After all we are not talking about some multimillion dollar production here that might need copyright protection to recoup its costs. This low-budget, home-made documentary is so simplistic that anyone with half an understanding of video and computers could have pieced it together as the vast majority of YouTube users demonstrate. All it appears to have cost the producers mostly was their time. Clearly, the producers went into this as a business and not a charitable campaign to save the world.
What hypocrisy to claim to have all the questions and answers that will save the world but then only make it available to those that can afford to purchase the DVD. If this information was truly meant to help enlighten all of humanity to save itself from itself - then why is it not freely available for everyone to see?
Here are the film-makers' plans for the movie: "We plan to have a DVD for sale to the public on our website." Luckily - the YouTube users and other file sharing sites who took the time to post their own copies seem to care more about saving humanity than the producers themselves!
It's not a big deal. Inequalities will continue to grow until the top 1% own 99.9% of every thing. It will be like a feudal state. People will be kept alive on food stamps, rationing, energy subsidies and living 4-5 familys in one house. Think of your modern day first generation impoverished Hispanic immigrant in America today - that will be considered a GOOD standard of living.
Great film. It's a wonderful movie to watch with others, and get a discussion going. It's important to remember, though, that this is not happening because HUMANS are doomed- it's industrial civilization that's destined for failure. We're not a destructive species- it's a destructive culture. Humans thrived on the Earth for thousands upon thousands of years, we're quite capable of living in a healthy way. Just something to keep in mind when people insist that humans are fundamentally flawed.
The American lifestyle is what has enabled a film such as this "going against the empire" to be created; travel to North Korea or Red China and create the same movie and attempt to publicize for your peers to see. Be careful how hipocratic you become speaking on doom and gloom of our modern society.
This is terrible! Speaking as someone who works very hard at Transition etc., I hated this trailer. It's slacker sundance doomer rubbish, has nothing to do with real efforts to move society onto different paths and everything to do with handwringing.
Have you seen the whole movie, or just the trailer?
I heard an engaging podcast interview w/ the filmmakers, and seen mention of it my local IRL community.
To me it doesn't sound very "doomy", since it's explicitly talking about a *journey through* a process, not just a wrapped up package of bad news like so many videos.
I haven't seen it -- trailer didn't make me want to.
When you say it advocates 'journey through a process' is that psychologically or learning skills?
I'm through the psychological aspect ages ago, and I didn't like the approach in the trailer which seemed stuck in doom, using it to pull people in. I would never see a film that created fear and then said, see our film, we'll take away your fear that we just created! It's the wrong approach mentally, never mind practically. Maybe it's just me.
I don't watch films based off trailers. I looked this documentary up on wiki and read what it was about, that was more than enough to convince me. Besides, when you look at the facts about humans and our current impact on earth.. Trust me when I say you feel hopeless and ashamed to be part of such a destructive and careless race. It's quite clear that our species have doomed ourselves. But how else does one learn not to do something other than experiencing it first hand.
@Skwafatch I'm not suggesting you avoid experiencing it, I'm just saying I have other sources of info I prefer.
I don't feel in any way hopeless and ashamed, and we're not simplistically "doomed"... we're in a very nuanced situation with many factors at play. I work at these things in my local area every day now.
Google John Michael Greer, Rob Hopkins, Automatic Earth... do something!
I love that -- "trust me, you feel hopeless and ashamed..." I've been through that already. Old news.
@Skwafatch Dude I've been there. I got heavy into meditation and all sorts of stuff, now I help others with the bipolar etc. But that bipolar thing... it's not the situation, it's you. You see what I'm saying?
I don't think it's healthy -- personally -- to project a strong depression on the situation and use that as your way of approaching it. And I think this trailer does some of that. It takes a route that is too laden with emotions that TBH might not be appropriate.
I meditate as well and it has helped a lot. I am just so damn sensitive, I try many positive things to get my mind off of it but my emotions seem out of control.. Sometimes time alone is the healer.. I am only 21 and still have many years to overcome my problems mentally and emotionally. I actually gave myself medical problems just from stress alone and have only just recently been recovering. I have a very loving family fortunately though and am not worried about myself anymore.
Perhaps I said that wrong.. But it is hard for me to get past the depression. I have a mild bi-polar condition and have a very sensitive personality when it comes to nature and violence. I don't feel helpless however, simply because everything happens for a reason and there is nothing you can do but learn from it. Its a simple matter of my understanding that we as a species have overpopulated and the more we populate, the more the environment and wildlife has to suffer.
I also have strong feelings! But the situation is just not that straightforward for me. For example -- civilization imploding and the end of oil means a major reduction in human capacity to polute.
Also, my grandmother is one of the founders of Ducks Unlimited Canada and I am a full fledged member so I do try to contribute with saving the environment. Unfortunately there is only so much anyone can do when the fact remains that our species population must decline significantly in order for the planet to sustain a healthy environment. I do remain optimistic though because everything will happen the way it is supposed to, I just have difficulty restraining my emotions.
@Skwafatch There's more you can do. I gave a few a names to look at back there. But I recommend you sort yourself out first because it's a lot easier to be strong for others when you've done so.
If you want more detail, message me here on YouTube! (these little 500char slots are no place to go through serious stuff!)
I've been taken into the grasps of this film. Wow! I also believe that this Economy must grow every year regardless, is a fairytale; obtainable for only the 5% of Rich individuals who stand to benefit from it. I personally don't get it. If your plate is full, move on and let others eat. Western Society is consuming all other humans, and yet we are powerless about it. The only thing to do is to bring awereness and plant the seeds of tomorrow.
Anyway - ad hoc quote-dismantlings aside - Einstein's case is not as clear-cut an anti-progress one as you've implied, which is about all I have to say about that.
I almost didn't post the Einstein quotes, because I thought it would be distracting.
And I'm not exactly supporting WalMart, "the economy", etc ... (the "economy" seems very much like a poker game played by pirates to me - "we have to grow the economy" = "we have to pump each other up with brighter poker chips to go pillage some more"), and I don't see bigger TVs or cheaper private jets as the important parts of progress -
but I do see a broad trend of improvement, when you take centuries as a whole, minor snags and reversals and side tracks aside - I think humans have the potential to make life better for themselves than the "nature" that brought us optical nematodes and lethal tooth rot.
Hey your coments come off as smart. I hope your nice and helpful too.
If you know of this Documentary in You tube form, could you send me a message of its title and the url address? Me and a friend are composing a documentary list.
I didn't see it when I searched "What a Way to Go" But It looks like the beginning of "the corporation" or has this movie not come out yet?
Would you give humans rapid growth and greater intelligence, if the trade was the ability to feel enjoyment?"
Good question. While I suspect "enjoyment" would still crop up in our emotional toolkit, albeit in a paler form - this isn't really a good rebuttal, because you HAVE been saying we should cut down on complexity, whereas I've never said we should be less happy.
Maybe "intelligence" was the wrong word, then - I'm not sure what the right word would be, and I think our disagreement is focusing on whether it exists at all. A direction for life to move in, beyond "maintained comfort".
"Happiness is all there is" - direct quote from you - thus, an objective increase in happiness should be total compensation for a lobotomy. It's no good trying to weasel out of it by saying the two can coexist.
Surely, an endless future of happy bacteria would be ideal.
"because we're so discontinuous with other life forms so far"
One string of culture, out of thousands, has this problem.
There are groups living to this day who have managed to fit with their ecosystem, often in a beneficial manner.
Do we hold leverage? Yes, but so does plankton. We do not have the ability to control that leverage in a truly beneficial manner. Nature runs best on autopilot.
Would you press a button to stop all humans from being lobotomised into happy neolithic survival, into the indefinite future? If you wouldn't, I grant that we're approaching this issue from such different vantage points that there's no point in continuing, and invite you only to acquire this happiness you seek.
Would you press the button that would stop all life forms from being "reset" back to single celled creatures?
The button that would stop earth from exploding (if everything is equal, how is a cloud of free-floating gas worse than a living earth? Things that aren't alive can't feel pain or oppress each other)?
True, not all human cultures are dramatically more influential than earlier biological layers (though I would argue their societies are significantly more elaborate, but won't press the point). But this is the opposite of a chain being as strong as its weakest link: it's like having 1000 pebbles of equal size on either side of a scale, balancing it precisely, and then adding another pebble to one side and a boulder to the other. The species is as powerful as its most powerful members.
- optical nematodes - worms that can only live inside the eyeballs of other living things.
- some species of bird (goonies?) in which, when siblings are born, one invariably kills the other shortly after birth.
- some insect (wasp?) that paralyses a caterpillar with a sting and lays eggs inside it so the young can eat their way out of its living body when they're born.
I agree that humans, as we currently understand them, are not capable of improving on these systems: I don't think you understand the scope of my regard for intelligence as a force for shaping the universe: chimps can fish termites out of mounds of dirt with stalks of grass, but we humans can stop light and control machines with direct brain interfaces (google it).
I brought up the mediocrity principle, not to show that we're just another kind of animal, but to show that we aren't necessarily at the upper limit of what intelligence can do in the universe. Imagine if you were reincarnated (just go with it) as one of the first living things, just emerging from nonorganic compounds - could you have imagined Where Things Were Going?
Yeah, we could blow ourselves up, but it'd be a waste just to slink back to the herd. We are unprecedented in the universe. We can do things that have never been done before.
What other thing is there than happiness? Everything comes back to it. Are you waiting for humans to mutate another, more joyful emotion? What is the goal?
"we aren't necessarily at the upper limit"
So?
"it'd be a waste" How does this justify anything?
There are a lot of nukes and bio/chem agents out there being "wasted" right now. Do we have to unleash that potential?
The only culture ever to make any effort to NOT be ethnocentric is the one we're in.
I get that you think "happiness" is the best we can do. That's not an interesting idea, and if you really don't see any other ... thing to aim for in life, we might as well be arguing about favourite colours.
My final question to you: would you press a button to stop every neocortex on earth from being shaved off, even if that loss meant people would enjoy neolithic survival into the indefinite future?
