[The following is a guest post and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pumpkin Person]
Humans can be narcissistic; I don’t need a degree to tell you that. That’s something that most people figure out just from interacting with members of their species. Unfortunately, this narcissism has seeped into our research of life sciences and has had profound effects on the way we conduct said research, and I believe these effects are the most apparent within the current debate on animal consciousness and intelligence.
Humans have two bad habits, prescribing anthropomorphic traits to animals and things. The other is hyper skepticism to the idea that anything that isn’t human could be conscious and feel something the same way humans do. Unfortunately, the former has resulted in incidents like at the Berlin Zoo, where a gorilla named Bokito broke out of his enclosure and beat the shit out of some dumbass who thought the aggressive behaviors the gorilla was displaying towards her were friendly (“Gorilla Goes on Dutch Zoo Rampage,” 2007). The latter has led to enormous animal abuse, like whaling practices and dog fighting.
There is massive debate and research on whether animals are conscious or intelligent in the way that we are. I’m not going to regurgitate the entirety of this debate; if you’re interested in going further than what I have presented here, I suggest the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on animal consciousness as a start. In this post, I will give an example that I believe characterizes this debate the best! And nothing, I think, does this more than the ongoing feud between Dr. Marino and Professor Paul Manger (“We discovered that whale and dolphin brains produce lots of heat. Why it matters,” 2021).
Note** I wrote this almost a year ago, and some of the citations that were originally here were no longer in existence. One was a podcast that interviewed Marino and Manger about this topic and their papers. If you want to see the whole debate, just take Dr. Marino’s or Manger’s paper and put it in google scholar, and you can see who else has cited their papers. From there, just look for Marino/Manger in the list that pops up.
So, to put things simply, Manger believes that many of the supposed complex behaviors Dolphins and other Cetaceans exhibit have been overstated by the researchers documenting them and are not actually that special or impressive compared to other species. Moreover, he believes his hypothesis proves that Cetacean brains are built for thermogenesis, not intelligence. He also maintains that this caused increased encephalization during the Archaeocete-Neocete transition (Manger, 2006), (Manger, 2013). While Marino believes she is not overstating any perceived intelligence of cetaceans and that Manger is simply ignorant of the literature (Marino et al., 2007).
Now, I know a little about Neuroscience, but I won’t pretend that I am as competent as these two are in comparative Neurobiology. Admittedly I can’t tell which one of them is bullshitting because they both accuse the other of being dishonest or ignorant of the Neurobiological data on Cetaceans. But, as the smug fence sitter, I am, I have found some problems with both of their approaches to this kind of research.
If you read Manger’s 2013 paper I cited previously; you’ll quickly notice a pattern when he starts going down the list, “debunking” each example of supposedly complex cognition. His criticisms can be summed up as “Other, less encephalized animals do it too, so it can’t be that complex or special at all.”. And when he can’t just handwave it away with that argument, he instead will claim that it doesn’t align with the Archeocete-Neocete transition.
I can’t fault him for not seeing the irony in his criticism because he’s just trying to defend his hypothesis and is not an “anthropocentric individual .” At least, as far as I know. But what’s hilarious about all this is that he undermines his entire point in his hyper-skeptic frenzy. Because if none of those behaviors like tool use, the ability to count, or cooperative hunting are particularly impressive or cognitively demanding, what the hell makes Primates unique? I mean, all of the abilities mentioned above can be done by multiple species of invertebrates, and they all have “primitive” neurological systems (Carazo et al., 2012), (Gross et al., 2009), (Pierce, 1986), (Alloway, 1979), (Vail et al., 2013), (Mikhalevich & Powell, 2020).
Meaning it can’t be due to the structure of the Nervous System because the behavior that makes said neural architecture important is present across virtually all orders of life! This problem leads to my other issues with his critique. One is his claim that the absence of a prefrontal cortex means Cetaceans are dumber or lack abilities associated with the said region. This is puzzling because areas of the cerebral cortex are not demarcated by morphological differences but by function, and said functional localizations vary significantly between individuals, minute by minute (Sporns et al., 2005), (Uttal, 2014). So to suggest that the absence of a prefrontal cortex means Cetaceans are incapable of higher-order thought is complete asinine bullshit, and I’m pretty shocked someone of Manger’s caliber would make such a mistake.
Furthermore, his critique of their “language” capabilities seems wanting. The idea that it takes a long time for these dolphins to learn the language doesn’t really help his case because it takes a long time for humans too, and if you’ve ever been on the internet, like ever, some adults still haven’t mastered their language even after decades of using it. He goes as far as saying that dolphins don’t even understand when objects disappear, but this was later refuted after adjusting the settings of the experiments to match more closely with their natural marine environments (Johnson et al., 2014).
I’m not here to shit on Manger, I may cover his paper in more depth in the future, but I simply want to draw the relation between anthropocentrism and his thesis mentioned earlier. His skepticism is so exaggerated that you almost have to wonder if Manger even believes other humans are conscious. After all, that is the burden this side of the aisle must be ready to take on if you think it is impossible to understand the mental states of other organisms. I mean, everyone interacts daily with members of their species and never really questions whether that person genuinely has consciousness or not. We just assume this is the case, and we base our interactions, which are sometimes Machiavellian, upon the perceptions of other people’s mental states. Maybe it is better to go with this intuition and not be afraid of anthropomorphizing “lower” species.
However, the problem with that and Marino’s side is that, as scientists, we have to base our beliefs on empirically reasonable grounds. Unfortunately, she has not provided ample evidence suggesting that cetaceans are as conscious or intelligent as they appear. Moreover, just as I wouldn’t say that Manger believes we can’t ever know if animals are conscious, I also wouldn’t say that Marino has entirely made up her assertions that Dolphins have human-like cognition. But sometimes, she can go a little far, like in her interview on the All things wild podcast, where she suggests a group of orcas is “culturally conservative” when you could equally assert that they are too dumb to adapt to a changing environment.
But no one wants to say that because humans are not rational creatures. We all enjoy going by just our common sense and intuitions, and even our coldest logic is still directed by emotion. To me and many others, it’s as obvious that animals, like cetaceans, have minds as it is that my neighbor has one, but that’s not empirically provable (yet). And, of course, this is in direct conflict with how we ought to operate in science which we often like to see as an objective lens through which we use to decipher the world around us. At the same time, this conflict poses a severe problem for people who want to toss intuition aside because you end up arriving at ridiculous conclusions. Ultimately, we may never know “what it’s like to be a bat,” but maybe in the future, when cognitive science becomes more developed, we will (Nagel, 1974). But for now, we must sit back and wonder whether animals have consciousness.
Pumpkin Person 
His criticisms can be summed up as “Other, less encephalized animals do it too, so it can’t be that complex or special at all.”. And when he can’t just handwave it away with that argument, he instead will claim that it doesn’t align with the Archeocete-Neocete transition.
All this could be resolved if Wechsler had created the Wechsler Animal Intelligence Scale. The norming sample would look like Noah’s Ark. LOL!
do animals act consciously whatsoever or is it always instinctual and/or subconsciously?
brahman is ashamed of uttar pradesh muslims.
do blah blah blah whatsoever logic logic logic semantics?
MY DOG HAS A MIND!
RR…
IT’S QUESTIONABLE.
“do animals act consciously whatsoever or is it always instinctual and/or subconsciously?”
No and yes.
I think they act consciously. Or at least most Mammals do. I found an excellent paper on the matter, but I’d have to dig through my bookmarks and try to find it.
So, according to this study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5182125/
Instinct isn’t as ingrained as many people believe, and even something like the vestibular system can be affected during gestation. However, this doesn’t really answer the question of whether a behavior is intentional in animals.
We have some evidence to suggest that certain animals can think in counterfactual ways, but that isn’t fully proof.
Nonhuman animals possess phenomenal consciousness.
Islam is a much more tolerant and less autistic religion than Hinduism. check mate Mug!
