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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (18111)	12/8/2007 11:40:41 PM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

They do try a huge range of things on a vast number of pathogens and use natural selection to determine the winners. I happen to design equipment sold into the drug discovery industry. Evolutionary strategies are well used in that business, as even the Conservative blogger I linked stated. Which is why he was calling the ID'ers clueless. For some obscure reasons you seem to think that natural selection only works on sexual selection? How did life on earth evolve prior to sexual selection? You do known that most primitive life forms do not reproduce sexually don't you? Sexual selection is but a small part of evolution. I have noticed in prior comments from you that it looms large in your mind. Perhaps date rejection???

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (18111)	12/9/2007 12:02:02 AM
From: neolib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

It's a new thing, so the unimaginative and Luddite types are automatically opposed and prefer the old cruelty, suffering and death process which nature inflicts on DNA carriers. Err... I was the one stating that population control is preferred to control via suffering. You were the one in favor of continued population growth. You're the Luddite, clinging to cruelty & suffering in that case. As an example, various Africa countries are running at about 4 births/women for lifetime fertility (Zim is a little below, but Kenya is closer to 5 for instance). Using 4, assuming no Luddite cruelty & suffering, that is a doubling/generation. Assume the generation is about 30 years (most likely being generous here), then about 9 generations or 270 years takes Zim from its current pop to 6.5B, the current world pop. You think Zim can support 6.5B in 270 years? Of course Zim is not currently growing, due to AIDS as I noted in a prior post. But if AIDS goes away, either the growth returns and some other suffering will take over, or growth is reduced by intelligence, which can get around the suffering part. What one cannot get around is growth without eventual suffering. Something you fail to understand, and can't justify either. Feel free to pick some numbers and show how they play out, if you think growth can remain significantly positive. Please stay away from the pathological examples of positive functions with small finite integrals. I'm not wanting to split hairs here. Such functions eventually are close enough to zero to be called zero when you have to deal with integers (babies don't come in fractions). And please don't claim that in 270 years we'll be exporting the "surplus" to Mars or outside the solar system.