The Food Race - SIX BILLION HUMANS !
An...@cable.a2000.nl
A few days ago I was feeling depressed and said to my wife, Rennie,
"I don't see why I should give THIS speech at Kent State University.
Why can't I talk about something that will send everyone home
with warm, fuzzy feelings and smiles on their faces?"
"Well, why don't you then?" Rennie said. "Why did you decide to speak
on this subject in the first place?"
"Because it's the most important subject in the world right now,"
I told her.
"But why do YOU have to tackle it?"
"Because no one ELSE is tackling it, at least not
for the general public."
"Then I guess you're pretty well stuck, aren't you?" Rennie said.
I thought I'd start with this little story, just to let you know what
I'm doing here. The Phrygian sage Epictetus said: Everything has two
handles, one by which it can be carried and a second by which it cannot.
The sage who stands before you here today says: There's a third handle
on the other side, but it can only be reached by people who realize
they've got a third hand to reach with.
I think the reason people invite me to speak at events like this is that
they vaguely sense, from reading my books, that I have a third hand I
use to grab at things that most people only use two hands on.
They want to see what a three-handed man will make of whatever theme
they're exploring--whether it's social investment, health care reform,
or the future of business in the 21st century.
Ours is an obsessively two-valued culture. For example, we have all
sorts of two-sided games--chess, checkers, tennis, boxing, pool, and so
on--all sorts of two-sided team games--bridge, football, baseball,
soccer, basketball, and so on. And we have all sorts of any-sided games
(poker, baccarat, track events, skiing events, and so on). But we have
no three-sided games of any kind. You will never see three teams take
any court or field anywhere.
Our justice system is intrinsically two-valued. There must be
prosecution and defense, plaintiff and respondent--one winner and one
loser, always. Everyone HATES a hung jury.
Everyone takes it for granted that there are exactly two sides to every
argument. When it comes to abortion, for example, there's the
pro-choice side and the pro-life side, and people who haven't chosen one
of these two sides don't represent a third side, they just don't
represent any side at all. The same is true of issues like animal
rights, capital punishment, and drug legalization.
The media play an important role in shaping reality into two-sided
events. Very often two-sidedness isn't clearly evident in developing
situations. The fundamental news-gathering process helps to clarify--or
manufacture--that desired two-sidedness. If one expert says that X is
wonderful, the reporter is expected to find another expert who will say
that X is terrible--or that Y is much more wonderful than X. This is,
to a large extent, what makes the story NEWS.
When it comes to "the environment," it hasn't been so easy to polarize
the community. Where do you send a reporter to get a quote AGAINST
clean water? Or AGAINST clean air? Obviously EVERYBODY wants clean
water and clean air. The issue had to be recast into one that doesn't
put everyone on the same side--and so it was. After a lot of pushing
and pulling, a lot of tweaking, a way was found to represent the
interests of the environment as being opposed to the interests of
PEOPLE. This is kind of mind-boggling but that's how it's shaken out.
You can't be for people and for the environment--you've got to "choose
sides." This is an interesting example of taking a thing that originally
presented only one handle and rotating it so as to expose two
handles--thereby putting the third handle completely out of sight.
The arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union started
when I was ten years old, so I watched the whole race from beginning to
end. I'm sure you all know how it went. We made an atomic bomb, they
made one. We made a hydrogen bomb, they made one. We made an
intercontinental ballistic missile, they made one. We pointed twenty
missiles at them, they pointed thirty at us. We pointed a hundred at
them, they pointed two hundred at us, and so on. It was a race with no
finish line (except catastrophe). Apparently it was a race no one could
either win or quit.
As you'd expect, the arms race presented two handles. You could take
one of two positions. If you were a Hawk, you said Better dead than
red, and if you were a Dove, you said Better red than dead, and every
presidential candidate had to talk tough enough to placate the Hawks but
also nice enough to placate the Doves.
