5 ms·

This is what we get when humanity at large is wasting time on killing each other over petty things such as race, land, oil and religion.

ars 12y ago
Is there something non-petty we should be killing each other over?
- paulbaumgart 12y ago
  What are you, a compiler? :-P
ricardolopes 12y ago
Exactly. Thus we have get what we deserve, less scientific advancements and quality of life. If only we could get rid of his perpetual self-damaging instinct.
- waps 12y ago
  And if Ukraine stops fighting now ... all will be solved. Oh wait. Besides if we got rid of "self-damaging instincts", there'd be other, equally horrible problems we'd hit. Competing, of course, is why evolution works, and thus if life, as a whole, got rid of this "self-damaging instincts" we'd be nothing but simple bacteria, if that. And the problem with statements like this is that they're not really moral. Neutrality is nothing more than a vote that says the strongest party can do whatever it wants.
  - deciplex 12y ago
    So, why did humans evolve language and to live in groups, be social, etc? And, what makes you think evolution is intrinsically good, or that it can decide the best path forward for humans? Isn't evolution intrinsically nothing at all?
    - waps 12y ago
      There is no good and evil. There is only economics. Anything that is not a Nash balance WILL die. Including any definition of good that does not meet the bar. Which is I think where your problem is. Evolution provides one definition of "good" and we live in a world that enforces that definition. I know people take offence at this and think Jesus overrides that. The truth is that what Jesus provides is a slightly different way of living together, and that way has proven it's success over what evolution would probably call a very short period so far. To apply the previous reasoning, does "Jesus" meet the bar ? I'd say the current situation is that evolution doesn't know, but is interested to see how things progress from here. The whole point of evolution is that it does not "choose" the best path forward. It tries 9999999999999999999... paths forward (and "fighting" evolution is certainly one such path it is not -at all- opposed to try, just not with "too" many resources) and then kills of all but the, call it 100, best. In reality this force is very much active in today's society, as over 96% of humanity descends from less than 10% of the society that existed 2 generations ago. I would bet that this is a wholly unremarkable value for that has remained pretty constant over history. This happens in phases. First you create a million experiments. Stir for a while. Then a disaster happens, and most of the experiments die off. GOTO 10. Obviously we are currently close to the end of the "create a million experiments" phase. Loads and loads of things are being "invested" in by evolution. That will stop at some point. As to why humans live in (small) groups (meaning up to 50 people, no more), simple : redundancy, size, and efficiency. A natural human society is a group of 20-50 individuals (that don't behave all that individual, or let their colleagues do that either). The group has men and women, men being useful and expendable appendages that can be sent out to do useful things, like hunting, or fighting a neighbouring tribe when their location threatens to make the hunting grounds too small. Women that take care of progeny, and are not expendable (because loss of a woman impacts the reproductive speed of a group in a way that loss of a man doesn't, which in the short term can lead to losing a war to a bigger tribe, and the death that follows), and do whatever needs doing in a protected environment. To some extent, the bodies and brains of both kinds of humans have adapted to these roles. Not a very great extent, but it's there. It's nowhere near as specialized as you find in bees, spiders, or bacteria, and more specialized than you'd find in birds or reptiles. I would argue it's pretty similar to the sex differences you see in most mammals. It is a useful way of organising, that you will find all over nature. There are bacteria that do this (even sexual ones, yes, they do exist, though they tend to be able to switch sex when convenient), there are loads of insects that do this, again you have loads of different forms, from monogamy to