The Glade 4.0

The human race has been giving mother nature the middle finger for centuries. Vaccinations and antibiotics were massive leaps in ensuring the survival of the species. The world used to be one giant minefield of death. A lot of people believe that human beings used to have shorter natural lifespans. The truth is that a super-careful human could easily outlive 70. It's just the reality was it was far too easy for them to get infected with something.

People talk about the natural order and how it shouldn't be messed with. Well, we've been **** with the natural order forever. We put a stop to natural entities that want to destroy us (diseases). We are constantly working on curing other natural entities that are currently destroying us (AIDS a nd cancer research).

We're even doing genetic manipulation that some extremists are ok with, like organ transplants and the like.

There's always going to be some line that some folks don't want humanity to cross. And we've crossed several of them during our short reign of this planet. Personally, I'm ok with genetic modification as it relates to birth defects. There is no argument that anyone could ever give me that could be stronger than "This will allow the child to live a happy, healthy, and productive life and ensure the parents are not burdened physically, emotionally, and monetarily." Throwing God or Khan into that argument still doesn't change the fact that some kid's life and their parent's lives are going to forever be changed for the better.

Humanity won't ever stop **** with mother nature. Like mother nature herself, people are just going to have to accept that fact and realize shouting at the storm they hate is useless. But hey, if it makes people feel good.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Humanity has already bypassed natural selection and evolution, this debate is a pointless one. When we started giving people medicine and stopped throwing away deformed babies we started carving our own path. The argument that "natural" is somehow better is one that we've been contradicting for our entire history as a species.

Who gets to decide what human beings "should have been"?

Let me know when you can answer that question with a straight face. Let me know when you can tell me who is currently so enlightened and knowledgeable and perfect that they can make such a determination; or, better yet, let me know what the face of the oligarchs that would invariable govern such a thing would be.

Humanity is not ready to play with God's sandbox, and you, Aizle, have just demonstrated why.

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First and foremost, the argument you are making had nothing to do with natural selection being "good".


Instead, you made a statement which is blatantly false. However, rather than decrying your subsequent posts as shifting goalposts, I will accept that you are amending the above statement to read as follows.


This simply does not follow. While the argument could certainly be made that believers of the Judeo-Christian God should decry genetic modification of species on the grounds that they were built by a Perfect Creator, the fact remains that the Judeo-Christian God never delivered a, "Thou shalt not **** with my Divine Plan," Commandment. Within the context of the Judeo-Christian mythology, the intelligence of humans is a gift by God as Man was made in the image of God - an image that included his wisdom. Man was given the Earth over which to rule. Man was empowered by God to make changes to the world in which he lives, an element that would certainly have been foreseen by a Perfect Creator when He chose to gift Man with the very intelligence Man seeks to wield against his surroundings.

So, a believer in the Judeo-Christian God is not in any way compelled to decry the genetic modification of any species. Man's ability to alter God's Plan is itself a manifestation of God's Plan. If that seems like a tautology, remember that the Judeo-Christian religions thrive on tautology.

As for a belief that Natural Selection is "good", that says nothing about Artificial Selection being "worse" than Natural Selection, let alone being "bad" overall. Natural Selection speaks to the history of how we got to where we are as a species. It explains "what happened" and serves as a useful tool for predicting "what happens next." To continue the analogy used in an earlier post, consider the case of Boyle's Law. This is a special case of the Combined Gas Law, when temperature is held constant, that explains the relationship between pressure and volume. Boyle's Law can be used to make judgements about what is "good" and "bad," such as whether a balloon might pop, or whether it might become difficult to breath. Boyle's Law makes no judgement about whether a change in temperature is "good" or "bad."

This analogy is not perfect, because temperature has no effect on Boyle's Law whatsoever. It simply does not appear in the relationship. If we were to formulate a mathematical model to track the progress of a species, both Natural and Artificial Selection terms would show up in the equation. The Natural Selection term could be used to evaluate whether a particular Artificial Selection term is going to be "good" or "bad," but it is not useful for determining whether Artificial Selection is "good" or "bad" in general. As such, there is no link between what one believes about Natural Selection and what one should then therefore think, opine, believe, and proselytize about Artificial Selection (of which genetic modification is a component).

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

A good modification.

I generally disagree with the rest of what you said in terms of conclusion, if not necessarily the content.

If somebody holds that "natural" is somehow "good," that infers that "artificial" or "unnatural" is somehow bad. Good should be pursued and bad should be avoided. If GMO products from Monsanto, for example, are "bad," then that means natural is good. Naturally selected species being good are commonly held high in the current culture by lots of people, mainly in regards to food.

