Forum Philosophy Update

[Serendipper]

@Karpel Tunnel

@Serendipper

Evolution tends to work with a lot of collaboration

Evolution only works if it is resisted.

Except, again, there is a great deal of collaboration, even fusing of different species - lichens, our own cells - symbiotic crossspecies relationships and more.

Sure, but collaboration is incidental to the selective process because the process continues whether or not collaboration exists.

[i]Evolution is the destruction of one state (or person) in such a way as to produce a “stronger” state or person.

No, that’s a myth, the ‘stronger’ part. It would be adapted to the new situation better. It might be smaller and weaker. It might simply be different, not stronger, but suited.

Well that’s Jame’s words, not mine, but “stronger” is a subjective term. Let’s take the bacterial example: if antibiotics are used, then evolution will overcome the antibiotic resistance. Coincidentally: Man has ‘world’s worst’ super-gonorrhoea

Now if the antibiotics go away, then there will no longer be a challenge to natural selection so the bacteria will devolve into “weaker” strains. This is the theory regarding syphilis, that it’s a harmless bacteria if it’s allowed to circulate in a population, but when clothing and cleanliness interfere with that process, it evolves into a more virulent strain. In order to evolve (as in move forward, not backwards), there must be a challenge or resistance to overcome.

As far as I know, trees can’t direct water movement as they are slave to transpiration from the leaves which suck water from the ground. That’s one reason why it’s so hard to grow grass under trees… they suck the ground dry… literally.

ecology.com/2012/10/08/trees-communicate/

Yes, this one I knew about. It’s the fungal contribution of water to the roots. I was thankful I had put woodchips on my trees before that drought hit.

https://boingboing.net/2017/01/02/the-sophisticated-hidden-ways.html

I have some problems with this one.

If sick trees die, they fall, which open gaps in the canopy. The climate becomes hotter and drier and the environment becomes worse for the trees that remain.[/i]

I don’t agree with that. Trees give up their lives for the ones that remain. I’ve seen it 100s of times. A smaller tree that didn’t compete for light as well will whither and die then fall over and decay and feed the soil and the taller trees that were more genetically equipped to thrive in the particular environment. There is no advantage to trees nursing sick trees, especially during a drought. I’m struggling to keep my forest thick as possible and can assure you there is no truth to that claim… not that I can see, but I sincerely wish there were.

Now, yes, plants do communicate through the roots and they may even feed each other in competition with other species, but when it comes down to one tree vs another, family loyalty goes out the window. The best thing a sick tree can do for the species is to die and feed the remaining trees, which is why I’m a beggar for woodchips.

The tree has no leaves to create sugars, so the only explanation is that it has been supported by neighboring trees for more than four centuries.

It’s not that the neighboring trees were feeding the stump, but feeding the bacteria in the ground and the stump was stealing the sugar. The bacteria produce N in exchange for sugar. I actually pour sugar on my pepper plants to get more peppers.

That article is a lot of hippie communal idealism. Plants are vicious competitors in reality.

Lots of things could wipe us out, but evolution will overcome it.

Evolution is an infallible process? This evolution, on this planet?

Well it’s the random, exhaustive, and unrelenting process of problem solving, so it would seem infallible. If there is a way at all to overcome, it will be found and exploited.

And we fight evolution all the time.

And we will always lose. Evolution is the force that overcomes resistance.

Again, that’s not true. We have been keeping problematic genes going through social support. This is true of other social mammals. We reduce natural selection all the time.

It’s not over yet, give it time. Anyway, social support is a product of evolution, so it’s difficult to tell what is the result and what is the resistance.

In a way, it is natural selection. We are not unnatural.

I am not arguing that we are unnatural. I am arguing against the purist natural selection getting rid of the weak conception of evolution. That evolution we successfully resist. IOW it is not a full image of evolution, and neither is what gets called natural selection. The moment you see things like evolution weeding out the weak, it is a sign you are dealing with an incomplete view of evolution - a social darwinism, a popularized version, a Spencerian version, and a problematic version.

Well, perhaps it’s better to say evolution weeds out the weak and devolution favors the weak. If there are no antibiotics present, then there is no resistance to overcome and therefore evolution doesn’t take place, but devolution (the weak are favored). Evolution only works if there is resistance of it.

