Multi factor authentication is definitely a good idea. Just a 'something you have, something you know' approach is already a big improvement over what is being used in many cases nowadays.
This is a security breech in it of its self. The idea is to make a system harder to get into, by allowing users to have a single token for a multi-organizational environment you are essentially defeating the purpose of information security. ONLY one person has to sell their information or loose it for a single person to attack a vast amount of networks.
One token is a lot easier to manage securely then a dozen tokens.
Ways to use a single token system without having to give every party that needs to verify your identification access have been known for some time, with regards to computer networks, take a look at Kerberos. The basic idea is that there is a token verifier that gives out a ticket with a limited validity and proof of issue.
Financial transactions covering balance, interest, or both are indestinguishable from each other.
Hmm, yes.. they can be if you want them to be. Regardless, those covering balance are not income for anyone, and are not taxable, neither do they involve trade, so they are outside the scope of the law you refered to.
Also to be technical a balance payment could affect income if the institution had written it off or otherwise considered the customer's account "impaired" - this may or may not involve cooking the books to inflate earnings or shift earning from one period to another. I guess we need to introduce a different three letter agency that has the power to snoop, the SEC.
Seeing how it is those same financial institutes that have the requirement to report big transactions, I fail to see how this prevents cooking the books.
Also, since you've snipped and failed to comment on it twice, I assume you accept that the transaction is fair game given the enumerated powers to define felonies, say laundering money.
No, for that it is still enough to look at the income side of things.
Don't get me wrong btw. I do understand the need to monitor financial transactions, but I also do see a need to limit that to where it is strictly required. And there is no need whatsoever to freeze transactions or a complete account over this.
Boom! Collapse of society happens. The local magistrate and his constabulary are not farmers. The farmers are. By your logic the farmer and his offspring now have some reproductive advantage over the magistrate and other skilled labor because the otherscan not grow their own food due to lack of knowledge. Am I with your premise so far?
Correct.
Ok. So the magistrate, the constabulary, the blacksmith, and all of the other skilled non-farm workers are now unable to feed themselves due to the collapse of society. They get together and grab some pointy items. They go to the farmer's farm. They ask for food. If the farmer refuses they attempt to purchase food with money or barter. If the farmer refuses they take out their pokey items and poke the farmer until he agrees or dies. I doubt it matters to them at this point. If the children of the farmer attempt to interfere with this the citizenry poke them also. At the end of the day a majority of the citizenry are still alive, fed, and able to reproduce, so they have been successful from the evolutionary point of view. The farmer and his offspring may or may not still be alive so his success was questionable. If they kill that farmer, they will simply go to the next farmer who will either submit or cease to be a player in reproduction roulette.
Ah yes, and the farmer is stupid enough to just stand there and get poked... Pointy items are readily available on farms you know... Or if you want to look at a more modern case, a farmer is pretty likely to have a gun around, and has the room, and even some need at times to be good at using it.
As argued already, being able to defend oneself is quite essential also in this situation, regardless of whom you are.
When overwhelmed by a too large group, the farmer is definitely going to lose, but the means to produce food will be gone as well with that, so this is not going to help the others to survive for long.
Well, opengl on nvidia cards works extremely well. ATI cards are still a bit of a problem, but the situation is getting better.
I'm using the (cvs) development versions of dri and glx, and the improvement over the older drivers is substantial (in the order of 10-40% framerate increase depending on what you are running), not to mention initial rv300 support, which means newer cards become an option without needing the utter crap that ATI produces as drivers for Linux.
If you were referring to the official binary drivers from ATI, again, those are a pile of crap.
Dude, read some history. Real history, not historical novels which have little to nothing to do with reality.
I do read history, and have some 10 years of history education behind me with very high marks.
Ok. Now to address your misguided concept of reproductive success. Yes, there were farmers before Rome. Yes, there were farmers after Rome fell. Here is the problem with your assumption. They are not the same people. They are not direct descendants of the farmers that were there before Rome existed.
Some were, some were not. That was not exactly the point. The point is that farming can exist and survive despite a collapse of society, whereas trade and industry cannot.
Being a farmer is not an advantage to reproductive success. Just because someone is a farmer now does not mean they always were, or that their ancestors were. Farming as a career does not increase your reproductive success.
