Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (185044)	4/13/2006 5:03:36 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

<so you do like population control. > Of course. Without it, we'd be in Malthusian/Hobbesian times again. But still, the more the merrier. We are far from "needing" to cut the population. What's needed is quality improvement, not quantity reduction. That vast eugenics process of quality improvement is proceeding apace. Check out the Flynn Effect to see some results. Women are very very keen on eugenics. Around the world, most women are in fact choosing. And so are most men. <Humans are the only ones who choose how many children to have. <<AFAIK, quite a few of them don't choose. They just reproduce >>> Those on welfare are choosing to have children too. Yes, the Catholic church proscribes prophylactic prescription, but I heard that Ireland and Italy are Catholic, and count the babies. I doubt that they have given up sex. But there are very few babies. <The 6-billion humans have expanded into a virtual vacuum as a result of our intelligence over other species. > I doubt the species we displaced would consider themselves a vacuum, if they could consider such things. Bad luck for those species which were in the way. That's interspecies battle for survival [just as humans used to look on other tribes as just another species to be cleared out of the way, eaten, enslaved]. Body mass and longevity probably correlate well. Sluggishness of habits would go along with life expectancy too [as it's the highly active species which probably run into trouble more frequently than something that just hibernates in mud for half the year, or just sits in the sun day in, day out]. Tortoises have long life expectancy so that they have time to get to their destination before closing time. On the ice age, there's no doubt that we have been in the thick of it for eons. We are merely in an interglacial period. It would be nice to avoid desertification, but I'd rather take my chances with that than another ice-up. I can always wear sunscreen, but 3 kilometres of ice on my house would be really annoying. On increasing numbers of people increasing total happiness, obviously that doesn't apply in Malthusian increases. But that's not what we have. People choose to have children because they want to, and they love their children [apart from the welfare bludgers who have them as a meal ticket and treat them hideously]. People choose to do things because they figure it will increase their happiness. Our grandson has certainly increased my happiness. It would be saddening if he suddenly vanished. I'd have to waste more time playing golf or something. <Certainly my dogs are happy creatures, and I doubt they hit 100.> Of course, and pet people with IQ 70 looked after as well as you no doubt look after your dogs, would be happy too. Happiness doesn't come with the IQ, it comes with the reduced exigencies of life which brainpower enables. If those exigencies go away, then happiness is not correlated with IQ. It might even be that being dumb as a dog is a happier state than being smart, and wondering and worrying what the hell is going on in this weird place we inhabit, or think we do, and what's going to happen to us. <Most crime happens in high density situations. It must therefore be a result of human happiness> That's correlation, not causation. I'll leave it to you to try to work it out. That'll be more interesting than Sudoku. Mqurice