Come on… argue a bit more. We need this thread to break out of the 8-bit boundaries of the past and exceed post #255!

Unless you're not smart enough to do it….

Yo' mama.

When the police came for the murderers,
I remained silent;
I was not a murderer.

Then they locked up the rapists,
I remained silent;
I was not a rapist.

Then they came for the thieves,
I did not protest;
I was not a thief.

Then they came for the drunk drivers,
I did not speak out;
I was not a drunk driver.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me.

I wasn't advocating it so much as pointing out what I see as a flaw in your argument. I'm not sure why you have decided that some things make people happy but others don't. In particular, you've decided that people would be happier with a government or other force telling them if, when, and how they can have children, and that this would be better; but then, you decide that people wouldn't be happy if they are somehow calibrated to be precisely satisfied with what they have. In other words, I think you appear slightly arbitrary in your picking and choosing of what is in the name of the greater happiness and what isn't, or at least, you have not justified those assumptions.

Logically you're correct, so are you going to keep beating the dead horse, or are you going to share some interesting insights?

Some news related to the topic at hand:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/...

Aboriginals have an average IQ below 70.

And you were doing this by suggesting that deliberately causing mental retardation causes people to be happier, even though you yourself admit that you don't believe this is true?


Observation?


I'm not suggesting that at all. It would, of course, be convenient for you if I were, because it would be easier for you to argue against. But unfortunately you cannot win a debate that way; you need to argue with what I am actually saying, not with what you would like to imagine I am saying.

To clarify: first, I am suggesting that these people's children would be happier, not that they would; second, I am suggesting that the comparatively minor inconvenience of some people having to go through embryo screening when they want to have children is a price worth paying for that. If you doubt that people without disabilities are happier than those with them, then ask someone who has had the experience of being disabled and also not being disabled which of those two states they were happier in and which of those two states they would prefer to be in from now on if they had a free choice. You know perfectly well what the answer will be, and it is pointless to try to deny it.


Again, that simply isn't what we're discussing. Aidil made the rather bizarre and patronising assertion that it is impossible for an intelligent person to be happy doing a menial job, before going on to make the truly terrifying suggestion that is therefore actively desirable for people to be deliberately inflicted with otherwise-unnecessary levels of mental retardation in order to make their intellects compatible with their jobs.

Both of aidil's basic assumptions are self-evidently wrong. It is not the case that an intelligent person must be unhappy doing menial work; even if he doesn't enjoy his job, there are plenty of non-work-related aspects to his life which can still make him happy. And if we can accept that society has changed enough to make everyone of high intelligence, then surely we can accept the possibility of job-sharing? It is even less true to imagine that a stupid person is somehow guaranteed to be happy, merely because he is doing a job that is at the upper limit of what his intellect is capable of dealing with. Many stupid people in menial jobs are desperately miserable, and neither the fact that their job is boring nor their lack of imagination and intellect makes life any easier.

Both of these facts are, again, merely a matter of observation.

One of my guilty pleasures is a series of not-good books called "WarWorld",
which involves what happens in the future when humanity breeds superfast,
superstrong, supersmart supersoldiers for use in the battlefield against
other countries.

The supersoldiers obviously eventually decide they know better. Derr.
Plus they wind up with an inherent and explicit reason for a new
supersoldier society: the genetic development of the perfect soldier.
Only makes sense, since humanity winds up waging a genocidal war
against them out of terror the supersoldiers will wipe them out first.

Terrible books. Loved the idea.

So anyway, in one of these books there's a chapter with a supersoldier
in a garrison, moppin the floor or somethin. He's a total loser,
always worst at the range, never fast enough on the track, dead last
in every written test, just a complete waste of protoplasm. He's
like, crapjob engineer, 4th class. So he's moppin away and there's
a blast that shakes the building. Turns out the frontline supersoldiers
were all wiped out in a surprise attack by human forces, and he's
basically the last uninjured guy. He suits up, confronts the enemy,
and fricken kills every human invader he finds, using hyperfast
reflexes, abusively ingrained training, supersharp battlefield wits
and oxlike strength and resilience. He rages like a god of battle,
feeling the burning fire of war joy roaring through his veins
fulfilling the destiny and use that every fiber of his being
was created for. Only through an unlucky accident does he bite the
dust…but when he dies, he dies feeling at last like a Soldier.