No need to repeat yourself, I can read, thank you.
At any rate, my claim is that those involved in farming have a better chance of survival in case of economic and social collapse then those involved in trade or industry for the simple reason that they directly own the means to produce food and have the experience to use those means. Others with access to such means and experience will have better chances as well. Or more generally, those who depend less on technology and society will have better chances when those things are no longer there. The logic of that should really not be that hard to figure out.
You seem to think that someone that works in a trade or industry is too fucking stupid to figure out how to obtain food after a social collapse so only people that know how to grow food before a social collapse will be able to feed themselves. This is just absurd.
Not absurd at all. I never claimed that those involved in trade or industry are too stupid to figure it out, but on average they lack the experience and skills and means initially, giving them less of a chance. I never claimed none will survive or all farmers will survive or anything of that sort.
Being a farmer or a skilled hunter-gatherer in no way confers some mythical survival benefit to your offspring.
When it gives you a better chance to survive, it gives you a better chance on having offspring to begin with.
That observation seems correct, and once more suggests that distribution of wealth is good for economic development I believe.
That said, approx 12% of the population of the USA lives below the povertly line according to the CIA world fact book.. Would that mean that the USA would be even richer and more powerfull once that gets solved?
I think my statement was somewhat confusing. I was not in any way intending 'more attractive to look at', rather, more attractive to reproduce with.
Generally spoken, a healthy and relatively stable person is more attractive to reproduce with then someone with a mental or physical dissability for example (not judging those on value to society there btw)
Yeah sure. Any example of a developing nation without such a state funded program that actually manages to climb out of missery? Ah wait, there is this supposed economic tiger called Thailand... Now guess what, children of poor families there get partially state funded education, and there is even a very basic public healthcare system.
If you want to know what unrestricted free trade does, take a look at Nigeria, Venezuela, and in fact much of central and southern America.
You get means of production owned by foreign investors who care about their bottomline and are extremely unwilling to invest in anything other then that. The proof is all around, you really just have to look.
Churches and mentoring are another.
Those played a nice role in keeping Europe in the dark ages for much longer then needed.
The market is all that matters
That comment has nothing to do with your argument, churches nor public schools are 'free market'.
there was a time when public schools did not exist
Yes, we had centuries of that in Europe, guess what, most people were uneducated.
and public schools in America arent so great that you have to defend them.
I am not defending them, again, you simply don't look beyond your own situation. The American public school system seems somewhat broken from what I hear, doesn't mean it can't work, and in fact it is working very well in many countries around the world.
When it comes to college maybe you have a point, but when it comes to public school, I don't think it matters
I am first of all talking about basic education, not so much college, but its nice to include them when it can be payed for.
and I don't think most Indians are going to college.
Completely irrelevant, see above.
I also don't think most Indian public schools are great.
I think those actually use the system strongly disagree with you. Not to mention that a state funded education program does not by definition mean public schools, it can also mean providing people with funding for visiting private schools.
Don't confuse things for the sake of your argument.
I agree you need libraries
Only usefull when people learn to read first.
I agree you need churches, or in general just access to information, but I also believe in the free market.
You have one and only one good point, a free market is an essential ingredient for economic development, but by far not the only one, and on its own it actually hinders development more then it helps. Again, see southern and central America for some nice examples (and yes, some countries there went the opposite direction now as a response, overdoing anything is a bad idea)
The ability to defend oneself is a very important one, I don't underestimate that. When society collapses, it is an essential one even.
Regardless, that was not the argument. The argument I dispute and replied to is that the rich and succesfull have a better chance then a farmer when society collapses, well, it took a few centuries after the collapse of the Roman empire before trade and industry became an important part of society again. Cities virtually dissapeared, roads got closed or were left unkept and travel became extremely dangerous. Farming was there before the Romans arrived, it was still there after they left, and it is still there in fact.
Please stop changing the argument all the time and come up with an actual counter argument or admit you are wrong.
I suggest looking at Europe after the collapse of the Roman empire for a nice example.
Then, there was once a highly developed society in what is now Zimbabwe (pre colonisation times), when it collapsed, society there was 'reduced' to hunter gatherers.
There are definitely more examples to be found when you care to look.
Of course everyone is affected by such a collapse, but some people have better chances then others.