We fight natural selection with antibiotics which empowers natural selection to select for strains that resist our drugs. We fight natural selection with herbicides which empowers natural selection to favor weeds that resist chemicals. We can’t put out fires with gasoline and by trying to solve our problems we sometimes fan the flames.

Sure, there’s that. But that’s not the only way. It is not dependent on technology, even elephants do this. And, of course, not all technology has these kinds of feedback problems.

If there is ample grass and few predators, the grazers will devolve into short-legged eating machines. But if there are lots of predators and little grass, then grazers will evolve into runners, browsers. In the grasslands we have buffalo and in the mountains we have deer. Evolution overcomes the pressure put on it.

In other ways, we are natural selection. We are currently selecting masculine women and feminine men. All domesticated animals have been selected for by us and the only reason they exist is that we guard them. All of our food has been naturally selected by us: tomatoes, corn, taters, beans, you name it. None of that existed before we made it, er, selected it.

Right, all those plants are pussies. Lol.

Yes of course because if we weren’t around to protect them, they’d be wiped out. Nothing is more helpless than a peking duck. Owls, turtles, coyotes, coons, everything is wanting to eat the duck and it can do nothing to protect itself other than having us building cages around it. I have netting, chicken wire, and electric fencing around mine and the turtles still get in.

What is better or good? What survives is the test for what is good. “Good” cannot be presumed or evolution would be pointless. All of this would be pointless if the universe already knew what it was going out to discover.

OK, but it seemed like you were saying that capitalism was better since it undermined communism.

I was just saying all is fair in love and war.

I was questioning that in specific. Now you seem to be questioning the idea of evaluating good or better at all.

“Good” only exists in relation to some defined goal.

IOW you are argreeing with my conclusion but supporting it with an argument at a higher level of abstraction, one which contradicts your first evaluation.

I’m not seeing what you’re seeing. Can you elaborate?

China Deploys “SkyNet” Facial Recognition, Can Compare 3 Billion Faces Per Second

The problem with communism is the need for control.

But now imagine a system where all these behaviours are rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according to rules set by the government. That would create your Citizen Score and it would tell everyone whether or not you were trustworthy. Plus, your rating would be publicly ranked against that of the entire population and used to determine your eligibility for a mortgage or a job, where your children can go to school - or even just your chances of getting a date.

As soon as they’ve defined a merit system like that, they’ve defined the “weak and degenerate”. And that presumes one can know what weak means.

An exhaustive, unrelenting process will defeat a guided, presumptuous process in time, every time.

[Arcturus_Descending]

It is murder to eternally banish someone.

Not in this place it isn’t. lol

Eternal Recurrence is greatly practiced in ILP like the Phoenix rising out of the ashes being renewed and transformed into another skin. I daresay that Carleas is both stoic and practical in allowing it…but I may be wrong in that latter regard.

Eternal Banishment, my foot!

---

As Elie put it in his first classic work, Night, “to forget would not only be dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time” • The danger of silence in the face of evil – the imperative of standing up against injustice. As Elie put it in his 1986 Nobel Prize lecture, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor never the victim, silence encourages the tormentor never the tormented… wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.” And he added: “there may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time where we fail to protest against injustice.”

"The danger of state sanctioned cultures of hate – the responsibility to prevent. The enduring lessons of the Holocaust, and the genocides that followed in Srebrenica, Rwanda and Darfur – where Elie sounded the alarm again and again – is that the Shoah, and these genocides, occurred not only because of the machinery of death but because of state sanctioned ideologies of hate. It is this teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other, this is where it all begins."

[b]"The danger of indifference and inaction in the face of mass atrocity and genocide – the responsibility to protect."[/b]

[b]"What made the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda so unspeakable was not only the horror of the genocides themselves but that these genocides were preventable. We knew and we did not act, just as we knew and did not act in the genocide in Darfur, and just as we know and have not acted in the mass atrocities in Syria. As Elie warned us again and again, indifference in the face of evil is acquiescence with evil itself – it is complicity with evil."[/b]

"And as Elie would add: “It is our responsibility to confront evil, as Raoul Wallenberg did, to resist it, to expose it – particularly when evil masks itself under the cover of law.” For let us not forget, on this the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Race Laws and the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, that the Nazis committed mass murder under the cover of law, aided and abetted by the Nuremberg elites – doctors, lawyers, judges, educators – la trahison des clercs."

