[This article is sponsored by proscootersmart.com. Check out the unbiased reviews of skateboards, scooters, and much more.]
Few sports embody what Howard Gardener called bodily-kinesthetic intelligence quite like skateboarding, where champions seem to defy the laws of gravity. But how smart are the best skateboarders in the conventional sense? How would they score on an actual IQ test?
vice.com describes the negative stereotype:
Skateboarders have never been accused of being the smartest people in the room. They are creative, artistic, and resourceful, but most are high school or home school drop-outs incapable of basic reading comprehension.
Average IQ of the 10 best skaters
While your average skater may have only average intelligence, those who dominate the sport might be quite a bit smarter. The following video ranks the ten best skaters:
Even though skateboarding is a physical skill, it requires far more coordination than most sports, which means the brain is highly involved.
Since the best skaters must be young enough to be physically active, but old enough to have decades of practice, the majority of the most skilled are from Generation X (the 84 million Americans born from the early 1960s to the early 1980s). About 1.7% of U.S. youth are core skaters (defined as people who’ve skated 52+ times per year). Assuming this was the case when generation X was young, roughly 1.4 million Gen Xers were core skaters.
Thus, ranking among the ten best skaters in America is roughly a one in 140,000 level achievement, and the median top ten skater would be at the one in 280,000 level (or roughly 4.5 standard deviations above the mean). And because performance correlates about 0.82 with talent, the top ten skaters likely average 0.82(4.5) = 3.69 standard deviations above average in raw physical coordination. And since physical coordination correlates 0.35 with IQ, they likely average 0.35(3.69) = 1.29 standard deviations above average in IQ.
In other words the 10 best skaters in America likely average an IQ of about 120 (smarter than 90% of Americans their age), however the Gaussian curve predicts that in a group of 10 people, the dullest is roughly 20 points below the group’s average and the brightest is roughly 20 points above, and so America’s 10 best skaters likely range from around a normal IQ of 100 to a genius IQ of 140.
Perhaps one of the smartest on the list is Rodney Mullen:
As a child, he used Erector sets to build a complete control center for his room, which used pulleys and strings to allow him to turn on the lights and open the door from the upper bunk of his bed.
High IQ may run in his family: His mother “graduated high school at age 14 and then earned a degree in physics, while also being an accomplished pianist.”
It’s interesting to note that the #1 skater on this list (Tony Hawk) actually took a professionally administered IQ test and scored an incredible 144! Described by the psychologist as a twelve-year-old’s mind in an eight-year-old’s body, Hawk would grow up to build a $140 million empire.
It’s sometimes claimed that high IQ people only get rich because IQ predicts education and it’s the latter that’s rewarded by the market, but Hawk has little formal education and started getting rich while still in high school. He’s an example of a high functioning braining causing money directly, first by having the neurological ability to master a lucrative sport, and secondly, having the mental ability to parlay that talent into a huge brand.
Starting an online business
Of course we can’t all be the next Tony Hawk no matter how high your IQ might be, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make some money off skateboards, or whatever your passion may be. Who would have guessed that a small web site likeproscootersmart.com made a few thousand dollars last year and expects to double that this year.
“I was shopping for a scooter for my son and noticed that a lot of the sites were affiliate sites so I wanted to get in the game,” the owner explained.
“I’ve actually tried many of the products myself because I want to give unbiased reviews of them. Hover boards are the hardest product to ride because everyone wants to ride one but don’t automatically get the concept of how it works.”
For those who want to learn from his business model and start their own affiliate site, his advice is to just jump in because you’ll “never learn unless you try it.” He also notes that education can be overrated since the internet can teach you anything. He advises not giving up because your luck can change, just when you think something’s a lost cause.
As the super high IQ Marilyn Vos Savant once said, failure tends to be a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
Pumpkin Person 
Was just talking to a friend about how ectomorphs dominate skateboarding, actually. The sport requires a lot of concentration. You need to able to redirect your body weight to stick a landing and how to shift your it around to stick a landing. Timing is everything and knowing what to do and when to do it is crucial. Reaction times for these guys are very superb.
And ectomorphs have the highest IQs. Tony Hawk is an ectomorph.
Is this how an ectomorph would muscles look like? Or would Dolph even qualify as an ectomorph? He apparently has an IQ of 140+ also.
What do you mean by “ectomorph muscles”? I’m an ecto and I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Good question. I’ve assumed it to be a skeletal thing.
I mean, “ectomorph muscles” on an ectomorph frame are necessarily “ectomorph muscles” but it’s not like muscle quality is different between somatotypes, if that’s what you meant. (Although i have no idea if fiber type composition is related to somatotype, I’ll look into it later.)
PP
Do you mean that ectomorphs have the highest skateboard IQs or IQs in general because if it is the latter I would be quite intrigued to look at the data you have infered this from. My impression is quite the contrary regarding body types, most nerds/geeks tend to be quite the opposite to ectomorphs. Not that body type should matter at all, what matters is what you have between your ears but still…
I mean IQ in general.
For starters, I’ve read that weight/height ratio is NEGATIVELY correlated with IQ, meaning the higher the BMI, the lower the IQ on average. I cited some data here:
More to the point, I recently posted about research showing ectomorphs have the highest IQs of the three main body types:
If true, this perfectly fits the stereotype of the scrawny high IQ geek vs the dumb hulking jock.
East Asians ate the most intelligent macro race and they are usually endomorphic(short and fat)
Secondly the stereotype of jocks vs nerds is completely retarded. Jocks tend to be smarter or at least happier and more successful which is correlated to intelligence
Well physical coordination is correlated with IQ so that would predict jocks are smart.
On the subject of ectomorphs, outside of the obvious fact that their bodies allow for greater amount of muscle mass to be attached to the body(thereby giving them a physical advantage in sports) i think the shape of their body allows for greater balance to be achieved. Think of those high wire acts that hold a pole to maintain balance, similarly a well controlled wider body gives greater capacity to manoeuver and balance.
Correction:
I may have confused ectomorphs with mesomorphs. As a greek speaker, the word meanings actually run counter to what they are actually used for.
“Secondly the stereotype of jocks vs nerds is completely retarded. Jocks tend to be smarter or at least happier and more successful which is correlated to intelligence”
This.
“I may have confused ectomorphs with mesomorphs”
Yea you did. In my personal experience, meso-endos gain muscle the fastest. No studies as its what I’ve inferred from my own personal experience.
“East Asians … are usually endomorphic(short and fat)”
So, just like at the same BMI blacks have lower body fat and thinner skinfolds than whites (Vickery, Cureton, and Collins, 1988; Wagner and Heyward, 2000; Flegal et al, 2010), at the same BMI as whites, Asians have higher body fat and thicker skinfolds (Wang et al, 1994; WHO expert consultation, 2004; Wang et al, 2011).
To further buttress Melo’s point:
See, we can agree on some things.
It’s not that we can’t. You can just be so frustrating to talk to that nothing ever gets accomplished.
Talk to someone else?
I do.
why talk to me then?
Well you’re not frustrating all the time and as I said before, a lot people annoy me. It’s nothing new.
RR
Oh! I meant to say ectomorphs with muscles. I had a brain lapse or something and mistyped.
PP
“If true, this perfectly fits the stereotype of the scrawny high IQ geek vs the dumb hulking jock.”
Right that is the impression that I had. It appears that I have confused ectomorphs with mesomorphs. I will agree that the thicker boned one is the less room there is in the cranial cavity for a given head circumference. Maybe that impacts intelligence a little bit. Also its possible that athletic jock types(ie physically formidable) take a different life trajectory and become more reliant on their physicality than their brains. Skinny scrawny types only have their brains to get them out of trouble and probably exercise them more.
In any case:
“ecto-
/ˈɛktəʊ/
combining form
prefix: ecto-
outer; external.
“ectoderm”
Origin
from Greek ektos ‘outside’.”
Ecto implies outside or wider, endo implies within or narrower, and meso implies middle or intermediate. I always thought of it as ectomorph means wide shoulders with respect to the waist, endomorph means narrow shoulders with respect to the waist and mesomorph means something in between. Whoever came up with these classifications probably doesn’t understand greek very well though I understand that the math used to figure out where one lies is quite elaborate. However I fail to see how this impacts intelligence in any real or substantive way outside of the above explanation i gave.
There might have been a brain-muscle evolutionary trade-off and low IQ folks may have more primitive DNA and thus more potential muscle. As for scrawny guys exercising their brains more; this assumes the brain is like a muscle & thus gets bigger and better with exercise. Speaking of Greek, one key difference is brains are endo (inside the cranimum) while muscles are ecto (outside the skeleton), which means the latter can grow a lot with exercise while the former is confined to the cranium size. This may partly explain why mental stimulation does little to raise IQ.
Ph, I see how you could get confused. Point taken. You’re Greek, right?
The classifications were made by Sheldon in the 40s.
RR
Yes I’m of Greek ancestry.
“The classifications were made by Sheldon in the 40s.”
Well had a quick look through the “science” and the behavioral/psychometric component of this looks like utter hogwash to me. Far too low resolution and subject to stereotyping errors. As for the equations, they seem fairly legit in as much as ectomorph is associated with thin and tall, mesomorphy is associated with muscular and endomorphy is associated with fat. As such it appears that one can be a combination of two of the above(Ec + M or M + En).
As for the naming the only way in which this can make sense to me is if by ectomorph he means that the bones in part protrude outside the profile of the body(ie skinny bony person) by endomorph he means that the bones are entirely contained inside the profile of the body(ie fat blob) and mesomorph means highly muscular with some healthy bone protrusions. Morph appears to mean skeletal structure by his definition.
Wouldn’t skinny/tall, fat and muscular be far better definitions rather than what seems to be convoluted and perhaps clumsy incoherent definitons. I mean why should height negatively effect mesomorphy? If musculature is what mesomorphy gauges height should have nothing to do with it. Also why is skinny and tall associated in this way, what ever happened to fat and tall or muscular and tall? More nonsense!
“There might have been a brain-muscle evolutionary trade-off and low IQ folks may have more primitive DNA and thus more potential muscle.”
I agree that there might be such a correlation though I would hardly call it a rule nor that one is genetically causal of the other. In other words genes for athleticism as far as I know have no negative effect on intelligence and genes for intelligence have no negative effect on athleticism. What is likely the case IMO is that there might be some marginal level of gene clustering in that athletic genes are often packaged with low IQ genes(as in non genius genes not necesarily idiot genes) and high IQ genes are often packaged with non athletic genes. I guess, it would be interesting to see to what extent this occurs, my guess is it is not terribly significant. I still contend that social dynamics are the predominant drivers of this phenomenon. The reason we don’t often see academic genius athletes is that those geniuses that are also athletically gifted choose academia or business instead as it is a far more lucrative prestigeous and healthy endeavor. Keep in mind that I hold the view that IQ can vary up to 20 IQ points(outside of brain damage mental illness and severe withdrawal) depending on the upbringing, nutrition, education and motivation. Meaning that a Jock of average or slightly above average intelligence(100-115) if he dedicates himself to academia could theoretically eventually possess an IQ of 120-135 which makes quite a difference assuming he has this innate potential that was not given a chance to express itself due to full devotion to sports.
“As for scrawny guys exercising their brains more; this assumes the brain is like a muscle & thus gets bigger and better with exercise.”
Well there is absolutely no denying that this is the case, the brain IS like a muscle of sorts, try abstaining from any reading, problem solving or academic work for a few months and you will feel the effects. The reason we don’t often think of it that way is that we are all constantly on the hamster wheel, some are full on yet others are going at a more leasurely pace but we are all within 80-100% of our potential, society demands this of us otherwise we starve and die. I think of it as a race, as long as we are all running and giving it 100% then the one with the best innate potential wins the race and things like IQ tests and life tests are highly predictive but if only half are giving it all they got and the rest are running at 75% this may mean that a good number of people with potential miss out on the prize and the promise of what their potential holds. Now of course I’m not implying that IQ is limitless(or that it fluctuates wildly) of course there are limitations, hard limitations like a ceiling on simple and complex reaction time, processing speed, lateral thinking ability long and short term memory capacity and so on but I’m virtually certain that all these variables fluctuate through life and it requires a fair amount of diligence to keep them all in top form. Those that are intellectually/academically inclined have drilled in this maintenance to the degree that they don’t even think about it(while their academic interests ensure sharpness at the 95-100% level) while others might fall in and out of form depending on life circumstances and lack the discipline nor do they sometimes see the need to maintain consistency(idling around 90% or less of their potential).
“Speaking of Greek, one key difference is brains are endo (inside the cranimum) while muscles are ecto (outside the skeleton), which means the latter can grow a lot with exercise while the former is confined to the cranium size. This may partly explain why mental stimulation does little to raise IQ.”
Right well, I think ectomorph means bones protruding outside the body profile(as in thin and bony), endomorph means skeletal bones fully inside body profile(as in surrounded by fat with no protrusions) and mesomorph means something in between(took a while but i figured it out, quite silly though).
As for the brain, of course you are right, but I believe that most of the IQ gains past making full use of the cranial cavity(not all people do) are qualitative gains by improved neural connectivity, refined networks, higher quality information and optimized brain configuration. Mind you this is not achieved from one day to the next, it likely takes many many years to achieve. At this point one is making full use of their potential. Mind you most people are well above 90% of what they are capable of anyway, hence why I think that gains past 20 points(from a semi-wthdrawn individual to a fully engaged academically involved individual) are not realistic.
Yeah, that’s who I was envisioning when writing that comment. You’ll see a lot of diversity in skateboarding, too, like Nyjah Huston and several others.
Dolph is an outlier, both extremely mesomorphic and ectomorphic. with Ridiculously hi IQ, shame he has 3 daughters and not 3 sons.
It requires tones of NMC – which is acquired through numerous reps.
i’m a meso like sir charles.
It’s an all-encompassing reaction time that measures how quickly your mind can react, how quickly your body can react, and how quickly your eyes can react to moving stimuli as well.
I lived in California for a majority of my life so I know what’s up when it comes to skateboarding.
As a criminal.
Pumpkin our minds really do have some things in common. I literally just came here to celebrate my latest achievement. My cologne/perfume business! Complete, with a perfect business plan, growth plan, and 5 star quality product. I’ll be selling in various vendor locations in Cincinnati Ohio by the end of the month!!! Next goal is get a permanent vendor location deal setup. Get my business on their insurance policy. And then get my Cologne on Walmart shelves cross country. (Walmart requires a company to have a brick and mortar business address + insurance policy, before said product can be put on Walmart’s shelves.)
Fascinating! What made you choose the cologne/perfume business? I would think getting on Walmart shelves would be incredibly difficult. There must be so much competition.
Before I get to the cologne business you gotta know the whole story.
I started investing with T.D. Ameritrade. After a year of experience and research everyday, I became an expert on simply buying and holding, made $5,000 on investing in Comcast and bought a motorcycle. In hindsight a dumb move, but I’m young and wanted to impress. Then I felt ready in terms of my financial knowledge to start a business. I always and still do have the mind set, of keeping things simple and not re-inventing the wheel, or creating a new one entirely. Gold has been traded for centuries so I thought I would start there.
Well my 1st business, was buying and selling gold. However that failed because it turns out all gold sold commercially is fake. You have to be a registered company and use bank wire transfers to trade gold. So everyone is walking around with fake gold thinking its real. And even if it says 24k on the piece its not. Also real gold is not impressive looking at all. Fake gold is about 5 times shinier and a much more attractive color. Real gold is this ” I have not drunk water in 2 days piss color.”
Even tho it was a failure I got experience on the paperwork of registering a business, going to the bank, and I spent about the next 2 years doing more business research.
Then I had my 2nd business selling novelty breathalyzer key chains. I had a business plan, I’m over 5 years into my sales and marketing, 9-5, so im business knowledgeable, the product was cheap, and it was something not commonly bought at Walmart. I only made back what I spent on it. Because I learned only wealthy people with disposable incomes buy novelty items. Regular people would not touch it even tho its cheap.
Even tho this was a failure, I learned how to make engaging and entertaining commercials, using my 4k H.D Camcorder, how to make an attractive Ebay listing for a product, and how to expertly utilize Facebook, marketing and targeting. I also learned how to male products in bulk at the post office.
Then my 3rd business was doing commercials for online businesses. And that flopped, because not a single friend, or family member was willing to simply hold the camera and press play. I had to default of a $1,000 commercial contract. Even when I told and showed these would be camera men and women, they would get paid, they still refused.
From this I learned, very few people like myself, can be genuinely altruistic. If you have nothing to offer, or you make others feel insecure, thru intelligence, success, or any positive quality they will turn on you. Business partners are not actually partners. Only subordinates who think themselves as partners.
I learned that ultimately I’m in this alone.
I continued my research on different business strategies, and I came upon Multi level marketing. AKA the legal pyramid scheme. I’ve seen them before, have friends that worked for them. I even worked for 1 just to have good experience on my resume. Thru understand their scheme it helped me understand business hierarchy. Because remember when you go to a job you never know what your boss above you is doing. However thru applying for a pyramid scheme on purpose. And going thru just the interview process, I was able to deduce exactly how a pyramid scheme works. Every level of the Pyramid, and then extrapolate that knowledge toward creating a traditional business model.
Basically without getting too into it a business weather its MLM or traditional has 5 levels in descending order. Investors, owners, hiring managers, marketers, and salespeople. Note this has nothing to do with income just importance in the business hierarchy of how things are run. Plenty of salesmen earn more than hiring managers.
Weather a business is a MLM or traditional depends on only, what product you are selling. If the product is expensive enough. If 1 sale is enough for a sales person to live on. So lets say Life insurance, a brand new car, etc. Then its traditional. I calculated this to be about $1,500 minimum commission for traditional. Anything less is MLM.
Traditional is a perfectly shaped pyramid. Lots of workers at the bottom, few at the top. MLM is a diamond. In MLM people on the very bottom get a few sales and leave because there is little money to be made. However eventually someone sticks and they move to up and become unofficial and rarely if at all official managers. Then most people at the top jump ship eventually because the business model is not sustainable in the long term.
A traditional business grows by expanding its base population 1st and the other 4 upward levels afterward, in ascending order. A MLM expands by franchising. Setting up multiple mini pyramids.
A traditional business owner, will sit in an office atop a skyscraper, and listen to his analysts, while he contemplates his next decision.
A MLM business owner, will do his own analyzing of all his different franchises, and fly from state to state, giving motivating speeches to convince his workers to keep working. As you can see this limits growth, vs traditional, which has potentially unlimited. Over centuries and longer.
Traditional businesses are Walmart, Donald Trump Hotels.
Not only are the products expensive, (the buildings themselves.) They do not need salesmen. So more money for everyone else in the hierarchy. And since each building is also the product being sold, there is no franchising.
A hybrid would be McDonald’s, the food is cheap but they sell so much volume everyone gets a salary.
100% traditional and 100% MLM are two extremes on a spectrum.
With this in mind my 4th business. Ok So I am online searching for cheap wholesale products and comparing them to their retail counterparts to start a MLM since it has such cheap startup requirements. For the longest I was coming up with nothing, then I saw the wholesale cologne was literally I kid you not 1,000% cheaper than the same product at retail. I was amazed. I did cologne research. The knockoff colognes actually have the same template and cost as much to make as the retail colognes. The retail colognes have a special deal, where their brand is slightly different from the generic template, for an extra cost. So basically Cologne is like Nike. Cost next to nothing to make and sell at 1,000% markup.
