Fake News

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

What you think tends to be what you do. As Bidinotto said: criminal thinking results in criminal activity. Words to that effect if not a direct quote. Rend out or do not honor rationality then the (irrational) stories take over and dominate.

Brant,

It's not quite that simple. But it is for the part that applies to real prime-cause volition, which is a lot smaller (a looooooot smaller) than people on our side think, but definitely exists, which is against what some scientists and determinists posit.

As a simple explanation, many times you are unconsciously reacting to something and your unconscious "makes a choice" so to speak and starts the neural cogs spinning to actually do something. Then the aware part of your mind catches up and it feels like you decide to it, even though you are already doing it. It feels like you are making a choice when, in reality, the aware part of your brain is receiving a choice already made and in execution. This has been measured countless times in all kinds of ways. 

This is where people go off the rails. Many of those who study this say it proves volition is an illusion. And many on the more ideological and religious side ignore this stuff altogether as they preach about free will. 

As to Biddibob, he writes good stories and I'm really proud of him. His view of the human mind, though, is oversimplified dogma. That's what allows him to look at highly principled people and call them evaders, unprincipled and so on. Biddibob has a very strongly set core story and he's highly emotional about it. If you look like a villain to him (to his core story), you are a villain. Period. End of story. If he had been born within the Islamic culture, I fear he would have become one of the radicals.

Hypnotists know that some people are more susceptible to being hypnotized than others. (This is physical in the brain in the same manner some people are taller than others.) That's why stage hypnotists start their shows interacting with the audience with patter. They are testing people to find which ones they will later call on stage. If they call less susceptible subjects on stage, they will lay an egg instead of making the subject act like a chicken.  

By the same measure, some people are more susceptible to blindly embracing a core story. These are the hardest nuts to crack and they always end up getting insulting when you don't agree with them. They may not be insulting at first, but as time goes on and you keep expressing your disagreement, they become an outright enemy if you don't capitulate to their core story or get away from them. That's why I got away from Biddibob. I like him, but I know if I stay around him, he will start hating me. Hell, he might already.  

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

18 minutes ago, Peter said:

That may be why I can still, reluctantly with clenched fists, ride a bike.

Peter,

Motor skills are mostly automated and stored in a separate part of the brain called the cerebellum (man, what an oversimplification I just made!  ). I haven't studied the neuroscience of motor skills in particular yet, but I am pretty sure the pathways are myelinated.

Things kinda run differently there than the rest of the brain, but they are essentially the same processes.

Practically speaking, if you want to keep riding a bike, make sure you don't get bashed on the lower back part of your head.

Michael

[Peter]

From Newsmax: Thanks to deregulation, Trump is starting to drain the swamp by Adam Brandon, contributor, May 18, 2017, 11:59 AM: end quote

It would not let me copy any more but you get the drift. Have you ever noticed that when it is about to rain, the tree and ground frogs and toads know it and start to croak to alert potential mating partners? Has the croaking in DC decreased or increased? Well the regulations have decreased, croak, but now the swamp denizens are getting real vocal about the drought and draining. CROAK. Trump bad. Croak. Hah!  

Michael wrote: Practically speaking, if you want to keep riding a bike, make sure you don't get bashed on the lower back part of your head. end quote

I did that sliding on the ice as a kid causing a concussion and fractured skull and to this day I cannot ice skate. Seriously, I have wondered about the damage I did. The back of my head has a flat spot that is not explained by genetics, but my IQ did not decrease. If anything I got smarter until, I would guess, I was in my fifties . . . but senility has not yet taken me to the land of brain freeze.   

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, Peter said:

From Newsmax: Thanks to deregulation, Trump is starting to drain the swamp by Adam Brandon, contributor, May 18, 2017, 11:59 AM: end quote

It would not let me copy any more but you get the drift. Have you ever noticed that when it is about to rain, the tree and ground frogs and toads know it and start to croak to alert potential mating partners? Has the croaking in DC decreased or increased? Well the regulations have decreased, croak, but now the swamp denizens are getting real vocal about the drought and draining. CROAK. Trump bad. Croak. Hah!  