Which shows how much of a pipe dream it may be ever to have an intelligence test that can successfully compare between species. I’d love to understand how Encephalopods think.
and of course the spanish…
the greatest works by the spanish are religious…
the eastern europeans are the same.
the “great spanish thinkers” are all catholic saints…so they are ignored as such by morons.
obviously, maimonides was spanish but jewish. and he is the single greatest philosopher his people has ever produced and it isn’t even close.
Guide for the Perplexed is one of the greatest works in the west…even though by a jew.
ibn arabi was also a great thinker who was not ethnically spanish but was spanish.
what is welfare-state liberalism doing up there?
because if one’s actually interested in maximizing freedom in an industrialized or post-industrial economy…
and if property rights are enforced by the police…
then one must admit that “stealing” from the rich can actually increase freedom…sometimes by A LOT.
Economic freedom means giving people a basic income. Freedom can’t exist if everyone is a debt slave. Libertarians who are retarded and fellate the rich can’t admit that.
Economic freedom means giving people a basic income.
^^Autism^^
LOL autists are against basic income and any welfare spending.
Advocating basic income shows an inability to predict human behavior:
1) half the population would quit their jobs and sit on their ass all day weighing 400 lbs causing helathcare costs to skyrocket. People like Mug of Pee would drink themselves to death (okay some benefits)
2) There’d be a huge labour shortage; businesses would not be able to pay enough to get people to work. Say goodbye to McDonalds.
3) People would spend all day spreading disinfo on social media, leading to political instability, riots, assassinations, revolution and civil war
4) Illegal immigrants would rush to the border so they too could get paid to sleep all day
Maybe in a high IQ ethnically homogenous society it would work better, but in America it’s pure autism
1) half the population would quit their jobs and sit on their ass all day weighing 400 lbs causing helathcare costs to skyrocket. People like Mug of Pee would drink themselves to death (okay some benefits)
False.
2) There’d be a huge labour shortage; businesses would not be able to pay enough to get people to work. Say goodbye to McDonalds.
False.
3) People would spend all day spreading disinfo on social media, leading to political instability, riots, assassinations, revolution and civil war
False
4) Illegal immigrants would rush to the border so they too could get paid to sleep all day
False.
Thank you for repeating all the autistic talking points. We actually more or less have it in western europe (except the UK) and only the immigrant one has some semblance of truth but obviously they can’t give free money to non-citizens. The system isn’t that absurd.
You do not have it in Western Europe. It’s been tried and abandoned. We kind of had it in Canada during the pandemic (CERB) and we’re experiencing massive labour shortages. It was tried it Germany. Wikipedia reports:
A commission of the German parliament discussed basic income in 2013 and concluded that it is “unrealizable” because:
it would cause a significant decrease in the motivation to work among citizens, with unpredictable consequences for the national economy
it would require a complete restructuring of the taxation, social insurance and pension systems, which will cost a significant amount of money
the current system of social help in Germany is regarded as more effective because it is more personalized: the amount of help provided depends on the financial situation of the recipient; for some socially vulnerable groups, the basic income could be insufficient
it would cause a vast increase in immigration
it would cause a rise in the shadow economy
the corresponding rise of taxes would cause more inequality: higher taxes would cause higher prices of everyday products, harming the finances of poor people
no viable way to finance basic income in Germany was found[64][65]
We do have it. Its called unemployment and basically once youre on it, they’re not going to stop giving it to you unless youre in the UK or US, which are countries run by neoliberals.
The technology and productivity are there for people to not need to work if they don’t want to and have a basic standard of living in all Western countries. Capitalists (i.e. your masters) want maximum ouput even though workers don’t care about output.
To pay for it, all you would need to do is tax wealth.
By your logic, if AI and robotics improved and replaced workers the economy would collapse. Obviously that doesn’t make sense.
Keynes talked about it 80 years ago…if you’ve ever noticed the amount of hours we work now is a fraction of what people worked 100 years ago. And theres no child labour or indentured servants now either. This didn’t cause an economic crisis even though hours worked is much less puppy.
The secret is that all the output is going to the top 1% and nobody complains about them sitting on their asses all day.
Illegal immigrants don’t get welfare in western europe. Thats a myth. But I could see people from Romania or other poor parts of Europe migrating and so there should be a policy to only give basic income to citizens.
We do have it. Its called unemployment and basically once youre on it, they’re not going to stop giving it to you unless youre in the UK or US, which are countries run by neoliberals.
LIE!
France’s unemployment benefits are among the most generous in Europe…Workers aged under 50 can claim unemployment benefit for two years, while those aged over 50 can claim for three years.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/15/which-best-countries-live-unemployed-disabled-benefits
To pay for it, all you would need to do is tax wealth.
No all wealth taxes (including property tax) are dumb, except for the death tax which I see as an income tax on the next generation not a wealth tax on the dead. A wealth tax would be terribly disruptive because people would need to sell their assets and homes every year driving the value way down and wasting everyone’s time and energy. Dumbest idea ever. Much better to just tax capital gains and bank loans at the level we tax salary.
By your logic, if AI and robotics improved and replaced workers the economy would collapse.
No it’s precisely because we don’t have good robots that we need workers to stay at work and not at home enjoying Basic Income
The secret is that all the output is going to the top 1% and nobody complains about them sitting on their asses all day.
Because the top 1% have an average IQ of 118. They’re smart and disciplined enough to use leisure time constructively.
It comes down to whether you believe high wages for workers are good for the economy or bad.
Autists and their masters, Robert Rubin and Rockefeller say wages need to be subsistence wages.
Obviously I think the economy would be much stronger if workers had the highest wages possible.
All the textbooks tell me I’m wrong, but they’re false and evil.
“half the population would quit their jobs and sit on their ass all day weighing 400 lbs causing helathcare costs to skyrocket.”
There definitely would be people that would take advantage of a UBI, but that’s more of an outlier. That’s just elite propaganda to convince low-class, low-IQ individuals to vote against their interests. It all stems from people like Reagan.
“we’re experiencing massive labour shortages”
Well, in the US, we’re experiencing labor shortages because Covid caused many older people to retire early (also killed many of them), which took out a large portion of the workforce. There’s also the fact that people are starting to demand higher wages, and I don’t blame them for that in the slightest. I highly doubt CERB made everyone just decide to stop working.
I also don’t believe a word of what Germany’s parliament has to say on the matter. They, like many governments, have their money tied into corporate special interests. You increase taxes on rich people, not the poor ones, and Corps don’t have to increase the prices of their goods and services. They do that to offset the increase in taxes and inflation because they have to please their investors.
Eat the rich. In my opinion, capitalist apologists are “autistic” because they’ve been duped into believing that the best way to live is to work your whole life making someone else rich.
There definitely would be people that would take advantage of a UBI, but that’s more of an outlier.
In an ideal World unemployed people would spend their free time exercising, gardening, writing poetry and creating art. In reality, millions would spend the time partying, getting drunk, eating pizza, getting high, having sex, sleeping in. Ever heard the saying leisure is lethal. Even people who retire early suffer dementia and early death so just imagine a World where retirement is the starting point.
That’s just elite propaganda to convince low-class, low-IQ individuals to vote against their interests. It all stems from people like Reagan.
That was more about getting working class whites to turn on blacks (who Reagan portrayed as welfare Queens and unemployed strapping young bucks ) than about opposing a basic income per se, which wasn’t even on the table back then, but I see your point. But some propaganda is needed for society to function though not the racist kind.
Eat the rich. In my opinion, capitalist apologists are “autistic” because they’ve been duped into believing that the best way to live is to work your whole life making someone else rich.
Or making themselves rich. A lot of capitalists are small business owners and they’re the ones who would be hurt the most by basic income.
Wealth taxes are the optimal way to do it. Income can be misreported if you get clever enough accountants and lawyers whereas the ultra wealthy can’t hide their yacht or mansion. Also your friends/mind controllers at the heritage foundation say taxing income penalises economic activity whereas taxing wealth can’t penalise anything.
