Peterkin

Don't you wonder sometimes whether they might have been justified? But, no: it never happened. And it's not likely to. I suspect it's because they're too "soft" on the weakness of the Gregs and mindful of their male allies.

And that's only one factor. When one allocates funding, one must also take into account the methods of diagnosis and treatment, and the cost of each available option. But why is prostate cancer compared to breast cancer in the first place? The more appropriate analogy of prostate would be to cervical. If you were to compare breast cancer to breast cancer, given that men do get it, though less frequently, you might have a more realistic comparison. But that would require that actually care about the medical aspects, rather than just throw out random accusations of sexism.

There's always cloning...

So? It's the small investors who'd be left without their homes and pensions; the rich would have their 9 mansions, 19 luxury cars, yacht, jet, furs, jewellery and all those off-shore accounts to fall back on. Plus, of course, they could swoop in buy all the cheap real estate and small businesses from bankrupt small investors. In the 1970' and into the early '80's, our city hospital was doing 2-3 prostate currettings a week, histological examination of each consisting 36 slides, on average. That's roughly equivalent to the number and size of cervical sections. There were more ovarian cancers than testicular - as is still the case, at approximately four times the incidence. As for breast cancer: it is vastly more prevalent in women, but the male ones are not being ignored. Fact checking is easy. Anyone can do it. Anyone at all!

https://fortune.com/2016/12/02/aig-study-billionaires-wealth-gap/ The picture is worth visiting. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/eu-action/transport-emissions/road-transport-reducing-co2-emissions-vehicles/co2-emission-performance-standards-cars-and-vans_en https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2231434-eu-draft-exempts-private-jets-cargo-from-jet-fuel-tax

1912 https://qz.com/817354/scientists-have-been-forecasting-that-burning-fossil-fuels-will-cause-climate-change-as-early-as-1882/ Like the economic recessions, who coulda seen it coming - right, Right? Ignorance? Ah! So it's the quality control? Fair enough.

Seeing no threat where a real and practical threat exits (i.e. you can be dismissed, replaced as leader or demoted) and seeing a threat where none actually exists (the unqualified person will fail in their assignment) sounded like a mismatch to me. But then my hearing is no better than my sense of humour. Thank you for explaining.

I've been told otherwise. But humour wasn't the point here. I was really curious about the difference in perception between status-threat form someone who is, in either fact or your own estimation, qualified to displace you (an actual threat), and from someone you do not consider a serious contender (not an actual threat). It seemed to me a kind of conceptual mismatch, and I wondered whether it bore any relation to the mismatch to which CharonY was referring. Which would be an interesting psychological phenomenon... Otherwise, 🤣

Funny, that's what I said. Allergy as a class of ailment has not been bred out. Nobody said the profile of allergic reactions in any given region has not changed.

Greg A apparently feels differently. He may not be unique. Then... what? Since I do not make, and never have made any such claim, obviously, there is no actual threat to your position. And yet, your perception would be different? Why?

So then, why was it not bred out in the first 100,000 years? How is it able to persist and increase in a hugely expanded human population?

I believe that would be a mistake. The last 6000 years accounts for the most intense human intervention in human reproductive process, the most rapid mixing of gene-pools, drastic changes in diet and habitat, and introduction of new elements into the environment. It has been studied extensively, with complicated and as yet unresolved conclusions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8145659/

I see now. We were responding to two related arguments along different lines, each unaware that the other had a precedent elsewhere.

"Mismatch" is the term of which I'm failing to follow the significance. In a stratified society, you either have a status - a recognized place in the hierarchy, accorded respect, worth, income, etc. - or you don't. I don't see how or why it becomes a question of matching perception to reality: an alteration to the structure either takes place or not. If it does, then the hierarchy changes in some way, and the actual position of some or many or all strata shift to some degree. Whether some people have illusions about their own status or not; whether they perceive a disproportionate shift in their own status or not, whether some strata have more or less horizontal expansion space than others, the threat does exist; they are or will be expected to make an adjustment. Even if the change is ultimately to their own benefit, any change makes some people in a vertical structure uncomfortable. Those with more secure positions, or are most adaptable, have the least potential loss; those who are already precarious may be displaced altogether.

I don't see how that contradicts what I said. Everyone in a ranked society is affected by some form of threat - direct, indirect, imminent or illusory - by any structural change. Immigration is a structural change, as is the admission of women to professions previously exclusive to men, as is the elimination of a colour-bar or the institution of universal old age benefits.

Uh-huh...

A-a-a-nd... we have a punchline!

