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Old 09-26-2016, 09:56 AM
 
Location: Missouri, USA
5,671 posts, read 4,355,463 times
Reputation: 2610

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Quote:
Originally Posted by gwynedd1 View Post
As I said, it takes a lot more than intelligence to be successful. An exchange of ICBMs would certainly require great technical expertise, but it would hardly be a success. The intelligence of the average person also hardly matters between a few points . What is the variability of it? A society that creates a few geniuses and it able to transmit it will likely do better than the relatively intelligent masses. This is the fatal flaw of socialism. Liver cells don't need to "know anything". They are specialized cells that do their job well and they are compliant in doing so. So while socialist countries try to educate everyone equally, successful societies compartmentalize, specialize and divide labor. Capitalism creates the equivalent of complex eukaryotic life forms with complex specialized organ systems. Social equalists emphasize growing a bacterial colony. Sometime cells revolt. We call that cancers. Sometime foreign agents enter the body, we call it an infection.

So its not how intelligent everyone is across a broad spectrum. Its how well they perform their functions, how compliant they are and how well they interact. If you randomly put together 20 "smart people", they would not come close to performing the task of a well trained team at McDonald's, especially if they hated each other.

Or I suppose one could just go with Neanderthals died out because they were stupid.
That's not a fatal flaw of socialism. That's just a strength of capitalism. You can have a capitalism with socialist programs like social security, the military, government funded police and firefighters, free medical care/dental care or various safety nets. Without our control centers that produce hormones and send signals for how the rest of the body should behave, we wouldn't last very long. The survival and the spreading of genetics of cells is often benefited by doing what those control centers tell them to do...but that's more similar to communism and socialism style governments that pure capitalism. Pure capitalism, I'd think, would be more like the vicious fighting we see in nature, where the rule is eat or be eaten...or eat then be eaten. Not many people in human society want to be eaten for doing poorly in business, and a society that gets too close to pure capitalism will lead to the type of viciousness, instability, and general unpleasantness that nobody wants. It's in everybody's benefit not to have a bunch of starving, mentally challenged, broke people with easy access to grenade launchers wandering in roving gangs through the streets.

Last edited by Clintone; 09-26-2016 at 10:32 AM..

 
Old 09-26-2016, 10:34 AM
 
20,728 posts, read 19,374,196 times
Reputation: 8293
Quote:
Originally Posted by Clintone View Post
That's not a fatal flaw of socialism.
No, state education,centrally planned, is probably one of the worst gifts of socialism. Not only does it arrest a natural division of labor, which was the opening statement Adam Smith said was the path to the national wealth, but it also servers as a propaganda machine.





Quote:
That's just a strength of capitalism. You can have a capitalism with socialist programs like social security, the military, government funded police and firefighters, free medical care/dental care or various safety nets.
Sure you can. However you cannot have open borders with socialism, not does it need to be on a large scale. Cooperation tends to work on the smaller scale. States should be far more social that the federal government. At the county level even more so. There are no federal fire departments for example. More or less my observations match those of well know classical sources. Societies with common trade and defense agreements tend to thrive. Unfortunately some rather intelligent (evil) people realize they can become successful parasites.


Quote:
The human body works like a combined capitalist/socialist government.
The individual cells evolved to work together because that was the best way for them to spread their genes, so they work for selfish reasons. Their behaviors are, however, directed by various hormones and chemicals from centers in the body, such as the pituitary gland. If they don't do what the body wants them to do, however, we say they are defective, and if they procreate uncontrollably to the point where they harm the rest of the body (like what happens in monopolies) we say they are cancerous and get chemotherapy or other treatments.

It was my analogy but it has its limits to the specifics. The point is nature itself creates specialized organs, not general unspecific tissue unless its in the early stages like stem cells. its certainly not all nerve tissue.
 
Old 09-26-2016, 10:35 AM
 
20,728 posts, read 19,374,196 times
Reputation: 8293
Are these full of the smarted ants in the world?


BBC - Earth News - Ant mega-colony takes over world
A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.
Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.


Kind of ironic that Eurasians are considered violent invasive civilizations when in fact it was their passive civilian tendency not to in fight that was responsible, just like the Argentinian ant.

passive domination:
However, the irony is that it is us who likely created the ant mega-colony by initially transporting the insects around the world, and by continually introducing ants from the three continents to each other, ensuring the mega-colony continues to mingle.
"Humans created this great non-aggressive ant population," the researchers write.
 
Old 09-26-2016, 12:12 PM
 
13,586 posts, read 13,126,981 times
Reputation: 17786
Quote:
Originally Posted by mtl1 View Post
I think the important points are that race is genetic or is a genetic grouping, through differential or isolated breeding, natural selection and evolution over an extended time period. The genetic difference affects not just phenotype and appearance but other things like the brain. So races differ mentally and in behavior, tendencies and the cultures they tend to create. There's also an issue of compatibility, interchangeability and affinity. Different outcomes are not caused by "racism" but by 10s or 100s of thousands of years of natural selection.
So then that would make my race (Caucasian ) the biggest A-holes in the history of the planet. Gee. Thanks.

I find the science fascinating. The Neanderthal DNA is interesting since for many years, it was purported that Neanderthals and modern humans did not breed, or produce live offspring. That was practically doctrine in the scientific community. Until they were proved wrong.

