Considering how recent C-section has been, the dissolution of the evolutionary advantage of small head children will take many, many generations to show any effect.
However, there is of course no real logical link. There are plenty of very smart and successful people who produce more than two children. For example, it is not rare to read reports of CEOs of major companies who have quite a number of children. Politicians, despite their bad rep, and are intelligent in some dimension also have children in good numbers. Oxford philosopher GEM Anscombe had seven children -- although this was partly due to her being a devout catholic.
What is important would rather be the sort of personality underlying intelligence.
Using your personal anecdotes to form a causal relationship in the overall population is ridiculous. For one, I assume that your friends who experienced such hardships did so while growing up in Western culture, which is vastly different from African culture. After all, the pervasiveness of Hollywood, hip-hop and shiny gimmicks only exist on such a level in America.
Being introduced to hardship doesn't cause one to grow up faster -- it causes one to stop growing and start muddling through, even if they're not ready.
That is an incredibly stupid comment, drawn from folk psychology and intuition.
What psychological research has shown is that rats exposured to higher levels of stress in the experimental condition do mature faster than control rats. This "maturity" level in rats is measured by behavioral pattern exhibition. Of course, we are not sure if this general research can extend to humans -- it would be unethical to conduct experimental studies in humans.
The possibilities are complex; it could be that a significant amount of stress facilitates maturity but TOO much stress shatters the personality. It is also obvious that people have their own unique defence mechanisms; some persevere in the face of hardship while others withdraw and retreat into themselves. Some actively resolve problems, while others wait for problems to dissolve. This personality disposition is then actively combined with the culture (North American, Western European, Eastern, African..) to produce behavioral patterns and growth/change in the personality.
I just want to clear up a conceptual confusion as a philosophy major. Utilitarianism is not the exact problem here -- what is, is the GOAL that underlies the utilitarian strategy.
That is, there are different forms of utility, the one most common being "happiness". This is of course quite understandable when happiness is one of the most basic positive states that most Westerners enjoy being in. The mindset has seeped into mainstream culture.. what's important is that you're happy, I wish you happiness, I love this person because he or she makes me feel happy.. etc.
However, other alternative forms of utility can exist (but are exceedingly rare). For example, I wrote on combining Aristotle's Virtue ethics with Utilitarianism; you can perform cost-benefit analysis using your conception of virtue as your goal. Do X because it is more virtuous than Y, etc etc.
So, utilitarianism is not really what is to blame. What IS, are the values underlying that strategy.. for the sort you are talking about, it is the indulgent, individualistic, self-centered sort of mongering for benefit. Coming together, this forms hedonism.
But Nintendo does the same with Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong and their various spinoffs. I don't get the "sequel" criticism directed only at Sony -- Nintendo milk just as much, if not more.
Did Google buy into Baidu BEFORE or AFTER they made the decision to self-censor their version of Wikipedia?
If you're expecting "Do no Evil" to include supernatural powers to have prescient visions of the future, then maybe you're an idiot.
You *must* know that socioeconomic factors have been taken into account and controlled for in the twin studies... but I have no idea whether cultural factors have been controlled for. I don't think it's that possible, because identical twins reared separately aren't all that common.
If I recall correctly, there was a pair of twins where one was reared in Nazi Germany and the other in Communist Russia. Only their habitual similarities were discussed about, I don't think they were subject to IQ tests.
The evidence points strongly towards a biological bias in intelligence, at least if only for IQ. Identical twins reared apart and independently have IQ correlations of 0.8+, which is basically the correlation needed for test-retest reliability. By that I mean that testing one twin is equivalent to testing the other. Non-related children reared in the same family (by adoption or such) have an IQ correlation of 0.
The nurture theory proposes that children reared apart should have IQs that continually diverge, given their socioeconomic differences. This is not true.
The only real difference occurs when children are reared at poverty or below-poverty levels, where they are unable to attain nutrients to sustain adequate physiological growth.
It is important to note that the Asians tested were those who have immigrated to America or such. This means that they are in no way representative of the Asian race at large --- the highly educated or quite rich compose a larger proportion of this migrant population than they do of normal asian populations. Asians also have a very strong culture of working hard and studying, although this will dissipate with each new generation born in North American land.