Then in the mid-sixties there appeared a generation of children who
didn't value either of these two values. They were sick of the arms
race, and they began groping for a third handle on this whole thing. In
fact, they began to look like regular three-handed monsters. During the
1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago police waged war on them,
and the mayor gave out orders to "Shoot to Kill." A couple years later,
as I'm sure you all know, more of the three-handed monsters staged a
protest against the invasion of Cambodia right here at Kent State
University. After National Guardsmen killed four of them, people began
to understand just how dangerous these monsters were. It was time to
start shooting on sight when you saw people exhibiting signs of
three-handedness.
But the youngsters of that generation ultimately failed to find the
third handle they were seeking. It was found--and it probably had to be
found--by a Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who said to us, "I'm going
to do something really nasty to you. I'm going to deprive you of an
enemy." He ended the arms race the only way such a race CAN be ended--by
pulling out of it.
Everyone in the world knew the arms race was dangerous--globally
dangerous, mortally dangerous--to the entire human race and to the
planet itself. I'm here to talk to you today about another race, no
less globally dangerous, no less mortally dangerous--to the entire human
race and to the planet itself. In some ways it's even more dangerous
than the arms race--first because almost no one is aware of it, and
second because almost no one wants it to stop.
I'm talking about the food race--the race to produce enough food to feed
our growing population.
There are people in the world--calm, intelligent, reasoning people--who
believe that we've already gone over the limit, that even our present
population of six billion can't be fed sustainably on this planet. I
have no evidence that they're right--and I certainly hope they're wrong.
But the six billion is not nearly as alarming as the twelve billion that
we will be in your lifetime if we go on growing at this rate.
Now--of course!--there are two handles to this thing. I recently read
an Associated Press story that reported that food scientists are
confident that they can WIN the food race. By the time there are twelve
billion of us, they'll be able to FEED twelve billion. That constitutes
a win. SO: Not to worry, folks. The scientists are confident that food
will ultimately triumph over population. That's one handle.
The other handle is the one the Union of Concerned Scientists has
grabbed. In their "Warning to Humanity," they say: "We must stabilize
population," which is of course unarguable. But then they go on to say,
"This will be possible only if all nations recognize that it requires
improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective,
voluntary family planning." I'm afraid that grabbing this handle is an
act of faith that has virtually nothing to do with science, but it's
easy to do, because it means that, really, nobody has to do anything but
pray that someday, through some magical, unknown process all nations of
the world will improve social and economic conditions and adopt
effective, voluntary family planning.
It has been my misfortune to saddle myself with the really thankless
task of bringing into view the third handle on this issue. This is a
simple and well-known biological fact--well known at least to biologists
and ecologists--that a food race like the one I've just described can no
more be won than the arms race could be won--and for the same reason.
Because neither race has a finish line--except catastrophe. You can't
win an arms race with your enemy, because every advance you make in your
weaponry will be answered by an advance in your enemy's weaponry, which
of course must be answered by an advance in YOUR weaponry, which
stimulates an advance in THEIR weaponry, and so on in a never-ending
escalation.
And in the same way, food cannot win any race with population, because
every advance in food production is answered by an advance in
population. This isn't a statement that is happily or readily accepted
by most members of the public, because, I'm afraid, most members of the
public don't really understand the connection between food and
populations. I'm therefore going to take a minute to explain that
connection.
If you fence off a shopping mall parking lot, put a bull and a cow
inside, along with a bale of hay every day, you will soon have three or
four cows. But no matter how long you wait, you will NOT have thirty or
forty cows--not on one bale of hay a day. If you want to have thirty or
forty cows, then you're going to have throw ten bales of hay over the
fence. Of course they also need water and air--but all the water and
air in the world will not turn three or four cows into thirty or forty
cows in the absence of those ten bales of hay. You can't make cows out
of sunshine or rainbows or moonbeams. It takes hay.
Now when you have your forty cows, you don't have to start throwing
eleven bales of hay over the fence. If you just want forty, then ten
bales is plenty. There isn't going to be a famine among these cows just
because you stop at ten bales--there just isn't going to be any
population growth. On those ten bales a day, those forty cows are NEVER
going to turn into four hundred. But if you WANT four hundred cows,
then you've got to provide more hay, and you're going to end up buying a
hundred bales a day to feed those four hundred cows.