Where did you get the idea that tribal peoples are somehow less intelligent than civilized ones? Most tribal peoples have developed living/belief systems that by and large are far superior to civilization for nurturing the human mind and spirit. Tribal people have much more free time to think, discuss, wonder, dance, and make love than we do. That is, until we show up with guns to make slaves out of them. Technological advancement does not constitute human progress.
"Where did you get the idea that tribal peoples are somehow less intelligent than civilized ones?"
Where did you read me saying that? I do think, however, that maintenance of the necessities of life in a tribal civilisation would *require* less intelligence.
My question to withindarkness was whether he would see drastically reduced intelligence, coupled with happiness, as an improvement: specifically, if he would prevent that at no cost to himself.
"What other thing is there than happiness? Everything comes back to it. Are you waiting for humans to mutate another, more joyful emotion?"
Well, would you say chimps, small mammals, houseflies, single celled creatures, and inorganic compounds have the same level of happiness? Considering that the limbic system is the part of the brain associated with emotions, it only arose in mammals, it grew over the lizard brain and under the neocortex?
This is precisely what I meant by us not being at the upper limit. How can you follow up "are you waiting for the evolution of better things" with a dismissing acknowledgement that we aren't as evolved as we could be?
And why do you keep talking about goals? Happiness isn't a fixed, static state - unless you think houseflies are just as happy as us, despite having far less brain matter to generate said emotion - happiness is a direction, like "east" or "up", and it's more multivalent than just one note: try "glory", "aspiration", "hope", etc... Not to mention other emotions that the structure of reality may permit living things to experience, but are currently as beyond us as symphonies are to flatworms.
You aren't even an articulate moron. You're (or "anarchoprimitivists are") snarky, one-shot class clowns in the story of human life.
It's the simplest kind of contradiction to use your mind to say it was a bad idea to develop minds in the first place. There are ups and downs to it, but look:
if every living thing is as good as any other, and "happiness" is all any living thing can get, then who gives a crap if we take a stab at the singularity and leave behind a bunch of happy rats and cockroaches? If the only thing that distinguishes people from other creatures - consciousness, intelligence, tool use on a large scale - is just a bad idea, then why should we take pains to avoid it? Let it kill us off, since we're clearly titanotheres-of-the-brain.
Or, let me put it another way: if the universe/biosphere is such a closed, unwelcoming, dark-and-limited system, like a stuffy hall closet surrounded by brick in all directions, and intelligence arose as a painful mistake that eats away at the remaining air and kills us off slowly (which seems to be the aesthetic I'm getting from AP's), then - fuck it. Why try to hold our breath when there's nothing to get to in the future?
It's not bad to have a mind, and I never suggested so. It's bad to use your mind to see only the positive and none of the negative outcomes of having a mind, though. Human intelligence is an experiment of evolution (just like every other biological adaptation), not it's pinnacle achievement. I agree the human mind is a potent and awesome thing. But it is equally useful for harm or for good. Like the internet.
Note: research the word "holarchy" (as opposed to hierarchy): that's what I was getting at with "containing and adding": that's why you're actually *better* at lifting objects of all kinds than me, not just "different": you can lift everything I can lift, and then some. This is not a complex concept. If you had a large number of such superior traits, we could agree that, on average, you were "more evolved" than I, even while I might be better at articulate moronhood.
(Although "evolution" relates more to complexity than physical abilities: still, the idea of "anything you can do, I can do better" is the basic idea of "development", and I wish we could stop pretending that it needs defending as a concept.)
Good point. I mean "highest level of existence" from your perspective, with stone age being lower and atomic age being higher. I suppose that's implicit acceptance of said heirarchy, for the sake of argument; "most technologically sophistocated" would have been a better phrase.
Sophistication - height - development - this is the core of our disagreement: I think the *thrust* of life is to improve along this axis, and APs seem to want to hamstring humanity and have us limp along with the beasts because the world can't support our ambition.
We can quibble over what we mean by it, but I suggest that the "good" is what living things move towards, given understanding and opportunity, and "bad" is what they move away from.
That's what I was getting at with the "lobotomised happiness" angle: would I be doing you a favour by cutting out your neocortex, hooking your pleasure centre up to electrodes, and putting you on IV drip in some institutional basement? Withindarkness has not disagreed that I would be.
We don't have to agree that "more sophisticated" is "better" - just that life tends to move towards it, if given the chance.
Pointing out that creatures that aren't given this chance, don't develop, is like pointing out that hamstrung kittens don't want to grow up to be leaping cats.
That [greater sophistication=progress] is the claim I've been trying to refute. I'm saying the primary reason you are so enamored with the idea that complexity/sophistication is superior to simplicity is self-centeredness. Call it intellectual fascism: "I will elevate and value those traits I identify with, and demote and devalue those traits I don't identify with". If humans had evolved to be the only creatures with two heads, you would be spewing the virtues of two-headedness.
We're teetering over the brink of Godwin's law here, since everyone "elevates and values" traits they like.
Your "two heads" example isn't so great - humans are the least hairy ape,and I don't dislike hair. I would compare the relation of "intelligence" to "life" with the relation of "life" to "matter" (the difference is in degree, not in kind).
You can say "everything evens out in the end" if you want - silver linings may have clouds, but it's a stretch to say that *silver doesn't exist*, or even that the balance of "silver" to "cloud" is universally equal.
I'm trying to get this discussion a little more abstract, because the core defect of AP thinking, as I see it, is this perverse denial of ... I hate to say "values", because it sounds all Southern-Baptist-moral ... but it's something like that.
Confrontational mode dropped for a second, do you see what I'm getting at here? Help me out and phrase my argument for me.
Yes, even the sincerest effort toward altruistic ends can have disastrous unintended consequences. For example, developments in agriculture, energy use, and medicine--with the aim of improving human life--that induce a population explosion and overshoot that ends up creating far more human misery than if these developments had never taken place. And on the flipside, I have been known to turn an insult into a friendship, so watch out!
"even the sincerest effort toward altruistic ends can have disastrous unintended consequences"
"Unintended consequences" is not the same as "no possibility for improvement/all things are equal", and arguing (as you did earlier) that consciousness lets us appreciate pain and pleasure alike isn't really an argument: you can find a cloud for every silver lining, it's not a reason for the species to willfully stagnate: in fact, willful stagnation might itself have unintended consequences.
Pointing out the cloud under every silver lining is, in any context, kind of a snarky, facile, adolescent thing - and if the universe *is* structured in such a way that that level of nihilistic rebuttal is a relevant response to any ambition, winning an anonymous argument with it seems small consolation for having to go on living.
Hey--I'm no nihilist! Pointing out the cloud is simply a way to illustrate that we may not even be in a position to discern what truly constitutes "progress" where human technological advancement is concerned . And focusing only on the silver lining while ignoring the thunderhead within is a naive and irresponsible adolescent thing.
"Pointing out the cloud is simply a way to illustrate that we may not even be in a position to discern what truly constitutes "progress" where human technological advancement is concerned."
Okay, I'll buy that: we should get away from short term self interest, like the taoist farmer whose son breaks his leg, which ends up saving him from army conscription.
Still, in the long term, let's agree that the dark ages were bad and the Renaissance was good.
If only the knowledge and enrichment bestowed on humanity by the Renaissance could have been gotten honestly and used exclusively for non-destructive purposes. I do appreciate the good things of civlilized life--and all the more when I look at the entire balance sheet and see the real costs of having them.
And I'll own up to acting childish, but only if I can prove your culpability as well!
"If only the knowledge and enrichment bestowed on humanity by the Renaissance could have been gotten honestly and used exclusively for non-destructive purposes."
I guess ... but, "if only peeing felt like an orgasm", right?
I think our main disagreement, again, is in the idea of directionality/development/"betterness" - you're arguing for absolute relativity (clouds and silver linings are precisely equal), and I'm saying there's a decisive better-ward drift - which is why it happens at all.
Richard Dawkins (ignore his stance on god for the moment) reads a quote from H.G. Wells that the people of tomorrow would probably have to kill all the "brown, black, and dirty-white" people of the world. You could almost claim that quote for your side of this debate (civ = teh bad), except that Dawkins' point was that the moral zeitgeist *evolves* over time - as a culture, as time goes on, we get nicer/better.
You couldn't say your AP stuff 100 years ago and be understood, for instance, you probably couldn't say it and *survive* a few hundred years ago, and you'd probably just get strange looks from a tribal culture for it - even the nice ones aren't known for their embrace of cultural relativity.
(BTW, Dawkins reads the Wells quote in a youtube vid called "Richard Dawkins: The Good Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist", if you want his full argument).
Clouds and linings are equal, but only from the standpoint of a detached, objective observer. Your observer is clearly smitten with Western ideals. The drift only seems "better-ward" to you because you are the the beneficiary of the drift. There is an equal and opposite reaction to this drift somewhere that you are not accounting for. That's my point with the balance sheet statement. It is nearly a universal trait among humans to rationalize and defend the belief systems they inherit.
"There is an equal and opposite reaction to this drift somewhere that you are not accounting for."
Was there an equal and opposite reaction to the appearance of life in the cosmos? Did some carbon atoms cry themselves to sleep?
Was there an E and A R to multi celled creatures forming from single celled?
Once again, you're denying that "better" can exist in this universe, and yet you're continuing to breathe. This suggest to me that you're being facetious.
"There is an equal and opposite reaction to this drift somewhere that you are not accounting for."
This could be a defining quote for you - personally, I really don't think there is - but if this is a fundamental law of the universe (in more than the narrow, physics sense), there's no use in applying it to special cases of civilisations you dislike (and yet, benefit from). You should be actively discouraging every form of activity in the universe.
Also, you and withindarkness both use the word "pinnacle": you seem to hate pinnacles.
I think people - specifically, people at the "high levels of existence" you've already acknowledged - are easily the most interesting thing on the planet, and it's ... again, sophistry, or ideology-demanded mental contortion, to say otherwise.
We can continue to bonk words together as if we both believe that *you* believe that the social lives of mice are as unusual/rare/complex/worthwhile as the products of the human mind, but I don't think either of us does. If not, I invite you to live with the animals, talk with the animals, run and dance and sing with the animals for the rest of your life.
