If the earth's population had to be reduced to say.. 1 million (methodical selection)

[glass]

i saw an ad for a charity showing a little HIV-positive African girl who got a second chance thanks to sponsors. now.. i don't think it's possible to say this without being an asshole, but why would a charity organization save an arbitrary HIV positive person when so many other non-HIV positive people are dying out there?

let's say you have enough money to donate a million dollars to charity, 10 million people dying in a small third world country, and you were asked to pick guidelines on what type of people would take priority (maybe women, children, educated, poor, etc) in this process of "saving". your resources are limited, so you have to be precise. what kind of people would you focus on saving?

---

say there's an asteroid is headed for earth and you own the rocketship that'll take 1 million (yes..) people to Mars where you can start a new civilization - everyone else dies. how should we pick who gets to live?

two obvious dimensions we could go by:
- obvious physical attributes, e.g. size, bone structure, raw intelligence, immunity to disease, race, sex, etc
- acquired qualities, e.g. personal character, social skills, devotion to the community, enthusiasm, personality, sense of humor, etc

we could pick at random too, but i'm not sure i would do that. but maybe random selection is fairer, since you can't 'discriminate'. also, in a new world there'd be challenges you wouldn't have anticipated. you'd have more shots at gold in the Olympics sending a team for each sport, instead of a single super-team in one sport.

---

Chris Rock fans might know this: "they used to take the biggest strongest (black) slaves and breed them,.. to make big strong superslaves. there's evidence of this today, like the NFL for instance... we're 10% of the population, we're 90% of the final four." and it makes sense.. sorta.

i don't know if asians, europeans, etc have ever been subjected to that kind of methodical selection, but the results seem obvious: a black man prone to obesity in those days would've been killed, reducing the pool of obesity-causing genes among african slaves. meanwhile, a person of another race would've been allowed to live and pass on the genes despite the fact that they don't do him or the species any favors.

---

point: there can be some benefit in being selective. if we were forced to look at each person to decide which million in a world of 6 billion would live, we might not want to pick at random. so how do we pick?

[Seta]

All I know is, obesity was most definately not a problem in the slave-era.

[Taito]

I watched this movie 'Children of Men' a couple months ago.. other than it being about the end of the fucking world with the entire human population stricken with infertility and every nation collapsing.. Britain locked down their borders, violently ridding itself of the legion of refugees trying to immigrate to the last government on Earth..

But lo and behold, an illegal immigrant ended up being the only pregnant woman on the planet in years.. what if some immigration control officer killed that chick before she got knocked up? That dude would have signed humanity's death warrant, right?

My point is, no matter what the criteria you choose to select (beauty, intellience, strength, immunity, race etc.), do we know enough about humans to know if the right or best choice was made? What if during a war or plague or genocide sometime in history, some walk of life that was immune to the HIV got killed off?

Ninja EDIT: I'm no scientist, but I would go with random selection.

[SirFritzalot]

They'd leave all the niggas cept Wayne Brady:sweat:

No but seriously,I'd suspect that they'd choose anybody who can benefit society in some way or another. They'd be first priority, ie doctors and such. But I'd also like to believe that children and women would take priority over anyone else seeing as they could continue mankind itself. So it's kinda hard to say. Oh well.

-Fritz

[white shadow]

Humanity can never survive without diversity. One pandemic of the Martian AIDS and you're all fucked. (no pun intended)

[epsilon_]

selective people from different fields.

scientists/doctors/musicians/artists etc

and HOT CHICKS. :o

[Dem-Dem]

I'd take non religious skilled tradsmen and women and scientist leaving the god fearing to there fate while the million of use create a socity built on principle of Supply and create. I can't go into details because the system is tom simple and I don't want my ideas duplicated.

[ViciousSLASH]

I'd take one million super hetero ultimate jock guys and no women.

Then I'd laff when they'd all end up turning gay, their greatest fear realised.

Then when we got old we'd all die. The End.