We were discussing chances on survival when society collapses weren't we?
I guess my point is that both hunter-gatherers and farmers have survived such things many times. Industry and trade however almost always collapse together with society.
In the case of african-americans, they in general do considerably better than africans. Of course, environmental conditions in Africa are very sub-optimal, while there has been a small but significant amount of gene exchange between whites and africans in the US, making a straight comparison harder.
It is more difficult to compare indeed, but I doubt the slight amount of 'foreign genes' play a role there, rather, I'd point at education and general living conditions, as well as the requirements their societ puts on them as major causes for this.
Africa has in theory ideal (natural) environmental conditions for humans to survive and thrive. They started out there, the longest uninterupted cultures on the planet can be found there, and there were social conditions are better you also see the supposedly typical African problems being not that big of a problem.
"Also, early education and training are fundamental for developing certain skills well, and those 2 groups are less likely to get those due to social circumstances."
True to some degree, although huge interventions to rectify the situation has so far been unsuccessful. Also, note that "skills" are not measured in the tests described here.
The article you refered to mentioned mostly math tests. While there is likely a natural ability for abstract thinking required for those, developing that abbility still requires actual practise and training.
Many 'nature people' will have the abbility to grasp abstract concepts, but will have initially limited ability to actually use them for what I know.
I didn't read the NYT article (don't feel like registering and don't feel like 'cheating', if they don't let me read their stuff directly they won't get my eyeballs) but the study you linked to earlier suggests that there is still evolution going on with regards to brainsize, and that there is likely a strong positive selection of larger brainsize.
Yet, that article also asserts that there are likely other features that cause this selection and that there is no proven link to intelligence.
For the record, the Neanderthaler people had a huge brain, for as far as I understand bigger then early modern humans, and possibly bigger then current humans. That did not helpt them much however in an evolutionary sense, and neither did it allow them to develop highly advanced societies. Their intelligence can only be guessed at, but they obviously didn't outsmart modern humans.
The article itself makes clear that any claims as to links to intelligence and/or mental abilities are quite disputable.
Nonetheless, interesting article, just shows that evolution is in fact still going on.
Hunter gatherers have been around for a long long time, and they still are (oldest still existing hunter-gatherer 'culture' can be traced back for at least 25000, that is twenty five thousand years)
Farmers have been around for a long long time, and they still are.
Economic systems and societies have come and gone many times in the meantime.
That implies total collapse of social structure (which did not happen when Soviet Union fell; that was just a change of masters).
Which did definitely happen when the former societ union collapsed.
The entire economic system they had had failed and was thrown away. Any social support that the state provided was gone, ownership of goods and means of production was disputed since the previous owner stopped existing alltogether, territory changed, any guarantees provided by the state changed. The state did organize virtually everything before the collapse, that completely fell away.
I suggest you go talk to people from Russia who were there when it happened.
OK. And who says that a corporate CEO doesn't know how to grow or harvest plansts?
Most of them have no time for such things whatsoever, so on average they don't. Some do, and those have a much better chance indeed.
Who says that the director of human resources doesn't know how to set a snare of build a fish trap?
Because both take practise and experience to do well, again, unlikely that this person has enough time for that. Some will, and again will have a better chance.
Plus he can have money and other trade goods stockpiled that can be used to obtain items from the farmer.
Maybe some will. Money will be of little use since it will not be worth anything when society collapses, trade goods may, but that is a very finite resource.
Sounds like a CEO with well rounded interests trumps a farmer or hunter-gatherer.
The fact that some of them may have the skills required does not say much, most won't, so on average they have a worse chance.
In virtually all forms of intelligence testing, significant differences between various ethnic groups are detected, that are steady over time. (This is the reason we get a steady flow of these kinds of stories.
One of the major problems with that is that both blacks and hispanics in the USA decent from the less succesfull individuals in their 'home' societies. Also, early education and training are fundamental for developing certain skills well, and those 2 groups are less likely to get those due to social circumstances.
Imho that makes those stories interesting but not representative for average mental capabilities of either group as a whole.
Also, we are starting to find stuff like geographically determined differences in brain development genes. Hence, I wouldn't be so sure about your assertion.
Any pointers to such studies that are factual and undisputed?