Yes, what profound intelligence have we! Einstein would rather have been a shoe maker after seeing the Bomb his genius created. Filo Farnsworth, inventor of television, went to his grave in deepest regret for zombifying entire cultures with the Box. Alberto Santos-Dumont, inventor of powered flight, killed himself after WWI--his dear gift to humankind turned out to be one of the most potent war machines ever devised. And look at the nifty situation we have coming with antibiotic resistance!
I always find it interesting that people like Einstein seem to fall on the side of simplicity and careful use of knowledge, and were quite outspoken against what most people consider "progress".
"Net gain, no matter what is lost" is the realm of reckless stupidity, yet it's the path we're on. We need a different path.
Einstein quotes: Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds ... It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature ... I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research ... The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing ...
We must find a way, or we will make one ... We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings ...Human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate ... All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
"That's not a human problem, that's conditioning. Many people, past and present, totally lack the gnawing need to "progress"."
We could argue which side has the "conditioning" and which side is "natural" - but I don't want to - I will point out that eunuchs lack sexual desire, blind people don't care about paintings, and dead people don't eat meat.
"If evolution has "points", and things can be "more" or "less" developed..."
We are the same chronological 'distance' from a common ancestor, with chimps having more beneficial genetic changes occurring in that time than humans.
Mostly semantics again.
"the fact that it appears to be doing so proves that it isn't"
"If the facts dont fit the theory, change the facts" -Einstein
Life *appears* to defy entropy(the theory) by advancing(the fact). Thus life is not advancing, merely changing.
Okay, forget chimps. I disagree, but they're close enough to us that I won't press the point.
Take flatworms or single celled creatures.
All I'm getting at is that development does occur - another way to phrase this is that the more developed thing can do everything the less developed can, and then some. That gets rid of "better" or "worse".
To rephrase what I mean by "more evolved" - the more evolved thing includes everything in the less evolved thing, and adds new things, while taking nothing away.
Tried photosynthesizing your food lately? Lowly microbes can do it, so you should be able to as well, being so much more evolved as you obviously are.
"Lowly microbes can do it, so you should be able to as well"
You make a good point. To clarify - my, say, problem solving/physical strength/ability to travel at high speed are more evolved, whereas my sunlight-eating isn't.
Evolution can occur in different lines - think of an idiot savant. Way better at memorising, worse at, uh, dancing.
Looking at your profile, I see that you enjoy Lifting Things. I do not - but can you lift this pen on my desk? No? You cannot reach it? Then I guess I am better at some kinds of lifting, and our lifting skills even out.
Trying to deny the concept of development is silly.
You assume I don't lift pens as well as barbells? Of course--fearful of the ad hominem attack (but apparently not afraid to employ it), you post no information about yourself on your channel.
My point with the "you can't lift my pen" thing was that you can't lift MY pen - i.e. the one on my desk - because it's too far away, and therefore you can't really be stronger than me.
Also, it's not really an insult to refer to you lifting things, but "articulate moron" totally was.
My point with the "articulate moron" thing was that, like many learned scholars, you are using a lot of sophisticated language to support a claim that can only appear valid to someone with a vested interest in it being so. Like how American capitalism works (to try to stay relevant to the video): "we have every reason to expect infinite economic growth, given that we have a finite supply of raw materials".
As a living human who enjoys toilet paper, a lifestyle not based on subsistence farming, and a future different from the present - yes, I have a vested interest. I probably wouldn't care if I didn't: would we value living matter above dead carbon atoms if we weren't alive?
"we have every reason to expect infinite economic growth, given that we have a finite supply of raw materials"
(Shrug) Space?
Also, remember that guy who said New York would be submerged in horse dung if the population - and thus, demand for "transportation" - continued to increase?
The first creature to crawl on land found a way around the ocean's "finite supply of raw materials" pretty neatly.
I'm not necessarily defending capitalism per se, just ... well, a future better than the past.
Yes, that's the whole rationale for empire (civilization), isn't it? The only problem is that the future is only better for those on the right side of the equation. We seem to be running out of frontiers and resources for expansion ("development") while at the same time confronting unintended consequences (population explosion, peak oil, etc.) of this cultural iimperative of the future needing to be better than the past. The law of diminishing returns rears its head in all endeavors.
Remember the definition of life as the "adjacent possible": think of lichen spreading to cover all the wall area it can. Life wants to do stuff - to grow, to expand, to get bigger and better. Intelligence is a new way of doing that.
Not every thing we try as intelligent beings will work, no. We should try harder, not give up.
The "advancement" of civilization has a lot of victims, both human and nonhuman. Maybe their experiences with civilization should factor in to our assessment of how wonderful human "achievement" truly is.
Optical nematodes are worms that can only live in eyeballs. Coyotes eat their prey alive. Wasps lay eggs in live caterpillars that then eat their way out.
As for tribal people - there's always the constant, unremitting attrition of early death, death in childbirth, disease, etc...
But I agree that downsides should be considered. I don't think either of us has the full facts, though, and if we had to either take modern medicine or go blind tomorrow, or whatever, there's really no question what we'd do. (Thomas de Zengotitia calls this the "Justin's Helmet Principle" - you can make fun of safety precautions, but you'll generally buy the helmet).
You are descended from photosynthetic microbes. Why don't you retain the ability to photosynthesize, instead of having to eat (be dependent on) "lower" life forms?
Because being descended from something doesn't mean retaining everything it does, in the same way musical parents may have non-musical children.
I'm not saying evolution happens steadily, with every generation, along every possible trait and development path, in every instance - but I am saying that it required simple creatures to lay the foundations for more complex ones through natural selection. Eyes, wings, and brains were generated out of goo. It's sophistry to deny development here.
More geared towards the whole concept is the "mediocrity principle", though the Copernican principal has expanded in common use to include this, and in many ways they are interchangeable.
Copernicus was operating more from tangible observation than philosophy, seeing problems with the physical position of Earth.
Yeah, the mediocrity principle is what I was thinking of, but I think you've missed what I was getting at *with* it.
You've taken it to mean that we're just another interchangeable node in the web of life. I would sort of agree, except to say that we have such a high leverage position over other lifenodes that it's almost irresponsible to pretend otherwise (not to say we *should* interfere, per se, but that unless we're reduced to mad-max lifestyles or have our neocortexes shaved off, we will).
And, because we're so discontinuous with other life forms so far (yeah, I know chimps use grass to fish termites out of their mounds and crack rocks, but it's a massive difference of degree) - because, as far as we can tell, the universe has never brought forth anything like "intelligence" before, we're in a (potential) position to make changes to it as profound as any it's seen.
You talk as if the future of humanity is sort of ... melting back into the host of animals, sheepishly recanting our ambition to live up to our minds instead of down to our bodies.
I highly doubt we'd be content with this - and, if everything is equal-but-different, why should we try to fit ourselves into uncomfortably small shoes? If our intelligence is such a genocide-prompting, earth-raping tumour, what need is there for us to persist?
It may just be a difference in personality/temperament - the thought of an indefinite future of changeless tribal existence is as grotesque to me as the idea of poisoning the earth's water supply with lobotomising chemicals. People are the animals that think, that create, that do things, that make the future different from the past - I appreciate this movie's concerns, but I can't take the idea of "reverting" to a tribal mode seriously.
Unless it's not voluntary (mad max again), in which case, why argue about it? If someone threatens to cut off your arms, do you start talking about how Hitler and Stalin both had arms, and how arms are involved in most fights, etc...
The tribal level is the highest level of existence at which humans don't start poisoning the biosphere. Civilization absolutely requires empirical expansion, which leads inexorably to our current predicament of runaway overpopulation, resource depletion, and toxification of the total environment, which the film here is trying to describe.
(Shrug) When the first bacteria arose, they gave off enough oxygen to kill most other living things. Would you have prevented that holocaust and doomed us to being single celled creatures forever?
Think about what you just wrote. When the first bacteria/archaea arose and started giving off oxygen, there were not yet any other living things to kill off. But the oxygen they emitted did eventually build up and allow the evolution of aerobic respiration and multicellular life. So what holocaust are you talking about? Sentience allows us to grasp and feel terror, pain, and despair as well as joy, love and exultation.
This brings me back to my first post on this video, too: and it kind of makes me despair, since my "point" doesn't even seem to be getting across, much less being accepted:
A baby can't live in a womb forever. Maybe it seems to be "sustainable" when it's the size of a kidney bean,
but if you'd been reincarnated (just go with it) as a cell in that developing fetus, I can see you calling for a halt to "reckless limb expansion", since we couldn't go on growing indefinitely, since the "biosphere", as we knew it, was a dark, blood-coloured sac only slightly larger than we were.
I see AP's (anarchoprimitivists) endorsing tribal cultures in the name of non-ethnocentrism, which every tribal culture either rejects or couldn't care less about. I see you calling for humans to hold back, to do less than we can, to limit ourselves, to pull our punches into the infinite future because we live in a world of harsh limits, and the only acceptable use of intelligence is as a brake upon itself.
I see you knocking people because we want more than dumb, mute, animal "happiness" - because our reach exceeds our grasp - but what wolf/lion/bear/rabbit etc would stop at "just okay" if it possessed and understood the means for arranging its environment to suit itself more fully?
When rats are given buttons to push that stimulate the pleasure centres of their brains or drop food pellets, they don't stop. If birds are fed in winter, they don't hunt/forage: they mooch.
This suggests to me that the idea of voluntary limits is anathema to living things (somebody once defined life as the "adjacent possible": if it can be done, life will spill into that niche, like lichen on rock), and that, if humans died tomorrow and any other creature developed Mind, it would do the exact same thing: find a leverage point to shape the world the way it wanted and keep going until it achieved transcendence or died.
"Isn't that the copernican principle? We shouldn't expect to be at the centre? "
Exactly.
We aren't at the center, and it does only harm to act otherwise. We are part of an interconnected system. Just another point on the chart. To harm that system, is to harm ourselves.
Homo Sapiens always had the last three, and medicine has not improved to the extent most people think ('amazing development', Cold FX, is nothing more than American Ginseng, with enough filler to make it patentable). Again, we've hurt more than we've fixed.
Art is a moot point. Again, it arbitrarily assigns human traits to others.
Other species don't need/want it anymore than a person with no desire to try sushi, needs/wants sushi.
They are at the same point of evolution as we are, they simply filled different niches.