All I'm really trying to point out is that, if somebody BELIEVES (as in, thinks it's a "good" and should thus be pursued) in Natural Selection (as evidenced by, for example advocacy against GMO food), they cannot be logically consistent while advocating for GMO people.

It seems, in the latter portion of your last post, you disagree with that final conclusion.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

The divide here is how DFK! was using the word "believes." We chatted offline.

I believe in Natural Selection in the sense that I believe it is the primary mechanism by which arose the variety of life that exists on Earth today.

DFK! Is using the term "Believe" in the same sense that one might "believe in the ten commandments." While my gut reaction is to say that such religious fervor is rare in science, and therefore this is irrelevant, the unfortunate fact is there are many people who do not understand science and yet blindly use it to make their own religious type of morality. (Check out any environmental rally.)

Turns out, I mostly agree with DFK! He even mostly agrees with me.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Taly, anyone who argues genetically modified food is operating on a Belief (capital B) rather than science.

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This was one of my underlying, implied points. I just had, as Prezbo would call it, a "messaging problem."

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I got you. Which should scare the **** out of you

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I am assuming you mean to say "anyone who argues against genetically modified food", in which case, I agree with you wholeheartedly.

There is no evidence that it is any less healthy than "natural" food.

The very fact that we use the terms "natural"=good and "artificial"=bad is an unscientific bias that has absolutely no support from reality. (And ultimately, the terms are often meaningless and not distinguishable from each other at all when you look at how they are used.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

^ Yeah that.

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Me.

But don't worry, I'm a benevolent despot.

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I'd like to point out that an awful lot of people don't hate Monsanto because they dare to play with genetic engineering. They hate Monsanto for the same reason they hate Walmart - because both corporations are well known for doing some rather dickish things.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Fair enough. I think in this case Monsanto is being generalized to mean specifically people who hate on GMO food.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I used to work for Monsanto. I don't have any issues with genetically modified crops or any of the products that they sell. However, the company is still pretty evil in my opinion.

Monsanto views its employees as numbers on a balance sheet and makes no attempt to paper over this fact. On my first day working there, I was bluntly informed of the following:

1. As a new, inexperienced employee, I am worse than useless. Right now, Monsanto would be better off setting fire to the $14/hour they were paying me, as I am costing them additional money by forcing actual productive employees to stop doing productive things and train me.
2. Simply doing work worth $14/hour is nowhere near enough, as here are all these extra costs we have to pay to employ you, you cost us more like $30/hour.
3. A spotty work history and involuntary termination will not look good to future employers, so you damn well better work on fixing #1 as fast as possible or you're out on your ***, and good luck finding another job.

As a temp, I was basically there as a potential replacement for one of their permanent employees. I had a very similar job description and they were watching to see if I could outperform him, and he knew it. It's just a [sarcasm]fantastic[/sarcasm] place to work, no matter what position you have, they keep the knife at your throat at all times. Long story short, I outperformed the employee they currently had, and got his job. They wasted no time in finding another temp to hold at my throat. That guy beat me, and I was out.

In addition, Monsanto is very ambitious and predatory, and it encourages these traits in their employees. Working there is like working in the mirror universe version of a university lab. You have a Ph.D. heading a project with like a half dozen people assisting him, and you're set against other similar groups to see who can make the most profit. Fall too far behind the pack and you're all out. Needless to say, there was a lot of animosity between the different groups. I never witnessed any actual sabotage, but nobody ever helped anyone from the other teams and if you stepped even slightly out of line everyone else would make hell for you in order to pull ahead. I remember one time I naively took a couple ounces of bleach from the lab across the hall and they raised a shitstorm that followed me for a week.

Also, I'll bet at the company you work for have semi-regular meetings which essentially qualify as pep-rallies where management tries to get people more involved in their work, focus on putting out higher quality work, serve the customer better, communicate better, better teamwork, etc. Monsanto also has these, except they don't discuss any of those things there. At Monsanto, these meetings outline the following:

1. Here are the companies that are competing with us.
2. These companies are the enemy.
3. We are better than them, and the world would be a better place if they all went away because we are better at everything they do.
4. Here are the ways we are working to crush them.
5. Here are some ways you can help us crush them.

These meetings were something out of the Twilight Zone. At one of them, the CEO went up and did a presentation on how they used a strategy consisting of aggressive pricing combined with a series of lawsuits to drain the resources of and eventually drive one of our competitiors out of business. This was great news! We have one less competitor, can scoop up all their good talent for a fraction of the price, and all the "bad" employees can now be forced out of the industry and stop polluting it with their badness. He was proud of this and expected us all to also be proud of it.

