JoeShipley
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JoeShipley has not written any posts yet.
JoeShipley has not written any posts yet.
This is true, I didn't think of this. A superintelligent sheperd. Interesting idea. It just seems so stagnant to me, but I don't have the value meme for it.
In this case, tame might mean: "Able to co-exist with other males in your species". Our concestor with chimpanzees probably wasn't, but we had to adapt.
Agreed. One of the interesting points in that Dawkin's book is how sexual selection can result in the enhancement of traits that neither increase survivability or produce more offspring. He talks about 'fashions' spreading within a species, in his personal theory of how humans started walking upright.
Basically, the females or the males start selecting for a particular rare behavior as indicative of something desirable over their lessers, which leads to that male or female exhibiting that trait reproducing and the trait being reinforced for as long as it is in 'fashion'. Several cases of the way that can run away are presented in the book; Testicle size in chimpanzees due to sperm... (read more)
Well, yes, on Pg. 31 of 'The Ancestor's Tale',
I feel as though if you are hoping to preserve the specific biological scope of humanity you have some significant roadblocks on the way. Our species was generated in millions of years of shifting genes with selection factors blatant to subtle, and more recently we've stripped as many selection factors out as we can. (For good reason, natural selection is a harsh mistress...)
Malaria etc still is a selecting factor as has been documented but they're greatly reduced. In Dawkin's 'The Ancestor's Tale', he tells the story of the Russian Silver Fox breeding experiment in which wild foxes were selected for tame characteristics, resulting in foxes that behaved like border collies.
He hypothesizes... (read more)
Oh, I'm sorry I misunderstood you. Yeah, it can be tiring. I'm a fairly introverted person and need a good amount of downtime between socialization. I guess I was projecting a little -- I use to think social norms were garbage and useless, until I realized neglecting their utility was irrational and it was primarily an emotional bias against them in never feeling like I 'fit in'. Sometimes it feels like you never stop discovering unfortunate things about yourself...
Being called 'profoundly stupid' is not exactly a criticism of someone's reasoning. (Not that anybody was called that.) I think we're objecting to this because of how it'll offend people outside of the 'in group' anyway. Besides that, As much as we might wish we were immune to the emotional shock or glee at our thoughts and concepts being ridiculed or praised. I think it would be a rarity here to find someone who didn't. People socializing and exchanging ideas is a type of system -- It has to be understood and used effectively in order to produce the best results -- and calling, essentially, everybody who disagrees with you 'profoundly stupid' is not good social lubrication.
I agree completely. If intelligence-generated problems cannot outpace the solutions total destruction awaits.
I apologize if the stupid pill characterization feels wrong, I just was trying to think of a viable alternative to increasing intelligence.
I disagree. It is rational to exploit interpersonal communication for clarity between persons and comfortable use. If the 'language of rationality' can't be understood by the 'irrational people', it is rational to translate best you can, and that can include utilizing societal norms. (For clarity and lubrication of the general process.)
In 'Proust and the Squid', Maryanne Wolf talks about just that, how external reading and writing skills behave as a kind of storage area for brain contents. I can't remember the exact passage (I guess because I have it written down in a book at home) but she talks about how we don't write things down to remember them, but so that it's okay for us to forget them. She goes into an analysis of a few cultures and their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to writing, reading, and memory. Very related and a good read. It follows along a bit with Plato's Phaedrus, the story of Socrates' objection to the... (read more)