They are less 'elaborate' in higher brain functions, but this does not put them behind us in an evolutionary sense. They aren't less developed.
Evolution has not fought entropy. The fact that it appears so, simply supports the fact that it isn't advancing, just changing. Following "complexity=increased entropy", it might even partly explain why simpler forms last longer.
"They are at the same point of evolution as we are,"
If evolution has "points", and things can be "more" or "less" developed, you have conceded everything I've been saying about evolution.
I'll concede a draw with the chimp thing - they're close enough that it's up to specialists to work it out - but surely, say, lungfish or small mammals are "less developed"?
Bear in mind the human brain has a lizard core, capped with a limbic system, capped with a neocortex - a pretty visually clear indication of "development" (consciousness and goal-directedness aren't relevant - a tall guy is taller than a short guy, whether or not they're both consciously trying to proceed to the goal of infinite height).
"Evolution has not fought entropy. The fact that it appears so, simply supports the fact that it isn't advancing, just changing."
I think you're saying that "evolution could not possibly violate the second law of thermodynamics", but it sounds like you're saying "the fact that it appears to be doing so proves that it isn't" - which, uh ... what?
Entropy increases in closed systems - the earth is fed by the sun's energy (something like that) which fuels life's hijinx, but entropy is "order/complexity decreasing over time", and - as it seems we've agreed - as natural selection automatically suits traits to their situations, complexity tends to increase in living things - leading, in us, to the first known incidence of conscious intelligence in the universe. I see it as a waste to put that genie back in the bottle of tribal life.
Lastly - my favourite thing about this trailer is that graph, showing how human capability/impact has risen dramatically. The thing is, this rising trend can be traced back to humans rising out of small mammals, rising out of single-celled creatures, rising out of complex organic molecules, rising out of interstellar dust, rising out of ... nothing?
We're in a strange situation, being able to consciously appreciate this. Turning our brains to finding roots and berries ... it's just silly.
This would require a ridiculously controlled world, which would be a terrible place to live. Mental/emotional factors are at least as important as the physical. The only real non-biological meaning to life, actually.
It couldn't likely account for environmental changes effectively, and such circumstances would build dangerous dependence on the controlled system.
Who's to say this isn't the "total fit"? If not, is it even desirable? Possible?
This would require a ridiculously controlled world, which would be a terrible place to live."
Ridiculous! Terrible! Yeah, other than that ...
I'm getting a bit more radical than I meant to with my discussion of "total fit", and, I think, more "out there" than you expected - it was just a thought exercise really, but what I was getting at was not so much "ironclad technological control by human civilisation over earth/life as we understand it"
... but "telepathic omnipotence over reality at the subatomic level, to the point that the inside and outside of the head are indistinguishable, and the world melts away, with all its obstructions, like a bad dream dissolved in acid".
This is, of course, so far beyond our present abilities that doing anything concrete to bring it about would be like walking towards the sun - it was a thought experiment to show that ... our current position in the possible development of the universe out of a state of primal entropy (think free floating hydrogen) is nowhere near the far end.
Isn't that the copernican principle? We shouldn't expect to be at the centre? Things - living conditions - could be more primitive, yes - but they could be much, much more hospitable to the more developed, "higher", "better" aspects of our being.
"Watch a chimp try to use sign language sometime. "
So all things are ranked by how similar they are to humans? By the ability to replicate human abstractions? Interesting.
"which does seem like a direction, "
I will concede "direction", in an abstract sense, but not progress.
"a possible "pinnacle" "
Nature itself is the pinnacle, and it has existed for billions of years. Anticlimactic, but true. The sense of approaching perfection or greatness is a false one, only recently spawned.
""Watch a chimp try to use sign language sometime. "
So all things are ranked by how similar they are to humans? By the ability to replicate human abstractions? Interesting."
Are you serious?
Let's back up: you said chimps were as complex in design as people. Now, if you acknowledge that a chimp is *more* complex than a small rodent, which is more complex than a single celled creature, you can't possibly claim it's *as* complex as a human.
It's not about imitation of sign language - that's like saying my inability to beat Gary Kasparov at chess demonstrates only my cultural disregard of chess.
I picked "sign language" as one possible way of demonstrating their difficulty with higher mental processing tasks - i.e., their less elaborate design.
"Higher mental processing tasks" is a human trait.
I don't downgrade your 'status' for being unable to fly, using wing mechanisms that are more complex than any human muscular biology.
Everything is equal, but different. Even if "complexity" can be used to define these differences, their is no reason to say that more complex = superior. Simpler forms tend to survive longer, actually. At least one branch of Homo (spp) showed greater mental faculty than Sapiens, yet they are all extinct.
- this is more of that relativity that's facile and easy to employ - and this is what I meant by "facile" - everything being equal is like everything being "blortz" - it just doesn't mean/contribute anything.
The universe tends to run down, degrade, get simpler and simpler - you point out that simpler life forms last a long time. Free floating hydrogen lasts a long time too - does that make a hard vacuum full of it "equal but different" to a thriving biosphere?
Saying that any possible trait does not grant "superiority", and that all things, without exception are "equal", just excludes the word "superiority" from existence - as if it referred to "flying unicorns" - and smooshes the word "equal" out to a meaningless flatness.
"My meaning was that the degree of proficiency in that trait does not confer superiority to the being as a whole."
I know that's what you meant. I'm saying the word "superiority" is meaningless the way you're using it.
If a bigger, stronger guy fights you to the death - if a meteorite wipes out the earth that a smarter, more developed civ could have prevented - if a more desirable guy takes your girlfriend
laughable....empty fear and smear...
never... never bet against the U.S.A.
pbradford021 4 months ago
these kind of films are promoted by the elite to get you to accept lower living standards. ignore this propaganda.
matchbox555 1 year ago
@matchbox555 why relate living standards with non sustainability?
JerryNo2006 10 months ago
@JerryNo2006 its entirely sustainable
matchbox555 10 months ago
@matchbox555 SAre we are talking the same thing? I am talking the way people live today. And it obviously is not.
JerryNo2006 10 months ago
@JerryNo2006 yes it is
matchbox555 10 months ago
@matchbox555 Could you please elaborate a bit?
JerryNo2006 10 months ago
After all we are not talking about some multimillion dollar production here that might need copyright protection to recoup its costs. This low-budget, home-made documentary is so simplistic that anyone with half an understanding of video and computers could have pieced it together as the vast majority of YouTube users demonstrate. All it appears to have cost the producers mostly was their time. Clearly, the producers went into this as a business and not a charitable campaign to save the world.
TheOzdawn 1 year ago
What hypocrisy to claim to have all the questions and answers that will save the world but then only make it available to those that can afford to purchase the DVD. If this information was truly meant to help enlighten all of humanity to save itself from itself - then why is it not freely available for everyone to see?
TheOzdawn 1 year ago
Here are the film-makers' plans for the movie: "We plan to have a DVD for sale to the public on our website." Luckily - the YouTube users and other file sharing sites who took the time to post their own copies seem to care more about saving humanity than the producers themselves!
TheOzdawn 1 year ago
It's not a big deal. Inequalities will continue to grow until the top 1% own 99.9% of every thing. It will be like a feudal state. People will be kept alive on food stamps, rationing, energy subsidies and living 4-5 familys in one house. Think of your modern day first generation impoverished Hispanic immigrant in America today - that will be considered a GOOD standard of living.
mycatisromeo 1 year ago
This video is a poem.
rapauli 1 year ago
Great film. It's a wonderful movie to watch with others, and get a discussion going. It's important to remember, though, that this is not happening because HUMANS are doomed- it's industrial civilization that's destined for failure. We're not a destructive species- it's a destructive culture. Humans thrived on the Earth for thousands upon thousands of years, we're quite capable of living in a healthy way. Just something to keep in mind when people insist that humans are fundamentally flawed.
xs0heavenly 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
best movie evar!
prolixart 1 year ago
Saw this movie, way better then Gore's or similar movies on the subject.
Hopeful71 1 year ago
The American lifestyle is what has enabled a film such as this "going against the empire" to be created; travel to North Korea or Red China and create the same movie and attempt to publicize for your peers to see. Be careful how hipocratic you become speaking on doom and gloom of our modern society.
alanlewis82 1 year ago
Excellent Film ! A great journey ...
Maiyaee 1 year ago
I saw the whole movie and it's awesome....It kind of keeps you in a fast paced trace...very unique...
MrEnergyCzar 1 year ago 4
"The American lifestyle is unsustainable. That means that it can't be sustained."
No shit, Sherlock!
IvanTheHeathen 2 years ago
@IvanTheHeathen NO SHIT. SHERLOCK!
Watchdawg 1 year ago
This is terrible! Speaking as someone who works very hard at Transition etc., I hated this trailer. It's slacker sundance doomer rubbish, has nothing to do with real efforts to move society onto different paths and everything to do with handwringing.
fourplusseven 2 years ago
Have you seen the whole movie, or just the trailer?
I heard an engaging podcast interview w/ the filmmakers, and seen mention of it my local IRL community.
To me it doesn't sound very "doomy", since it's explicitly talking about a *journey through* a process, not just a wrapped up package of bad news like so many videos.
Iacobra84 2 years ago
I haven't seen it -- trailer didn't make me want to.
When you say it advocates 'journey through a process' is that psychologically or learning skills?
I'm through the psychological aspect ages ago, and I didn't like the approach in the trailer which seemed stuck in doom, using it to pull people in. I would never see a film that created fear and then said, see our film, we'll take away your fear that we just created! It's the wrong approach mentally, never mind practically. Maybe it's just me.
fourplusseven 2 years ago
Comment removed
silje1979 1 year ago
@fourplusseven
I don't watch films based off trailers. I looked this documentary up on wiki and read what it was about, that was more than enough to convince me. Besides, when you look at the facts about humans and our current impact on earth.. Trust me when I say you feel hopeless and ashamed to be part of such a destructive and careless race. It's quite clear that our species have doomed ourselves. But how else does one learn not to do something other than experiencing it first hand.
Skwafatch 1 year ago
@Skwafatch I'm not suggesting you avoid experiencing it, I'm just saying I have other sources of info I prefer.