[Rhio2k]

Humanity can never survive without diversity. One pandemic of the Martian AIDS and you're all fucked. (no pun intended)

Hell, just the Martian Flu (scabs ftw!) would cause massive shitstorms all over the world.

[ChibiT89]

naw man, shit would be crazy like a real life Halo game. No one would survive. This world could not handle organzing something of that magnitude because everyone would be pissed, armed, and/or high off something.

[Dem-Dem]

I'd tell the world that I had the cure for martian flu but only enough for one hundred thousand ppl and watch with popcorn as everone fights to be the one.

[Rhio2k]

I'd tell the world that I had the cure for martian flu but only enough for one hundred thousand ppl and watch with popcorn as everone fights to be the one.

Some of the scabs might not WANT to be human again...

[Xenozip.]

I remember Viscant had some interesting views on this subject.

[thedude.com]

no this is stupid . is just that unequal distribution of land and that's it , the earth population can survive for 30 decades .

[glass]

mm.. i read somewhere that good looking couples (attractive male+attractive female) tend to produce female offspring, and that this was because natural selection favored female humans who were beautiful, and males who were strong or aggressive. the more i thought about it, the more it sounded like a crock of shit.. but it brought up other thoughts.

besides making it easy to get laid, what evolutionary purpose does having the propotions of a supermodel serve? i mean.. i'm sure we were all once apes that were too wild and horny to give a fuck what the piece of ass we were hitting looked like. but somewhere along the line we evolved this appreciation for a certain type of physique and facial features. wouldn't we as a species propogate much more quickly if we weren't so picky, and just hit every willing ho in sight? (not that that doesn't happen)

maybe we unwittingly prefer the wide hips for childbearing? the breasts for breastmilk for our children? the legs for doing manual labor? what i mean is.. do we find these features beautiful in a woman because evolution has caused us to desire them, since they help ensure survival and success of our offspring? then what about a pretty face.. how did that ever help survival?

but seriously, i'm baffled sometimes about how some things have just managed to come about via natural selection.

---

i can understand how "love" might've come about - it makes the family unit more stable and the continued survival of one's genetic material just that much more likely. it's also more economically feasible to support one family and educate a small number of children than to provide for a dozen wives you don't love (as intensely as you would one wife) and dozens of children.

"ethics" and fair play just makes things better for the group. a lot of things in Christianity for example make a lot of sense when you think in terms of game theory - if both people sacrifice a little bit, overall everyone benefits more than if both tried to take advantage. as a philosophy the self-sacrificing message holds a lot, and i'm sure would look very consistent with any strategy for ensuring the continued survival of the species - God can be useful as a back up to having the proper institutions in place.

---

why does stupidity continue to thrive? as humans, would we pay any price if the general level of raw intelligence went up dramatically?

well.. i read somewhere (i think here actually..) that humans, apes and dolphins are among the only species that murder, and these are the most intelligent species on the planet. so there's a correlation, but does the intelligence of a group really give reason for its members to be malicious towards each other? it's as though the capacity to scheme came with the desire to scheme. i guess a successful murderer simultaneously passes on the "murderer" genes while stopping a line of "weak victim" genes.

more condescendingly maybe: i notice that i get really bored when i'm asked to do something simple repetitively. but when i'm asked to do something challenging (which a smarter person would find boring), i enjoy it and can do better than someone more intelligent since i'm not bored. a possible explanation for the continued persistence of different levels of raw intelligence could be the market of "things to do", many of which require different attention spans to do effectively. but that sounds like garbage.

---

anyway.. i hope some of this freestyle rant made sense. i guess these have been in support of 'variety' more than anything.

[thurst]

i'd bring no one over 40 and no one over 25 that didn't possess some trade skill or degree.

15% engineers & doctors, i figure a doc:patient ratio of 1:14 should be more than sufficient to keep everyone relatively healthy.

and then i'd choose everyone else based on looks, 40% guys and 60% women bcuz women die easier than guys thru child birth and shit like that so i figure we'd need more of them, and no retarded, handicapped or fat people would be brought obviously.