Man what a crappy book. But you do wonder who cleans the toilets
of the master race.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

Scandum complaining about someone else being a broken record is win.

-Crat

Yknow what this sounds like to me? It sounds like the Spanish justification
for the rape, murder, and robbery of mesoamerica. But replace "higher
average IQ" with "the sainted grace of the heavenly father."

There is good reason to view with a jaundiced eye the absolute certainty
of people who insist on proselytizing that some races are inherently
superior/inferior. What exactly is it supposed to lead to?

btw, nice cite, Scandum. Top notch, as usual.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

I think the more you look into human colonization of space, the more
depressing the outlook for it seems. Sure, there may be astonishing
breakthroughs in the next 500 or 1,000 years, but ultimately our
meatbag bodies are pretty much made for this one environment, and
it is crazy expensive to recreate it where it doesn't exist.

My guess is that by the time we make the breakthroughs required
to construct longterm living-meatbag containers to do the job of
colonizing space, we'll have the technology to ditch the meatbags.

How "human" we'll be then I think would be something that meatbag
humans might be willing to debate, but not in a position to do so.
I wonder how the synthetic humans will think of us in 30,000 years.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

PS 250!

I suggest folks get a hold of a DVD called "The Fog of War." It's
a fascinating interview with Robert S. McNamara, a(n) (in)famous
figure in american politics and military history.

In this interview he lists the things he learned from his
experiences, and there's a point he made which really stayed
with me.

We've reached a point in our development where we don't get
a second chance on some choices. Back 100 years ago we could
do *everything* in war that we possibly could, anything in
our power, and the worst we'd do is ruin a few nations.

Now we're capable of ruining a lot more than a few nations,
and this is a completely new experience foe humans. We've
never before had the ability to actually wipe ourselves out.

What we're used to doing is trial and error, trial and error.
We try a thing, see the results, go back to the drawing board.
Sometimes we get "eureka" sometimes "that's funny", but
always we test and experiment and that's how we learn. Sadly,
this is even how we wage war, at the expense of our younglings.

But now we have in our hands tools that must be used correctly,
the very first time, if at all. Nothing in our development
was like this. We are simply unprepared for it. Completely.
As a society, as a culture, as a race. We are a monkey with
a pistol.

That's how I view this eugenics business. Someday we'll be
smart enough and wise enough to have a shasarak society
where reason above all else guides our policy. Until then
what we have is the politics of greed as our form of
economy and government. We work within those controls only
just as much as we absolutely have to by force of law*, and
not because we think those instruments of control are wise
enough to make the best choices for us.

Giving those greed-driven instruments control over the expression
of the fruit of our precious bodily fluids is completely
unacceptable to me, and I expect it's abhorrent to most people
brought up in a free society. Not just because we are emotional
about our potential babies, but because giving control to the
government of something that has to be got right the first time
must be done only when there is absolutely no choice at all.

I'm not surprised that these eugenics fantasies being described
here seem to imply an incredibly powerful government that
imposes these genetic choices. A free people would know better
than to submit to such a thing given our present state of
human governance.

In summary:

- We don't even know how to do it.
- If we did know how to do it, we'd need a perfected government
and/or a perfected people in the first place.
- Even if we had it figured out, we'd probably fuck it up the first time.
- We probably wouldn't get a second chance.

I don't know if I call the current genetic selection system
"intelligent design." I'm inclined not to, since it has religious
baggage. However, whatever you call it, it's worked fine for a
good long while. Just because people are alarmed at some transient
social trend of the past X decades is an incredibly poor reason to
tinker with a system that worked this well, this long.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

* With obvious rare exceptions where the law dovetails with our
sense of right and wrong. Most of us wouldn't murder for fun,
for example. Hopefully.

It's funny how people have had to struggle in order to establish
this democracy thing. To assert the will of the majority can
be a very very difficult thing if the minority has a lot of
advanced weaponry.