Michael wrote: Practically speaking, if you want to keep riding a bike, make sure you don't get bashed on the lower back part of your head. end quote

I did that sliding on the ice as a kid causing a concussion and fractured skull and to this day I cannot ice skate. Seriously, I have wondered about the damage I did. The back of my head has a flat spot that is not explained by genetics, but my IQ did not decrease. If anything I got smarter until, I would guess, I was in my fifties . . . but senility has not yet taken me to the land of brain freeze.   

The wise bike rider wears a crash helmet.  A properly fitting helmet will protect the back of the skull.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It is soooooo sweet to see condescending, but normally disciplined, elitists get knocked off their game.

It shows they are worried to death.

They are becoming irrelevant, they lost their power, and now they are losing their influence with the public.

They are worried to death.

And, of course, the meme is going around: Anderson Pooper.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

4 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Brant,

It's not quite that simple. But it is for the part that applies to real prime-cause volition, which is a lot smaller (a looooooot smaller) than people on our side think, but definitely exists, which is against what some scientists and determinists posit.

As a simple explanation, many times you are unconsciously reacting to something and your unconscious "makes a choice" so to speak and starts the neural cogs spinning to actually do something. Then the aware part of your mind catches up and it feels like you decide to it, even though you are already doing it. It feels like you are making a choice when, in reality, the aware part of your brain is receiving a choice already made and in execution. This has been measured countless times in all kinds of ways. 

This is where people go off the rails. Many of those who study this say it proves volition is an illusion. And many on the more ideological and religious side ignore this stuff altogether as they preach about free will. 

As to Biddibob, he writes good stories and I'm really proud of him. His view of the human mind, though, is oversimplified dogma. That's what allows him to look at highly principled people and call them evaders, unprincipled and so on. Biddibob has a very strongly set core story and he's highly emotional about it. If you look like a villain to him (to his core story), you are a villain. Period. End of story. If he had been born within the Islamic culture, I fear he would have become one of the radicals.

Hypnotists know that some people are more susceptible to being hypnotized than others. (This is physical in the brain in the same manner some people are taller than others.) That's why stage hypnotists start their shows interacting with the audience with patter. They are testing people to find which ones they will later call on stage. If they call less susceptible subjects on stage, they will lay an egg instead of making the subject act like a chicken.  

By the same measure, some people are more susceptible to blindly embracing a core story. These are the hardest nuts to crack and they always end up getting insulting when you don't agree with them. They may not be insulting at first, but as time goes on and you keep expressing your disagreement, they become an outright enemy if you don't capitulate to their core story or get away from them. That's why I got away from Biddibob. I like him, but I know if I stay around him, he will start hating me. Hell, he might already.  

Michael

Well, whatever, but if we have the power of story how about the power of context?

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

23 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Wolf,

This exact bafflement is what led me to studying story on a deeper level than fiction rules for writing or book reviews.

We have developed conceptual intelligence through storytelling since story, more than any other activity, engages the maximum number of parts of the brain and neural circuits in tandem--and triggers a wide range of differing neurochemicals (which prompt behavior, make things stick in memory, etc.).

 

Story and neurochemicals

Here's a video Paul Zak did on how stories release cortisol and oxytocin in the audience's brain by focusing it on a distressful and empathic situation. Most people get choked up with this story. Paul Zak made these findings in his lab and deepened them through DARPA funding. (Yup, DARPA wants weapons-grade stories.  )

Those are two of the main neurochemicals. Oxytocin is especially important for tearjerkers. There are other neurochemicals that get released with story, though, especially dopamine and serotonin. Ever hear of an adrenaline rush from watching a movie? 

