Sunday School

[TheEncogitationer]

Robert,

Yes…Humans are no longer subject to the normal genetic screening processes. In many cases the least-fittest humans can propagate as much as anyone. It seems the struggle is changing to the situation where we somehow force our environment to adapt to us. We will fail, of course. Elon Musk can’t even build a decent electric truck, let alone guide us to civilizations on Mars.

In Evolution,”fitness” does not mean just particular traits like physical strength, speed, agility, enhanced sense, or even intellect. “Fitness” means adaptability of a species in the face of environmental changes. The particular traits above mean fitness only if they help the species survive and flourish over generations.

The “Fitness” of the human species has changed in all the ways members of the human species have both adapted the species to variable environment and adopted variable environment to the species’ own survival needs.

In hunter-gatherer and agrarian times, survival required physical strength and speed and took many hands working together cohesively in one geographic area. As humans aquired surplus production, it allowed for development of more specialized skills for production and “soft” skills involved in facilitating trade.

As skills and work became more specialized, it required conceiving and making new tools and development first of crafts and techniques, then development of mass production industries utilizing machines to make goods and procure services.

As this whole process went on, the traits meant for “fitness” changed and the requirements for survival changed from many hands and fewer brains to fewer hands and more brains until you get a Stephen Hawking who can say in a synthesized voice: “Look, Mom! No hands!”

As long as we’re here, we haven’t failed yet. And if Elon Musk doesn’t get us to other worlds, a Branson or a Gates or a yet unknown name could do it…as long as we don’t listen to anyone who wants us to “pause.”

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake,

Is it a stretch or bigotry to wonder whether century after century of Islam has caused a dumbing of the general population? If animals living underground or in caves generation after generation have in many cases lost their eyesight does generation after generation of Islamic life make epigentic changes both through the failure to exercise faculties and the reproduction that thwarts natural sexual selection?

I don’t have an answer. But i am curious.

I wouldn’t say it’s bigotry, but a misunderstanding of Evolution. Natural Selection takes a much longer time frame than Islam has been around.

Besides, religion doesn’t need multiple generations to do damage. It starts working it’s wonders of woe practically in real time.

Fortunately, starting to undo the damage of religion can happen just as quickly as well, as this story from Deutsche Welle points out about the rise of “Nones” in the Islamic world:

Middle East: Are people losing their religion?
Jennifer Holleis
02/04/2021February 4, 2021
Recent surveys indicate strongly that across the Middle East and Iran, almost half the population is loosening their ties to Islam. Governments have reacted differently to calls for reforms of institutional religion.
https://www.dw.com/en/middle-east-are-people-losing-their-religion/a-56442163

Gets back to that ol’ Volition thing that everyone says doesn’t exist, yet here we are.

How long before we wipe ourselves out?

Vegas has over/under at 22 yrs & 6 months?

If you take the under it may be a little problematic to collect.

Las Vegas has a Death Pool on the Human Species???

How accurate are they on the Death Pool for specific persons? (Yeah, yeah, I know. Over enough time, it’s 100 percent. I mean how accurate are they on the time frame they specify?)

What is the metric they use to come up with that time frame for Humanity?

And if Death Pools are so accurate, did anyone make an accurate call on the mass shooting that happened in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017?

Woo can give false despair as well as false hope. Don’t be a sucker for it either way.

[jakelafort]

Enco,

I was being facetious with that Vegas over under. Silly even.

Was quite serious about the possibility that Islam which dictates EVERY SINGLE ASPECT OF LIFE causes inherited stupidity. There are severe pentalties and debilitating anxiety suffered by its adherents/victims for thinking or questioning. And women ain’t typically doing the selection of husbands. Women are property and do as they are commanded. So they end up with men who they would not choose in many instances. So sexual selection is johny bar the door.

I have read so many things about how one lives one’s life or one’s environment causes changes in offspring. For instance hundreds of children of women who were in hiding and pregnant in Eastern Europe during holocaust had EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEIR KIDS come out with mental illness. And we all know i think that kids who are under untoward stress come out fucked up later in life. God, i have seen enough these people. Any obstacle to self-actualization or that thwarts intellectual curiosity is a dumbing down.

But then there is the question of innate characteristics caused by epigenetic changes. The examples in nature of animals that adapted to their environment in lightless niches and losing eyesight are many. Now i am not saying it is Lamarckian in use/disuse. Who knows the mechanism? Maybe it is that energy normally consumed on eyesight is inefficient and better utilized by some other organ or sense. Hell if i know. But i think it is a legit question whether intellectual retardation caused by the cult of Islam is inheritable. And that of course would not mean that all kids born into Islamic culture are innately stupid. It MIGHT mean that as a group there is a deficiency relative to other populations.

I typed this fast cuz i am johny bar the door going on an epic hike on a lovely sunny spring day in which the apricity will engender a felicity..

[Unseen]

Simon Paynton wrote:

There are all kinds of people who shouldn’t be here if Mother Nature had anything to do with it. For humans, it’s not so much survival of the fittest, it’s the survival of the most cooperative. That’s why young children are born knowing how to cooperate.

If they are “born knowing how to cooperate,” why don’t they. Children are possessive of their resources (crayons, toys, snacks, etc.) and jealous of attention other children get. Child on child attacks, sometimes vicious, are hardly uncommon.

If they don’t behave this way, they should be checked for brain damage or even a pulse.

Cooperation has to be taught through positive and negative reinforcement.

Are you actually a parent, Simon?

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

I was being facetious with that Vegas over under. Silly even.

Phew, glad to know that because They’re gonna put it down, on the Vegas strip

[_Robert_]

Unfortunately, even though many antivaxers might erase themselves during a pandemic, the ties to a representative genotype are so complicated that the behavior will not become a phenotype in the normal sense.