hives (with a single woman per society), there are lots of animals that do this ... I don't see the mystery here, I also see serious indications that while all of these forms of living together are obviously superior to solitary lifestyles. There are considerations though : if the hunting/foraging grounds have a certain minimum richness that is, meaning living together clearly makes more sense with what you'd probably term a "better economy", and larger societies need larger, denser economies, but they are also more efficient if such an economy is possible. Below a certain productivity value, solitary lifestyles are the norm (although that tends to be the end of the road for a species). But the short answer is : why do we have societies ? For the same reason dinosaurs got big : because bigger lifeforms are more efficient. Dinosaurs were a mostly failed experiment in making the individuals bigger to give them economies of scale, without requiring groups, without requiring investment in a brain. Humans working together, or even competing, is a lot more cooperative than some lower lifeforms that we still call multicellular, and a lot more efficient than solitary lifestyles. So does evolution "decide" the best path forward ? No ! You should. In the same sense that you should be a freelancer and launch your own company, meaning the caveat simply is : you will most likely crash and burn, and die/live in poverty. TLDR: One human couldn't possibly live of 1 acre of land, but 10 acres will feed 10 people, easily.
visakanv 12y ago
I personally agree completely, but in the interest of knowledge and learning- how do we avoid conflict re: energy security?
- polysics 12y ago
  My opinion is that the US should have "won" any kind of war they had in mind with the Arab world by putting the trillions spent on Iraq and Afghanistan into energy research. That would have been far more damaging to their targets and immensely beneficial to the world at large.
  - visakanv 12y ago
    That's a nice way of putting it. Will probably use that in the future. Thanks!
kolev 12y ago
All recent wars are about energy (oil, gas, etc.) This is all very ridiculous as we're living in an endless ocean of energy. Not to mention the toll on our environment that those primitive energy sources cause. Instead of putting efforts into super volcano event prediction, meteor shields, and other things that can help us prevent the plethora of possibilities for an extinction event, little people with shortsighted and pathologically egoistic vision are controlling this planet. We need people like Elon Musk in charge - people who want to take our civilization to the next level, not because of some personal agenda, but because this is how they find happiness, and not let us rot in wars, diseases, and poverty, which hasn't improved much in the last century. A new order is needed, the so-called "democracy" is defunct and it only promotes populist politicians that promise to the dumber majority things just to get elected and shortly after election they forget their promises. Look at Obama - he promised GMO labeling and other things, which completely forgot about. I think all politicians should face criminal charges if they don't follow their pre-election promises. This way, they will be very careful to promise things they truly believe in and that can really happen. I really like Jacque Fresco's vision about the next level of society that has scientific advancement as the leading goal. Conveniently, the America's leading goal for the past decade has been "War on Terror", which is a convenient vicious circle as with all wars for oil and enforcing petrodollar hegemony, all America does is fuel terrorism! It's like being a firefighter and an arsonist at the same time - you'll never be out of a job. I think some people in Washington got too afraid that Russia was becoming a good guy, and gaining momentum, and spurred the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine to keep the convenient Cold War going on.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  >afraid that Russia was becoming a good guy There is no chance of that until some Russians who want their country to join the civilized world put a bullet in Putin's head.
  - tete 12y ago
    "want their country to join the civilized world" ⊥ "put a bullet in ∀ head"

