Philosophy Now Forum

Obvious Leo wrote:Cladking. Controlling the flow of information has always been the most effective method of controlling the masses but coupling this tactic by enslaving people to personal debt is nothing short of genius. However I don't think it can work indefinitely because many people are waking up to the fact that the gadgets which the dark satanic mills are churning out are crap which is not worth having and poisoning the world into the bargain.

I keep saying that the meek are about to inherit the earth. If it doesn't happen because of a new way of thinking it will happen because of the free flow of ideas made possible by the net.

After decades of the few digging resources out of the ground to merely put them back through landfill there might not be a lot left though.

cladking wrote: I keep saying that the meek are about to inherit the earth. If it doesn't happen because of a new way of thinking it will happen because of the free flow of ideas made possible by the net.

I completely agree because the winds of change are already blowing through the more progressive societies of the world. It has yet to evolve into a global movement but I reckon this is just a matter of time. Unfortunately I'm an old fart and don't expect to see my optimism fully confirmed in my own lifetime but I'm confident that my grandchildren will. The anarchy of the internet is unstoppable and it will become steadily more impossible to cultivate people in the same way as we cultivate mushrooms. Keeping them in the dark and feeding them on bullshit will eventually stop working.

cladking wrote:After decades of the few digging resources out of the ground to merely put them back through landfill there might not be a lot left though.

I see this more as a short-term problem of resource management rather than a long-term one of resource availability. Humans have a good track record of generally solving the problems which confront them although they also have a bad habit of always leaving it till the last minute. I can hardly be too critical of this because this is a failing which I share.

Obvious Leo wrote:
I completely agree because the winds of change are already blowing through the more progressive societies of the world. It has yet to evolve into a global movement but I reckon this is just a matter of time. Unfortunately I'm an old fart and don't expect to see my optimism fully confirmed in my own lifetime but I'm confident that my grandchildren will. The anarchy of the internet is unstoppable and it will become steadily more impossible to cultivate people in the same way as we cultivate mushrooms. Keeping them in the dark and feeding them on bullshit will eventually stop working.

I'm sure I won't get much agreement from any corner but I expect this to happen very soon and be much faster than anyone imagines possible. It will require a couple generations before the changes are complete but before that it will take only ten years for the key changes to be in place and this could begin at nearly any time and no later than five years.

The future is notoriously difficult to predict but no matter what mechanism triggers it the process should be essentially complete in a little more than half a century. The meek will do a far better job with the world than has been done in millinea. Efficiency and human production will soar beyond any plutocrat's or robber barron's wildest dreams.

cladking wrote: Efficiency and human production will soar beyond any plutocrat's or robber barron's wildest dreams.

This is certainly the mainstream view of most economists. Essentially all the economic progress which has been made in the past century has been due to technological advance and the biggest impediment to technological advance is the power of the plutocracy to prevent it. Most of the modern-day Luddites are not on the factory floor but in the boardrooms.

Obvious Leo wrote:

cladking wrote: Efficiency and human production will soar beyond any plutocrat's or robber barron's wildest dreams.

This is certainly the mainstream view of most economists. Essentially all the economic progress which has been made in the past century has been due to technological advance and the biggest impediment to technological advance is the power of the plutocracy to prevent it. Most of the modern-day Luddites are not on the factory floor but in the boardrooms.

I wasn't aware of this and am a little surprised.

It's not only that they stand in the way of progress but even worse is they stand in the way of efficiency and quality.

But worst of all is they stand in the way of full utilization of human resources. Top management is principally interested in inventing forms and and processes that all impede progress. They organize the company from the top down and make sure no one is authorized to do his own job. The company can succeed despite these obstacles because the competition is equally bad and the success of a company, like an individual organism, is dependent principally on its immediate enviroment. When the company does well the CEO takes credit and awards himself vast bonuses and when it does poorly he blames the union and steals the pension fund.

The meek must inherit the earth because these things become more apparent with each passing day.

cladking wrote: The company can succeed despite these obstacles because the competition is equally bad and the success of a company, like an individual organism, is dependent principally on its immediate enviroment.

Your analogy between economic evolution and biological evolution is very precisely drawn because the evolution of the corporate world is exclusively a Darwinist model. However true evolution is not Darwinian at all because Darwinian evolution applies only to the origin of speciation, which relies on extinction. In biology this is only a minor part of the evolution story because the principle driver of evolution in the science of life is adaptation and expression. The individual organism evolves throughout its life by adapting to its environment and this effects changes in gene expression at the cellular level. The genes themselves change very little but the way they continuously encode for protein manufacture is changing all the time in response to a vast range of external changes in the entire system. This more sophisticated understanding of evolution is known as AUTOPOIESIS (self-creating), and autopoiesis is seen as applying to the entire biosphere rather than the individuals within it. Instead of regarding individual species as evolving within a biosphere we regard the entire biosphere as evolving and the successful individuals or species as just tagging along for the ride. This is the more appropriate model to apply in economic theory and it is slowly being done.

