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How to control the people : Keep them stupid and uninformed

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raildogg said:
All sides are conditioned and aren't interested in the truth. They are only interested in pushing their own beliefs which are formed by their own conditioning.

Too bad 99.9999% of people are not aware of their own heavy conditioning - all sides. This includes every group, religious or not.

But keep believing you are more "evolved" or whatever than the next guy.

It's hard to believe but humanity is becoming more tribal and superficial than ever before. It doesn't matter whether someone believes in evolution or not. We as humans are just as disgusting creatures as we ever were - maybe even more now.
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No, "both side do it" doesn't apply here.
 
Moonbeam said:
buckshot, rather than search back through tis thread where you told Bowfinger you were communicating something to me, let me just say I wanted to respond to that post by telling you I didn't get what you intended.
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Haha, I was attempting to communicate something to you. I failed miserably apparently. That bird has flown the coop.
 
agent00f said:
It's a little confusing to call artificial selection natural selection (aka evolution). In practice humans tend to be pretty resilient against environmental change, which was rather why we were successful in the first place.
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But that's just it - it's still natural in the sense that we are part of nature. If lions developed a new feature that made them way more successful at hunting gazelles, I don't think you'd have any trouble calling that natural selection. If we start killing everyone except green eyed people, that's the same basic concept and eventually everyone would have green eyes even though it's a stupid selection pressure. The human race would have almost immediately evolved to have green eyes. I agree it's different in some way, but then again it's not because nature created us, which includes our ability to fuck ourselves over pointlessly. It's still evolution.

agent00f said:
Shitty people tend to love the argument that everyone else is just as shitty as themselves.
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Yeah, that argument makes no sense to me either. I am conditioned to try to develop models that can explain observable data. Religion is basically the opposite - developing data to fit a pre-determined model. It's not the same and it doesn't imply the same level of awareness.
 
MrDudeMan said:
But that's just it - it's still natural in the sense that we are part of nature. If lions developed a new feature that made them way more successful at hunting gazelles, I don't think you'd have any trouble calling that natural selection. If we start killing everyone except green eyed people, that's the same basic concept and eventually everyone would have green eyes even though it's a stupid selection pressure. The human race would have almost immediately evolved to have green eyes. I agree it's different in some way, but then again it's not because nature created us, which includes our ability to fuck ourselves over pointlessly. It's still evolution.
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It's true there's arguably no bright line distinction but generally the term evolution/natural-selection refers to non-normative processes, not ones humans deliberately chose, like only planting/fertilizing fat delicious kernels of corn. There exist some conceptual difference there and the point of language as a tool to communicate is to help make those distinctions. In any case, it's just confusing to refer to growing fat corn or the like as evolution.
 
IronWing said:
Oh, I wasn't going to say boo about any possible kids. I just wanted a pic of a woman holding a signing saying, "Yes Ironwing, I consented to boink buckshot24."
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I'm not buckshot24 in my day to day life. I'd probably get along swimmingly with most of the people who hate me here or are annoyed with me if we ever met in real life.
 
agent00f said:
It's true there's arguably no bright line distinction but generally the term evolution/natural-selection refers to non-normative processes, not ones humans deliberately chose, like only planting/fertilizing fat delicious kernels of corn. There exist some conceptual difference there and the point of language as a tool to communicate is to help make those distinctions. In any case, it's just confusing to refer to growing fat corn or the like as evolution.
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This merits a bit of discussion. Lions hunting gazelles favors speedier gazelles. Humans selecting fat corn isn't significantly different than lions selecting slower gazelles to hunt. When humans start directly interfering with corn pollination, the argument could be made that there is something new going on, though maybe not. Pollinators maybe select for better nectar by visiting those plants more frequently.
 
agent00f said:
It's true there's arguably no bright line distinction but generally the term evolution/natural-selection refers to non-normative processes, not ones humans deliberately chose, like only planting/fertilizing fat delicious kernels of corn. There exist some conceptual difference there and the point of language as a tool to communicate is to help make those distinctions. In any case, it's just confusing to refer to growing fat corn or the like as evolution.
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I agree. Genetic engineering has a goal, evolution does not. It is random and can take a cellular organism in myriad directions if the offspring live to reproduce.
 
