Guest guest Posted January 1, 2004 Report Share Posted January 1, 2004 " > I personally can only comprehend evolution in the terms of > `controlled evolution'. Eg. Mr Ford creates a car model, the Escort > Mk I. He then creates another better or alternative model the Mk II. > To me this is the only possible way evolution can work. I do not > believe that `mother nature' is more intelligent than man. " this is not a good argument. nature has no intelligence. it just is. evolution happens over millions of years, with countless changes that do not work. the reason that people find it hard to create sustainable environments are probably two fold. they are aiming for something very specific, which did not happen with the evolution of the earth environment. that was random. so if they started a kind of primordial soup and left it alone, it would be interesting to see the result, but I doubt that it would be an earth clone. The other thing is that human intervention is about rapid change. It is a totally different process from evolution and should not be compared. __________________________________________________________________ New! Unlimited Access from the Netscape Internet Service. Beta test the new Netscape Internet Service for only $1.00 per month until 3/1/04. Sign up today at http://isp.netscape.com/register Act now to get a personalized email address! Netscape. Just the Net You Need. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 31, 2004 Report Share Posted December 31, 2004 Neil Gardner wrote: > Re: Disproving my theory > > > >>Perhaps, but less of a disadvantage now than in the time for which >>nonverbal abilities were well-adapted-- preverbal times, including those >>before H. sapiens existed as such. Things are not easy for our kind, >>but we live in a time when the richest person in the world and " Man of >>the century " are/were probably both of our kind. >> >> > >Nonverbal communication has coexisted with the spoken word since homo >sapiens sapiens first evolved. We live in an increasingly duplicitous >society > full of NTs who have been trained to fool other NTs into instictively trusting them. Every used-car salesman, lawyer, con-man and politician does it. Trust has become a commodity. It obviously works, given the number of people who still believe anything Bush or Blair says. > or let's say in this phase of human history people are becoming more >conformist, and today that means conforming to a hiphop mass-consumerist >culture and living with the myth of individualism. > As the corporations merge and become more monolithic, they want to sell an ever-smaller product line in ever-higher volume to ever-more-homogenous consumers. They are not all-powerful, however. They may own every television station, but they do not own the net. There is a world outside the mainstream, and that has been growing a lot faster than the dinasaur corporations, who rant and rave about piracy and file-sharing, while their real problem is that the market has slipped out of their control, and people are increasingly finding the stuff that the big corporations refuse to market. They can't bottle us up into their neat half-a-dozen market segments because we refuse to fit into them. We aren't buying it. As their top 100 turned into a top 40 and then a top 10, their bottom line is going down. > Kids are increasingly (at >least in this part of the globe) confined to their homes plugged into one >electronic gadget or another and > This tends to confirm my position that the world is becoming a more autistic place. We also increasingly use such devices to communicate, as we are doing right now. Where is your eye-contact now? >amazingly the further down the social ladder you go the more this is the case. >To escape the cultural decadance that is blasted through available mass media > > look around the fringes. >you need to buy a house in the wilds > there are other good reasons to do that anyway. > and send your kids to a remote village >school with 2-3 pupils (there is actually a school on the island of Yell, >Shetland, with one pupil), home-school > a cultural vacuum isn't really a good alternative. > or send your kids to a private school, >which is what the upper middle classes have been doing for years. > same mass culture in fancier clothes. Even more pressure to conform. > Anyway as people are trained not >to say what they think, they seek other means and nonverbal signals, >actively encouraged by children's TV, are the best means. > ??? >Indeed I doubt if the whole notion of coolness is older than 30 to 40 years. > There are a whole lot of old hippies who would dispute that, including me. And some even older beatniks. > As I child this >use of the word cool always seemed an Americanism and i think you shoudl >understand the psychological importance of something conveyed via movies and >TV from the land of plenty. Cool was acting like the Fonz in Happy Days. The >more you stress coolness, the more nerds are sidelined. > >Now whether Bill Gates and Albert Einstein were on the spectrum is open to >debate,but they certainly did not suffer the same psychological trauma that >many of us have. They enjoyed optiminal conditions. I really don't see how >Microsoft behaves differently from other multinationals and certainly don't >approve of many of its business practices. Indeed I doubt if Bill is really >in control or entirely aware of the effects that his merchandise is having >the world. Does Bill really want to force war propaganda on the masses?I >doubt it, but that's what is bundled with X-Boxes over here (Desert Storm >II). The