Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Pattern-chaser]

Wealth is averaging out, as the west bleeds its riches out, seemingly deliberately. Races are averaging out...

I'm not sure about that. The super-rich are getting richer more quickly than the poorer members of humanity. The opposite of "averaging out".

And human communities are not always open to newcomers. The Jewish community is a good example, and far from the only one. They strongly prefer to marry and breed within their own community, and so minor differences between them and most others emerge. This is exactly what we expect, and what empirical evidence supports. It's like the wildlife of Madagascar, or Australia, which developed in isolation from their mainland cousins. Minor differences emerge. If we wait long enough, evolution will eventually lead to the emergence of new species. But humanity is far away from that, if only because we haven't yet been around long enough for evolution to do what it tends to do... And yet it doesn't seem to be the case that we are averaging out.

[Sy Borg]

Wealth is averaging out, as the west bleeds its riches out, seemingly deliberately. Races are averaging out...

I'm not sure about that. The super-rich are getting richer more quickly than the poorer members of humanity. The opposite of "averaging out".

And human communities are not always open to newcomers. The Jewish community is a good example, and far from the only one. They strongly prefer to marry and breed within their own community, and so minor differences between them and most others emerge. This is exactly what we expect, and what empirical evidence supports. It's like the wildlife of Madagascar, or Australia, which developed in isolation from their mainland cousins. Minor differences emerge. If we wait long enough, evolution will eventually lead to the emergence of new species. But humanity is far away from that, if only because we haven't yet been around long enough for evolution to do what it tends to do... And yet it doesn't seem to be the case that we are averaging out.

I'm not talking about personal wealth, I'm talking about national wealth. The west's economies are faltering, while many developing countries are on the rise.

I'm too old to ever see it, but I am confident that the world is turning brown and that human sexual dimorphism will reduce. There is no other possibility. Despite the UN's blinkered worldview, the world is not, and will not, be Jews plus The Rest of Humanity. If humanity survives, the melting pot will happen.

[Pattern-chaser]

Wealth is averaging out, as the west bleeds its riches out, seemingly deliberately. Races are averaging out...

I'm not sure about that. The super-rich are getting richer more quickly than the poorer members of humanity. The opposite of "averaging out".

And human communities are not always open to newcomers. The Jewish community is a good example, and far from the only one. They strongly prefer to marry and breed within their own community, and so minor differences between them and most others emerge. This is exactly what we expect, and what empirical evidence supports. It's like the wildlife of Madagascar, or Australia, which developed in isolation from their mainland cousins. Minor differences emerge. If we wait long enough, evolution will eventually lead to the emergence of new species. But humanity is far away from that, if only because we haven't yet been around long enough for evolution to do what it tends to do... And yet it doesn't seem to be the case that we are averaging out.

I'm not talking about personal wealth, I'm talking about national wealth. The west's economies are faltering, while many developing countries are on the rise.

I'm too old to ever see it, but I am confident that the world is turning brown and that human sexual dimorphism will reduce. There is no other possibility. [...] If humanity survives, the melting pot will happen.

The 'superest' of the super-rich control more personal wealth than many companies, even than many countries...

And while averaging out is something we sometimes see, the opposite is also the case. The Universe emerged unpredictably from the quantum foam (I think). If what was there (?) had remained 'averaged out', the BB couldn't've happened. I would be surprised to see all predators merging into a super-shark-tyrannosaur, and all prey animals merging into handily-packaged steaks. Only some things average out, sometimes. I'm not convinced that this is one such circumstance.

[Lagayascienza]

Wealth is averaging out, as the west bleeds its riches out, seemingly deliberately. Races are averaging out...

I'm not sure about that. The super-rich are getting richer more quickly than the poorer members of humanity. The opposite of "averaging out".

And human communities are not always open to newcomers. The Jewish community is a good example, and far from the only one. They strongly prefer to marry and breed within their own community, and so minor differences between them and most others emerge. This is exactly what we expect, and what empirical evidence supports. It's like the wildlife of Madagascar, or Australia, which developed in isolation from their mainland cousins. Minor differences emerge. If we wait long enough, evolution will eventually lead to the emergence of new species. But humanity is far away from that, if only because we haven't yet been around long enough for evolution to do what it tends to do... And yet it doesn't seem to be the case that we are averaging out.