Now the exact same thing is true of humans. Fence off the parking lot,
toss in a man and a woman and a couple bags of groceries every day, and
before long you'll have a family of four. But those four will NEVER
turn into forty if all you're throwing over the fence is a couple bags
of groceries a day. Can't happen. Because people are just like
cows--you can't make them out of sunshine or rainbows or moonbeams. It
takes corn flakes and bananas and hot dogs and split pea soup and raisin
bread and broccoli.
If you want these four to turn into forty, then you're going to have
throw twenty bags of groceries over the fence instead of two. And when
you get those forty people, if you decide that's ALL you want living in
this parking lot, all you have to do is keep throwing twenty bags of
groceries over the fence. There's not going to be a famine. Twenty
bags of groceries fed these forty people yesterday and they'll feed them
today. On these twenty bags of groceries, the population is going to be
stable at around forty people. But if you change your mind and decide
you want 400 people living in this parking lot, then all you have to do
is start throwing a couple hundred bags of groceries over the fence
instead of twenty--and by golly, eventually there WILL be 400 people
living in that parking lot.
There WILL be, but our cultural mythology says there doesn't HAVE to be.
According to our cultural mythology, forty people COULD make up their
minds to remain forty. It could of course happen. It's imaginable.
But on this big parking lot we call the earth it never HAS happened.
It didn't happen last year, obviously. Last year we increased food
production, gave ourselves two percent more groceries, and our
population grew by two percent. The year before that we increased food
production by two percent, and our population grew by two percent.
The year before that we increased food production by two percent, and
our population grew by two percent. The year before that we increased
food production by two percent, and our population grew by two percent.
The year before that we increased food production by two percent, and
our population grew by two percent. I could stand here all day
repeating that sentence 10,000 times--because that's how long we've been
increasing food production, starting back there in the Fertile Crescent.
Last year we increased food production by two percent, and our
population grew by two percent. THIS year we'll increase food
production by two percent, and our population will grow by two
percent--there's no doubt at all that this will happen. NEXT year we'll
increase food production by two percent, and our population will grow by
two percent--and there's no doubt at all that this will happen. And the
year after that we'll increase food production by two percent, and our
population will grow by two percent--and there's no doubt at all that
this will happen. But ONE OF THESE YEARS we'll increase food production
by two percent--and our population will NOT grow. That's what our
cultural mythology says.
For ten thousand years we've been increasing food production to feed an
increasing population--and for ten thousand years our population has
grown. Every single "win" in food production has been answered by a
"win" in population growth. Every single one. But, according to our
cultural mythology, this doesn't have to happen--and one of these years,
magically, it will not happen. The magic will presumably be that all
nations will achieve improved social and economic conditions and adopt
effective, voluntary family planning, just like the Union of Concerned
Scientists recommends. This magic didn't happen last year or the year
before that or the year before that or the year before that or the year
before that--but one of these years, by God, every guy on earth will put
on a condom and super-glue it in place and it WILL work. One way or
another, there will come a year when we increase food production--and
miraculously there won't be an answering increase in population to
consume it.
Our cultural mythology explains why it was vitally important for us to
increase food production last year. We HAD to, in order to feed the
starving millions. Everyone knows that. But, oddly enough, we
increased food production to feed the starving millions, and guess what?
The starving millions went on starving. The population went up--but the
starving millions didn't get fed. And of course we know why it's
vitally important to increase food production THIS year. We've got to
do that in order to feed the starving millions. We WILL increase food
production this year--there's no doubt of that--but is there anyone in
this room who believes that the starving millions will be fed, this
year, for the first time in living memory? I guarantee you, my friends,
that by year's end this year, the starving millions will still be
starving--and I guarantee that our population will have grown by two
percent.
But of course our cultural mythology tells us it doesn't HAVE to be this
way. It was this way last year and the year before that and the year
before that and the year before that and the year before that--and it
will be this way this year and next year and the year after that and the
year after that. But one of these years, according to our cultural
mythology, we'll increase food production and by God those starving
millions will get fed and our population won't grow a bit.