Cologne/perfume is the perfect product. Its value is based purely on brand. And an extremely hi quality 5 star bottle only takes $20 for a custom cologne making company to make for you. So here I am about to sell a $20 bottle of 5 star design. I spent HOURS of creativity on my design, I’ll make a video showing it off and post it here. and 5 star scent cologne for $33, starting out, and 10 years from now that can be $66 dollars per bottle, with no product change.
I can start out as MLM and transition to traditional, as my product value grows. Also as soon as I get my product on a store shelf, my business becomes traditional, for at that point I have eliminated the need for salesmen.
And go look it up Pumpkin, the requirements to get a product on Walmart shelves are actually very simple, its the fact less than 1% of people know business, and its requirements which makes it hard.
Mikey I cant believe I took time to read your entire business history. But its great you keep coming back despite your setbacks. Eventually youll get the right formula.
this time tattoo it to your neck, because neck tattoos are cool.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-heritability-of-intelligence-not-what-you-think/
thank u for the support!
“Even though skateboarding is a physical skill, it requires far more coordination than most sports, which means the brain is highly involved.”
How do you define ‘sport’? I’d make the claim that all sports need coordination. If I’m in error then what sports don’t need coordination? This hinges on how one defines ‘sport.’ If one defines it as a competition between one or two individuals then it could go either way.
I define sports as an athletic competition that requires open skills.
Also I’m not sure why you tend to think in absolutes(might explain a lot) but Pumpkin’s claim is not that other sports don’t need coordination but that skateboarding takes proportionately more which I can agree with. Most of my friends are skaters.
I think it depends which sports you’re thinking of. Think gymnastics.
That Top 10 leaves out so many greats. How about Christian? I think the fact that there was a Dennis Hopper-narrated documentary made about you, 20 years after your prime, has got to count for something. Tony Hawk himself said: “I definitely knew, whenever we’d go to a contest, Christian was the one to beat.”
“Rising Son: the Legend of Skateboarder Christian Hosoi”. Full doc:
https://youtu.be/E_20RLnnF-0
According to the doc, there were two camps in skateboarding in the 80s, with Hawk representing tricks and Christian representing style. He brought that style to the equipment itself, introducing a design sense that helped the budding skateboarding industry blow up in the early 1980s, as explained in the doc. It’s interesting because when you watch the two compete, Hawk can be seen as the thinker and Christian can be seen as the artist.
Maybe his jail time derailed his skating career, keeping him off the list?
He was way past his prime when he went to jail in the late 1990s. So were Steve Caballero and Mark Gonzales, both of whom made the list, not to mention Tony Hawk. I’m pretty sure none of these guys were on the contest circuit by then. It’s interesting that Christian never became that famous, given that numerous skaters call him a “rock star” in the documentary. I guess he falls into the category of those who are respected by colleagues but not marketable, just as there are “actor’s actors” who are obviously talented but get shunned by Hollywood. Do you/did you skate, Pumpkin? (No, I am not trying to determine your IQ!)
Do you/did you skate, Pumpkin?
Not since high school.
Hey Pumpkin, I was wondering if you could estimate the IQs of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the two perpetrators of the Columbine massacre. I’ve heard that Eric got good grades in school, and Dylan was in a gifted program in elementary school. Furthermore, his SAT scores were 560 Verbal and 650 Math.
Great idea! But there are several articles I’ve promised to write first like Ted K & Crowley, but will add to my list.
Thank you so much!
And Macho Man. Hes also on your list.
like baseball, skateboarding is another sport which most people simply can’t do…ever.
what about juggling…juggling chainsaws or trapeze artists…or tight rope walkers?
i couldn’t even learn to type without looking at the keyboard…i couldn’t learn to play the clarinet…but that’s just fingers. the most noteworthy thing about einstein’s brain was the hypertrophy of the part used to control his right hand…he played the violin.
it was his left hand. einstein was right handed, but the right hand hand is used for bowing.
“i couldn’t learn to play the clarinet”
Fun fact: I used to play.
the typing bit is true, but i practiced much less than all the other kids in what my middle school called “band”. maybe if i’d taken it seriously i could’ve done well enough. i do have a very good “head for music”. i was judged by far the best singer in school. who needs a radio when you can play the song in your head?
robin williams said he was the same. he had the head but not the fingers.
and my musical talent is totally not hereditary. my parents were tone deaf.
it’s interesting how some people have voice blindness. a lot of ads are voiced by famous people, but some can’t identify people by their voice. for me it’s just as easy to identify someone by his voice as by his face.
Hey ,
I see website http://www.pumpkinperson.comand its impressive.I wonder if the content or banners advertising options available on your site ?
What will be the price if we would like to put an article on your site?
Note : Article must not be any text like sponsored or advertise or like that
Cheers
hallet biran
Any sponsored content would have to be listed as sponsored content of course. If you email me we can discuss the specifics.
Next time I am in a court room. Next time will be the 3rd time. I will ask the Judge, what exactly is the point of the Federal Government? As far as I was aware the point is to take care of the people, and make lives easier. However my independent research shows otherwise. Apparently the need for government came about when agriculture boomed the human population, and large scale wars were breaking out, between ethnic groups. Not necessarily white vs black more like family/clan vs family/clan living a few miles down the road. Government essentially started out as a corporate, entity, mediator for 2 different families to resolve issues. As far as I can tell the Government is the original corporation, and therefore the original Archetype of all corporations. The 1st government would have consisted of warring family members whom did not wish to fight and simply wanted peace. So these genetically unrelated members of each family would have worked together, to make their families happy and end the wars. you can imagine this would have been thru arranged marriages and gift giving, and other mediatory practices as well. Then what happened is the 2 families interbred and became 1 family and they anointed the leader of the government corporate entity as the head of the clan! logically this creates a social hierarchy with the government members equaling “Royalty” and the formerly warring family members becoming “Peasants.” The Peasants thankful to the King ending their family feud would lavish him with gifts and praise. (currency, female attention, food, clothing, jewels, etc.) The King would distribute these gifts in an pyramid like fashion, with the royal members at the top receiving the most gifts, and those royals at the bottom the least. The King would quickly realize that without any new problems to solve, his sway over the people would end. The King initially benevolent, would then become greedy. Because it is unfortunately for the peasants in his best genetic interest to switch from benevolent to greedy. ( Getting laid and having more babies, because of his privilege.) The King must find a way to pass down his privilege to his male heirs so they can maximize their own reproductive success. The King must find problems to solve for the Peasants, or the Peasants will get rid of him and simply return to fighting among themselves. If the family is at peace, and needs are met, and there are no legitimate problems. The King must secretively create the problem himself, and then publicly solve it. The King would immediately send his nobles to look for another warring 2 families, and then promote enough Peasant to the rank of Knight in order to form an army to go , mediate the 2 families conflict, this pattern is repeated until every family in the land is unified under 1 clan. 1 Kingdom. now the King and the royalty have more gifts than ever. However now there’s nothing left for the King to fix! So they King and the Nobles perform magic rituals, critically think, divinate, anything to come up with a plan. They decide to ask the Peasants what they wish for and the government will do their best to grant it. Some people say they want better houses, others better roads to travel on. The problem is currency in the Kingdom is limited and fulfilling all these wishes costs more money than the kingdom has. Which back in the agriculture days was crops. So the King encourages Peasants to produce more crops and reproduce more people, so the government can pay Peasants to work on the roads and improve houses. Now different Peasants doing a variety of jobs, earn different amounts of money, thus creating a social Hierarchy among the Peasants. Most of the Peasants are still farmers, and work harder than their ancestors did, every single day, the farmers have nicer things now, however not the time to enjoy them. The poor Peasants start demanding more money and equal pay and less hours. You see people originally did not understand that in order to have nice and improved things, they had to work harder and longer than they were used to, to get them, also they thought everyone would be happy not just a select few. This is because an in depth understanding of group dynamics and economics is not an automatic feature of the human mind. They are concepts that must be learned. Peasants began to see the King as the enemy because their problem cannot be fixed, and it is the King’s responsibility to fix everything. The King finally reaching the problem that cant be solved, deploys his Knights, against the Peasants to stop any and all riots. Some of the more intelligent nobles see what is coming and flee or blend in with The Peasants. A leader from the Peasant class rises up, promising to end poverty, tax the rich, give equality for all! The Peasants take up their farming tools and thru sheer numbers defeat the Knights, whom eventually disobey orders and give up because they have more in common with the peasants than the nobles. The nobles are executed and the King is dead. The new leader is crowned, and he quickly realizes, he has no more problem to solve. He learns economics and realizes he cant give the people everything they want without them giving up their time and energy. He goes into the royal library and learns about what happened before his time. The New King, lets call him “The Dictator” then switches the royal strategy from “giving the Peasants what they want” to pacifying the Peasants so they do not overthrow him. The Dictator has the Peasants build massive stadiums and engage in sports and create music, any and all enjoyable activaties for Peasants to partake in, after a hard days works. More drugs! Better drugs! More addiction! Domesticate the people, make them docile, childlike and afraid. Make the people afraid of the government create chaos and bring in order. The Dictator successfully pacifies the Peasants. However the members of his own cabinet conspire against him to take control, and the royalty fight among themselves, just as their ancient ancestors once did. After many generations of killing. The families create a system of checks and balances, that allows each section of the royal family to lead the government for a short amount of time, in a consistent rotational schedule, to end the bloodshed. Meanwhile, certain families of Peasants have been aquiring vast wealth albeit with no political power. These Rich Peasants form schemes to bankrupt the royal families and they all fall for every scheme hook line and sinker. The Royal families still retain political power, however financial power is held in the Rich Peasants, thus over the generations of interbreeding become one in the same. This is the situation you and I are in now. You may have noticed that even tho every single member of the government was replaced over and over and over again, its structure still mainted. Government has a mind of its own. An unconscious mind and the people that work for the government are its conscious mind and its body. Government has plans behind the scenes that not even the leader knows about. Government is an unconscious corpearal entity with us humans as its living body. Government can be described as a spirit, demon, angel, or even a god, the God, depending on an individuals own beliefs. Therefore all non corporeal entity’s, even our own minds can be interpreted as spirits, demons, angels or gods, pulling our strings for an unkowable purpose. Government does not have to be opressive, however it does need to solve a problem. And it will solve any problem no matter what, it has no moral code. Government is constantly growing, trying to gain every business, every entity, corporeal or not under its control. In Revalations of the Bible the Monarchy system is what Kings become drunk on, when they drink from the Whore of Babylon’s cup. Even if we do overthrow this current oppressive government, what new problem would need to be solved? We will not find out until we get to that point. Governments are evolving everytime an overthrow happens. We can only hope the problem solving method Government has in mind for when the revolters take over, is benevolent. Only time will tell. One thing I want to note. I am curious about how unconscious, factual, verifiable, non-corporeal entities, like Government, Evolution, Religion, Science, behave. Not all non-corporeal entities behave the same way. Oh also The very 1st government should be todays largest government, since it has had the most time to grow. Which is China. China is were sedentarary farming first developed.
Great story! I actually agree with a lot of what you write but feel it is a very partial perspective, you fail to see the flip side of the coin.
But first, a correction, the first sedentary farming developed with the Natufian culture in the Levant region. Is it a coincidence that this is the same region Jews originate from…hmmm maybe, maybe not. IMO China is as large as it is today due to mass scale conformity. This works to their benefit in terms of creating such a large scale “unified” people under one government but I think it is also to their detriment as in order to create conformity and uniformity all outliers must be violently headed off. This may have negatively impacted their ability to produce the highest levels of creativity thus stifling revolutionary ideas(most revolutionaries intellectual or otherwise are non-conformists). So they may have the brains to successfully sustain such a large government but lack the creativity to take it to the next level. Don’t get me wrong, i think conformity is useful and in many cases important, but never when it comes to ideas, intellectual pursuit and cognitive talent(in the form of creativity or genius however eccentric it may appear). Typically highly conformist people fail to appreciate talent partcularly if it is atypical nad not adherent to their perceptual/cultural norms.
Back to your story, you fail to note that this form of social organization just so happens to be the only practical way to further the interests of all people, bringing us agriculture, democracy, the republic, renaissance, enlightenment, scientific revolution, industrial revolution and finally the age of technology which we are currently in(otherwise known as the information age). Without people pooling their resources, both natural physical and mental resources and creating a written record none of this would have been possible. I do appreciate the cynical perspective you have and actually don’t think it is unwarranted at all, I think that anywhere a human lays his/her hands corruption is bound to follow, be it through socialism or capitalism, liberalism or conservatism we are inherently flawed, biased, partial, and constrained by the human condition physically and mentally and as such subject to the consequences of it’s flaws. But among all that chaos one thing that seems to work is that through our system of information collection/recording/dissemination and our system of hierarchical governance and social organization, we are afforded the best chance for merit to rise to the top and all it takes is for 51% of merit to prevail over demerit and we are essentially moving in the right direction. The fear is that now that we have apocalyptic weapons at our disposal, within that 49%(however small it ever becomes) exists the potential for complete annihilation.
Honestly I see the incorporeal entity known as Evolution, as an always demonic force. The “best” creatures are always the most monstrous, if not in looks, then in behavior. Government is the child of Order and Chaos, thus capable of bringing about both. These are Gods, and I see now it is my unfortunate curse to develop a modern pantheon for the modern Gods.
The fact that these real life non-corporeal entities can and do have non-corporeal children forces me to question the very nature of what it means to be alive.
Ultimately there has to be a new enlightenment, a group of scholars, studying the unconscious, minds as living organisms. a memetic enlightenment.
“Ultimately there has to be a new enlightenment, a group of scholars, studying the unconscious, minds as living organisms. a memetic enlightenment.”
I can see the utility to that, obviously the more we get to understand the human psyche the better able we are to get the best out of ourselves and hopefully pre-empt future disasters. I agree that we are in dire need of, if not re-inventing and refining enlightenment ideals at least revisiting them. This is why I like Steven Pinker’s book enlightenment now.
One way I can think of to improve our human existence is to mass produce Archetypes. Using genetic engineering, or at least an extensive alternative private education. We should give Jungian Archetype tests to children, to see which Universal Archetype they most have in common with, and steer them in that direction.
Here’s an amazing video on the evolutionary side of memes. By the way if anyone wants to debate whether Evolution is an inherently demonic non-corporeal entity. I am down for the discussion.
“One way I can think of to improve our human existence is to mass produce Archetypes. Using genetic engineering, or at least an extensive alternative private education. We should give Jungian Archetype tests to children, to see which Universal Archetype they most have in common with, and steer them in that direction.”
Not a bad idea, I think we are in dire need of good well thought out archetypes but in this day and age I would say good luck with that. Back in the day we quite readily and easily did this because we were more tribal, each ethnic group had their own, Greeks, Romans, Norse, Slav, Celtic, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hindu, Chinese, Japanese and so on and so forth. We could agree on what was an archetype because we were unified and mind you across the board there were plenty of similarities. Today i really don’t see that happening, people are losing their sense of direction and only because no one can agree what the right ideals are, we are bending over backwards to make sure we do not offend anyone by promoting ourselves and our culture too much(as if having pride in your people and history says anything bad about other great cultures). The result is a bland watered down regressive conglomeration/abomination of what is an “archetype”. But this is the world we live in, walk on egg shells warp and twist your ideals to make them compatible with other people’s sensibilities(which quite often are borne out of jealousy) and in the end lose all sense of direction.
Now I’m not saying this because I favour any one culture over another, in fact there are many cultures I admire and can’t wait for the day that we can just appreciate each other and what we each bring to the table and learn from one another but it seems that the left in particular have got it in their heads that any sense of pride or promotion(especially if it is European pride) is a big no no. Instead we are taught to denigrate our own people and take every opportunity to put others above us. I think that is incredibly damaging to people and the incorrect way to go about creating a more peaceful world. I am a strong believer in healthy competition. Granted a lot of people have a twisted view of what healthy is and with the increased involvement and seizing of power by women our ability to properly calibrate these things has gone haywire. We have become overly sensitive and hyper-empathetic to the degree that even the smell of competition is reviled(conveniently however only when the strong display this, those perceived as weak are fully within their rights to compete denigrate others even as they are viewed to be in the “right side of history”). This is disastrous to young people. Like I said I am all for peace and collaboration and all that good stuff, but for the love of god let people express themselves and let them promote good meritocratic leaders that can show them how to properly express themselves in a healthy and constructive way. Don’t shoot them down as soon as you feel intimidated by them just because they are not of your own “clan”, maybe you can learn something, maybe we can all learn something from them no matter what their background. I think that the world is experiencing a massive regression to the mean at the moment. This force is always in operation mind you but it has gained a lot of traction as of late and a lot of women are prime actors in this regard.
Funny enough someone I think has tapped into a lot of truth as to how male and female brains are wired is Dr Helen Fisher (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSGd6Ojuw0Q). Mind you she tends to be a little one sided(overly glorifying women) but she manages to touch on the main differences and one thing she points out which i find interesting is that men tend to be hierarchical and women tend to be leaderless and more in tune with each others sensibilities(15 minute mark). While the female way of doing things may avoid major conflict it is in fact a very inefficient way of doing things. Imagine having to take turns with even the least competent having equal time and say, imagine having to stop whatever it is you are doing in order to tend to someone’s feelings. You are bound to waste a lot of time in senseless things. I think the rise of women in power is going to destabilize things quite a bit and I’m not all that convinced that it will even bring more peace. Women do bring a lot of great things to the table but we have to be careful in how we go about this, women and men were created to complement one another and not compete as we both have our flaws and giving equal time to those flaws is an exercise in regression.
“Dawkins noted that in a society with culture a person need not have descendants to remain influential in the actions of individuals thousands of years after their death:
But if you contribute to the world’s culture, if you have a good idea…it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool. Socrates may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today, as G.C. Williams has remarked, but who cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are still going strong.[24]”
I disagree with Dawkins implication that enduring memes are more reproductively successful than enduring genes. Memes that cause the host to not have children and not seek reproductive success, are parasitic. The ideas feed off the host, to live longer and increase their own reproductive success. The childless, great thinkers, of history, were victims of a mind parasite. Although Memes can also be symbiotic, increasing the reproductive success of both the meme and the gene. For example, “The badass Jesus” meme or the “Benevolent ruler meme.” If a man was to completely embody the idea of a badass going around helping people, and be successful in his persona, he would undoubtedly gain a higher reproductive success, at least thru his fame. Than if he was just a “normal” person. Women consider fame to be an nigh irresistible aphrodisiac.. Carl Jung identified 12 Universal Archetypal personas, and a more update to date list of Universal Archetypes can be found here at
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArchetypalCharacter
I hypothesize if one where to embody any of the Universal Archetypes, he or she would form a symbiosis with the gene and the meme, and enhance their reproductive success. Also memes can be parasitic at times or symbiotic.
Take Pumpkin for example. Since an early age his mind has been invaded by the meme, the idea of I.Q. His greatest obsession. At first the meme was symbiotic, allowing him to graduate school, earn praise, and even land a great job, while his ideas about I.Q. Slowly spread to others. However the meme kept growing within his mind, becoming the most important detail in his life. The meme consumed him and kept growing. The meme used Pumpkin’s hi general intelligence to spread. To spread to us on this blog. Pumpkin created this blog, as a sort of offering, to the meme. This meme named I.Q. is the God Pumpkin worships. The God pulling his strings. The God will not release Pumpkin from his covenant. The God must grow larger, and attempt to invade the minds of others, and use their minds to grow larger and larger. I.Q. will not allow Pumpkin to reproduce, it can’t it wont!