“The danger of anti-Semitism; simply put – 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz, 1.1 million of them were Jews, of which Elie was one. One million of them were murdered, including Elie’s parents and sister. But let there be no mistake about it: Jews died at Auschwitz because of anti-Semitism, [u]but anti-Semitism itself did not die. And Jew-hatred remains the canary in the mineshaft of global evil that threatens us all. [/u]”

[b]The closing excerpt from this Declaration is as follows: “…That never again will we be indifferent to incitement and hate. That never again will we be silent in the face of evil. That never again will we indulge racism and anti-Semitism.

That never again will we be indifferent to the plight of the vulnerable. That never again will we be indifferent to mass atrocity and impunity. But we will speak and we will act against racism, against hate, against anti-Semitism, against mass atrocity, against injustice – and against the crime of crimes we should even shudder to mention – genocide.”[/b]

jpost.com/Opinion/Elie-Wies … ity-460012

[Serendipper]

@Arcturus Descending

It is murder to eternally banish someone.

Not in this place it isn’t. lol

Eternal Recurrence is greatly practiced in ILP like the Phoenix rising out of the ashes being renewed and transformed into another skin. I daresay that Carleas is both stoic and practical in allowing it…but I may be wrong in that latter regard.

Eternal Banishment, my foot!

The intent is for eternal banishment… regardless of the actuality.

As Elie put it in his first classic work, Night, “to forget would not only be dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time” • The danger of silence in the face of evil – the imperative of standing up against injustice. As Elie put it in his 1986 Nobel Prize lecture, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor never the victim, silence encourages the tormentor never the tormented… wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.” And he added: “there may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time where we fail to protest against injustice.”

"The danger of state sanctioned cultures of hate – the responsibility to prevent. The enduring lessons of the Holocaust, and the genocides that followed in Srebrenica, Rwanda and Darfur – where Elie sounded the alarm again and again – is that the Shoah, and these genocides, occurred not only because of the machinery of death but because of state sanctioned ideologies of hate. It is this teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other, this is where it all begins."

[b]"The danger of indifference and inaction in the face of mass atrocity and genocide – the responsibility to protect."[/b]

[b]"What made the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda so unspeakable was not only the horror of the genocides themselves but that these genocides were preventable. We knew and we did not act, just as we knew and did not act in the genocide in Darfur, and just as we know and have not acted in the mass atrocities in Syria. As Elie warned us again and again, indifference in the face of evil is acquiescence with evil itself – it is complicity with evil."[/b]

"And as Elie would add: “It is our responsibility to confront evil, as Raoul Wallenberg did, to resist it, to expose it – particularly when evil masks itself under the cover of law.” For let us not forget, on this the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Race Laws and the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, that the Nazis committed mass murder under the cover of law, aided and abetted by the Nuremberg elites – doctors, lawyers, judges, educators – la trahison des clercs."

“The danger of anti-Semitism; simply put – 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz, 1.1 million of them were Jews, of which Elie was one. One million of them were murdered, including Elie’s parents and sister. But let there be no mistake about it: Jews died at Auschwitz because of anti-Semitism, [u]but anti-Semitism itself did not die. And Jew-hatred remains the canary in the mineshaft of global evil that threatens us all. [/u]”

[b]The closing excerpt from this Declaration is as follows: “…That never again will we be indifferent to incitement and hate. That never again will we be silent in the face of evil. That never again will we indulge racism and anti-Semitism.

That never again will we be indifferent to the plight of the vulnerable. That never again will we be indifferent to mass atrocity and impunity. But we will speak and we will act against racism, against hate, against anti-Semitism, against mass atrocity, against injustice – and against the crime of crimes we should even shudder to mention – genocide.”[/b]

jpost.com/Opinion/Elie-Wies … ity-460012

Is that an argument for or against censorship?

If you ban something, you only make it stronger. Evolution thrives on resistance! However if an ideology is truly stupid, then let it be stupid for all to see.

We see this today in Twitter trying to silence the Right through shadowbanning, but that very effort is strengthening the resolve of Trumpers. Twitter is empowering its enemy via its efforts to silence them.