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Atheists are mutants

Started by GSOgymrat, December 23, 2017, 03:30:57 PM

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SGOS

Quote from: GSOgymrat on December 24, 2017, 06:52:26 AM
Am I the only one who thinks the authors have combined a couple of pieces of data and a lot of assumptions to make some spurious predictions? They don't seem to even consider how gene editing and computer technology will influence intelligence in the future.

"In that our intelligence is decreasing, I suspect civilization will go backwards, Natural selection will return and we will become more religious once more. This seems to be a rule of history.”

A rule of history? I am unfamiliar with this rule.
No, you are not the only one wondering about that.  Before I read your comment, I was pondering the same things.  They collected some data, and not a whole lot, and then started speculating about what it means, how it correlates, and lacking the necessary explanation, seemed to be making causations out of correlations. 

And the rule of history thing surprised me too.  Seems like it may have been conjured out of think air.

Cavebear

Quote from: Baruch on December 24, 2017, 07:59:12 AM
Ah, but you are The Mule, from Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.  You are here to disrupt the careful calculations of the historians of the future (it was a con, the historians were manipulating popular opinion behind the scenes).

The Mule was not a healthy individual.  He was non-threatingly small in stature in his true form.  His larger-than-life self was merely the presentation he created using his mind-powers enhanced via his instrument.  And, being sterile, he was a one-off.  The Seldon predictions went on just fine after his death.

Do you never tire of being wrong?
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Baruch

Quote from: Cavebear on December 26, 2017, 04:27:14 AM
The Mule was not a healthy individual.  He was non-threatingly small in stature in his true form.  His larger-than-life self was merely the presentation he created using his mind-powers enhanced via his instrument.  And, being sterile, he was a one-off.  The Seldon predictions went on just fine after his death.

Do you never tire of being wrong?

Do you ever tire of preferring one fiction over another?  Of thinking that your preferred fiction is true?
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Cavebear

Quote from: Baruch on December 26, 2017, 09:06:43 AM
Do you ever tire of preferring one fiction over another?  Of thinking that your preferred fiction is true?

No.  But just admit you really botched it (again) and let's go on from there.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Baruch

Quote from: Cavebear on December 26, 2017, 09:42:32 AM
No.  But just admit you really botched it (again) and let's go on from there.

I do analogy, not exact quotation.  Easier that way.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Cavebear

Quote from: Baruch on December 26, 2017, 09:44:16 AM
I do analogy, not exact quotation.  Easier that way.

Ah, analogies...  The last refuge of the imprecise!  Like...  (and you thought I was going to do an analogy here?)  That would be like cutting the cake before... (and you thought I would do it again), LOL!
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Unbeliever

Quote from: Baruch on December 24, 2017, 07:59:12 AM
Ah, but you are The Mule, from Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.  You are here to disrupt the careful calculations of the historians of the future (it was a con, the historians were manipulating popular opinion behind the scenes).
Ah, damn it! No spoiler alert!?

:shucks:







:neener:

God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Sal1981

I'm certainly the odd one out, everyone else in my family is religious.

Unbeliever

I guess everything alive on the planet is a mutant, one way or another. So we're in good company.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Hydra009

#24
QuoteExplaining the behavior behind these results, Dutton says: “Religiousness makes you more pro-social, and you become more religious when you're stressed. Religious people would have been sexually selected for because their pro-social, moral, unstressed nature would be attractive.”
So...stress makes people more religious, but religious people are unstressed, therefore...

QuoteHe predicts that, in the end, intelligence and atheism will be both undone by a gradual return to natural selection.
Didn't intelligence evolve via natural selection in the first place?   :headscratch:

Baruch

Quote from: Hydra009 on December 26, 2017, 06:28:41 PM
So...stress makes people more religious, but religious people are unstressed, therefore...

Didn't intelligence evolve via natural selection in the first place?   :headscratch:

Yes, the first part is contradictory.  And the second part I don't believe ... natural selection is about sex and successful child rearing.  And I don't see much connection between those and intelligence ;-)
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

trdsf

Quote from: GSOgymrat on December 24, 2017, 06:52:26 AM
Am I the only one who thinks the authors have combined a couple of pieces of data and a lot of assumptions to make some spurious predictions? They don't seem to even consider how gene editing and computer technology will influence intelligence in the future.

"In that our intelligence is decreasing, I suspect civilization will go backwards, Natural selection will return and we will become more religious once more. This seems to be a rule of history.”

A rule of history? I am unfamiliar with this rule.

Yeah, that conclusion seemed to come out of thin air.  In the first place, if/when atheism and rationality come to predominate over religion and woo, that solves the social grouping issue he's leaning on because the largest group -- even if heterogeneous -- will be the 'mutant' group of rationalists, with the analogous social constructs to support them as the religious group have in their groups.

What I really wish I could find fault with was his argument that intelligence is decreasing... alas, there's plenty of evidence to support that conjecture.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

omokuroi

Quote from: GSOgymrat on December 24, 2017, 06:52:26 AM
Am I the only one who thinks the authors have combined a couple of pieces of data and a lot of assumptions to make some spurious predictions? They don't seem to even consider how gene editing and computer technology will influence intelligence in the future.

"In that our intelligence is decreasing, I suspect civilization will go backwards, Natural selection will return and we will become more religious once more. This seems to be a rule of history.”

A rule of history? I am unfamiliar with this rule.
I actually don't disagree with the "rule," but I do disagree that it can't be broken. As it has been said, "history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme a little"...

The problem is, stack enough slant rhymes (as history does), and you eventually end up with something completely different.

...The rule is evidenced by the continuous growth and collapse of civilisations, empires, etc. Growth -> Prosperity -> Decay. I'd suggest evolution, at least in humans, operates closely along the same lines: Growth = Reducing selective pressure; Prosperity = Increasing mutational load; Decay = Reinstating selection, removing most of the detrimental mutations.

The caveat is that history doesn't show a return to the same baseline. To the contrary, it shows the baseline changes--sometimes slightly, sometimes a lot--with each repetition.

The same cycle also applies to nonhuman species when we look at carrying capacity, population crashes, and even biologically-produced mass extinction events (e.g. oxygen catastrophe). The idea that mutations are bad and always selected against is just ascientific nonsense.

Cavebear

Quote from: trdsf on December 27, 2017, 12:54:35 PM
What I really wish I could find fault with was his argument that intelligence is decreasing... alas, there's plenty of evidence to support that conjecture.

You my be thinking of the idea that "The intelligence of the planet is finite, and the population is growing".
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

SGOS

Quote from: Cavebear on January 18, 2018, 06:41:14 AM
You my be thinking of the idea that "The intelligence of the planet is finite, and the population is growing".
Zero Sum Game