Ah but Pumpkin did reproduce, my daughter would not have been born if it were not for me reading this blog. Remember Pumpkin and I are both human and share 99.9% repeating of the same D.N.A Pumpkin believes he has cleverly increased his reproductive success. In reality it is simply a statistical inevitability. If enough useful information is spread, eventually someone is going to use it to increase and achieve reproductive success. Who knows how many countless worshipers I.Q. had before Pumpkin. He was simply the next link in the chain. I simply took the useful information and disregarded the rest.
There is some type of memetic immune system we all have, that attempts to filter out reproductively useful and neutral information from harmful.
“How to get laid memes” and ” winter clothing memes” vs “Feminism Obsession memes”
It’s obvious that these mind parasites instinctively prey on the young, liberal, “open-minded”, and very generally intelligent members of society. These minds are the most prone to obsession of ideas. People that have all of these qualities in a single package have the weakest memeticimmune systems.
I see that as a species, we cannot jump too hi in intelligence too quickly, or else these mind parasites will cause us to become obsessed with their ideas, and not reproduce, thus ending the human race.
It would be extremely risky to just jump from average I.Q. 100 to I.Q. 130
As a species we have to increase our intelligence slowly but surely in order to build up a memeticimmunity, to the reproductively debilitating memes we are constantly being bombarded with on a daily basis.
Considering the fact that I.Q. is slightly correlated with lower reproductive success among men and extremely among women, tells us that although women have a stronger genetic immune system, men have a stronger memetic immune system.
Food for thought. I ask you, reader, what are the traits that allow some individuals to be more or less obsessed with “bad memes” than others?
A really good read on sex differences in the brain. Quite conclusive if you ask me.
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/28/8/2959/4996558
Some people(achem RR) like to take the position that sex differences do not warrant the claim that there is a male brain and a female brain. Of course this is beyond pedantic and circular in reasoning and misses the major point which is that these differences collectively can be used to differentiate males from females(wrt to the brain) such that when tabulated, will, with a high level of accuracy predict if a particular brain belongs to a male or a female. Furthermore these differences are intrinsically linked to DNA and more specifically the Y chromosome such that no amount of social engineering will alter this phenomenon on a mass scale. In fact studies have shown that in a truly egalitarian unbiased society(with respect to how kids are raised) the sexes diverge even more.
The two most pivotal pieces of evidence pointing towards this are for one the relative sizes of certain regions(after corrected for overall body and brain size though overall brain size is itself a distinguishing feature), men and women both have certain regions in the brain that are relatively larger and configured differently. The second reason is that there are regions in the male brain that are solely devoted to male body functions and instincts(male sex organs, sexual orientation, behavior etc). Similarly for women, meaning that if we take a female brain even at the fetus level(once it is fully formed say, the third trimester) and put it in a male body, it would likely be incompatible and exhibit many female characteristics(assuming the body does not outright reject it). Even at the very earliest phases of development(first trimester) the brain would still not develop into a male typical brain if it is taken from a female body(and that is without factoring in the fact that the development process is itself very much genetically determined).
Finally the reason we often feel the need to put a label on things is due to utility(it creates a more robust conceptual framework and increases our resolution on the matter thereby improving our ability to more effectively navigate the world), otherwise we would simply class animals into bipeds and quadrapeds oceanics and terrans, guess which other major classification there is, that’s right you guessed it males and females. Well our higher intelligence has afforded us the ability and most importantly the need to further refine our ability to differentiate natural phenomena down to minute differences(though I would argue that male/female brain differences are far from minute). As such only a fool or a pathological feminist would reject that there is a male brain or a female brain(male typical or female typical, call it what you want). Fact is these distinct classes exist and even if there is variance and some intersection in qualities, as a sum these differences make the distinction clear as day and further instantiate the need for the label of male brain and female brain.
No one denies that sex differences in the brain exist. What is denied is the claim of “male and female brains”, as it’s being asserted that two types of brain exist. The brains of the two sexes differ in degree only insofar as the brains of two individuals differ in degree.
Are you claiming that sex determines brain type?
“What is denied is the claim of “male and female brains”, as it’s being asserted that two types of brain exist.”
Once again no one claims there there are only two types of brains. Anyone with any sense in them knows there are a huge array of brains, the claim is that there are two distinct classes of brains, male and female.
“The brains of the two sexes differ in degree only insofar as the brains of two individuals differ in degree.”
WRONG!!!!! The variance(and divergence) in brain organization and configuration is far greater across the sexes than it is within the sexes. For example if you pick two random men, they are going to show far greater similarity than if you picked a random woman and a random man. FACT!!!!
So distinct is this difference that we could if we wanted(evidence suggests that a lot of so called “social scientists” don’t actually want to do this in order to preserve the illusion of equality) predict the sex of a brain to a degree far in excess of 90%, perhaps eventually at 100% accuracy.
“Once again no one claims there there are only two types of brains”
Right – the human brain is a mosaic.
“the claim is that there are two distinct classes of brains, male and female.”
What do you mean by “distinct classes of brains”?
Joel’s work shows that “male and female typical brains” are a myth and that the brain is a mosaic.
PP post this and not the other.
You should read Pink Brain, Blue Brain by Lise Eliot.
RR
Mosaic? Wtf does mosaic mean, explain mosaic in scientific terms.
These bloody post modernists(particularly the intersectional and feminist types) using words with nebulous meaning in order to smuggle their ideology into the social conscience and scramble people’s brains beyond recognition.
Come on man, tell me, which gym hottie got you on to this nonsense? Maybe you never hooked up with her(a shame considering how much she scrambled your brains) but you certainly have/had the hots for her.
class
/klɑːs/
noun
1.
a set or category of things having some property or attribute in common and differentiated from others by kind, type, or quality.
Are you familiar with “mosaics of features”, meaning numerous features?
No gym hottie got me on this nonsense. I’ve never expressed believed in this. But seeing how you get so charged up over this is pretty funny.
Yea, that was refuted by Joel’s study.
RR
How does “mosaic of features” translate to “numerous features” and what does “numerous features” have to do with sexual(brain) dimorphism or lack thereof. Of course we have many many features in the brain but that is neither here nor there when we are talking about the male/female brain.
“Yea, that was refuted by Joel’s study.”
Methinks Joel is full of s**t.
“No gym hottie got me on this nonsense.”
Well that’s a shame, at the very least I would have thought you were getting some action out of this nonsense.
“I’ve never expressed believed in this.”
Oh crap this is going from bad to worse. You actually don’t believe anything that you are arguing in favor of? Tragic!
“But seeing how you get so charged up over this is pretty funny.”
I’m glad you are getting as much entertainment from this as I am.
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/28/8/2959/4996558
In case you missed it the first time.
Gender refers to the socially constructed characteristics of women and men – such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of women and men. It varies from society to society and can be changed. While most people are born either male or female, they are taught appropriate norms and behaviours – including how they should interact with others of the same or opposite sex within households, communities and work places.
https://www.who.int/gender-equity-rights/understanding/gender-definition/en/
“How does “mosaic of features” translate to “numerous features” and what does “numerous features” have to do with sexual(brain) dimorphism or lack thereof. Of course we have many many features in the brain but that is neither here nor there when we are talking about the male/female brain.”
Again: No one denies that sex differences exist, so I don’t know why you keep linking that study.
Do you know what “mosaic” means?
“Well that’s a shame, at the very least I would have thought you were getting some action out of this nonsense.”
I didn’t know that providing arguments means that I’m “getting some action”.
“You actually don’t believe anything that you are arguing in favor of?”
One needs to hold a view that they argue?
“I’m glad you are getting as much entertainment from this as I am.”
Yea man, I’m laying in bed pre-gaming before the bar tonight drinking Guinness, the nectar of the gods. Tons of entertainment.
See also the developmental systems view on sex/gender; that you can say is a view I hold as I am a DST proponent:
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/b978-0-12-394281-4.00002-7
RR
You quoted a WHO definition of gender??? Are you for real? The WHO is a conglomoration of some 200 nations with a wide variety of cultures and perspectives(some progressive, good and rational some backwards regressive and decades perhaps even centuries behind the rest of the world) that come together to agree on a definition. It stands to reason that the best definition they can come up with that everyone is happy with is a watered down politically correct one. Come on man, you can do better than that.
“Do you know what “mosaic” means?”
I do, I was asking YOU whether you do and what you(and Joel) mean by “mosaic of features” and how that translates to “numerous features” and finally how numerous features has anything to do with sexual(brain) dymorphism. Hmmm nice try but maybe next time you should try answering my question instead of avoiding it with a question of your own.
“One needs to hold a view that they argue?”
Usually, especially if the debate is meant to be substantive and constructive, unless hold on, is this debate class and is PP the moderator?
“You quoted a WHO definition of gender??? Are you for real?”
Did you see me quote it?
“conglomoration of some 200 nations with a wide variety of cultures and perspectives(some progressive, good and rational some backwards regressive and decades perhaps even centuries behind the rest of the world) that come together to agree on a definition.”
You could also read how other continents/geographic locales define it, too, which proves my point.
“I do, I was asking YOU whether you do and what you(and Joel) mean by “mosaic of features” and how that translates to “numerous features” and finally how numerous features has anything to do with sexual(brain) dymorphism.”
No one denies “sexual(brain) dimorphism”. By “mosaic”, it is meant that there are features common in males compared to females, more common in males over females and more common in both.
“Usually, especially if the debate is meant to be substantive and constructive, unless hold on, is this debate class and is PP the moderator?”
“One needs to hold the view they hold while debating”—pumpkinhead, 2019
RR
How does this,
“Usually, especially if the debate is meant to be substantive and constructive, unless hold on, is this debate class and is PP the moderator?”
translate to this,
““One needs to hold the view they hold while debating”—pumpkinhead, 2019”
Also you are not using quotations correctly, I have not once made such a statement or made a claim like “one needs to hold the view they hold while debating” (whatever the F that means) so why are you presenting it as if I have?
What I AM actually saying is that outside of debate class or some pre-agreed intellectual exercise most people tend to(and find it optimal and proactive to) hold the view they are arguing in favor of. If you are to take a position you don’t truly believe in it is common practice to let the other person know that you are doing that. Saying something like “I’m playing devil’s advocate” is enough to correctly orient the person as to your intentions and position. The way you did it was quite deceptive. Convenient isn’t it, debate fervently about something frustrate your interlocutor with nonsensical responses and positions and when you are about to lose just claim, “well i don’t actually believe what I am saying”. Duplicity at it’s worst, a typical trope of pseudo intellectuals. You have much to learn young man.
“No one denies “sexual(brain) dimorphism”. By “mosaic”, it is meant that there are features common in males compared to females, more common in males over females and more common in both.”
I know what mosaic means, problem is Joel and obviously you have no clue what mosaic actually means and this dimwitted woman is using the term as some kind of pseudo-high brow intellectual signal. Total hogwash, has no correlation to reality and is utterly unscientific much like a lot of her work. In genetics mosaicism is “the condition wherein two or more cell populations with different genotypes exist in an organism, derived from a single zygote, as a result of experimental manipulation or to faulty distribution of genetic material during mitosis”. She is using the term incorrectly and though I know what she is getting at, the fact remains is that multiple features(which is what she should have said instead of “mosaic” in order to sound clever) says nothing about dimorphism or lack thereof nor does it negate the idea of “male brain” and “female brain”.
“mosaic
/mə(ʊ)ˈzeɪɪk/
noun
1.
a picture or pattern produced by arranging together small pieces of stone, tile, glass, etc.
“mosaics on the interior depict scenes from the Old Testament”
2.
BIOLOGY
an individual (especially an animal) composed of cells of two genetically different types.
verb
1.
decorate with a mosaic.
“he mosaicked the walls, ceilings, and floors”
adjectiveBIOLOGY
1.
denoting an individual composed of cells of two genetically different types.”
If you can’t hack true intellectual debate abstain or at least stay away from and try not to cite scientific hacks.
RR
What she appears to be implying by “mosaic”(of all the pretentious words one can think of) is that there are typed features as in male features and female features and there is such variance between and within males and females that it is hard to tell if a particular brain belongs to a male or a female. In other words both males and females have male and female type features…..which is utter hogwash!
There are no typed features, both males and females probably at a level over 99% have the same brain parts(it is very likely however that some small regions yet undiscovered or understudied are solely male or female regions that the other sex does not share at all). What differs is the relative size configuration and relative organization of those parts.
Think of it this way a Jaguar and a Bentley both have wheels, doors, seats, an engine so on and so forth….so why do we even differentiate them we could readily just proclaim “there is no such thing as a Jaguar or a Bentley as they share all the same qualities”. Of course only an idiot would make such a statement yet when it comes to the brain because of virtue signalling halfwits such statements are lauded. No, what makes a jag a jag and a bentley a bentley are the details like the shape of the car the type of wheels the design and other qualitative aspects that as a sum clearly invoke the sense that one car is a Jaguar and the other is a Bentley.
I strongly suggest you read through the following study:
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/28/8/2959/4996558
Note the Bayes Factor in table 1 indicating beyond a shadow of a doubt the probability of the alternative hypothesis(that there is a sex difference). To say that sex differences are not indicative of a male typical brain(or male brain) or female typical brain(or female brain) is just olympic level mental gymnastics.
true story. i was given a doll by a rightthinkful inlaw when i was 2 or something. i pretended it was a dump truck.
Wait, RR thinks gender is a social construct? Hahahahaha sometimes he is so ass backwards.
(i) Something is “natural” if it’s socially unmediated and inevitable.
(ii) Gender is socially mediated and not inevitable; gender roles change with the times.
(c) Therefore, gender is not “natural” since it’s socially mediated and not inevitable.
To add to Pumpkinhead’s criticism you could take the syllogism and replace the word “gender” with “race” and the argument would be sound. Not to say I support that contention but I’m simply putting the hypocrisy into perspective for someone like you who doesn’t believe race is a social construct
Gender roles may change over time, but gender does not. You either have a penis, a vagina, or both. Race is different it’s proxies reside in a spectrum. The number of K is always subjective.
Also, I don’t believe anyone here doubts your intelligence over just disagreeing. You and I agree on far more than Pumpkin and I still believe PP is more intelligent.
Right – race is a social construct of a biological reality (Spencer).
Sex and gender are distinct concepts. Having penises and vaginas or both is biological.
Both Spencer and Hardimon defended their use of Rosenberg et al. Even then one does not need to use Rosenberg et al to prove the existence of race.
I don’t care if you think PP is more intelligent. I don’t care what anyone on this blog thinks about me at all.
You completely missed the point. Race is a social construct because it’s subjective not because it’s a concept. Any concept of race you make is subjective because the variation you are trying to capture is clinal. Gender is a social construct that reflects real biological categories, race is not.
You don’t have to care, I’m just making you aware that people are sick of you victimizing yourself.
King meLo
He is a stubborn doofus! I say this affectionately of course.
Nothing wrong with being stubborn. You only think I’m a “doofus” because you disagree with me.
I should also note that I’m not saying that to insulting.
“(i) Something is “natural” if it’s socially unmediated and inevitable.”
This is not the definition of natural, the word mediate implies effect or moderation. Does this mean that one day when we figure out how to control the weather, the weather is also a social construct? Also what does innevitability have to do with it? Something could be natural and not innevitable. Very poor definition of natural man.
Something is natural when it exists in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind.
Humankind did not create humankind nor it’s sexual dimorphism(this existed long before humans evolved). Humankind evolved through countless partially random iterations each one edging us closer to who we collectively refer to as modern humans. Ergo, humankind is not a social construct and nor is gender. If gender, humankind or race is to be a social construct we would have had to have conceived of and created this ourselves in a controlled and deliberate manner. How could we have created ourselves, are we gods? You are off your rocker if you think we(modern humans or any human like ancestor in our past for that matter) had any concious involvement in this.
“(ii) Gender is socially mediated and not inevitable; gender roles change with the times.”
NO you bleeding retard, how is gender socially mediated? Have modern humans had a say as to whether a person could be male or female? Have we ever had the ability to create arbitrary genders that are substantiated by the underlying biology and not the figment of some random unitary person’s imagination? In fact do you think that our chimp like ancestors ever had the aforementioned abilities? Not a chance in a million. Gender and sex(assuming you differentiate the two) have evolved through time and have had zero conscient deliberate influence(a critical component of a social construct) by any of us(modern humans) nor any of our distant ancestors(not even the shrew like earliest mammals). It is possible that one day in the distant future humans can become partially socially constructed(in that we can significantly alter our biology and behavior) but would require substantial genetic engineering and this will not change the past nor the present nor will it make us fully socially constructed nor will it change the fact that up until now(and for the foreseeable future) gender is NOT a social construct. Gender roles change in superficial character but never in relative mode or function with respect to one another.
“(c) Therefore, gender is not “natural” since it’s socially mediated and not inevitable.”
Your premises are false and therefore your conclusion is also false.
You just collected a number of arbitrary poorly thought out statements that you have failed to prove or substantiate and conveniently used them to validate your conclusion, otherwise known as talking out of your ass.
Well I kept saying RR has the same opinions as CNN. While CNN doesn’t quote random books like RR does, at the end of the day, CNN would agree with all RRs conclusions on things.
He may have got brainwashed by being at a liberal college. I think he went to college?
“I should also note that I’m not saying that to insulting”
Don’t worry about it. I don’t care what anonymous internet people think of me.
“Well I kept saying RR has the same opinions as CNN.”
Where have i claimed these are my opinions?
Providing arguments and arguing for X means you hold the belief that X?
“He may have got brainwashed by being at a liberal college. I think he went to college?”
Right I currently am. But I didn’t get “brainwashed” at college. I challenge people’s/professors’ beliefs on a wide range of subjects. (Yes I’m “that guy.”)
You mean the guy who makes himself look a dipshit. I feel so sorry for your professors if you’ve been regurgitating to them the same stuff that you do here.
Hey I’m all for challenging the status quo but you need to drop the absolutist ideology you have. It dampens your logic to much.
Ph,
1 Social mediation cannot change what is natural. Social mediation can change gender roles. Thus it is not “natural.”
In defending P1 of my argument, something is “natural” if it is resistant to social change. Sex is resistant to social change. Sex is natural. My arm length is resistant to social change. Furthermore, one can take the definition of “natural” as something not created by humankind. Gender roles are created by humankind. Thus gender roles aren’t natural and it therefore follows that gender isn’t either – it’s not a natural kind.
2 Gender is socially mediated because roles change with the time, across societies and cultures.
My (c) then follows.
Keep up with the name calling, dude. I want to see how mad you can get.
No it’s not. What if a new law passed tomorrow that demanded all body builders must have an arm of their choosing cut off? Clearly your arm length is not resistant social changes of this kind.
In terms of socially constructed things and on a scale of 1 to 10(10 being absolutely socially constructed);
0(a rock)……..0.000000001(humankind)……0.0000001(gender)
………race(0.00001)…….1(currency)
Meaning that nor humankind nor gender nor race could possibly conceivably be considered social constructs.