 

[Simon Paynton]

Unseen wrote:

Cooperation has to be taught through positive and negative reinforcement.

Are you actually a parent, Simon?

I’m not a parent.  According to laboratory experiments, they develop the skills by around the age of 3.  I should have been more precise.  The point is they don’t need to be taught, they do things like respect commitments and help those in need (much of the time) automatically.  That in turn looks like the best cooperators survived and reproduced, in the past.

Michael Tomasello and his team do experiments on chimpanzees and young children.  Chimpanzees don’t, and young children do, cooperate.

[Simon Paynton]

_Robert_ wrote:

Unfortunately, even though many antivaxers might erase themselves during a pandemic, the ties to a representative genotype are so complicated that the behavior will not become a phenotype in the normal sense.

I think it’s a case of culturally-induced suicide, rather than maladaptive genes.

[_Robert_]

Simon Paynton wrote:

_Robert_ wrote:

Unfortunately, even though many antivaxers might erase themselves during a pandemic, the ties to a representative genotype are so complicated that the behavior will not become a phenotype in the normal sense.

I think it’s a case of culturally-induced suicide, rather than maladaptive genes.

Yes, but can you think of any biological characteristic including the behavior of living things that does not ultimately stem from our genetic composition? Of course, tying specific behaviors to specific genetics falls upon AI, supercomputing and the future. But holy cow, the “engineering” implications are immense.

[Simon Paynton]

_Robert_ wrote:

Yes, but can you think of any biological characteristic including the behavior of living things that does not ultimately stem from our genetic composition?

Well, you could say that all behaviour is biological, because it’s carried out by human beings with biological bodies.  I think it’s more relevant to look at the reasons for behaviour.

Human genes are about the same the world over, with some variation in shape and colour of people.  But cultures vary wildly.  Cultures can make people do maladaptive things, like refuse vaccines for example.  Presumably there’s some other benefit in it for them, but I don’t know what it is.  I suppose they place other values over human life and safety.

[_Robert_]

Simon Paynton wrote:

_Robert_ wrote:

Yes, but can you think of any biological characteristic including the behavior of living things that does not ultimately stem from our genetic composition?

Well, you could say that all behaviour is biological, because it’s carried out by human beings with biological bodies. I think it’s more relevant to look at the reasons for behaviour. Human genes are about the same the world over, with some variation in shape and colour of people. But cultures vary wildly. Cultures can make people do maladaptive things, like refuse vaccines for example. Presumably there’s some other benefit in it for them, but I don’t know what it is. I suppose they place other values over human life and safety.

 

Yeah, I guess I agree. I doubt refusal to get vaccinated is a directly inheritable trait like eye-color. Could be somewhat of a genetic predisposition, however. Would be good if it was like eye-color. One bad plague and all the anti-vaxxers would be gone for a good while.

[TheEncogitationer]

Jake,

I would say for sure that how a religion regards incestuous relationships, hereditary Monarchy, and heterosexual relationships across religious lines would have an affect on the genetics of the adhersnts.

Likewise, if a religion–such as Christian Identity, original Mormonism, Black Hebrew Israelites, The Nation of Islam, or Ancestral Worship–is racist or tribalist in it’s tenets, then this would also limit both the number and kind of heterosexual prospective partners a believer could have.

Even there, though, the defects that result would necessarily be limited to adherents and wouldn’t spread past their lineage.

But for the most part, the damage of religion is in real time and is an acquired trait that we can put a stop to now.

I did my own part yesterday on a cool, sunny Spring Afternoon. I took some Good Off™, Fast Orange™, alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and an ice scraper and I removed some stickers with Matthew 24 and Revelation 14:6-11 from lamp posts and a traffic light control box, as well as removed gangland graffiti from the box.

I hope I removed the stickers before some impressionable kid could look up the Bible passages and get scared to death. And I hope both the religionists and gangbangers discovered that they no longer have marked territory and that someone does not welcome their apocalyptic, fear-spreading beliefs and vandalous, thuggish practices. A little piece of civilization is safer for now.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spelling

[Unseen]

Simon Paynton wrote:

’m not a parent.  According to laboratory experiments, they develop the skills by around the age of 3.  I should have been more precise.  The point is they don’t need to be taught, they do things like respect commitments and help those in need (much of the time) automatically.  That in turn looks like the best cooperators survived and reproduced, in the past.

Your paucity of parenting experience is palpable.

I wasn’t saying that they can’t ever cooperate with other kids but that, as a rule, looking out for #1 is the overriding consideration.

Adults, one hopes, cooperate for the good of a collective (family, community, employer, club, whatever). That comes over time with life experience and maturity.

Kids are narcissists.

[Simon Paynton]

Unseen wrote:

Kids are narcissists.

I wasn’t saying they’re fantastic.  They are monsters compared with adults.  But they seem to be born with innate cooperation skills that aren’t taught.

Compared with a chimpanzee, a 3-year old child is a great team player.

[jakelafort]

Religion impacts lives in a number of unfortunate ways.

I have been listening to a slew of apostates of Islam tell their stories and not only is antisemitism more virulent (ubiquitous too) than i realized but the degree of control over every aspect of life is shocking. It is such a blatant and horrific cult. One of the many revelations to me is how FRIGHTENED Muslims are to THINK or QUESTION or deviate from the expected conformity.

I think it is accepted that phenotypes are impacted by all kinds of life experiences. So why not our brains being essentially dormant and subject to such jarring anxiety? Generations upon generations of mindless devotion, fear, and authoritarian control resulting in retardation of normal curiosity and intellectual exploration might be inheritable in terms of intelligence? It would certainly aid the mind virus of Islam to dumb down its hosts. IDK

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