Myanmar

China

Loo'ziana

?

[Edited on May 16, 2008 at 3:31 PM. Reason : and Natural Selection]

5/16/2008 3:31:02 PM

what?

what does survival of the fittest have anything to do with this?

you think these disasters even put a dent in their populations?

GROW SOME GILLS OR DIE!!!

BE A BETTER SWIMMER SON!!!

IMPROVE YOUR "CAN'T DIE BY A FALLING BUILDING" TRAIT"

come on

5/16/2008 3:32:52 PM

cuz the wimps cant swim and climb out of rubble

5/16/2008 3:36:33 PM

yeah... no

those are punctuated events over a very small time scale that have very little to do with their general environments

and put very little pressure on the general, unisolated, population on the whole.

[Edited on May 16, 2008 at 3:40 PM. Reason : .]

5/16/2008 3:38:01 PM

Survival of the fittest people above sea level?

I don't get where this thread is going...

[Edited on May 16, 2008 at 3:40 PM. Reason : .]

5/16/2008 3:40:03 PM

natural selection always wins.


especially when mother nature is the opponent

5/16/2008 7:18:40 PM

^ You would take the foolish and irrational side of this argument.

5/16/2008 11:49:01 PM

In China's case, at least, the earthquake has revealed corruption and a lack of building code enforcement:

China quake shows flaws in building boom

Quote :

"'This building is just a piece of junk,' one newly homeless resident of Dujiangyan yelled Wednesday, her body quivering with rage. Her family salvaged clothing and mementos from their wrecked apartment, built when their older home was razed 10 years ago. 'The government tricked us. It told us this building was well constructed. But look at the homes all around us, they're still standing,' said the woman, who would give only her surname, Chen."

Quote :

"'This new economy in China is not going up safely, it's going up fast, and the two don't go together,' said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. 'You look at the buildings that fell and they should not have fallen,' he said. 'This is a story that has been repeated throughout the developing nations.'"

Quote :

"Another problem is that actual enforcement of building codes varies. The construction boom that has underpinned much of the stunning growth has also been an invitation for corruption, with officials and developers colluding. Profit margins are thinner on smaller projects in less prosperous places, encouraging developers to cut corners. In larger cities like Shanghai, authorities generally enforce regulations. But that isn't always true in smaller cities. And in rural areas, it's out of the question, says Andrew Smeall, an associate at Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations in New York. 'The cost of trying to go back and make sure everything is built to code would be prohibitive,' he said."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/china_boom_bust

[Edited on May 17, 2008 at 4:18 AM. Reason : .]

5/17/2008 4:17:38 AM

Quote :

"^ You would take the foolish and irrational side of this argument."

i'm quite certain your dna ends when you die. thank you for not having children

5/17/2008 12:32:29 PM

Quote :

"you think these disasters even put a dent in their populations?"

Estimates for the cyclone go 77,738 - 124,000

Population of the nation is estimated at 55,390,000

But the Ayeyarwady Division, where most of the deaths were is 6,663,000. Also, the death toll will probably just keep climbing and climbing.

Quote :

"In China's case, at least, the earthquake has revealed corruption and a lack of building code enforcement: "

I think that revealed is the wrong word choice here.

5/17/2008 5:40:49 PM

The asians are winning survival of the fittest because they are out reproducing us despite all the deaths.

[Edited on May 17, 2008 at 5:48 PM. Reason : see also Zerg rush]

5/17/2008 5:47:56 PM

5/17/2008 5:53:17 PM

Quote :

"IMPROVE YOUR "CAN'T DIE BY A FALLING BUILDING" TRAIT""

LOL

5/19/2008 12:47:24 AM

peoples' infatuation with the evolutionary denominator is almost necrophillic. yes, the modern world has reduced selective pressures. but i think if we're to be a truly advanced species, we have to use the numerator to drive our own evolution -- to really be in charge of our own destiny. we can do it in a way that's truly human, not animalistic. see Eamon Healey:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TC1X9yPLWwg

5/19/2008 1:11:15 AM

^ the scope of this is horrendously limited. He outright promotes the digital-analogue as if the next step would be to make the new version of humans, and yes, all of us here should have already heard of the idea of the intelligence singularity. If we can make people smarter than us (by computer technology or genetic engineering), then those people can make people even smarter, and it's a geometric series. This argument itself has huge flaws, ignores natural limits (Moore's law anyone?) and IMHO is jumbled shit that philosophers 100s of years ago should have been able to play with to the limits of usefulness.