Microsoft monolith has been sucked into a global system alongside >Monsanto, GM, Ford, Chrysler-Benz, Texaco, Exxon, Enron etc.. > > I'm running linux here. We will push back the current outbreak of Mad Cowboy disease eventually, I hope. >AS is an issue because some otherwise intelligent individuals are at a >distinct disadvantage. My point is we would fare better in a lower impact >world with less emphasis on presentation and more on content. > > > >>How so? I don't see that. I see a trend, from the beginning of the >>species (or even the genus) until now, where nonverbal language went >>from the only means of communication to one that isn't necessary. We >>don't need it anymore... we have verbal rules and concepts that are much >>more clear and precise than the " fuzzy, " emotionally-based nonverbal >>cues ever were. >> >> > >Except advanced language has been with us for thousands of years long before >the industrial revolution and the recent consumer boom (since the 1940s in >North America and since the 1960s in Western Europe). I'd say we reached a >happy medium around the late 60s. Since the Mid 70s the rich /poor gap has >widened, and emotionally charged media have begun to play a much bigger role >in our lives. > Who owns the " news " ? > Your theory might be right in the long term in the post >mass-consumerist society, but for the time being advertisers and >propagandists would have a very hard job without appealing to emotions >rather than reason. > > but their tricks don't work on us. >>I don't know that this is the case... but even if it is, it can hardly >>be taken as a long-term trend. It would be but a blip on the radar... >>it is clear that, for all of human history, verbal or written language >>has been gaining in importance, while nonverbal language has been >>diminishing. A single person's perception of greater conformism does >>not make it so... but even if it is accurate, it could be regional, or >>it could be a short-lived phenomenon. If you look at recent human >>history, there have been alternating times of conformism and >>non-conformism... I can see non-conformism in the pre-depression >> " roaring 20s, " then society was interrupted by the depression and >>WWII... then there was a period of heavy conformism in the 1950s, >>followed by a period of nonconformism in the 60s and 70s, and then >>another period of conformism in the 80s. It ebbs and flows, but >>overall, I think we are making incremental gains. >> >> > >Oh I yearn for a return of the mythical peace movement of the 1960s, > It has returned. The mass media just isn't talking about it. >free love, > just as soon as we find a cure for AIDS > free speech etc.. > Freedom of the press is owning one. (T. Jefferson) >except most sold out very soon to commercialism. > Commercial interests moved in, and made a lot of noise about how everyone was selling out to them, and the real people headed for the hills. >I was heartened to witness so many demonstrators against the oil-grab invasion >of Iraq, but saddened that the media employed devious means to win over >wishful thinking leftists by adopting leftwing rhetoric about overthrowing >dictatorships, ridding the world of WMDs or establishing democracy (a >wonderful idea, but a sad joke in the real world). > Democracy *is* a wonderful idea still. Our country has been stolen by fundies and robber barons (who defame the idea of democracy by using it to wrap their lies in) but democracy still lives on in other countries. Bush's ONLY skill is the ability to lie convincingly. He is able to appeal to the instincts that the NTs rely on to determine if somebody is telling the truth. That should tell us something of the real value of these vaunted instincts. > But they got away with >it..but as the US economy (only 6 trillion in debt) falters and cheap oil >runs out (a matter of time), tomorrow's hippies will need to build a real >alternative... > > Today's hippies are working on it. >>Now, we live in a time where computers are ubiquitous, and computer >>nerds are not disliked as they were in the 1980s, when I was one, when I >>was in school. Our numbers appear to be growing, if there is anything >>to the reports that say so, and people are living a lifestyle that is >>more suited to people that live in groups of one than for people who >>desire to live in familial tribal groups. >> >> > >There have always been nerdish types who excel at painstaking tasks but are >not as adept at socialising. IT just happens to be what nerds choose today. >In times past I could see myself as a scribe in some remote monastery. A >balanced society values different kinds of contributions and also evolves to >channel human instincts to socially useful roles. However, our socially >competitive world isolates oddballs who cannot dance to the same beat. > > > > >>> Imagine a society nobody could tolerate the presence of others, >>> nobody sought friendship and everyone were completely immersed in >>> their own world. It would be utterly dysfuntional. >>> >>> >>It sounds nice to me. >> >> > >Everything you consumeis the product of an advanced industrial society that >would never seen the light of day without massive social organisation. A >human being devoid of intellectual input from other members of the same >species can achieve very little. We're a social animal, but we on the >spectrum may not socialise in the same way. > > > >>We could better tolerate others if they weren't so.... well, NT. Part >>of the reason I dislike others is because they place so much expectation >>upon me... they think that I am there for them to talk