The wealth tax wouldn’t effect middle class people, it would only effect the ultra rich who have enough cash to pay. If they have to sell some extra homes, so be it. Who cares.
“No it’s precisely because we don’t have good robots that we need workers to stay at work and not at home enjoying Basic Income”
False. Technology has increased dramatically over the past 200 years. We’re at the stage where maybe 50% of the population can sit at home on their asses. In many Western European countries its already the case 30% or more sit on their asses. The question is the distribution wealth now, not the productivity levels.
People shouldn’t be forced to work you idiot. Like Melo says, it mainly benefits the 1% only. Obviously, Puppy takes pride in making his boss richer because he’s retarded.
“Because the top 1% have an average IQ of 118. They’re smart and disciplined enough to use leisure time constructively.”
This is where I am more of a libertarian than you…I actually think people should be allowed to do whatever they want with their free time. It doesn’t need to be ‘productive’ as long as its not something really horrible like shooting heroin or something.
Wealth taxes are the optimal way to do it. Income can be misreported if you get clever enough accountants and lawyers whereas the ultra wealthy can’t hide their yacht or mansion.
LOL! You’ve literally spent the last five years arguing how easy it is for the super rich to hide their wealth in offshore accounts. You even recommended a book on the topic.
Also your friends/mind controllers at the heritage foundation say taxing income penalises economic activity whereas taxing wealth can’t penalise anything.
That’s retarded. The whole point of economic activity is wealth acquisition.
The wealth tax wouldn’t effect middle class people,
It already does. It’s called property tax and it’s terribly disruptive. Expanding in to all assets and not just real-estate ones would be disastrous.
it would only effect the ultra rich who have enough cash to pay. If they have to sell some extra homes, so be it. Who cares.
In a free society people should be allowed to keep their possessions that they’ve worked hard to acquire; they should not be forced to sell them just because they exceed some arbitrary value. And no they don’t have enough cash to pay. A middle class computer geek who creates a startup suddenly worth $100 million does not typically have $2 million in cash to pay in taxes, even if he sold his house. He’d have to sell 2% of his company and the mere act of doing that might reduce its value to $90 million by spooking the market, and then next year he has to sell another 2% reducing it to $80 million, so in effect he’s paying 12% a year on a paper asset that contributes nothing to his standard of living and has earned him zero income so far.
Why not just tax him 50% everytime he liquidates. It would achieve similar results but less disruptively.
False. Technology has increased dramatically over the past 200 years. We’re at the stage where maybe 50% of the population can sit at home on their asses.
Then why are there “help wanted” signs everywhere?
People shouldn’t be forced to work you idiot. Like Melo says, it mainly benefits the 1% only.
No dumbass, it benefits you the most. You already don’t have to work because you’re mentally ill, so why would you want millions of others to stop working too? All it will do is lower your standard of living. Instead of paying $5 for a burger and waiting $5 minutes, you’ll pay $15 and wait 20 minutes because labour will be more scarce and expensive. The most valuable asset you have is your citizenship in a rich country and you want to squander the national treasury by paying millions of productive people trillions of dollars to do absolutely nothing. You couldn’t come up with a more retarded proposal if you tried.
Obviously, Puppy takes pride in making his boss richer because he’s retarded.
Obviously, pill takes pride in squandering trillions of tax dollars to lower his country’s standard of living while making his co-citizens fat, drunk and lazy, even though he already doesn’t have to work so this doesn’t benefit him at all.
This is where I am more of a libertarian than you…I actually think people should be allowed to do whatever they want with their free time. It doesn’t need to be ‘productive’ as long as its not something really horrible like shooting heroin or something.
Dude, the whole concept of basic income in libertarian, having been pushed by Milton Friedman and Charles Murray. It’s compassionate of you to want liberate millions of people from wage slavery, but paying people trillions of dollars to do whatever they want is dumb policy. Humans need structure, dignity, responsibility and a valued place in the community and without that they go astray.
As workers become less essential, government could instead pay folks to be guinea pigs in scientific research or pay folks to create patriotic media like journalism, documentaries, novels, movies, plays, songs or paintings that celebrated the country and added to national pride, education, cohesion and sense of community.
People in france have lived on welfare for years and the neoliberals like Macron keep complaining about it. They kick nobody off welfare. What the fuck is the point in working a minimum wage job to make some shareholders in the Caymans richer?
The French have a higher standard of living than the Americans and the British and also the right not to have to work and the fucking evil neoliberals like Macron want them to go stack shelves in supermarkets to make the 1% that bit richer.
One thing I give the French is that on economics they are based. Sadly…many like Bruno were still stupid enough to vote for Macron.
“In an ideal World unemployed people would spend their free time exercising, gardening, writing poetry and creating art. In reality, millions would spend the time partying, getting drunk, eating pizza, getting high, having sex, sleeping in.”
Well, the point of policies is to create systemic change, not necessarily cultural ones, beyond obviously making sure everyone has rights and stuff. I can’t force you or anyone else to make sound financial decisions and let’s be honest, we all could have made better choices with our money and probably all been a little less poor. That doesn’t change the fact that offering a UBI would lift millions out of poverty, and when people don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, they can focus on more personal enrichment. Obviously, some people would waste it, but I feel like it’s overly cynical to assume that everyone would be as gluttonous as possible.
Research has shown that when poor people get money, they overcompensate by splurging (think of the term “nigga-rich”). But what they splurge on is things like McDonald’s (which is partly why so many poor people are obese). Growing up as a poor prole, I had the same habits, and when I first started making real money from my business, I would waste money on shit I didn’t need. Especially with food, holy shit, I ate so much damn food. But I’m not like that now; the money kept coming in, so I started putting it away, wasting money started seeming boring, and I started learning better financial habits. Poor people act the way they do because they are poor, and the best way to fix it is to make income an everyday thing. Think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
“A lot of capitalists are small business owners and they’re the ones who would be hurt the most by basic income.”
I don’t believe that. If my employees had UBI, I could have paid them less. If you combine a UBI with a $15 minimum wage and then punish freeloaders who abuse UBI and Corps that offset costs to consumers, then you would nearly eliminate poverty. Of course, that would mean the stock market would be less lucrative for investors, but I think that’s a decent trade-off for the average American having more income and subsequently being healthier and more intelligent.
“If my employees had UBI, I could have paid them less.”
Unlikely, they would demand higher wages for it to be worth working at all when they have a guaranteed income, unless they work at some place that’s really fun to work at.
“If you combine a UBI with a $15 minimum wage”
The sort of people who only bring in 10 dollars of profit/hour for a company would become unemployed.
“Poor people act the way they do because they are poor”
Partly, partly they’re poor because they act in certain ways. Pretty sure drug overdoses and car crashes increased after the stimulus checks.
Ok, you did mention splurging. There was some study recently that gave low-income people regular money for a short period IIRC, and it didn’t seem to improve anything for the recipients. But you’d probably say the period was too short. No I don’t have the link.
Two alternative UBI proposals:
A really low UBI of like 1 dollar a day(enough for 2000 calories in pasta/cooking oil/multivitamins), just so that (usually overweight) people can’t complain about “going hungry” anymore.
A UBI that’s proportional to something like academic performance, so that the competent/disciplined people can risk starting their own business or whatever. Some sort of loan system would probably be more efficient than a UBI for that though.
I think the arguments for UBI are very good, but I think in reality, the results would be very unpredictable. Tons of people thought communism was a good idea (and still do despite it failing every time!) I don’t think anyone predicted the effect that welfare would have on the black community, or society in general.
There are a lot of possibilities that we are assuming. For example, obviously the way UBI is given could be cash, or only digitally. It could be tied to other systems of government evaluation.