I'm not sure what that means. Organizational structures are based on social structures and tend to reflect the mind-set of the cultures in which they exist. If they bear a resemblance to religious or other structures, that might be because humans structure things in similar ways through the ages. I see no reason to use only religious models for your observations of IT organizations, especially as one analogy regards values, while the other regards aesthetics, which are two very different entities, not comparable as structures. I don't see a topic for discussion. Even less do I see a need for giant font.

Just as well. Greg A has no ideas. He repeats nonsense he's received from various unreliable sources without bothering to verify or inform himself, because it's just so much easier to be a self-designated victim than a functional citizen. The insight he provides into such a mind-set has been interesting and somewhat entertaining, but the returns diminish very quickly. Has the Supreme Court not gotten around to that yet? Shouldn't be long! https://civilrights.org/2020/03/23/u-s-supreme-court-rolls-back-historic-civil-rights-protections-in-comcast-ruling/# https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/27/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-00042478 If you think you're protected, start thinking again!

Sorry! In a status-ranked society, everyone is affected by status threat, because everyone's interest is intimately tied up in their status. The people with the most at stake in any proposed structural alteration are the ones with the highest accustomed status. In a wealth-based patriarchal society, that would be the richest men, their first-born sons [any women who, through accomplishment, aggression or marriage had made themselves a place in the hierarchy, according to its rules] their wives, brothers, younger sons, daughters, trusty retainers and mistresses - in roughly that order. How the wealth-based hierarchy maintains its power over the the lower (wealth-producing) tiers of the society is by constantly keeping the threat in play for all of their minions, and that can best be done by making sure there is always a large pool of no-status people below everyone who has any - slaves, women, undocumented immigrants, homeless, prison populations, unemployables - doesn't matter, as you can make sure each tier knows that somebody is after their position. Let me guess! Fictional? Not exactly somebody likely to compete for your job?

There is nothing arbitrary about those directions: they are descriptions of the degree of fairness and equity of each kind of arrangement. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/nyregion/day-meyer-murray-young-warehouse-of-the-rich.html

How long a past are you considering? Within the last 6000 or so years, human selection has been no more natural than the breeding of livestock, and the environment in which humans lived was no more natural than their diets and lifestyles. And they're still complicated, and still responding to changing environmental factors. But the gene pools have also been remixed a number of time, on quite large scales, during that period. What was 'selected-for' in equatorial Africa 60,000 years ago is not the same as the traits selected-for in northern Asia in the same period. But the resulting populations, and their counterparts in Europe and Oceania, have met in various capacities since that time, exchanging DNA all over the place. No; people are still dying in famines. The wealthy populations with unfettered choice in their diet actually make up a relative insignificant portion of the human genome, though they probably account the majority of allergies, though data is obviously easier to collect in some places than other. And the number, especially of food allergies, is rising steadily. https://comfyliving.net/allergy-statistics/ And a lot more successful reproduction (i.e. offspring surviving to reproductive age) happened during times of relative plenty. Neither situation triggered a change in people's reproductive choices or behaviours - just more people died or fewer people died.

Every word in that quote corresponds to my experience of group activities in a very general way. I'd like to add only two things. I have been in a mixed group that worked very well, because the men involved had a broader vision than the question of who's in charge. Every member of the team, male and female, was goal-oriented: more intent on the success of the project, and finding the most effective means of achieving that, then their own status. Of course, it's helpful if the members are all secure in their own competence and worth. On the same premise, I take a slightly different view of the last statement. A 'rearrangement of possibilities' is perhaps the greatest threat of all to people who hold unearned privilege - as well as the only hope of mankind.

Because real men, tough men, strong men never complain; they just suffer and suffer and suffer in silence. You can hear them doing it every Saturday night after the after-football pub-crawl. Poor things, wraith-like in the dark shadows, floating homeward to abusive wives, preparing to bear the kicks and blows without a whimper of protest... One's heart goes out to them!

If it only prevents one in ten successful offspring, it would take a very long time to disappear. Over that period, any number of natural catastrophes, plagues and wars may have decimated the population, so that it's impossible to tell which factor accounts for which 10% loss. Some - the more serious - genetic anomalies do get bred out. How long it takes depends on how much human interference there is in the process: whether a society exposes its defective infants or saves them at all cost; whether the anomaly is prevalent in a class that gets more or less protection; whether intermarriage of castes and clans is encouraged or forbidden; whether birth control and reproductive choice of are practiced, etc. Some harmful genetic anomalies do not present until later in life, when reproduction has already taken, often without the carrier being aware that he or she has already passed it on. Hence DNA testing before a planned conception. Some uncomfortable but not disabling anomalies may be associated with traits that are valued by a culture. Domestic evolution is subject to many of the same, but also some very different influences from natural evolution.