[white shadow]

maybe we unwittingly prefer the wide hips for childbearing? the breasts for breastmilk for our children? the legs for doing manual labor? what i mean is.. do we find these features beautiful in a woman because evolution has caused us to desire them, since they help ensure survival and success of our offspring? then what about a pretty face.. how did that ever help survival?

but seriously, i'm baffled sometimes about how some things have just managed to come about via natural selection.

---

Think of it as the same way as male sexual advertisement. A peacock has beautiful feathers that are very large, and makes it too cumbersome to walk or fly and vunerable to many predators. Why have it? Simply because of sexual selection, a female desires those traits and those peacocks end up passing those traits because they could afford to have their features even at the high cost of a shorter lifespan.

i can understand how "love" might've come about - it makes the family unit more stable and the continued survival of one's genetic material just that much more likely. it's also more economically feasible to support one family and educate a small number of children than to provide for a dozen wives you don't love (as intensely as you would one wife) and dozens of children.

"ethics" and fair play just makes things better for the group. a lot of things in Christianity for example make a lot of sense when you think in terms of game theory - if both people sacrifice a little bit, overall everyone benefits more than if both tried to take advantage. as a philosophy the self-sacrificing message holds a lot, and i'm sure would look very consistent with any strategy for ensuring the continued survival of the species - God can be useful as a back up to having the proper institutions in place.

---

Yeah I can't argue with that. lol

why does stupidity continue to thrive? as humans, would we pay any price if the general level of raw intelligence went up dramatically?


Because stupidity is subjective, there are people who are productive and graduate top colleges and are still stupid. (see. Jack Thompson)

well.. i read somewhere (i think here actually..) that humans, apes and dolphins are among the only species that murder, and these are the most intelligent species on the planet. so there's a correlation, but does the intelligence of a group really give reason for its members to be malicious towards each other? it's as though the capacity to scheme came with the desire to scheme. i guess a successful murderer simultaneously passes on the "murderer" genes while stopping a line of "weak victim" genes.


Yep I'm pretty sure there's a correlation. Maybe the act of cognitive choice makes us want to test these abilities just because... we can? I do not think that there are "murder" genes however, only testosterone. (since it is still largely male chimps/dolphins that murder.)


more condescendingly maybe: i notice that i get really bored when i'm asked to do something simple repetitively. but when i'm asked to do something challenging (which a smarter person would find boring), i enjoy it and can do better than someone more intelligent since i'm not bored. a possible explanation for the continued persistence of different levels of raw intelligence could be the market of "things to do", many of which require different attention spans to do effectively. but that sounds like garbage.

---


Actually I think that is quite a contradiction to most theories of how we got intelligence. It is actually believe repitition made use more smarter, by doing certain tasks over and over for thousands of years we could instinctually do certain tasks that normally in the past would require extensive thought.

So instead of focusing all our mental faculties in threading a needle, we could think even further to make a sewing machine.:razzy:

[HeaT]

why does stupidity continue to thrive? as humans, would we pay any price if the general level of raw intelligence went up dramatically?



because it is needed for society to function on an economic level...if everyone was intellegient, who would do low labor stuff??? like you said intellegient people dont like to do repetative things they like to be challenged mentally...

raw intelligence is very obscure to me, what exactly does that mean to you? to me raw intelligence is something that is rediculous hard to measure...

im outi

Roberth

[TheIlluminati]

Think of it as the same way as male sexual advertisement. A peacock has beautiful feathers that are very large, and makes it too cumbersome to walk or fly and vunerable to many predators. Why have it? Simply because of sexual selection, a female desires those traits and those peacocks end up passing those traits because they could afford to have their features even at the high cost of a shorter lifespan.



With regards to glass' 'pretty face' question, though, you can't apply your reasoning-- it would be circular. While you could reason that men sexually chose those women with those other physical features and thus those features became favourable for women to have even at the cost of shorter lifespan, a 'pretty face' has no advantage from a basic evolutionary survival standpoint. A 'pretty face' won't make you run faster, do more work, look for food or feed babies.