Let me explain why those starving millions are not getting fed. Every
year here on this parking lot we call earth, the human population grows
by about two percent--all segments of it grow by two percent. This
means that there are more blue-eyed people here this year than last
year--and more brown-eyed people. It means there are more red-haired
people here this year than last year--and more brown-haired people. It
means there are more people here growing up well fed--and more people
here growing up hungry. The starving population goes up just like all
other populations, and producing more food can do NOTHING BUT produce
more starving millions. We're not making hunger go away by increasing
food production, we're just creating more and more people to go hungry.
Increasing food production actually INCREASES the number of hungry
people, the same way it increases the number of rich people, poor
people, tall people, short people, smart people, and dumb people.
The most horrific element of cultural mythology that has to be dealt
with on this topic is the notion that if we DIDN'T continue to increase
food production--year after year after year--we would face mass
starvation. I think at the base of this notion is the strange idea that
our population explosion would continue to run on--even if there was no
food to fuel it. This is rather like thinking that the engine in your
car might continue to run even if the gas tank was empty or like
thinking that the lights in this room might keep on burning even if the
electricity was turned off.
But though I say this, I know from experience that very few of you
believe it. Let me give you an example that I hope will convince you.
There are about 50 people in the Quinn clan, counting myself and my
wife, all my siblings and all my wife's siblings, all their children and
grandchildren, and all my children and grandchildren. Last year the
Quinn clan consumed a certain amount of food, and let's say that they're
going to have to subsist on the same amount of food this year--and next
year and all the years after that, forever.
Just as in any representative sample of the population, quite a few of
the clan are past the age where they can or want to have more children
and quite a few haven't yet reached the age where they can or want to
have children. But of course there are a few who are of an age to want
to have children. This doesn't mean they're all pregnant at once, of
course. In any given year, what you'd expect is that about two percent
of the clan would be pregnant--in this case, that means one woman. But
let's not make it too easy for me. Let's say she has twins. Now we
have to feed fifty assorted people and two infants on the same amount of
food that last year we fed fifty assorted people. Of course the same
odds that apply to birth apply to death, but again I don't want to make
it too easy for me. I'm going to say that two are born to the Quinn
clan but none die. Of course these infants don't need the same amount
of calories per day as a longshoreman. Let's say, just to keep the
numbers round, that the fifty of us have to come up with about 2000
calories for the two infants every day. That means each of us is going
to be short about forty calories a day--three ounces of orange juice.
Now, this is what I want to know. Does this sound like mass starvation
to anyone here? Are there people here who feel they'd be starving if
they missed a couple of swallows of orange juice a day? I know I
certainly don't.
But what about next year? Let's say that the same damn thing happens.
A new pair of twins, no deaths. Wow, we're really in trouble now. With
last year's twins to support and this year's twins to support, each of
us is going to be giving up a whole glass of orange juice a day! Now,
once again, does this sound like mass starvation to anyone here? Are
there people here who feel they'd be starving if they missed a glass of
orange juice a day? I know I certainly don't.
But of course I can't go on weighting the statistics against me forever.
Birth isn't the only fact of life. The population of the Quinn clan
isn't going to go on growing forever. There are going to be deaths as
well as births.
But the point I want to make is that in two years of even abnormally
high births, offset by no deaths, there has been no onset of famine.
Not even a hint of starvation anywhere. But let's continue to weigh
things against the Quinn clan and see what happens. Five years pass,
twins every year, no deaths at all. Now, instead of 50 mouths to feed
there are 60. Let's say that when we started out at 50, each of us was
receiving, on the average, 2500 calories a day. At a population of 60
we're now down to about 2100 calories a day. That piece of double fudge
chocolate cake is out of our lives as a daily treat--but of course we're
still nowhere near starvation. Even so, it may be time to have a clan
conference where we go over the basics of family planning. I'm missing
that piece of double fudge chocolate cake and don't want to have to
follow it up next year by giving up a spoonful of jam every day.
What I'm trying to point out here is that capping the Quinn clan food
supply does not produce instant famine. It doesn't produce famine at
all, and its instant effect is negligible. We have plenty of time to
begin talking about family planning. We're not--simply NOT--plunged
into a food crisis.
