buffon01

iTrader: (9)

Legislating responsibility, boldstrategycotton.jpeg

. less of that would be great

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

that would be great, but yet, there's a huge mob that wants the taxpayer to give to these people as a basic human right.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

hate speech, burn it:

fooger03

iTrader: (2)

I'd like to repeat previous sentiments; I believe that sterilization should be a basic human right. I would be willing to tax-pay a one-time payment to those below a certain age (perhaps 30) to undergo sterilization surgery - pro-rated of course based on age - while simultaneously eliminating any taxpayer funded benefits for new children.

Secondly, I propose an opinion that the overwhelming majority of fetuses who might be saved as a result of anti-abortion laws would end up as future democrats anyways. That's not to suggest that the life of a democrat is any less valuable than that of an independent or republican, but rather to suggest that the anti-abortion platform of the republican party has been a self-defeat mechanism which might vastly sway public opinion away from republican support in the long term.

Thirdly, I've never seen a compelling argument against abortion which is not rooted in religion and therefore fundamentally incompatible with the framework of the U.S. constitution.

BGordon

Same discussion on sterilization or other birth control methods, different direction, something I never considered until watching some YouTube video's on the subject.
This is off the top of my head so don't cut it off if I get a couple of the numbers off just a bit.

The summary being that modern human breeding appears to favor people of lower intelligence and lower income.

The presumption is that it is due to social support programs focusing on low income people, which in turn allows low income people to successfully raise more children while people above low income status are choosing to have fewer children.

The US Military has been using a version of the Armed Services Testing (ASBT if memory serves) for applicants since the end of WW1 so it has generally been used for 100+ years.
The acceptable minimum equates to an IQ of 83.
The minimum can be higher due to demand for new recruits or inclusion into specific skill sets but that number is the absolute bottom line that the military considers acceptable to get people who can be trained to perform jobs independently without the need for constant oversight within the military structure.
Millions of people of all ethnic and sexual backgrounds get tested every year
In layman terms, people who score below the minimum are considered to be "untrainable" for normal jobs in the military (and by extension the USA).

Based on the testing failure rate of approx. 1/3 (it varies from year to year and geography) it means that a huge number of adults in the United States are not, and never will be, employable at anything more than minimum wage jobs if they can get any job at all.

That same 1/3 of the population ends up having as many offspring than the rest of the population combined according to several long term studies that have been conducted.
I don't remember the specifics on the studies so don't ask for them.
If interested scan the internet for yourself to find them and spend the time reading thru some extremely boring summaries.

If you do look at the studies you will find a few very interesting tidbits (rather off subject but still interesting)
On the ASBT test the combined average for white males (as an ethnic group) score right at average for the test . No glaring highs or lows.
White females score a few points lower overall with some categories being lower and some categories being higher than white males.
People claiming to be German Jewish descent supposedly score very high on math and communication categories.
The lowest overall finishers claim descent of aboriginal Australian.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I'm curious as to whether you are aware that you pretty much summarized the plot and introductory narrative of the 2006 film Idiocracy.


But yes, over time the degree to which the lives of those least productive members of the society are viewed to have some legitimacy tends to increase, and the degree to which entitlement becomes normalized also increases.

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

That only works if they are subsidized and artificially protected from themselves.

Ryan_G

iTrader: (8)

The argument that a fetus is a person upon conception is not rooted in religion. A lot of religious people hold this view but it's a fairly biological argument. Sperm has fertilized an egg which has attached to the uterine wall and become a viable human fetus. The fetus is alive and will exit the womb as a human with no chance of coming out as a lizard or a chimp. It's human. Killing another human generally constitutes murder which is illegal. There is no religion in this argument. Just saying.

BGordon

Good discussion point Ryan.
The focus of your point is the term "Murder" and what context is correct to use it in.

The difficulty becomes how do you define Murder since it is one of those things that really needs to be defined on a case by case basis rather than as a general definition.

You go in the military, learn to be a soldier, get deployed and kill the enemy.
Is that murder?

You are in bed at home asleep in your bed. Get woken up by the noise of the door getting kicked open. Grab your pistol and shoot the intruder as he/she comes into the bedroom.
Is that murder?

You are a policeman/security guard and get in a shootout with an armed robber as he/she is in the process or robbing a business.
The suspect gets shot and killed.
Is it murder?

A pregnant woman does not have proper health care, enough food, and is living on the street selling her body because she has no other way to feed herself.
She has a miscarriage due to her difficult lifestyle and years of bad decisions.
Is it murder?

Plenty more examples but you get the idea.
The difficulty is in deciding what constitutes "Murder".

ryansmoneypit

iTrader: (6)

...