I don't see how this attempt would preclude a similar ban on guns, or ALL stimuli that encourages violence. Basically, there's a study which showed that showing test participants a cue stimuli of a shotgun before engaging in the experiment made them behave more aggressively.
The shotgun basically "frames" their mind in a certain perspective. This is not equally true of kitchen knives and the like, because most instances of interaction with the kitchen knife involve chopping food (if anything, it frames you to be hungry).
The consequence is then justifying banning games but not banning other violence-encouraging stimuli like action movies, the military, and so forth.
Just because in your mind (and in many other people's minds) Rumsfeld has been discredited (hey I don't like him either), making a broad, sweeping generalization is a little foolish.
Not recognizing a poor track record is foolish.
Too right. One of the words that has suffered from this linquistic drift is "unique," which in English means "one of a kind." Now, we Americans, (and possibly Brits, I don't know) often use this word to mean "unusual," "cool," or "neat-o." I actually heard a commercial the other day describing something as "unique and one-of-a-kind."
Actually, I think the usage of "unique" to mean all those other things that you said actually originated from a *masterful* use of language. Because you can probably imagine social contexts where you don't really want to insult someone, or you are poking fun at them.. so you say something like:
"He's really...... 'unique'."
Where you really mean weird, crazy, perverted, and such. You have to be pretty intelligent to make such side-remarks. It's just additional semantic layers added onto words because of our clever usage of them. Sometimes the connotations become negative, like the word "retarded". Now we have "special" children.
And I don't think we should worship the original meaning of a word. Things change dynamically because of social usage. The biggest problem with this is the consistency of texts through time. We could be seeing a situation where two hundred years from now, they can hardly make out what we're saying from our texts (in fact, it's pretty hard to make out what ancient or even Renaissance philosophers are saying themselves)...
What the study did was only show that people who were pessimistic and hard on themselves became more "miserable" after they did poorly or did not match up to their expectations.
This in no way means that if you adopt this sort of view, the same sort of phenomena will happen to you. The study constrained itself such that it can only conclude the emotional outcomes of pessimistic people, and not pessimistic thinking.
What is needed is an experiment where people adopted a pessimistic approach, and others an optimistic approach (with an additional control group) regardless of their natural outlook on life. Only then can we possibly say something about pessimistic thinking.
There is one basic faulty premise in these sorts of argument (not one you necessarily proclaim); which is the idea that one mother and one father is the "prime" example or "optimal" condition of a parenthood.
A child that is reared by two same-sex parents might turn out differently from children who have same-sex parents. Certainly if you believe in particularly Freudian or neo-Freudian constructs, this will be true. Even without those beliefs, we would think that the amount of attention given to children of same-sex parents by other children and their parents could inevitably attract some jeering.
But if same-sex marriages were common, or at least treated like nothing out of the ordinary, then these children will not suffer such discrimination. This still leaves the problem of missing "one side" of the parental love; be it the paternal or maternal sort of love -- although you might argue that one of the same-sex parents could play that role.
But who is to say that same-sex parents are not "as good" as heterosexual parents? What is there to prove that a heterosexual arrangement is the optimal one? It's a little harder to prove by collecting statistics of the children, because most same-sex couples adopt their children, whereby their own genetic traits aren't passed down.
Yes, you can carry the "potential" argument to extemes. One could claim the lint in my belly-button has rights, because there are probably sufficient atoms to spontaneously rearrange into a zygote. But clearly, the probability of this is trivially small. Therefore we can safely discount it.
What do you mean "trivially" small? Such that 1 out of every billion (or any arbitrary large number) would have a chance to spontaneously rearrange itself into a zygote? So, it's okay to kill 1 in 1 billion?
And yet it's not okay to make use of an embryo that might or might not make it into a fully functional human?
I would say the same standard applies at the end of life. If Shiavo had a 10% chance of recovering, killing her would have been wrong, don't you agree? But the fact was that her chances of recovering were vanishingly small. That is why pulling the plug was ethical. Now, if a fertilized egg has a 30% chance of surviving, why would we also not grant it rights?
