Well, you're talking about blind, darwinian evolution. I was talking about evolution in general. Darwinian evolution, ie "survival of the fittest", is as you defined it. But evolution in general is an alteration of physical characteristics for purpose X. Where, in this case, purpose X can be whatever we want.
That is an excellent point. Is it good to evolve? First we must define what we mean by "evolve". I think a good definition would be 'improve our innate physical characteristics'.
There are several angles we can approach this then. Economically, some traits are positive for society - for instance less disease - because it reduces, for instance health care costs. But that's really of very small importance. Economical arguments are not enough to justify such tampering with our gene pool.
What about the point of view of our own happiness? Being able to live longer and healthier would improve our happiness? Quite possibly. I think if you go to someone with a hereditary genetic disease, you will have a hard time convincing them that they wouldn't be happier without it. That's a very good reason to push evolution forward - to help us be happier.
I could go into more angles but as I've found one which works I'll leave it for someone else to dig out the other angles.
So then, yes, there are some benefits to evolution. The question is really whether the benefits outweigh the costs. If the costs are those associated with selective breeding and all the horrible societal consequences it brings, then the benefits definitely do not outweigh the costs. See nazi germany for a good example of how selective breeding makes for a bad world.
So what are the costs of genetic engineering that would outweigh the benefits of evolution? I can't see such great costs, so long as the process is regulated properly to allow universal access to it. Please let me know if you think of any.
PvP can make the game significantly more interesting, so long as it's done right. An implementation similar to real life is actually probably the best. ie:
- if you attack another player, you're "flagged" for a period of time (say 30 minutes) so that for that time you have to stay in the game, and if you quit or get disconnected it's as if you'd just got killed (with whatever losses of equipment or xp as usual), and if you get hunted down by your victim or their friends in that time they can kill you.
- if you attack someone who's flagged you don't get flagged, even if they were flagged by someone else.
- if you walk into a regulated area while flagged (eg into town), the local militia will come after your ass.
A lot of areas don't need to be the 'deserted by the law' type - enough to ensure that those who do get to such deserted places actually know that they could get attacked by some random lunatic and take their precautions (keep an eye out, ready to recall if a suspicious character just happens to wander by, or a strong enough party to be able to handle such an event). The pkiller flag, especially if it's visible (eg by a dark halo around your head or something) makes it quite an investment to attack someone - because if anyone else sees you in the next, say, half an hour, they know they can attack you and kill you without getting a flag, if they think they're stronger than you.
The trick is, basically, to make it an expensive action to attack someone. Just like in real life, it should not be something you do casually, it should cost you - in this case, no visit to regulated areas for a while, and shiny "hit me" target aroudn your head - so that basically you don't want to be meeting anyone stronger than you whom you can't trust.
The only times such a system gets out of hand is if there are a significant number of very high-level players who band together and decide to exploit it. Enter horror scenes like the evil clan taking over the fountain in the middle of the city, slaughtering all the guards, and requiring newbies to pay to get water from the fountain! But those should be rare enough to warrant intervention from the game moderators (and with an appropriate punishment the first time - eg demotion of all the involved characters to half their level and loss of all eq), it probably won't happen a second time.
So the result of such a system for the non-pker (like me) is that you know when you're safe, and you know when you're not, and when you're not safe you always have this little edge thinking "what if a bastard walks here and attacks me" and you're on the edge of your seat a little more. It makes the game more interesting.
While I agree with your point about other animals, funnily enough I think that where humans are concerned, genetic engineering is the only possible next step.
Why?
Because evolution, for humans (at least in the western world), has in effect come to a standstill. The sick don't die, and even when they do die they often have time to reproduce first (except for a very small minority). The weak don't get eaten by predators. The stupid don't get eaten by predators as well, though their country does... but that's another topic. Anyway so my point is that there are no selection factors that are able to affect humanity at large, because there's too many of us and we're too well protected from our environment. Note that I think it's great that we're not playing that game anymore, because that game is not one that is acceptable for us, intelligent, thinking human beings.
So then, the only way to continue evolving as a species is to drive our own evolution. There are several ways you can do that. You can use the nazi way of selective breeding (or rather selective killing), only let people with 'good genes' have kids... but what a terrible world that would be. Or you could use a bit of genetic engineering to nudge things forward. The latter needs to be done with great care to avoid all the potential dangers, but it is clearly a better solution than the former, and a better solution than simply doing nothing and stagnating forever (or until we kill each other with nukes or pretzels or whatever).