I don't feel in any way hopeless and ashamed, and we're not simplistically "doomed"... we're in a very nuanced situation with many factors at play. I work at these things in my local area every day now.
Google John Michael Greer, Rob Hopkins, Automatic Earth... do something!
I love that -- "trust me, you feel hopeless and ashamed..." I've been through that already. Old news.
fourplusseven 1 year ago
Comment removed
Skwafatch 1 year ago
@Skwafatch Dude I've been there. I got heavy into meditation and all sorts of stuff, now I help others with the bipolar etc. But that bipolar thing... it's not the situation, it's you. You see what I'm saying?
I don't think it's healthy -- personally -- to project a strong depression on the situation and use that as your way of approaching it. And I think this trailer does some of that. It takes a route that is too laden with emotions that TBH might not be appropriate.
fourplusseven 1 year ago
@fourplusseven
I meditate as well and it has helped a lot. I am just so damn sensitive, I try many positive things to get my mind off of it but my emotions seem out of control.. Sometimes time alone is the healer.. I am only 21 and still have many years to overcome my problems mentally and emotionally. I actually gave myself medical problems just from stress alone and have only just recently been recovering. I have a very loving family fortunately though and am not worried about myself anymore.
Skwafatch 1 year ago
@fourplusseven
Perhaps I said that wrong.. But it is hard for me to get past the depression. I have a mild bi-polar condition and have a very sensitive personality when it comes to nature and violence. I don't feel helpless however, simply because everything happens for a reason and there is nothing you can do but learn from it. Its a simple matter of my understanding that we as a species have overpopulated and the more we populate, the more the environment and wildlife has to suffer.
Skwafatch 1 year ago
@Skwafatch Just answered the deleted one, above.
I also have strong feelings! But the situation is just not that straightforward for me. For example -- civilization imploding and the end of oil means a major reduction in human capacity to polute.
fourplusseven 1 year ago
@fourplusseven
Also, my grandmother is one of the founders of Ducks Unlimited Canada and I am a full fledged member so I do try to contribute with saving the environment. Unfortunately there is only so much anyone can do when the fact remains that our species population must decline significantly in order for the planet to sustain a healthy environment. I do remain optimistic though because everything will happen the way it is supposed to, I just have difficulty restraining my emotions.
Skwafatch 1 year ago
@Skwafatch There's more you can do. I gave a few a names to look at back there. But I recommend you sort yourself out first because it's a lot easier to be strong for others when you've done so.
If you want more detail, message me here on YouTube! (these little 500char slots are no place to go through serious stuff!)
fourplusseven 1 year ago
I've been taken into the grasps of this film. Wow! I also believe that this Economy must grow every year regardless, is a fairytale; obtainable for only the 5% of Rich individuals who stand to benefit from it. I personally don't get it. If your plate is full, move on and let others eat. Western Society is consuming all other humans, and yet we are powerless about it. The only thing to do is to bring awereness and plant the seeds of tomorrow.
guitarben2000 2 years ago 12
thank you!
waltzingtilly 2 years ago
"Re: Einstein: I think he wanted *more* humanity, not *less* technology, if that's the quote you're thinking of. "
I'm sure he would choose the former, no matter the cost to the latter, not the reverse, as has been the trend.
I doubt he would endorse the current view that net gain is good, no matter what is lost.
withindarkness 3 years ago
"I'm sure he would choose the former,"
I find your certainty disinteresting.
Anyway - ad hoc quote-dismantlings aside - Einstein's case is not as clear-cut an anti-progress one as you've implied, which is about all I have to say about that.
fertileboredom 2 years ago
I almost didn't post the Einstein quotes, because I thought it would be distracting.
And I'm not exactly supporting WalMart, "the economy", etc ... (the "economy" seems very much like a poker game played by pirates to me - "we have to grow the economy" = "we have to pump each other up with brighter poker chips to go pillage some more"), and I don't see bigger TVs or cheaper private jets as the important parts of progress -
fertileboredom 2 years ago
but I do see a broad trend of improvement, when you take centuries as a whole, minor snags and reversals and side tracks aside - I think humans have the potential to make life better for themselves than the "nature" that brought us optical nematodes and lethal tooth rot.
fertileboredom 2 years ago
Hey your coments come off as smart. I hope your nice and helpful too.
If you know of this Documentary in You tube form, could you send me a message of its title and the url address? Me and a friend are composing a documentary list.
I didn't see it when I searched "What a Way to Go" But It looks like the beginning of "the corporation" or has this movie not come out yet?
lorerax1 2 years ago
WAWTG was on youtube when it first came out, but has since been removed.
withindarkness 2 years ago
Ahh alright. thanks man.
If your interested in documentaries checkout my channel or SCartpianoDoc
lorerax1 2 years ago
No problem.
Hopefully it will get put back up at some point.
I'll be sure check out your docs as well.. thanks for the offer.
withindarkness 2 years ago
"Human beings are not condemned... to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate ... "
Which is why I say we're on the wrong path, let's find a better one.
"All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual."
Individual development has nothing to do with tech.
"you HAVE been saying we should cut down on complexity,"
No. I said that complexity is not inherently better, and that current ways need to change.
withindarkness 3 years ago
"My question to withindarkness was whether he would see drastically reduced intelligence, coupled with happiness, as an improvement"
We are intelligent. So what? That's one of our traits. I don't condemn it anymore than I condemn skin or eyes.
Happiness and intelligence are not mutually exclusive.
To flip the question:
Would you give humans rapid growth and greater intelligence, if the trade was the ability to feel enjoyment?
withindarkness 3 years ago
"To flip the question:
Would you give humans rapid growth and greater intelligence, if the trade was the ability to feel enjoyment?"
Good question. While I suspect "enjoyment" would still crop up in our emotional toolkit, albeit in a paler form - this isn't really a good rebuttal, because you HAVE been saying we should cut down on complexity, whereas I've never said we should be less happy.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Maybe "intelligence" was the wrong word, then - I'm not sure what the right word would be, and I think our disagreement is focusing on whether it exists at all. A direction for life to move in, beyond "maintained comfort".
"Happiness is all there is" - direct quote from you - thus, an objective increase in happiness should be total compensation for a lobotomy. It's no good trying to weasel out of it by saying the two can coexist.
Surely, an endless future of happy bacteria would be ideal.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"because we're so discontinuous with other life forms so far"
One string of culture, out of thousands, has this problem.
There are groups living to this day who have managed to fit with their ecosystem, often in a beneficial manner.
Do we hold leverage? Yes, but so does plankton. We do not have the ability to control that leverage in a truly beneficial manner. Nature runs best on autopilot.
withindarkness 3 years ago
Would you press a button to stop all humans from being lobotomised into happy neolithic survival, into the indefinite future? If you wouldn't, I grant that we're approaching this issue from such different vantage points that there's no point in continuing, and invite you only to acquire this happiness you seek.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Would you press the button that would stop all life forms from being "reset" back to single celled creatures?
The button that would stop earth from exploding (if everything is equal, how is a cloud of free-floating gas worse than a living earth? Things that aren't alive can't feel pain or oppress each other)?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"Do we hold leverage? Yes, but so does plankton."
No. That's like saying igneous rock holds leverage because we'd burn in lava without it.
I'm talking about the living creature having the ability to affect the environment, deliberately, for its own purposes.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
True, not all human cultures are dramatically more influential than earlier biological layers (though I would argue their societies are significantly more elaborate, but won't press the point). But this is the opposite of a chain being as strong as its weakest link: it's like having 1000 pebbles of equal size on either side of a scale, balancing it precisely, and then adding another pebble to one side and a boulder to the other. The species is as powerful as its most powerful members.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"Nature runs best on autopilot."
Nature, on autopilot, has produced:
- optical nematodes - worms that can only live inside the eyeballs of other living things.
- some species of bird (goonies?) in which, when siblings are born, one invariably kills the other shortly after birth.
- some insect (wasp?) that paralyses a caterpillar with a sting and lays eggs inside it so the young can eat their way out of its living body when they're born.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
I agree that humans, as we currently understand them, are not capable of improving on these systems: I don't think you understand the scope of my regard for intelligence as a force for shaping the universe: chimps can fish termites out of mounds of dirt with stalks of grass, but we humans can stop light and control machines with direct brain interfaces (google it).
fertileboredom 3 years ago
I brought up the mediocrity principle, not to show that we're just another kind of animal, but to show that we aren't necessarily at the upper limit of what intelligence can do in the universe. Imagine if you were reincarnated (just go with it) as one of the first living things, just emerging from nonorganic compounds - could you have imagined Where Things Were Going?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Yeah, we could blow ourselves up, but it'd be a waste just to slink back to the herd. We are unprecedented in the universe. We can do things that have never been done before.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Ethnocentrism. Putting this one cultures values as 'better'.
"Neolithic survival"? "Lobotomized"? "most powerful"?
What other thing is there than happiness? Everything comes back to it. Are you waiting for humans to mutate another, more joyful emotion? What is the goal?
"we aren't necessarily at the upper limit"
So?
"it'd be a waste" How does this justify anything?
There are a lot of nukes and bio/chem agents out there being "wasted" right now. Do we have to unleash that potential?
withindarkness 3 years ago
The only culture ever to make any effort to NOT be ethnocentric is the one we're in.
I get that you think "happiness" is the best we can do. That's not an interesting idea, and if you really don't see any other ... thing to aim for in life, we might as well be arguing about favourite colours.
My final question to you: would you press a button to stop every neocortex on earth from being shaved off, even if that loss meant people would enjoy neolithic survival into the indefinite future?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Where did you get the idea that tribal peoples are somehow less intelligent than civilized ones? Most tribal peoples have developed living/belief systems that by and large are far superior to civilization for nurturing the human mind and spirit. Tribal people have much more free time to think, discuss, wonder, dance, and make love than we do. That is, until we show up with guns to make slaves out of them. Technological advancement does not constitute human progress.
bastionhead 3 years ago
"Where did you get the idea that tribal peoples are somehow less intelligent than civilized ones?"
Where did you read me saying that? I do think, however, that maintenance of the necessities of life in a tribal civilisation would *require* less intelligence.
