Our Future?

[Mali]

The worst of the bunch if you ask me.

[samag08]

It's rather stupid, but watch the movie "Idiocracy" sometime when you get the chance. You will laugh and then sigh.

[Pali]

It's rather stupid' date=' but watch the movie "Idiocracy" sometime when you get the chance. You will laugh and then sigh.[/quote']

Seen it, enjoyed it, and to a degree I think it is accurate... I expect that over the next several generations (more likely double than single digits), assuming there aren't major catastrophes or wars that massively change the population levels, a noticeable increase in genetic abnormalities will occur as many people who would have died young in the past will currently survive until adulthood and reproduce - thus spreading traits that previously had a powerful selective pressure against them, pressures that have been largely countered by modern medicine. While I doubt any of us will live long enough to see this and verify it, it's still a prediction I have a measure of confidence in making... of course, there are plenty of possibilities that would nullify it (a new eugenics program, for instance - not that I am advocating such).

Also, even if the average intelligence level continues to drop, that doesn't mean there won't still be very smart people. There may be fewer of them, especially in terms of percentages... but they'll be there.

[abghoul]

What if it the "modern" society rather needs idiots than well developed minds for the whole "working class" idea.

And maybe things are working well in this issue, as the earlier reports seem to confirm.

There is a big random factor in genetics, of course some scientists claim to have gained control over it, but i am about sure the restriction of reproduction for "not so healthy" people is a loss for the gene pool's randomness.

And it is not like such restrictions would not be abused, just a question when and why.

[Mali]

Hey Pali, whats your level of confidence for the probability of an increase in stupid people?

[Pali]

Hey Pali' date=' whats your level of confidence for the probability of an increase in stupid people?[/quote']

Nearly 100%. We can already show a difference between the average adult intelligence of industrial and hunter/gatherer societies, with the latter having a significantly higher average IQ (our tests used for figuring this out aren't perfect, but they're the best we've got). Simple logic also leads me to this conclusion...

1) Intelligence is highly (though not entirely) dependent on one's genetics.

2) People of lower intelligence have more children than people of higher intelligence.

3) Children of people of lower intelligence are more likely to be dumber, whereas children born of parents with higher intelligence levels are more likely to be smarter.

C1) More children will be born with lower intelligence levels than children born with higher intelligence levels.

4) Surviving until adulthood and being capable of successfully reproducing is nearly certain in modern society regardless of one's intelligence.

C2) The average intelligence level of adults in the future will decrease.

To be clear, though, I'm not limiting this expectation to intelligence or mental issues... I expect physical defects (ranging from bad eyesight to more serious deformities) will become more common as well, as these also often no longer prevent survival (depending on the defect, there's a level of sexual selection against it in that people just won't find it attractive, so I expect the spread of relatively minor defects rather than extra limbs ).

What if it the "modern" society rather needs idiots than well developed minds for the whole "working class" idea.

I'm working class, yet I'm also of above average intelligence and education. I'm just not ambitious, and rather enjoy my working class status for the moment. Plenty of very intelligent people wind up in jobs and situations that don't require or make great use of that intelligence, for reasons as varied as the people are.

There is a big random factor in genetics, of course some scientists claim to have gained control over it, but i am about sure the restriction of reproduction for "not so healthy" people is a loss for the gene pool's randomness.

I'm not aware of any scientists who have claimed to have total control over genetics... we may have been able to synthesize an organism, and we may be capable of some low-level genetic modification of developing organisms, but that's different from having an absolute knowledge of genetics (which we certainly don't... genetics is still a field that has plenty to teach us).

As for the gene pool's "randomness" and how it might be lost... life has been going along just fine for the last 3.5 billion years of natural selection, which is a much harsher mistress when it comes to what genes are successful at passing themselves on than any scientist has dreamed of being. 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are now dead, and the vast majority of offspring of modern organisms (excepting humans and those in our care) die before they reach reproductive age. There's plenty of variation that constantly gets wiped out... the removal of a few genes that we know will cause negative effects in the one carrying them is something that I have no problem with, though it's a much more complicated issue than this as most genes don't work independently but as networks (thinking of "a gene for X trait" is helpful for conversation, but it doesn't really reflect reality).

[Mali]

worth checking out from your local library

http://www.amazon.com/Mismeasure-Man-Stephen-Jay-Gould/dp/0393314251

[Pali]

I'm sure it is (though Gould's endorsement of NOMA in regards to the religion/science debate has taken my respect for him down a few notches), and I'm well aware of the flaws inherent to IQ testing and the like (particularly on an individual level, which is why, despite having taken a few of them, I never bother with remembering my own IQ score)... but that does not mean that disparities in intelligence don't exist, and that they don't have real consequences.

