Phi for All

Thank you for being so honest about "finding" this paper. It's rare that someone who isn't the author would care so much.

If there isn't already, there should be a name for this syndrome, where modern humans somehow get it in their heads that we were meant to stay in the trees, or not develop agriculture or animal husbandry and just roam as hunter/gatherers forever. It seems like it's just because other animals don't do the things we do. I don't understand why our exceptional intelligence doesn't get factored in, why other animals get to use their natural talents but we don't. This is an extremely intellectually dishonest stance, if you think about it. Anyone who feels this way but sits on a computer in their home demonizing humanity instead of going out to live off the land and survive "in a competitive world" is in a failed loop. You're basically saying, "The world is all messed up and I refuse to see it any differently, but I'm unwilling to live the way I think it should be until you change it all for me, so I'm just going to be negative and miserable. Oh, and for some reason, words are bad". Why is using our high intelligence and communicative skills considered unnatural? I guess because it makes things seem unfair, like an adult gambling with a kid for his allowance. I suppose that's the topic of another thread though.

! Moderator Note The Staff feels this question deserves some rational discussion, but not based on what the OP has presented as a starter. Beginning with a shaky Appeal to Authority foundation and following up with crime statistics that ignore socioeconomic factors, this argument is simply not going to be strong enough to last past the first page, but will inevitably gather several pages of repetition and ire. Can we have another, better supported attempt at starting this discussion? Please? Does that sound fair? SlavicWolf, I'm leaving this thread closed but you should open another, and please make sure to support your conclusions with rigor. That thread will be under the microscope and we want a productive discussion. "Heat without flame" is our motto here, And please, EVERYONE, anecdotal stories are NOT evidence, and will probably be hidden from view if that's all that a post has to offer as support. Thanks for your patience in this.

I didn't say it's crazy, but your knee-jerk reaction is understandable. I didn't call names and cower from debate. I said Time Cube is a bad influence as its extremely rigor-free assumptions and conclusions are not trust-worthy. What kind of cube has four corners? Why should people be killed for not believing this? Why does the author claim absolute proof yet never gives even a shred of rational evidence? Are you trying to insult me personally in this discussion? That's a very poor tactic for anyone who claims to want to talk about anything.

Time Cube is a bad influence. Extremism often is.

Fishing conglomerates should be ponying up some heavy research bucks since this may mean restrictions on them could level off (not relax, just stop getting stricter). More studies needed, absolutely! And I love that these fish have adapted to avoid nets, and so quickly!

I don't know how to say it any clearer. Superiority is a qualification that needs a great amount of detail and context in order to be a meaningful metric. We're superior to every animal in some ways, and every animal is superior to us in other ways. Claiming superiority means you accept the context in which your claim was made. You can't say, "Humans are superior to ants", but you can say, "Humans are superior to ants in sheer size and destructive capabilities with regard to each other."

This is good news, but I didn't see anything in the article about new species, and that's what I gathered from your title.

Success measured by what? Sharks are extremely successful, and have been around longer than humans. Other species do this, but I feel we're superior in this regard. Putting your eggs in another bird's nest is a far cry from modern animal husbandry. We're the only conscious farmers I know of, so that's a strictly human parameter. Destroying what hinders us is an interesting one. Many species could destroy us in a one-on-one confrontation, but our abilities are more exponential whereas most animals can only scale up in numbers. I would contend that a bear could destroy a human, but 10 bears might have a tough time with 10 humans. We're so good at cooperative efforts and communicating the ideas our high intelligence makes possible.

I'm fairly certain I defined the parameters of how my socio-political example reminded me of the topic we're discussing, and didn't imply anything outside those parameters. I'm not certain why you feel it needs more conformity, but I am certain I wasn't trying to make it an all-encompassing, 100% spot-on analogy. I think the definition we've been loosely using is fine, but an adjective needs a noun to modify. What needs definition is the context in which we're calling anything superior to anything else.

There are lots of applications for an explosive that could be put into caulking tubes and squeezed into hard-to-reach places. Or eaten, if the door turns out to be open already.