I am not suggesting free trade is a bad thing, but alone it doesn't solve much.
If India didn't try to educate its people (on tax money) there would be no programmers for hire there.
China has an education and healthcare system in line with socialist ideals, all state provided.
It is not accidental that those are among the very few countries in the developing world that are making some real economic progress.
There is trade with them because they actually have something to offer, and they have something to offer exactly because of spending tax money on helping those who cannot afford education and such themselves initially.
When left to a pure 'free market' you get something like Nigeria. Lots of money available in theory, trade due to natural resources, but a population living in poverty and not able to provide anything worth trading.
If all you have seen is the social security system in the USA then I can hardly blame you for your opinion, that system is horribly broken.
There are extremely well working social security systems in other countries, take a look at most of Scandinavia for a good example of that. Interestingly, people there are not angry at 'the weak' at all, only at those who actually abuse the system.
It is the free market fundamentalists that undo most of the help that is being given to third world countries, but despite that, a lot of help is going their way.
For the rest, you are so caught up in free market fundamentalism that you cannot see beyond your own situation. Too bad your own situation is completely irrelevant. Please go learn something about this world and the different societies on it before believing that you have a solution for anything.
This would in turn go against the dominant western ideology of empirical egalitarianism, that dictates that the average innate skills and predispositions of all human populations (I.e. 'races') are (on average and in distributions) entirely equal. Therefore, clearly, evolution must have stopped with the modern era. After all, how could something ideologically uncomfortable be true?
Skills can be learned, natural fitness for a specific enviroment can't be learned.
People in countries with a high intensity of sunlight have developed a higher amount of pigment in their skin over the centuries. People living in very cold climates have some slight body adaptations to that environment.
Of course those adaptations are a bit less relevant today since we have technological means to overcome the conditions that caused them.
Those adaptations do not seem to have much if any influence on the mental abilities of people however.
Don't mistake equal for identical, its not the same thing.
And you miss the fact that, in the case of an economic collapse large enough to cause starvation in high society in the First World, the farmland will get burned there.
Maybe, depending on how things go, even likely. That said, we have seen economic and social collapse without this happening (see the end of the former soviet union for a nice example)
Regardless, you are right that a hunter-gatherer has an even better chance, but that is only in line with the argument I was trying to make.
Less dependence on society + technology == better chance on survival when society collapses.
I wonder to what extent that's true in any industrialized country. Do you really think a person who relies on huge combines and irrigation systems to grow food for millions of people is going to be any better than average at maintaining a garden for his or her own family? Seems like two different skillsets, to me.
I think the person having the garden and growing food in it has the better chance, but then, my argument was comparing a farmer to for example a CEO of some huge company.
As someone else pointed out in a reply to my post, a hunter-gatherer has a much better chance still in case of collapse of society and economy.
Bottomline, those who depend less on technology and society for forfilling their basic needs have a better chance on survival in case of such a collapse.
Incorrect. Dolphins support the sick members of the herd by keeping it afloat so it can breath. The leader of the dogpack defends the weaker members against outside aggressors. Bees will attack an intruder and die to protect their nest and queen.
You have a good point with regards to dolphins, the other 2 cases are protecting a society as a whole from an outside thread.
A dogpack has little trouble expelling the weaker members as soon as they become a burden for the pack but will protect those that can directly contribute to its survival. Its weaker members will only see food when there happens to be enough left after the alpha animal(s) are satisfied. If there is too little, the weak members are simply out of luck.
The queen of a bee nest is fundamental for the survival of the nest and species. Also, if you ever encountered a bee queen on her way to settling a new nest, you'll most likely stop regarding her as a 'weak member'.
Survival of the species is a big motivator for action, don't confuse it with caring for the weak.
We do regard dolphins as somewhat special specifically because of their intelligence and slightly unusual behavior and capabilities.
At any rate, you are of course correct that there are some animals that do in fact protect the weak beyond what is needed for basic survival of the group. Another animal that at least at times shows such behavior is the elephant.
Slashdot Mirror
Multi factor authentication is definitely a good idea. Just a 'something you have, something you know' approach is already a big improvement over what is being used in many cases nowadays.