No sir! I didn't! Never! I don't even know what they are! What's an mp3 anyway? Huh? Why you bringing the subject up? Maybe YOU have something to hide, huh? huh? huh?
Not entirely true. Development of enterprise applications is hardly the lowest level of jobs, and that tends to be moving overseas too, though the move is more complex than stuff like helpdesks..
Ditto to the wish for a cure. My grandmother has dementia too, and it hurts me just to see what she's degenerated into.:-( It's almost as if she was already dead - she barely recognises me or my father (her son), and even if she does, the only way she shows it is by looking at one of us for a long time. The only way in which she still seems to function as a conscious human being is that when my dad touches here and says "mom?" in the right tone of voice she slightly turns towards him and says "hmm?" like a normal human being would. But that's about it.
Alzheimer's is a terrible, terrible disease that I would not wish on my worst enemies...
This morning I rebooted my dev machine. Somehow, god knows how, this screwed up my user profile on the company's domain, and I spent all day going through tech support to eventually get it fixed by creating a new user profile!
An entire day wasted doing... nothing. I'm scared of reboots now...
It boggles my mind to think that we can measure temperature that exactly from 279,000,000,000,000 miles away, and that they are complaining over a 12-degree difference.
Indeed. Go read up on spectrum analysis methods of measuring black body temperatures. It's fairly straightforward actually, because stars are perfect emitters/absorbers (aka "black bodies").
Me neither. When you look at all the crap happening these days, it's quite clear we inherited a lot of stuff that no one would put anywhere else than/dev/null...
Daniel
It does not even have anything to do with being wise, but with being capitalistic. The submitter is very narrow-minded. Purely capitalistic economics argues against price control. Purely communist economics argues for it. There's a wide range of possibilities between the two, and certainly not all have been proved unwise (and if they have been, then all governments are unwise because no government is 100% capitalistic).
B: So don't let them mess with the inside of the computer until they have enough pocket money stashed up to pay for it themselves (or out of their future pocket money)... Simple enough. Duh.
As for A, similarly: "Sure, you can have it. I'll pay for half of it. You pay for the other half." Blang, two lessons in one - IT literacy AND value of money.
More to the point, stop struggling and realise that windows is by design a system which will fall over itself after a long enough period of time, and you WILL have to reinstall it sometime. So stop trying to delay that moment, and make sure that you can do that easily. The previous suggestion about ghosting the system in a stable state is good, but not the best because you will still have to keep track of what important updates you hadn't done when you made the ghost image.
Probably the best solution would be to keep a CD-RW regularly updated with the entire list of drivers/service packs/updates that you need to install when you reinstall the computer, along with a list of the programs that must be reinstalled before any games (eg Office, any dev tools that you need, etc), and (this will be a shocker) teach your kids to do it!!! Then when the computer falls over, you can tell the kids that it's in part their fault, and that this is a good learning opportunity for them (and it is - you learn more about how a computer functions when rebuilding it from scratch than when using it), and so stick them on there for whatever time it takes and let them do it (under penalty of no gaming if they screw it up and you have to do it yourself, of course).
The result will be kids who know more about PCs than just gaming, who will not need to pester their friends/parents to get their computer(s) set up, and who will be more computer-literate than most of their age group. And don't worry about the task being 'too complicated'. Don't underestimate your kids, they will pick it up in no time, and by the time the next version of Windows comes along they'll probably be the ones giving you tips on how to install your PC.
Who cares about selling. In Geneva we have public CD libraries. For a small yearly fee you can take out up to 5 CDs at a time for any length of time (so long as you keep renewing them every month or two). That beats the paranoiac situation described in the submission...
To circumvent U.S. Internet companies, spammers may ricochet their e-mail through less secure networks in China, South Korea or South America before the junk winds up in in boxes from Georgia to California. They share or sell information on how to crack various systems.
"Less secure networks"? Riight... They're all equally insecure, the US as much as anyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you're talking about blind, darwinian evolution. I was talking about evolution in general. Darwinian evolution, ie "survival of the fittest", is as you defined it. But evolution in general is an alteration of physical characteristics for purpose X. Where, in this case, purpose X can be whatever we want.
Daniel
That is an excellent point. Is it good to evolve? First we must define what we mean by "evolve". I think a good definition would be 'improve our innate physical characteristics'.
There are several angles we can approach this then. Economically, some traits are positive for society - for instance less disease - because it reduces, for instance health care costs. But that's really of very small importance. Economical arguments are not enough to justify such tampering with our gene pool.
