imagine, if you will...

[monkey]

* that we didnt have amazing pre-and neo-natal care and infant mortality was on par with early humans.
* that the world was only populated by 1 billion people, all mixed.
* that the diseases that exist now (cancer/aids/bird flu) arent an issue. we dont mess with chemicals, monkeys or birds with flu.
* that we didnt spend the last 300 years messing with the environment

would this world be a better place?

[Bob]

sure, why not

[marsdaddy]

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Image if Back to the Future was never made.

[monkey]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[Schmeltz]

For a population of a billion people to maintain itself with the infant mortality rates of ancient times, there'd be no room for any of us to stand without stepping on a mass grave full of babies. We would also be unable to read this message because, since we didn't spend three centuries messing with the environment, there would be no internet, computers, or electricity. In fact, without that three centuries of exploitation, most of the billion people on the planet would be spending sixteen-hour days breaking their backs at subsistence agriculture - but if you were lucky you could maybe get a job on a little wind-driven merchant ship hauling small-scale trade to keep a tiny elite of fabulously wealthy nobles living in a luxury unimaginable to the great seething mass of miserable, impoverished humanity.

History is a two-way street. Yes, we have overpopulated, exploited, and grossly mismanaged this planet's resources. Yes, our interaction with the earth and with each other has produced, for many people, a terrifying onslaught of destruction and disease. At the same time, the quality of life is exponentially better now, for exponentially more people, than it has ever been before. The playing field in terms of standards of living is actually more even than it has ever been previously: now education, health care, good hygiene, and economic security are freely available to a much greater proportion of people than was the case three centuries ago when 99% of humanity lived lives of gruelling labour simply on the chance that their next child might live past the age of five.

So no, for all the problems that we confront right now I don't think the world would be a better place. We've made gains, and paid the price for them, just like always. The trick now is to make the payoff really worth it for future generations, not just for ourselves.

[QueenAdrock]

Well, the world's an inter-linking system. If you change around one thing, everything else in the system is changed. For example, no disease would lead to more people being alive which would lead to less food for everyone which would lead to more hunger and death. It's a delicate balance and way too many issues to contemplate whether or not it would be 'better' in the long run.

[Qdrop]

so basically, Pauli...

you're wrong.

end thread.

[ma belle]

if you make the death rate exceed the birth rate then the population will gradually shrink. 4 billion is sustainable. fertility rates are dropping already so i reckon it will all occur naturally. i don't expect governments of the world to do anything except maintain themselves and their systems. its up to us.

[marsdaddy]

if you make the death rate exceed the birth rate then the population will gradually shrink.Unless cryrogentics becomes a reality!

[ma belle]

well yes...

we can take all that money off the rich stupid people and freeze them for future consumption... more space and money for the rest of us... kind of like a modern day robin hood adventure. or vanilla sky!

[The Notorious LOL]

if the population was 1 billion versus 6 billion, then 16% of the current earths population would be alive. Odds are none of us would know because we would have an 84% chance of not existing.


So with that in mind, no...screw that idealistic hippie shit.

[Bob]

that's assuming that you exist right now

...duuuuuude

[ma belle]

hey nilsson

i think you just summed up bush's foreign policy
;)

[TurdBerglar]

How about we just kill 5 billion people who don't deserve to live?


nah

babies just need to die more. the population will eventually go down with less effort. maybe someone should taint the water supply with baby killing agents.

[CrankItUp!]

* that we didnt have amazing pre-and neo-natal care and infant mortality was on par with early humans.
* that the world was only populated by 1 billion people, all mixed.
* that the diseases that exist now (cancer/aids/bird flu) arent an issue. we dont mess with chemicals, monkeys or birds with flu.
* that we didnt spend the last 300 years messing with the environment

would this world be a better place?

...don't mess with monkeys ya say ???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMMYfvgq9m8&search=jay%20and%20silent%20bob :D

[Ace42X]

As infants dying is invariably due to outside influences, there is very limited scope for evolution to play a significant part in development. The strongest and most disease resistant baby isn't going to survive being eaten by wolves, for example. The only qualities that will be ACTIVELY bred through to subsequent generations are ones which help a baby survive / help with birthing. A faculty for learning, etc will only very very coincidentally be bred through, as the benefits only become apparent AFTER the infant has had a chance to grow up. IE there is no selection based on it until after the individual has had a chance to learn, etc. The same is true for all manner of socially necessary behaviours, etc etc.

High infant mortality means that later-term beneficial traits are "watered down" by the high chances of even the most adapted offspring for dying quite coincidentally. If there was associated lowed life expectancy (due to lack of medical advancements associated with an advanced society) - then a lot of other traits that only begin to become more rewarding as the individual gets older will be less significant compared to traits which allow the parents to survive to breeding age and have lots and lots of attempts at sex.

So, in short, we'd quite possibly have a stupider world.

