Sayonara

Perhaps I am just being dim, but I am still having trouble seeing your point. Is it your view that there are no male actors in their late 20s or 30s who you would consider to be "alpha"? You have disputed, but you have not really adequately demonstrated any of my points to be either factually incorrect or implausible as explanations. If I may make a suggestion, there is little point disputing anything I have said until the final paragraph of my last post is considered. With hindsight I ought to have started off with that point, sorry. Is any of this actually helping you? I'm trying to give you alternative views, but I acknowledge that it does read like quite a severe critique.

The thing is, the Drake equation doesn't make any statement about genesis, and genesis is not a specified variable. It just estimates the population of races which are capable of communicating in a particular way. If anything, seeding is going to deliver to worlds which might otherwise remain lifeless the chance to produce such a civilisation. This is possibly something which we could model experimentally as a community. The problem lends itself well to study by simulation and we have plenty of programming skills between us. I had a really important point to make on this last week shortly after making my last post, but I was unable to get to a PC and I forget what I was thinking about. I'll try and remember!

The post was not deleted; that is a lie. It was moved to a thread of its very own. There is no such thread. What there is is a thread which begins with your post and deteriotes into a jovial discussion about possible names for YT's take on creationist-less creationism. Stop mischaracterising the valid actions of the staff on this site as some kind of crusade of censorship against you, and stop lying about staff actions. If we were going to censor you, you would first need to say something compelling and controversial, rather than just flaunting the rules of our community. And stop derailing other people's threads - it is getting very tiresome.

They key word being "illusion".

I agree entirely. There is no reason to pick and choose.

The poster hasn't responded for over a year. This debacle was bumped by HannonRJ.

I don't think any of the reasons you offer come close to falsifying the idea. Since none of the actors you list there are "between the age of 20-32" I am not sure what this is supposed to demonstrate. This is not representative of what I have been describing. I stated that the major market share aims at the 20-30s audience, and the method of representation which is currently in fashion for that audience is character exemplification for idealised roles. Contradiction. You make the claim after this that you have "looked at this situation very closely for a long time". So is it a sudden event or a trend that has developed over time? It can't be both. But it is only within the last decade or so that they have commanded the lion's share of the market. Do not simply ignore this. I am talking about disposable income. People used to leave school and get a job because they had to pay into the household, and had enough left over to put fuel in their car and take Betsy-Sue to the drive-in once a month. Young people these days are (i) vastly more numerous than they were in Russell Crowe's equivalent generation, and (ii) vastly richer in terms of what they can spend on non-essential goods and services. There really is no point arguing against this; it's not just some wacky opinion that is exclusive to me. It's real. Their motive is money. As for strange, sudden, and completeness, I don't think you have really shown that they apply. Most likely because these are observations which you cannot measure in a properly controlled or empirical fashion. I don't make the claim that it is being orchestrated. It is a completely normal example of products changing to match shifts in the market. It is, if you will, the current fashion. If you extended your study back even further, to cinema, television, and music from the 1940s onwards perhaps, you would see quite clearly how they have all developed and diversified greatly over time in the way that they produce and market material. That process will never cease as long as social norms are changing. What is the basis of this claim? That is all entirely possible. But you can demonstrate it only by carrying out trials to show that those agents can have the effects that you claim, then by carrying out a controlled study to show that those agents do have the opportunity to cause those effects, and then provide strong evidence that it happens. You don't demonstrate it by comparing celebrities' faces then attributing the differences to some unspecified environmental factor, while ignoring variables that will influence any possible conclusion. People seem to accept all sorts of ideas very easily, which as you can appreciate has caused one or two problems throughout history. That is why we have developed the scientific method. I appreciate your enthusiasm for the topic and the investment you have made in your research so far, but I think that you are taking a very narrow view to the detriment of the quality of your conclusions. There is one thing I need to clarify with you. I do not make the claim that the trend you are describing (that of decreasing physical "maturity" in the population, I suppose) is not occurring. I think that there is at least some evidence to support that. What I am trying to say is that the study of celebrities is not adequate to the task of evidencing a theory which explores that trend, because there are unrelated variables involved which lead to similar results, and you cannot eliminate their effects from your data by observation alone.

That's good. The characteristics you are investigating clearly have a cause, and I suspect that the cause is due to selective processes in the way that they have been made into celebrities, rather than something acting on the biology of the population. Where do you stand on that? Do you think it might be worth investigating? Heh. I wouldn't make the claim that there is homogeneity amongst celebrities, because that simply wouldn't be true. Even if the trends I described are prevalent in the entertainment industry, there will of course be plenty of examples of people and groups who are talented or self-enabling enough to be celebritised even though they are less marketable than their contemporaries. The majority market does not preclude niche markets or popular demand.

http://intelligence-test.net/part2/ I am on 20/24 and counting; this one is a bit tougher. [edit] Some of these are really annoying when you finally get them.

That's exactly what it is supposed to be about.

This thread is edging towards the SFN theological danger line.

Fair enough! Was worried you were going to get whacked by the Peer Review Mafia or something.

Don't take this is a criticism, I'm just curious... shouldn't you research things you state as fact before you write the paper?