This is a security breech in it of its self. The idea is to make a system harder to get into, by allowing users to have a single token for a multi-organizational environment you are essentially defeating the purpose of information security. ONLY one person has to sell their information or loose it for a single person to attack a vast amount of networks.
One token is a lot easier to manage securely then a dozen tokens.
Ways to use a single token system without having to give every party that needs to verify your identification access have been known for some time, with regards to computer networks, take a look at Kerberos. The basic idea is that there is a token verifier that gives out a ticket with a limited validity and proof of issue.
Financial transactions covering balance, interest, or both are indestinguishable from each other.
Hmm, yes.. they can be if you want them to be. Regardless, those covering balance are not income for anyone, and are not taxable, neither do they involve trade, so they are outside the scope of the law you refered to.
Also to be technical a balance payment could affect income if the institution had written it off or otherwise considered the customer's account "impaired" - this may or may not involve cooking the books to inflate earnings or shift earning from one period to another. I guess we need to introduce a different three letter agency that has the power to snoop, the SEC.
Seeing how it is those same financial institutes that have the requirement to report big transactions, I fail to see how this prevents cooking the books.
Also, since you've snipped and failed to comment on it twice, I assume you accept that the transaction is fair game given the enumerated powers to define felonies, say laundering money.
No, for that it is still enough to look at the income side of things.
Don't get me wrong btw. I do understand the need to monitor financial transactions, but I also do see a need to limit that to where it is strictly required. And there is no need whatsoever to freeze transactions or a complete account over this.
Boom! Collapse of society happens. The local magistrate and his constabulary are not farmers. The farmers are. By your logic the farmer and his offspring now have some reproductive advantage over the magistrate and other skilled labor because the otherscan not grow their own food due to lack of knowledge. Am I with your premise so far?
Correct.
Ok. So the magistrate, the constabulary, the blacksmith, and all of the other skilled non-farm workers are now unable to feed themselves due to the collapse of society. They get together and grab some pointy items. They go to the farmer's farm. They ask for food. If the farmer refuses they attempt to purchase food with money or barter. If the farmer refuses they take out their pokey items and poke the farmer until he agrees or dies. I doubt it matters to them at this point. If the children of the farmer attempt to interfere with this the citizenry poke them also. At the end of the day a majority of the citizenry are still alive, fed, and able to reproduce, so they have been successful from the evolutionary point of view. The farmer and his offspring may or may not still be alive so his success was questionable. If they kill that farmer, they will simply go to the next farmer who will either submit or cease to be a player in reproduction roulette.
Ah yes, and the farmer is stupid enough to just stand there and get poked... Pointy items are readily available on farms you know... Or if you want to look at a more modern case, a farmer is pretty likely to have a gun around, and has the room, and even some need at times to be good at using it.
As argued already, being able to defend oneself is quite essential also in this situation, regardless of whom you are.
When overwhelmed by a too large group, the farmer is definitely going to lose, but the means to produce food will be gone as well with that, so this is not going to help the others to survive for long.
Well, opengl on nvidia cards works extremely well. ATI cards are still a bit of a problem, but the situation is getting better.
I'm using the (cvs) development versions of dri and glx, and the improvement over the older drivers is substantial (in the order of 10-40% framerate increase depending on what you are running), not to mention initial rv300 support, which means newer cards become an option without needing the utter crap that ATI produces as drivers for Linux.
If you were referring to the official binary drivers from ATI, again, those are a pile of crap.
Dude, read some history. Real history, not historical novels which have little to nothing to do with reality.
I do read history, and have some 10 years of history education behind me with very high marks.
Ok. Now to address your misguided concept of reproductive success. Yes, there were farmers before Rome. Yes, there were farmers after Rome fell. Here is the problem with your assumption. They are not the same people. They are not direct descendants of the farmers that were there before Rome existed.
Some were, some were not. That was not exactly the point. The point is that farming can exist and survive despite a collapse of society, whereas trade and industry cannot.
Being a farmer is not an advantage to reproductive success. Just because someone is a farmer now does not mean they always were, or that their ancestors were. Farming as a career does not increase your reproductive success.
No need to repeat yourself, I can read, thank you.
At any rate, my claim is that those involved in farming have a better chance of survival in case of economic and social collapse then those involved in trade or industry for the simple reason that they directly own the means to produce food and have the experience to use those means. Others with access to such means and experience will have better chances as well. Or more generally, those who depend less on technology and society will have better chances when those things are no longer there. The logic of that should really not be that hard to figure out.