There are just no grounds for thinking that a failure to increase food
production would result in global mass starvation. But people who are
deeply invested in the food race will continue to make this claim, just
the way that people who were deeply invested in the arms race were
forever claiming that the commies would surely overrun the world if we
relaxed our militancy for even one minute.
We're in the midst of a food race that is as deadly to us and to the
world around us as the arms race was. In some ways it's even more
deadly, because, after all, we and the Soviets never actually unleashed
all the weapons we created. The catastrophe didn't come to pass.
And as far as I know, not a single species became extinct as a result of
the arms race. It's quite different with the food race. It's estimated
that upwards of two hundred species a day are being forced into
extinction by the inexorable expansion of our population.
Right now--and I want to leave you with this clear picture--our food
race is converting our planet's biomass into HUMAN mass. This is what
happens when we clear a piece of land of wildlife and replant it with
human crops. This land was supporting a biomass comprising hundreds of
thousands of species and tens of millions of individuals. Now all the
productivity of that land is being turned into human mass, literally
into human flesh. Every day all over the world diversity is
disappearing as more and more of our planet's biomass is being turned
into human mass. This is what the food race is about. This is EXACTLY
what the food race is about: Every year turning more of our planet's
biomass into human mass.
The arms race could only be ended in two ways. It could be ended by a
catastrophe, a nuclear holocaust. Or the participants could walk away
from it.
Luckily, that's what happened: The Soviets called it quits--and there
was no catastrophe.
The race between food and population is the same. It can be ended by
catastrophe, when simply too much of our planet's biomass is tied up in
humans, and fundamental ecological systems collapse. And if we refuse
to abandon the race, it will end that way--probably not in my lifetime,
but very probably in the lifetime of many of you. But the race doesn't
have to end that way. It can end the way the arms race ended, by people
simply walking away from it. We can say, "We understand now that there
can be no final triumph of food over population. This is because every
single win made on the side of food is answered by a win on the side of
population. It has to be that way, it always HAS been that way, and we
can see that it's never going to STOP being that way."
The strange thing is that many people HATE hearing all this--yet I'm
clearly pointing out a path of possibility and hope. I'm not a doom
merchant, my compass is set firmly on success. Our population explosion
is a problem we CAN get a handle on, provided we all start reaching for
it with that third hand.
written by: Daniel Quinn ( Kent State University, for Earth Day 1998 )
--
So nope, this is not by me, Julius, but it easily could have been,
that's why I'm posting it in usenet. (It's not copyrighted.)
Gail Klein
>If you fence off a shopping mall parking lot, put a bull and a cow
>inside, along with a bale of hay every day, you will soon have three or
>four cows. But no matter how long you wait, you will NOT have thirty or
>forty cows--not on one bale of hay a day. If you want to have thirty or
>forty cows, then you're going to have throw ten bales of hay over the
>fence. Of course they also need water and air--but all the water and
>air in the world will not turn three or four cows into thirty or forty
>cows in the absence of those ten bales of hay. You can't make cows out
>of sunshine or rainbows or moonbeams. It takes hay.
Question 1) In this case, why do you claim later in the article
that the people who are *not* getting their bales of hay can still
reproduce at rates as if they were?
>Now the exact same thing is true of humans. Fence off the parking lot,
>toss in a man and a woman and a couple bags of groceries every day, and
>before long you'll have a family of four. But those four will NEVER
>turn into forty if all you're throwing over the fence is a couple bags
>of groceries a day. Can't happen. Because people are just like
>cows--you can't make them out of sunshine or rainbows or moonbeams. It
>takes corn flakes and bananas and hot dogs and split pea soup and raisin
>bread and broccoli.
Okay. So then, the ones who are starving can't reproduce - according
to this logic. But they do, and I presume you're saying it is to
these people that the extra 2% of food is going? (If that's true,
we should have seen at least a minimal decline in the supply of
chocolate fudge cake by now.)
>population grew by two percent. THIS year we'll increase food
>production by two percent, and our population will grow by two
>percent--there's no doubt at all that this will happen. NEXT year we'll
>increase food production by two percent, and our population will grow by
>two percent--and there's no doubt at all that this will happen.