Race is certifiably NOT a social construct because it is primarily a result of geographical limitations(a random African could not mate with a random East Asian because they have been separated by several thousand miles for the last 70k+ years). Furthermore the way we are socially organized in clans or troops(in the case of our ancestros millions of years ago) this creates a tribal-to-genetic relation of subsets of populations which across time emerge as broad classifications we call races. None of this was deliberate or conscious it just happened and is borne out of millions of years of evolution drilled into our DNA and outside of our conscious control AND natural physical forces like distance and time. Ergo race is most definitely not a social construct. Our perception of race can have a dose of social constructionism(but so can a lot of things that are left to people’s interpretations) but the underlying biology and reality has nothing to do with a social construct.
RR
“Gender is socially mediated because roles change with the time, across societies and cultures.”
You keep insisting on this but you are wrong. Gender roles change with respect to past intra gender role iterations but not with respect to one another and not in any remotely substantive way. That aspect of gender role is subject to social construction(as is behavior in general, people today behave differently to people in the past regardless of gender) but the aspect of gender that is biologically dictated and causes the chasm between males and females is not socially constructed it never has and it likely never will be(on a mass scale). In other words that male to female behavioral difference has always existed and always will as it is engrained in our DNA.
Think of gender as two vertical stacks of bricks. Each generation or brick added is slightly different to the previous one but the distance between the two stacks remains the same across time. As such that distance will never completely be bridged nor will the respective gender roles(male and female) be the same or interchangeable with each subsequent generation. When people refer to gender they are referring to this difference or distinctly different classifications of physical and behavioral phenomena. They never refer to the generational shift of gender behaviour, only dimwitted fools that watch CNN(sorry I had to) conflate this with the conventional notion(ie dichotomy) of gender.
Your scientific and intellectual acuity is very very low. Now I appreciate that you might be a little smarter than you let on and a contrarian of sorts but the deeper you take this stance of yours the more you will get embroiled in all kinds of nonsense. Let it go, you are not doing yourself any favors here.
“No it’s not. What if a new law passed tomorrow that demanded all body builders must have an arm of their choosing cut off? Clearly your arm length is not resistant social changes of this kind.”
Drugs are illegal too. Homosexuality is illegal in certain countries too. Still gets done.
“Gender roles change with respect to past intra gender role iterations but not with respect to one another and not in any remotely substantive way. That aspect of gender role is subject to social construction(as is behavior in general, people today behave differently to people in the past regardless of gender)”
You half agree.
“but the aspect of gender that is biologically dictated and causes the chasm between males and females is not socially constructed it never has and it likely never will be(on a mass scale). In other words that male to female behavioral difference has always existed and always will as it is engrained in our DNA.”
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/b978-0-12-394281-4.00002-7
Read
You’re conflating “sex” and “gender”. pumpkin head. they’re distinct.
“Your scientific and intellectual acuity is very very low.”
ok
“Now I appreciate that you might be a little smarter than you let on and a contrarian of sorts but the deeper you take this stance of yours the more you will get embroiled in all kinds of nonsense. Let it go, you are not doing yourself any favors here.”
ok
“You half agree.”
No I don’t, gender as it has been instantiated historically up until now denotes a genetically and biologically determined quality and speaks to types of humans based on their sexual organs and behavior. Just because I agree that some superficial facets of gender are open to social constructionism does not mean that I agree to any substantive level that gender is a social construct and certainly not “half agree”.
“You’re conflating “sex” and “gender”. pumpkin head. they’re distinct.”
No I am not, the terms have been used interchangeably historically and only recently have diverged somwhat but the fact remains even if one takes gender to be a behavioral characteristic and sex to be biological, one is borne out of the other or at least heavily influenced by it such that more than 99% of people fall in line with this causal relationship(sex determines gender). In other words not nearly as distinct as you would like.
as i’ve said before: the single most un-natural, most difficult thing to learn, most coordinated movement in all of sports is the tennis serve.
and it isn’t even close.
I’d also say a golf swing too. I’m learning how to instruct golf swings now. It’s tough, but there’s tons of money to be made doing it.
think about the difference between the ability of a world class snooker player, dart player, olympic sharp shooter, or steve nash at freethrows…vs pete sampras, the best server ever…
so “physical intelligence” can be measured in at least two categories:
1. the very accurate but simple movement.
2. the very complex movement (which is impossible to make very accurate).
Im not a big believer in body ‘intelligence’. But for things like boxing and MMA there is a lot of intelligence in terms of the strategy and hold transitions and all that.
this explains the attraction to michelle.
The biggest untold story of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election… Finally, the no-holds-barred, 100% true story of Barack Obama’s use and sale of cocaine; his homosexual affairs and the December 23, 2007 murder of Barack Obama’s former lover and choir director of Obama’s Chicago church of 20 years, Donald Young, just days before the 2008 Iowa Caucus. This searing candid story begins with Barack Obama meeting Larry Sinclair in November, 1999, and subsequently procuring and selling cocaine, and then engaging in consensual, homosexual sex with Sinclair on November 6th and again on November 7, 1999. You’ll read in riveting detail how Sinclair, in 2007, repeatedly contacted and requested that the Obama campaign simply come clean about their candidate’s 1999 drug use and sales. You learn how the Obama campaign, David Axelrod and Barack Obama used Donald Young (the homosexual lover of Barack Obama) to contact and seek out information from Sinclair about who he had told of Obama’s crimes and actions. You’ll read how the Obama campaign used internet porn king Dan Parisi and Ph.D. fraud Edward I. Gelb to conduct a rigged polygraph exam in an attempt to make the Sinclair story go away. The Obama team and the controlled media – specifically MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, CNN, Politico’s Ben Smith, The DailyKos, The Huffington Post and others – attacked the National Press Club for making its facilities available to Larry Sinclair for a news conference to present his evidence and allegations to the world media. You’ll read how Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, issued an arrest warrant on completely false, fabricated charges to attempt to discredit Mr. Sinclair’s National Press Club news conference. This is a staggeringly true story of how the sitting U.S.President with the help of the Mainstream Media, the Chicago Police Department, the FBI, the Delaware Attorney General and others got away with murder and more….
The other part of the theory is that Michelle used to be a man.
Alex Jones:
“I really think — her daughters don’t look like her — I really think this is some weird hoax they did again,” he said, “just like he didn’t get sworn in on the Bible, it was the Quran.
“All this weirdness, I mean, I used to laugh at this stuff, but man, it’s all about rubbing our noses in it.”
Yes, Jones really thinks the comedy legend’s goal wasn’t to mock everyone in equal measure to expose Michelle as a man. He goes on:
“I think it’s all an arranged marriage, it’s all completely fake and it’s this big sick joke because he’s obsessed with transgender, just like some weird cult or something. I think Michelle Obama is a man. I really do. I really do. I believe it.”
He goes on to claim that it’s common knowledge that Michelle is a man, and that President Obama frequently refers to her by her birth name, “Michael.”
Then he rants about Bono for a little bit and calls George Clooney a “maggot.”
It’s impossible to talk about Jones without sounding like you’re joking, but that’s really how the clip above plays out.
Source?
Anyone else think the moon landings are a bit dodgy?
Im not much into science news. But from what I gather a manned flight to the moon in the 1960s and early 70s was never done again.
I think from a technical perspective, the moon landings could have been pulled off in the time mentioned, but it would have been an extravagant effort and use of resources. Like, NASAs budget must have been the size of the entire millitary budget for a few years running to make it happen.
AFAIK, I don’t know the actual funding numbers for NASA in the late 60s. But thats the best question I would ask to see if they were a hoax or not.
Another more intriguing conspiracy theory Alex Jones always mentions is the the Sandy Hook shootings being staged. Theres a video he had of a ‘father’ reacting to the media in the immediate wake of the shooting and the guy, who jones thinks is an actor, starts smiling and laughing once the cameras go off him. I found that really weird.
I would suggest the american deep state really does think Americans are so fucking dumb, they can get away with hoaxes like this or the purported one of the moon landings.
[redacted by pp, March 30, 2019]
But I don’t think Sandy Hook was staged. Not at this point in time. Alex would need to show me more evidence.
Maybe should set up a seperate conspiracy theory blog and each week research a different conspiracy theory and see what we come up with. I’d much rather hope our best minds were working out what bullshit theyve been fed since childhood rather than soemthing boring like curing polio or [redacted by pp, March 30, 2019]
totally non-verbal test is face recognition and voice recognition like the gestalt images test. there’s a continuum.
https://www.thecut.com/2016/09/voice-recognition-apparently-not-a-universal-human-skill.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_recogniser
because if there were ever some freak who could serve and serve with snooker level accuracy, tennis would be a dead sport…
every serve would be an ace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxfbtcfkzas
i would guess that the first type of physical ability can be improved…basically until you die.
but the second type peaks at 35 or earlier.
like the VIQ vs PIQ maybe.
so the oldest olympic medalist won his medal in archery iirc. but google claims it was a shooter in 1912.
the world’s best snooker players have grey hairs.
To be more precise, it’s crystallized tests that keep improving with age & so-called fluid tests that in theory decline in older age, though longitudinal studies are few so could be a Flynn artifact.
On the WAIS most verbal tests are crystallized & most performance Tess are fluid, but there are fluid verbal tests (analogies using simple vocabulary) & crystalized performance tests (drawing flags of different countries from memory)
[redacted by pp, March 30, 2019]. as i’ve said a jillion times: the crystallized vs fluid jive talk is a distinction without a difference like affirmative action vs quotas. it’s still used by psychology professors because low IQ. it was destroyed by a PhD student from holland years ago. i’ve posted his results a jillion times.
The study you’re talking about proved only that crystallized tests were more genetic according to studies comparing MZ with DZ twins reared together. However the Bouchard study of MZ twins raised apart found WAIS performance IQ was more genetic than than WAIS verbal IQ, other studies have found verbal IQ is more sensitive to upper class adoption than performance IQ, & research on canal boat kids in the 1920s found verbal IQ but not performance IQ was impaired by no schooling.
So let’s not be too dogmatic.
hes talking about difference between fluid and crystalised. Not viq vs performance iq.
Verbal tests are typically more crystallized than performance tests, even though it’s possible to create fluid verbal tests & crystallized performance tests
Pumpkinhead we are definitely regressing toward the mean as a world population
Pumpkinhead That woman Dr. Helen Fisher. As soon as the video started, she said. ” Epigenetics, is the most exciting this that’s happened in her life.” instantly I knew she had 0 children, and looked it up just to be safe. She is a perfect example, of a mind being hijacked. Hijacked by a mind parasite. I see why women have a weaker memetic immune system. They have not been exposed to new ideas as often as men have thruout evolutionary history.
You think anyone with no kids has a hijacked mind?
I know, that if one does not have children he or she could have a hijacked mind. He or she could also have a hormonal, chemical makeup, that does not drive said person toward reproductive success. A hijacked mind is simply one of many possible reasons for some one remaining childless.
Come on Pumpkin you, will have to ask a harder question than that to slip up my reasoning.
Lots of sexually active hormonally healthy people use protection because they don’t want the responsibility of having kids. Do they have hijacked minds?
I actually feel insulted, by your insinuation.
Whats the insinuation?
Yes they have hijacked minds. The Childless Meme heavily, increases survival success at the also heavy cost of reducing reproductive success, all the way to 0. Despite the meme lowering reproductive success so heavily, our Age of hi population, planned parenthood, and conscious birth control, has allowed the meme to reproduce at a rapid rate and spread thru-out all modern societies.
The Childless Meme allows 1 to accrue more money. (Obvious survival advantage.) Most likely you can give a long list of other survival advantages as well.
The Childless Meme. Is A meme that can be at times parasitic and other times symbiotic .
An example of a 100% parasitic meme, is the Suicide Obsession Meme. An obsession with suicide decreases both reproductive, and survival success, however, still exists every generation. 1 of many reasons the meme never dies is because people are always committing suicide everyday all over the world. Who knows how long organisms let alone humans have been commiting suicide. I would refer to this as a universally bad meme.
The reason people don’t have kids is because we evolved to want sex & not to necessarily want kids. Wanting sex was nature’s way of tricking us into have kids for millions of years, but with the advent of birth control, it no longer works. It has nothing to do with a hijacked mind in my humble opinion. On the contrary, we now have the ability to decide what’s in our individual interest, instead of being slaves to our genetic interests. Thus you’ll find high IQ women have few if any children.
There are multiple reasons people don’t have kids, not just one like you falsely believe. Also your thesis of birth control being this new thing that sets us free from our genes is also false. Birth control is nothing new. Birth control has always been with us. A human women’s hidden estrus is birth control. do you honestly think our ancestors, did not practice birth control to keep the population stable? Records of birth control date to before recorded history.
Birth control and abortion are well documented in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. The Ebers Papyrus from 1550 BC and the Kahun Papyrus from 1850 BC have within them some of the earliest documented descriptions of birth control, the use of honey, acacia leaves and lint to be placed in the vagina to block sperm. Another early document explicitly referring to birth control methods is the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus from about 1850 BC. It describes various contraceptive pessaries, including acacia gum, which recent research has confirmed to have spermatocidal qualities and is still used in contraceptive jellies. Other birth control methods mentioned in the papyrus include the application of gummy substances to cover the “mouth of the womb” (i.e. the cervix), a mixture of honey and sodium carbonate applied to the inside of the vagina, and a pessary made from crocodile dung. Lactation (breast-feeding) of up to three years was also used for birth control purposes in ancient Egypt.
The Book of Genesis references withdrawal, or coitus interruptus, as a method of contraception when Onan “spills his seed” (ejaculates) on the ground so as to not father a child with his deceased brother’s wife Tamar.
Despite birth control being a part of the human race since our beginning, this meme, this idea of birth control being new, freeing us from our impulses, allowing us to choose our own destiny has evolved along side our genes for countless generations. Birth control has evolved to be more accurate and reliable than ever. So what? People reproduced then and people reproduce now. When the population is small this meme is weak, when the population is large and hits carrying capacity, the meme is at its most powerful. Every generation when the population gets smaller and smaller, the meme loses more and more power and influence over the minds of the masses. This trend of childlessness is simply just that, A trend. Also Pumpkin you speak of “we evolved” in the past tense as if we have reached some pinnacle of evolution, and no longer evolve. Generations still pass, therefore changes still take place. Just because these changes are small, does not mean they do not happen. Evolution, is a giant amalgam of changes over time caused by stressors and preferential mutations. However I know you will insist that we have all reached some sort of pinnacle and it all has stopped, you might even say it all stopped 10,000 years ago. Its a story we have all heard before in some shape or form, because that is exactly what it is. A story a meme. The Hollywood Meme that Evolution is goal orientated and pushing humanity toward Ascending Evolutionary Levels to become The Ultimate Life Form. Please spare us, those memes are terrible memes.
There were some very inefficient forms of birth control in ancient civilizations but even those have only been around for several thousand years at most. Humans did not even understand that sex made babies until the upper Paleolithic at the earliest so we’ve had very little time to be selected for intentional reproduction.
By contrast we’ve had tens of millions of years to evolve a strong sex drive, selected because it causes accidental reproduction. When a powerful innovation like the pill is introduced into countries, it reduces those accidents and birth rates go way down. Study after study has shown this.
Not the only reason people have fewer kids, but a major one.
And of course evolution’s not goal directed but you seem to think humans are supposed to have the goal of having kids. If we had evolved such a drive to any great degree, the huge human sex drive would be redundant
Is your “proof” that those forms of birth control are “inefficient” because we are still here? You seem to believe that the pill is the evolutionary pinnacle of birth control, and an even greater more accurate birth control wont be developed in the future.That this birth control is a singularity, that will wipe out the human race.
Yesterday you claimed we were not selected for intentional reproduction at all. Now it’s “We have been selected for intentional reproduction, however only in very recent times.” Yesterday you believed sex drive, was the only reason people have children, now you believe in many different reasons? It’s amazing how much an idea can change over night. Birth rates are down. So what? Population declines, have happened all thru-out human history. I can read your argument now. “Oh but this time is different from all the other times, this time is the singularity, this time the population will decline and never recover.This time we have reached a evolutionary population pinnacle.” Uh huh sure we have. Your quote below
“And of course evolution’s not goal directed but you seem to think humans are supposed to have the goal of having kids.”
You just wrote yesterday you believe the evolutionary goal of humans is having sex! And that we have reached a pinnacle of that want! Your quote below..
“Wanting sex was nature’s way of tricking us into have kids for millions of years, but with the advent of birth control, IT NO LONGER WORKS.”
Clearly you believed nature had a goal of tricking us, and that birth control was just invented and we have reached an evolutionary pinnacle were nature no longer affects us. Hindsight is amazing.
Yesterday you claimed we were not selected for intentional reproduction at all. Now it’s “We have been selected for intentional reproduction, however only in very recent times.”
The point remains the same: not wanting kids is normal and healthy because for the vast majority of our evolution, people who didn’t want kids were just as reproductively successful as people who did so wanting kids never evolved to be a human goal and the proof of this is the incredible human sex drive. If people had evolved a strong need for children, we wouldn’t still have a strong need for sex, because the former would be enough to compel us to reproduce.
You just wrote yesterday you believe the evolutionary goal of humans is having sex!
Yes, I believe we evolved to want sex. I don’t believe we evolved to want children, because there are tribes that hardly understand how children are made, yet have higher birth rates than most Americans. The reason memes can, in your words, hijack us out of having kids, is because the desire never evolved (to any great extent) in the first place, in my humble opinion. Good luck hijacking people out of not having sex.
Now that birth control has become widespread and effective, wanting sex no longer guarantees reproductive success, so future generations may be selected for actively wanting kids (as LOTB argued) but there hasn’t been enough time yet in my opinion
And that we have reached a pinnacle of that want! Your quote below..
“Wanting sex was nature’s way of tricking us into have kids for millions of years, but with the advent of birth control, IT NO LONGER WORKS.”
Clearly you believed nature had a goal of tricking us, and that birth control was just invented and we have reached an evolutionary pinnacle were nature no longer affects us.
I was speaking metaphorically. It’s like Richard Dawkins’s book “The Selfish Gene”. He doesn’t literally believe genes are selfish, but evolution mimics goal directed behavior so perfectly that the analogy is irresistible.
“I don’t believe we evolved to want children.” Explain royal families and their inbreeding?, you know what? enough.
So your final answer which is it? Do you subscribe to, “The trend to want children emerged recently in the past few hundred thousand years”, or “The trend has not ever occurred even now.” I ask because your going back and forth.
“Good luck hi-jacking people out of having sex.” This is already a thing. Its called celibacy, religions all over the world have been pushing this meme for thousands of years. And the idea of celibacy has still not died, because no matter how many generations pass, groups of people all over the world, still attempt it. We have a celibacy group here in the USA called M.G.T.O.W. Men Going There Own Way.
“I was speaking metaphorically. It’s like Richard Dawkins’s book “The Selfish Gene”. He doesn’t literally believe genes are selfish, but evolution mimics goal directed behavior so perfectly that the analogy is irresistible.”
That analogy is resistible. Do not let the Selfish Gene Meme guide your typing hands.
“So future generations may be selected for actively wanting kids (as LOTB argued) but there hasn’t been enough time yet in my opinion.” Again you are thinking in terms of absolute singularity.
the meme of actively wanting kids will grow as the childless meme declines. It is a 2 way street not a 1 way, ahem metaphorically typing.
So your final answer which is it? Do you subscribe to, “The trend to want children emerged recently in the past few hundred thousand years”, or “The trend has not ever occurred even now.” I ask because your going back and forth.