 

Story as conceptual referent

On another point, when you get down to it, philosophy is nothing but stories at root. I remarked once to Chris Sciabarra that every single conceptual referent we have--for any and all concepts--is essentially a story about something that exists and it kind of stopped him in his tracks to reflect. He encouraged me to write about this.

 

Framing stories (core stories)

Now add this to what I call framing neurons and neural networks. There are probably some technical terms for them that I will come across (or even coin, maybe, since I believe in explaining this stuff in common language as much as possible, especially seeing how evil people use this knowledge covertly to manipulate others). The main characteristic of a frame is that it is predominantly static. It stays put while many different details can flow around it.

For example, a concept--as Rand came up with it--is a frame (like a file folder) whereas the conceptual referents are varied and open-ended (contents).

Another example. We physically have neurons in the hippocampus (and elsewhere in the brain) that frame our perception of space. Have you ever had the sensation of leaving one room and entering another, then forgetting what you were going to do in the other? That's because each room has corresponding neural frames that come with a whole lot of cognitive, emotional and sensory associations. If what you were going to do was not as important as the unfinished business you left while you were in the other room the last few times you were there, this unfinished business (through habits and emotional promptings) will come into your awareness and crowd out your immediate goal as soon as you enter the room. We only have the ability to hold about four things in our conscious awareness at any given moment, so when a new item enters, at least one of the items has to go back to being processed by the unconscious.

Now another point. When a neural pathway, especially a framing pathway, is developed through sheer repetition, a protective coating forms around it called myelination. (Think plastic coating around a copper wire.) This prompts a high degree of instant automation. The thicker the neural pathway, the richer the automation will be, the more myelination it will receive, and the more it will feel like an absolute. 

I could go on and on about this stuff, but that's enough for the main point I want to make. 

 

More on core stories

The intelligent people you talk about who are evil have been telling the same core story to themselves for so long, it has become a framing neural pathway and network. They accept that frame as a not-to-be-questioned lens through which they filter everything they come in contact with. And they get plenty of focused repetition, approval from others and other positive feedbacks from the people around them telling and living the same core story. 

Just think if your core story involves a feeling that you, and those like you, are superior to those who are not like you. Over time, that no longer becomes a judgment in your mind. Instead, it becomes a metaphysical fact. Whether it is a metaphysical fact or not is irrelevant. You believe it. It is based so much on the certainty that your core story, your frame, gives you that it becomes part of the frame.

It is very easy to change the details within someone's frame, but wickedly hard to change the frame itself. Making a neural frame is not so much fact-based, but story based. To oversimplify, the reason for this is that facts are processed in some parts of the brain and the frame itself is processed in another. 

 

Changing frames

Can we change the frame? Of course we can, but it has to come with a strong emotional experience, a new core story, etc. Religious conversions work well because they have this. So do attacks that trigger wrath and makes you want revenge. (Apropos, Islam has a wickedly effective tool for creating certainty and reinforcing the frame: prayer five times a day. This creates physical framing neural pathways and networks through sheer repetition.)

People with a high degree of intelligence eventually make a life-level choice on the deepest parts within them: they seek wisdom, love, creativity, etc., or they seek power. After that frame is set, a power-seeker can pursue love, wisdom, etc., but those things no longer belong to the frame. They become changeable details within it. A person with a core power frame will seek these things mostly to help him reinforce his frame. And he will equally seek the destruction of those who oppose him. He can be rational, too. He will use as much of his conceptual volition as he can muster to make things, manipulate people, etc., to reinforce his frame. 

The way to get evil people to want to stop is to get a new core story into their heads. And even then, you never destroy a neural pathway (network) after it is myelinated. You replace it with another that you have to build up as the old one atrophies and dissolves. (This is why relapses are so common with addicts and they are told to avoid old environments.)