I'm not talking about personal wealth, I'm talking about national wealth. The west's economies are faltering, while many developing countries are on the rise.

I'm too old to ever see it, but I am confident that the world is turning brown and that human sexual dimorphism will reduce. There is no other possibility. Despite the UN's blinkered worldview, the world is not, and will not, be Jews plus The Rest of Humanity. If humanity survives, the melting pot will happen.

We are already in the melting pot. When I was a kid, Australia was basically white Anglo-Saxon plus the few surviving Aborigines. And how does it look today? Massive immigration from all parts of the world became necessary because of our aging population and has made Australia a vastly different country.

I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. In many ways it's been great for Australia. I love pasta and sweet and sour pork. But we have gone from being a fabulously rich country in terms of GDP (albeit a very unequal one internally) to a still somewhat unequal one but more of an average one compared to other developed nations. And the developing nations are catching up to us in terms of GDP. Then there is the ease of travel, of instant access to information via the internet to all, and the integration of the global economy. I cannot see these trends reversing and so I guess the melting pot will continue.

And maybe these massive changes we have seen in just our lifetimes in broader society will be increasingly mirrored and felt long-term in things like gender identity, gender fluidity and gender roles. On an evolutionary time scale who can say what humanity will look like. If we survive?

[Lagayascienza]

Speaking of social change, failing another dark Age, I cannot imagine gains in women's' rights or their control over when and whether to reproduce will be reversed on a global scale or that knowledge about human sexuality will be lost or ignored. People will increasingly be allowed to be what they want to be in that regard. And if automation continues and women and men can do the same sort of work for the next 10,000 years it would certainly impact our evolution. But if we survive that long, I suspect that we will already have become cyborgs and messy stuff like actually giving birth will be in the past and we will have control of our own evolution. Our evolution will no longer be about natural selection.

[Lagayascienza]

Unless cyborgs, too, could be somehow subject to natural selection. But it's hard to see what natural selection in biological terms would have any traction on. I guess it would depend on how much biological stuff we, as cyborgs, chose to retain. If we became completely synthetic, that is, completely non-biological, any stray coding errors, for example, could be deleted unless it was thought they might be useful. But that would not be mindless evolution by natural selection. It would be artificially directed and teleological driven, evolution.

[Fried Egg]

I'm too old to ever see it, but I am confident that the world is turning brown and that human sexual dimorphism will reduce. There is no other possibility. Despite the UN's blinkered worldview, the world is not, and will not, be Jews plus The Rest of Humanity. If humanity survives, the melting pot will happen.

Well, the idea that humanity is becoming an ethnic melting pot makes sense if the populations of the world continue to move around and interbreed. but it makes no sense that sexual dimorphism would reduce. In the very long term species evolve and that could change of course but there's no way it's going to happen any time soon.

[Sy Borg]

I'm too old to ever see it, but I am confident that the world is turning brown and that human sexual dimorphism will reduce. There is no other possibility. Despite the UN's blinkered worldview, the world is not, and will not, be Jews plus The Rest of Humanity. If humanity survives, the melting pot will happen.

Well, the idea that humanity is becoming an ethnic melting pot makes sense if the populations of the world continue to move around and interbreed. but it makes no sense that sexual dimorphism would reduce. In the very long term species evolve and that could change of course but there's no way it's going to happen any time soon.

Who said it's happening any time soon?

[Belinda]

Wealth is averaging out, as the west bleeds its riches out, seemingly deliberately. Races are averaging out...

I'm not sure about that. The super-rich are getting richer more quickly than the poorer members of humanity. The opposite of "averaging out".

And human communities are not always open to newcomers. The Jewish community is a good example, and far from the only one. They strongly prefer to marry and breed within their own community, and so minor differences between them and most others emerge. This is exactly what we expect, and what empirical evidence supports. It's like the wildlife of Madagascar, or Australia, which developed in isolation from their mainland cousins. Minor differences emerge. If we wait long enough, evolution will eventually lead to the emergence of new species. But humanity is far away from that, if only because we haven't yet been around long enough for evolution to do what it tends to do... And yet it doesn't seem to be the case that we are averaging out.