I think there may have been some selection for wanting kids in the past 10,000 years but it’s been weak, because people who didn’t want kids were still passing on their DNA because their sex drive caused them to have kids by accident. Only since the 20th century have we become skilled at having sex without having kids, so only now are people who don’t want kids being selected against.
“Good luck hi-jacking people out of having sex.” This is already a thing. Its called celibacy, religions all over the world have been pushing this meme for thousands of years. And the idea of celibacy has still not died, because no matter how many generations pass, groups of people all over the world, still attempt it. We have a celibacy group here in the USA called M.G.T.O.W. Men Going There Own Way.
But only 5% of U.S. men at the most go their whole lives without having sex. By contrast 53% of men go their whole lives without having children. So there’s a huge group of people who want sex but don’t want children. Their genes have survived until today because in the past, their desire for sex would cause accidental pregnancy, but now that accidental pregnancy is becoming less common, their genes are on their way out & the future will be filled with people who want kids more than they want sex (unlike today, where people want sex more than they want kids).
eventually the actively wanting kids meme will decline and the childless meme will incline, it is an ebb and flow.
Fair enough.
PP
“The reason people don’t have kids is because we evolved to want sex & not to necessarily want kids. Wanting sex was nature’s way of tricking us into have kids for millions of years, but with the advent of birth control, it no longer works.”
You are partly right but I don’t think that is the whole story. Women far more than men are naturally driven to want to have kids, their oestrus cycle ensures this on a mechanical level while there is a psychological component to this as well which hits most women in their mid 20s and they have a strong urge to want to have kids. Even animals experience this “psychological” effect. It has been documented that dogs that were sterilized enter a phase where they are fixated with having pups even though they can’t so they start nursing toys. What you are describing is only one side of the coin, mainly men. Men are for the most part simply interested in having sex and women are more interested in having kids.
Of course you are right in that contraception has eliminated those chance events but there’s more to it, women entering the work force is another reason for reduced fertility rates. Late 20th-21st century lifestyle is another reason(in large part due to the pill and advances in technology and standard of living). I believe that the more conscious we becomes(yes I think our collective consciousness is increasing with time) the more we are entering into an existential crisis where we once had religion and our instincts to center us and drive us forward we are transitioning into a phase of so called rationality in which most educated(and some less educated) people are trying to work things out for themselves from first principles. The problem is most people are not equiped to do this so this has created a lot of confusion in society as our culture is being stretched every which way to the absolute limits of what it can handle. As Mikey puts it a lot of self destructive memes are doing the rounds and our hubris and overindulgence in our own supposed “rationality” is mostly to blame. The reality is that most 130+ IQ people can’t make heads or tails of things(they only think they can) let alone the rest of the population.
Having said that I am a little more optimistic than Mikey in that I think that when push comes to shove people will react positively. When the fertility rates get dangerously low the survival instinct will kick in as we have seen time and time again through wars plague etc. People have it pretty good right now and it seems to me that they are trying to make the best of it. The engine of progress and evolution can’t keep running full steam ahead all the time, sometimes it idles and that’s fine AFAIC.
pumpkinhead, I think people (and dogs) have a natural desire to nurture, I just don’t think they have a natural desire to reproduce. Just because we evolved to reproduce doesn’t mean we evolved to WANT to reproduce. Such a desire would only be selected if a) we knew how to reproduce, thus making the desire to do so actionable, and b) our desire for sex in and of itself was an insufficient cause of pregnancy. I don’t think such criteria has been true long enough for goal-directed reproduction to evolve.
PP
Well I personally like to give people a little more credit than that. I think that our ancestors were a lot smarter than we often think they were. I seriously think there are enough people that think of procreation on a long term and large scale basis and have been for at least the last 5,000 years, ever since the first large scale civiliazations. Maybe not as much with the average joe(or jane) but certainly the overwhelming majority of the top 10%(and at the end of the day they are the ones that call the shots). Which is why fertility rates have dropped as much as they have in the developed world, that 10% are fearing overpopulation and along with other circumstantial reasons has led to the current status quo.
“I think people (and dogs) have a natural desire to nurture, I just don’t think they have a natural desire to reproduce.”
I’ll agree that dogs aren’t necessarily imbued with the desire to reproduce but humans? Hmmm humans I believe are fully cognizant of and sufficiently instilled with such a desire.
“a) we knew how to reproduce, thus making the desire to do so actionable”
Not sure I follow, we have known that sex causes pregnancy for at least the last 50k years if not since modern humans evolved 200k years ago. Do you think that ancient humans did not understand concepts like “strength in numbers” or that if they do not procreate it’s the end of the line for them and possibly their tribe? Of course I won’t address our more recent understanding of these things or at least I hope I won’t have to.
“b) our desire for sex in and of itself was an insufficient cause of pregnancy. I don’t think such criteria has been true long enough for goal-directed reproduction to evolve.”
I’ll agree with the first sentence, obviously our sex drive is enough to keep us moving forward without any conscious deliberate effort to do so but this does not mean that we don’t or haven’t known how it works or that this knowledge has not actually shaped the way in which we go about procreating. All you have to do is look at post war rise in fertility rates to realize that we are not solely driven by primal instincts. As for goal directed reproduction, I think it has been around for a very very long time, as noted above.
Two obvious reasons why we have known how reproduction works are
a) Noticing how the babies would often grow up to have the same features as the father, this would have been obvious to the first tribes possibly going back before modern humans. Arguably even animals might be cognizant of this as well. Ever wondered why when male lions take over a tribe the first thing they do is kill the cubs of the former pride leader? There is no logical evolutionary reason that this would have happened other than the lion putting two and two together and realizing, these are not my cubs better get rid of them. As a side note the brain size of a lion is around 250 ml, which is larger than most primates.
b) If we had not figured it out 200k years ago we certainly would have figured it out when we domesticated dogs some 18 – 30k years ago.
Ever wondered why when male lions take over a tribe the first thing they do is kill the cubs of the former pride leader? There is no logical evolutionary reason that this would have happened other than the lion putting two and two together and realizing, these are not my cubs better get rid of them.
Any behaviour that enhances genetic fitness will get selected, regardless of whether the animal knows why it’s doing it or not. I’m sure there was once just as many lion ancestors that killed their own cubs, but they by definition removed themselves from the gene pool, leaving only those who killed unrelated cubs as the survivors.
What looks like strategy on the part of the lion is just the result of millions of years of mindless evolutionary trial & error making species more & more adapted to their environment
The fact that humans didn’t start practicing agriculture until 10 kya suggests we didn’t understand reproduction until the Holocene & even today there are still tribes that don’t fully grasp the concept including South American tribes that think babies can have multiple fathers & even many U.S. teenagers don’t know sex causes babies
In order for intentional reproduction to evolve the desire to reproduce would not only have to be genetic, but those with that genotype would need to reproduce more than those who were motivated only by sex. Since sex already provides such a strong incentive to have sex (and thus reproduce), it’s hard to see the reproductive motive gaining traction & if it did, we’d expect orgasms to gradually vanish since a reproductive motive for sex would make the pleasure motive evolutionarily obsolete. That hasn’t happened
The simplest explanation for why humans have sex is the same reason other primates do: because they enjoy it. Positing a special evolutionary explanation just for humans seems to violate occam’s razor & ascribing non-humans with reproductive urges seems like a stretch in my humble opinion.
Forgive me for hammering on about this but allow me to flesh out a few more of my thoughts on the matter.
So there’s evidence that even animals are aware of how procreation works, and if so then certainly human ancestors have known this perhaps for millions of years. Obviously this does not necessarily imply goal directed reproduction. However if that is not the case then one can safely assume that we knew ever since modern humans came on to the scene. Even if that does not convince you then in all likelihood we put two and two together when we domesticated dogs from wolves. Watching a pair of dogs mate and then pups popping out a couple of months later with the same features as the parents would have been absolutely conclusive evidence. Now even if that does not convince you then certainly by the time we started breeding dogs some 9k years ago surely would have required knowledge of how it works. Goal directed reproduction would have arise by the time of the first large scale civilizations some 5k years ago if not significantly earlier than that.
Now I’ve noticed a disturbing pattern in academia where often times historians/archaeologists/anthropologists take anecdotal evidence from the past of some superstitious beliefs as common belief of the time. More often than not this IMO is done as part of some propagandist push, as evidenced from atheist’s attack on christians. Barring some religious doctrines(which it isn’t all that clear how many people fully bought into it) I doubt that people were that naive(certainly not with procreation). It would be like people 1000 years from now looking at you tube videos of flat earthers and assuming that all 21st century humans held such beliefs and were primitive and stupid. Though no doubt we are but not quite that stupid.
”are aware of how procreation works”
Maybe, they become aware when their females are already pregnant. Before, i doubt they know about ”how procreation works” because just the abstract reasoning to anticipate this information or biological event/developmental stage, before of this happen.
Oprah
If you are referring to animals, then that is actually an interesting point you bring up. I find it hard to reconcile the fact that lions would do this. We are talking about lions in their prime with limited experience but youthfull prowess coming in and driving out the head of the pride and then going ahead and killing his cubs. I don’t see any evolutionary mechanism by which this would come about without some knowledge at least that the cubs are not his and it is in his genetic interest to get rid of them in order to establish cubs of his own. Here is the interesting part, where did he learn this? Is this knowledge coded in their DNA? Some people speculate that this is possible. In fact I remember at the age of 3 having a strong feeling of having knowledge of things I had never been taught before. It’s possible that I didn’t remember acquiring this knowledge(pre 3s) or that on some level my brain was putting two and two together without me realizing it but I find this idea fascinating. On the other hand it could be that lions learn from a very young age and being in a pride realized how things work by watching the females in the pride give birth to subsequent generations of cubs.
On a little side note dogs and cats also seem to know exactly what is going on when their female owner is pregnant. They appear to show compassion, is it because they know the owner is pregnant or is it because they sense something is different? So here’s my theory, could it be that having a particular genetic make up(say being the nurturing empathetic type) would predispose you to naturally and inevitably figuring certain things out without being directly taught. As opposed to people of a different genetic make up that might seem oblivious to these things…? Is that what knowledge encoded in our DNA means? Not direct knowledge but the genetic predisposition to acquiring timeless primal bits of knowledge effortlessly?
there were likely thousands of genetic mutations that caused lion’s to feel infanticidal urges at various times in their life. Those who felt infanticidal when they had cubs of their own were by definition weeded out of the gene pool, leaving only those who felt infanticidal when taking over another lion’s pride as the survivors (since the latter removed rival genes)
One needn’t assume any knowledge at all on the part of the lion, but rather those lucky enough to have a murderous impulse that just happened to correspond with genetic interests passed on that well-timed impulse.
It’s just the blind trial & error of evolution producing increasingly sophisticated phenotypes
PP
That is a valid argument I guess but that leaves everything up to chance or trial and error as you put it and removes all agency from sentient beings. I don’t buy that line of reasoning. Animals have been shown to understand far more than previously thought. Maybe they don’t understand things to the depth that we do but I don’t believe it is far beyond their capabilities to understand basic reproductive principles. I mean quite convenient isn’t it that they would only kill the cubs of the defeated lion and in so doing increasing the prevalence of their own lineage. At the end of the day why kill the cubs at all? Lions are not known to be cannibalistic while they often let the deafeated severely wounded competitors escape. So killing cubs simply makes no sense to me other than on some level knowing that this is to their genetic interests.
So IMO blind trial and error may have led to the most basic life forms or perhaps some of the more primitive animals but with most large brained mammals i contend that they understand more and have more agency than we give them credit for.
Note that infanticide is especially prevalent among primates(gorillas act in pretty much the same way as lions do) so IMO big brained social animals are more likely to do this sort of thing as a way of ensuring higher prevelance of their progeny. Apparently killing the cubs hastens the female lions into estrus but recently there is some dispute to this theory while if true this means that spreading their seed as quickly as possible appears to be a prime directive which implies some level of reproductive agency. A point that reiterates this reproductive agency is that male lions will kill cubs born just after they take over the pride knowing that those could not have possibly been their own cubs as there was not enough time for this to have taken place.
I think you’re underestimating the degree to which billions of years of evolutionary trial and error can mimic intentionality. After all, blind trial and error produced agency itself, so it can easily produce something that looks like agency. Nature does incredibly impressive things without agency. Look at the way it builds entire organisms just from DNA, “reading” each base-pair to produce an animal’s fur, legs, brain, etc, and all with exquisite timing. Our best geneticists can’t figure out how to interpret genetic code, but nature does it flawlessly and unintentionally. Look at the complex, intricate and beautiful nests built by creatures as small brained as wasps. Look at the incredibly adaptive well-timed behavior that bacteria colonies show (as RR once noted) despite not having anything resembling a brain.
Inferring that a lion understands a concept as abstract as paternity sounds a bit like saying the embryology process understands genetics or that wasps understand engineering. I realize that lions are much smarter than wasps, but the concept of reproduction is so advanced that even some human groups are stumped by it. A lion can’t even recognize itself in a mirror, so the notion that it can recognize an abstract extension of itself (an offspring) seems unlikely in my opinion.
I disagree with PP about ”knowledge” definition. Instincts ARE knowledges but they are not reflexive knowledges. Our prejudices are knowledges too, to survive, to detect risks, but they are primary instincts. All prejudices are, at priori, impartial factual informations what subjectivity is.
Knowledge is in its origin, any fact a living being can internalize, memorize or learn.
Pumpkinperson,
our intelligence is [still] mostly intuitive. And for people who are, on avg, more intuitive, as me, this reality is even bigger. Most of what you thought to write all of your comments was predominantly intuitive. Reflexive reasoning is just like our mechanism to check our thoughts, not necessarily to produce them. Right now, words are bubbling in my mind without i figure out why, in my pseudo-dialect vulgar mimilized englischch.
Nonhuman animals intelligences are based on developmental program, instincts are self-answered questions we born, and because they no have abstract and reflexive reasoning, they just follows their instincts even because it’s the best they can have.
“Any behaviour that enhances genetic fitness will get selected, regardless of whether the animal knows why it’s doing it or not. I’m sure there was once just as many lion ancestors that killed their own cubs, but they by definition removed themselves from the gene pool, leaving only those who killed unrelated cubs as the survivors.
This may be the case, I have no definitive proof, I am merely speculating. It appears that the common theory is that infanticide of this type(lions killing cubs of the displaced pride leader) is that it is done to hasten the female lions into estrus but the question remains, why also kill the lions that were born after they took over the tribe if those lions were not his(ie from the previous lion)? To me this reveals agency and not merely blind programmable behaviour(how does the lion know the cubs are not his).
“What looks like strategy on the part of the lion is just the result of millions of years of mindless evolutionary trial & error making species more & more adapted to their environment”
Is intelligence not an evolutionary adaptation? Surely you will admit that human intelligence affords us the ability to take matters into our own hands with regard to reproduction. Now the question remains are some other advanced animals capable of the type of intelligence we have(though to a far lesser degree), I would argue yes.
“The fact that humans didn’t start practicing agriculture until 10 kya suggests we didn’t understand reproduction until the Holocene & even today there are still tribes that don’t fully grasp the concept including South American tribes that think babies can have multiple fathers & even many U.S. teenagers don’t know sex causes babies”
I fail to see what agriculture has to do with it. As I have mentioned, the obvious tell would have been noticing that a baby grew up to have the same features as a male tribe member that was known to have mated with the mother. This deduction could have happened long before the Holocene. Though as I have said if that doesn’t convince you, watching dogs mate after we domesticated them would have been enough proof. If not that then surely by the time we started breeding dogs, not necessarily due to agriculture though the sedentary lifestyle would have helped create the right conditions for breeding. Regardless it appears that you agree that we have known for a long time how reproduction works(at least the more intelligent and educated among us). Anecdotal evidence of primitive highly superstituous tribes or immature quite frankly stupid teens(1 in 1000?) simply says nothing to the validity of the argument that we did not know for a long time or that this lack of knowledge was at all pervasive.
“In order for intentional reproduction to evolve the desire to reproduce would not only have to be genetic, but those with that genotype would need to reproduce more than those who were motivated only by sex. Since sex already provides such a strong incentive to have sex (and thus reproduce), it’s hard to see the reproductive motive gaining traction & if it did, we’d expect orgasms to gradually vanish since a reproductive motive for sex would make the pleasure motive evolutionarily obsolete. That hasn’t happened”
You are assuming that for one to exist(intentional reproduction) the other(sex drive) must not which is quite low resolution don’t you think? I ask you then, why are we now more and more in control of our reproduction to the degree that a lot of women and men abstain from having kids while enjoying all the sex they can? This implies that on top of our sexual drive we also developed the cognitive ability to direct that reproduction to our heart’s content. The ancients practiced various methods of contraception some 2-3k years ago. I am not saying that intentional reproduction is the only mechanism by which we have kids(in fact for a fair amount of people it isn’t and for the rest it only is partially so) I am saying that it is a secondary ability that developed on top of our primitive sex drive. Think of the sex drive as the engine of the car and us at the wheel(or gorillas or lions with the corresponding reduction in control). Without the engine the car cannot move forward, the addition of the wheel and a skilled driver makes the car far more flexible and adaptable to the road.
“The simplest explanation for why humans have sex is the same reason other primates do: because they enjoy it.”
Sex is one thing having children is another, i believe we have evolved to the point where we can differentiate the two(perhaps have done so for many thousands of years by now).
“Positing a special evolutionary explanation just for humans seems to violate occam’s razor & ascribing non-humans with reproductive urges seems like a stretch in my humble opinion.”
I am not doing that, I am saying that humans probably have evolved to a degree that we can now take control of our reproductive rate as a complimentary ability on top of the sex drive we share with all other animals. Mind you I am also suggesting(more like speculating) that same more advanced animals also have on some level reproductive agency(though perhaps on a more primitive instinctual level).
[redacted by pp, April 6, 2019]
it’s “all night long” for chimps, hence the chimps yuge balls = “sperm competition”.
“I think you’re underestimating the degree to which billions of years of evolutionary trial and error can mimic intentionality.”
” Look at the complex, intricate and beautiful nests built by creatures as small brained as wasps. Look at the incredibly adaptive well-timed behavior that bacteria colonies show (as RR once noted) despite not having anything resembling a brain.”
Well can we agree that humans occupy a realm in the animal kingdom where we are to some degree governed by our instincts but also have tremendous agency? Now look at dogs, do you think dogs have some amount of agency or do you think it is all mindless instinct? Ever watched a dog interact with humans? Countless youtube videos online show dogs exhibit very human like traits and show greater emotional range than thought before. Maybe you even caught some videos on youtube of lions interacting with humans where they arguably show greater range of affection than dogs do(check out the lion whispered on YT). Perhaps their larger brians afford them this range. It is theorized that dogs have some level of theory of mind and if dogs have this then perhaps lions do too. I think we need to make a clear distinction between highly cognitively evolved and behaviorally complex animals and those animals that as far as we can tell lack the congitve real estate for higher functions.
Clearly evolution had it’s part to play, obviously it has created the foundations and the framework for these sorts of behavior to be possible the question is whether their behavior is borne out of sufficient agency or blind instinct? My sense is that due to the greater degrees of freedom afforded to and exhibited by larger more advanced animals they likely have the type of agency we possess(albeit to a far lesser degree).
“Inferring that a lion understands a concept as abstract as paternity sounds a bit like saying the embryology process understands genetics or that wasps understand engineering”.