You don't like science, but you grab onto a classification that calls us "word animals"? I googled for this classification and all I got was animals drawn using words. I think you're basing much of your stance on some really tenuous "classifications". It's easy to see you're disillusioned with humans. I think you realize there is absolutely no way society would voluntarily go back to living like savages, so you've set up a scenario where you can never approve of human civilization. It will never get any better because you keep making up more reasons to hate them. You're sure it was healthier? This is why we try to look for evidence in science, and not get caught up in emotional guesswork. Ringer mentioned the volcanoes in the Permian, and that's a great example of what everyone would call a natural occurrence, yet it was more destructive to life than anything we've ever done, including nuclear weapons. I'll never understand the prejudice that tells people it's perfectly fine for beavers to build houses unlike most other animals, but not OK for humans. You seem to infer here that we were meant to stop evolving, at a point of your choosing because you romanticize living off the land as the ideal condition for all animals. Can I ask you a question? What would be your reaction if we started observing great apes building houses in the trees? Should we stop them? Should we blow up that evolutionary bridge? Should we assume that's not natural or do apes automatically get a pass because... well, they aren't human?

A science/evolution-based answer is the most trustworthy. This issue has a lot of emotional baggage tied to it, and emotional choices aren't always rational. We look around and see what we've created and it's easy to feel superior. But as others have pointed out, we need other species and can't assume our needs could be met without them. This reminds me of the class distinctions that are moving towards a critical mass in our socio-political landscape. When the top 1% feel superior to the other 99% because they own the companies that create the jobs, they forget that they need the 99% to do those jobs. They wouldn't have companies without the workers that make things happen, and similarly, we could not have gotten where we are without all the other species doing their parts to make our environments stable and flourishing.

I think your perspective on humans needs to mature. You're comparing us to other animals using criteria that condemn us from the outset. "If we didn't talk and create pseudo-reality"? What the hell is that? Why is our talking different from any other animal's communication? "Nature would have been at optimal health" is speculation, but it seems to be at the very heart of your disillusionment. You can't know what nature's optimal health is, or if such a state even exists, but you're condemning all of us because you THINK you know. THINK about that. We can do better, always. That's one of the reasons I like science, it's always improving because it's not looking for rock solid answers, but rather the best explanations. And I happen to think you're wrong about destroying modern civilization. Imo, we're the only species capable of leaving this planet, which we know will eventually be consumed by our own sun going red giant. Where will your "natural living" humans be then? They'll be naturally gone. They certainly won't be with me, seeding Earth's biodiversity across the stars in our most important evolutionary leap to date.

As in, "Back in Adam and Eve's day..." Good point. I've argued with creationists over the definitions of the word "yom", so I guess I have to acknowledge it may be the case here.

It IS arrogant, but it's less opinion-based and more contextual. We're superior when it comes to intelligence and tool-use, but toss us in the water with nothing else and many creatures become superior to us. And not just sharks; a Humboldt squid, at about a meter and a half, could kill you just by pulling you underwater. There is no superior creature, just superior skills for different situations and environments. Overall though, one of our superior traits is that we're very good at making sure we don't get caught without our tools and the brains we use them with. Together with integrated cooperation on a huge level and really great communication skills, we can control many parts of our environment, and that gives us superiority in lots of areas. And you're absolutely right, we should NOT abuse our position in the natural world (very nicely put), for we very much are a part of it.

Genesis 3:22 "And the LORD God said, 'Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever'" This implies there was another tree they weren't allowed to eat from besides Knowledge.

Isn't this one of the Bible contradictions? Doesn't God tell them they can eat from any tree except Knowledge, but then Life is mentioned later as a forbidden tree? Interesting, especially when you consider this was when the first lie was told. Not by the snake; oddly enough it was God who said Adam and Eve would die if they ever ate of the Tree of Knowledge.