BGordon

Never heard of the movie but also not surprised that somebody could look at some boring study summaries and think up a movie.

There is a guy on YouTube that does some very good (and some really bad) video's on various subjects
Bright Insight is the name he goes by.
He does an outstanding job of taking a complex subject and doing a great 10 minute summary.
One of his summaries deals with intelligence and various human races.
In that summary he noted that the genetically similar humans who are currently testing at the low end of the IQ tests tend to come from populations that did not actively participate in developing modern civilizations.
An example is steppe reindeer herders who have lived simple nomadic lives for many thousands of years.
Even the offspring of individuals who abandon that lifestyle and move to civilization and become educated in schools tend to score very low on IQ tests.
On the flip side, in times of historical natural disasters that kill off large groups of humans, those more primitive individuals survive at a much greater rate than the more civilized humans.

In the big picture it appears that humans go thru a normal cycle that has happened multiple times;
We start off being primitive and simple and lower IQ being more suited to a primitive lifestyle but over time becoming settled and specialized humans with IQ getting higher and higher.
Then a natural disaster happens that kills of most of the population with the survivors being the more primitive individuals.
The cycle happens over and over.

Supposedly the latest time it happened was about 13,000 years ago during the last ice age when a meteor struck the earth up in Canada, causing a very rapid melting of the North American glacier, which in turn caused a sea level rise of 400 feet in a very short time period (somewhere between one week and one year).
90% of all the animals over 100 pounds on the North American continent (including humans) died out within a few hundred years of that event.
The 10% that were left either adjusted to the climate change or became extinct.
Very interesting subject for those who want to check into it.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

hector

You've never heard of Idiocracy? You have been deprived of a solid look into the future if we keep going the way we are.

And if studies show that intellectual humans die off at a higher rate than simple humans in moments of disaster, I think it would be an easy connection to urban versus rural living. I don't think anyone can argue large societies of humans need more resources than small ones and they would therefore die off at a higher rate.

BGordon

Urban to rural living does not necessarily equate to a very primitive culture -vs- advanced cultural living.
A true primitive society would be defined as small groups of individuals who live full time in the environment with minimal use of advanced tools or technology.
Think "Naked and Afraid" small family groups living off the land for thousands of years or American plains Indians before getting overrun by whites.

In the continental USA we are all long term tied in to modern technology even if some are living a primitive life style on an individual basis.

There is also a good deal of random chance in what groups live and what groups die in large scale natural disasters.
You can be the most adaptive and capable natural living person on the planet but if a super volcano erupts next door you are still toast and will not get to propagate the species.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

It was actually pretty good. Personally, I think some people attach too much gravitas to it, but still solidly entertaining. Many memes came out of it, such as "It's got electrolytes!"

hector

BG, I get your point. My point is that large societies have more numbers and therefore die off at a higher rate. If a 100 sq mile area sustains a million people and the same area sustains 100 people, even if they all die, the urban population (which is more likely to have a higher IQ) suffered more losses.

And yes, proximity to natural disaster doesn't care about your intelligence. Of course if you set up shop next to a volcano, your intelligence may come into question......

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

Eemian warm period was the name of the time period when the oceans rose about 400 ft.

Here's a map with the red area showing what would have been underwater during that time.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Things that happen in Silicon Valley and also the Soviet Union:

- waiting years to receive a car you ordered, to find that it's of poor workmanship and quality

- promises of colonizing the solar system while you toil in drudgery day in, day out

- living five adults to a two room apartment

- being told you are constructing utopia while the system crumbles around you

- mandatory workplace political education

- productivity largely falsified to satisfy appearance of sponsoring elites

- deviation from mainstream narrative carries heavy social and political consequences

- networked computers exist but they're really bad

- Henry Kissinger visits sometimes for some reason

- elite power struggles result in massive collateral damage, sometimes purges

- failures are bizarrely upheld as triumphs

- the plight of the working class is discussed mainly by people who do no work

- the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default

- the currency most people are talking about is fake and worthless

- the economy is centrally planned, using opaque algorithms not fully understood by their users

BGordon

Sixshooter, your map is of the wrong time period.

125,000 years ago was the sea level rise indicated on your map.
It shows how much higher the level was from current level at the pre-ice age level.

The period I mentioned was 13,000 years ago when there was an ice sheet up to a couple of miles thick over Canada and a portion of Northern USA.
The sea levels were 400 ft. LOWER than the current level but raised abruptly to current levels in a short time period that is debated to be somewhere between a few days and 5 years as the North American ice sheet abruptly melted.