Not remotely the same animal not a fair comparison, also engineering is far more complex than understanding kinship. In fact it has been shown that cats and many other animals do have kinship recognition. Lions perhaps greater than most due to their highly social nature. Lionesses will not allow their daughters to mate with their sons and when the males reach maturity they are kicked out of the pride in order to avoid inbreeding. Lionesses will also fight ferociously to prevent the father from mating with his daughters. Now these behaviors might be instinctual but i believe that agency overlaps this instinct or at the very least allows for awareness and some understanding of what is going on.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150725-animals-cats-science-recognition-family/
https://www.quora.com/Would-a-male-lion-mate-with-his-mother-or-sister
” realize that lions are much smarter than wasps, but the concept of reproduction is so advanced that even some human groups are stumped by it. A lion can’t even recognize itself in a mirror, so the notion that it can recognize an abstract extension of itself (an offspring) seems unlikely in my opinion.”
Can the female lion recognize her cubs? Evidence shows they certainly can. I think you are conflating the mechanistic behavior of simpler organisms and animals with that of advanced animals. The complexity in nature is beyond anything we could possibly imagine. Looking at everything from a particular evolutionary lens does not do that complexity any justice. It really is not a one size fits all, if we have agency then why not other animals too?
I believe there are 4 levels of agency:
Level 1: No agency These are very primitive animals that engage in mostly involuntary behavior. They lack the intelligence to get what they want, so they don’t want anything, not even food or sex, because they can’t feel much pleasure or pain. They just behave automatically like a machine
Level 2: Individual agency This occurs in more evolved animals like mammals. They have the intelligence to get what they want but they don’t have the intelligence to understand abstract things like reproduction, so evolution has programmed them to want concrete things like food, sex, status, self-protection, and violence against rivals, since these concrete goals advance their genetic interests without them needing the intelligence to do so intentionally.
Level 3: Reproductive agency This occurred with the human mind, and likely only near the end of the Upper Paleolithic. This is the agency to not only intentionally determine the fate of yourself and others, but to determine reproductive fates too (i.e the discovery that we can plant seeds and make crops grow, leading to the neolithic transition). It’s unclear if people have been good enough at birth control for long enough for the desire to reproduce to have been strongly selected for. This is a very high stage of evolution because at this point you’re directing evolution itself by deciding you want to pass on your biology to the next generation. The pinnacle of this stage would be eugenics.
Level 4: Genetic agency This is the agency to intentionally select DNA itself, and has only been possible for the past few decades. This can be seen as the pinnacle of evolution because for the first time, we control the genes instead of the genes controlling us.
I do think a lioness can recognize her cubs, but I don’t think she recognizes them as an extension of herself because that’s too abstract a thought for her to have. I think she’s just been selected to feel extremely nurturing and protective towards her cubs without any understanding of why she feels that way.
Agency implies the chance of failure. So, in a way, animals are agents, metaphorically speaking. But they’re not “agents” in the way humans are. Agency is the capacity to *act* in a given environment. Humans have minds, so humans are agents; humans have the capacity for intentional states. Animals lack minds; animals have phenomenal states.
Genes don’t “control us”, either. More “selfish gene” pop sci BS from PP.
I’m using “genes” in the colloquial sense, as a synonym for DNA in general. What else controls us besides our DNA, our environment & the interaction between the two?
The most primitive animals may lack intention but where’s your evidence that all non-humans do?
I mean, there are some pretty good arguments that the “most primitive animals” do intend, but I don’t really find it convincing. Richardson discusses intelligent cells in chapters 4 and 5 of his book Genes, Brains and Human Potential. He cites papers showing that there is a type of “intention” for bacteria. I’ll discuss in depth later in between writing my research paper for my religions class.
DNA doesn’t control us. Environmental cues are imperative for behavior, as it interacts with the cells in our body causing behavior. But, as I’ve said previously and will continue to say, action and behavior are distinct concepts. You should read into action theory.
DNA controls the phenotype we’ll have in a given environment.
And as I’ve explained to you a million times, I’m using the term behavior as defined by science, not philosophy. And as I’ve already told you, I think you misunderstood action theory because all the philosophy sources I’ve cited for you in the past defined action as a type of behavior, which means that even in philosophy-speak, all actions are behaviors (though only intentional behaviors are actions).
In my opinion bacteria definitely do not have intention but higher life forms like mammals most certain do.
PP
I am mostly in agreement with your four levels of agency though I would argue there is some overlap with some more advanced animals occupying a space between levels 2 and 3. This is in fact very much my mode of thinking on the matter. I think(and agree) that the next innevitable stage in evolution will be genetic engineering. Eugenics is far too brutal a practice though one could argue that we have been practicing a more benign form of eugenics for thousands perhaps millions of years(ie selecting for valued traits and marginalizing traits and people that are not valued through various social pressures). Obviously society has become more sophisticated about it in recent years(some would argue we are regressing) but I contend that on the whole we have it right. That is there is value in every human being and just because some don’t fit the mold does not mean that they should be discarded.
“I do think a lioness can recognize her cubs, but I don’t think she recognizes them as an extension of herself because that’s too abstract a thought for her to have.”
Chimps have been shown to have some elementary capacity for abstract thinking and their brain is only 100 grams larger than lions. But back to lionesses, do you think then that the lion has no memory of her gestation period and giving birth to her cubs and remembering that the lions that have grown in her pride were once those little cubs that came out of her body? Maybe lions don’t understand kinship the way we do but I have no doubt that they have some conception of the idea on top of their blind instinct to nurture their offspring. Lions remember people and other lions even after being separated for a decade(largely through smell) do you think they cannot put two and two together and realize these are my cubs?
I mean, in theory we could take this mechanistic interpretation of evolution and explain away every behaviour known to man no matter how advanced it is. In my view it is a cognitive trap reminiscent of the “no free will” argument(don’t get me started on that nonsense).
“DNA controls the phenotype we’ll have in a given environment.”
DNA “controls” nothing. DNA sequences are passive, not active causes. They’re used by and for the physiological system.
“And as I’ve already told you, I think you misunderstood action theory because all the philosophy sources I’ve cited for you in the past defined action as a type of behavior, which means that even in philosophy-speak, all actions are behaviors (though only intentional behaviors are actions).”
“Intentional behavior” is a contradiction.
Actions are intentional; behavior is dispositional.
RR I’ve rebutted all these exact arguments several times before & you just keep robotically repeating them.
If you’re just going to ignore rebuttals instead of revising your arguments in response to them, then I need to move on.
Where have you shown that there is such a thing as “Intentional behavior”?
Are actions determined by one’s current intentional state? Can one intend to behave?
You need to read Davidson, Anscombe, Bilgrami. I’ll provide references later, if you care.
This is like the 10th time I’ve provide a reference showing that even Davidson says behaviour can be intentional:
Basic action theory typically describes action as behavior caused by an agent in a particular situation. The agent’s desires and beliefs (e.g. my wanting a glass of water and believing the clear liquid in the cup in front of me is water) lead to bodily behavior (e.g. reaching over for the glass). In the simple theory (see Donald Davidson), the desire and belief jointly cause the action
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_theory_(philosophy)
There’s a *distinction*; one can intend to act, one can’t intend to behave. “Intentional behavior” is a contradiction. Read the SEP article on intentionality and dispositions. Intentional refers to contentful mental states. Is behavior a contentful mental state?
I guess I’ll provide the Bilgrami reference later. Actions are irreducible to dispositions.
Did you not read the quote I just posted. Actions ARE behaviours.
Even Davidson agrees we can intend to behave. What we can’t do (by his definition) is unintended to act. This is where you’re getting confused.
How can one intend to behave if behavior is automatic and reflexive?
Are actions automatic and reflexive?
Wikipedia on Action: “In philosophy, an action is that which is done by an agent. In common speech, the term is often used interchangeably with the term “behaviour”. ***However, in the philosophy of action, behavioural sciences, and the social sciences, a distinction is made: behavior is automatic and reflexive activity, while action is an intentional, purposive, conscious and subjectively meaningful activity***”
Citations can be found by Googling around and seeing for yourself.
I found the Wikipedia article you cited & there’s a citation request following your quote, so it’s not verified
But at least you e finally found some support for your claim
Maybe some philosophers define behaviour as only unintentional, but others use it as an umbrella term that covers both intentional & unintentional reactions
It’s kind of like the word animal. Some people use it only to describe subhuman creatures, while others include humans in the definition
“Intentional” refers to contentful mental states.
Are you in denial of the distinction because some of your pet theories may be undermined by said distinction between action and behavior?
I just don’t like using obscure definitions that make no sense to 99.9% of people because it creates needless confusion.
Pee,
nonhuman animals are not sub-humans, dear, because they are not half or going-to-be-humans someday.
They’re subhuman because they’re less evolved than us
I’m not disagreing with this, it’s obvious. I’m saying the misuse of term ”sub-human”, from the instance nonhuman animals are not humans, just that. We can say about sub-humanity or degree of traits which substantially define human consciousness level only among humans.
“I found the Wikipedia article you cited & there’s a citation request following your quote, so it’s not verified
But at least you e finally found some support for your claim”
Surely this will suffice. From page 147 of Philosophy of Nursing (the emphasis is in the text):
“Perhaps it would be important at this point to explain the differences between action, conduct, and behavior, because we have used these three terms in the discussion of caring. …
Teleology, the reader is reminded, involves goals or lures that provide the reasons for a person acting in a certain way. It is goals or reasons that establish action from simple behavior. On the other hand the concept of efficient causation is involved in the concept of behavior. Behavior is the result of antecedent conditions. The individual behaves in response to causal stimuli or antecedent conditions. Hence, behavior is a reaction to what already is—the result of a push from the past to do something in the present. In contrast, an action aims at the future. It is motivated by a vision of what can be.”
Hopefully this clears up the distinction.
Further, in Actions, Causes, and Events, Davidson sufficiently argues that we act for reasons. Thus, we don’t behave for reasons, as behavior is a response to stimuli.
And here’s Bilgrami:
Click to access Self-Knowledge_and_Resentment.pdf
Okay, you’ve convinced me that some philosophers use the word behavior only for what we unintentionally do, but you haven’t convinced me to adopt a definition used by only 0.01% of the population. In order to be understood by my readers, I will continue to use the terms action and behavior interchangeably, and will simply add the word “intentional” when being specific.
I have nothing against your definitions, but words are only useful if they’re understood so it’s better to use common definitions.
PP
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-animals-can-think-abstractly/
I have long suspected this. The way I see it, the best analogy for the differences between animals and humans is that a dog for example is a commodore from the 80s and humans are IBM supercomputers. Both have very similar parts and can do many of the same types of operations but supercomputers are infinitely faster at doing more complex operations(many of which are entirely outside the scope of even the most advanced mammals). IMO however kinship recognition is so primal and basic that I really don’t think it falls outside their domain.
I thought you made a good point about a lioness being aware that cubs came out of her body. I find that plausible.
Animals are cable of stimulus generalization which is abstract reasoning however attempts to teach chimps sign language show they can’t ask questions.
There’s also no evidence of representational art more than about 40 kya suggesting the capacity to think symbolically may have emerged very late.
I do think animals evolved to favour kin, & this shows some abstract capacity to categorize others as kin vs non-kin, however with the plausible exceptions like mothers knowing their cubs were part of them, I don’t think they grasp that kin are extensions of themselves, but rather there’s probably a more concrete mechanism, such as evolving to feel protective of those who look & smell like their infant memories (since those around you in infancy are likely kin)
You even mentioned that dogs will starting nursing toys. This suggests they lack a true understanding of kinship & are motivated by more concrete cues
”you’ve convinced me that some philosophers ”
They are mostly performers or half [insufficient] philosophers or phisolophers.
”Behavior is the result of antecedent conditions. Hence, behavior is a reaction to what already is—the result of a push from the past to do something in the present.”
If behavior is ALSO or first of all a reaction why it is ONLY a reaction*
It’s sound a strawman fallacy.
It’s a ONE conceptual facets of what behavior is, a temporal facet one. But, this definition don’t fullfill all behavior concept /big picture. PP common definition does because it’s about the conceptual core of behavior. All things are products of another things and self-expressors in itselves. It’s just like if i define you based on your sorrounding circumsntances and your behavior but not about you. It’s look like a non-self aware perspective where the individual subject don’t completely exist on its own eyes but its behavior as the self-refference in its perception.
Behavior is, absolutely speaking, an action, in the sense, existence itself is a behavior. Behavior is the expression of existing patterns, if these patterns move externally or not. The resistence of given structure [a rock, for example] is a behavior, a very basic expression of it.
Seems there are two possible or current concepts for action, a bigger concept [action as synonimous to behavior] and in interaction with reaction [a type of behavior/voluntary ”or” protagonist behavior, protagonist when it’s the first involuntary behavior OR reaction within a system dynamic or with another elements in interaction].
You’re obviously not familiar with the literature.
You’re obviously not familiar with common sense? Why would I use some obscure definition of behaviour when I could use the common one?
Sorry for not specifying, I was talking to Santo.
We can then make this argument:
(1) Cognition (an action) is intentional
(2) Behavior is dispositional
(3) Therefore cognition (an action) is not responsible for behavior
PP
“Animals are cable of stimulus generalization which is abstract reasoning however attempts to teach chimps sign language show they can’t ask questions.”
Could it be that they were not taught how to ask questions in sign language? Perhaps merely asking them questions and expecting them to mimic this practice is not enough, maybe they need to be taught how to do it. I find this a little too hard to believe tbh. If you have ever seen a dog tilt it’s head you will realize that they are perfectly capable of asking questions. That may be the biggest physical expression of a question(ie the dog version of WTF). Maybe they don’t do it the way we do it or maybe they are used to and content with not knowing, they are more concerned with where to get the next meal and don’t realize that they can get answers from others verbally. Perhaps in chimp language questions are asked all the time, just not the type of questions we ask.
“There’s also no evidence of representational art more than about 40 kya suggesting the capacity to think symbolically may have emerged very late.”
Well lack of art is not necessarily indicative of lack of symbolic logic. Pardon me but this sort of elementary mode of infering reality from nature is utterly moronic if you ask me. My guess is that anthropologists and social psychologists are not the brightest bunch.
“I do think animals evolved to favour kin, & this shows some abstract capacity to categorize others as kin vs non-kin, however with the plausible exceptions like mothers knowing their cubs were part of them, I don’t think they grasp that kin are extensions of themselves, but rather there’s probably a more concrete mechanism, such as evolving to feel protective of those who look & smell like their infant memories (since those around you in infancy are likely kin)”
My feeling is that what actually occurs is that they are for the most part instructed by their instincts but on some level very crude inferences are made such that the mother will know the cubs are hers, perhaps even the father too(as evidence suggests). I think this is mostly done through smell. Could it be that they can work out if another lion smells like a relative? So this is what I think happens, their instinct instructs them first and in time the connection is made and in a very crude way they now understand that they share kinship with another animal.
“You even mentioned that dogs will starting nursing toys. This suggests they lack a true understanding of kinship & are motivated by more concrete cues”
Well that comment was made to show that the need to be a mother is a primitive one even found in dogs(let alone humans) meaning that reproduction is not entirely dictated by sex drive. Now we can’t take some sort of dog psychosis(driven by those mothering instincts) as indication of a lack of understanding.
I think some people are so heavily invested in human superiority that they are unable to concede any sort of cognitive capacity remotely reminiscent of human abilities. I tend to think nature(ie the animal world and not necessarily the physical world) is not quantized but operate with gradations. So maybe they don’t have human like theory of mind but they have partial or a fraction of the theory of mind humans have. That is not to say that they have all the human capacities but to a smaller degree but rather they share some of the more fundamental ones(which are more than is commonly accepted).
You guys went on a complete tangent. This thread was originally a discussion about memes affecting genes. And now it has become memes (ideas) competing with other memes for only the sake of dominance, completely disregarding the original goal of understanding empirical truth, about the relationship of memes and genes.
It’s interesting, your memes continually do battle for dominance, with no clear winner.
I can literally scroll down the thread and count the memes each person has.
Hmm how about this, since the individual that reproduces his genes the most, is the genetic winner. Then in this environment whoever reproduces his memes the most is the memetic winner. Essentially who brings more ideas to the table, regardless of weather they are true or not is the memetic winner, successfully propagating the most memes into the next generation.
The tangent begins after my comment “fair enough.” Like any referee i may have missed a few calls in the tally, however you will see its overwhelmingly accurate.
Pumpkin Head:
1. Women far more than men are naturally driven to want to have kids
2. Men are for the most part simply interested in having sex
3. women entering the work force is another reason for reduced fertility rates
4. I believe that the more conscious we become the more we are entering into an existential crisis.
5. (I think our collective consciousness is increasing with time)
6. we are transitioning into a phase of so called rationality in which most educated(and some less educated) people are trying to work things out for themselves from first principles
7. our culture is being stretched every which way to the absolute limits of what it can handle
8. most 130+ IQ people can’t make heads or tails of things(they only think they can) let alone the rest of the population.
9. I think that our ancestors were a lot smarter than we often think they were
10. I seriously think there are enough people that think of procreation on a long term and large scale basis and have been for at least the last 5,000 years, ever since the first large scale civiliazations.
11. the overwhelming majority of the top 10%(and at the end of the day they are the ones that call the shots).
12. Which is why fertility rates have dropped as much as they have in the developed world, that 10% are fearing overpopulation and along with other circumstantial reasons has led to the current status quo.
13.humans I believe are fully cognizant of and sufficiently instilled with such a desire
14.we have known that sex causes pregnancy for at least the last 50k years if not since modern humans evolved 200k years ago.
15. obviously our sex drive is enough to keep us moving forward without any conscious deliberate effort to do so (Convergent Meme with Pumpkin Person)
16. this does not mean that we don’t or haven’t known how it works or that this knowledge has not actually shaped the way in which we go about procreating.
17. goal directed reproduction, I think it has been around for a very very long time, as noted above.
18. Noticing how the babies would often grow up to have the same features as the father, this would have been obvious to the first tribes possibly going back before modern humans.
19. If we had not figured it out 200k years ago we certainly would have figured it out when we domesticated dogs some 18 – 30k years ago.
20. So there’s evidence that even animals are aware of how procreation works, and if so then certainly human ancestors have known this perhaps for millions of years.
21. Obviously this does not necessarily imply goal directed reproduction. However if that is not the case then one can safely assume that we knew ever since modern humans came on to the scene.
22. Even if that does not convince you then in all likelihood we put two and two together when we domesticated dogs from wolves.
23. Watching a pair of dogs mate and then pups popping out a couple of months later with the same features as the parents would have been absolutely conclusive evidence.
24. Now even if that does not convince you then certainly by the time we started breeding dogs some 9k years ago surely would have required knowledge of how it works.
25. Goal directed reproduction would have arise by the time of the first large scale civilizations some 5k years ago if not significantly earlier than that.
26. Now I’ve noticed a disturbing pattern in academia where often times historians/archaeologists/anthropologists take anecdotal evidence from the past of some superstitious beliefs as common belief of the time. More often than not this IMO is done as part of some propagandist push,
27. Barring some religious doctrines(which it isn’t all that clear how many people fully bought into it) I doubt that people were that naive(certainly not with procreation).
28. Though no doubt we are but not quite that stupid.
29. I don’t see any evolutionary mechanism by which this would come about without some knowledge at least that the cubs are not his and it is in his genetic interest to get rid of them in order to establish cubs of his own
30. It’s possible that I didn’t remember acquiring this knowledge(pre 3s) or that on some level my brain was putting two and two together without me realizing it but I find this idea fascinating.
