World Population Growth

[wacki]

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Medicine has advanced to the point where "traditional" evolution no longer works right.

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Within a couple of decades traditional evolution will be obsolete. We are already re-writing our genome. Well, some of us are anyway. If I ever have a child I fully intend to give him a designer genome.

BTW, one of the founders of this website (John Feeney) has a blog you might be interested in:

http://growthmadness.org/

[BCPVP]

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For similar reasons, I think some efforts to rescue endangered species is somewhat ridiculous. The success of humans has changed the landscape. Some species have adapted well and some have not. And some others would have gone extinct regardless of human presence. Again, we are so full of self-importance that we think every consequence is a result of our own action. Even if it is true, we are a natural part of the world. Species that don't adapt don't continue. Deal with it.

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This is same logical error that popped up a zillion times in the meat thread. The mere fact that we are sufficiently intelligent and industrialized to cause the extinction of a wide variety of plants and animals does not mean that such extinctions are part of the natural order of things and therefore no particular cause for concern.

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What is the "natural order of things"?

[DosXX]

LOL at the the thought humans can trump "traditional evolution." As long as we are carbon-based life forms with hereditary material, we have evolution. Its like as long as we have mass, we are subject to gravity.

[Rococo]

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Jeff - There is a strong inverse correlation between income and population growth.

You might also want to read up on James Watson (the daddy of DNA) and his views on the issue.

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Are you suggesting that the OP would agree with Watson, or that you agree with Watson? I hope not.

Watson article on race

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I have a question for you. Lets just pretend the standardized IQ test is an accurate indicator of intelligence. And lets just pretend that the average IQ score for a negro (85) is half way between mental retardation (70) and the average for white people (100). Would you still find Watson racist? And lets just pretend that east Asians and Jews are higher than whites. Would you consider anyone that claims East Asians smarter than the average white as racist?

Just asking a hypothetical question to see how open ones mind is.

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One would also have to assume that intelligence is an immutable characteristic that is fixed at birth and unaffected by nutrition, education, etc.

If all those assumptions were true, and I strongly believe that they are not, the issue would be trickier.

Even then, one would have little basis for making a blind assumption about an individual person's intelligence based on skin color.

In any case, Watson's statement that, "even though he hopes everyone is equal, people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true," reveals him as an old-fashioned racist.

[jeffnc]

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If you believe in evolution, then you should believe that it always operates "correctly." Our definition of what is 'fittest' may change, but the fittest are always going to survive.

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No, I think you're missing the point. Evolution is no longer operating "correctly" - at least not on the short term - at least not in any way that we would recognize as evolution as everything thinks of it. When individuals of a species can regulate the survivability of the species as a whole, then we no longer have evolution of the species. We basically got one or two lucky intelligent individuals (which might or might not have gotten that way because of evolution) who now break the evolutionary chain. That, and combined knowledge of hundreds of years of civilization.

If anything, we're now into something new which might be called "cultural evolution" (aka "progress" and "high technology"), but it's not like anything that's ever occurred before, so normal rules of "evolution" don't apply.

To put it another way, we've stopped normal evolution from operating correctly. (e.g. survival of progressively weaker individuals is ensured.) There is no adaptation going on, because there's no advantage to adapting. Someone else will protect, cure, and provide for us. We are living off the principle or trust fund of past intelligence. The occasional brilliant person will still come along and make some advancement, but just by freak chance, not by natural selection.

[JereLock]

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I have a basic theory that is probably not popular, and is also easily misunderstood, so I rarely discuss it. In a nutshell, I think the world population (of humans) is too high and population growth should be stopped.

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Rainbow 6 anyone?

[jeffnc]

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BTW, one of the founders of this website (John Feeney) has a blog you might be interested in:

http://growthmadness.org/

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Yeah, this article is referenced
http://tinyurl.com/32stkn

[jeffnc]

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LOL at the the thought humans can trump "traditional evolution." As long as we are carbon-based life forms with hereditary material, we have evolution. Its like as long as we have mass, we are subject to gravity.

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Ridiculous. Tell that to the astronauts on the shuttle. Gravity doesn't matter if you're not close enough to a gigantic mass. The human species has done the equivalent of moving far enough away from the Earth that it's irrelevant.

[wacki]

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Jeff - There is a strong inverse correlation between income and population growth.

You might also want to read up on James Watson (the daddy of DNA) and his views on the issue.

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Are you suggesting that the OP would agree with Watson, or that you agree with Watson? I hope not.

Watson article on race

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I have a question for you. Lets just pretend the standardized IQ test is an accurate indicator of intelligence. And lets just pretend that the average IQ score for a negro (85) is half way between mental retardation (70) and the average for white people (100). Would you still find Watson racist? And lets just pretend that east Asians and Jews are higher than whites. Would you consider anyone that claims East Asians smarter than the average white as racist?

Just asking a hypothetical question to see how open ones mind is.

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One would also have to assume that intelligence is an immutable characteristic that is fixed at birth and unaffected by nutrition, education, etc.

If all those assumptions were true, and I strongly believe that they are not, the issue would be trickier.

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Do you know what hypothetical means? The rules I laid out clearly stated that "pretend the standardized IQ test is an accurate indicator of intelligence". Now, I repeat this question in a hypothetical situation.

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Even then, one would have little basis for making a blind assumption about an individual person's intelligence based on skin color.

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In the very same article you referenced: He also said people should not be discriminated against because of their color, adding that "there are many people of color who are very talented."

So it would appear that in this sentence he is not claiming that all people of color are of low intelligence. Maybe he misspoke, maybe he is racist, maybe the reporter fabricated a quote which they are infamous for doing. I don't know and I don't care. I'm simply interested in the concept that people are different. Again, my question about the hypothetical situation still stands.

FYI:
Please note, I am a strong proponent of widespread acceptance of genetic diversity. However, I find peoples inability to accept certain concepts of genetic diversity rather curious.

[wacki]

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LOL at the the thought humans can trump "traditional evolution." As long as we are carbon-based life forms with hereditary material, we have evolution. Its like as long as we have mass, we are subject to gravity.

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Well you can LOL at me all you want but my field is directly related to this. If you think that designer evolution will never out pace regular evolution then you are simply ignorant. We are creating chimeras as we speak.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n..._chimeras.html

and that's just the simple stuff.