Ayn Rand was onto something by creating a story structure around reason. Without story, without strong emotions, without lavish doses of neurochemicals squirting on learning and contemplating her ideas, without her sheer repetition, her ideas would not have stood a chance against ancient cultural framing stories that prioritized obedience and so on.

I think she became bitterly frustrated and baffled about why her efforts didn't take quickly in the culture and why she was so viciously opposed. People don't take kindly to someone trying to change their core story frame. And you don't kill a set frame or eject it like you can a detail that becomes irrelevant or contradictory to the frame. You can replace the old frame by constantly reinforcing a new one as the old one weakens and dries up, but this takes time and effort. You don't win an argument and you're done.

 

Random thoughts

Bigotry is an extremely strong frame. It does all the right things in the brain (story, neurochemicals, neural pathways and networks, etc.) to make it feel like absolute fact. Notice how emotional people manage to get when talking about bigotry.

On a parallel point, I constantly see an irony with class warfare victimization stories. These are generally stories about the oppression and destruction of an individual victim. When done right, these stories are strong enough to challenge a bigotry frame and create a new one, even in the minds of oppressors and bigots. Note, with class warfare stories, an individual victim becomes a metaphor for a collective and the brain is all too happy to unconsciously process metaphors as stand-ins for facts and categories. (Was it Stalin who said that an individual death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic?)

Now here's the irony. The people promoting a class warfare victimization story incorporate a different core story without even realizing it--a conquest story. And they, as individuals, are the conqueror. They begin to become individual bigots against a collective oppressor. And that's where they stare into the abyss so much that the abyss stares back at them and transforms them into itself (to riff off Nietzsche).

I'm not sure this is clear and I've rambled a bit, but I'm out of time.

This general direction is where I am headed and I know it is the right course intellectually. We cannot simply deduce reality from principles. We have to look deep at reality and change our frames if there is a contradiction. (Rand called this checking one's premises.)

What's worse, as most funding for neuroscience and modern psychology comes from the government, guess what many of the most popular neuroscientists are mucking around in? Prison reform, promoting climate change, class warfare, etc. One day I might put together a list of things to avoid or challenge for those who study these authors.

People who love freedom and individual happiness on earth must get involved and learn this stuff or the power-frame-people will win hands down. They are doing a massive amount of research on human behavior and human transformation with repeatable results.

"Guess what they want to do with those results?" asks the lamb to the wolves...

Michael

What an outstanding essay. Wonderful. I rarely get to say that. I read every word.

[Wolf DeVoon]

6 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

We?

That's the problem. The problem of "we" (and "them").

Not individualism.

--Brant

it's not that there is no "we" only that it lacks moral significance which you try to impute

The terms of reference was culture, a long line of we. The epistemological challenge is to shake off our heritage, after which moral life begins.

I have the distinct feeling that my work as a novelist and thinker was wasted effort. I should have made horror movies.

[BaalChatzaf]

10 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

What an outstanding essay. Wonderful. I rarely get to say that. I read every word.

The essay concurred with my view that we humans are physical chemical  organic machines.

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The essay concurred with my view that we humans are physical chemical  organic machines.

What else?

--Brant

my view is we are all atom machines if we want further reductionism still begging the question of why this reductionism in the first place beyond an "A is A" type need (of science sans philosophy including any philosophy of science?), but A is A is a beginning and yours goes nowhere for it has no A is A meaning no science for there is no science without a philosophy of science and philosophy is to you "doxa" (is that still your position?)

put some Objectivism into your tea

[BaalChatzaf]

38 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

What else?