I have come to the conclusion, over many years, that people differ very much in some ways. But fundamentally, humans are humans. Culture can change and shape us, we are very malleable as children. But ultimately, we all need to breathe, to drink clean water, to eat.

We all love to eat and share good food with friends who make us smile. We love to laugh. We love our children. We love a good night's sleep. We like to be warm and safe and dry. The fundamentals remain the same.
 
Old 09-26-2016, 12:21 PM
 
Location: Los Angeles
14,361 posts, read 9,794,304 times
Reputation: 6663
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Dark Enlightenment View Post
With the results from 3 major studies now in, there doesn't seem to be much doubt left about this. All non-Africans can trace the vast majority of their ancestry (96% or more) to a single small group of Homo sapiens who left Africa between 50,000 and 80,000 years ago. And members of this group also received a small amount of DNA from Neanderthals and/or Denisovans. Africans are not closely related to the out-of-Africa group and did not receive DNA from the other human groups.

Read all about it in the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/sc...tory.html?_r=0

And watch a lecture from one of the main scientists involved, Carl Zimmer:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxYb0QtN1WI

Here is a simple chart that explains it all:

https://twitter.com/carlzimmer/statu...638976/photo/1

Out of Africa - The Unz Review
At this point I can't figure out how anyone can still believe that Africa wasn't where humans sprang from. Christians who deny this fail to realize that the Garden of Eden was most likely in North Africa, making Africa the defacto birthplace of civilization.

Like it or not, we all came from there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NLVgal View Post
The Neanderthal DNA is interesting since for many years, it was purported that Neanderthals and modern humans did not breed, or produce live offspring. That was practically doctrine in the scientific community. Until they were proved wrong.
Science... proven wrong? Nooooooooooooooooooooo say it ain't so!
 
Old 09-26-2016, 01:52 PM
 
Location: West Coast of Europe
25,947 posts, read 24,756,050 times
Reputation: 9728
I don't get the point of those findings, which are not that new, anyway. We are still all very closely related, which is why we can have perfectly healthy offspring when mixing, just like different dog breeds.
Even Neanderthals were so close that they could mix with homo sapiens sapiens, but having been a different species, the offspring were not always free of defects. Those that survived and were fertile somehow incorporated the alien genes and lived on like nothing happened.
 
Old 09-26-2016, 01:59 PM
 
19,966 posts, read 7,881,487 times
Reputation: 6556
Quote:
Originally Posted by NLVgal View Post
So then that would make my race (Caucasian ) the biggest A-holes in the history of the planet. Gee. Thanks.
I have no idea how or why you came to that conclusion. If anything you would conclude that Europeans paid their dues against harsh circumstances and nature to become what they are.

Quote:
I find the science fascinating. The Neanderthal DNA is interesting since for many years, it was purported that Neanderthals and modern humans did not breed, or produce live offspring. That was practically doctrine in the scientific community. Until they were proved wrong.
Agree, the scientific community wanted a certain doctrine and still does. But evidence is emerging that anatomically modern humans outside and inside Africa bred with early human groups.


Quote:
I have come to the conclusion, over many years, that people differ very much in some ways. But fundamentally, humans are humans. Culture can change and shape us, we are very malleable as children. But ultimately, we all need to breathe, to drink clean water, to eat.

We all love to eat and share good food with friends who make us smile. We love to laugh. We love our children. We love a good night's sleep. We like to be warm and safe and dry. The fundamentals remain the same.
I think that is too broad and generalized and maybe idealistic to have any real meaning or usefulness. It's analogous to saying dogs are all dogs and dogs and cats are all just pets. Or maybe people or people so everyone is the same to me as my sibling. It's just not the case.
 
Old 09-26-2016, 02:06 PM
 
Location: West Coast of Europe
25,947 posts, read 24,756,050 times
Reputation: 9728
Quote:
Originally Posted by mtl1 View Post
I have no idea how or why you came to that conclusion. If anything you would conclude that Europeans paid their dues against harsh circumstances and nature to become what they are.



Agree, the scientific community wanted a certain doctrine and still does. But evidence is emerging that anatomically modern humans outside and inside Africa bred with early human groups.




I think that is too broad and generalized and maybe idealistic to have any real meaning or usefulness. It's analogous to saying dogs are all dogs and dogs and cats are all just pets. Or maybe people or people so everyone is the same to me as my sibling. It's just not the case.
Actually, it is. There are no differences that get in the way of treating each other as if we were all the same. Look at all the mixed couples, all it takes is for people to get to know each other on a personal basis and they will notice how close we all are.
 
Old 09-26-2016, 02:11 PM
 
18,561 posts, read 7,380,719 times
Reputation: 11382
Quote:
Originally Posted by No_Recess View Post
But race still is a social construct.

The variables within the human species have never been enough to classify humans into sub-species (which is what "race" would be).
No, you're mistaken. The differences between some pairs of human races is greater than the difference between various pairs of species.
 
Old 09-26-2016, 02:19 PM
 
Location: West Coast of Europe
25,947 posts, read 24,756,050 times
Reputation: 9728
Quote:
Originally Posted by hbdwihdh378y9 View Post
No, you're mistaken. The differences between some pairs of human races is greater than the difference between various pairs of species.
That is not the case. Species are defined as different enough not to be able to reliably procreate. Tell me two different species that are closer than any two humans as different as say a Sudanese and a Swede.
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