You make it sound easy, but where do you draw the line between a "reasonable" chance of 10% and a "vanishingly small" chance? 5%? 3%? You've driven yourself into the heap paradox, and any arbitrary number you propose will provide troubles.
Yes. Bad information is worse than no information.
Political information does not in any way constitute ALL of information. You are being naive, and foolish here.
There is plenty of non-political, academic, or useful information on the net that China needs, and it needs organized access to it.
That so many here adopt a confrontational stance of "all or nothing at all" with regards to the China situation. Most of you don't know China, and probably almost all of you have not even stepped into the damn country. You don't know what the average citizen or the populous think, and what it is like to think within the Chinese framework. And yet here you are dispensing your high-horse values; a great reflection of what much of the world perceives the US to be -- all dominant, crushing without any real pandering to the cares of others.
The fact is, leaving China out of business, or international relations will not bring a change to its sort of rule. Best example: Look at North Korea. Isolation didn't do them any good, and instead they are accelerating towards being a Nuclear state. They pose only more danger, not less.
With Google in China, the citizens get more information and education. It would *probably* help in the long run, as the culture could get increasingly liberal with the vast information they acquire. It will breed a new generation of citizens that are a little bit more enlightened than the previous generation, and this might inch the country slowly towards a more democratic, free rule. Baby steps.
On the other hand, we are all worried about the "slippery slope". Google must know where to draw the line -- if the Chinese govt continues to make increasingly restrictive demands, Google must know not to fall into its manipulative tricks and respond accordingly.
Yes, I'm a senior in a university studying engineering. I guess that makes me somewhat educated, doesn't it?
I don't think that studying engineering would give a person authority on the subject on evolution, despite his "educated" status. Most/. posters are, I suspect, armchair experts, and this is not necessarily a bad thing but their fact pool might not be as cohesive and consistent as one a modern professor would teach. So, anyways, I hope I scrapped the equivocation of an "educated person" and an "educated opinion".
Next, the problem that by far bothers me the MOST in the thread is the very quick deduction that since there seems to be a need to explain how the universe started at all, that the Christian God is immediately pulled into the equation. This is of course, known as the problem of the 'prima mobile' (prime mover) --- what started the big bang?
The problem with this is that even you want to posit an entity behind the prime mover, it is NOT necessarily the Christian God. A superentity, yes, a "God" in common terms, yes, but there is nothing that points to the fact that the prime mover is in fact the Christian God. This choice is as arbitrary as ABC, and is motivated purely only by cultural reasons; the Western Christian idea of "God".
Similarly on one occassion I had an argument with a poster who argued that he experienced miraculous events in his life which he could not attribute to anything other than divine intervention. And that because of this, he was a devout Christian. I pointed out that from where I came from in Asia, I had friends of other "religions" (like Buddhism and such) who experienced miraculous events and automatically attributed it to the divine intervention of THEIR superdeity (Yes, I know Buddhism has no God, but modern strains of Buddhism has changed), so this was obviously culturally motivated. Therefore, there is *nothing* that says it has to be the Christian God; you are only primed to think so because that is the only superentity you have been exposed to. Thankfully, he agreed.
So this is what I would like the self-proclaimed Christian posters here to take note of... sure, there are some events in your life, or some deep questions about the universe that seem to be well explained through the option of God, but there is absolutely nothing that points to it being the Christian God.
The real life and philosophical consequences of Probability and Statistics have been somewhat distorted in public view. Here's a simple example:
If you toss a coin, in the LONG RUN, it will be 50-50 for heads and tails. But the fact of that matter is that you CANNOT predict what the result of the next toss is.
This is similarly extended to the dice.
While you are a composite part of population statistics, you are NOT "just a statistic". Individuals differ from person to person, but statistics hold true for aggregate events.
And why be so scared of its implications on free will? There is no real implication of it from statistics. Assuming that humans really do have free will, it doesn't change the fact that we are creatures of habit, and have several strong constants in our lives (day-to-day jobs, families, travel routes, etc). Statistical prediction is not an indication of a lack of free will, and if the push comes to the shove, it is but a repetitive exercise of free will.