[abghoul]

1) Intelligence is highly (though not entirely) dependent on one's genetics.

2) People of lower intelligence have more children than people of higher intelligence.

3) Children of people of lower intelligence are more likely to be dumber, whereas children born of parents with higher intelligence levels are more likely to be smarter.

C1) More children will be born with lower intelligence levels than children born with higher intelligence levels.

4) Surviving until adulthood and being capable of successfully reproducing is nearly certain in modern society regardless of one's intelligence.

C2) The average intelligence level of adults in the future will decrease.

1)I know a lot of very smart people beeing quite frustrated with their very stupid children, the genetics might form the bottle, but how much liquid is in it, is definined after, not before the birth.

2)The many children seem to me rather a social phenomenon, if your culture

is lacking medical support and safety, you might rather be called smart to have many children, so some survive the harshness of the world and support you when you get old and weak.

When the medics and social stability come up, people can not just drop off the shape of their mentality in an instant, due time they might though.

3)If that were true, we would all be more stupid than the folk of the stone age, wouldn't we?

4)This survival evolution factor is, in my opinion, not intelligence, but rather brutality, the most radical killed their opposition and took their women, not the smart guys, though one smart and brutal migh be even more victorious. In a way this may still be true in many places.

[Pali]

1)I know a lot of very smart people beeing quite frustrated with their very stupid children' date=' the genetics might form the bottle, but how much liquid is in it, is definined after, not before the birth.[/quote']

This is a misunderstanding of genetics and my position. It doesn't deal with individuals, it deals with populations. Of course some highly intelligent parents will have stupid kids, and some very dumb parents will have genius-level children (this is largely a consequence of how chromosomes are spliced together during meiosis - you're not getting exact copies of your parents' individual chromosomes), but the general trends are what I'm looking at here. EDIT: And genetics most certainly has an impact on intelligence levels, because genetics form the basic format for neural development - they are why your brain will develop into a slightly more specialized organ than a chimp's reared in the same type of environment. I don't deny the importance of mental stimulation at younger ages, but that's not genetically heritable, and so it's not going to be acted upon by natural selection (nor is it really relevant, as malnourishment surely happens to minds with both strong and poor genes at the start).

The many children seem to me rather a social phenomenon, if your culture is lacking medical support and safety, you might rather be called smart to have many children, so some survive the harshness of the world and support you when you get old and weak.

Several hundred years ago, yes, intelligent people also had large families. This is no longer the case, however, as intelligent people now tend to get married and have children a lot later in life (largely due to being in school longer, people trying to set up a stable career and home before having kids, easy access to birth control, etc. - nearly all of which is strongly correlated with higher intelligence), and fewer children at that. EDIT: This applies mostly to heavily industrialized countries, not the entire world, so I'm not expecting a huge shift through all of humanity... I'm expecting a shift that most would consider relatively minor to occur specifically in those countries, barring unexpected changes such as the implementation of a eugenics policy, major population extinctions due to disease/starvation/war, mass population migration and integration that would cause a sudden rise in genetic diversity amongst the population, etc..

3)If that were true, we would all be more stupid than the folk of the stone age, wouldn't we?

No. What I'm expecting is a shift in the Bell curve of intelligence distribution throughout the human population - there will still be plenty of incredibly smart people, I just expect the peaks of the curve to shift a bit. This is where Idiocracy went overboard (and also in terms of how dumb the people got) - it's incredibly unlikely that such traits would spread uniformly throughout the entire population. EDIT: By the way... I don't think we're any smarter than people of the stone age either. We've got a much higher knowledge and technology base to work with, but that's our main advantage.

4)This survival evolution factor is, in my opinion, not intelligence, but rather brutality, the most radical killed their opposition and took their women, not the smart guys, though one smart and brutal migh be even more victorious. In a way this may still be true in many places.

This is a very simplistic and incorrect view of natural selection. The most powerful advantage humans have over other animals is language - our ability for very complex social interaction and cooperation, for coordinating our activities and for exchanging our ideas. Our ability to create great weapons is only an outgrowth of this ability - without language and cooperation, we'd have never gotten past rocks and sticks, and those are the abilities natural selection favored very strongly in our recent evolution.

[abghoul]

This is a very simplistic and incorrect view of natural selection. The most powerful advantage humans have over other animals is language - our ability for very complex social interaction and cooperation' date=' for coordinating our activities and for exchanging our ideas. Our ability to create great weapons is only an outgrowth of this ability - without language and cooperation, we'd have never gotten past rocks and sticks, and those are the abilities natural selection favored in our evolution.[/quote']

Maybe we shape each other rather, than the animals do shape us, i assume even 10.000 years ago, folks had more trouble with other humans than with animals.