31. On the other hand it could be that lions learn from a very young age and being in a pride realized how things work by watching the females in the pride give birth to subsequent generations of cubs.
32. So here’s my theory, could it be that having a particular genetic make up(say being the nurturing empathetic type) would predispose you to naturally and inevitably figuring certain things out without being directly taught.
33. That is a valid argument I guess but that leaves everything up to chance or trial and error as you put it and removes all agency from sentient beings. I don’t buy that line of reasoning.
34. Maybe they don’t understand things to the depth that we do but I don’t believe it is far beyond their capabilities to understand basic reproductive principles.
35. I mean quite convenient isn’t it that they would only kill the cubs of the defeated lion and in so doing increasing the prevalence of their own lineage.
36. killing cubs simply makes no sense to me other than on some level knowing that this is to their genetic interests.
37. So IMO blind trial and error may have led to the most basic life forms or perhaps some of the more primitive animals but with most large brained mammals i contend that they understand more and have more agency than we give them credit for.
38. IMO big brained social animals are more likely to do this sort of thing as a way of ensuring higher prevelance of their progeny.
39. I am mostly in agreement with your four levels of agency though I would argue there is some overlap with some more advanced animals occupying a space between levels 2 and 3.
40. Eugenics is far too brutal a practice though one could argue that we have been practicing a more benign form of eugenics for thousands perhaps millions of years
41. Obviously society has become more sophisticated about it in recent years(some would argue we are regressing)
42. but I contend that on the whole we have it right.
43. Maybe lions don’t understand kinship the way we do but I have no doubt that they have some conception of the idea on top of their blind instinct to nurture their offspring.
44. I mean, in theory we could take this mechanistic interpretation of evolution and explain away every behaviour known to man no matter how advanced it is. In my view it is a cognitive trap reminiscent of the “no free will” argument(don’t get me started on that nonsense).
Pumpkin Person: 1. I think people (and dogs) have a natural desire to nurture, I just don’t think they have a natural desire to reproduce
2.Just because we evolved to reproduce doesn’t mean we evolved to WANT to reproduce
3.Such a desire would only be selected if a) we knew how to reproduce, thus making the desire to do so actionable, and b) our desire for sex in and of itself was an insufficient cause of pregnancy. I don’t think such criteria has been true long enough for goal-directed reproduction to evolve.
4.I’m sure there was once just as many lion ancestors that killed their own cubs, but they by definition removed themselves from the gene pool, leaving only those who killed unrelated cubs as the survivors.
5.The fact that humans didn’t start practicing agriculture until 10 kya suggests we didn’t understand reproduction until the Holocene
6.In order for intentional reproduction to evolve the desire to reproduce would not only have to be genetic, but those with that genotype would need to reproduce more than those who were motivated only by sex
7. we’d expect orgasms to gradually vanish since a reproductive motive for sex would make the pleasure motive evolutionarily obsolete
8.The simplest explanation for why humans have sex is the same reason other primates do: because they enjoy it.
9. Positing a special evolutionary explanation just for humans seems to violate occam’s razor & ascribing non-humans with reproductive urges seems like a stretch in my humble opinion.
10. there were likely thousands of genetic mutations that caused lion’s to feel infanticidal urges at various times in their life.
11. I think you’re underestimating the degree to which billions of years of evolutionary trial and error can mimic intentionality.
12. Nature does incredibly impressive things without agency
13. A lion can’t even recognize itself in a mirror, so the notion that it can recognize an abstract extension of itself (an offspring) seems unlikely in my opinion.
14.Level 1: No agency These are very primitive animals that engage in mostly involuntary behavior. They lack the intelligence to get what they want, so they don’t want anything, not even food or sex, because they can’t feel much pleasure or pain. They just behave automatically like a machine
15. Level 2: Individual agency This occurs in more evolved animals like mammals. They have the intelligence to get what they want but they don’t have the intelligence to understand abstract things like reproduction, so evolution has programmed them to want concrete things like food, sex, status, self-protection, and violence against rivals, since these concrete goals advance their genetic interests without them needing the intelligence to do so intentionally.
16. Level 3: Reproductive agency This occurred with the human mind, and likely only near the end of the Upper Paleolithic. This is the agency to not only intentionally determine the fate of yourself and others, but to determine reproductive fates too (i.e the discovery that we can plant seeds and make crops grow, leading to the neolithic transition). It’s unclear if people have been good enough at birth control for long enough for the desire to reproduce to have been strongly selected for. This is a very high stage of evolution because at this point you’re directing evolution itself by deciding you want to pass on your biology to the next generation. The pinnacle of this stage would be eugenics.
17. Level 4: Genetic agency This is the agency to intentionally select DNA itself, and has only been possible for the past few decades. This can be seen as the pinnacle of evolution because for the first time, we control the genes instead of the genes controlling us.
18. I do think a lioness can recognize her cubs, but I don’t think she recognizes them as an extension of herself because that’s too abstract a thought for her to have.
19. I think she’s just been selected to feel extremely nurturing and protective towards her cubs without any understanding of why she feels that way.
20. DNA controls the phenotype we’ll have in a given environment.
21. In my opinion bacteria definitely do not have intention but higher life forms like mammals most certain do.
22. I do think animals evolved to favour kin, & this shows some abstract capacity to categorize others as kin vs non-kin,
23. You even mentioned that dogs will starting nursing toys. This suggests they lack a true understanding of kinship & are motivated by more concrete cues
Oprah: 1.Maybe, they become aware when their females are already pregnant.
2.Before, i doubt they know about ”how procreation works” because just the abstract reasoning to anticipate this information or biological event/developmental stage, before of this happen.
RaceRealist: 1. Agency implies the chance of failure.
2. I mean, there are some pretty good arguments that the “most primitive animals” do intend, but I don’t really find it convincing.
3. DNA doesn’t control us.
4. “Intentional behavior” is a contradiction.
5. Actions are intentional; behavior is dispositional.
Pumpkin Head = at least 44 memes reproduced
Pumpkin Person= at least 23 memes reproduced
Oprah = at least 2 memes produces
Race Realist = at least 5 memes reproduced
Pumpkin Heads ideas overwhelmingly dominate the conversation. His posts actively lead the conversation while the rest of you follow. When Pumpkin Head has not posted in a while then Pumpkin Person’s memes take over and the conversation follows those. Only 1 meme was agreed upon. Pumpkin Heads 15th meme. “Obviously our sex drive is enough to keep us moving forward without any conscious deliberate effort to do so.”
What is it about Pumpkin Heads mind that allows so many different memes to thrive and reproduce vs Pumpkin Person’s, Oprah’s and Race’s?
Memes gain power in the physical world by attaching as many of themselves as possible to 1 existing mind and then attempting to reproduce themselves in the mind of another.
Enough memes coalescing in 1 place, becomes a consciousness. Therefore all information that exists in reality coalesced in 1 place, creates an omniscient consciousness seeking to reproduce.
Basically inside the abstract world, is a giant mind parasite made up of all information in all reality, sending out smaller copies of itself to infect genetic creatures. I don’t want to go further and will simply end on that note, and link a.bit of information i am studying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host%E2%80%93parasite_coevolution
You know what Pumpkin you have infected me.
I do believe Evolution has a goal.
I believe that goal is to create a species, that cannot die under any circumstance, whatsoever.
Mikey
Wow, I don’t know if I should be alarmed or flattered. I guess a bit of both. On the one hand you portray me as some kind of meme cult leader and on the other you appear to be agreeing with me. Well allow me to simplify this a little for you. First of all, it is clear that I may have a little more time on my hands than most people on this blog. I have a very fertile mind particularly with things that interest me I go deep with all sorts of ideas popping out. I concede that it is possible that I might be wrong about a few things here and there and while i take a fairly assertive stance on my positions my ultimate goal is to arrive at the truth. That is the thing I care about the most. No disrespect to you or PP or even RR and Oprah. In fact most of my ideas are shaped by our interactions or at least our interactions help me flesh out my thoughts better.
In any case at the end of this long discussion you said one thing that struck me,
“I believe that goal is to create a species, that cannot die under any circumstance, whatsoever.”
Yes THIS!!! You know I remember the first time I came up with this very same conclusion when I was 16 years old. In my view that is the goal whether we or any other being will manage to achieve this is another question. Maybe the purpose of the universe is for it to become aware of itself, perhaps as such there is no god but we or some other advanced alien species will in the distant future eventually become god-like(millions of years into the future). Just to clarify I do not intend to dominate the conversation or be the “meme king” as you appear to be implying. I welcome anyone who can dismantle my positions, it will only make me a better thinker.
We can sum up my entire argument in this thread to two main positions.
1. Human beings have evolved to in part develop intentional directional reproductive capacities. After all that is the very nature of natural selection anyway(directional) but we are far more conscious of this than any other time in history or other animal in existence. I believe that this capacity is underpinned by two mechanisms, an instinctual one and a growing overlapping conscious one.
2. Larger brained social animals(especially among mammals) have some basic understanding of reproduction and especially kinship. Just to clarify I’m not saying they know how reproduction works, they might not have put copulation pregnancy and offspring together but they probably understand that belonging to a pride results in offspring and they understand that the offsping is related to them.
In other words evolution has taken on a new dimension, it has become aware of itself(through us) and it is taking matters into its own hands rather than random trial and error. This should in theory compound the acceleration of evolution. Though i fear it is possible that humanity will branch off again(if it hasn’t already along class lines). It is possible that in the not too distant future this new class of people(possibly of 145+ IQ) will take their own direction in the cosmos. You see the more technology improves the less reliant the elites become on cheap labor and large populations. The only way to stave this off is through genetic engineering such that everyone is equiped with high IQ disease resistant genes but this has it’s own moral implications. Knowing how human beings think and behave this may spark a new gene race(or wars). So I think the mostl likely outcome will be that humanity will branch off, the most evolved among us will venture into the stars.
“Oprah = at least 2 memes produces”
“produces” I see what you did there. LOL
“Only 1 meme was agreed upon. Pumpkin Heads 15th meme. “Obviously our sex drive is enough to keep us moving forward without any conscious deliberate effort to do so.””
To be fair that is the default position, this is as much PP’s position as it is mine. I just support the ideas that we have evolved to the position that we can now intentionally direct our reproduction(and have done so for quite some time now) while PP seems to reject this notion. I wonder does PP believe ithat free will does not exist? PP, are you a fan of Sam Harris?
I think most people want to reproduce and do so intentionally, but I think that’s cultural, I don’t think it’s an evolutionary adaptation, because for it to be so, there would have to be genomic variants that increased that specific desire to reproduce, regardless of what culture one was raised in, and those who had those genomic variants would have to consistently outbreed those who were motivated only by sex, and for many generations. I doubt this has happened, not only because understanding pregnancy and how to efficiently prevent is relatively recent knowledge, but also because the human sex drive remains ridiculously strong. If people had evolved a strong desire to reproduce, the desire to have sex would stop being the dominant motive for doing so, allowing genes for low sex drive to spread. Sex would have evolved into a non-pleasurable activity that people just did as a means to an end, not an end in its own right.
Arguing that people evolved to want to reproduce is a bit like saying we evolved to want to feed our bodies. Such a need would be evolutionarily redundant because hunger is sufficient motive to eat.
As for free will, I believe we are largely free to get what we want, but we’re not free to want we want.
“Enough memes coalescing in 1 place, becomes a consciousness. Therefore all information that exists in reality coalesced in 1 place, creates an omniscient consciousness seeking to reproduce.
Basically inside the abstract world, is a giant mind parasite made up of all information in all reality, sending out smaller copies of itself to infect genetic creatures. I don’t want to go further and will simply end on that note, and link a.bit of information i am studying.”
While I appreciate that your meme conceptual orientation touches upon some fundamental truths of reality i am concerned that your interpretation takes somewhat of an dark character. At the end of the day “memes” is just a fancy word for ideas and while human beings are optimally designed to collectively make use of the best ideas through the propagation of viral meme we must never forget that the real value in human beings is their individuality because each individual acts as a conduit but can also be a stop point for some problematic memes. It is this individuality that affords us the ability to use our critical thinking and evaluate and improve or reject a meme, a self correcting mechanism, an immunity of sorts. We must never lose this individuality without it we would have fallen victim to some of our most malevolent memes.
One of the most poingnant scenes in movie history that touches on this idea is from Harold and Maude,
Not necessarily a fan of the film but i can appreciate it’s value and message.
As to the point of your original comment, I think memetic ideas/ideologies/cultures are mostly emergent rather than genetically hardwired(as far as genetically instantiated memes are concerned). I think the genes only give us the tools and the predisposition for those memes to be replicated and the interaction of genes with the world in most cases make those replications innevitable. Though i feel this operates on a scale of hundreds if not thousands of years rather than from generation to generation. In any case I don’t think we veered off too much, we were still discussing the likelihood that the reproduction meme for large brained animals was instinctual or emergent from consciousness. I think both(though more on the instinctual side), PP thinks only through instinct.
“we or some other advanced alien species will in the distant future eventually become god-like.” My basic explanation is this.
I believe that the abstract world was 1st, then because of the fundamental laws of reality, everything has to have a mirror opposite, so then the tangible world made up of multiple compounding dimensions in space is created adjacent to the abstract world.
So tangible reality has expanding negative energy and positive energy and the big bang. Basic stuff. Now I believe the Big Bang that has created life, will in some way shape or form return and absorb it, and then create it again, and this has been going on for eons, and every time new life, retains unconscious memories of life before. Eventually after X amount of time a species develops that survives the universal extinction event, and its evolution no longer has a limiting factor.These species evolve to the point where they no longer reproduce because they simply cannot die under any circumstance. I believe the only adaption that can accomplish this, is one where the species full biological code, leaves its body and travels outside of space and time.
I believe that this ascended, collective biological hive mind existing outside space and time, is what I refer too as “the giant meme parasite, made up of all knowledge in reality. Sending copies of itself to infect us, and spread its memes.” This species no longer reproduces but still has the biological urge, thus sends out wave-particles (thoughts) into space time, these thoughts end up creating the reality that the hive mind originally came from, thus creating a time loop, that we are all stuck in. All of the timelines bleed into each other becoming 1 .
I believe this is why our world IS NOT a simulation however behaves as if it is.
Sex desire = bodily sensation.
Sex or copulation based on specie-reproductible-rules will or it’s likely will result in pregnancy = advanced pattern association.
Nonhuman animals often understand the world following their cicle life
Humans evolved to be capable to understand cicle life stages before it’s happen
Nonhuman living beings know they are dying only when they are dying or when they are sick. Humans can anticipate this by pattern association and internalization of death concept.
”Pumpkin Heads ideas overwhelmingly dominate the conversation.”
Lol, dominate because s/he write too much, not because he ”won” the debate.
Nonhuman living beings don’t know that sex will result in pregnancy as, seems, some human primitive groups. It’s seems conclusive.
Humans evolved enough to be capable to differentiate sex from procreation even sex is often used as recreation as well strategy by other species.
Men, on avg, evolved to enphasise sex pleasure because are them who will inject the genetic material in feminine ”flower”.
”2.Just because we evolved to reproduce doesn’t mean we evolved to WANT to reproduce”
Yes, humans do, but because intelligence. Another species MUST NEED, what’s different than ”THEY WANT to”.
Instinct is more about needs than desires. Desires are always enjoyfull, needs not so.
Survive is often quite problematic, utter example.
The fact we must need to eat don’t mean we must want to.
Food is a need, something we can’t get with ourselves because we are not autotrophs.
That’s the paradigm of conscious and inconscious.
Most people MUST work [in parasite social models, just sayn] to survive.
But most people WANT to be entertained or engage in recreational activities.
Sex evolved to be enjoyfull just like a natural argument to procreate.
But, sex is considerably better [for those who are not assexual] than having kids.
My opinions.
PP
“I think most people want to reproduce and do so intentionally, but I think that’s cultural, I don’t think it’s an evolutionary adaptation,”
Well I think it’s both and yes I think that there is an evolutionary adaptation that drives us towards reproduction other than our sex drive(where reproduction is merely a by product). A lot of our rationalizations about the world are borne out of our instincts. First our instincts kick in and then we rationalize them. In this way our conscious desire to reproduce is not merely cultural but engrained in us. I hate to make this argument because I am firmly on the free will side of the debate(ie that we don’t have absolute free will but we do have some human form of free will, once again pointing to my belief that life very much operates in gradations and not an either or fashion). Saying that instinct informs our desire to reproduce may give the impression that we are not actually acting through our own free volition but that is a fallacy. We are still acting freely it just so happens that our instincts and rationalizations are concordant because we conclude that it is the right thing to do(and it is).
“because for it to be so, there would have to be genomic variants that increased that specific desire to reproduce, regardless of what culture one was raised in, and those who had those genomic variants would have to consistently outbreed those who were motivated only by sex, and for many generations.”
What? But why, why can’t we have both, why does it have to be an either or? The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I reckon those are independent parameters that vary from person to person. One can have a high sex drive and low or high desire to reproduce and one can have a low sex drive with high or low desire to reproduce. Knowledge of how it comes about is neither here nor there(though we have already established that this knowledge goes back at least 10k years and most likely 50k+ years). I mean come on man, we see this with men(and women) that simply love kids and love family life and then there are the types that view procreation through an existential lens(albeit less and less these days). I think what you should be saying is that our sex drive is by far the most powerful instinct and in that sense of course I agree but that does not mean that the others do not exist.
“If people had evolved a strong desire to reproduce, the desire to have sex would stop being the dominant motive for doing so, allowing genes for low sex drive to spread.”
Those genes do exist(we see many people that simply want nothing to do with kids), but my belief is that the genes for low sex drive or low reproductive desire are independently slowly being removed from the gene pool(as they run counter to fitness) and so what is increasingly becoming the norm are people that both have high sex drive and high reproductive desire.
“Sex would have evolved into a non-pleasurable activity that people just did as a means to an end, not an end in its own right.”
You are assuming it is either or, I don’t think it is.
“Arguing that people evolved to want to reproduce is a bit like saying we evolved to want to feed our bodies.”
Well, lets enumerate the possible incentives to feed that might have a genetic component to them. First of all there is hunger, the most powerful of all the incentives, this kicks in at the last minute(or that is when it is most powerful) and almost gives us superpowers in order to find food. Then we have taste, which makes us seek out calorie rich and possibly nutritious food and produces an enjoyment out of eating. Less powerful but strong enough that some people become obese just on this one instinct. Finally we have those people that are intuitively inclined to be meticulous about what they eat. I believe that this evolved more recently and it is designed to make us better at selecting food with optimal nutritional value. So of course our recent knowledge and culture has shaped and improved this last instinct but IMO it has been there for a long time. Just think about it, why do we hate eating the same food all the time? We like variety, we like all sorts of food and we like to mix it up. If it was just left up to hunger we might only eat once every couple of days(like lions who btw are content with just meat) I think there are a set of complimentary evolutionary adaptations. Not all are mutually exclusive, that is an overly simplistic way of looking at things.
“As for free will, I believe we are largely free to get what we want, but we’re not free to want we want.”