But I am quite puzzled about several comments on free will that I have spotted in past/. comments.. worrying about it even in the philosophy of mind discussion. Take a good read of some philosophical texts and get some real considered opinions by great thinkers.
Conservative students are discriminated against in academia. Yes it is true.
One student, one case illustrates the truth of your entire statement. Excellent grasp of statistics.
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That is, car-owners usually own about one car on average, but gun-owners own more than one gun on average.
Based on just comparing the cost of a car to that of a gun suggests this isn't that ridiculous a proposition..
Who makes the bigger difference?
Considering how recent C-section has been, the dissolution of the evolutionary advantage of small head children will take many, many generations to show any effect.
However, there is of course no real logical link. There are plenty of very smart and successful people who produce more than two children. For example, it is not rare to read reports of CEOs of major companies who have quite a number of children. Politicians, despite their bad rep, and are intelligent in some dimension also have children in good numbers. Oxford philosopher GEM Anscombe had seven children -- although this was partly due to her being a devout catholic.
What is important would rather be the sort of personality underlying intelligence.
Using your personal anecdotes to form a causal relationship in the overall population is ridiculous. For one, I assume that your friends who experienced such hardships did so while growing up in Western culture, which is vastly different from African culture. After all, the pervasiveness of Hollywood, hip-hop and shiny gimmicks only exist on such a level in America.
Being introduced to hardship doesn't cause one to grow up faster -- it causes one to stop growing and start muddling through, even if they're not ready.
That is an incredibly stupid comment, drawn from folk psychology and intuition.
What psychological research has shown is that rats exposured to higher levels of stress in the experimental condition do mature faster than control rats. This "maturity" level in rats is measured by behavioral pattern exhibition. Of course, we are not sure if this general research can extend to humans -- it would be unethical to conduct experimental studies in humans.
The possibilities are complex; it could be that a significant amount of stress facilitates maturity but TOO much stress shatters the personality. It is also obvious that people have their own unique defence mechanisms; some persevere in the face of hardship while others withdraw and retreat into themselves. Some actively resolve problems, while others wait for problems to dissolve. This personality disposition is then actively combined with the culture (North American, Western European, Eastern, African..) to produce behavioral patterns and growth/change in the personality.
That is, there are different forms of utility, the one most common being "happiness". This is of course quite understandable when happiness is one of the most basic positive states that most Westerners enjoy being in. The mindset has seeped into mainstream culture.. what's important is that you're happy, I wish you happiness, I love this person because he or she makes me feel happy.. etc.
However, other alternative forms of utility can exist (but are exceedingly rare). For example, I wrote on combining Aristotle's Virtue ethics with Utilitarianism; you can perform cost-benefit analysis using your conception of virtue as your goal. Do X because it is more virtuous than Y, etc etc.
So, utilitarianism is not really what is to blame. What IS, are the values underlying that strategy.. for the sort you are talking about, it is the indulgent, individualistic, self-centered sort of mongering for benefit. Coming together, this forms hedonism.
But Nintendo does the same with Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong and their various spinoffs. I don't get the "sequel" criticism directed only at Sony -- Nintendo milk just as much, if not more.
Did Google buy into Baidu BEFORE or AFTER they made the decision to self-censor their version of Wikipedia? If you're expecting "Do no Evil" to include supernatural powers to have prescient visions of the future, then maybe you're an idiot.
If I recall correctly, there was a pair of twins where one was reared in Nazi Germany and the other in Communist Russia. Only their habitual similarities were discussed about, I don't think they were subject to IQ tests.
The evidence points strongly towards a biological bias in intelligence, at least if only for IQ. Identical twins reared apart and independently have IQ correlations of 0.8+, which is basically the correlation needed for test-retest reliability. By that I mean that testing one twin is equivalent to testing the other. Non-related children reared in the same family (by adoption or such) have an IQ correlation of 0.
The nurture theory proposes that children reared apart should have IQs that continually diverge, given their socioeconomic differences. This is not true.