I am actually not liking the idea, but it is written down in the history, them bad guys always win, fame, women, reproduction.

Even if that stopped, (i dun believe so, but lets assume) like five hundred years ago, the genetic consequence would be with us, the next, umh, 10000 years or so.

Ask J.P.Satre, he might tell you. (Critique and natural reason)

[Pali]

Maybe we shape each other rather' date=' than the animals do shape us, i assume even 10.000 years ago, folks had more trouble with other humans than with animals.[/quote']

Yes, but this was populations competing with each other, not individuals, and populations with individuals that are more cooperative are populations that will generally out-compete those that are always fighting amongst themselves, not the other way around. Keep in mind that human ideas regarding how to treat others vary a great deal with how closely related to one another the people are - someone could be a great community asset and yet sleep easily after slaughtering the children of a neighboring village. Things here are a lot more complicated than simply "genes for" being good or bad.

Also, it's not like all interaction between neighboring tribes was war... there was also trade, cultural assimilation, intermarriage, etc.

I am actually not liking the idea, but it is written down in the history, them bad guys always win, fame, women, reproduction.

Yes, there will be a percentage of the population that will get by as jerks while the rest of the population tends to be pretty decent. Evolutionary game theory deals with explaining how differing sets of behaviors will arise within populations, and while it's not an area I understand extremely well, the general gist is that various strategies for dealing with other members of the species will have varying levels of success playing off each other, which will lead to them spreading through different average percentages of the population.

These behaviors also tend to be a lot more complicated than simply being "good" or "bad", but involve various reciprocal strategies and varying levels of investment and trust at differing stages of the relationships, many of which exist for the purpose of guarding against those that default to being jerks. The behaviors that are most successful are a sort of tit-for-tat reciprocity of giving and expecting favors, whereas being very nice or very mean both end up marginalized and remaining smaller percentages of the population. They don't go away, but they're not going to become the majority, because populations with them as a majority won't be as successful - they'll simply be out-competed by populations that work better together.

Ask J.P.Satre, he might tell you. (Critique and natural reason)

Could you try explaining it more yourself? I'm talking about evolutionary biology, Sartre was a philosopher - I don't see how he's an authority here.

[abghoul]

Philosophy can be taken as serious as you wish it of course.

We have a definition of terms in usage for instance, that can be considered to have philosophical influence.(->Ontology->Metaphysics)

What is the actual gain of evolution?

Improovement of sophistication? Optimal adjustment to the enviroment?

Or simply gain of superiority over the animal, and "lesser" versions of the species?

Maybe, if we restrict ourself to biological evolution, we might turn into very smart and dangerous folk, not unlike H.R. Giger's Alien.

[Pali]

Evolution by natural selection deals with maximizing reproduction amongst populations, not with creating ideal individuals. It happens at the genetic level, not the level of the individual organism - we're just vehicles for passing the genes on. Whatever behavioral traits help us do this better in our current environments are selected for - evolution works incrementally on a step-by-step basis, and so thinking of it in terms of "improving" us or "progressing towards" something is a misunderstanding of how evolution happens. It is not climbing a ladder, it is a tree that is constantly growing new branches in every direction.

Also, I wasn't disparaging philosophy, only noting that in this case it is not relevant.

Now, I go sleep.

[abghoul]

good night, and

Greetings from the pit

then

[Grim_Reefer]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6736722752013377089#

[Pali]

It's a lot more helpful if you can put a position into your own words rather than simply referring someone to an hour and a half long video.

[mmajunkie]

Says you

[Pali]

It also helps show that you have a working understanding of what it is you believe and why you believe it. If you can't take an idea and put it into your own words, all you're doing is parroting those of others.

[Grim_Reefer]

I'm not posting a view, I'm posting a video. Its a cool video.

[Mali]

[abghoul]

Consider,... some of us folks might have limited Volume on our net accounts.

This be the beginning of the month, i dont really want to reduce my connection to gprs yet, cause you dont feel like writing down a line.

Or two.

[mmajunkie]

Internet that isn't unlimited?! What are you from, a third world country or somethin?!

Witze

[abghoul]

My from the Pit.

Some dentist screwed me up, quite some year ago, and nowadays, nobody does a contract with me.

Runnin prepaid UMTS with a 3gig monthly.

[mmajunkie]

Dentist messed up your credit? Gotta pay those medical bills!!