Hmmm.... I have some doubt. (Well, during the power outages there may
be a baby boom, but I guess survival is the key in population growth.
Survival might be difficult, what with untransportable grain rotting in
silos and all. But who knows what's going to happen - I guess that's
the point.)
>There are about 50 people in the Quinn clan, counting myself and my
>wife, all my siblings and all my wife's siblings, all their children and
>grandchildren, and all my children and grandchildren.
Oh, I begin to see... you are one of those people having children
*and* complaining about overpopulation. Do you see any discrepancy
between those two positions? (If you had more than 2, you should
have picked another topic for your speech.)
I think it's been documented that population growth decreases
according to the increase of available education. It's more
complex, I think, than simply the rates of food production; factored in
are things like religious mind control, ingrained cultural norms,
little to no health care, etc.
>written by: Daniel Quinn ( Kent State University, for Earth Day 1998 )
>--
>So nope, this is not by me, Julius, but it easily could have been,
>that's why I'm posting it in usenet. (It's not copyrighted.)
--
Jonah Thomas
>In <3752280...@news.xs4all.nl> An...@cable.a2000.nl writes:
>>If you fence off a shopping mall parking lot, put a bull and a cow
>>inside, along with a bale of hay every day, you will soon have three or
>>four cows. But no matter how long you wait, you will NOT have thirty or
>>forty cows--not on one bale of hay a day. If you want to have thirty or
>>forty cows, then you're going to have throw ten bales of hay over the
>>fence. Of course they also need water and air--but all the water and
>>air in the world will not turn three or four cows into thirty or forty
>>cows in the absence of those ten bales of hay. You can't make cows out
>>of sunshine or rainbows or moonbeams. It takes hay.
>Question 1) In this case, why do you claim later in the article
>that the people who are *not* getting their bales of hay can still
>reproduce at rates as if they were?
They don't. But every year (on average) more children of rich people
slip out of being rich than almost-rich people become rich, more
middle-middle class people become lower-middle class than
lower-middle-class people become middle-middle, etc. Enough lower-lower
class people become totally impoverished to more than replace the ones
that starved.
>>Now the exact same thing is true of humans. Fence off the parking lot,
>>toss in a man and a woman and a couple bags of groceries every day, and
>>before long you'll have a family of four. But those four will NEVER
>>turn into forty if all you're throwing over the fence is a couple bags
>>of groceries a day. Can't happen. Because people are just like
>>cows--you can't make them out of sunshine or rainbows or moonbeams. It
>>takes corn flakes and bananas and hot dogs and split pea soup and raisin
>>bread and broccoli.
>Okay. So then, the ones who are starving can't reproduce - according
>to this logic. But they do, and I presume you're saying it is to
>these people that the extra 2% of food is going? (If that's true,
>we should have seen at least a minimal decline in the supply of
>chocolate fudge cake by now.)
We've had large declines in tuna, salmon, cod, and haddock. It's because
traditional fish are becoming unavailable that we're seeing exotic fish
in the supermarkets -- those used to be "trash fish" that nobody wanted.
And the japanese are running out of whales to eat.
We have plenty of chocolate because we keep cutting down rain forests
to make new cacao plantations. We have plenty of sugar for similar
reasons. People who can afford chocolate fudge cake won't run short
of that for a long time, long after poor people run out of tuna fish.
>>population grew by two percent. THIS year we'll increase food
>>production by two percent, and our population will grow by two
>>percent--there's no doubt at all that this will happen. NEXT year we'll
>>increase food production by two percent, and our population will grow by
>>two percent--and there's no doubt at all that this will happen.
>Hmmm.... I have some doubt. (Well, during the power outages there may
>be a baby boom, but I guess survival is the key in population growth.
>Survival might be difficult, what with untransportable grain rotting in
>silos and all. But who knows what's going to happen - I guess that's
>the point.)
I have some doubt too. People on salary, who have their lives planned
out, tend to have one child or perhaps two or very occasionally three.
People who're closer to reality tend to have more. Probably all it
would take to reduce population growth, or even to reduce populations,
would be to arrange to put the whole third world either on salary or
on the dole, and give them just enough to support one child per woman.
