No. I can obviously take a swing at which sort of attributes I consider to be the best in an individual.
However, I am not able to predict or guarantee if the environment will stay the same, or which way it will change.
Therefore my values apply exclusively to this very moment in time. They are a drop in an ocean.
We do not select. The environment does.
I am not being hasty. You are being disingenuous.
First you say value judgments must be a part of the conversation.
Then you say that the single most important attribute of human success is intelligence.
Then you start to show charts about which populations have the highest IQ.
Then this becomes a conversation about race.
You go ahead and throw your hands in the air and play innocent about it like this isn’t what you came here to say. Pardon if I don’t reciprocate.
I am not saying that this subject should be censored. I am just asking you to go do this in another thread because this one is about the theory of evolution as written by darwin.
Seriously, read the OP because I think you didn’t even bother to do that. You shot so far out that you are just being plain disruptive.
It smells like fish and it is red.
Being related to the subject is not the same as being pertinent to the discussion.
Sex is related to natural selection, so let me tell you about this beautiful blonde with the huge tits I saw the other day. You fucking dickhead.
I fail to see any accuracy in your posts as it pertains to the current discussion. You threw in a red herring, you acted disingenuous about it, and you now assign blame to me. This is where we say goodbye. Please, don’t cry. It’s not you, it’s me babeh.
Emmm… no. Often “keen senses, efficient nervous and cardiovascular systems and absence of disease” cause a lack of divergence toward a more progressive direction. When a species is fittest to its environment, it doesn’t evolve.
And that allows for other species to evolve passed it. The cockroaches had no reason to become more than they were.
a. But we prepare for the future no? What you are saying is that it doesn’t matter if we, as human beings, select for consumption, rotten fruit, bruised and battered, because in some possible though unlikely future rotten fruit may be the thing which suits the circumstances best somehow. Think about how fucking stupid that is and how politically and emotionally invested in that line of argument you must be to convince yourself that is rational and objective. If cancer has gone from 1 in 100 to 1 in 3 in a little over a century, does ‘a drop in the ocean’ still apply as a metaphor you fucking twit?
b. No first I point out that the entire essence of philosophy is attribution of values be they logical, moral what have you. This is a basic fact. Now I point out that I consider courage to be equally important to intelligence, which undermines all of your presumptions and the sad prejudices that you have which keep you from ever developing rational insight, preferring instead to appear coy and aloof when you are no good at doing either. You claim I ‘shot so far out that i am being disruptive’. Anyone with the ability to read can see with no complications that I made a reasonable, direct and pertinent point and YOU brought up race because YOU have prejudices and YOU want to disrupt the conversation and avoid having to actually engage in any philosophy. What a stupid arrogant child you prove to be.
c. Nothing I wrote was anything other than pertinent. Again, your hyper-sensitivity regarding race is causing you to read a racial undertone/agenda into x,y,z, when it is not even present, ironically proving that for all of you aloofness and coyness, it is a major issue which clouds and distorts your judgement. I brought up disease, intelligence, nervous and cardiovascular systems and YOU injected a racial component in as a pre-emptive strike, given that YOU obviously feel there is some merit to the case that YOU (not I) laid out above regarding race and intelligence but YOU would much rather not discuss it, even dispassionately (and even though I didn’t even mention it, what a fucking mess you are). You are an arrogant hypocrite arguing in bad faith WITH an agenda. But to you it is the ‘right’ kind of agenda, and so even when it clouds your judgement and completely distorts the argument, you try and play it off as someone else hang-up. That is fucking pathetic. Why don’t you try and act like an adult? Right now you are looking like one sad idiot.
d. In a thread about survival of the fittest, when YOU claim that any and all survival is a de-facto representation of fitness, regardless of the context or the health of the organism, and I disagree, are you seriously telling me that you are so fucking dense that you cannot perceive a relevance in my point? Worse still you say ‘I threw in a red herring, was disingenuous and tried to pawn it off on you’! Noone reading this thread honestly could come to that conclusion you ill-mannered twit. Noone. I made pertinent points and you pre-emptively projected some devious theory into it, provably based on YOUR hang-ups, and then claimed you did it because you had me sussed. What a scumbag you are. I have you sussed and I have shown it beyond doubt. If you are so touchy about a subject you should assess why on your own time, and not blame the other for your mistakes, shortcomings and prejudices you foolish rude girl.
In what scenario could those things be less likely to be representative of fitness than dull senses, an inefficient nervous system and the prevalence of disease?? I am very curious to know. If we are over-specialized for a sudden change in the coming future then there is nothing we can do, but given that evolutionary changes usually take place over a prolonged period of time, allowing some organisms to adapt, and given that humans appear to be one of the most remarkably adaptive species known to… well, humans, I don’t see your point as anything other than semantic.
And barring some mass-extinction event which we are unable to predict, like your earlier example, what observable justification is there for refraining from value judgements in the area of fitness in this context? Surely unless we become aware of an impending doom the only responsible thing we can do is make predictions based on the observations and probabilities which we are currently aware of… like with absolutely everything else in life… Why is this one area off limits to you in that respect?
Computers and many high tech gadgets are only relevant because so many humans can’t add, multiply, divide, and remember in their own minds easy enough. The easier it is for an animal to do something, the less its species has incentive to develop anything to go beyond it. And then because the inventions work, the species that uses them succeeds more than their un-inventive yet more talented brothers.
Those who can’t run develop awareness and intellectual skills, inventing ways to accomplish that the “more fit” people would never have bothered to imagine.
Currently it is promoted that the Jews developed to be more intelligent merely because the Catholics prevented them from using their prior more simple minded tricks. Whether that is true or not, the concept is right. And currently those who think too independently and cleverly are actively culled (designated “unfit team players” for the future designs).
