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Noah -> RE: Primitive vs. Modern (11/16/2008 7:57:19 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Timesamyth
"Of course not, unless you consider cancer research (and gains), the ability to get someone with a life threatening disease out of the hospital (with a 65% chance of survival) in his or her mates car as opposed to a body bag...a waste of effort. "
Actually, I do think it's a waste of effort and resources. Call me what you will. But human interference has caused a lot of problems.
Your question is weak, Timesamyth.
It is incoherent to talk about "human interference" as though interfering with things were some anamoly in the human condition.
A society of beings which did not interfere would not be a society of human beings. Even now you're toying with the notion of interfering with the human propensity to interfere. An absolutely revolution bit of interference in scale and scope.
Vast resources have been arrayed for just the sort of goal you have in mind. I'm thinking more of the Guild system than the Luddites, as well as countless imperial attempts to stifle innovation to preserve a political status quo. But you can no more eliminate technological change from the human experience than you can eliminate thought or motion. You might as well advocate for water to start running uphill rather than down.
I may not post to that thread, though.
In any event, have you considered the odds of ameliorating any of the interference-induced ills you refer to without interfering with anything? There again you have as a mission statement nothing less than a contradiction in terms. To promote a reversal of the human propensity to innovate would itself be an innovation calling for a wide range of further innovations.
And no, viewed closely that didn't make sense, despite what might have seemed some prima facie plausibility. But that was only because the answer infected with the incoherence of the question.
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If it was me or my family? Sure, I'd be fighting for my own/their survival. But, it's all in the luck of the draw.
If it is all in the luck of the draw then why fight? The fighting can't possibly have any beneficial effect and the fighting may weaken you.
Unless of course the fighting might indeed have the potential to help, in which case it isn't all in the luck of the draw. Which do you believe? Either incohrence is a strength or your critical thinking is weak, Timesamyth.
If we can trust your picture, as a redhead you have a congenital advantage in terms of the ability to internally produce vitamin D via sunlight. There was a time when that was adaptive, and so the mutation that produced your kind spread. Given the improvement in the general availability of food, that little perk no longer stands you in better stead than blonds or brunettes.
On the other hand, people like you also tend to have elevated sensitivity to the pain of heat and cold. Weak (unless you count it as a motivator for doing something about your comfort--but that would be human interference, right?)
Furthermore, people like you also have a weakness for skin cancer. And that weakness is a factor contributing to the fast-approaching extinction of your kind. For more detail please reread your recent issues of National Geographic and the science they cite.
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What better way to thin out the population than letting the weak die?
Conditions external to the human race will continue to change. Much of that change will arise from the further playing out of previous "human interference". Much of it won't. In any event, the capacity to adapt rather than succumb to change is a strength, no?
Those who can't abide change are crucially weaker than those who can. Unless those who can stomach change drag the change-o-phobes along, the change-o-phobes will be fail to survive.
It's a frickin' Malthusian wonderland, ain't it? And you seem to be momentarily cast in the role of Alice.
So look a little longer at what's given in the system you're hoping to tweak, before you go breaking a nail with your tweaking. You've let your malthusiasm for change blind you to inescapable exigencies. Man. talk about weak.
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What better way to thin out the population than letting the weak die?
Okay. I'll bite.
How about euthanasia? Why let the weak keep sucking up resources? Grind them up for protein and fertilizer. Oh but whom shall we appoint to define what constitutes weakness? Wooly mammoths, snail darters, Incas, or red-heads?
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