Once they give up the idea that they can feed themselves they'll be
glad to be sterilised to avoid too many mouths to share with.
>>There are about 50 people in the Quinn clan, counting myself and my
>>wife, all my siblings and all my wife's siblings, all their children and
>>grandchildren, and all my children and grandchildren.
>Oh, I begin to see... you are one of those people having children
>*and* complaining about overpopulation. Do you see any discrepancy
>between those two positions? (If you had more than 2, you should
>have picked another topic for your speech.)
No, I don't see any discrepancy between those. Unless you want to
treat it as a moral issue. You could look at it that way, I guess.
If a soldier points out that a military strategy isn't working you
could say, "You're a soldier, you gave up any right to tell us about
military problems when you swore to follow orders.". And if someone
tries out a diet and it doesn't work and they start to tell us it
doesn't, you could say, "You had the moral laxity to get fat, so you
have no right to tell us what's wrong about any proposed solution to
that.". I don't see it that way. I don't think a person's personal
morals should determine whether I listen to their suggestions about
solving technical problems. I want to consider the ideas on their
own merit, and then separately consider the source and why that
person would suggest that idea.
>I think it's been documented that population growth decreases
>according to the increase of available education.
Yes. Rich people have fewer children than poor people, rich people
get more education. Also students tend to put off getting married
and tend to put off having children. And they get a grandiose idea
of the lifestyle they deserve, so they put off children after
graduation when they find they haven't achieved that yet. And when
they do get the income they wanted, they tend to split up and start
over with others, which delays things more.
>It's more
>complex, I think, than simply the rates of food production; factored in
>are things like religious mind control, ingrained cultural norms,
>little to no health care, etc.
Those things matter. Religion tends to bow to cultural and economic
needs. Health care is important; when people know they're likely to
lose half their children before age 5 they tend to have a bit more
than twice as many children. Without social security people tend to
have more children to support them in their old age. If you have two
grown children you can figure one of them won't do it and the other
will be busy supporting the other set of parents. So you need four
grown children to have a reasonable hope one of them will support you
in your old age. And you need eight children to have a reasonable
hope of four that live. My grandmother had 13 children, five of them
died before one year. Her older children grew up in the depression,
one of them didn't marry, two had no children, one had a single child.
The younger ones had better times, they had two, three, three, and
four children respectively. The daughter who didn't marry took care
of my grandmother until she died. But now people don't think that
way, old people can vote themselves Social Security benefits
regardless how their children behave. So they don't need as many
children, in this country.
Anyway, I don't think you addressed the issue. This guy is hinting
at a new way to solve the population problem. If we just stop
increasing the amount of food, the population will stop growing.
That's literally true. He seems to be suggesting that we simply
accept that we're going to get some level of starvation, and we
should figure that this is unavoidable while the population explosion
is avoidable. But he gives us no hint how we should control the
world economy to stabilise the food supply. We aren't organised
to do that any more than we are to enforce birth control.
Here is one approach to do that which I think might be workable, given
enough individual initiative. You'd petition Bill Gates to start a
club of the 0.01% richest people in the world. These people already
own more than half of the world's resources that are owned by
individuals, outside of the XSSR and China. And they collectively
have a lot of political influence. If they collectively worked to
corner the agricultural markets, they could do it. They could destroy
the family farms and make subsistence farming illegal. They could
refuse to sell seed to individuals. They could work to concentrate
the population in urban areas where there isn't even room for family
vegetable gardens. All this would take time and money, but once they
had it set up they could reduce the food supply and charge whatever
they wanted for food. They would quickly own the other 47%, get
absolute control of the governments, and then own the public property
too. At that point anybody who wasn't in the Club would be out of
luck, they'd need to come up with not just food money but rent, and
the Club could charge whatever rents they wanted.
If you weren't a member of the Club your only choices would be to
get a job working for the Club doing whatever they wanted done, or
else try to steal from the system and hope they didn't notice you.
Since it would be illegal to be alive and not have a job, you'd need
good fake ID. It would be completely obvious to everybody that they
didn't have enough food to support more children than the Club wanted.