Human’s are largely self-defeating and the more powerful they become (“more fit”), the higher the probability of utter extinction by his own hand. Those creatures who did not attempt to become THAT “fit”/powerful end up not being able to exterminate themselves. The baby clever enough to discover the hand gun, is more likely to die than the baby too dumb to find it.
You call me rude and whatever have you, but it is obvious that you are more interested in arguing than in having a conversation on the subject. So let the child here extract the little that is salvageable from that post.
Sure, thinking about the future might be the most distinctly human portion of intelligence.
But I am not saying that it doesn’t matter what we select for. What I said is that ultimately we don’t get to choose who lives and who dies. Nature does. Therefore in a discussion about the theory, which is an understanding of the process in abstract form, introducing values is a distraction.
Thank you for giving an example of how intelligence is at the same time our greatest asset and the greatest threat to our survival.
Right back at ya.
You only disagree because you are misusing the word fitness. It does not mean best, strongest, most intelligent, most beautiful. It means the ones left standing.
Face the music, Phoney. You’ve lost this exchange with Liessa from KT. You lose.
If this is the kind of conclusion you have to reach for, then your stage of mental retardation is much worse than I originally feared.
You obviously have no idea how evolution and natural selection occur, and how you and your pretty face, work into the equation.
First realize that you, a womb-man, are one of the filtering agents of nature. The high quality seed (or low quality in your case) that you choose to pass through your womb, decides whether humanity progresses (Evolves) or regresses (Devolves). Somebody mentioned that you have a husband and child, already. Use yourself as an example.
What are your standards? (probably very low, like the average western female dimwit)
Selection causes survival, not survival causes selection.
You choose whether to improve the odds of your children, or lessen them. In fact your instincts, your genes, cause you to feel sexually attracted to some types of males, not others.
Figure it out!
Do you select for severe mental retardation, or against it?!
You can make a very strong case that these things reduce the human capacity to do all of those things and prevent the natural flexing of these attributes.
The fact that over-specialization can prove detrimental in the long term is true but completely different to saying the less fit version of that same over-specialized species is somehow likely to fare better in some future climate. That is my point. We aren’t talking about huge divergences between different organisms in the same species we are talking about the ability to judge whether an unprecedented relaxation in the selection pressures of a species can lead to a proliferation of unfit mutations and whether or not we can identify what is objectively more or less (likely to be) fit. So far you have said ‘well, there might be a catastrophe and a change in climate’ which a) would still make the evaluation of fitness the most worthwhile and rational cause of action in our current situation and b) would not, for any identifiable reason, make disease ridden, weaker and less efficient members of that same species somehow more capable of adaptation. Luck might play a factor but it would indeed be luck. In this, as with all other pursuits, it is best to play to the odds right?
Firstly I am not sure this is even true historically and secondly if intelligence is a key component of human fitness then why wouldn’t the most fit be the pioneers? And why wouldn’t the most athletically fit also be the most intelligent? The science offered by the HBD movement on this is far from satisfactory. Thirdly, inventions can and have been made which increase the potential fitness of the less fit in a way which make them competitive with the more fit and not in some new hypothetical tangent of fitness. Physical and mental exercise, including the practice of philosophy, certainly fit this bill.
It is also asserted that Ashkenazi Jews in the 1930’s on Ellis Island, the same genetic stock which apparently now average an IQ of 115, scored on average in the mid-to-high 80’s making it clear that a great deal of the science here is disatisfactory and or incomplete. Those who are most ‘clever’ are breeding themselves out of the gene pool because they lack the equally important courage to apply their intelligence to the most rudimentary aspects of fitness, most importantly, reproduction. If a guy with a 175 IQ chooses to master some obscure science and negates his genetic imperative, or a high IQ woman prefers to satisfy her ego and and forgoes childbirth then they were lacking some other element of fitness, most probably, in my opinion, courage and the will to live and acknowledge what is genuinely vital.
The baby clever enough to find and use a handgun is more likely to come from parents who are smart enough not to leave it lying around, and within reach, and loaded. The creatures who did not attempt to become that fit are most often at the mercy of the fittest or even the fitter, and given that they cannot exterminate themselves, they cannot hope to exterminate their foes, leaving them at a disadvantage in the here and now, the only route to the future.
Best is not always better, but it usually is and worse is almost never better in the long run and it certainly isn’t in the short run either. What say we go with the overwhelming odds on this one?
Thank you for proving what you are and how right I was. Pathetic. And if you are so lame and cowardly that you cannot admit there is some nuance between groups within ‘the ones left standing’ when the population has increased 7 fold in two centuries, then you don’t have the mental faculties for philosophy. Do us a favour and fuck off with your coy nonsense and sad mental projections whilst people talk about the things which you talk around.
I wonder if you are too dumb to look at your husband and see that you did not select a man who was ill, dwarfish, disease-ridden and insane to realize what a gross hypocrite you are. If not go fuck a crazy, drug-addicted, disease-ridden tramp and squeeze out his child, seeing as one set of surviving genes is the same as another.
I Have made that case for many years. Those who could not think well learn to use machines sooner than those who didn’t need to try. Eventually everyone can only use machines because they never tried to think or act without them and those with higher intellect and talents do not fit into the system any more and thus, even though more talented, are less fitted and have sometimes lethal conflict with society. Starting circa 1950 a cold war against lower class intelligence began (leading to serious DNA perversions in specific races).
Then take the example of the lion. The lion had sufficient talents to not feel evolution pressure (much) whereas the homosapian did. The homosapian was threatened and thus developed mental skills both psychologically and biologically.
The spider monkey, on the other end, wasn’t so threatened and thus didn’t develop further.
A species has to be slightly threatened in order to cause evolutionary development. And in order to be threatened, it must NOT be too fit.
Why is this one area off limits to you in that respect?