[paradoxper]

   
I'm saying even before all this tech natural selection was already skewed.

 
No, I did get that. I mean, I just didn't get your explanation of getting there.

 

[proton007]

Everything evolves - as I have said previously, it is all a matter of timescale and perspective. Evolution of a single species is often not successful - and just because you are the dominant species, that doesn't mean you are immune from evolving into an unstable state and then disappearing. Just ask the dinosaurs, or the Megalodon shark or any species that tried to cope with a changing climate. I will say again: Your timescales are WAY too short. Humans haven't been around nearly long enough to even be in the same league as some of the past dominant species on this planet. You aren't going to see human evolution - but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

 
Exactly.
 
We're considering evolution as a controllable process, something we don't even know the mechanics of. Its a slow process of change.
 
The Niagra Falls will disappear in another 50,000 years. None of us will be around to see it happen, but that doesn't mean its not receding now as we write in this thread.

 

[Double-A]

@billybob _jcv: Why oh why did you change your avatar to a picture of that satanic freak Aleister Crowley? That guy is pure evil. Satan in the flesh.
 
EDIT: One thing is for sure . . . I'm glad that SOB is dead. I get the creeps just looking at someone so tangibly evil. Please tell me that this is just some October/Halloween thing.

 

[Magick Man]

I believe humans are a heck of a lot more lazy now, and people don't seem to be able to speak face-to-face anymore. I think in some ways we are devolving, sure.

Oh, and there's that Honey Boo Boo crap. Seriously, What?!?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

   
Quote:

   
No, I did get that. I mean, I just didn't get your explanation of getting there.

 
Natural Selection, particularly as modeled in Game Theory in Biology, assumes best design gets to live, dominate, breed and their genetic code gets handed down. For humans, aside from "nature," there's "nurture," but it'll work similarly as a person will care for a child generally based on their own characteristics - good guys care for kids and have a higher chance of raising responsible kids, douchebags and crack whores are likely to breed douchebags and crackwhores. In other cases there are other extraneous factors, like fishermen on the Inland Sea picking crabs that look "nice" (smoother shells, maybe rounder) and toss out the "ugly" ones, so aftera  few generations of people fishing there, we have crabs that gave birth to the myth that their ugly backs are the tormented souls of the Taira samurai who drowned there during the Battle of Dan-No-Ura.
 



(Yes of course not long enough to be considered evolution strictly speaking, but if you can observe it happening, it probably isn't unless you're forcing a mutation. This is a possible step towards it the same way one step is part of your trip to any destination, or any drop of water a part of whatever body of water you're looking it)
 
In applying this NS game theoretic simulation on inter-generational effects of (continuous) war, assume you call for volunteers in roughly 500BC* - for simplicity's sake,** you have an equal number of straight out ********* rats and heroic types, which serve as characteristics that are genetic and social. They go on campaign, conquer a city - ********* rats plunder and rape, some of them knock up the victims. They get caught in a counter-attack, heroic types are more likely to lead the counter-charge, ********* rats run for it. All heroic types get smashed by the enemy charge, some of the ********* rats get cut down by the cavalry, soem of them hide and survive. Given how many (illegitimate) kids the ********* rats may already have at home, plus all the rape babies they left in the city they sacked, they replicated their DNA more than the heroic types, and socially, these children will likely grow up in conditions more likely to raise ********* rats than heroic types themselves - fatherless and shunned by society because the mothers damaged goods,*** and their fathers aren't hailed as heroes either. Heroic types' children might end up dying similarly also. So in such a model, by the end of 100 rounds of the game, the DNA of Hector, Ajax, and Scipio are all gone and probably anyone valuing their characteristics. Which also explains why some people would not recognize those names as easily as names from Jersey Shore.
 


*As part of the second point above, not only does this put significant chronological distance from the present, but also to put the scenario in a context where such types are more likely to make the choices stated, meaning in the present you can have douchebags and idiots choosing to sign up for the military because they can't wait to live out CODMW while heroic types getting killed are in too many other possible situations - like DAs, cops and federal agents getting assassinated
**This is for scientific modelling to illustrate a scenario, of course society is not that black and white; also as an illustrative example it doesn't mean it can actually be practicable
***Again, 500BC - no rape crisis centers, no feminists and liberals yelling at you for this, only one Jesus in a few hundred years to scare off a mob trying to stone an adulterous woman while presumably giving a high-five to the dude

 

[xnor]

Have you read the greatest show on earth? I'm reading that atm.

 

[billybob_jcv]

@billybob _jcv: Why oh why did you change your avatar to a picture of that satanic freak Aleister Crowley? That guy is pure evil. Satan in the flesh.

EDIT: One thing is for sure . . . I'm glad that SOB is dead. I get the creeps just looking at someone so tangibly evil. Please tell me that this is just some October/Halloween thing.

I suspect you are going to be seeing a lot of disturbing avatars for the next month. It is "Occult October" in the TMAC thread.

 

[Magick Man]

@billybob _jcv: Why oh why did you change your avatar to a picture of that satanic freak Aleister Crowley? That guy is pure evil. Satan in the flesh.

EDIT: One thing is for sure . . . I'm glad that SOB is dead. I get the creeps just looking at someone so tangibly evil. Please tell me that this is just some October/Halloween thing.