--Brant

my view is we are all atom machines if we want further reductionism still begging the question of why this reductionism in the first place beyond an "A is A" type need (of science sans philosophy including any philosophy of science?), but A is A is a beginning and yours goes nowhere for it has no A is A meaning no science for there is no science without a philosophy of science and philosophy is to you "doxa" (is that still your position?)

put some Objectivism into your tea

There are some who believe humans are -more- than  entities whose activity conforms to the physical laws of nature.  Some believe we have a non-natural, non-physical component,  sometimes  called The Soul, which exists independently of our physical parts (atoms, if you please and energy).  I do not believe in non-physical things.  The cosmos may be beyond our understanding,  but I believe that regardless of  how well we understand the workings of the cosmos the stuff of it  or the furniture of reality is  mass and energy embedded in a physical matrix space-time.  If at some point, it can be demonstrated empirically that there is more to things than I believe,  I will modify my beliefs. 

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

There are some who believe humans are -more- than  entities whose activity conforms to the physical laws of nature.  Some believe we have a non-natural, non-physical component,  sometimes  called The Soul, which exists independently of our physical parts (atoms, if you please and energy).  I do not believe in non-physical things.  The cosmos may be beyond our understanding,  but I believe that regardless of  how well we understand the workings of the cosmos the stuff of it  or the furniture of reality is  mass and energy embedded in a physical matrix space-time.  If at some point, it can be demonstrated empirically that there is more to things than I believe,  I will modify my beliefs. 

There are some who believe that the physicality creates more than mere physicality through conceptual consciousness. Some of that may create more physicality, such as a bridge or building or automobile. The alternative to your stated position doesn't have to be religion or such. What I'm stating is an add on. It's the old reality to be commanded must be obeyed which Rand endorsed without any reservation whatsoever.

--Brant

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote: I do not believe in non-physical things. end quote

Do automatons and Borg like bags of atoms roam the earth? Is *someone* behind your eyes when you look into a mirror? If your answer is “no one,” then your interactions on OL are like an ant following a scent trail because there is “no one.” Do you believe the veracity of the concept of “being?”

But Father! I’m alive! – Pinocchio  

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote about the climate change debate: Very interesting. This is good solid empirical work. Compare this kind of nose to the grindstone empirical undertaking to the Climate Mavens weighting the outputs of their two dozen crude and incomplete Global Climate Models.  end quote 

Perhaps you should demand the same rigor in your woefully bigoted mind about what you are. It’s a similar argument as with “free will vs. determinism”. You are using your self to argue against the existence of yourself. We are mental in a physical body, not some sort of free floating consciousness. Just go talk to the machine that takes your fMRI. It will be glad to explain this.  

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

16 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

What an outstanding essay. Wonderful. I rarely get to say that. I read every word.

Wolf,

Thank you.

I corrected a few minor things in it (verb tenses, wrong words, and so on) and broke up a sentence or two to make it easier to read. I didn't change anything of substance or add anything new.

As both you and Brant quoted the entire thing, I copied the corrected version in your posts.

This only scratches the surface. It's like the wilderness spread out before us. If we don't settle it, others will.

btw - I do not have the same negative view of your work that you do. I believe you can bolster it with this direction and it will fare a lot better with the public.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

16 hours ago, Wolf DeVoon said:

I should have made horror movies.

Wolf,

You probably would have made very good horror movies.

You still might. After all, a horror movie is nothing but a mystery story with blood, gore, and a big-ass monster to figure out instead of who killed a murder victim.

Give it a try.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

There are some who believe humans are -more- than  entities whose activity conforms to the physical laws of nature.  Some believe we have a non-natural, non-physical component,  sometimes  called The Soul, which exists independently of our physical parts (atoms, if you please and energy).  I do not believe in non-physical things.  The cosmos may be beyond our understanding,  but I believe that regardless of  how well we understand the workings of the cosmos the stuff of it  or the furniture of reality is  mass and energy embedded in a physical matrix space-time.  If at some point, it can be demonstrated empirically that there is more to things than I believe,  I will modify my beliefs. 

Bob,

Your premise and mine are different. Your unstated premise is that man has evolved to a point where he no longer needs to evolve to detect and process reality. He's evolved and now he's done. Without that assumption, your comments don't make much sense. Based on that assumption, you want proof of extrasensory things at your stage of development, but you may not be physically equipped to understand the thing or the proof. Sort of like a dog reading a newspaper. The dog can pee on the newspaper, but it will not understand what is written. Or maybe light for some blind organisms. Just because they are blind, that does not mean light does not exist. 