The whole 'pretty face' thing might be more intrinsic, more inborn, then. There are psychological studies that have compared the features that people across different cultures find attractive, and there are surprising similarities. Something that is very pretty to many is simple facial symmetry-- by the evolutionary psychologist, it's argued that this is a sign of healthiness, of lack of deformities.

[EvilKing]

You'd have 500,000 lawyers and roughly as many clients.

That is all.

[Dem-Dem]

I'll build tweenty eight Hollow spaceships that drop unsupecting people in to the lava of the valcanos there built over and braodcast fake launch's to draw more people. ignorance equals population controll.

[Lantis]

Annihilate all Gaia members. THE END-O

[Galactic]

999,999 of the most beautiful women on earth, and me.

We'd probably only survive about as long as it'd take me to fuck them all once....

But it would be the BEST. WEEK. EVER.

...

EVER.

^_-;

[white shadow]

With regards to glass' 'pretty face' question, though, you can't apply your reasoning-- it would be circular. While you could reason that men sexually chose those women with those other physical features and thus those features became favourable for women to have even at the cost of shorter lifespan, a 'pretty face' has no advantage from a basic evolutionary survival standpoint. A 'pretty face' won't make you run faster, do more work, look for food or feed babies.

The whole 'pretty face' thing might be more intrinsic, more inborn, then. There are psychological studies that have compared the features that people across different cultures find attractive, and there are surprising similarities. Something that is very pretty to many is simple facial symmetry-- by the evolutionary psychologist, it's argued that this is a sign of healthiness, of lack of deformities.

Well you're right, that was a hole. I neglected to also state that beauty advertises health too, such as a pimple-less face implies a healthy immune system.

[Xenozip.]

Some one post a link for this thread to Viscant. :lol:

[glass]

lol doesn't he search for his name whenever he hits the boards anyway?

and yeah, TheIlluminati hit the nail on the head about the circular reference. and yeah.. it's clear that we all agree roughly on what makes a face beautiful, but why is that? and we can sometimes prefer a pretty face with ok skin to a busted one with perfect skin.

about the relativity of intelligence, i guess with some research it might be possible to prove that the average level of raw intelligence (however that's measured) is higher today than 1000 years ago.

[DJ Ether]

Well you're right, that was a hole. I neglected to also state that beauty advertises health too, such as a pimple-less face implies a healthy immune system.

Really? I never heard that a clean face means you have a super immune system?

[white shadow]

Really? I never heard that a clean face means you have a super immune system?

I never said super. Scientists found out people with good skin generally had a healthier immune system on average, which makes perfect sense since it means the white blood cells that attack the bacteria in your pores are effective destroying the invading bacteria before accumulating into pus (aka a pimple).

[DJ Ether]

I never said super. Scientists found out people with good skin generally had a healthier immune system on average, which makes perfect sense since it means the white blood cells that attack the bacteria in your pores are effective destroying the invading bacteria before accumulating into pus (aka a pimple).

Well, at least I cant ever say SRK didnt teach me shit. Thanks fo the knowledge man.

[Stanman]

Well, at least I cant ever say SRK didnt teach me shit. Thanks fo the knowledge man.

SRK shaped me into the man I am today and I am being dead serious.

[white shadow]

Well, at least I cant ever say SRK didnt teach me shit. Thanks fo the knowledge man.
No prob.:pleased:

[HeaT]

Something that is very pretty to many is simple facial symmetry-- by the evolutionary psychologist, it's argued that this is a sign of healthiness, of lack of deformities.

that does not really make sense to me, can you show me a face that isnt symetrical from deformalities??? im going to assume that most peoples faces are fairly symetrical, farily symetrical that it would look symetrical if you did not closely inspect the face...

when checking out peoples faces no one inspects a face like that from the front...you can still tell people are good looking from an angular view, semi profile, or profile where you cant compare to see how symetrical it is...

so ya i dont buy it...

im outi

Roberth