The arc of history bends toward freedom, though, and I expect even
places like Burma-not-Myanmar will eventually have to hearken.

But majority rule isn't the last word. Modern democracy must also
protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

Speaking of democracy, this whole discussion reeks
of anti-democracy.

I was talking to this Dutch guy and he was decrying the high
vote turnouts in Europe. He said high vote turnouts ruin
everything.

I was like wat? Dat gaat niet! He's like jaa tootaly. He
said that with high vote turnout, what you get is a bunch
of poor and unemployed people not paying enough in taxes
for the services they demand to receive, voting for the
people who will pander to their laziness.

I'm like, so fuck the will of the people right?

Folks, if the problem is "people" then let's educate
them and help them out of their misery. Talking about
how we just need better people aint gonna do nothin.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

Please point out where I said that I want to deliberately cause mental retardation or stfu (and no, your attempts to put words in my mouth don't qualify)



How about you take some of your own medicine.
Or are you one of those 'do as I say, not as I do' people.

And for your information, I said not being able to use your mental capacity is less satisfying often, hence, people working below their mental capabilities have a good chance of also being less happy as a result. The impossibility is only in your own imagination, as is the suggestion to deliberately retard people to achieve this.

255!

For somebody who presumes to tell people how to argue, I'm a little surprised that this is the best you've got! :rolleyes:

I've made several points regarding why I think your argument doesn't float; you make far too many assumptions and simple assume (hrm) that everybody else either agrees with them or hasn't observed humanity enough. So, for starters, I'm not convinced that your premises are true, and frankly, I'm not convinced that your logic is, either.

For example, you allow that people can be happy in other ways than their job, and therefore should not be tailored to be happy with precisely their job. But then you put disabilities up on a pedestal and disallow people to be happy because of this. You pick and choose your "points of happiness" a little too freely for my taste.

Your indirection regarding people vs. their children is nothing more than a rhetorical trick because the same force would be acting upon those very children to prevent them from reproducing in ways you see unfit. You'd be far better off arguing that the inconvenience is very minor than this business with people and their children. I don't agree with you on the inconvenience point either, but your position is far more defensible there.

Anyhow I don't mean to be rude but I'm starting to lose interest a little bit here. You're picking and choosing what you reply to, and, well, frankly I am too because fewer and fewer things are interesting me.


Ah-yup.

That's the entire problem, education teaches people skills, it doesn't make them more intelligent, wiser, or develop common sense. Intelligent children spend 10 years doing the same boring crap in school, and unintelligent children spend 10 years struggling. You sound like the guy in Idiocracy, crying out that people should read more books, oblivious to the fact that the people he's talking to are real retards, and that culture or reading books isn't going to fix anything.

In real life it's like the Nazis put it, you've got those that create culture, you've got those that maintain culture, and you've got those that will let culture degenerate. Look at South Africa of how to turn a 1st world nation into a 2nd world nation in 15 years, and they'll probably be a 3rd world nation in another 15 years.

So, where exactly does it say that?

And for that matter, treatment of aboriginals has been rather bad in the past 1 century, and has been improving only very recently. If your statement is true, it argues for strong environmental impact on IQ.

Obviously, they also were the ones causing it to degenerate, as are most who argue along that same line.

I think it's getting to be time for folks to put that DVD
on the floor in front of them, raise their hands, and step
backward away from it. It is a movie.

In real life the application of education, nutrition, and
medicine to populations is actually a good thing that
helps societies develop. Have some countries failed their
people? Sure. So what? Bad government is bad.

But the reality is that a kid with little education and
poor nutrition and no practical access to proper medical
care is going to do poorly on a scandum test and will
probably wind up contributing to the ongoing ruin of
his country, regardless of his…what do you call it?
unmeasurable-dna-iq?

I suggest that rather than continue to parrot crackpot
science about iq, we set about actually doing something
that *is* possible, which is working with these hosed up
countries so that they can have educated, fed, healthy
citizens that can buy our stuff.

Incidentally, there's a lot of bad education, poor
nutrition, and absent health care right here in 1st
world populations too. That's something else we can work on,
rather than pretending it's not our concern because they are
just genetically defective.

It's in everyone's interest.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net