The only real difference occurs when children are reared at poverty or below-poverty levels, where they are unable to attain nutrients to sustain adequate physiological growth.
It is important to note that the Asians tested were those who have immigrated to America or such. This means that they are in no way representative of the Asian race at large --- the highly educated or quite rich compose a larger proportion of this migrant population than they do of normal asian populations. Asians also have a very strong culture of working hard and studying, although this will dissipate with each new generation born in North American land.
The truth is closer to the fact that they don't care, until they get into trouble.
The shotgun basically "frames" their mind in a certain perspective. This is not equally true of kitchen knives and the like, because most instances of interaction with the kitchen knife involve chopping food (if anything, it frames you to be hungry).
The consequence is then justifying banning games but not banning other violence-encouraging stimuli like action movies, the military, and so forth.
Just because in your mind (and in many other people's minds) Rumsfeld has been discredited (hey I don't like him either), making a broad, sweeping generalization is a little foolish. Not recognizing a poor track record is foolish.
Too right. One of the words that has suffered from this linquistic drift is "unique," which in English means "one of a kind." Now, we Americans, (and possibly Brits, I don't know) often use this word to mean "unusual," "cool," or "neat-o." I actually heard a commercial the other day describing something as "unique and one-of-a-kind." Actually, I think the usage of "unique" to mean all those other things that you said actually originated from a *masterful* use of language. Because you can probably imagine social contexts where you don't really want to insult someone, or you are poking fun at them.. so you say something like: "He's really... ... 'unique'."
Where you really mean weird, crazy, perverted, and such. You have to be pretty intelligent to make such side-remarks. It's just additional semantic layers added onto words because of our clever usage of them. Sometimes the connotations become negative, like the word "retarded". Now we have "special" children.
And I don't think we should worship the original meaning of a word. Things change dynamically because of social usage. The biggest problem with this is the consistency of texts through time. We could be seeing a situation where two hundred years from now, they can hardly make out what we're saying from our texts (in fact, it's pretty hard to make out what ancient or even Renaissance philosophers are saying themselves)...
This in no way means that if you adopt this sort of view, the same sort of phenomena will happen to you. The study constrained itself such that it can only conclude the emotional outcomes of pessimistic people, and not pessimistic thinking.
What is needed is an experiment where people adopted a pessimistic approach, and others an optimistic approach (with an additional control group) regardless of their natural outlook on life. Only then can we possibly say something about pessimistic thinking.
A child that is reared by two same-sex parents might turn out differently from children who have same-sex parents. Certainly if you believe in particularly Freudian or neo-Freudian constructs, this will be true. Even without those beliefs, we would think that the amount of attention given to children of same-sex parents by other children and their parents could inevitably attract some jeering.
But if same-sex marriages were common, or at least treated like nothing out of the ordinary, then these children will not suffer such discrimination. This still leaves the problem of missing "one side" of the parental love; be it the paternal or maternal sort of love -- although you might argue that one of the same-sex parents could play that role.
But who is to say that same-sex parents are not "as good" as heterosexual parents? What is there to prove that a heterosexual arrangement is the optimal one? It's a little harder to prove by collecting statistics of the children, because most same-sex couples adopt their children, whereby their own genetic traits aren't passed down.
Yes, you can carry the "potential" argument to extemes. One could claim the lint in my belly-button has rights, because there are probably sufficient atoms to spontaneously rearrange into a zygote. But clearly, the probability of this is trivially small. Therefore we can safely discount it. What do you mean "trivially" small? Such that 1 out of every billion (or any arbitrary large number) would have a chance to spontaneously rearrange itself into a zygote? So, it's okay to kill 1 in 1 billion? And yet it's not okay to make use of an embryo that might or might not make it into a fully functional human? I would say the same standard applies at the end of life. If Shiavo had a 10% chance of recovering, killing her would have been wrong, don't you agree? But the fact was that her chances of recovering were vanishingly small. That is why pulling the plug was ethical. Now, if a fertilized egg has a 30% chance of surviving, why would we also not grant it rights? You make it sound easy, but where do you draw the line between a "reasonable" chance of 10% and a "vanishingly small" chance? 5%? 3%? You've driven yourself into the heap paradox, and any arbitrary number you propose will provide troubles.