You seem to think that someone that works in a trade or industry is too fucking stupid to figure out how to obtain food after a social collapse so only people that know how to grow food before a social collapse will be able to feed themselves. This is just absurd.
Not absurd at all. I never claimed that those involved in trade or industry are too stupid to figure it out, but on average they lack the experience and skills and means initially, giving them less of a chance. I never claimed none will survive or all farmers will survive or anything of that sort.
Being a farmer or a skilled hunter-gatherer in no way confers some mythical survival benefit to your offspring.
When it gives you a better chance to survive, it gives you a better chance on having offspring to begin with.
That observation seems correct, and once more suggests that distribution of wealth is good for economic development I believe.
That said, approx 12% of the population of the USA lives below the povertly line according to the CIA world fact book.. Would that mean that the USA would be even richer and more powerfull once that gets solved?
I think my statement was somewhat confusing. I was not in any way intending 'more attractive to look at', rather, more attractive to reproduce with.
Generally spoken, a healthy and relatively stable person is more attractive to reproduce with then someone with a mental or physical dissability for example (not judging those on value to society there btw)
I am looking at the purpose of the transfer as well as the purpose of the law.
Interest payed is income for the creditcard company and as such is indeed fair game.
Payment of debt however is not income for them.
Yeah sure. Any example of a developing nation without such a state funded program that actually manages to climb out of missery? Ah wait, there is this supposed economic tiger called Thailand... Now guess what, children of poor families there get partially state funded education, and there is even a very basic public healthcare system.
If you want to know what unrestricted free trade does, take a look at Nigeria, Venezuela, and in fact much of central and southern America.
You get means of production owned by foreign investors who care about their bottomline and are extremely unwilling to invest in anything other then that. The proof is all around, you really just have to look.
Churches and mentoring are another.
Those played a nice role in keeping Europe in the dark ages for much longer then needed.
The market is all that matters
That comment has nothing to do with your argument, churches nor public schools are 'free market'.
there was a time when public schools did not exist
Yes, we had centuries of that in Europe, guess what, most people were uneducated.
and public schools in America arent so great that you have to defend them.
I am not defending them, again, you simply don't look beyond your own situation. The American public school system seems somewhat broken from what I hear, doesn't mean it can't work, and in fact it is working very well in many countries around the world.
When it comes to college maybe you have a point, but when it comes to public school, I don't think it matters
I am first of all talking about basic education, not so much college, but its nice to include them when it can be payed for.
and I don't think most Indians are going to college.
Completely irrelevant, see above.
I also don't think most Indian public schools are great.
I think those actually use the system strongly disagree with you. Not to mention that a state funded education program does not by definition mean public schools, it can also mean providing people with funding for visiting private schools.
Don't confuse things for the sake of your argument.
I agree you need libraries
Only usefull when people learn to read first.
I agree you need churches, or in general just access to information, but I also believe in the free market.
You have one and only one good point, a free market is an essential ingredient for economic development, but by far not the only one, and on its own it actually hinders development more then it helps. Again, see southern and central America for some nice examples (and yes, some countries there went the opposite direction now as a response, overdoing anything is a bad idea)
The ability to defend oneself is a very important one, I don't underestimate that. When society collapses, it is an essential one even.
Regardless, that was not the argument. The argument I dispute and replied to is that the rich and succesfull have a better chance then a farmer when society collapses, well, it took a few centuries after the collapse of the Roman empire before trade and industry became an important part of society again. Cities virtually dissapeared, roads got closed or were left unkept and travel became extremely dangerous. Farming was there before the Romans arrived, it was still there after they left, and it is still there in fact.
Please stop changing the argument all the time and come up with an actual counter argument or admit you are wrong.
I suggest looking at Europe after the collapse of the Roman empire for a nice example.
Then, there was once a highly developed society in what is now Zimbabwe (pre colonisation times), when it collapsed, society there was 'reduced' to hunter gatherers.
There are definitely more examples to be found when you care to look.
Of course everyone is affected by such a collapse, but some people have better chances then others.
We were discussing chances on survival when society collapses weren't we?
