DOOMSDAY 2012!!!!

Here's hoping that we all die in some freak occurance of nature tomorrow.

Hope I didn't sound like a malcontent. That's not what I was shooting for at all....

Well, I'm still alive (which is disappointing). You really made me happy with your post though, because you're the first person I've encountered who has also managed to independently think about this stuff. Do you have a biological science background by any chance?

Nah, just a workin' stiff. If I won the lottery, I probably would spend the rest of my life learning though...good thing there's the internet !

I'm good enough at my trade that I spend a lot of time working on 'autopilot' which frees my mind to wander. Actually, today I was building a barn roof but my thoughts were miles away, lol.

Anyway, a big point I wanted to make clear is that I wouldn't say it's a BAD thing that the human/nature relationship has diminished, just that it's worth acknowledging in the discussion. I don't know if it's a natural evolutionary path or if it's sending us down a dead end road but I'm enjoying the ride either way.

Maybe a global community IS where evolution goes when basic survival necessities are no longer a concern and when the mind has the luxury of free thought rather than focussing on putting food into your mouth and making babies. Maybe the next step in our evolution is the development of a more efficient form of communication, since that seems to be one of our defining features as a species. Internet again maybe ?...

I don't know what the next stage of our evolution is, but we certainly won't be in existence forever. Your theory about evolution targetting our communication skills is a good suggestion... ...perhaps we could all develop Electro Sensory Perception (ESP) or something; and then be able to read each other's thoughts. The brain is electrical in nature, after all, and anything that is electrical has an associated electromagnetic field. I firmly believe that some humans have brains sensitive enough to already be able to read what's on another person's mind, without realising it.

But anyway - no - we're really screwing up evolution by tampering with the human genome. Plus, I hate to say this, but by helping people with mental illnesses, we are 'contaminating' the human race.

Okay, that's controversial, but I know that I'm right.

Kevin

...helping people with...

That's where I was going with the argument... Not mental illness specifically, but anything that makes you less efficient at being a human. It goes back to natural order and how we're removed from it. It's not an original argument, but by continuing to propogate 'bent' genes within the species we reinforce those traits as a part of being human. Maybe that's the way a population naturally dies out if predation is reduced or eliminated over the long term, based on the observation that traits a species no longer needs tend to diminish to the point where their occurrence in members of the species becomes a 'defect' (our tails, 'Wolfman' syndrome)

Even though it seems morally reprehensible, maybe the future does involve some hard choices like culling or sterilization to keep the overall population healthy. To keep the genome from being 'corrupted' we would have to take even further control of our own development.

But that neglects our species' social development. Looking at how both individuals and nations tend to develop a more liberal point of view as education and standard of living increase, it follows that as human behaviour evolves it becomes more and more natural to incorporate even the 'flawed' genes out of simple moral responsibility. That's where we are now.

...Electro Sensory Perception (ESP)...

So that someone doesn't post just to correct it, I think the 'E' is 'Extra'.
Anyway, that's what I think too, specifically with regard to telepathy (but not anytime soon: at the moment, we can't even agree on what color god's skin is.)

We are already equipped with a power source, the raw data, a storage medium, and the ability to buffer the data. All we 'need' now is the hard part, a transceiver...
Could you imagine the white noise from a telepath getting tasered though ? Youch.

Dude, you're a breath of fresh air here: You have all of the same views on this that I do. Oh - and yeh - it IS Extra SP, not Electro. I don't believe that we'll ever reach a point where people will be 'culled' just to keep the human gene pool healthy though. Something like that simply isn't in human nature - know what I mean? The gene pool is already grossly contaminated though. Have you noticed the huge increase in allergies and other immunological hypersensitivities recently? Practically every second person that you meet has some allergy to something.

Actually Chucky, it could be argued that culling IS human nature, just not in the traditional (killing) sense of the word. Most importantly, it's about simply removing an individual's ability to propagate negative genetic traits. I can see the case for it myself, but I do have a problem with deciding what constitutes a negative trait. Obviously, many of them are no-brainers but the nature of evolution is such that what's a liability today may be an asset tomorrow when environmental conditions change. I think I made this point well enough in an earlier post so I 'll move on.

By removing criminals from society and putting them in prison we are effectively culling them from mainstream society. With generally laughable efforts at rehabilitation, it's no surprise that so many ex-cons have a hard time reintegrating (of those who actually try to).