My question to withindarkness was whether he would see drastically reduced intelligence, coupled with happiness, as an improvement: specifically, if he would prevent that at no cost to himself.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"What other thing is there than happiness? Everything comes back to it. Are you waiting for humans to mutate another, more joyful emotion?"
Well, would you say chimps, small mammals, houseflies, single celled creatures, and inorganic compounds have the same level of happiness? Considering that the limbic system is the part of the brain associated with emotions, it only arose in mammals, it grew over the lizard brain and under the neocortex?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
This is precisely what I meant by us not being at the upper limit. How can you follow up "are you waiting for the evolution of better things" with a dismissing acknowledgement that we aren't as evolved as we could be?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
And why do you keep talking about goals? Happiness isn't a fixed, static state - unless you think houseflies are just as happy as us, despite having far less brain matter to generate said emotion - happiness is a direction, like "east" or "up", and it's more multivalent than just one note: try "glory", "aspiration", "hope", etc... Not to mention other emotions that the structure of reality may permit living things to experience, but are currently as beyond us as symphonies are to flatworms.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
You are one articulate moron.
bastionhead 3 years ago
You aren't even an articulate moron. You're (or "anarchoprimitivists are") snarky, one-shot class clowns in the story of human life.
It's the simplest kind of contradiction to use your mind to say it was a bad idea to develop minds in the first place. There are ups and downs to it, but look:
fertileboredom 3 years ago
if every living thing is as good as any other, and "happiness" is all any living thing can get, then who gives a crap if we take a stab at the singularity and leave behind a bunch of happy rats and cockroaches? If the only thing that distinguishes people from other creatures - consciousness, intelligence, tool use on a large scale - is just a bad idea, then why should we take pains to avoid it? Let it kill us off, since we're clearly titanotheres-of-the-brain.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Or, let me put it another way: if the universe/biosphere is such a closed, unwelcoming, dark-and-limited system, like a stuffy hall closet surrounded by brick in all directions, and intelligence arose as a painful mistake that eats away at the remaining air and kills us off slowly (which seems to be the aesthetic I'm getting from AP's), then - fuck it. Why try to hold our breath when there's nothing to get to in the future?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
It's not bad to have a mind, and I never suggested so. It's bad to use your mind to see only the positive and none of the negative outcomes of having a mind, though. Human intelligence is an experiment of evolution (just like every other biological adaptation), not it's pinnacle achievement. I agree the human mind is a potent and awesome thing. But it is equally useful for harm or for good. Like the internet.
bastionhead 3 years ago
"It's bad to use your mind to see only the positive and none of the negative outcomes of having a mind, though."
Okay.
"Human intelligence is an experiment of evolution (just like every other biological adaptation), not it's pinnacle achievement."
Right.
"I agree the human mind is a potent and awesome thing. But it is equally useful for harm or for good."
Okay ... uh, what are we arguing about, then?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
You like the internet? You think the mind can be used for good? But ...
You jumped on me with an insult, a snarky dismissal, examples of bad technology, and - and I quote:
"The tribal level is the highest level of existence at which humans don't start poisoning the biosphere."
... "highest level of existence"? You've implicity accepted a hierarchy of "levels of existence" even while denying humans further progress along it.
I'm not getting you, bastionhead.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Note: research the word "holarchy" (as opposed to hierarchy): that's what I was getting at with "containing and adding": that's why you're actually *better* at lifting objects of all kinds than me, not just "different": you can lift everything I can lift, and then some. This is not a complex concept. If you had a large number of such superior traits, we could agree that, on average, you were "more evolved" than I, even while I might be better at articulate moronhood.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
(Although "evolution" relates more to complexity than physical abilities: still, the idea of "anything you can do, I can do better" is the basic idea of "development", and I wish we could stop pretending that it needs defending as a concept.)
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Good point. I mean "highest level of existence" from your perspective, with stone age being lower and atomic age being higher. I suppose that's implicit acceptance of said heirarchy, for the sake of argument; "most technologically sophistocated" would have been a better phrase.
bastionhead 3 years ago
Sophistication - height - development - this is the core of our disagreement: I think the *thrust* of life is to improve along this axis, and APs seem to want to hamstring humanity and have us limp along with the beasts because the world can't support our ambition.
We can quibble over what we mean by it, but I suggest that the "good" is what living things move towards, given understanding and opportunity, and "bad" is what they move away from.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
That's what I was getting at with the "lobotomised happiness" angle: would I be doing you a favour by cutting out your neocortex, hooking your pleasure centre up to electrodes, and putting you on IV drip in some institutional basement? Withindarkness has not disagreed that I would be.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
We don't have to agree that "more sophisticated" is "better" - just that life tends to move towards it, if given the chance.
Pointing out that creatures that aren't given this chance, don't develop, is like pointing out that hamstrung kittens don't want to grow up to be leaping cats.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
That [greater sophistication=progress] is the claim I've been trying to refute. I'm saying the primary reason you are so enamored with the idea that complexity/sophistication is superior to simplicity is self-centeredness. Call it intellectual fascism: "I will elevate and value those traits I identify with, and demote and devalue those traits I don't identify with". If humans had evolved to be the only creatures with two heads, you would be spewing the virtues of two-headedness.
bastionhead 3 years ago
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fertileboredom 3 years ago
"That [greater sophistication=progress] is the claim I've been trying to refute."
And hang on again - you and withindarkness keep saying "greater X does not mean better" and "greater Y does not mean progress".
This is a dealbreaking question: what *would* mean "better"? What *would* mean progress?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"Call it intellectual fascism"
We're teetering over the brink of Godwin's law here, since everyone "elevates and values" traits they like.
Your "two heads" example isn't so great - humans are the least hairy ape,and I don't dislike hair. I would compare the relation of "intelligence" to "life" with the relation of "life" to "matter" (the difference is in degree, not in kind).
fertileboredom 3 years ago
You can say "everything evens out in the end" if you want - silver linings may have clouds, but it's a stretch to say that *silver doesn't exist*, or even that the balance of "silver" to "cloud" is universally equal.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
I'm trying to get this discussion a little more abstract, because the core defect of AP thinking, as I see it, is this perverse denial of ... I hate to say "values", because it sounds all Southern-Baptist-moral ... but it's something like that.
Confrontational mode dropped for a second, do you see what I'm getting at here? Help me out and phrase my argument for me.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
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fertileboredom 3 years ago
Yes, even the sincerest effort toward altruistic ends can have disastrous unintended consequences. For example, developments in agriculture, energy use, and medicine--with the aim of improving human life--that induce a population explosion and overshoot that ends up creating far more human misery than if these developments had never taken place. And on the flipside, I have been known to turn an insult into a friendship, so watch out!
bastionhead 3 years ago
"even the sincerest effort toward altruistic ends can have disastrous unintended consequences"
"Unintended consequences" is not the same as "no possibility for improvement/all things are equal", and arguing (as you did earlier) that consciousness lets us appreciate pain and pleasure alike isn't really an argument: you can find a cloud for every silver lining, it's not a reason for the species to willfully stagnate: in fact, willful stagnation might itself have unintended consequences.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Pointing out the cloud under every silver lining is, in any context, kind of a snarky, facile, adolescent thing - and if the universe *is* structured in such a way that that level of nihilistic rebuttal is a relevant response to any ambition, winning an anonymous argument with it seems small consolation for having to go on living.
...buddy!
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Hey--I'm no nihilist! Pointing out the cloud is simply a way to illustrate that we may not even be in a position to discern what truly constitutes "progress" where human technological advancement is concerned . And focusing only on the silver lining while ignoring the thunderhead within is a naive and irresponsible adolescent thing.
bastionhead 3 years ago
"Pointing out the cloud is simply a way to illustrate that we may not even be in a position to discern what truly constitutes "progress" where human technological advancement is concerned."
Okay, I'll buy that: we should get away from short term self interest, like the taoist farmer whose son breaks his leg, which ends up saving him from army conscription.
Still, in the long term, let's agree that the dark ages were bad and the Renaissance was good.
"Adolescent"? Hey, do I steal *your* words?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
If only the knowledge and enrichment bestowed on humanity by the Renaissance could have been gotten honestly and used exclusively for non-destructive purposes. I do appreciate the good things of civlilized life--and all the more when I look at the entire balance sheet and see the real costs of having them.
And I'll own up to acting childish, but only if I can prove your culpability as well!
bastionhead 3 years ago
"If only the knowledge and enrichment bestowed on humanity by the Renaissance could have been gotten honestly and used exclusively for non-destructive purposes."
I guess ... but, "if only peeing felt like an orgasm", right?
I think our main disagreement, again, is in the idea of directionality/development/"betterness" - you're arguing for absolute relativity (clouds and silver linings are precisely equal), and I'm saying there's a decisive better-ward drift - which is why it happens at all.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Richard Dawkins (ignore his stance on god for the moment) reads a quote from H.G. Wells that the people of tomorrow would probably have to kill all the "brown, black, and dirty-white" people of the world. You could almost claim that quote for your side of this debate (civ = teh bad), except that Dawkins' point was that the moral zeitgeist *evolves* over time - as a culture, as time goes on, we get nicer/better.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
You couldn't say your AP stuff 100 years ago and be understood, for instance, you probably couldn't say it and *survive* a few hundred years ago, and you'd probably just get strange looks from a tribal culture for it - even the nice ones aren't known for their embrace of cultural relativity.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
(BTW, Dawkins reads the Wells quote in a youtube vid called "Richard Dawkins: The Good Book and the Changing Moral Zeitgeist", if you want his full argument).
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Clouds and linings are equal, but only from the standpoint of a detached, objective observer. Your observer is clearly smitten with Western ideals. The drift only seems "better-ward" to you because you are the the beneficiary of the drift. There is an equal and opposite reaction to this drift somewhere that you are not accounting for. That's my point with the balance sheet statement. It is nearly a universal trait among humans to rationalize and defend the belief systems they inherit.
bastionhead 3 years ago
"There is an equal and opposite reaction to this drift somewhere that you are not accounting for."
Was there an equal and opposite reaction to the appearance of life in the cosmos? Did some carbon atoms cry themselves to sleep?
Was there an E and A R to multi celled creatures forming from single celled?