I'm not talking about personal wealth, I'm talking about national wealth. The west's economies are faltering, while many developing countries are on the rise.

I'm too old to ever see it, but I am confident that the world is turning brown and that human sexual dimorphism will reduce. There is no other possibility. Despite the UN's blinkered worldview, the world is not, and will not, be Jews plus The Rest of Humanity. If humanity survives, the melting pot will happen.

The melting pot is an optimistic interpretation of present trends. Much more prudent to be the sort of pessimist who aims to oppose all tribalism.
True, we are not "averaging out". That's because, unlike the symbiotic wildlife of Madagascar ,we evolve through culture not biology. After two thousand years of cultural evolution we humans have invented genocide.
I am not romantic about any benefits of savagery. The struggle is within human culture.

[Pattern-chaser]

The melting pot is an optimistic interpretation of present trends. Much more prudent to be the sort of pessimist who aims to oppose all tribalism.

Tribes are just one level of human social grouping. Families likewise. Bigger groups include countries. And so on. Human are social creatures. Our social groupings are central to this. To "oppose all tribalism" seems counter-productive, wouldn't you say?

True, we are not "averaging out". That's because, unlike the symbiotic wildlife of Madagascar, we evolve through culture not biology. After two thousand years of cultural evolution we humans have invented genocide.

Evolutionary changes result in biological differences. Cultural changes are non-biological, and maybe we should not use "evolution" to describe them?

Humans, like all species, are still evolving, biologically. But it takes a very long time for these changes to occur, probably more time than we have been recording our own history. Also, the 'progress' we have made, makes it possible for us to minimise or change the ways in which evolution would otherwise modify us. The latter probably contains a substantial cultural contribution.

[Belinda]

The melting pot is an optimistic interpretation of present trends. Much more prudent to be the sort of pessimist who aims to oppose all tribalism.

Tribes are just one level of human social grouping. Families likewise. Bigger groups include countries. And so on. Human are social creatures. Our social groupings are central to this. To "oppose all tribalism" seems counter-productive, wouldn't you say?

True, we are not "averaging out". That's because, unlike the symbiotic wildlife of Madagascar, we evolve through culture not biology. After two thousand years of cultural evolution we humans have invented genocide.

Evolutionary changes result in biological differences. Cultural changes are non-biological, and maybe we should not use "evolution" to describe them?

Humans, like all species, are still evolving, biologically. But it takes a very long time for these changes to occur, probably more time than we have been recording our own history. Also, the 'progress' we have made, makes it possible for us to minimise or change the ways in which evolution would otherwise modify us. The latter probably contains a substantial cultural contribution.

I don't mean tribes as one sort of societies, I mean tribalism as an ideology in which one's own tribe whether that be family, clan, nationality, or religion, is more important than other familiies, clans, nationalities or religions.

Evolution means simply change over time. If I mean to refer to biological change over time I refer to natural selection or biological change. As a matter of fact humans adapt to change far too fast for human evolution to be biological (or via natural selection) . Humans learn how to survive by experience not by inherent instincts and they pass this experience from generation to generation via culture, mediated through language.

[Sy Borg]

Wealth is averaging out, as the west bleeds its riches out, seemingly deliberately. Races are averaging out...

I'm not sure about that. The super-rich are getting richer more quickly than the poorer members of humanity. The opposite of "averaging out".

And human communities are not always open to newcomers. The Jewish community is a good example, and far from the only one. They strongly prefer to marry and breed within their own community, and so minor differences between them and most others emerge. This is exactly what we expect, and what empirical evidence supports. It's like the wildlife of Madagascar, or Australia, which developed in isolation from their mainland cousins. Minor differences emerge. If we wait long enough, evolution will eventually lead to the emergence of new species. But humanity is far away from that, if only because we haven't yet been around long enough for evolution to do what it tends to do... And yet it doesn't seem to be the case that we are averaging out.

I'm not talking about personal wealth, I'm talking about national wealth. The west's economies are faltering, while many developing countries are on the rise.