This is true of all businesses with employees. You are a fungible commodity. Yes, you, Xequecal, are a fungible commodity. If you want this to change, I have a list of government programs we need to abolish, starting with all the ones you think we need.



100% True. New employees are an expenditure. They are a risk. And if there is no return, they are a bad investment. Replace them.



Absolutely true, except the total cost of employment and the non-payroll funding for a position becomes markedly less important the more valuable the employee is. If you're making $14/hour in the New Jersey/New York metroplex, you're making about minimum adjusted for cost of living. You're definitely a fungible commodity and should be treated as such.



That's called work ethic. American Liberals seem to not understand that ... at all.

The rest of your post is how competition works. Either find some way to become a tax leech, or get with the program. There's no middle ground for you, Xequecal. You're a wage serf. Get used to it.

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The $14/hour was in St. Louis, so it was a living, if not a particularly good one. Anyways, I'm not doing the temp thing anymore. I went and got myself a certification and a real, well-paying permanent job. I certainly don't think I'm irreplaceable, but my position is worth enough that they certainly can't afford to hire redundant staff just to play natural selection games.

A Belief in Natural Selection makes no such inference. I Believe in chicken. That says nothing at all about whether beef is good or bad. In fact, I could Believe in beef more strongly than I Believe in chicken. My strong moral convictions on the subject of chicken don't prevent me from enjoying a hamburger. Now, because PETA says eating meat is wrong, me Belief in chicken would cause me to reject PETA.


The simplest way to model the relationship I propose would be E = A + N.

E - Evolution
A - Artificial Selection
N - Natural Selection

This is a very simplistic model. The real model would be quite complicated. Both the A and N terms would be sums of numerous terms, and it would be a differential equation with derivatives of items from the A sum appearing in the N sum, and vice versa.

Suppose that the ideal value for E is 5. You have an N of 2.

For A = 1 you will yield an E of 3. This is "good", it's closer to the desired result than N by itself, but it's not great.
For A = 3 you will yield an E of 5. That's exactly what you want, and therefore A is certainly "good."
For A = 5 you will yield an E of 7. This is just as far from the desired E as the A = 1 case. "Good," but it could be better.
For A = 7+ you will yield an E of 9+. this is further away from the desired E than if we had just left things along. Such A is definitely "bad."

One's Belief that the N term is "good" simply compels them to refrain from trying to make the N term equal to 0 and remove it from the equation. You are able to make a statement that this or that set of axioms is logically consistent. However, you are attempting to work backwards using inverse and converse statements, neither of which must necessarily be true. It is the contrapositive that must hold.

The most obvious example is Euclid's Elements. Euclid cites numerous logical axioms for geometry, all of which have proven very useful for performing measurements on Earth. One of those axioms does not have to hold for the rest to be true. Changes in that one axiom result in the infamous Non-Euclidean Geometries (note - geometry is in its plural form), and one of those geometries is what outer space actually looks like as far as we can tell.

Within your set of axioms that you are using is the statement that !Natural must necessarily be Bad. That axiom is not required to have a logically consistent system.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Monsanto like Zynga without the scrupulous moral code.

They're both intensely interested in farming?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Fascinating formula, DFK is talking about people who aren't running mathematical formulas, he is referring to people who reject scientific advances in nutrition like these fine folk:

http://www.organicauthority.com/
http://www.refinery29.com/genetically-modified-food
http://geneticroulettemovie.com/
http://www.nongmoproject.org/

People who fall back on gems like:




So if their opinion is expressed in a formula it would be:

While A =0
E = N + A
Else
G = GovernmentIntervention
E = N + (A - G)

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Alol. Kudos, sir.

Word.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

God wasn't that competent. Humans are better engineers ... life (and humans get no special treatment here) is often very poorly designed. There are major errors there that no human engineer would make. Whether by God or by Natural Selection, our design is SERIOUSLY lacking. I fully believe humans are ready to start improving on it. At the very least, if humans are not ready, then either God or Nature was never ready.

You know, sometimes it seems like life wasn't "designed" at all... in fact, it really seems to be a bunch of random, unplanned mutations piled on top of each other... go figure.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

DeGrasse Tyson makes an awful lot of assumptions about what the purpose of the human body is in the first place in order to make his points. Not very good assumptions either. If he wants to say "don't teach Intelligent Design as science", he should just say that rather than try to impose his assumptions.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."