But what about health and genetics? A lot of people, probably me included, would either be dead or not be the same without the systems we had in place when I was growing up. A family that survives under UBI may be incapable of surviving in a similar society without it… that’s how a lot of poor or mentally ill people are in our societies. UBI could definitely allow some poor people to reach their potentials, but is it good for the long term? In reality, probably other systems of the free economy would counter some of the dysgenic effects. But basically, I think this is unpredictable.
Health and genetics are important. No one predicted covid (except Bill Gates). What happens when genetic engineering gets better, or technology gets better? Tech and information technology has basically eclipsed government power except for that which is tied to weaponry. I suppose in that case, UBI wouldn’t be very harmful but ultimately not that important. Can we assume society will function as it does 30 years in the future?
It also seems like with most socialist proposals, if your society agrees with them and it actually works, it’s generally because you had a society that was functioning well in the first place on a broader level. People already felt their lives were meaningful.
It also seems like by the time we would actually get to a point where we might implement UBI and it would be useful, it actually wouldn’t really matter.
Some guy,
“Unlikely, they would demand higher wages for it to be worth working at all when they have a guaranteed income,”
That’s not how people work, though. Is your ideal life doing nothing?
“The sort of people who only bring in 10 dollars of profit/hour for a company would become unemployed.”
Hahaha, Employees are always underpaid.
“Pretty sure drug overdoses and car crashes increased after the stimulus checks.”
Right, which coincides with my previous point. Poor people don’t know how to act with large amounts of money because they aren’t used to it. They aren’t taught how to handle it.
“A really low UBI of like 1 dollar a day(enough for 2000 calories in pasta/cooking oil/multivitamins), just so that (usually overweight) people can’t complain about “going hungry” anymore.”
Why would you want people to live like that? That’s so horrible.
Lurker,
“Tons of people thought communism was a good idea (and still do despite it failing every time!)”
Well, actually, communism has never been tried. You could maybe make the argument that the 7 million years we lived as hunter-gatherers could be considered a form of communism as it was a stateless, classless society. Still, I think that’s stretching the definition a little.
“some of the dysgenic effects”
I don’t believe that will be much of an issue because environmental factors will affect the genome positively, which will get passed on to the next generation.
“What happens when genetic engineering gets better, or technology gets better?”
Capitalism is definitely not equipped to solve those problems. The rich and poor gap will become even wider if designer babies ever become a thing.
But socialism can only work if we have a direct democracy and we prioritize education.
Pumpkin,
“A middle class computer geek who creates a startup suddenly worth $100 million does not typically have $2 million in cash to pay in taxes, even if he sold his house. He’d have to sell 2% of his company and the mere act of doing that might reduce its value to $90 million by spooking the market, and then next year he has to sell another 2% reducing it to $80 million, so in effect he’s paying 12% a year on a paper asset that contributes nothing to his standard of living and has earned him zero income so far.”
Not to keep butting in on your guys’ conversation, but there is one more thing I wanted to mention. One of the ways that rich people can avoid capital gains taxes (and why a wealth tax is desperately needed) is by getting asset-based loans. They can take out loans against the artwork, properties, yachts, and securities they own, and because upkeeping these loans is cheaper than paying taxes, it’s a great way to live lavishly while not contributing jack shit. How do you think Elkon affords shit? To make matters worse, they can take those loans and reinvest them. It’s actually pretty obscene.
I get where you’re coming from, Pumpkin, but rich people made the rules; why wouldn’t they let it benefit them? And let’s be real, 82 million dollars is a lot of fucking money, and that math assumes the geek’s company isn’t also growing in value each year.
I did mention taxing loans though that doesn’t make sense
If capital gains were taxed at 50% as I propose for the high end, Elon Musk would have to sell $50 billion in stock to payback a $25 billion loan
“That’s not how people work, though. Is your ideal life doing nothing?”
Is your ideal life accepting a below market-wage for the same job just because you have an UBI now? Because that’s what you claimed your employees would do:
“If my employees had UBI, I could have paid them less. ”
A UBI would decrease labor supply since at least some people would work less, and increase labor demand since people would suddenly be spending their UBI income on goods and services. Higher demand and lower supply would mean a higher price for labor. Wages are the price of labor.
Sure, some people may accept a small cut if they like a certain job(“unless they work at some place that’s really fun to work at”).
“Hahaha, Employees are always underpaid.”
Ok, now take that idea to it’s logical conclusion. With a minimum wage of 15 dollars anyone who produces less than 15 dollars worth for the employer can’t be underpaid. Therefore they will not be employed in the first place. Therefore unemployment.
Of course there are good aspects of a minimum wage too, but at some point there must be point where a higher minimum wage does more harm than good. Maybe not at 15 dollars, but somewhere.
“Why would you want people to live like that? That’s so horrible.”
It’s horrible for everyone to live like they do now but with an extra 30 dollars a month?
I’ve heard in the media about people going hungry, if that’s an actual problem then a minimalist UBI would be a relatively affordable and simple solution. You can’t infer from that proposal that I don’t support other welfare programs or a larger UBI, my point is simply that the basic problem of hunger doesn’t require that much.
Peeps,
Hoe about a basic income that is just enough to prevent people going hungry but not enough to Mae them quit jobs? Do you think it will be good?
“Is your ideal life accepting a below market-wage for the same job just because you have an UBI now?”
If I’m getting $1000 a month and my wage decrease by $100 a week, I still have a net positive of $900.
“Higher demand and lower supply would mean a higher price for labor. Wages are the price of labor.”
I don’t own a grocery store. People getting a UBI would not cause an influx of people buying homes (especially with how the housing market is right now), so labor demand wouldn’t go up for me. Similarly, there are no fast rules for how the market works. I took a Business class, so I understand how supply and demand work, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into the real world. If businesses can get away with paying employees less, they will, and in this instance, they definitely can get away with it.
That said, you’re correct that it would increase wages for many businesses, but that’s not bad.
“With a minimum wage of 15 dollars anyone who produces less than 15 dollars worth for the employer can’t be underpaid”
I think you’re confused. Capitalism relies on the exploitation of labor. That’s how businesses are even able to make a profit. Moreover, wages have barely budged in the last 4 decades, despite profits consistently soaring. The market has also been constantly growing.
So, the people getting paid $10/hour are already severely underpaid. The Corps can afford to pay those people more because their labor is already worth more than what they are being given.
For example, a dairy stocker that makes $12/hour stocking shelves makes a little over 400 dollars a week. But if a carton of eggs costs anywhere from $3-$8 for the consumer and they sell 40 cartons daily, then that company has made $800 a week.
Companies don’t pay you based on how much you produce. They pay you as much as they can get away with. In fact, businesses wouldn’t pay you at all if they could.
“It’s horrible for everyone to live like they do now but with an extra 30 dollars a month?”
There’s just virtually no difference. People should be able to eat whatever they fucking want. Especially the rich.
I get welfare in America. It is subsistence. $12,000year.
750 a month.
The middle class is 55-100,000 a year
The point is I don’t get to buy anything.
I don’t know how the economy works but people need money to buy goods. In Africa, they have a low manufacturing base because the cost of making high-end goods is high.
People need jobs making things people will buy.
What the great depression did was make money cheap after 1955. People could afford debt to buy goods and homes. but then stagflation happened under Regan. debt was no longer cheap but had in the upper economy made inflation. Loans cost more. between banks, the money ran up. Businesses sunk. This happened with bush / Clinton. Obama / bush.
The economy is not stable because of interest. interest makes cash run or crunch. the velocity of money.
goods are not stable because of interest. war is not stable.
housing is for rich people so is not an issue but for people looking to play games in the market. causing instability.
—
The only thing that will cause stability is the robot labor force. Cost about the same as a car. do all jobs that a robot can do.
The high-IQ people will work in jobs that create high-end goods.
The banks will still loan but with the blockchain, they will loan less. It is on big things where loans really matter, things that cannot be internalized by a company.
its called a compromise something you all know nothing about!