I guess my point is that both hunter-gatherers and farmers have survived such things many times. Industry and trade however almost always collapse together with society.
In the case of african-americans, they in general do considerably better than africans. Of course, environmental conditions in Africa are very sub-optimal, while there has been a small but significant amount of gene exchange between whites and africans in the US, making a straight comparison harder.
It is more difficult to compare indeed, but I doubt the slight amount of 'foreign genes' play a role there, rather, I'd point at education and general living conditions, as well as the requirements their societ puts on them as major causes for this.
Africa has in theory ideal (natural) environmental conditions for humans to survive and thrive. They started out there, the longest uninterupted cultures on the planet can be found there, and there were social conditions are better you also see the supposedly typical African problems being not that big of a problem.
"Also, early education and training are fundamental for developing certain skills well, and those 2 groups are less likely to get those due to social circumstances."
True to some degree, although huge interventions to rectify the situation has so far been unsuccessful. Also, note that "skills" are not measured in the tests described here.
The article you refered to mentioned mostly math tests. While there is likely a natural ability for abstract thinking required for those, developing that abbility still requires actual practise and training.
Many 'nature people' will have the abbility to grasp abstract concepts, but will have initially limited ability to actually use them for what I know.
I didn't read the NYT article (don't feel like registering and don't feel like 'cheating', if they don't let me read their stuff directly they won't get my eyeballs) but the study you linked to earlier suggests that there is still evolution going on with regards to brainsize, and that there is likely a strong positive selection of larger brainsize.
Yet, that article also asserts that there are likely other features that cause this selection and that there is no proven link to intelligence.
For the record, the Neanderthaler people had a huge brain, for as far as I understand bigger then early modern humans, and possibly bigger then current humans. That did not helpt them much however in an evolutionary sense, and neither did it allow them to develop highly advanced societies. Their intelligence can only be guessed at, but they obviously didn't outsmart modern humans.
The article itself makes clear that any claims as to links to intelligence and/or mental abilities are quite disputable.
Nonetheless, interesting article, just shows that evolution is in fact still going on.
Hunter gatherers have been around for a long long time, and they still are (oldest still existing hunter-gatherer 'culture' can be traced back for at least 25000, that is twenty five thousand years)
Farmers have been around for a long long time, and they still are.
Economic systems and societies have come and gone many times in the meantime.
That implies total collapse of social structure (which did not happen when Soviet Union fell; that was just a change of masters).
Which did definitely happen when the former societ union collapsed.
The entire economic system they had had failed and was thrown away. Any social support that the state provided was gone, ownership of goods and means of production was disputed since the previous owner stopped existing alltogether, territory changed, any guarantees provided by the state changed. The state did organize virtually everything before the collapse, that completely fell away.
I suggest you go talk to people from Russia who were there when it happened.
OK. And who says that a corporate CEO doesn't know how to grow or harvest plansts?
Most of them have no time for such things whatsoever, so on average they don't. Some do, and those have a much better chance indeed.
Who says that the director of human resources doesn't know how to set a snare of build a fish trap?
Because both take practise and experience to do well, again, unlikely that this person has enough time for that. Some will, and again will have a better chance.
Plus he can have money and other trade goods stockpiled that can be used to obtain items from the farmer.
Maybe some will. Money will be of little use since it will not be worth anything when society collapses, trade goods may, but that is a very finite resource.
Sounds like a CEO with well rounded interests trumps a farmer or hunter-gatherer.
The fact that some of them may have the skills required does not say much, most won't, so on average they have a worse chance.
In virtually all forms of intelligence testing, significant differences between various ethnic groups are detected, that are steady over time. (This is the reason we get a steady flow of these kinds of stories.
One of the major problems with that is that both blacks and hispanics in the USA decent from the less succesfull individuals in their 'home' societies. Also, early education and training are fundamental for developing certain skills well, and those 2 groups are less likely to get those due to social circumstances.
Imho that makes those stories interesting but not representative for average mental capabilities of either group as a whole.
Also, we are starting to find stuff like geographically determined differences in brain development genes. Hence, I wouldn't be so sure about your assertion.
Any pointers to such studies that are factual and undisputed?
I have yet to see one.
I am not suggesting free trade is a bad thing, but alone it doesn't solve much.