What about the point of view of our own happiness? Being able to live longer and healthier would improve our happiness? Quite possibly. I think if you go to someone with a hereditary genetic disease, you will have a hard time convincing them that they wouldn't be happier without it. That's a very good reason to push evolution forward - to help us be happier.
I could go into more angles but as I've found one which works I'll leave it for someone else to dig out the other angles.
So then, yes, there are some benefits to evolution. The question is really whether the benefits outweigh the costs. If the costs are those associated with selective breeding and all the horrible societal consequences it brings, then the benefits definitely do not outweigh the costs. See nazi germany for a good example of how selective breeding makes for a bad world.
So what are the costs of genetic engineering that would outweigh the benefits of evolution? I can't see such great costs, so long as the process is regulated properly to allow universal access to it. Please let me know if you think of any.
Daniel
PvP can make the game significantly more interesting, so long as it's done right. An implementation similar to real life is actually probably the best. ie:
- if you attack another player, you're "flagged" for a period of time (say 30 minutes) so that for that time you have to stay in the game, and if you quit or get disconnected it's as if you'd just got killed (with whatever losses of equipment or xp as usual), and if you get hunted down by your victim or their friends in that time they can kill you.
- if you attack someone who's flagged you don't get flagged, even if they were flagged by someone else.
- if you walk into a regulated area while flagged (eg into town), the local militia will come after your ass.
A lot of areas don't need to be the 'deserted by the law' type - enough to ensure that those who do get to such deserted places actually know that they could get attacked by some random lunatic and take their precautions (keep an eye out, ready to recall if a suspicious character just happens to wander by, or a strong enough party to be able to handle such an event). The pkiller flag, especially if it's visible (eg by a dark halo around your head or something) makes it quite an investment to attack someone - because if anyone else sees you in the next, say, half an hour, they know they can attack you and kill you without getting a flag, if they think they're stronger than you.
The trick is, basically, to make it an expensive action to attack someone. Just like in real life, it should not be something you do casually, it should cost you - in this case, no visit to regulated areas for a while, and shiny "hit me" target aroudn your head - so that basically you don't want to be meeting anyone stronger than you whom you can't trust.
The only times such a system gets out of hand is if there are a significant number of very high-level players who band together and decide to exploit it. Enter horror scenes like the evil clan taking over the fountain in the middle of the city, slaughtering all the guards, and requiring newbies to pay to get water from the fountain! But those should be rare enough to warrant intervention from the game moderators (and with an appropriate punishment the first time - eg demotion of all the involved characters to half their level and loss of all eq), it probably won't happen a second time.
So the result of such a system for the non-pker (like me) is that you know when you're safe, and you know when you're not, and when you're not safe you always have this little edge thinking "what if a bastard walks here and attacks me" and you're on the edge of your seat a little more. It makes the game more interesting.
Daniel
While I agree with your point about other animals, funnily enough I think that where humans are concerned, genetic engineering is the only possible next step.
Why?
Because evolution, for humans (at least in the western world), has in effect come to a standstill. The sick don't die, and even when they do die they often have time to reproduce first (except for a very small minority). The weak don't get eaten by predators. The stupid don't get eaten by predators as well, though their country does... but that's another topic. Anyway so my point is that there are no selection factors that are able to affect humanity at large, because there's too many of us and we're too well protected from our environment. Note that I think it's great that we're not playing that game anymore, because that game is not one that is acceptable for us, intelligent, thinking human beings.
So then, the only way to continue evolving as a species is to drive our own evolution. There are several ways you can do that. You can use the nazi way of selective breeding (or rather selective killing), only let people with 'good genes' have kids... but what a terrible world that would be. Or you could use a bit of genetic engineering to nudge things forward. The latter needs to be done with great care to avoid all the potential dangers, but it is clearly a better solution than the former, and a better solution than simply doing nothing and stagnating forever (or until we kill each other with nukes or pretzels or whatever).
Daniel
No sir! I didn't! Never! I don't even know what they are! What's an mp3 anyway? Huh? Why you bringing the subject up? Maybe YOU have something to hide, huh? huh? huh?
*shifty eyes*
Daniel
Your mind is wandering? What mind is it you're speaking of? You seem to either have none or several... ;-)
Daniel
That's just a javascript crap, nothing to do with IE.
Daniel
Not entirely true. Development of enterprise applications is hardly the lowest level of jobs, and that tends to be moving overseas too, though the move is more complex than stuff like helpdesks..
Daniel
My grandmother has dementia too:: slip of the keyboard, i meant she has Alzheimer's too.