I'm not saying it's a conspiracy. It's just the result of social trends. By what standards are you measuring this change to conclude that it is too complete or vast, or that it has come on too suddenly? Well this presents a measuring problem, because we can't just google the age of someone we see on the street. And if we ask someone how old they are, chances are they will shave years off (unless they are trying to buy alcohol off you). I for example know a 19-year-old who is, as they say, built like a brick shithouse, and who looks like he is just on the right side of 30. He is clearly bucking the trend, and you wouldn't ever say that he was representative of teenagers. So why attribute an inappropriate representative status to people who are chosen for their looks to fulfill a purpose which involves them pretending to be something that they are not? To demonstrate this, you will need a much more random sample. The celebrity comparison has undergone at least three levels of artificial selection already; that of the image-want which society dictates to studios, that of auditioning, and that of being picked for the comparison itself. You will also need a control of some sort.

I understand what you are observing. I am trying to provide a possible explanation, and the least you could do - since you asked for comments - is consider it. Youthful and "non-grown up" actors dominate the market now because the market has swung towards providing that image in order to reap the profit available from the massive amounts of disposable cash in the possession of the younger generation. It's not like there are no "grown up" looking people available in the current 20-30s age range; they are just not well-represented in the environment you are looking at. That is your 'hampering' factor - market forces. The standard definition of alpha male comes from social biology, where it is the term used to identify the lead individual to whom all the members of a pod or pack defer. This definition has bled into common everyday speech, where it means a male who dominates the males around him, by active or passive intimidation and reinforcements of his superiority. Simply being masculine and physically mature does not suffice (although I am sure they are commonly found to be attributes of alpha males), particularly since humans are capable of assuming the alpha role by political or subvertive means. Don't think you have to defend every word you have written to the very last just because you have devoted an entire web site to it. [merged post:] Let me put it another way. From your essay: All this demonstrates is that different people have different physical and mental characteristics and different responses to their different training. That's why auditions are used - to find the person most fit for the role. So if the roles are mainly being filled by the people you describe as "child for life" sufferers, this is due to the roles. And what drives role creation? The market. And that doesn't just mean the box office; it is influenced by everything from the way in which actors are contracted, to the way in which writers are hired or commissioned, to the way in which a studio and its shareholders want to present their brand. I think you would benefit immensely from gaining a much broader understanding of how the major film and television studios and record labels conduct their businesses successfully. [another merged post:] I have another point to make, again based on part of your essay: (I hope this will all help you to develop your ideas!) Take into consideration that the cast of these shows are chosen to fill particular roles. They are chosen by audition, from a particular set of applicants, which makes the process non-random. Consider what factors influence the choice which is made. Let's take Lost as an example. The actors exemplify an idealised version of the role they are occupying. It's not just that a 32-year-old happened to land the role of an early twenties post-fame heroin addict and got away with it despite being a boy-faced midget with man hands; Dominic Monaghan was chosen for that role because he physically and behaviourally can appear to be younger than he really is while having the benefit of ten years' acting experience on his character and the added bonus of being marketable thanks to his prior roles. If he looked like Terry O'Quinn he wouldn't be in the role, and if he looked like the stereotypical ideal that society expects of someone who is 32 he wouldn't be in the role. In short, what I am saying is that the 'hampering' you mentioned is really a process of selection that occurs within these industries. The only motive for selection in engineering a product that has no practical application is marketability. You said in your essay that Lost and BSG only contributed one cast member each to the celebrity comparison. Out of interest, how were these people chosen? Was it through some decision on your part, or a random process?

It's been "ctrl-click" or "shift-click" in most browsers since, like, 1995.

What is different between the current generation of 20-30 year olds and the generation of Russell Crowe, Gene Hackman, Denzel Washington, Harrison Ford, and so on, is that there are a great deal more of the former with vastly more disposable income between them. Since music, film and television are ruthlessly competitive, both on the markets where they are sold/licensed, and 'behind the scenes' where the artists hang out, this makes the 20-30s an obvious primary target audience for much of mass media. It's easy to see how the artists who that primary target audience can most identify with are going to find more opportunities to perform, and be more publically visible when they do. There is also the access to information argument. Children these days are being raised in households and going to schools where anything they want to learn about can be accessed without even going to another room. Transport has improved vastly and personal money can be earned earlier, meaning young people are more likely than ever before to undertake self-motivated study (languages, martial arts, amateur dramatics, etc) away from the home and school. It is not surprising that the numbers of visibly youthful stars are rising in so many areas, even when they are alarmingly precocious as individuals. And as Rev Blair suggests... the younger the generation you examine, the more likely they are to use products which prolong youthful looks, and the more likely they are to have (or have had at the right time) access to products which actually make a difference. As a side note I would suggest that using your own definition of such a widely known term as "alpha male" is just going to confuse people.

To be fair though, these problems are easily overcome.

I like your reasoning there, and I agree on the range of conditions front, but I don't think you see what I was trying to address. What I was getting at is that all life on Earth might (for all we know) have been seeded by matter from a now extinct Martian biosphere. However, is we were to suddenly discover this tomorrow, we would not suddenly become incapable of releasing detectable signals into space.

Well, by the same token, life on Earth means nothing to the Drake equation. Or rather, you can't be certain that it does. Let me ask you this: Does the distinction between life originating on a planet or being seeded there from elsewhere have any effect on whether or not such life can eventually produce a communicating civilisation such as those which the Drake equation estimates?

He kills the dolphin and hides the body in tuna cans.

It would be much easier to clean up the off-topic posts if people would stop adding to their numbers while I am managing the thread.

Every time a new window opens, god kills a dolphin.

That's odd - there are no deleted posts in this thread. Try clicking your own name and checking out the "find all posts by this user" link. [edit] Post was moved to a thread of its own. A thread you have already replied to.

Physics explanations that begin with "Imagine..." make the baby Jesus cry.