He was the Alice Cooper/Marilyn Manson of his time, it was showmanship to build PR. When he wasn't trying to be a Victorian "shock jock", he wrote several very good books on meditation and yoga that are still respected and quoted today.

 

[Double-A]

I suspect you are going to be seeing a lot of disturbing avatars for the next month. It is "Occult October" in the TMAC thread.

Oh okay, that explains it. Thanks for clearing that up.
 
@Magick Man: He was pure evil and he also wrote a little book that said if you raped children you would live longer. Yeah you're right, he was wonderful.

 

[Magick Man]

Oh okay, that explains it. Thanks for clearing that up.

@Magick Man: He was pure evil and he also wrote a little book that said if you raped children you would live longer. Yeah you're right, he was wonderful.

Citation?

If you're referring to The Book of Lies, it wasn't about physical sex, it was written about spiritual union. When he talked about "sex magik" he wasn't referring to intercourse.

 

[billybob_jcv]

Citation?

If you're referring to The Book of Lies, it wasn't about physical sex, it was written about spiritual union. When he talked about "sex magik" he wasn't referring to intercourse.

But he did like peyote...

 

[Double-A]

Citation?

If you're referring to The Book of Lies, it wasn't about physical sex, it was written about spiritual union. When he talked about "sex magik" he wasn't referring to intercourse.

I've never read the book but people who have read it have stated that he believed this. Based on how I've heard that notorious book described I've decided that I am never going to read it (or any other of his books for that matter) because of how evil I've deemed it to be. Have you read the book?

 

[Magick Man]

I've never read the book but people who have read it have stated that he believed this. Based on how I've heard that notorious book described I've decided that I am never going to read it (or any other of his books for that matter) because of how evil I've deemed it to be. Have you read the book?

Yes, I own all of Crowley's books and have read most of them at last once, and some of them several times. Like I said, he used a great deal of metaphor in his writings, and often he would purposely mislead people. That was an extremely common practice in Victorian occult literature. He wasn't a "nice guy", by any stretch, but he also wasn't a murderer, rapist, or cannibal either. He played off of public fear and hatred to build a reputation, and that reputation has made him immortal in many ways.

 

[Double-A]

Yes, I own all of Crowley's books and have read most of them at last once, and some of them several times. Like I said, he used a great deal of metaphor in his writings, and often he would purposely mislead people. That was an extremely common practice in Victorian occult literature. He wasn't a "nice guy", by any stretch, but he also wasn't a murderer, rapist, or cannibal either. He played off of public fear and hatred to build a reputation, and that reputation has made him immortal in many ways.

I don't get why some people are so desperate to have a reputation that they don't even care if it's a bad one. People are so obsessed with having fame and they need to overcome that obsession.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

He was the Alice Cooper/Marilyn Manson of his time, it was showmanship to build PR. When he wasn't trying to be a Victorian "shock jock", he wrote several very good books on meditation and yoga that are still respected and quoted today.

 
What many Christians often forget about branding Crowley, Cooper and Manson is that there are a LOT of self-proclaimed "faithful" who do God a lot more injustice than all three of them combined. Just because someone tells you to "let loose," it doesn't necessarily mean they deny STDs or the difficulty of raising out of wedlock kids (the only time certain conservatives get around the latter part is through polygamy, so technically they aren't outside the family structure). The current teachings of one Church of Satan (I wouldn't really know why they even picked that guy to begin with) is basically that you shouldn't worry too much about the afterlife because you're not sure about what God wants, given God is beyond human comprehension, and so you should doubt it when people are soooooo sure about anything about God - including making people blow themselves up, blowing up other people, or claiming that a woman can't get pregnant if she didn't like it and to hell with it if their taxes go into abortion and social services. They don't even preach about doing that in a wanton way - if that was the case then they would be crawling with AIDS and unloved children.
 

Have you read the greatest show on earth? I'm reading that atm.

 
Not yet, but I had to read The God Delusion for school (yes, in a Catholic school, and murdering the contents wasn't the requirement - you can get a 4.0 arguing for it). My real take on the 6 days vs billions of years of Big Bang and Evolution? I'm a bit in line with Daniken and Sitchin on this one: it really could have been six "days" of creation, just not six earth days. Days on Jupiter, some planet near Sirius or Orion, much less "God Days" are not the same and technically, given human existence and even aliens if they did force ape mutation, are a drop in time, then we might actually be living still on the seventh "God day." That's the primary reason why God doesn't just drop a winning lottery ticket or hit the guy murdering you with a lightning bolt - God is "resting," or as Levinas put it, "withdrawn" because our brains are supposed to be enough. Memo - Earth to God : these nutjobs have the same brain and they hate tinkering with our genetic code!
 
That's why for all the flaws and rip-offs people claim about Gundam SEED and DESTINY, I actually like them because they resonate with pertinent issues we are facing in the longer term (00 is another - military industrial complex and energy crisis), as well as logical inconsistencies. I see people hating on genetic engineers but pumping children with performance enhancing drugs as no different from claiming that abortion and contraceptives are murder when they themselves won't cough up the (tax) money to care for these children, and their fear of being supplanted by the genetically superior as similar to the what Nietzsche discussed in The Parable of the Mad Man and in the concept of the Ubermensch (which if totally equated with being genetically superior is the Nazi interpretation) as a new compass or basis for morality.