I believe man is still evolving, that there are parts of reality beyond the five senses, and that we are gradually developing sense organs to detect and process these parts. I think we get glimpses precisely because we are evolving senses (a messy process), which is one reason (but not the only reason) why there is a lot of similarity between individual accounts of many things over human history the world over (for example, near-death experiences), but so far, we cannot reliably repeat the findings.

The idea of life and consciousness randomly emerging from a big bang that produced non-living matter and energy (not to mention time and space) is just as fanciful to me as the idea of a Monkey God. You have to take it on faith because there is no way to verify random emergence as the cause. Hell, we can't even randomly emerge life forms in a lab, much less states of awareness.

So, in my view, I think maybe we don't see the whole picture yet because we can't. We can track the progress of wider awareness, though, just like we are tracking increased life span. 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's what a lot of people think about fake news through the lens of the Seth Rich story.

This guy is not saying anything new, but he is giving words to the way a lot of people think.

The corporate fake news media is committing suicide.

Good.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

4 hours ago, Peter said:

Ba’al wrote: I do not believe in non-physical things. end quote

Do automatons and Borg like bags of atoms roam the earth? Is *someone* behind your eyes when you look into a mirror? If your answer is “no one,” then your interactions on OL are like an ant following a scent trail because there is “no one.” Do you believe the veracity of the concept of “being?”

But Father! I’m alive! – Pinocchio  

I am alive and you are alive and we both are made of Stuff that  behaves according to natural physical laws. 

[BaalChatzaf]

3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,Your premise and mine are different. Your unstated premise is that man has evolved to a point where he no longer needs to evolve to detect and process reality.

I neither said nor implied that.  Evolution is modification of organisms from one generation to the next  and it is a process that conforms to natural physical law.

If the human race were divided into two groups that could not interact over an extended period of time  the offspring of the first group would differ genetically from the offspring of the second group.  That is how the bonobos and the chimpanzees,  genetically similar but distinct species arose from a common ancestor population.  At some time in the past the Congo River divided the territory of the original population in such a way that the two groups could no long reach and hence could no longer mate with each other.  One group became the bonobos and the other became the chimpanzees. 

The human race is as physically connected as it has ever been  in thousands of years.  People born thousands of miles apart,  meet and mate.  The human races has not been separated into non-interacting groups for 300 years.  Before that the humans who found their way to Australia became separated from those who remained on the main land.  When the oceans rose significantly  they could not longer meet and mater.  That is why the aboriginals of Australia are quite distinct in their body type from those back on the mainland.  However interbreeding is still possible and aboriginals and non-aboriginals meet and mate.  However if the separation had gone one for several tens of thousands of years more the descendants of the Australia population and the descendants of the mainland population would  reached a stage  where fertile mating  would be  infrequent.  Evolution in the more complex species  takes a long time. 

Right now the human species is a single interbreeding population regardless of cultural differences. The only thing that could produce  any significant change in our genome is  a radical change to the physical conditions in which we live.  Right now we see some interesting changes.  There are many near-sighted people.  Long ago when our ancestors  had to hunt to live (prior to agriculture)  near sightedness  selected against survival until procreation somewhat.  So nearsightedness would have been less common.  Nowadays we know how to correct our vision so deviation from 20-20 visual acuity is no longer a negative influence on reproductive fitness (the only fitness Nature cares about). 

Human groups  are now more affected by cultural differences than genetic level biological differences. The human species now undergoes a process of cultural modification over time.  This type of descent with modification follows Lamarckian lines and happens much more rapidly than does classical genetic evolution along Darwinian lines.  However, and mark this well, we may start to modify our genes  for pragmatic reasons.  When that happens all bets  are off.  If we modify our genes accord to plan and purpose,  natural selection will no long be the chief agent of our genetic change.  Once we can make designer babies  genetic evolution will occur  at super speed. Intelligent Design of humans will have become a reality.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I neither said nor implied that.