Once again, you're denying that "better" can exist in this universe, and yet you're continuing to breathe. This suggest to me that you're being facetious.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"There is an equal and opposite reaction to this drift somewhere that you are not accounting for."
This could be a defining quote for you - personally, I really don't think there is - but if this is a fundamental law of the universe (in more than the narrow, physics sense), there's no use in applying it to special cases of civilisations you dislike (and yet, benefit from). You should be actively discouraging every form of activity in the universe.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Also, you and withindarkness both use the word "pinnacle": you seem to hate pinnacles.
I think people - specifically, people at the "high levels of existence" you've already acknowledged - are easily the most interesting thing on the planet, and it's ... again, sophistry, or ideology-demanded mental contortion, to say otherwise.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
We can continue to bonk words together as if we both believe that *you* believe that the social lives of mice are as unusual/rare/complex/worthwhile as the products of the human mind, but I don't think either of us does. If not, I invite you to live with the animals, talk with the animals, run and dance and sing with the animals for the rest of your life.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
I agree that we're not the "pinnacle" in the sense of "can't be improved upon".
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Yes, what profound intelligence have we! Einstein would rather have been a shoe maker after seeing the Bomb his genius created. Filo Farnsworth, inventor of television, went to his grave in deepest regret for zombifying entire cultures with the Box. Alberto Santos-Dumont, inventor of powered flight, killed himself after WWI--his dear gift to humankind turned out to be one of the most potent war machines ever devised. And look at the nifty situation we have coming with antibiotic resistance!
bastionhead 3 years ago
I always find it interesting that people like Einstein seem to fall on the side of simplicity and careful use of knowledge, and were quite outspoken against what most people consider "progress".
"Net gain, no matter what is lost" is the realm of reckless stupidity, yet it's the path we're on. We need a different path.
withindarkness 3 years ago
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fertileboredom 3 years ago
Einstein quotes: Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds ... It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature ... I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research ... The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing ...
fertileboredom 3 years ago
We must find a way, or we will make one ... We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings ...Human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate ... All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Re: Einstein: I think he wanted *more* humanity, not *less* technology, if that's the quote you're thinking of.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Last Einstein quote: Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"the thought of an indefinite future of changeless tribal existence...."
That's not a human problem, that's conditioning. Many people, past and present, totally lack the gnawing need to "progress".
It's a sign of contentment. Why seek improvement unless you're missing something emotionally or physically?
Happiness is the only real goal, and it's lessened with the quest to "progress". "Civilized" people rank much lower in happiness than tribal people.
(The vid doesn't support tribalism, btw)
withindarkness 3 years ago
"(The vid doesn't support tribalism, btw)"
Yeah, I know: "tribalism" is just my sloppy shorthand for "regressing".
"Happiness is the only real goal"
- sez you -
"and it's lessened with the quest to "progress". "Civilized" people rank much lower in happiness than tribal people.""
Did you ever go to school with special ed students? I acknowledge that they seem very happy.
I'm not at all comparing them to tribal people - just pointing out that happiness may not be the ultimate state.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"That's not a human problem, that's conditioning. Many people, past and present, totally lack the gnawing need to "progress"."
We could argue which side has the "conditioning" and which side is "natural" - but I don't want to - I will point out that eunuchs lack sexual desire, blind people don't care about paintings, and dead people don't eat meat.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"If evolution has "points", and things can be "more" or "less" developed..."
We are the same chronological 'distance' from a common ancestor, with chimps having more beneficial genetic changes occurring in that time than humans.
Mostly semantics again.
"the fact that it appears to be doing so proves that it isn't"
"If the facts dont fit the theory, change the facts" -Einstein
Life *appears* to defy entropy(the theory) by advancing(the fact). Thus life is not advancing, merely changing.
withindarkness 3 years ago
Okay, forget chimps. I disagree, but they're close enough to us that I won't press the point.
Take flatworms or single celled creatures.
All I'm getting at is that development does occur - another way to phrase this is that the more developed thing can do everything the less developed can, and then some. That gets rid of "better" or "worse".
fertileboredom 3 years ago
To rephrase what I mean by "more evolved" - the more evolved thing includes everything in the less evolved thing, and adds new things, while taking nothing away.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Tried photosynthesizing your food lately? Lowly microbes can do it, so you should be able to as well, being so much more evolved as you obviously are.
bastionhead 3 years ago
"Lowly microbes can do it, so you should be able to as well"
You make a good point. To clarify - my, say, problem solving/physical strength/ability to travel at high speed are more evolved, whereas my sunlight-eating isn't.
Evolution can occur in different lines - think of an idiot savant. Way better at memorising, worse at, uh, dancing.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Looking at your profile, I see that you enjoy Lifting Things. I do not - but can you lift this pen on my desk? No? You cannot reach it? Then I guess I am better at some kinds of lifting, and our lifting skills even out.
Trying to deny the concept of development is silly.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
You assume I don't lift pens as well as barbells? Of course--fearful of the ad hominem attack (but apparently not afraid to employ it), you post no information about yourself on your channel.
bastionhead 3 years ago
My point with the "you can't lift my pen" thing was that you can't lift MY pen - i.e. the one on my desk - because it's too far away, and therefore you can't really be stronger than me.
Also, it's not really an insult to refer to you lifting things, but "articulate moron" totally was.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
The pen thing was a reductio-ad-absurdum of "we can't be more evolved than microbes because they can photosynthesize."
fertileboredom 3 years ago
My point with the "articulate moron" thing was that, like many learned scholars, you are using a lot of sophisticated language to support a claim that can only appear valid to someone with a vested interest in it being so. Like how American capitalism works (to try to stay relevant to the video): "we have every reason to expect infinite economic growth, given that we have a finite supply of raw materials".
bastionhead 3 years ago
As a living human who enjoys toilet paper, a lifestyle not based on subsistence farming, and a future different from the present - yes, I have a vested interest. I probably wouldn't care if I didn't: would we value living matter above dead carbon atoms if we weren't alive?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"we have every reason to expect infinite economic growth, given that we have a finite supply of raw materials"
(Shrug) Space?
Also, remember that guy who said New York would be submerged in horse dung if the population - and thus, demand for "transportation" - continued to increase?
The first creature to crawl on land found a way around the ocean's "finite supply of raw materials" pretty neatly.
I'm not necessarily defending capitalism per se, just ... well, a future better than the past.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Yes, that's the whole rationale for empire (civilization), isn't it? The only problem is that the future is only better for those on the right side of the equation. We seem to be running out of frontiers and resources for expansion ("development") while at the same time confronting unintended consequences (population explosion, peak oil, etc.) of this cultural iimperative of the future needing to be better than the past. The law of diminishing returns rears its head in all endeavors.
bastionhead 3 years ago
Remember the definition of life as the "adjacent possible": think of lichen spreading to cover all the wall area it can. Life wants to do stuff - to grow, to expand, to get bigger and better. Intelligence is a new way of doing that.
Not every thing we try as intelligent beings will work, no. We should try harder, not give up.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
The "advancement" of civilization has a lot of victims, both human and nonhuman. Maybe their experiences with civilization should factor in to our assessment of how wonderful human "achievement" truly is.
bastionhead 3 years ago
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fertileboredom 3 years ago
Optical nematodes are worms that can only live in eyeballs. Coyotes eat their prey alive. Wasps lay eggs in live caterpillars that then eat their way out.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
As for tribal people - there's always the constant, unremitting attrition of early death, death in childbirth, disease, etc...
But I agree that downsides should be considered. I don't think either of us has the full facts, though, and if we had to either take modern medicine or go blind tomorrow, or whatever, there's really no question what we'd do. (Thomas de Zengotitia calls this the "Justin's Helmet Principle" - you can make fun of safety precautions, but you'll generally buy the helmet).
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Yes, I take a pill every day. And you know it really chaps my ass!
bastionhead 3 years ago
You are descended from photosynthetic microbes. Why don't you retain the ability to photosynthesize, instead of having to eat (be dependent on) "lower" life forms?
bastionhead 3 years ago
Because being descended from something doesn't mean retaining everything it does, in the same way musical parents may have non-musical children.
I'm not saying evolution happens steadily, with every generation, along every possible trait and development path, in every instance - but I am saying that it required simple creatures to lay the foundations for more complex ones through natural selection. Eyes, wings, and brains were generated out of goo. It's sophistry to deny development here.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Going back to chimps for a second:
If we are going to use complexity and see evolution as a progress race(which I still do not), then perhaps google:
"Chimps More Evolved Than Humans"
Interesting article, which seems to dispute anthropocentric superiority on it's own ground.
withindarkness 3 years ago
More geared towards the whole concept is the "mediocrity principle", though the Copernican principal has expanded in common use to include this, and in many ways they are interchangeable.
Copernicus was operating more from tangible observation than philosophy, seeing problems with the physical position of Earth.
withindarkness 3 years ago
Yeah, the mediocrity principle is what I was thinking of, but I think you've missed what I was getting at *with* it.
You've taken it to mean that we're just another interchangeable node in the web of life. I would sort of agree, except to say that we have such a high leverage position over other lifenodes that it's almost irresponsible to pretend otherwise (not to say we *should* interfere, per se, but that unless we're reduced to mad-max lifestyles or have our neocortexes shaved off, we will).
fertileboredom 3 years ago
And, because we're so discontinuous with other life forms so far (yeah, I know chimps use grass to fish termites out of their mounds and crack rocks, but it's a massive difference of degree) - because, as far as we can tell, the universe has never brought forth anything like "intelligence" before, we're in a (potential) position to make changes to it as profound as any it's seen.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
You talk as if the future of humanity is sort of ... melting back into the host of animals, sheepishly recanting our ambition to live up to our minds instead of down to our bodies.
