On 5/15/2011 6:56 AM, Chip Mefford wrote:
> Interesting discussion;
> I've heard it postulated that having a significant prefrontal cortex allows us
> humans to -if we work really really hard at it- achieve something that isn't
> pure evil. That said, we -as a species- don't really like to use our
> prefrontal
> cortex all that much. We prefer to act based on emotion, action<->re-action.
> That's much easier. We have a pretty strong evolutionary precedent for acting
> on what serves us in the short term, the long term nearly always can only be
> considered to beneficial to others, not us, not directly.
You're underscoring my point. Just because we HAVE intelligence
and the ability to judge the long-term consequences of what we do
doesn't mean we will chose to act in the long-term best interest of our
species. I think, however, that even the most secular evolutionist
would argue that altruism and cooperation have individual survival
benefits. I've read essays and books from die-hard materialist
scientists, who (unlike me) do not believe in God, and yet conclude that
evolutionary pressures have resulted in the development of traits, like
sharing and labor division, that benefit the whole species precisely
because the odds of individual survival are greater in a cooperative,
social order.
Perhaps this is wishful thinking. Or, maybe they're on to
something. We are not terribly strong, nor fast, and without a big
brain it's hard to imagine how we could have survived for long in a
world filled with fierce predators and effective competition.
> But what about yeast? How intelligent is yeast? Are there yeast cells that
> become
> aware of the walls of the petri dish? Do they tell their neighbors? Do the
> neighbors shout them down, calling them unpatriotic, traitors, communists,
> etc?
>
> No, yeast cells probably don't ever become aware of the walls of the petri
> dish,
> probably never become aware of the depletion of the agar. But then again,
> neither
> do we.
Oh, but there is historical precedent for societies surviving in
environments where others failed to thrive. China has experienced
better than 40 centuries of continuous habitation. The Inuit survived
in Greenland where the Greenland Norse did not. How did the aboriginal
peoples of the North American desert southwest manage to eek out a
living when the Anasazi could not? (Jared Diamond wrote a compelling
book on this topic entitled "Collapse.") In essence, the survivors made
choices that harmonized with the environment, and this permitted their
social order to continue. We can go WAY back into the earliest reaches
of human history on earth, where we find people who lived in what is now
South Africa changing their diet and lifestyle to accommodate climate
changes that wiped out other early humans. In all cases, people who
made intelligent decisions to live within the limits of the ecosystem
survived.
Why can't we do the same?
> So, as an experiment goes, this is a pretty good one, and the empirical
> results are
> pretty telling.
>
> Intelligence? Where?
>
I keep waiting for Keith to jump in, as he is far more optimistic
about human nature than I. Having written this, I don't believe for a
moment that we're doomed to extinction because we're smart. Our current
social organization is not sustainable, but those of us who KNOW that
and adapt well to the changes are more likely to survive than those who
do not. My heart goes out to the poor, who have little flexibility, and
the powerless, who are easily exploited by the powerful, yet those poor
and powerless may be the ones who laugh on the day when the wealthy and
powerful see their world crumble around them. I've read somewhere that
the meek will inherit the earth . . .
:)
robert luis rabello
Adventure for Your Mind
http://www.newadventure.ca
Crisis video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZedNEXhTn4
The Long Journey video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy4muxaksgk
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