I'm too old to ever see it, but I am confident that the world is turning brown and that human sexual dimorphism will reduce. There is no other possibility. Despite the UN's blinkered worldview, the world is not, and will not, be Jews plus The Rest of Humanity. If humanity survives, the melting pot will happen.

The melting pot is an optimistic interpretation of present trends. Much more prudent to be the sort of pessimist who aims to oppose all tribalism.
True, we are not "averaging out". That's because, unlike the symbiotic wildlife of Madagascar ,we evolve through culture not biology. After two thousand years of cultural evolution we humans have invented genocide.
I am not romantic about any benefits of savagery. The struggle is within human culture.

You are hijacking this thread with your Marxist obsession with preventing Jews (The Evil Oppressor) from harming Arabs (The Righteous Oppressed) - and complete indifference to Arab harming Jews. Israel has committed the only recorded "genocide" that has resulted in a rapid population increase of the supposed victims. Ethnic Darfuris in Sudan must be jealous because they are actually being killed off.

In reality, has been standard for billions of years. Uncounted species have been made extinct by other species, and this situation continues. Gene-o-cide - countless entire genomes have been wiped out by predators and competitors. Have you been chatting with any Homo habilis lately?

Of course, there will be (and are already) strong tribalist movements that reject any movement to weaken racial and gender boundaries. Such resistance is natural, and to be expected. However, over time, that resistance will erode as surely as rocky shorelines do. Certainly, Jews will be erased into the melting pot long before Arabs.

The melting pot is already happening. The percentage of very black and very white people is shrinking. I'm "olive skinned" myself, although lighter now than when I was young.

Meanwhile, strict gender roles are breaking down. Men are less manly and woman are less feminine as we become more rational, increasingly eschewing gender-based display behaviours. Once alpha males were the physically strongest and most aggressive. Now alpha males are business-minded intellectuals. Once alpha females were matriarchs or large clans. Now alpha females are business-minded intellectuals.

Racial and gender dimorphism will continue to be most pronounced in the poorest communities.

[Belinda]

Sy Borg wrote:

"Now alpha males are business-minded intellectuals. Once alpha females were matriarchs or large clans. Now alpha females are business-minded intellectuals."

Might it be better to see that cultural development through the biological spectrum of levels of oestrogen and testosterone? I believe it's a bell curve.

[Pattern-chaser]

The melting pot is an optimistic interpretation of present trends. Much more prudent to be the sort of pessimist who aims to oppose all tribalism.

Tribes are just one level of human social grouping. Families likewise. Bigger groups include countries. And so on. Human are social creatures. Our social groupings are central to this. To "oppose all tribalism" seems counter-productive, wouldn't you say?

I don't mean tribes as one sort of societies, I mean tribalism as an ideology in which one's own tribe whether that be family, clan, nationality, or religion, is more important than other familiies, clans, nationalities or religions.

Them and us. Despicable in many ways ... but indispensable in others. This 'ideology' (?) contributes to the bonding of, and within, social groups such as tribes. It's just a shame it does so at the expense of all other groups, which are necessarily considered less good or desirable than 'us', leading to unnecessary conflict or disagreement.

[Belinda]

The melting pot is an optimistic interpretation of present trends. Much more prudent to be the sort of pessimist who aims to oppose all tribalism.

Tribes are just one level of human social grouping. Families likewise. Bigger groups include countries. And so on. Human are social creatures. Our social groupings are central to this. To "oppose all tribalism" seems counter-productive, wouldn't you say?

I don't mean tribes as one sort of societies, I mean tribalism as an ideology in which one's own tribe whether that be family, clan, nationality, or religion, is more important than other familiies, clans, nationalities or religions.

Them and us. Despicable in many ways ... but indispensable in others. This 'ideology' (?) contributes to the bonding of, and within, social groups such as tribes. It's just a shame it does so at the expense of all other groups, which are necessarily considered less good or desirable than 'us', leading to unnecessary conflict or disagreement.

None of us is Jesus Christ so universalism is unlikely to totally happen with us. We need a moral anchor and universalism is part of the moral anchor.
A man's a man for all the superficial adornments of nationality, rank, or religious affiliation.