[monkey]

some of you people didnt read this correctly. it was mostly a question whether or not you'd be willing to give up what we now think of as basic (like your kids NOT dying before age 2) for a world that's "better" in terms of what humans have done to the environment. it's like getting rid of the human effect.

no wrong or right, just thoughts. sometimes we need to just think about these things.

[monkey]

For a population of a billion people to maintain itself with the infant mortality rates of ancient times, there'd be no room for any of us to stand without stepping on a mass grave full of babies. We would also be unable to read this message because, since we didn't spend three centuries messing with the environment, there would be no internet, computers, or electricity. In fact, without that three centuries of exploitation, most of the billion people on the planet would be spending sixteen-hour days breaking their backs at subsistence agriculture - but if you were lucky you could maybe get a job on a little wind-driven merchant ship hauling small-scale trade to keep a tiny elite of fabulously wealthy nobles living in a luxury unimaginable to the great seething mass of miserable, impoverished humanity.

History is a two-way street. Yes, we have overpopulated, exploited, and grossly mismanaged this planet's resources. Yes, our interaction with the earth and with each other has produced, for many people, a terrifying onslaught of destruction and disease. At the same time, the quality of life is exponentially better now, for exponentially more people, than it has ever been before. The playing field in terms of standards of living is actually more even than it has ever been previously: now education, health care, good hygiene, and economic security are freely available to a much greater proportion of people than was the case three centuries ago when 99% of humanity lived lives of gruelling labour simply on the chance that their next child might live past the age of five.

So no, for all the problems that we confront right now I don't think the world would be a better place. We've made gains, and paid the price for them, just like always. The trick now is to make the payoff really worth it for future generations, not just for ourselves.

oh yea. this person got it. (y)

[monkey]

Actually, I don't think you asked the question correctly.

probably. i was just trying to get you people to think in terms of choice. would you give up the possible life of your child for the ability to live in a world without its current issues?

[monkey]

see i love this lifestyle. i love the ability for me to get any book i want in less than a minute or find out anything i want from google, etc. but im becoming ever-so-conscious about what i put into my body and how the environment is affecting me. YET, early humans had the perfect undisturbed environment but they died young and their quality of life (as thought of today) sucked.

i wish i was an ant. their lifestyles havent changed much, have they?

[drizl]

i think that sounds like a big fucking party. imagine if we lived on the earth, with the earth, celebrated the solstices in tribes, had a crazy shaman communicating with the otherworlds and bringing back the stories in front of the fire. seasons bringing change in lifestyle, maybe migrating....the culture, the human-beingness....thats some real shit. too bad we gave it all up for cars, apartments and irradiated meat.












i stopped in utah for about six months last year, lived in the forest, in the desert, backpacked, hitchiked and saught our ancestors, played amongst the ruins, dreamed below starry skies, sang beneath the heavens, ate the sacred datura, communicated with the great desert....it was amazing.

[drizl]

made me feel alive...what life used to be like...

[Ace42X]

perfect undisturbed environment?

Perfect and undisturbed in what way?

[monkey]

Perfect and undisturbed in what way?
in the way which is the complete opposite of now.

and drizl, that experience sounds awesome. i would love to have the balls to do it. :o

[Ace42X]

in the way which is the complete opposite of now.

I was being serious. And I cannot see how the "complete opposite of now" is either perfect, or "how it was back then."

Take gravity, it hasn't changed much through the aeons of mankind. The complete opposite of "now" would have ape-men floating through clouds. And oxygen - the absense of which, the opposite of it being present at the moment", would not only be lethal to us, but also men of any age.

I think you need to clarify precisely what you mean, as the opposte of "now" is as far from perfect as I can get.

[Qdrop]

As infants dying is invariably due to outside influences, there is very limited scope for evolution to play a significant part in development. The strongest and most disease resistant baby isn't going to survive being eaten by wolves, for example. The only qualities that will be ACTIVELY bred through to subsequent generations are ones which help a baby survive / help with birthing. A faculty for learning, etc will only very very coincidentally be bred through, as the benefits only become apparent AFTER the infant has had a chance to grow up. IE there is no selection based on it until after the individual has had a chance to learn, etc. The same is true for all manner of socially necessary behaviours, etc etc.



socially necessary behaviors would have an effect on finding mates and having babies......sexual selection, etc.
so it could balance out to a degree.

[ma belle]

natural selection includes intelligence as well as physical resilience.

perhaps if the catholic church allowed condoms there would be far less babies and therefore less dying babies, which would lower the birth rate.

less abuse of the land (just adding NPK to the soil for years has made the soil sterile - pointed out in the 1940s by the WHO) and humans (particularly child labour) in the name of profit eg the sweat shops that make brand clothing, would be a move in the right direction.

as for gravity - no one's ever proved or measured the existence of 'gravitons'...a bit like god

[Ace42X]

natural selection includes intelligence as well as physical resilience.