If India didn't try to educate its people (on tax money) there would be no programmers for hire there.
China has an education and healthcare system in line with socialist ideals, all state provided.
It is not accidental that those are among the very few countries in the developing world that are making some real economic progress.
There is trade with them because they actually have something to offer, and they have something to offer exactly because of spending tax money on helping those who cannot afford education and such themselves initially.
When left to a pure 'free market' you get something like Nigeria. Lots of money available in theory, trade due to natural resources, but a population living in poverty and not able to provide anything worth trading.
Blahblahblahblah free market blahblahblah extreme individualism blahblah
If all you have seen is the social security system in the USA then I can hardly blame you for your opinion, that system is horribly broken.
There are extremely well working social security systems in other countries, take a look at most of Scandinavia for a good example of that. Interestingly, people there are not angry at 'the weak' at all, only at those who actually abuse the system.
It is the free market fundamentalists that undo most of the help that is being given to third world countries, but despite that, a lot of help is going their way.
For the rest, you are so caught up in free market fundamentalism that you cannot see beyond your own situation. Too bad your own situation is completely irrelevant. Please go learn something about this world and the different societies on it before believing that you have a solution for anything.
This would in turn go against the dominant western ideology of empirical egalitarianism, that dictates that the average innate skills and predispositions of all human populations (I.e. 'races') are (on average and in distributions) entirely equal. Therefore, clearly, evolution must have stopped with the modern era. After all, how could something ideologically uncomfortable be true?
Skills can be learned, natural fitness for a specific enviroment can't be learned.
People in countries with a high intensity of sunlight have developed a higher amount of pigment in their skin over the centuries. People living in very cold climates have some slight body adaptations to that environment.
Of course those adaptations are a bit less relevant today since we have technological means to overcome the conditions that caused them.
Those adaptations do not seem to have much if any influence on the mental abilities of people however.
Don't mistake equal for identical, its not the same thing.
which brings another interesting question: is laziness hereditary, and if so, how does it contribute to the fitness function?
No idea bout the first, but yes, it does contribute to the fitness function.
Laziness promotes finding more efficient ways to accomplish things since that reduces the amount of efford required.
And you miss the fact that, in the case of an economic collapse large enough to cause starvation in high society in the First World, the farmland will get burned there.
Maybe, depending on how things go, even likely. That said, we have seen economic and social collapse without this happening (see the end of the former soviet union for a nice example)
Regardless, you are right that a hunter-gatherer has an even better chance, but that is only in line with the argument I was trying to make.
Less dependence on society + technology == better chance on survival when society collapses.
I wonder to what extent that's true in any industrialized country. Do you really think a person who relies on huge combines and irrigation systems to grow food for millions of people is going to be any better than average at maintaining a garden for his or her own family? Seems like two different skillsets, to me.
I think the person having the garden and growing food in it has the better chance, but then, my argument was comparing a farmer to for example a CEO of some huge company.
As someone else pointed out in a reply to my post, a hunter-gatherer has a much better chance still in case of collapse of society and economy.
Bottomline, those who depend less on technology and society for forfilling their basic needs have a better chance on survival in case of such a collapse.
Incorrect. Dolphins support the sick members of the herd by keeping it afloat so it can breath. The leader of the dogpack defends the weaker members against outside aggressors. Bees will attack an intruder and die to protect their nest and queen.
You have a good point with regards to dolphins, the other 2 cases are protecting a society as a whole from an outside thread.
A dogpack has little trouble expelling the weaker members as soon as they become a burden for the pack but will protect those that can directly contribute to its survival. Its weaker members will only see food when there happens to be enough left after the alpha animal(s) are satisfied. If there is too little, the weak members are simply out of luck.
The queen of a bee nest is fundamental for the survival of the nest and species. Also, if you ever encountered a bee queen on her way to settling a new nest, you'll most likely stop regarding her as a 'weak member'.
Survival of the species is a big motivator for action, don't confuse it with caring for the weak.
We do regard dolphins as somewhat special specifically because of their intelligence and slightly unusual behavior and capabilities.
At any rate, you are of course correct that there are some animals that do in fact protect the weak beyond what is needed for basic survival of the group. Another animal that at least at times shows such behavior is the elephant.