If these cars crash while on their automatic-pilot mode, are the makers liable for lawsuits? Or is it the fault of the (drunk) idling driver?
Saddam Hussein was supposed to be the Iraqi's fight, then.. but look at America and its strongarm ideology.
Yes. Bad information is worse than no information. Political information does not in any way constitute ALL of information. You are being naive, and foolish here. There is plenty of non-political, academic, or useful information on the net that China needs, and it needs organized access to it.
The fact is, leaving China out of business, or international relations will not bring a change to its sort of rule. Best example: Look at North Korea. Isolation didn't do them any good, and instead they are accelerating towards being a Nuclear state. They pose only more danger, not less.
With Google in China, the citizens get more information and education. It would *probably* help in the long run, as the culture could get increasingly liberal with the vast information they acquire. It will breed a new generation of citizens that are a little bit more enlightened than the previous generation, and this might inch the country slowly towards a more democratic, free rule. Baby steps.
On the other hand, we are all worried about the "slippery slope". Google must know where to draw the line -- if the Chinese govt continues to make increasingly restrictive demands, Google must know not to fall into its manipulative tricks and respond accordingly.
I don't think that studying engineering would give a person authority on the subject on evolution, despite his "educated" status. Most /. posters are, I suspect, armchair experts, and this is not necessarily a bad thing but their fact pool might not be as cohesive and consistent as one a modern professor would teach. So, anyways, I hope I scrapped the equivocation of an "educated person" and an "educated opinion".
Next, the problem that by far bothers me the MOST in the thread is the very quick deduction that since there seems to be a need to explain how the universe started at all, that the Christian God is immediately pulled into the equation. This is of course, known as the problem of the 'prima mobile' (prime mover) --- what started the big bang?
The problem with this is that even you want to posit an entity behind the prime mover, it is NOT necessarily the Christian God. A superentity, yes, a "God" in common terms, yes, but there is nothing that points to the fact that the prime mover is in fact the Christian God. This choice is as arbitrary as ABC, and is motivated purely only by cultural reasons; the Western Christian idea of "God".
Similarly on one occassion I had an argument with a poster who argued that he experienced miraculous events in his life which he could not attribute to anything other than divine intervention. And that because of this, he was a devout Christian. I pointed out that from where I came from in Asia, I had friends of other "religions" (like Buddhism and such) who experienced miraculous events and automatically attributed it to the divine intervention of THEIR superdeity (Yes, I know Buddhism has no God, but modern strains of Buddhism has changed), so this was obviously culturally motivated. Therefore, there is *nothing* that says it has to be the Christian God; you are only primed to think so because that is the only superentity you have been exposed to. Thankfully, he agreed.
So this is what I would like the self-proclaimed Christian posters here to take note of... sure, there are some events in your life, or some deep questions about the universe that seem to be well explained through the option of God, but there is absolutely nothing that points to it being the Christian God.
If you toss a coin, in the LONG RUN, it will be 50-50 for heads and tails. But the fact of that matter is that you CANNOT predict what the result of the next toss is.
This is similarly extended to the dice.
While you are a composite part of population statistics, you are NOT "just a statistic". Individuals differ from person to person, but statistics hold true for aggregate events.
And why be so scared of its implications on free will? There is no real implication of it from statistics. Assuming that humans really do have free will, it doesn't change the fact that we are creatures of habit, and have several strong constants in our lives (day-to-day jobs, families, travel routes, etc). Statistical prediction is not an indication of a lack of free will, and if the push comes to the shove, it is but a repetitive exercise of free will.
But I am quite puzzled about several comments on free will that I have spotted in past /. comments.. worrying about it even in the philosophy of mind discussion. Take a good read of some philosophical texts and get some real considered opinions by great thinkers.
Conservative students are discriminated against in academia. Yes it is true. One student, one case illustrates the truth of your entire statement. Excellent grasp of statistics.