Daniel
Ditto to the wish for a cure. My grandmother has dementia too, and it hurts me just to see what she's degenerated into. :-( It's almost as if she was already dead - she barely recognises me or my father (her son), and even if she does, the only way she shows it is by looking at one of us for a long time. The only way in which she still seems to function as a conscious human being is that when my dad touches here and says "mom?" in the right tone of voice she slightly turns towards him and says "hmm?" like a normal human being would. But that's about it.
Alzheimer's is a terrible, terrible disease that I would not wish on my worst enemies...
Daniel
Well, you can only fit so much into two lines targetted at a non-physicist :-P
Daniel
When I wrote that post it was past 5pm already. I arrived at work at 9 and stayed until about 7pm, and got about an hour and a half of work done.
Daniel
This morning I rebooted my dev machine. Somehow, god knows how, this screwed up my user profile on the company's domain, and I spent all day going through tech support to eventually get it fixed by creating a new user profile!
An entire day wasted doing... nothing. I'm scared of reboots now...
Daniel
It boggles my mind to think that we can measure temperature that exactly from 279,000,000,000,000 miles away, and that they are complaining over a 12-degree difference.
Indeed. Go read up on spectrum analysis methods of measuring black body temperatures. It's fairly straightforward actually, because stars are perfect emitters/absorbers (aka "black bodies").
Daniel
Me neither. When you look at all the crap happening these days, it's quite clear we inherited a lot of stuff that no one would put anywhere else than /dev/null...
Daniel
It does not even have anything to do with being wise, but with being capitalistic. The submitter is very narrow-minded. Purely capitalistic economics argues against price control. Purely communist economics argues for it. There's a wide range of possibilities between the two, and certainly not all have been proved unwise (and if they have been, then all governments are unwise because no government is 100% capitalistic).
Daniel
You sure he didn't just swap the left and right speakers?? :-P
Daniel
If you make it so that people can't be fired, then you have to make it so that people can't quit, either.
Do you get off inventing inane ideas like this one, or is this temporary?
Daniel
Yes, the US really does suck, doesn't it? No workers' rights? Maybe socialism isn't that bad after all...
Daniel
B: So don't let them mess with the inside of the computer until they have enough pocket money stashed up to pay for it themselves (or out of their future pocket money)... Simple enough. Duh.
As for A, similarly: "Sure, you can have it. I'll pay for half of it. You pay for the other half." Blang, two lessons in one - IT literacy AND value of money.
Daniel
More to the point, stop struggling and realise that windows is by design a system which will fall over itself after a long enough period of time, and you WILL have to reinstall it sometime. So stop trying to delay that moment, and make sure that you can do that easily. The previous suggestion about ghosting the system in a stable state is good, but not the best because you will still have to keep track of what important updates you hadn't done when you made the ghost image.
Probably the best solution would be to keep a CD-RW regularly updated with the entire list of drivers/service packs/updates that you need to install when you reinstall the computer, along with a list of the programs that must be reinstalled before any games (eg Office, any dev tools that you need, etc), and (this will be a shocker) teach your kids to do it!!! Then when the computer falls over, you can tell the kids that it's in part their fault, and that this is a good learning opportunity for them (and it is - you learn more about how a computer functions when rebuilding it from scratch than when using it), and so stick them on there for whatever time it takes and let them do it (under penalty of no gaming if they screw it up and you have to do it yourself, of course).
The result will be kids who know more about PCs than just gaming, who will not need to pester their friends/parents to get their computer(s) set up, and who will be more computer-literate than most of their age group. And don't worry about the task being 'too complicated'. Don't underestimate your kids, they will pick it up in no time, and by the time the next version of Windows comes along they'll probably be the ones giving you tips on how to install your PC.
Daniel
Don't try this if most of your employees are software geeks.
What, like SCO? So far they're not doing so badly out of it! Time will tell, though, I guess/hope...
Daniel
Let's patent it right now !!!
Daniel
Who cares about selling. In Geneva we have public CD libraries. For a small yearly fee you can take out up to 5 CDs at a time for any length of time (so long as you keep renewing them every month or two). That beats the paranoiac situation described in the submission...
Daniel
To circumvent U.S. Internet companies, spammers may ricochet their e-mail through less secure networks in China, South Korea or South America before the junk winds up in in boxes from Georgia to California. They share or sell information on how to crack various systems.
"Less secure networks"? Riight... They're all equally insecure, the US as much as anyone else.
Daniel