But don’t conservatives want companies to enforce abortions and ban cake shops from baking LGBT cakes or something? And dont they oppose TPP? So that means they don’t want corporations to be free. They don’t support free market.
the Republican party and other conservative parties across the world are a lot more corrupt than any of the liberal ones tbh.
you have to look at it from the perspective of what they are preaching and how they act on it because oftentimes they will destroy their own reputation by doing something that they warned against in the name of profit.
exactly!
mugabe’s version of UBI includes un-believably cheap/$0.00 EtOH.
why?
do you have to ax?
1. prohibition (dillinger’s penis)
2. repeal of prohibition
…
3. EtOH is…
a. extremely easy to make.
b. totally NOT like meth.
c. ALL the cool people do it.
ANYWAY…as my dad used to say…rudely…
EtOH is SHIVA!
I enjoyed this and I think you explained both points of view really well. Good use of the Uttal citation.
I somewhat weighed in on this debate 3 years ago. I would change a few things here but I still largely agree with my past self.
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2019/09/01/the-human-and-cetacean-neocortex-and-the-number-of-neurons-in-it/
“The latter has led to enormous animal abuse, like whaling practices and dog fighting.”
I see where you’re coming from but denying mindedness to nonhuman animals doesn’t necessarily mean that we should treat nonhuman animals this way.
“you almost have to wonder if Manger even believes other humans are conscious.”
If this critique (the problem of other minds) is leveled at Manger, then the following argument—I think—would dispatch it
I have a body and a brain, I know I have a mind and that I’m conscious. If I look around, I see other humans that have bodies and brains. These other humans that I know have bodies and brains behave and act similarly to me. Thus, I can rightly infer that other humans with bodies and brains also have minds and therefore they are conscious too.
“Ultimately, we may never know “what it’s like to be a bat,” but maybe in the future, when cognitive science becomes more developed, we will (Nagel, 1974).”
An argument for claim that science can study subjective states would need to be given. And since science deals only in the third person, not in the first, I don’t think it is at all possible. I would say that Nagel strengthened the What It’s Like argument in Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.
My view on the overall debate of animal consciousness is below:
Nonhuman animals lack language and so lack minds and propositional attitudes, so since the contents of intentional states are propositions, language thusly is meaningful for propositional attitudes. Macphail (1985) concludes that our language capabilities are what sets us apart from nonhuman animals.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rstb.1985.0008
Dumbass. You don’t need language to have a mind. Though I agree with Chomsky and some of these other scientists that knowing a language does change your mind relative to being raised by wolves.
One way to get at this question is to ask yourself whether you ever have thoughts that you can’t articulate in words.
I have thoughts without words all the time.
The contents of intentional states are propositions. What does that mean?
“denying mindedness to nonhuman animals doesn’t necessarily mean that we should treat nonhuman animals this way.”
Of course, but that hasn’t stopped people from using that idea to justify animal abuse.
For example, you wouldn’t feel bad for throwing a stone in a trashcan, and why is that? Because you don’t believe the stone has consciousness. Neurotypical people feel bad for others because they have empathy and can conceptualize that being rude to someone is wrong because it affects that person mentally in the same way it affects them. Clearly, our concept of morality is predicated on the idea that other beings have consciousness.
“These other humans that I know have bodies and brains behave and act similarly to me. Thus, I can rightly infer that other humans with bodies and brains also have minds and therefore they are conscious too.”
These animals that I see have bodies and brains that behave and act similarly to me. Thus, I can rightly infer that animals with bodies and brains also have minds, and therefore they are conscious too.
“An argument for claim that science can study subjective states would need to be given.”
What happens if, one day, we create a device that allows us to switch perspectives with other organisms on the planet? Would I need an argument, then?
“My view on the overall debate of animal consciousness is below:”
Yes, I saw it in the other post, and I remember you making this argument a year or so ago.
I’m not very convinced, though. A lack of language certainly means that animals have different types of thoughts than us, but I don’t believe that means they don’t have thoughts in general. To me, thought can be as simple as visualizing a series of images, and honestly, I can’t comprehend how any complex mammal could function without thought. How would a jaguar hunt without knowing what its prey is, having a conception of that, knowing where they stay, what times of day they are active, etc.? We know that Mammals have some intelligence level, which implies they have consciousness because I think the two concepts are incredibly similar, if not identical.
“Because you don’t believe the stone has consciousness.”
Animals have consciousness but it’s different from human consciousness—they have phenomenal consciousness. Of course, if an organism is alive there is something “that it’s like” to be that organism. That doesn’t mean that there is a one-to-one relation between human and nonhuman consciousness.
“These animals that I see have bodies and brains that behave and act similarly to me. This, I can rightly infer that animals with bodies and brains also have minds, and therefore they are conscious too.”
There is an implicit premise in my argument; since I am talking about humans, I’m talking about human bodies and human brains. I believe that nonhuman animals possess phenomenal consciousness but not intentional consciousness. I believe there are billions, trillions of organisms that are experiencing the world, but only abkht 7 billion of them have intentional consciousness. Nonhuman animals don’t possess second-order mental states, as Davidson’s argument shows.
“What happens if…we create a device that allows us to switch perspectives with other organisms on the planet?”
I’m not claiming that there is nothing that it’s like to be a nonhuman animal—as I stated above and will reiterate again, I do believe there are trillions of organisms that are currently experiencing the world, though they experience the world in different ways. Animal mentality is phenomenal and not intentional like human mentality.
“I’m not very convinced, though.”
How can a jaguar have a belief about prey if a jaguar doesn’t have beliefs about beliefs which requires language? I can have a belief about jaguar’s prey, but I don’t see how a jaguar can have a belief without language.
I believe language has bearing here since the contents of intentional states are propositions. A propositional attitude is a mental state held by an organism toward a proposition. If nonhuman animals lack language like humans, then then they cannot have a mental state toward a proposition. Thus, nonhuman animals lack propositional attitudes. Language, further, has bearing since nonhuman animals don’t interpret the sounds of others, as Davidson argued in Thought and Talk.
Animals don’t have language. So animals don’t have a full range of propositional attitudes. Thus, animals don’t think.
Davidson’s argument against animal thought is basically a modern-day Descartes “animals are automatons” argument. I do believe that what sets humans apart from nonhumans is intentionality and language.
I apologize because I forgot that you stated animals have phenomenal consciousness in a previous comment.
So, it seems you’re making this distinction between ‘minds which have thoughts’ and consciousness. Where a conscious being with a mind has phenomenal and intentional states, and therefore, a mind. But a conscious being without a mind just has the former. Is that a correct assessment?
I’ve always used the two terms interchangeably. To me, having consciousness is the same as having a mind with thoughts. Moreover, I honestly can’t comprehend how something could have phenomenal states that aren’t about something. I think of GAD as an example of phenomenal consciousness without intentionality, but not much else comes to mind. Or are there different levels of intentionality? Nonetheless, I believe our disagreement is more minor than I imagined.
“There is an implicit premise in my argument; since I am talking about humans, I’m talking about human bodies and human brains.”
Why would that matter, though? As you noted, the mental is underdetermined by the physical, and you cannot glean the mental states of organisms from their correlated brain states alone. Furthermore, if all we have to go on are the physical aspects of an organism to determine the nature of their mental states, then it stands to reason the animals must have minds as well because they share the very same physical aspects as us. Even if they are structured differently, their function remains the same across species. Animals manipulate objects, communicate, shit, eat, and fuck too. Animals act similarly to us; regardless of whether we want to pretend we’re unique, we all have the same wants and needs.
Maybe there is something fundamentally different between human and animal consciousness, but I don’t believe this argument can circumvent the problem of other minds. That’s not to say that I believe Humans aren’t conscious, I think it’s evident that they are, but if we give this luxury to other humans, I don’t see why it can’t be extended to non-human animals.
“I’m not claiming that there is nothing that it’s like to be a nonhuman animal.”