More importantly, it has nothing to do with the argument that natural selection is occurring to the current human race in a fucked up manner.

People are getting smarter by improvements in education all the time. It's still the same genetic palate we're working with - suffice it to say that has not been improving in modern times.

5/19/2008 10:23:19 AM

Asians are the fire ants of the human world.

5/19/2008 10:25:10 AM

^^ its a 4 minute clip within some arthouse film - of course its limited.

and

Quote :

"It's still the same genetic palate we're working with - suffice it to say that has not been improving in modern times."

there in lies the kicker. we're not going to have to wait for selective pressures over thousands of years to get our palate up to speed. soon enough we'll be in charge of that.

5/19/2008 10:55:04 AM

Half of the people in the world barley have access to the necessities of life.

We've got a long way to go before they can sport the genetic engineering for their children. Or maybe the rich of the world would use such technology before the rest, leading to some really really fucked up class differences. Or maybe our plan to kill off half the developing world with biofuels will succeed before then.

5/19/2008 11:19:54 AM

You guys are responding to a baonest thread.

Awesome.

5/19/2008 11:33:59 AM

Quote :

"ignores natural limits (Moore's law anyone?)"

how is this a natural limit?

5/19/2008 11:42:37 AM

Just out of curiousity, on that chart a few posts up where exactly is North America?

5/19/2008 11:50:25 AM

^^ if the argument is that we will make essentially a computer "smarter than us", then in the early 90s it might have made sense that we would do so in a business-as-usual scenario. Not so now. Doesn't matter how good we get at making processors with the current philosophy behind the construction - they won't resemble intelligent life.

^ it would appear not be there.

5/19/2008 2:13:45 PM

wasnt there a thread recently in which hooksaw listed out how much each country donates in aid and saudi arabia was literally at 0?

5/23/2008 6:06:37 PM

There is plenty of evolution going on because sexual selection is still natural selection. You don't need people to die before producing offspring in order to have selective pressure.

One group outreproducing another selects against the less prolific group. Nerds mating with nerds (as in silicon valley) selects nerd genes, creating a gene pool that differs from the greater population. That's two types of evolution caused just by sexual selection.

[Edited on May 23, 2008 at 7:35 PM. Reason : .]

5/23/2008 7:34:57 PM

what will happen to all the fat people who have kids with other fat people?

5/23/2008 10:30:22 PM

a race of super fat people

duh

5/23/2008 10:41:30 PM

great famine...

5/23/2008 10:50:21 PM

Quote :

"There is plenty of evolution going on because sexual selection is still natural selection. You don't need people to die before producing offspring in order to have selective pressure. One group outreproducing another selects against the less prolific group. Nerds mating with nerds (as in silicon valley) selects nerd genes, creating a gene pool that differs from the greater population. That's two types of evolution caused just by sexual selection."

that's actually one of the more interesting cases in modern natural selection

you know what probably happens when you breed nerds with nerds

you get supernerds also known as autistic people

why do you think there is such a concentration of autism in silicon valley

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html

5/24/2008 12:11:43 AM

~

5/24/2008 2:08:22 AM

Quote :

"There is plenty of evolution going on because sexual selection is still natural selection. You don't need people to die before producing offspring in order to have selective pressure."

well with current social programs and gov't policy it seems that the we as the US are encouraging survival of the LEAST fit. After all it is the lower classes that are greatly out reproducing the successful and productive members of society. Sally May from the trailor park gets pregnant @ 15 and has 3 kids while living on welfare by age 30. Meanwhile Katherine career woman has her one child at age 30 while she works hard to advance in her career.