ars 12y ago

Is there something non-petty we should be killing each other over?

paulbaumgart 12y ago
What are you, a compiler? :-P

ricardolopes 12y ago

Exactly. Thus we have get what we deserve, less scientific advancements and quality of life. If only we could get rid of his perpetual self-damaging instinct.

waps 12y ago
And if Ukraine stops fighting now ... all will be solved. Oh wait. Besides if we got rid of "self-damaging instincts", there'd be other, equally horrible problems we'd hit. Competing, of course, is why evolution works, and thus if life, as a whole, got rid of this "self-damaging instincts" we'd be nothing but simple bacteria, if that. And the problem with statements like this is that they're not really moral. Neutrality is nothing more than a vote that says the strongest party can do whatever it wants.
- deciplex 12y ago
  So, why did humans evolve language and to live in groups, be social, etc? And, what makes you think evolution is intrinsically good, or that it can decide the best path forward for humans? Isn't evolution intrinsically nothing at all?
  - waps 12y ago
    There is no good and evil. There is only economics. Anything that is not a Nash balance WILL die. Including any definition of good that does not meet the bar. Which is I think where your problem is. Evolution provides one definition of "good" and we live in a world that enforces that definition. I know people take offence at this and think Jesus overrides that. The truth is that what Jesus provides is a slightly different way of living together, and that way has proven it's success over what evolution would probably call a very short period so far. To apply the previous reasoning, does "Jesus" meet the bar ? I'd say the current situation is that evolution doesn't know, but is interested to see how things progress from here. The whole point of evolution is that it does not "choose" the best path forward. It tries 9999999999999999999... paths forward (and "fighting" evolution is certainly one such path it is not -at all- opposed to try, just not with "too" many resources) and then kills of all but the, call it 100, best. In reality this force is very much active in today's society, as over 96% of humanity descends from less than 10% of the society that existed 2 generations ago. I would bet that this is a wholly unremarkable value for that has remained pretty constant over history. This happens in phases. First you create a million experiments. Stir for a while. Then a disaster happens, and most of the experiments die off. GOTO 10. Obviously we are currently close to the end of the "create a million experiments" phase. Loads and loads of things are being "invested" in by evolution. That will stop at some point. As to why humans live in (small) groups (meaning up to 50 people, no more), simple : redundancy, size, and efficiency. A natural human society is a group of 20-50 individuals (that don't behave all that individual, or let their colleagues do that either). The group has men and women, men being useful and expendable appendages that can be sent out to do useful things, like hunting, or fighting a neighbouring tribe when their location threatens to make the hunting grounds too small. Women that take care of progeny, and are not expendable (because loss of a woman impacts the reproductive speed of a group in a way that loss of a man doesn't, which in the short term can lead to losing a war to a bigger tribe, and the death that follows), and do whatever needs doing in a protected environment. To some extent, the bodies and brains of both kinds of humans have adapted to these roles. Not a very great extent, but it's there. It's nowhere near as specialized as you find in bees, spiders, or bacteria, and more specialized than you'd find in birds or reptiles. I would argue it's pretty similar to the sex differences you see in most mammals. It is a useful way of organising, that you will find all over nature. There are bacteria that do this (even sexual ones, yes, they do exist, though they tend to be able to switch sex when convenient), there are loads of insects that do this, again you have loads of different forms, from monogamy to hives (with a single woman per society), there are lots of animals that do this ... I don't see the mystery here, I also see serious indications that while all of these forms of living together are obviously superior to solitary lifestyles. There are considerations though : if the hunting/foraging grounds have a certain minimum richness that is, meaning living together clearly makes more sense with what you'd probably term a "better economy", and larger societies need larger, denser economies, but they are also more efficient if such an economy is possible. Below a certain productivity value, solitary lifestyles are the norm (although that tends to be the end of the road for a species). But the short answer is : why do we have societies ? For the same reason dinosaurs got big : because bigger lifeforms are more efficient. Dinosaurs were a mostly failed experiment in making the individuals bigger to give them economies of scale, without requiring groups, without requiring investment in a brain. Humans working together, or even competing, is a lot more cooperative than some lower lifeforms that we still call multicellular, and a lot more efficient than solitary lifestyles. So does evolution "decide" the best path forward ? No ! You should. In the same sense that you should be a freelancer and launch your own company, meaning the caveat simply is : you will most likely crash and burn, and die/live in poverty. TLDR: One human couldn't possibly live of 1 acre of land, but 10 acres will feed 10 people, easily.

visakanv 12y ago

I personally agree completely, but in the interest of knowledge and learning- how do we avoid conflict re: energy security?

polysics 12y ago
My opinion is that the US should have "won" any kind of war they had in mind with the Arab world by putting the trillions spent on Iraq and Afghanistan into energy research. That would have been far more damaging to their targets and immensely beneficial to the world at large.
- visakanv 12y ago
  That's a nice way of putting it. Will probably use that in the future. Thanks!

kolev 12y ago

All recent wars are about energy (oil, gas, etc.) This is all very ridiculous as we're living in an endless ocean of energy. Not to mention the toll on our environment that those primitive energy sources cause. Instead of putting efforts into super volcano event prediction, meteor shields, and other things that can help us prevent the plethora of possibilities for an extinction event, little people with shortsighted and pathologically egoistic vision are controlling this planet. We need people like Elon Musk in charge - people who want to take our civilization to the next level, not because of some personal agenda, but because this is how they find happiness, and not let us rot in wars, diseases, and poverty, which hasn't improved much in the last century. A new order is needed, the so-called "democracy" is defunct and it only promotes populist politicians that promise to the dumber majority things just to get elected and shortly after election they forget their promises. Look at Obama - he promised GMO labeling and other things, which completely forgot about. I think all politicians should face criminal charges if they don't follow their pre-election promises. This way, they will be very careful to promise things they truly believe in and that can really happen. I really like Jacque Fresco's vision about the next level of society that has scientific advancement as the leading goal. Conveniently, the America's leading goal for the past decade has been "War on Terror", which is a convenient vicious circle as with all wars for oil and enforcing petrodollar hegemony, all America does is fuel terrorism! It's like being a firefighter and an arsonist at the same time - you'll never be out of a job. I think some people in Washington got too afraid that Russia was becoming a good guy, and gaining momentum, and spurred the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine to keep the convenient Cold War going on.

happyscrappy 12y ago
>afraid that Russia was becoming a good guy There is no chance of that until some Russians who want their country to join the civilized world put a bullet in Putin's head.
- tete 12y ago
  "want their country to join the civilized world" ⊥ "put a bullet in ∀ head"