Moonbeam said:
I agree. Genetic engineering has a goal, evolution does not. It is random and can take a cellular organism in myriad directions if the offspring live to reproduce.
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Mutations are random but selection is not random. You are correct that there is no goal to evolution beyond producing viable offspring.
 
buckshot24 said:
I'm not buckshot24 in my day to day life. I'd probably get along swimmingly with most of the people who hate me here or are annoyed with me if we ever met in real life.
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It's pretty obvious that buckshot is the person you can't be due to the consequences of degeneracy IRL.

IronWing said:
This merits a bit of discussion. Lions hunting gazelles favors speedier gazelles. Humans selecting fat corn isn't significantly different than lions selecting slower gazelles to hunt. When humans start directly interfering with corn pollination, the argument could be made that there is something new going on, though maybe not. Pollinators maybe select for better nectar by visiting those plants more frequently.
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It's like pondering if "man-made" vs "natural" means anything because there's a philosophical argument to be made that man is part of natural. In practice here, the outcomes of "man-made" selection happens at substantially differing rates and often with consequentially differing methods than in nature, and there are many clear examples of one vs the other so the terminological distinction does have linguistic value.
 
By the way, your governments have been keeping us dumb, stupid and heavily conditioned since the day we enroll in their school system.

Then the media bombards you and now the internet is here. All forms of conditioning. No wonder very, very few humans can think for themselves.
 
raildogg said:
By the way, your governments have been keeping us dumb, stupid and heavily conditioned since the day we enroll in their school system.

Then the media bombards you and now the internet is here. All forms of conditioning. No wonder very, very few humans can think for themselves.
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Sure, dropping out of that dumb gubmint school is why you're smart.
 
raildogg said:
Yes, you are way beyond my abilities and intellect. I don't mind it though.

I do not wish to continue this any longer with you.

No offense to you or anyone else.
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There is some truth in what you say, but of the portion that is true most everyone is already aware. We just continue to play the part because it's typically not in our interests to do otherwise.

For example, many if not most people don't like their job in significant part due to the people politics, but trying to fix that is an exercise in futility. However, notice that we're still aware of the problem even if it's in our interest to remain employed.
 
Protip: if you're arguing science with someone who disregards science because they have religious faith, you lose, every time. Because God.

Keep losing the argument accordingly I guess.
 
MrDudeMan said:
I'm not talking about evolution in the traditional sense. That's part of it, but a higher level of evolution exists now that we are capable of modifying our environment. It's hard to explain, but consider what would happen if the earth pushed back in a way we didn't expect or foresee. If chickens and cows became infertile in captivity, we would die off pretty quickly I think and, frankly, I'd have a hard time feeling bad for us. We treat other living things on this planet like shit, so we kind of deserve it. It's not necessarily evolution, but then it kinda is.

Evolution doesn't require long periods of time for significant changes to propagate. Case in point, we could intentionally and artificially introduce selection pressure(s) onto the population to drastically and immediately change our evolutionary trajectory. What if you started neutering everyone who didn't have green eyes? Nature typically plays this game over millennia as you suggested, but we unfortunately have the power to accelerate it.

The other evidence for fast evolution is the bacteria article posted earlier in the thread showing how quickly antibiotic resistance was accumulated in a population. That happened in weeks, not eons. My point is we're disrupting the slower, long term evolutionary trajectory of this planet and that's going to have a long-term impact. How isn't clear, but we'd be naive to not recognize that it's probably coming.
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Well, it can happen in weeks in bacteria because:

~30-50 generations per day
-bacteria directly exchange plasmids (their genetic information) to their neighbors, so it's a highly efficient way to pass on useful genes within a local environment.
 
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