to or interact >>with, and that I should do so and be happy about it. A lot of the >>stress of being around them is caused by my not knowing when they are >>going to begin interacting with me and loading my speech modules, which >>I do not always like to do in public. >> >> > >Aspies dislike others precisely because they fail to act in the expected >cool way. > > > >>I don't see what the problem would be if nobody sought friendship. >> >> > >Humanity would be doomed... > >Of > > >>course, that is a strawman argument, because we already know that many >>of our kind do want friendships, although I can't personally understand >>why (unless they need someone to help move the furniture or something). >>But even if we take that as a given-- why would that be a problem? >> >> > >What would you do without any salary or social security benefit? You'd need >to get yourself a plot of land and start a new life based on subsistenance. > > > >>Which many of us don't believe exists outside of the heads of conspiracy >>theorists >> >> > >I good way to dismiss an idea is to call it a conspiracy theory. Yes, I do >think big business and big government collude to condition the masses. >Always have done and always will, except in recent years they've done so >with increasing intensity. > > The media is owned by an ever-smaller number of robber barons. The FCC has just acted (against MASSIVE public outcry) to allow even more consolidation. >>I don't see what you mean by that. I still have the right to vote, and >>to speak my mind and try to influence others. >> >> > >You mean the right to choose between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum? I mean how >did voting in Terminator III help Californians? They got rid of one corrupt >career politcian and voted in an actor. > Even with the All-Arnie-All-The-Time the media was giving us as a dry run for 2004, I am suspicious of the election results and think we may have been Diebolded (also a beta test for 2004). I don't know ONE person who voted for the Gropenator. > The only real alternative in the >last US presidential elections was Ralph Nader, but then again he had to >water down his program just to get 3%.If he had spoken his mind, the >corporate media would have run an almighty smear campaign. > > Nader wasn't a real alternative. He was just siphoning off votes from Gore to get Bush elected. Why else was he campaining hardest in all the small swing states that Gore needed to win? He would have gotten more votes campaining in big Democratic states. I would have considered voting for him if he wasn't being such an obvious spoiler to throw the election to Bush. >>Natural selection works when an accidental mutation causes a change in a >>species... a change that happens to cause the organisms of the species >>to be better adapted to their environment. I think that people without >>the tribal mentality are better adapted to our environment, >> >> > >Which isonly two or three generations old and could soon revert to a >pre-industrial ecomomy. > > No, it won't. That isn't sustainable with anywhere near our current population. The " die-off " scenarios don't work either, since the part of the world's population they consign to oblivion won't go quietly and leave a nice clean world for the survivors. More like a scorched Earth. We actually have to get off the planet. Some of our modern infrastructure, like our computers and our communications networks, are more energy-efficient than the old-fasioned way of doing those things, and can easily be run by renewable energy. These technologies will grow as energy costs rise. There may not be any gas for all those hummers, but we'll find the energy for the good stuff. >whatever the > > >>cause of the loss of that mentality may be. If you look at the >> " alarming " increase in the rate of autistic births, it looks like it is >>happening rapidly indeed, and it has been hypothesized that the >>increase, especially in San and the so-called Silicon Valley of >>California, may be the concentration of nerds (BAPs usually, aspies >>sometimes) and their genes. As the numbers increase, social >>acceptability is likely to follow. I think things don't look bad in the >>future. >> >> > >Wish you were right on that score, but my hope lies that sooner or later a >sizable minority will challenge the logic behind social competition and an >environmentally unsustainable economy. > >However, I seriously doubt that social ineptness has any evolutionary >advantage > some other autistic traits do, however. Ride the Music AndyTiedye Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted January 1, 2005 Report Share Posted January 1, 2005 Klein wrote: >You ought to thank them for saving you northerners from yourselves. > was probably close to the worst of all of the candidates >(pretending here that he was on the same level as all of the candidates >to replace him), probably right below that porn-star woman > > Based on what? The energy deregulation? That was 's baby. The fact that Enron ripped us off for billions of dollars? You can thank Bush and for that. The fact that they want to go on ripping us off forever? You did know about The Meeting, didn't you? http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/081903G.shtml http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=283 & row=0 http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/08/11/enron/index_np.html Now watch Arnie hold us down while Kennyboy and his friends grope a few more billions out of our wallets. Ride the Music AndyTiedye Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.