processing capacity. Once the baby becomes 2 weeks old, it's all downhill from there.
And yes I realize that looking at it this way would be considered problematic by pro-abortionists. I don't give a shit. I merely point out the absurdity of protecting cows from pain while not caring about a 19 day old baby.
The truth is that the only real difference is that you cannot see a 19 day old baby suffer. And what is not seen, nobody cares about. And what is seen and is politically inconvenient is declared unreliable. Of course it's more or less equally unreliable as, say, global warming models. And apparently they're describing people who raise even reasonable doubts about them as psychologically ill.
I find it funny, really. When I was young the criticism of catholics in school and such pertained mostly to their hypocrisy. It's funny, because I find those people a lot less hypocritical as those criticizing them, even if I'll fully agree they're a lot less than perfect.
Let's just put this in perspective, right ? A feutus, 2 months after conception, is capable of more complex reasoning (and feels pain) than a cow. Yet abortion ... that's no problem, right ? A child's brain starts up and starts learning and feeling the 18th day after conception, long before even the most perceptive of women realizes she's pregnant. Yet we allow abortion, but feel sorry for animals which will never attain the intellectual capacity a human feutus develops before it even connects blood vessels to the mother.
Something is a bit ... well, stupid, about this idiocy.
And don't worry about this plan : it's a non-starter. Animals who feel no pain for whatever reason are born all of the time. So are humans who feel no pain. You might think this is a blessing, right ? Think again ... In case you're wondering why there are so few of them : most of these people die from idiotic accidents (like biting off critical body parts, I shit you not) at a young age.
I seriously doubt that once these cows turn out to have zero feedback between tongue and teeth, then bite of their tongue, and refuse to eat any more until they die, this idiocy will have lost all appearance of either relieving pain or being economically interesting. Or they refuse to turn back at the edge of the meadow, no matter how much barbed wire they get wrapped around them or how much blood they lose (actually bulls have serious problems with that even with perfectly functioning pain nerves)
Besides growing meat directly, without animal involvement at all, is getting underway. Just google it. That will presumably be cheaper and will present zero ethical issues. And it will get rid having to cut nerves or blood vessels out of steaks. Hurray. Also it will be more efficient. The sad truth is that plants are very inefficient solar panels, and animals are utter disasters at turning biomatter into meat. There is no existing plant that has 2% efficiency at photosynthesis, and there is no animal that has a 2% efficient digestive system (humans are actually just about the most efficient animals on the planet, and while everyone thinks it's intelligence that allows us to spread, it might very well be that we have, by far, the most efficient metabolism (measured by testing energy intake versus movement performance)). And as we all know 2%*2% = 0.4% efficiency solar energy -> meat (and that's only for animals captured in the wild, farmed animals are less efficient). The most efficient amongst humans are about 2%^3 or they use about 1 watt from around 8 million delivered by the sun.
As population rises this 8 million solar watts to give 1 human 1 watt (which will allow a california resident to maintain body temperature in the summer for about 3 minutes) will have to get better. We can't modify humans, so we'll have to eat more efficiently produced foods.
You need to read the parent post again ... was I talking about India's independance ? No, I wasn't ... Partition is a word you might want to look up.
First off, this makes no logical sense. As you so aptly described, capitalism is a means to organize civilization... the supply of actual richnes does not change with this.
If you truly believe that, then why don't you go to North Korea, after all "the supply of richess" is the same there, now isn't it ?
Capitalism, theoretically perfectly implemented is exactly as efficient as communism. That's because capitalism converges to the optimum with pareto efficient actors (meaning, people "don't do unto others as they would not have done on themselves"). Communism, by contrast requires absolute obedience in order to even approach efficiency. Communism efficiency requires that "normal" people are reduced to automatons, incapable of independant decision making AND requires that the state successfully manages the complexity of EVERYTHING that happens within it's borders.
So yes, I suppose you're right. There is nothing inherently more efficient about capitalism versus communism. "Actors" in the theory does however, mean you and me. Any person living in a communist system that expects to have any efficiency must be totally oppressed by the state (the state must literally be involved in the decision to use leaves or toilet paper). There are required rules to be followed in a capitalist society too, of course, but a capitalist society can be much more flexible.
Furthermore, a communist society is de-facto frozen in practice by it's own complexity, for no state (or large company) has ever shown to fully master it's own complexity. China did so best, but -surprise- allowing large-scale privatisation increased efficiency enormously, so I guess they too never attained the level of efficiency that even half-assed capitalism attains.
In a capitalist society decision making is distributed, so it can deal with any level of complexity, limited only by total population size.
They call it "survival of the fittest", but that's figurative. It's like saying the guy with the biggest muscles is the most likely to reproduce (see effects of steroids on balls). Pacifism is a way of co-existing, there are other ways of doing it, but there isn't one that tends to evolution any more than the other.
Name 2 even reasonably similar species that cooperate without involving violence (ie, members of these species must not be capable of reproducing with a member of the other species, but otherwise they must compete for the same resources).
These don't exist. (yes there are 2 or 3 exceptions, but those are all cases where this is temporary, where one species is fast gaining ground. E.g. rabbits versus all manner of creatures is Australia, or a type of seaweed in the Mediterranean, ...).
Refusing to compete, or even refusing to expand your resource base (whether that means land, people, or whatever ...), for whatever reason, is suicide (at best it's slow suicide). That's one effect of how evolution works.
If you're saying pacifists are disadvantaged in evolution? Say that to every Indian today that isn't (involuntarily) under the rule of the Queen of England.
Okay, let's ask these indians. Oops, we can't, they're dead.
Ever since the partition there have been millions of Hindu and Sikh disappearances in both territories (both territories of Pakistan that is). They're dead. Ever since then attacks within India itself have also done nothing but risen.
The pacifists, gandhi's co-religionists are all but extinct in both colonies were pacifism was tried. There are literally more catholics in Pakistan and in Bangladesh than Hindus. For a nation that was 100% Hindu less than 300 years ago,