men and women

i agree…i dont have much hope for this acceptance of differences…

Is that the Royal “we”?
Actually an advantage is not always a deal breaker. Fact is that organisms carry traits that are advantages, neutral, and even disadvantageous; evolution not be a cause but an effect does not give a rat’s arse. As long as the organism continues to have viable progeny, they can do things that are selectively negative.
Humans, having the survival thing pretty much sown up tend to behave in ways all the time that do not affect their survival in any sense. And probably when the shit eventually hits the fan it will probably be for some reason no one was able to predict.
Humans have pursued a massively diverse set of social strategies whose concerns are only peripherally acquainted with basic survival, and that was the reason I piked you up on the “we all should get along so we can have babies” assumption; because that is not always how we have proceeded in the long history of human “progress”.

But it can be–in highly stressful environments.

Yes, but again, I’m thinking in terms of the modern Western world. And I’m not talking about one or another individual–I’m talking about the way we live as a civilization.

I get that you’re trying to argue that we can reproduce without men and women getting along (in the sense that they like each other and enjoy each other’s company–or, at the very least, have a workable system by which they help each other raise children), but I’m including things in the equation that I’m calling “advantages” or “improvements”–things that make the system better or function more efficiently.

When I think about evolution, I usually include efficiency as one of the variables that must be plugged into the equation for survival. Survival is competition, after all–that’s one of the bedrock principles of the theory anyway. It’s survival of the fittest, not survival of the fit enough. The only cases in which this rule may be relaxed somewhat would be cases in which the species has far outrun its competition (and I’ll grant you that this may be the case with human beings), but this is typically the exception to the rule, and I wouldn’t start counting on it if you’re considering what’s the best survival strategy for human beings today.

You seem to be answering the question “What’s the minimum requirement for us to continue the human species?”

I’m answering the question “What’s the best way for us to continue the human species?”

I don’t think it is safe to assume that ‘getting along’ is an especially adaptive trait. Evolution is 90% speculation and 10% verification.
No species ever survives FOR a trait. They are not selected FOR specific behaviours.
It is only true to say that Species with selectively advantageous traits are selected.

And each comes with positive, neutral and even negative traits, just so long as they continue to make viable progeny; evolution does not give a rats arse, and at no time can you say a trait is THE reason for survival.
Evolution is not a cause ,and traits do not emerge in the first case in view of the function they might fulfil. Evolution is an effect that happens when selection happens; some creatures do better than others.
As it is the case that human have progressed for millions of years without “getting along” and most countries do not follow the “Western Model” it is hardly appropriate to suggest that "getting along’ is the deal breaker. Most brides are bought.
When the oil runs out, the survivors will be the ones with the biggest sticks able to spread their seed wider than nice people.

Meh. There is a lot of evidence that getting along is an adaptive trait. We’re social animals, we depend on each other to survive (we ain’t scorpions). We want to get along–especially men and women: we lust after each other and we want to love one another. I don’t see this as a culturally learnt trait or some fleeting fad like platform shoes. It’s a hunger. Why would we be bestowed with sensations of thirst and hunger unless it was advantageous for us to having some inner impetus to seek out and consume food and water. Why would we lust after, and seek love from, the opposite sex unless it drove us to engage in actions that were condusive to our survival and that of our offspring? Is that verification? Probably not, but I find it very convincing.

On a surface reading, you sound like you’re contradicting yourself.

Yeah, I get that. But you can only take that so far. You can’t tell me that someone born with a genetic defect by which he can’t digest food very well might actually turn out to have an advantage just in case we suddenly enter into a new environment in which digesting food is not important at all and that some other means of getting nurishment to the body is miraculously provided. That may be true in principle (even then I’m hard pressed to imagine what such an environment would be like), but I’m still gonna place my bets on the assumption that this poor chap’s genetic defect is not going to help him or his offspring in the game of survival.

Now I think you’re taking flights of fancy. Millions of years??? The kind of warfare we see today and throughout the better part of the last 5 to 10 millennia are on a mass scale that human kind has never seen before. I don’t think you can say that before this time, warfare was the norm as a way of life. You have to keep in mind that our species is roughly 200 thousand years old (and yes, we could go back about 2 to 3 million years if we want to include older humanoid ancestors). This means that although our cultural and technological worlds have been evolving at an alarming rate, our genetic profiles have not been able to keep up. The way we lived back 200 thousand years ago is most likely still encoded for in our present genes. I don’t think warfare, kidnapping, raping, buying wives, etc. was a significant or essential component of that genetic encoding (or at least I have my doubts that it eclipsed our more peaceful and amicable tendencies).

The jury’s still out on whether non-western ways of life are a better survival strategy than western ways.

Having a bigger stick does not make you a rapist. You have two dominant males, each with equally big sticks. One spreads his genes by kidnapping and raping women, the other attracts women by his demonstrated tendencies to protect and provide for them by beating off the other guy who wants to rape and kidnap them. Who do you think is going to get more women?

Try and read it more carefully, and try to get over the impression that you are smarter than me.
I’m not saying that I am smarter, but you have missed a very important point here.

Examine these two claims:

(1) The claim that evolution is a process in which creatures with adaptive traits are selected and

(2) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures are selected for their adaptive traits.

When you have figured out the difference get back to me.

I get it, Hobbes. That’s why I said on a surface reading. But I don’t think your point makes a difference to what I’m saying.

This is grabbed out of thin air, we have moved forward since women got voting rights and such, it hasn’t gone backwards, you are seeing things.

He did say “around the world”.

He said “we may anyways…”

Why ?

Why ?

bollocks

I concur with thim.

Surely you are jesting!?

Why would I jest? Do you really think mankind is destined to forever move forward? Do we have a guarantee?

Some of it will.

The problem with trying to define human nature is that somebody’s bound to be offended.

Homo Sapiens (hohmo sahpeeins)

• Easily offended species of Ape
• Paranoid Hominid
• Self-aware primate
• Sinner
• King-murderer
• Conspiracy-theorist
• Earthbound dolphin
• ?
• ??
• ???

Dolphin haters are going to be furious with this one.

So long as we can record our words and thoughts and learn from it, we will progress.

Only when we should all get kind of religious, we will surely degress.

But this is a near religious belief on your part. mankind might make a pestilence that will kill it off. It may make errors when it determines what post humans should be like, the gene manipulated cyborgs many think we will shortly become. How does one objectively determine we have moved forward? What are the criteria?

Ehh, hellOooOOooo? You said cyborg, isn’t that huge step forward in itself to be able to create that? Wake up!