I highly doubt we'd be content with this - and, if everything is equal-but-different, why should we try to fit ourselves into uncomfortably small shoes? If our intelligence is such a genocide-prompting, earth-raping tumour, what need is there for us to persist?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
It may just be a difference in personality/temperament - the thought of an indefinite future of changeless tribal existence is as grotesque to me as the idea of poisoning the earth's water supply with lobotomising chemicals. People are the animals that think, that create, that do things, that make the future different from the past - I appreciate this movie's concerns, but I can't take the idea of "reverting" to a tribal mode seriously.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Unless it's not voluntary (mad max again), in which case, why argue about it? If someone threatens to cut off your arms, do you start talking about how Hitler and Stalin both had arms, and how arms are involved in most fights, etc...
fertileboredom 3 years ago
The tribal level is the highest level of existence at which humans don't start poisoning the biosphere. Civilization absolutely requires empirical expansion, which leads inexorably to our current predicament of runaway overpopulation, resource depletion, and toxification of the total environment, which the film here is trying to describe.
bastionhead 3 years ago
(Shrug) When the first bacteria arose, they gave off enough oxygen to kill most other living things. Would you have prevented that holocaust and doomed us to being single celled creatures forever?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Think about what you just wrote. When the first bacteria/archaea arose and started giving off oxygen, there were not yet any other living things to kill off. But the oxygen they emitted did eventually build up and allow the evolution of aerobic respiration and multicellular life. So what holocaust are you talking about? Sentience allows us to grasp and feel terror, pain, and despair as well as joy, love and exultation.
bastionhead 3 years ago
"When the first bacteria/archaea arose and started giving off oxygen, there were not yet any other living things to kill off."
Yeah there were.
I can't post links on a vid comment, so just google "teacher's domain: life before oxygen" for a rebuttal.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
This brings me back to my first post on this video, too: and it kind of makes me despair, since my "point" doesn't even seem to be getting across, much less being accepted:
A baby can't live in a womb forever. Maybe it seems to be "sustainable" when it's the size of a kidney bean,
fertileboredom 3 years ago
but if you'd been reincarnated (just go with it) as a cell in that developing fetus, I can see you calling for a halt to "reckless limb expansion", since we couldn't go on growing indefinitely, since the "biosphere", as we knew it, was a dark, blood-coloured sac only slightly larger than we were.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Here's my final word for the day:
I see AP's (anarchoprimitivists) endorsing tribal cultures in the name of non-ethnocentrism, which every tribal culture either rejects or couldn't care less about. I see you calling for humans to hold back, to do less than we can, to limit ourselves, to pull our punches into the infinite future because we live in a world of harsh limits, and the only acceptable use of intelligence is as a brake upon itself.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
I see you knocking people because we want more than dumb, mute, animal "happiness" - because our reach exceeds our grasp - but what wolf/lion/bear/rabbit etc would stop at "just okay" if it possessed and understood the means for arranging its environment to suit itself more fully?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
When rats are given buttons to push that stimulate the pleasure centres of their brains or drop food pellets, they don't stop. If birds are fed in winter, they don't hunt/forage: they mooch.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
This suggests to me that the idea of voluntary limits is anathema to living things (somebody once defined life as the "adjacent possible": if it can be done, life will spill into that niche, like lichen on rock), and that, if humans died tomorrow and any other creature developed Mind, it would do the exact same thing: find a leverage point to shape the world the way it wanted and keep going until it achieved transcendence or died.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"Isn't that the copernican principle? We shouldn't expect to be at the centre? "
Exactly.
We aren't at the center, and it does only harm to act otherwise. We are part of an interconnected system. Just another point on the chart. To harm that system, is to harm ourselves.
withindarkness 3 years ago
"modern medicine, culture, art, consciousness, etc.."
Homo Sapiens always had the last three, and medicine has not improved to the extent most people think ('amazing development', Cold FX, is nothing more than American Ginseng, with enough filler to make it patentable). Again, we've hurt more than we've fixed.
Art is a moot point. Again, it arbitrarily assigns human traits to others.
Other species don't need/want it anymore than a person with no desire to try sushi, needs/wants sushi.
withindarkness 3 years ago
"chimps are simply less elaborate "
They are at the same point of evolution as we are, they simply filled different niches.
They are less 'elaborate' in higher brain functions, but this does not put them behind us in an evolutionary sense. They aren't less developed.
Evolution has not fought entropy. The fact that it appears so, simply supports the fact that it isn't advancing, just changing. Following "complexity=increased entropy", it might even partly explain why simpler forms last longer.
withindarkness 3 years ago
"They are at the same point of evolution as we are,"
If evolution has "points", and things can be "more" or "less" developed, you have conceded everything I've been saying about evolution.
I'll concede a draw with the chimp thing - they're close enough that it's up to specialists to work it out - but surely, say, lungfish or small mammals are "less developed"?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Bear in mind the human brain has a lizard core, capped with a limbic system, capped with a neocortex - a pretty visually clear indication of "development" (consciousness and goal-directedness aren't relevant - a tall guy is taller than a short guy, whether or not they're both consciously trying to proceed to the goal of infinite height).
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"Evolution has not fought entropy. The fact that it appears so, simply supports the fact that it isn't advancing, just changing."
I think you're saying that "evolution could not possibly violate the second law of thermodynamics", but it sounds like you're saying "the fact that it appears to be doing so proves that it isn't" - which, uh ... what?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Entropy increases in closed systems - the earth is fed by the sun's energy (something like that) which fuels life's hijinx, but entropy is "order/complexity decreasing over time", and - as it seems we've agreed - as natural selection automatically suits traits to their situations, complexity tends to increase in living things - leading, in us, to the first known incidence of conscious intelligence in the universe. I see it as a waste to put that genie back in the bottle of tribal life.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Lastly - my favourite thing about this trailer is that graph, showing how human capability/impact has risen dramatically. The thing is, this rising trend can be traced back to humans rising out of small mammals, rising out of single-celled creatures, rising out of complex organic molecules, rising out of interstellar dust, rising out of ... nothing?
We're in a strange situation, being able to consciously appreciate this. Turning our brains to finding roots and berries ... it's just silly.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"I can imagine a state of "total fit" "
This would require a ridiculously controlled world, which would be a terrible place to live. Mental/emotional factors are at least as important as the physical. The only real non-biological meaning to life, actually.
It couldn't likely account for environmental changes effectively, and such circumstances would build dangerous dependence on the controlled system.
Who's to say this isn't the "total fit"? If not, is it even desirable? Possible?
withindarkness 3 years ago
""I can imagine a state of "total fit" "
This would require a ridiculously controlled world, which would be a terrible place to live."
Ridiculous! Terrible! Yeah, other than that ...
I'm getting a bit more radical than I meant to with my discussion of "total fit", and, I think, more "out there" than you expected - it was just a thought exercise really, but what I was getting at was not so much "ironclad technological control by human civilisation over earth/life as we understand it"
fertileboredom 3 years ago
... but "telepathic omnipotence over reality at the subatomic level, to the point that the inside and outside of the head are indistinguishable, and the world melts away, with all its obstructions, like a bad dream dissolved in acid".
fertileboredom 3 years ago
This is, of course, so far beyond our present abilities that doing anything concrete to bring it about would be like walking towards the sun - it was a thought experiment to show that ... our current position in the possible development of the universe out of a state of primal entropy (think free floating hydrogen) is nowhere near the far end.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Isn't that the copernican principle? We shouldn't expect to be at the centre? Things - living conditions - could be more primitive, yes - but they could be much, much more hospitable to the more developed, "higher", "better" aspects of our being.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"Watch a chimp try to use sign language sometime. "
So all things are ranked by how similar they are to humans? By the ability to replicate human abstractions? Interesting.
"which does seem like a direction, "
I will concede "direction", in an abstract sense, but not progress.
"a possible "pinnacle" "
Nature itself is the pinnacle, and it has existed for billions of years. Anticlimactic, but true. The sense of approaching perfection or greatness is a false one, only recently spawned.
withindarkness 3 years ago
""Watch a chimp try to use sign language sometime. "
So all things are ranked by how similar they are to humans? By the ability to replicate human abstractions? Interesting."
Are you serious?
Let's back up: you said chimps were as complex in design as people. Now, if you acknowledge that a chimp is *more* complex than a small rodent, which is more complex than a single celled creature, you can't possibly claim it's *as* complex as a human.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
It's not about imitation of sign language - that's like saying my inability to beat Gary Kasparov at chess demonstrates only my cultural disregard of chess.
I picked "sign language" as one possible way of demonstrating their difficulty with higher mental processing tasks - i.e., their less elaborate design.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
"Higher mental processing tasks" is a human trait.
I don't downgrade your 'status' for being unable to fly, using wing mechanisms that are more complex than any human muscular biology.
Everything is equal, but different. Even if "complexity" can be used to define these differences, their is no reason to say that more complex = superior. Simpler forms tend to survive longer, actually. At least one branch of Homo (spp) showed greater mental faculty than Sapiens, yet they are all extinct.
withindarkness 3 years ago
"At least one branch of Homo (spp) showed greater mental faculty than Sapiens"
Back it up.
"Everything is equal, but different."
Meaningless - if everything is equal, without exception, then nothing is unequal, and the word loses meaning.
"Even if "complexity" can be used to define these differences"
If the word "complexity" has any meaning, yes it can be used to define these differences.
"their is no reason to say that more complex = superior."
I never said or implied "superior" -
fertileboredom 3 years ago
- this is more of that relativity that's facile and easy to employ - and this is what I meant by "facile" - everything being equal is like everything being "blortz" - it just doesn't mean/contribute anything.
The universe tends to run down, degrade, get simpler and simpler - you point out that simpler life forms last a long time. Free floating hydrogen lasts a long time too - does that make a hard vacuum full of it "equal but different" to a thriving biosphere?
fertileboredom 3 years ago
Saying that any possible trait does not grant "superiority", and that all things, without exception are "equal", just excludes the word "superiority" from existence - as if it referred to "flying unicorns" - and smooshes the word "equal" out to a meaningless flatness.
You're straining your relativity muscle.
fertileboredom 3 years ago
My meaning was that the degree of proficiency in that trait does not confer superiority to the being as a whole.
Are we more intelligent? By what we recognize as intelligence, absolutely, but that's as far as it goes.
The tall guy might be taller, but he is not "better".
withindarkness 3 years ago
"My meaning was that the degree of proficiency in that trait does not confer superiority to the being as a whole."
I know that's what you meant. I'm saying the word "superiority" is meaningless the way you're using it.
If a bigger, stronger guy fights you to the death - if a meteorite wipes out the earth that a smarter, more developed civ could have prevented - if a more desirable guy takes your girlfriend