OK well as long as you are not a fan of Sam Harris(the guy is the most eloquent fool in recent history). I might be a little harsh on him, I do actually find myself agreeing with him from time to time but he is so wrong on some of the most crucial topics that it is essentially unforgivable. In any case I believe that free will comes in 3 settings(at least conceptually) no free will(a rock), absolute free will(potentially a god), and relative free will that comes in gradations and is measured via degrees of freedom(ie Us, even other animals albeit to a lesser degree). Sam Harris pushes the argument(quite cleverly I might add) and alludes to the idea that the only real free will is absolute free will and since we are not gods we do not have free will. What is even more tragic out of all of this is that people buy into his schtick and he has an almost cult like following.
Mikey
“I believe that the abstract world was 1st, then because of the fundamental laws of reality, everything has to have a mirror opposite, so then the tangible world made up of multiple compounding dimensions in space is created adjacent to the abstract world.”
Sounds reminiscent of Plato’s theory of forms. Well your theory appears to be well outside of empirical knowledge and firmly in the theoretical. While I would not dismiss it outright(anything is possible) I generally am oriented towards using existing established axiomatic principles of how the universe works and incrementally work from there as to what makes our universe tick and then maybe one day(probably not in my lifetime) where it came from and why.
“I believe this is why our world IS NOT a simulation however behaves as if it is.”
So you see that is a very interesting point you bring up. On the one hand it is actually feasible that we are in a simulation. We understand enough about simulations to realize that it is theoretically possible that we are in one. But here lies the problem. Human beings are exceedingly good pattern seekers but we are somewhat unsophisticated in establishing the prime directives for seeking a particular pattern. What I mean by that is that lets say the prime directive is simulations, we then become exceptional detectives in putting pieces together to validate that theory, suddenly everything around us becomes an obvious sign that we are in a simulation. PP falls for this with his arguments for how various instincts determine our behaviour. He opts for the simplistic(either or) natural selection model and suddenly everything fits that model(ie sex drive being the only mechanism for reproduction even with sophisticated animals like humans). Well guess what, it works, just like Newtonian physics worked perfectly well for 99.9% of all cases until Einstein came along and showed that Newton’s theory was just a low resolution approximation of reality. Now I am not saying PP is Newton and I am Einstein, that is preposterous, I’m simply saying that life is more complicated than that and we must not fall victim to our unsophisticated but exceptionally good ability to find patterns. So while your theory may in fact be true it is predicated on the idea that the Universe either is a simulation or acts like one. The prime directive there is a simulation and I’m not entirely convinced that we are in a simulation nor that the Universe even acts like one. We need to work out if that is the case first before we try to come up with alternative theories as to why the universe acts like it is a simulation.
Anyway I’m not trying to poo poo your theory, just saying that it is a pretty big leap which might be true in the end but we need to work methodically and with particular attention to cause and effect once we have factored in ALL the variables.
Yes this fertility crisis is just a trend, it will pass eventually. All of the known knowledge, even Occult, is public information now, all at once. Its a rocky transition, the average person does not have the required mimetic immunity, to not be consumed, by these mind parasites/symbiotes.
I had a stupid idea that all cells are just like fossilized or self domesticated viruses or bacterias. Life to evolve, must devolve a little bit from the degree of autentic stability it is, if someone understand this, if i understood. To improve a new level of adaptation life must break part of current level. Disease is to evolution what sex is to reproduction, a motivation to evolve as well to reproduce.
Dawkins is also under the wrong impression that humans create ideas. Do humans create numbers? Of course not numbers were always there. We discover ideas, and often times become obsessed with them. Our brain is a computer, and when we critically think we deep dive google search.
CNN creates ideas. Not humans.
No Cable News Network. Is the idea, itself.
Philosopher might find this exotic. An autistic african.
Africa needs to keep its geniuses, and have them not be subordinate to the corrupt.
I didn’t watch the full video. But if they are 14 year olds being on tv for the first time. It might just be shyness and nerves rather than autism.
[redacted by pp, april 1, 2019]
Puppy what are your views on psychoanalysis. Did u cover that at all in your undergrad?
Also did you ban anime. i dont see him commenting. Animes views might not be to your liking but i am pro freedom of speech. Anime has a right to talk about his brain.
No I would never ban Anime. I enjoy his comments a lot.
Ok Pumpkin any reason you keep deleting my comments?
Ok now I see it is waiting moderation. his is weird never happened before.. Anyone else having this problem?
the yuge dis-confirmation of the twin studies by the SNP studies might be explained by various “repeat counts” which are generally uncorrelated with SNPs.
hd is the most common genetic neurodegenerative disease even though it’s very rare (1 in 10,000), but most of the spinocerebellar ataxias (also genetic) are also caused by “too many repeats”.
according to the chair in psychiatry at the university of iowa repeat counts in the huntington’s gene have the same effect on IQ as alcohol has on cvd. that is, it’s a j shaped curve. but the peak is reached for those who are just barely over the line for hd…those who will develop hd late in life.
i can’t find the paper online so my guess is it’s bullshit…in other words the effect is VERY small and if the study were repeated no association would be found.
but “repeat count” is an “out” for shoe, cockring, et al.
so if this woman’s theory were true one would expect that those who develop dispositive symptoms of hd late in life will also be distinguished by various accomplishments associated with higher IQ. but not by higher IQ at the time of diagnosis as hd makes ‘tarded.
https://medicine.uiowa.edu/psychiatry/content/ui-research-suggests-huntingtons-disease-gene-also-vital-human-development-and-intelligence
Excellent research!
And this is an “out” for behavioural genetics because it’s not thr type of thing that would be found by GWAS?
and my grandfather was a heavy drinker his whole life…much more than his children.
even though hd+ people are no more likely to be alcoholics, there are mechanistic reasons to believe that EtOH actually protects the brain from the mhtt protein.
because EtOH is a glutamate receptor antagonist AND it lowers the brain’s metabolic rate.
and alcohol can only do so much damage. no one has ever died from alcoholic brain damage.
peepee is right that in any environment…if i lived long enough and if i was hd+…i would show symptoms of my fucked htt gene…
but she’s wrong in that for most of human evolution and even today my hd+ status would’ve made me MORE fit.
and so many years ago i used hd as the PARADIGMATIC example of a genetic psychiatric condition. little did i know…
but for 36 to 43 repeats the phenotype is EXTREMELY variable.
you could die at 55 drooling, live to 90 and have a “neck twitch”, or never develop any symptoms.
alan krueger [redacted by pp, March 31, 2019]
anthony bourdain [redacted by pp, March 31, 2019]
robin williams [redacted by pp, March 31, 2019]
these middle-aged suicides who appeared to have “what everyone wants” according to peepee…
one wonders if they had some neurodegenerative disease.
williams DID!
my own psyciatric history is zero indication of hd as it’s so old and so NOT UN-explainable by other factors.
Interesting. Oprah once asked williams if his “IQ was off the scale?”, presumably because he was so witty. Wonder if the disease was responsible
the “gestalt” of all of the EVIDENCE is…
at least if you’re european…
1. alcohol is a superfood.
2. consuming as much EtOH as possible (without the obvious negs) retards ALL age-related diseases.
chapter 4 of the following:
REALITY:
COSA NOSTRA IS STILL THE “APEX PREDATOR” IN THE NORTH EAST.
IF YOU’RE HOT SHIT…
THEY PAY YOU A VISIT.
wiki claims i was WAY wrong.
cosa nostra makes $50b a year.
so the actually richest man in america is NOT bezos.
it’s some guido.
sad?
cosa nostra makes $50b a year
If you believe that I got a bridge to sell you
EXACTLY!
rachel maddow is a yuge lesbian!
https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#65f25836251c
This list is for fuckin kids make belief. No sheikhs in the top 20. No heads of state of kleptocract nations.
1/3 of the worlds wealth is held offshore for a reason puppy. Its to avoid publicity and the taxman that follows.
This article explains the absence of sheikhs:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2018/03/06/no-saudi-arabian-billionaires-forbes-list-2018-alwaleed-alamoudi/#5746939c1d42
It’s very hard to confirm that kleptocrats are billionaires, and most of them spread their wealth among so many different family members and associates that no single individual qualifies as a billionaire.
Putin and Xi Jinping are probably wealthier de facto than most of the people in the top 50. How wealthy I can guess by looking at how Mubarack was worth €80b after they looked at his loot after the coup in eygpt. And eygpt is poorer than Russia or China. Same with ghaddafi in libya being worth tens of billions.
Mubarack’s 80 billion is like Saddam Hussein’s WMD: Non-existent. pill falls for another hoax.
And now pill does a 180 & agrees with the CNN about Putin’s omnipotence.
But on Cosa Nostra my inclination is to think that it doesn’t make that much. Its primarily based in southern Italy which is one of the poorest regions of western europe. Beating up local fishermen can’t be worth that much. If they had 50b rev every year I’d expect they must wholly or in part own the entire drug trade coming into europe from africa and the mid east.
in the northeast US they do “wholly or in part own the entire drug trade”.
the capo di tutti i capi of the russian mob is actually a ukrainian <b<[redacted by pp, April 1, 2019], and he’s very very rich and a putin friend. he lives in moscow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semion_Mogilevich
I thought I read that Forbes doesn’t list heads of state because it is impractical or impossible to quantify their wealth. It is very easy to say Bezos has shares in amazon, and based on the current price for AMZN, he has $100 billion. A king’s wealth is harder to quantify because he can lay claim to anything in his kingdom, like the lumber in the forests, or state owned industries.
According to Wikipedia, the state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco is one of the largest companies in the world, and possibly the most profitable. It is apparently worth about $1 trillion.
Wikipedia also says that “the Deputy Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, announced he was considering listing shares of the state-owned company, and selling around 5% of them in order to build a large sovereign fund.”
They don’t list wealth they can’t confirm but they do sometimes list heads of state, though it’s typically in a separate section,
i meant to say wiki claims just the american cosa nostra makes $50b. but that’s an estimate by the fbi…so totally not trustworthy. and maybe they meant revenues and not profits…but almost all illegal revenue is profit.
my aunt’s husband was batfuzz. many times he’s said, “the bottom line is crime pays if you’re smart, but most criminals are dumb so they get caught.”
Your uncle is correct. Average criminal has an IQ of 90. The hardcore criminals I personally tested averaged IQ 85.
I wonder how many people this “$50 billion per year” is split among
By the way, in that ‘official’ forbes list (for public consumption) lists 3 aspies in the top 10 (and Bezos also looks like hes probably on the spectrum himself). If you believe the world’s elite are people with aspergers…..
I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
By the way, in that ‘official’ forbes list (for public consumption) lists 3 aspies in the top 10
Aspergers is meaningless when your IQ is above 150.
Actually Marsha would probably back up everything I’ve said here. She ‘meets’, uh, very intimately, some of the people that hang around elites and even some of the elites themselves. Marsha has previously said she agrees with me on a majority of stuff.
I think a person can become an alpha male. I’m pretty sure I know the formula.
I would say 7/10 girls would have thought I was ugly as a teenager. I was a typical nerd with bad acne, weak muscle tone, terrible hair etc etc.
But I think in my late 20s for some reason I started actually ‘waking up’ and being a lot better socially and in terms of social perception of what I looked like. Anyway long story short I used by big juicy brain to engineer being in the top 5-10% of guys in terms of attractiveness. And if you believe Krauser and the other manosphere guys, whether women are attracted to you is the number 1 way to tell an alpha.
Actually I remember doing some research on this a year or two ago on this blog comment section. I looked up the family offices executives of rothschild and the rockefeller families and if you look at their CVs, they must be managing A LOT of money.
So I suspect a lot of elites trade for themselves and use entities like Goldman or the Fed more like tools to manipulate markets rather than a primary means of wealth creation.
Final point Ill make is that a lot of wealth creation is luck..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Huateng
I was just reading about this guy who is like Chinas mark Zuckerberg. He literally ripped off an israeli product and even called his product basically the same name. All he did was change the language to chinese hahahaha. Now hes worth 40b.
Zuckerberg copied myspace and bebo and others.
Gates copied as well. Cant remembr the name of the company.
But Bezos online mail order catalogue business was original i think.
I remember reading in an academic article how most inniovators and first movers don’t actually end up benefitting from the market they created. Its always the second mover.
[redacted by pp, april 1, 2019]
1. annual income, not capital gains realized or un-realized, has been maximized by al capone and pablo escobar.
2. the american mafia has been especially publicity shy after gotti.
3. the american mafia has changed. it used to eschew drugs, but now it does almost nothing else.
here’s the whole paper. would be a game changer if replicated. the IQ peak was about 112.5. see figure 2. it’s a big effect. i assume “GAI” means something like IQ…peepee can read the paper and tell us.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6013750/figure/f0010/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6013750/
Probably stands for general ability index but I’ll take a look
if 105 were the average and sd is still 15, then the probability that the average for n=22 would be 112.5 or higher is 0.95%. but would like to see the results replicated.
there are bunches of these repeat variable genes.
105 were the average and sd is still 15, then the probability that the average for n=22 would be 112.5 or higher is 0.95%
I think 5% not 0.95%
Unless I’ve misunderstood something
The standard error of a sample mean is the population S.D. divided by the square root of the sample size, so the odds of getting a sample that’s around 1.6 SE above the population mean is like 5%
No mug of pee is right. It’s around 2.33 SE above mean which is around 1%
The trend would feel more reliable if it were linear instead of curvilinear
The paper you cite is itself a partial replication of earlier work:
We showed that the number of repeats in HTT, below disease threshold (15–35), confer advantageous changes in brain structure and general intelligence (IQ): the higher the number of repeats, the greater the change in brain structure, and the higher the IQ (Lee et al., 2017).
Theres an article about how CAG repeats make you smarter and its a kind of game of chicken in terms of evolution. I read about it in the Economist a few years ago.
there’s also the obvious fact that only dumb people would have children if they knew they were hd+ or might be and had no means to abort an hd+ fetus.
those with late onset (and therefore fewer repeats) are much more likely to have no family history.
so it’s really only the front of the curve that’s interesting.
and natural selection needn’t be invoked. that humans have longer repeats than apes can be explained by “mutational bias” in humans. that is, as i’ve said before, these repeat diseases will occur even with eugenics, because dna repair mechanisms are imperfect and dna is being damaged all the time and there is a bias in human dna repair toward repeat expansion.
maybe it’s explained by the controls being dumber than the 300 at risk.
if IQ has always been correlated with accomplishment and if repeat counts in various genes increase “cognitive ability” up to a point one could determine this by just looking at pedigrees.
like “do the direct descendants of pitt the younger or the duke of wellington have a greater incidence of neurodegenerative disease?”
if yes this is due to the phenomenon known as “genetic anticipation”. that is, repeat expansion from one generation to the next. and thus earlier onset and perhaps lower premorbid ability.
Anyone have thoughts on why the religious elite have such different beliefs, than the religious commoners?
https://giphy.com/gifs/forehead-asians-tiara-zb8B5tlJjdpzW
Hey Pumpkin. I have a few questions (sorry if they are stupid ones, I don’t know much about statistics beyond 9th grade algebra):
1. Is it possible that a PSAT score (the nationally representative percentile) could be sufficient for estimating an IQ? If so, in which grade (10th or 11th) would it be best to estimate an IQ from a PSAT? The population is supposedly random, so we wouldn’t expect any selection like we do for Harvard students. Here is a link to the chart: https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/psat-nmsqt-understanding-scores.pdf
2. What do you think is the minimum IQ for talent searches like Duke TIP, CTY John Hopkins (You may want to look at their websites for their score requirements)? Would regression be a major factor, due to the fact that folks there are selected by SAT scores?
Also, do you think that the SAT could be a great proxy for the VCI of the WAIS (if taken randomly)? I have seen a few people whose scores on the SAT were about on par with their VCI, although my observed sample was ostensibly too small.
Yes I expect they’re highly correlated although the SAT measures receptive verbal ability while the WAIS measures active verbal ability
When I refer to correlation, I mean that the composite SAT score (Verbal + Math) correlates to the VCI, and not just the Verbal portion.
In this article I crudely estimate (based on how much Ivy League students regress to the mean) how well the composite old SAT correlated with each subtest on the old WAIS:
Would this regression apply only to Ivy League students, or would it apply to everyone who takes the SAT, regardless if they are being selected by their scores or not?
If people are selected based on high scores on the SAT (i.e. Ivy League) then on average they regress to the mean on the wechsler (and other tests)
If they’re selected for high scores on the wechsler (i.e. gifted class) then on average they regress to the mean on the SAT (and others tests)
If they’re selected based on a third criterion (i.e. real world success) then they’d likely regress from their success scores (on average) to equal scores on the SAT & WAIS (and other tests) on average
Interesting. In our school the average SAT and ACT score is quite high (1290 and 30 respectively), though I suppose that’s due to preparation. And for what it’s worth, there isn’t any selection in our school: the test scores in general are high, though the school in general is said to be more focused on its athletic department. Our city in general is very affluent, with most people occupying high socioeconomic status. I think that in one year 15% of students were in gifted programs, though the test used is the Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT, equal to CCAT in your country.)
maybe escobar and capone have been out earned, but…
MSFT’s largest shareholder is ballmer actually. he owns 8%.
so what is that in dividends per year? MSFT is worth $915b and has a yield of 1.55%.
so it’s $1.14b per year. so same level, but it will be repeated, and gates has diversified. the rich have become much richer than they were. much richer in real dollars. since howard hughs died
wrong again.
ballmer owns less than 4% of msft.
[redacted by pp, April 2, 2019]
I suggest that people will be at their happiest, if they embody the god (idea) (meme) (Archetype) that matches up with their life goals. For example, Want to be rich? embody, the meme (Dis Pater) (Hades) (Pluto). So since almost every one here on this blog is aspire to be rich, while remaining a scholar, the idea most people here would embody is that of (Hermes) (Mercury.) Using knowledge to seek greater material wealth.
Note Satan in Christianity equates to Hermes, however people wrongly equate Satan with Hades since Hades is a god of wealth and Hermes is a god of commerce.
The pursuit of money may or may not be your life goal, however it is for most people.
Obviously most people don’t embody Hades or Satan, however those that do are at the top of the world hierarchy.
I have not been able to find the idea of a “God of commoners” or “God of peasants.” As far as I can tell, there is no god that represents the Peasants, Therefore regular people, aspire to be like others, for they do not have their own original Archetypes (ideas). Why do you think the advice “Just be yourself.” Never works.
Is it wrong to aspire to be like Hades? Hermes? Satan? Is it wrong to worship currency and wealth?
Only if thou is not wealthy or likely to be wealthy. for the meme will then not align with the gene. There is nothing more foolhardy than a poor man worshiping a god of currency and wealth.
Commoners among us, you are forsaken and cursed to forever attempt to be like someone else.
Are rich instead of want to be rich
williams had been diagnosed with pd but his autopsy showed this was only a small part of his problem. he suffered from “diffuse lewy body dementia”.
so if i can get these fuckers to give me my dad’s pathology report would be not that surprising if he didn’t have hd but some other repeat expansion disease.
that is, very surprising for the average person.
perhaps not for me.
given the prior of very high “cognitive ability”.
or at least very high test scores.
that is, bourdain and krueger may have topped themselves because they were suffering from an UN-DIAGNOSED neurodegenerative disease.
and williams had only been diagnosed with pd. his problem was much worse.
boob cancer is an example of “incomplete penetrance”.
so lots of women may know they’re boob cancer + and live in fear, but…
20% of the time there’s no cancer.
this might be explained by the “complement” of the genome, but likely there’s an environmental component…but no one knows what it is.
Obesity? I haven’t bothered looking it up but I’ll bet the average BMI of breast-cancer sufferers is substantially higher than that of the general population, which is saying a lot.