I know. My statement was in response to your skepticism that there could be a way to observe the phenomenal experience of non-human animals. I was asking you if I were to invent a device that allowed me to switch perspectives with a bat, would I still need an argument to prove that Science can study the subjective states of other organisms?
“I don’t see how a jaguar can have a belief without language.”
I don’t see how language is required to have a belief. Why do you think belief systems necessarily have to be propositional in structure?
notice the word “argument” occurs three time in rr’s comment.
this results from at least two implicit metaphysical assumptions which are both FALSE.
IQ test question.
name those two false assumptions.
another way you know rr is a fraud is he keeps giving references.
this is part of the cargo cult.
papers in natural science give references so we pseudo-philosophers have to too.
when a paper in natural science has too many references that’s a red flag it’s a scam.
the legit paper says:
1. this is what we did…
2. these are the papers (never too many) which helped us accomplish what we did.
analytic philosophy never accomplishes anything.
it’s a satan worshipping suicide cult.
and genuine philosophy never has references. not any. except a nod and a wink within the text itself.
Exactly. If you are writing a paper on philosophy why would you copy and paste other peoples ideas? Its acceptable however to present another persons idea in other to take it down or point out its faults.
These people use citations to pretend they have legitimacy.
I agree to an extent. Obviously, having citations in one’s paper is important for substantiating claims and giving credit. However, you’d be surprised how many falsehoods are consistently propagated through time because one asshole cited it in his paper, and another asshole came along and cited that asshole in his paper, and so on and so forth without anyone ever actually fact-checking it.
It’s almost like people see an in-text citation next to a sentence, and that’s a cue for them just to be lazy and believe it.
Its a scam. A group of about 6 or 7 jews get together and put out papers denying race exists and then for the next 40 years they all cite each other and pretend there is vigour in their arguments because theres citations.
I mean, gentiles do it too, if not more, but yeah, you get the idea.
This animal rights debate goes back to the assertion I made that sometimes we just don’t have the tools and the data to make empirical statements and just have to rely on intuition.
Right now, intuition for most people would say that animals do have minds. They are kind of like children or something.
Its a sliding scale. Obviously if we resurrected cro-magnon and neanderthals and even earlier ape-human transition species, RR would claim they don’t have minds because they can’t do calculus.
When you look at the Koko case, it was clear that the ape could do all the basic stuff you expect a human to do. But it raises the question of whether a human mind is conscious because there are probably alien species on other planets with even greater cognitive capabilities and they may call us ‘animals’ in the pejorative way.
RR questioning whether animals have minds makes me think him and this Manger guy have autism.
i’ll give you a hint:
how are arguments used outside pseudophilosophy?
1. in natural science and mathematics there are no arguments. there are only facts. an elegant and elaborate theory must be testable. it must be confirmed by experiment or be dropped or amended.
2. in law facts are used in arguments but arguments never establish facts. their success or failure is the decision of the judge or jury. arguments without facts are purely a matter of interpretation of man made laws.
rr: answer my question! what’s wrong with muh argument? i can say “argument” a lot.
mugabe: the truth doesn’t give a shit about your argument rr. give me the test of your proposition.
I’ll give you a hint: a priori and a posteriori.
you don’t know what those mean. read CPR little baby girl.
“animals have no minds.” means what? what is a test such that the results of the test might falsify this claim? if you can’t give them then it’s a meaningless statement.
rr thinks “animals have no minds” is an analytic statement because he is retarded.
there is only one type of synthetic a priori, that’s mathematics.
“animals have no minds” is not an a priori truth fucktard.
rr “argument”:
P1. i define having a mind to be having a language.
P2. animals don’t have a langauge.
C. animals don’t have minds.
it is a priori impossible for someone to be this dumb.
If an organism doesn’t have language the how can they have propositional attitudes?
you said yourself animals have “phenomenal consciousness”. i would say this includes consciousness of internal states which no other animal including me are privy to. such together is what the word “mind” is used to mean by actual humans.
for example, my dog steps on a pine cone and i see him limping. i assume he is experiencing pain. i don’t experience pain.
even more than that my dog experiences the world outside his own body in a way very different from the way i do. dogs have a “smell picture”. or so it seems. i smell pizza. my dog smells all the toppings individually.
my dog has propositional attitudes.
when he hears me putting my clothes on he believes he’s going for a walk.
cue rr trying to distinguish propositional attitudes from pavlovian conditioning. idiot.
Your dog talks?
you know there are human infants without language and severely disabled adult humans like yourself. they have minds. don’t they?
if schlitzie had a mind then so does my dog.
Babes have the capacity for language. Severely ID adult humans can use gestures that convey what they are thinking and they perform the same function in people who have normal brains. They are humans and they therefore have minds. (Though I am undecided if some person’s with ID are or could be moral agents.)
what is in principle unobservable, beyond experience, doesn’t exist.
esse est percipi. — berkeley
therefore whenever one speaks of the truth value of a proposition or the validity of an argument regarding the way things are and have been and will be vs merely a single event like OJ killing nichole…
there must be an experience such that having it one could say the proposition is false OR having it one can say the proposition is true…with apodictic/by definition/ex hypothesi certainty.
Yea “phenomenonal consciousness”, not “intentional consciousness.” I don’t deny that there are currently trillions of subjective experiences going on in the world. I don’t doubt that animals can feel pain. They can’t communicate their pain to humans. It’s like if a doctor is treating a patient that doesn’t speak their language, they can still know that they are in pain.
but…my dog certainly does COMMUNICATE!
wtf is wrong with you?
have you ever left the south bronx?
Your dog has propositional attitudes?
“when he hears me putting my clothes on he believes he’s going for a walk.”
Additionally, it’s been empirically shown that Primates and other mammals can plan for the future. How could they achieve this without beliefs?
Whether or not they can plan presumes they can act and act to achieve goals. How can they do this without propositional attitudes—an international state?
Primate thoughts are propositional in the sense that they are representational meaning they are truth-assessable or represent a state of affairs. They are not propositional in the sense that they have a sential structure.
On another note, apparently, prairie dogs have the most complex communication skills of any animal besides Humans. To the point that scientists are saying it’s a language. They can differentiate between members of predator species by the color of their fur and have unique calls for the color, size, and speed of individual members of predators.
I’m a little skeptical, so I’m going to research it more, but if this is true, I guess that means thought would have to include prairie dogs too.
i should say rather: mathematics and theories of natural science have arguments but their theorems/conclusions are always testable. otherwise they are meaningless.
for example, i could prove some theory in real analysis, but this is always testable using computers.
Nothing is particularly testable without certain parameters set to test within. A test can be disproved by having variance at all. But we do not abide by this at times because variance shows that maybe the other variables impact the parameters to begin with!
this goes back to the question of “behavioral modernity”.
could my dog slowly develop into charles dance?
or is there some discontinuity/quantum leap/step function along the way from animal to human?
the supporters of chomsky’s theory are his coethnics? and the supporters of the continuum between animals and humans are goyish?
some have claimed (i forget who) that hitler’s bizarre, insane antisemitism was ultimately motivated by his belief that the abrahamic religions had invented and promoted the idea that animals are just meat robots.
Hitler was against jews because like most WW1 veterans there was a widespread belief in the ‘stab in the back’ theory. That basically the government suddenly collapsed because of jews and this was supported by the predominance of jews in the Weimar government.
The truth is that jews were somewhat responsible for germany’s defeat (i.e. Cheim Weizmann blackmailed President Wilson into WW1 on behalf of the British) but there were other elite jews that supported Germany or were ambivalent.
of course his “bizarre and insane antisemitism” is only such in retrospect for autists.
until the WAR it was no bizzare or insane than the way israelis treat the palestinians.
the original plane was “territorial”. that is, hitler just wanted the jews out of germany, he didn’t want them dead.
but WAR fucks people up.