It sounds like you're holding a grudge about something. If you're angry about pollution, you should know that it used to be ever so much worse. It's still not where it should be, we can always do better, but the point is we're improving. A great deal of improvement can be directly related to the internet, by bringing these subjects into public discussion. It's easy to say people are evil and unnatural. Try looking at the extraordinary way we can cooperate for mutual good, communicating over vast distances to learn and improve ourselves and our societies. And realize that we were hunter/gatherers a mere 12,000 years ago. That's not evil. I think a lot of people think it's modern society that isn't natural. They look at where we were just before the industrial revolution and think it was a simpler time, and somehow more natural. I think we've done very well in the last two hundred years. We've made mistakes like we do, and we've fixed what we could. And the fact that we're now capable of leaving the planet, capable of spreading Earth's lifeforms across the galaxy, is something no other natural animal but us could do.

I understand and share your concerns. I think that any increases in longevity won't be happening overnight, and so we'll probably have the time to adapt the rest of our society to compensate. It's definitely a game-changer. We have some encouraging technologies that may dovetail well with this, particularly with lab-grown proteins and other ways to increase food yields. I've always felt we have quite a ways to go in improving efficiency in many areas that have been wasteful in the past, and living longer may force us to put in more effort.

I have a lot of respect for Craig Venter. This is an incredible undertaking. This gives me hope that longevity isn't going to be a rich-person-only, privatized endeavor. And I like Venter's approach, make 100 the new 60. If more scientists became entrepreneurs, perhaps we'd see more long-ranged, thoughtful market applications and less bottom-line-only mentality.

Looking at the process as a whole, hemp has advantages over wood. Monolignol content is a fraction of wood, so you don't need bleaching agents that harm the environment (peroxide or oxygen vs chlorine compounds). Hemp's growth cycles are much quicker, and it can be grown with less maintenance almost anywhere. Wood's biggest advantage is that it doesn't spoil as fast, so transport has less pitfalls, but if more facilities start pilot programs using hemp, its ability to grow just about anywhere should offset its distribution problems. To be honest, much of the reason why we still use wood is the same reason we still use many things we should move away from. The infrastructure for processing is firmly established and many of the better fibers for paper won't work in mills meant for wood.

I've heard that hemp fibers make great paper. Wood requires a lot more processing. You're absolutely right, we shouldn't be using trees to make paper. I hope this is what you meant by Grass with a capital G, although industrial hemp isn't really called Grass.

He was not written about much before this time, though, almost nothing outside of the texts the church chose. So much was written and rejected by the Council, who claimed to know which writings were written with God's blessing and which weren't. Even the Gospels weren't written by the people they're supposed to be written by. My point is that there were other figures around at the time (NOT Constantine's time) who were being considered as the messiah foretold in the OT. I get the feeling choosing Jesus of Nazareth was simply fortuitous, like Constantine deciding to pick Christianity as the state religion. He could have chosen his previous favorite Sun worship; Mithraism was very popular at the time as well. But Christianity fit his agenda more perfectly, and that's how I think Jesus was chosen as messiah centuries before. He fit the most prophecies from the OT, especially those that couldn't be "fulfilled" any other way, like his lineage from Jacob (many of the other prophecies could easily have been fulfilled in a sort of post hoc fashion; that he would be betrayed, that he would be called Immanuel, that he would speak in parables, etc.).

It should be alarming to any citizen how quickly one can go from being a "peaceful protester" or "freedom fighter" to "radical insurgent" or "terrorist suspect". The US political situation is such a quagmire. The financial elite are the only ones who can afford to "represent" us, yet they hardly represent the common man they work so hard to pretend to emulate. They don't want their taxes going to pay for public works they'll never use. They want the public to buy them airports the public will rarely use, and legislate away their tax liability so the wealthy pay for even less. The whole time, the wealthy are claiming they're the ones who create the jobs, so we should all be happy to bend over for them. Perhaps the problem is that the job description for politics attracts mostly people we should be terrified of. So many are fringe fanatics that feel their small segment isn't adequately represented, so they Tea Party things up and claim to be bringing their voice to the table. Our media loves those types and often goes out of its way to make their stances on a par with the mainstream.