Obvious Leo wrote:

cladking wrote: The company can succeed despite these obstacles because the competition is equally bad and the success of a company, like an individual organism, is dependent principally on its immediate enviroment.

Your analogy between economic evolution and biological evolution is very precisely drawn because the evolution of the corporate world is exclusively a Darwinist model. However true evolution is not Darwinian at all because Darwinian evolution applies only to the origin of speciation, which relies on extinction. In biology this is only a minor part of the evolution story because the principle driver of evolution in the science of life is adaptation and expression..

No it does not.
Even with epigenetics the genome remains the same from cradle to grave. SO what you do in your life is not relevant to Darwinian evolution, namely natural selection.

You've been wrong on this before and you're wrong again, Hobbes. Gene expression is not determined by gene structure but by how the genes function within a living organism. That the same gene will encode for entirely different proteins in a banana and a human is easily understood. However exactly the same gene might also encode for an entirely different protein today than it does tomorrow and none of this has anything whatsoever to do with heredity.

Jaded Sage wrote: How can we see beyond the cultural blinder of ideas that we are convinced are a reality, the ones most obvious to us that we never dream of doubting?

Travel.

Obvious Leo wrote:You've been wrong on this before and you're wrong again, Hobbes. Gene expression is not determined by gene structure but by how the genes function within a living organism. That the same gene will encode for entirely different proteins in a banana and a human is easily understood. However exactly the same gene might also encode for an entirely different protein today than it does tomorrow and none of this has anything whatsoever to do with heredity.

What you say does not refute my statement. You've made that mistake before.

The genome is immune to lived activities. This was investigated by Darwin and Galton, long before the discovery of genes, and remains unchallenged. What you do in your life cannot alter by improvement the prospects of your offspring's genetics.

Jaded Sage wrote: How can we see beyond the cultural blinder of ideas that we are convinced are a reality, the ones most obvious to us that we never dream of doubting?

Anthropology, history, philosophy, critical thinking.
Preferably all of them

Hobbes' Choice wrote:What you do in your life cannot alter by improvement the prospects of your offspring's genetics.

Evolutionary biology has moved on a long way from the simplistic approach of Darwin and Galton. What you say here is true but very misleading. Evolution is not about the role of an individual within a biosphere but about the evolution of the biosphere as a whole. Except in very rare cases your offspring's prospects are not determined by the genetics he was born with but by how those genetics then operate in the environment he was born into. This explains why there has been a 1000% increase in the incidence of peanut allergies within a single generation, for instance. Such auto-immune disorders are genetically determined but it is the environment which then defines how the particular genes involved are expressed. There's a lot more to evolution than Darwinism.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:What you do in your life cannot alter by improvement the prospects of your offspring's genetics.

Evolutionary biology has moved on a long way from the simplistic approach of Darwin and Galton. What you say here is true but very misleading. Evolution is not about the role of an individual within a biosphere but about the evolution of the biosphere as a whole. Except in very rare cases your offspring's prospects are not determined by the genetics he was born with but by how those genetics then operate in the environment he was born into. This explains why there has been a 1000% increase in the incidence of peanut allergies within a single generation, for instance. Such auto-immune disorders are genetically determined but it is the environment which then defines how the particular genes involved are expressed. There's a lot more to evolution than Darwinism.

It is not at all misleading.
The idea that working out, or study will make better sperm or eggs is still believed. And this fallacy has increased with the advent of epigenetics.
When we discuss all other systems of evolution, we like to call "Darwinian", such as the subject of memes and temes, social systems and design a ~Lamarkian approach is just as valid. None of these rely on anything analogous to gametes. A social system of fully interactive and the results of actions can directly feedback instantaneously. When we talk about the evolution of a petrol engine, it can happen in from of your eyes on paper and can directly reflect need.


Please explain your odd assertion about peanut allergy.
Please explain the mechanism that you think you have uncovered.
And what does it have to do with evolution.

Evolution occurs throughout one's life. Every time a cell replicates it does so imperfectly and some replicants are better adapted than others. You are referring to species evolution and I'm referring to the continuous evolution of our cellular biology which involves a vastly greater suite of selection factors. The most significant of these selection factors is the tens of thousands of species which exist in symbiosis with us, each of which has an evolutionary trajectory of its own. It is these which determine how genes are expressed in cellular mitosis and these symbiotic species outlive their hosts.

Obvious Leo wrote:Evolution occurs throughout one's life. Every time a cell replicates it does so imperfectly and some replicants are better adapted than others. You are referring to species evolution and I'm referring to the continuous evolution of our cellular biology which involves a vastly greater suite of selection factors. The most significant of these selection factors is the tens of thousands of species which exist in symbiosis with us, each of which has an evolutionary trajectory of its own. It is these which determine how genes are expressed in cellular mitosis and these symbiotic species outlive their hosts.

Exactly you are talking bollocks. It does not matter a rat's arse if each of our cells manages to "evolve". That's just an abuse of language. When we die, as we must that process contributes nothing to human evolution.