I am thinking that animals have greater instinctual empathy than humans. If animals were intelligent as humans then they would be intelligent and cooperative that would make humans believe in their own stupidity.
why does peepee habitually overestimate oprah’s cranial capacity by at least 50%?
the only explanation is peepee is a negress.
I estimate her at 1874 cc which is EXTREMELY conservative. Based on her head circumference, she should be over 2000 cc.
i am pretty sure Mug of Piss here is Pincher Martin. cant be certain but i have a hunch since Pincher still comments on Greg Cochrans blog and i see a lot of similarities between their writing styles and what not.
Oh God no. They’re not the same
interesting. sometimes i believe Mug to be the epicenter of the Internet because he has so many ties to so many places on the web its crazy!
there is a low IQ assumption by chomsky et al that an infinitessimal change cannot produce a quantum leap.
that is, it could be language and the language faculty have been developing CONTINUOUSLY (in the mathematical sense) for more than 250k years, but that some THRESHOLD was reached 50,000 years ago that produced the putative step function in behavior/technology. language is best viewed as a technology according to tom wolfe.
cartoon version:
earliest AMHs 250k years ago could only say uhguh-buhg.
but then 50k years ago AMHs could say uhguh-buhg-uh.
an anatomical example of how technology has shaped humans in their genes is the human hand. it is made for gripping the shaft of a tool. the chimp and gorilla hands are bad at this.
Chomsky would admit Oprah has a freakishly YUGE brain, but then he would deny there is any correlation between brain size and IQ.
Chomsky’s point is no art appears in the archeological record until very recently.
What does art have to do with language? Art and language both involve analogies. For example, a dog could never understand that a stick man represents a person because it wouldn’t know sticks are to legs as circles are to heads.
art is a visual spatial component of analogies yes so the higher ones visual spatial abilities the better artists they will be. true for fine motor skills and other attributes one must have to be a good artist no doubt.
currently watching Friday the 13th. pretty interesting movie! glad its October already this year was unbearable.
You’re watching the original F13? How?
AMC i believe. its a good channel here in the United States i think it stands for American Movie Channel but i may be wrong lol.
sorry you missed out ill invite you over sometime so we can eat and watch together!
I was afraid you’d say AMC. They edit out all the gore. Watching F13 on AMC is like watching a porno with all the sex edited out.
thank goodness for my imagination then! ive been told old horror films like the Exorcist are better because less ostentatious gore and more imagination prerequisites if that even makes sense.
who is “dillon” pill?
my dad told me he FBI had john dillinger’s 14″ penis preserved in formaldahyde.
why do Pills comments get moderated and then still appear on [redacted by pp. 2022-10-03] as well as Pumpkins response to them?
is it visible to anyone else like Pill or Pumpkin or what purpose does that serve then?
Yeah, wait a minute, am I tripping? There’s a whole conversation between Philo and Pumpkin on the mobile app that doesn’t appear on the site’s desktop version. What’s going on?
I say a lot only on the app because I know mug of pee’s too dumb to use it so rational thought is safe there
this has happened many times not just once and it is sad because i dont have WordPress to download the app and would rather not subscribe to one more thing that i dont necessarily think would be easier to use anyways!
but yeah Mug of Pee should just be flat out banned by this point if he is going to keep being as toxic as he is tbh.
He provides an interesting perspective sometimes. I just wish he could do so without acting like an unhinged schizo.
He’s like Diogenes.
It would be extremely interesting if they could test whether jews are less likely to get autism at higher IQ levels.
That would basically explain why jews are more powerful than gentiles if my observation is true.
But there are very famous examples of jewish autists like Mark Zuckerberg and Saul Kripke ‘philosopher’ (as if an autist could be a philosopher LOL).
According to you Jews are not successful. Old money WASPs still rule America but Forbes can’t track them. That’s how autistic you are.
the truth about women is…
they’d act more like fags (but not that much more) if they knew they wouldn’t get pregnant or wouldn’t have to raise the child solo.
women lay down with ugly rich men for purely “rational reasons”. it’s not because they make them horny.
the negress is stenotypic for IQ. the male jew is eurytypic.
this means that the plot of IQ vs E for a male jew looks like styhead tarn. it’s just a hill.
but the same plot for a negress looks like some peak in southern chile. that only rocky can climb. oh right rocko! go sly!
that is inter alia, IQ is NOT like height.
it IS like obesity.
within the prevailing environment some people will never get fat (cue rr being autistic) and some people will become ridiculously obese.
but the ridiculously obese person…
for such there exists an environment wherein he would be thin…
and “thrive”.
No IQ is like height. Income might be like obesity
what the fuck are these comments lol. your associative thinking might be making a lot of you consumed in things that are irrelevant and point blank disrespectful.
How was F13?
the one character that stuck out to me was Shelley. he was a guy who always bagged on himself and self deprecated in front of other people to see if they would pity him and no one did. that is the character i resonate with the most.
i liked the ending of the second one a lot it was a very good transition from one movie to another. it literally had a hypnotic effect on me and i thought wow this is some really good portrayal of what is going on!
well i watched the 2nd and third one if i recall correctly they were really slow paced and horrifying but they lacked the preparation to take on suspense as much as i would like.
i am more into movies with either ostentatious gore and malevolent story lines so newer versions of these films appease me more.
my favorite horror movies are the Omen series not the new one at all but the older ones had a lot of conflict in them.
i wrote a horror play for my film literature class a few years ago at my university and based my play on the Omen. i think i called it the Aftermath or something i really just paid a professional writer to write all my screenplays for me that year but i did write the essays myself that pertained to the topics we researched about movies!
F13s can be kind of cheesy imo. i like more fantasy movies anyways. but i have to applaud everyone for playing a majorly spectacular role in helping bridge movies together.
i also watched John Carpenter’s Escape from LA a bit and it was intriguing with a lot of action but the Terminator gets the job done better in its various catalogue of films!
tbh i didnt pay much attention to the movies but the marathons will continue across the month so maybe i will catch more material in each movie etc.
did you see part 1?
tbh i dont think it came on. if it does i will watch it im on vacation right now with my shithead parents so honestly will be tough to watch anything good right now!
i watched Conan the Barbarian and Immortals last night pretty good movies too.
vacation where?
youre probably hoping i say my home country but in all honesty im back in boston for the short amount of time my mother has conferences here and i have to clear legal issues too.
ive been put at a disadvantage wherever i go unfortunately and its been destroying my reputation tremendously.
people are so much more racist to me than anyone else tbh. its crazy.
Mugabe youre totally wrong on this issue. You weight it like environment is the sole determinant of intelligence which plainly wrong.
how is this not obvious?
drrr!
when everyone has that environment which is best for him/her from conception to gestation to IQ test at age 18…
1. all those dumb pipo are gonna have way higher IQs.
2. all those smart pipo are gonna hit the ceiling of human.
as always…
one more time!
There is the argument about there being no reason for our brains to be so vulnerable and wasteful if size or energy use provides no benefit to intelligence. It’s basically irrefutable. Any explanation that refutes this should be called a “just-so story” but instead RR is calling anything that actually supports it a just-so story.
Thus missing the point that our evolutionary arguments are often imprecise or wrong it part, but right in realizing brain growth and evolution is related to an intelligence increase (there being literally no other reason given the drawbacks).
But to make it even clearer, if it is all about environment suiting the brain to you… you can’t deny the brain is part of the environment, and that different brains create different environments, and so different brains (different environments themselves as brain tissue is also matter that it interacts with) effect intelligence measurements.
Robert Mugabe, you said you weren’t a dualist, but you are when you claim the brain isn’t part of the environment.
environment can affect a lot. for example ive noticed because of the evil and suffering in this world people have become immune to empathy and decided to kill off their emotions in favor of callousness!
it seems like the midwit liberals Lurker talks about are actually the most empathic bracket of people in regards to an intelligence correlation and then the farther away you get from the midwits the less empathy you see!
it is kind of a strange phenomenon. environment can affect this obviously so i brought that up for that very reason.
