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Originally Posted by damocles
The second factor is Stephen Hawking.
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That's my point, see.
Stephen Hawking isn't 'breeding', to put it mildly.
Sperm banks the world over should be begging Mr. Hawking for a small, shall we call it, 'donation'.
In stead, the majority of breeders of this mostly blue (there might be some poetic justice in that) planet of ours is the poor, the down-trodden, the illiterate, the people who find a large part of their daily entertainment quota in sex.
And not only that: Imagine, if you will, a world where the ability to count things adds to your chances of survival. The ability to reason abstractly, to remember things, to bring things into perspective, to draw relationships between seemingly unrelated events/issues/parts/whatever. Such a world, with such abilities, made
homo sapiens lord it over neanderthal man. In such a world, the ability to outsmart a sabre-toothed tiger meant survival, and the opportunity to procreate.
Today, such abilities are useless. Hand-held calculators have dumbed down the vast majority of our population to the point where most people won't think you're making a joke if you tell them one plus one is actually nine. They can't refute your statement without a CASIO CX-940 in their left hand, the right punching away at tiny little buttons. Will it lessen their chances to breed?
Drawing relationships between objects is a computer keyboard away. Will the inability to do even this lessen their chances to breed?
We are dumb. Let me rephrase that. We are DUMB. Capital. And getting dumber every single day. Animals evolve rapidly when their population shrinks, and is forced to go through a crisis bottleneck. Ice ages, meteor impacts, global disasters are cases in point. The species need to be small enough in numbers for any specific change to become rapidly distributed. The human race is currently the biggest (numerically speaking) mammalian species on the face of this planet. Probably the biggest ever. The BIGGEST BY FAR. Which means that our gene pool is so big, that any beneficial change will only become rapidly diluted, only to disappear. Negative changes will distribute, and won't harm the species (or the individual) as it should in nature, because our culture has found ways around it. Welfare, the Dole, etc. Problem is, by and large, and statistically speaking as well, there's a heck of a lot more negative changes for every single positive change. You do the math. We are DOOMED. Thanks to altruism and technology.
Embrace pessimism. At least you'll never be disappointed.