Bob,

Sure you did. You wrote:

11 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

If at some point, it can be demonstrated empirically that there is more to things than I believe,  I will modify my beliefs. 

What form, pray tell, will this empirical evidence come in if not in a manner suited to your current stage of evolutionary development?

Or do you pretend to time travel to the future and somehow adopt a more evolved state to observe it so you can come back to the present and modify your beliefs?

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

3 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,

Sure you did. You wrote:

What form, pray tell, will this empirical evidence come in if not in a manner suited to your current stage of evolutionary development?

Or do you pretend to time travel to the future and somehow adopt a more evolved state to observe it so you can come back to the present and modify your beliefs?

Michael

I speak English.  What language to do you speak?  How you could infer what you inferred from what I wrote  is beyond my understanding. 

I said, and I thought I said it plainly,  that if my belief in the total physicality of humans  were ever contradicted empirically I would change my belief.  I always yield my principles and beliefs to fact.   So far my belief in the physicality of humans has not been contradicted by a manifest and demonstrated fact. 

No reproducing organism on Earth can be  shielded from the effects of natural selection.   However  our clever inventions  have made it it tough for Nature to eliminate the reproductive unfit.   People with conditions stemming from defective genomes used to die young in the Old Days.  Now we keep them alive and some of them even have children with the defects of their parent.  So you have people with cystic fibrosis living long enough to have children some of whom have the disease.   Without effective medical intervention  cystic fibrosis would have been eliminated by virtue of the people having the disease not living long enough to reproduce. 

The basic machinery of natural selection does not go away,  but it effectiveness can be blunted  by medical intervention or  repair of the genome. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

28 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

I said, and I thought I said it plainly,  that if my belief in the total physicality of humans  were ever contradicted empirically I would change my belief.

Bob,

You did. And when examining a proposition of humans evolving to detect parts of reality we cannot detect yet, it's a nonsensical statement without the time travel and transformation I mentioned.

How can you detect something you are incapable of detecting?

That's a contradiction.

And if that's your only condition for considering it, you have essentially said humans are fully evolved, that you need no further evolution to detect anything that exists.

In other words, you can only believe that assumption on faith. 

 

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

5 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,

You did. And when examining a proposition of humans evolving to detect parts of reality we cannot detect yet, it's a nonsensical statement without the time travel and transformation I mentioned.

How can you detect something you are incapable of detecting?

That's a contradiction.

And if that's your only condition for considering it, you have essentially said humans are fully evolved, that you need no further evolution to detect anything that exists.

In other words, you can only believe that assumption on faith. 

 

Michael

Evolution is a local process.   Future possible conditions  have nothing to do with evolution.  Evolution is produced by the interaction of genetic variations HERE AND NOW   and  physical processes that interact  with varied genomes HERE AND NOW.   Evolution has no foresight. Humans are not evolving -in order to do anything-.  Evolution is a chance happenstance.  There is no purpose in it.  The idea that humans evolve to deal with future states yet to be instantiated has long since been discredited.  The evolutionary process that produced  our species was a crap shoot.  It is chance and odds in action. 

If we rewound the Earth  one billion years to a prior state and let it go forward again, there is no guarantee that humans would evolve on the second try.

The idea of purposeful perfecting evolution  has no scientific or factual basis  whatsoever.  

Have a look at  http://science.sciencemag.org/content/249/4971/843.2.  The second letter reproduced on that page. You may have to crank up the font size a bit to read it. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

5 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Future possible conditions  have nothing to do with evolution.

Now there's a hell of a statement.

You're proving what I said. Your assumption is that evolution stopped.

 

Michael