E vs G is a FALSE dichotomy. i only works when he range of E and the range of G is small. then there is a planar approximation to the surface formed by the points (P, G, E).
you can see how “black IQ” is FUBAR.
1. in america the IQ isn’t just lower. it also has a smaller SD.
2. the highest IQ blacks are overwhelmingly female or gay.
3. data does differ across space. caribbean blacks are smarter. bermudan blacks are white.
stenotopic
: having a narrow range of adaptability to changes in environmental conditions
eurytopic
: tolerant of wide variation in one or more environmental factors
“it seems like the midwit liberals Lurker talks about are actually the most empathic bracket of people in regards to an intelligence correlation and then the farther away you get from the midwits the less empathy you see!”
Yes I agree those slightly intelligent liberals understand that one must have a good environment to maximize intelligence. Therefore they favor open cultures with the most freedom to explore and the minimal amount of punishment possible. But at some point they lose sight of the fact that genetics do matter, and that conservative values are still somewhat necessary (like having police, having guns, or limiting the welfare state). They get into this obsession where they think, “If I just wish everyone cooperates, we will all work together peacefully and there will be no suffering!” This is the trap communists fall into IMO. If we could make everyone cooperate and give everyone a fair chance that easily, it would have already happened.
It’s empathy gone too far with no critical thinking… I think evidence indicates that we are obviously moving in the direction of greater peace and cooperation, but that it takes extreme effort and probably generations and generations of progressive movement towards that goal. In order to master our emotions we have to master our natural world since our emotions stem from the world and they should adhere to the conditions of the natural world (we shouldn’t lie to ourselves, in other words)
I think Marx led believe to believe that because coercion exists, and because are societies obviously tend to less coercion and greater equality, that all inequality stems from coercion. An intelligent conservative realizes that the inequality is necessary for progression (otherwise how do we have the freedom to move forward?) and that human psychology/inequality cannot be completely controlled. A stupid conservative thinks that all inequality is always the poor person’s fault and that all progression is a bad sign.
“E vs G is a FALSE dichotomy. i only works when he range of E and the range of G is small. then there is a planar approximation to the surface formed by the points (P, G, E).”
The idea that everyone is equally intelligent given the right environment is tautological. Of course given a specific environment idealized towards a specific person, they would always be correct. Hence the Slumdog Millionaire example where your life had handed you the answers to the test you were taking, despite having little education.
But if genetics can lead to brains that hold more answers, and can find answers quicker, that brain will be more intelligent in ALL environments. Better storage and quicker speed is G intelligence. Of course a minimum of environmental factors are necessary, such as a requisite amount of nutrition for brain growth, protection from diseases that damage the brain, and learning materials. Those being equal, some will be smarter than others.
Of course genes and environments both affect each other. Introversion might lead one to make their immediate environment more quiet or suited to themselves and effect their learning. But it must also be kept in mind that the natural genetic urges of people might be such that they create societies in which high IQ educated people will never thrive in the first place. Much of Africa seems like that, very corrupt and violent. This is will put a lower peak on the possible IQ of the population, and that is clearly due largely to the genetics of the people and the environment they’ve created.
Perhaps Asians can create stable, very civilized environments that allow for high base IQ but never progress much and are very closed. Perhaps white genetics create less stable, but sufficiently civilized environments that allow for great progression and high IQs but also have a higher degree of violence and inequality and lower average IQs (than East Asians). So the IQ is limited or enhanced by the societies created by the groups there, which is determined largely by their genetics.
So yes ultimately genetics and environment are linked together, but we can also isolate them to some degree. We can state that their effect on intelligence is somewhat independent, and independent enough to matter greatly and study scientifically.
i disagree Lurker midwits are the biggest advocates for critical thinking. its just that they only have a binary-thought pattern something i believe hinders them tremendously….they can only think left or right not left right up down etc.
this is why they struggle to cope with a lot of the nuances in reality!
also i believe that even with the same environments (a phenomenon articulated by the Bush No Child Left Behind Act) you can still see very different outcomes. i grew up in the same environment as my sister and although i am more verbally intelligent than her she has a conscientious advantage that gave her success over me!
these are just my assertions on the matter i have not much understanding of the technical stuff on the blog.
Mugabe is retarded. He said it himself that blacks put together will revert to Africa. So he suggests blacks raised in jewish womens wombs and raised by Harvard professors would be the way to go to make blacks equal….
Why jewish women?
Would Harvard be Harvard if all the professors were chosen based on affirmative action?
These questions make Mugabe’s head hurt.
Obviously if you’re saying its bad for blacks to be around each other you’re probably saying theres a bad culture which is basically what jews say. Mugabe and these jews never explain why the ‘culture’ is bad in the first place. Maybe the answer is testosterone?
Duh.
Mugabe is a complete idiot if he believes theres no genetic differences in IQ and its all caused by environment.
So, what type of environment do you think Black people would most thrive in, Mugabe?
a homogenous society! it seems like africa is the most diverse continent in the world according to scientists so there is a factor of people being different from each other despite having the same phenotype on a lot of things.
this would be interesting to see though i dunno. blacks are very ethnocentric and i mean this as a way of saying they love to politic for their people and their neighborhood and their family etc.
so clannish we would say.
Mugabe is an idiot. Like his religious views. Some of the things he believes are just totally daft.
you’re too dumb to even unnuhstan what i believe. what you think i believe isn’t what i believe.
the environmentalists AND the hereditists are BOTH wrong.
can you make the aufhebung?
there is no one environment best for black pipo in general. but all would benefit from not watching oprah and not making fake blog comments on their own blogs.
and actually an environment where there are no other blacks is better for blacks in america. this is the lesson of the minnesota transracial adoption study.
when blacks get in touch wi’ dey blackness their IQ drops by 15 points.
pill’s “beliefs” are self-contradictory.
he blames his issues on “mental illness”.
totally unable to imagine a world wherein his putative “mental illness” wouldn’t prevent him from making bank.
the biggest environmental constant in the developed world is school. from age 6 to age 18 chirren spend the majority of their waking hours at school or in school related activities. what if the putative genetic basis for IQ were just “how much do you hate school? does it shut you down? or does it get you hard?” there are so many other ways education can be done than school…a lot of kids’ intellectual development is STUNTED by school relative to what it could have been outside a classroom.
Mug is the most easily agitated person ive ever met and he cant even answer simple questions. what a toxic person to have on a blog like this tbh.
i know i get the emotions get the better of me but that is because i have struggled through a lot in life because of discrimination. ive been discriminated by height weight gender age class income etc.
even if it shouldve worked to my advantage it always worked to my disadvantage regardless if spoken so truly! society has rotted me!
what rr infers is the mind is really just human reasoning. there is nothing metaphysical about it it is just a mechanism that may be phenomenal.
Basically, it is self-monitoring your plans to see if they will work in the real world. And come up with new plans as backups.
IQ or g is most associated with the parietal and frontal lobes. It is mechanical, something that could easily be built into an AGI.
animals seem to reason seem to plan but because of evolution, humans have greater planning than any one species.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-06-upfront-personal-scientists-human-brain.html
“The latter has led to enormous animal abuse, like whaling practices and dog fighting.”
Note how dogfighting is, rightly, considered atrocious and banned, but factory farms operate with impunity. ‘Crime is when an individual does on a small scale what governments [and corporations] do on a large scale.’
yeah malevolence and benevolence are entirely subjective. i mean maybe less for benevolence because there is a cap on how much good someone can do but there stupidity and evil just go hand-in-hand and create a spiral of behavior that is just defeatist and unnecessary.
i myself am a utilitarian. i hope to one day see the world have the most pleasure. i believe in a hedonic maximum for our society though. it is very interesting to see how bad and sour things get before we change anything for the better though!
so the cool kids get together in the basement of the vice principal (who is a white cuban with blue eyes and freckles) and we listen to…
eddie murphy…