To an infinitly lesser degree if there is a high infant mortality rate, as intelligence has NO say in the survival chances of a helpless child who is too young to use it, and whose behaviour is based solely on instinct, rather than intelligence based decision making.

Combined with a shorter life-span, there is less benefit for intelligence as you have less time in order for the benefits to become apparent. Intelligence is of little use without knowledge to process with it, and knowledge has to be acquired over time. The resources, both mental and in terms of the time spent "experimenting" (in a primitive playful way, not in a lab, obv) could be lethal before being beneficial (For example testing berries and accidentally discovering one is highly toxic. Learning that deep caves aren't as full as oxygen as you'd like whilst exploring, etc etc) all adding a "drag" factor to this trait.

So, when you take into account the confounding variables, yes clearly intelligence is a useful trait and will be bred in over time, but the more confounding variables you add the longer it will take - and high infant mortality is an incredibly big confounding variable. A rise from 3% to 50% (and it could quite conceivably be higher) would mean that there is a 50% chance that no matter how sophisticated the intelligence traits in offspring are, they will not be bred through from an individual who otherwise would;'ve grown up and repearted the benefits and been able to pass them on.

I am sure plenty of older posters will say "I thought I knew it all when I was 18, but I didn't" to illustrate this anecdotally.

as for gravity - no one's ever proved or measured the existence of 'gravitons'...a bit like god

Who mentioned gravitons? The mechanism of the force is beside the point. No matter which theory you choose to believe or discount, the fact remains that there is an observable "force" (or 'effect' or 'thing' if you want to argue over terminology) that was well documented by Newton, and that if it was in opposition, we'd be floating about trying to catch nearby apples floating off trees and drink upward flying water. Or, more accurately, dead because there is no atmosphere for us to breath.

[ma belle]

i take your point Ace, but i meant that personally speaking i reckon i am fairly intelligent...at least i got degrees and diplomas coming out my ass if that's the measurement. but more importantly i can light fires, build shelters and have a basic working knowledge of how to survive, navigate, eat out in the wilds - which i reckon is a better measurement. i can play music with people of all other cultures. i also do my best to develop my mind, body and spirit through various means. i know lots of people who have no paper qualifications who can do these other things, and they are just as intelligent in my opinion too.

natural selection, and through that mutation to the developing environmental climate, may favour more people becoming like that over time. if not then i reckon we're all actually fucked and may as well start freeloading now because the whole shebangs going up in smoke. take your choice, and i took mine. :)

[Qdrop]

To an infinitly lesser degree if there is a high infant mortality rate, as intelligence has NO say in the survival chances of a helpless child who is too young to use it, and whose behaviour is based solely on instinct, rather than intelligence based decision making.

Combined with a shorter life-span, there is less benefit for intelligence as you have less time in order for the benefits to become apparent. Intelligence is of little use without knowledge to process with it, and knowledge has to be acquired over time. The resources, both mental and in terms of the time spent "experimenting" (in a primitive playful way, not in a lab, obv) could be lethal before being beneficial (For example testing berries and accidentally discovering one is highly toxic. Learning that deep caves aren't as full as oxygen as you'd like whilst exploring, etc etc) all adding a "drag" factor to this trait.

So, when you take into account the confounding variables, yes clearly intelligence is a useful trait and will be bred in over time, but the more confounding variables you add the longer it will take - and high infant mortality is an incredibly big confounding variable. A rise from 3% to 50% (and it could quite conceivably be higher) would mean that there is a 50% chance that no matter how sophisticated the intelligence traits in offspring are, they will not be bred through from an individual who otherwise would;'ve grown up and repearted the benefits and been able to pass them on.

I am sure plenty of older posters will say "I thought I knew it all when I was 18, but I didn't" to illustrate this anecdotally.



AGAIN, you are discounting the natural/sexual selection of the parents....
intelligent children who do make it past infancy for reasons unrelated to intelligence....but with better genes for higher intelligence. the higher intelligence would lend itself to a higher survival rate, and thus....a higher birth rate for those parents...who pass those genes on to thier children.


jesus, do you have me on ignore?
you are such a child.

[Lyman Zerga]

q said youre such a child

[ma belle]

Oh yeah I forgot to say that bit..nice one

AGAIN, you are discounting the natural/sexual selection of the parents....
intelligent children who do make it past infancy for reasons unrelated to intelligence....but with better genes for higher intelligence. the higher intelligence would lend itself to a higher survival rate, and thus....a higher birth rate for those parents...who pass those genes on to thier children.

(y)

[Ace42X]

Oh yeah I forgot to say that bit..nice one

I didn't, I actually covered that, twice.

[Qdrop]

I didn't, I actually covered that, twice.

no, you ignored it.

[adam_f]

You both need to take your soma.