It's also been the case with mental illnesses and diseases like tb, influenza, and leprosy.

In terms of 'controversy'...even Canada, a bastion of fraternity and liberty, had eugenic sterilization laws on the books until the early 70s. The US led the pack by sterilizing not only the mentally deficient but criminals as well. Japan, Sweden, India, China, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland and of course Germany had compulsory sterilization programs at some point within their recent histories. Bear in mind also that all of these countries instituted their programs PRIOR to the rise of Josef Mengele and the Nazis.

So yeah, I would have to argue that culling is indeed human nature. Is it one of those darker parts of us to be suppressed ? Or should we accept it as one of the negative traits that may become an advantage when environmental conditions change...

The development of the brain has, in general, been a bad idea.

I certainly understand what you're saying there but I don't think that's the case. Not literally anyway: I think the problem stems from the fact that our ethical development is still at a paleolithic level. We have this great product of the evolutionary machine rolling around inside our skulls, yet we still kill each other over stupid $#%^. We are just monkeys - we want our own bananas and yours too so if we can't have 'em we'll just take 'em, regardless of how it'll affect you.

We have a million ways to kill each other but we can't cure a cold.


EDIT: Ok, I actually edited this out because I wanted to shorten the post but, yeah I've been trying to figure this one out too...

...the huge increase in allergies...

I JUST saw this story which makes one of my points exactly so I'll paraphrase.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7758183.stm

Another side of that is that all of the fear messages we see in the traditional media now have another avenue of delivery with the ability to target it, surreptitiously or not.

The next is about how our diet has changed because of our manipulation of our food supply and what that's done to our resistance to things like allergens and previously-benign microorganisms (necrotizing fasciitis...wtf?).

Hey,

Since when was necrotising fasciitis benign? It chews up tissue - How bening is that? Be warned, I have studied microbiology for 3 years now and regard myself as an expert ( ). It's funny how you refer to the distant past with regard to culling, but stuff like that is going on in modern times too. Just think of the genocide in Kenya recently: 1,000,000+ people killed. Also, think of Sudan.

However, if we really wished to cull 'correctly', then we'd have to stop allowing babies to live who would otherwise die. I don't want to expand on this, however, because I don't want to offend people too much.

Chucky wrote:Hey,

Since when was necrotising fasciitis benign?

One of the potential organisms responsible for it is a staphyloccocus. As you'll know, it's a genus that's found everywhere and is benign...usually. As I understand it NF is a condition with a variety of causes, not a single organism. More insight would be interesting actually.

PS...you gave yourself away 'expert-wise' with the Botulism toxin bit...

...think of the genocide...

As I see it, a cull is different from a genocide because a cull is meant to improve the population by weeding out the 'unfit' vs a genocide wherein the objective is to eliminate the entire population . I was thinking of Rwanda in that light and that's also why I didn't mention the Canadian residential school system: the idea was to indoctrinate an entire population rather than all the individuals from that population.

...stop allowing babies...

Again, compulsory sterilization would be the less immoral route to achieve the same thing. Allowing an individual to lead their life won't make a difference as long as the lineage ends there.

Forgot to ask earlier:

Humans had to develop a brain in order to realise that having a brain is a very bad idea indeed

That's gotta be Douglas Adams...

...don't want to expand...

I hear ya. If you weren't a mod I would have shut it down a couple posts ago myself, lol.

Actually, I want to go back to your post about how "having a brain is a bad idea" anyway. Not only do I agree with that but I think that's what Rodenberry was lampooning with the Ferengi characters in Star Trek - we've got the technology to poison the earth forever then blow it apart but we can't get along thanks in large part to petty, self-perpetuating hatreds. How is that plotline supposed to end ?...

Ummm...time to stop for a breath...

Good grief, you're right: We DO have the power to completely feck up this planet, don't we? We've come a long way from hanging out in trees picking fruit and scratching our own bums (apes). Staphylococci are indeed mostly benign, and they grow in the nose and on the skin of most people (they love human sweat, especially). However, they are also the cause of MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and can cause skin-infections if you get cut.

I think that you and I would probably 'hang out' with each other if we actually knew each other by face. I use 'hang out' very loosely here because I prefer to operate by myself most of the time.

What specifically are you saying about the Ferengi? - That they are dumb but are still using good technology (like us, perhaps!)?

Kevin