Quote :

"you know what probably happens when you breed nerds with nerds"

I thought it has been proven that statistically the child of two parents having high IQ correlates to the child having a higher IQ; though in all likelihood they will fall closer to the mean then the two parents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ

[Edited on May 26, 2008 at 4:18 PM. Reason : l]

5/26/2008 4:15:53 PM

i think that's essentially the premise of Idiocracy

5/26/2008 4:18:37 PM

Quote :

"well with current social programs and gov't policy it seems that the we as the US are encouraging survival of the LEAST fit."

That's not exactly how natural selection works. Whatever organism reproduces most wins. From that point of view, producing kids matters more than making money or any sort of professional success. Those things are only fitness when they lead to greater reproduction. Remember that poorer folks tend to have more children globally, even in countries without social programs. I doubt slashing welfare and company would significantly change things here.

5/26/2008 4:34:34 PM

I guess idiocy, laziness, and other societal negative traits are the ones currently being propragated thanks to natural selection.

5/26/2008 5:06:24 PM

^ I can't tell if you're being sarcastic there, but those things correlate far more closely with societal factors than genetic ones.

There is no good research currently that shows the children of poor people are genetically inferior to the children of rich people. It doesn't make much sense in the context of biology that in a large mobile population for this hypothesis to be valid.

If Idiocracy were going to happen, it would have happened by now.

5/26/2008 10:41:44 PM

^ thats why we have wars, famine, natural disasters, and disease for.

5/27/2008 11:46:41 AM

Quote :

"a 35-year-old mother of eight -- can relate. The single mom was cleaning the yard when a man handed her a notice of foreclosure"

This woman sounds like a winner. Glad darwin selected her to run around the ghetto spreading her legs and get knocked up 8 times out of wed lock. I am sure all of her little bundle of joys will grow up to be outstanding members of the community.


http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/05/28/renters.booted/index.html

5/29/2008 12:28:53 PM

isn't myanmar bhurma? (sp)

5/29/2008 5:02:28 PM

6/3/2008 12:28:29 AM

^ Wouldn't that be more appropriate for the global warming thread?

6/3/2008 1:36:17 AM

Quote :

"If Idiocracy were going to happen, it would have happened by now."

Have you noticed who's wielding supreme (by his assertion) executive authority these days?

6/3/2008 1:18:41 PM

i've only seen parts of idiocracy, and it looked pretty terrible.

what's the "global agenda" in that movie? how are India and China faring? what's the main source of energy fueling the country at that time?

i know its stupid to ask those questions in the context of the type of movie that is, but this is soap box...

there is no witty satire in that movie. i think Voltaire rolled over in his grave when it came out. its pretty much a movie made by stupid people, trying to reiterate a stupid point to a group of stupid people, who are already in agreement with that point.

6/3/2008 1:32:47 PM

i guess its about as obnoxious an example as that rotoscripted clip that i posted earlier

6/3/2008 1:33:44 PM

http://www.tmz.com/2008/05/26/sharon-stone-calls-chinese-earthquake-karma/

[Edited on June 3, 2008 at 1:40 PM. Reason : link in case you didnt understand the pic]

6/3/2008 1:37:42 PM

^ That's a horrible thing to say. Of course, I guess it's somewhat like Grumpster's commitment to nuke anyone attempting genocide.

6/3/2008 1:52:41 PM

Quote :

"what's the "global agenda" in that movie? how are India and China faring? what's the main source of energy fueling the country at that time? i know its stupid to ask those questions in the context of the type of movie that is, but this is soap box... there is no witty satire in that movie. i think Voltaire rolled over in his grave when it came out. its pretty much a movie made by stupid people, trying to reiterate a stupid point to a group of stupid people, who are already in agreement with that point."

it pretty much comes down to:
society has to run completely off self-sustaining machines (built long ago) by that time because the humans have become too dumb to do anything but eat, poop, and fuck.

6/3/2008 3:24:06 PM

That is what I concluded when watching Idiocracy. There had been a period long before the events of the movie when really smart people automated much of the economy. Hence the confusion when the Brawndo central computer, which evidently made all executive decisions, fired everyone when agriculture suddenly switched from Brawndo to water.

6/3/2008 11:27:53 PM