But if the Club members wanted to take the trouble they could give
people the right to have a child as a special reward. The population
would drop to whatever the Club wanted it to be, within a generation.
We're talking about a club with 600,000 members. It's hard to maintain
a consensus in a group that large. But anybody who didn't go along
would be thrown out of the Club and their assets impounded. Also,
anybody who had more than two children would have to choose which two
could be in the Club.
I think this might be workable but it seems less than ideal.
Here's another approach: Persuade as many people as possible that
their lives are intrinsicly meaningless, that the world is an awful
place and they shouldn't have been born, that the best and only
acceptable response to this is a continual sense of angst. Maybe
that would cut the birthrate. However, it isn't yet clear how
much it contributes to angst to be a student or to live on a salary
or other fixed income. If those are major factors then it might
be better to encourage those directly and let the angst take care of
itself.
waldby julian f
>They don't. But every year (on average) more children of rich people
>slip out of being rich than almost-rich people become rich, more
>middle-middle class people become lower-middle class than
>lower-middle-class people become middle-middle, etc. Enough lower-lower
>class people become totally impoverished to more than replace the ones
>that starved.
This is the way we want it. It seems that our equilibrium over time is
5% of the people very rich and 95% rather poor. Any other model is a
waste of energy, because we will slip back into the 5-95
situation. One has to accept this and see that it is good. One has to
encourage one's children to strive, to do well in school and to make
that salmon swim up to the top. It is a waste of time to lament the
model. The logical step is to deal with it.
Julian
--
for it would be extremely difficult for you to get away from here,
unless, of course, you have wings..
like a bat
Jonah Thomas
>Jonah Thomas <jeth...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>>They don't. But every year (on average) more children of rich people
>>slip out of being rich than almost-rich people become rich, more
>>middle-middle class people become lower-middle class than
>>lower-middle-class people become middle-middle, etc. Enough lower-lower
>>class people become totally impoverished to more than replace the ones
>>that starved.
>This is the way we want it.
Speak for yourself. I could imagine other good ways.
>It seems that our equilibrium over time is
>5% of the people very rich and 95% rather poor. Any other model is a
>waste of energy, because we will slip back into the 5-95
>situation.
Again it depends. The upper 5% of 20 people is a lot lower than the
upper 5% of six billion. We might have a good system with small nations
with the 5% thing, and a bad system doing it with a world economy.
>One has to accept this and see that it is good.
No one doesn't. But one can.
>One has to
>encourage one's children to strive, to do well in school and to make
>that salmon swim up to the top. It is a waste of time to lament the
>model. The logical step is to deal with it.
Agreed, the logical step is to deal with it. Sometimes people have
dealt with it by killing the top 5%. It can go various ways.
Galadriel
>g...@panix.com (Gail Klein) wrote:
>We've had large declines in tuna, salmon, cod, and haddock. It's because
>traditional fish are becoming unavailable that we're seeing exotic fish
>in the supermarkets -- those used to be "trash fish" that nobody wanted.
>And the japanese are running out of whales to eat.
Is this related in any significant way to the new dolphin protection
laws? The supermarkets around here have had frequent sales of
"Chicken of the Sea" - which don't mark their cans with the safe
dolphin icon. Almost makes me want to picket.
>We have plenty of chocolate because we keep cutting down rain forests
>to make new cacao plantations. We have plenty of sugar for similar
>reasons.
The greater threat to the rainforests is the South American
beef industry. Cattle and beef "production" are a major waste
of resources.
>I have some doubt too. People on salary, who have their lives planned
>out, tend to have one child or perhaps two or very occasionally three.
>People who're closer to reality tend to have more. Probably all it
>would take to reduce population growth, or even to reduce populations,
>would be to arrange to put the whole third world either on salary or
>on the dole, and give them just enough to support one child per woman.
>Once they give up the idea that they can feed themselves they'll be
>glad to be sterilised to avoid too many mouths to share with.
Shouldn't this have already been seen in the 3rd world? Do we
imagine that these women with skeletal, bloated, babies believe
they can feed themselves and their kids? In South America, will
women be glad to be sterilized - unless the pope tells them it's
permitted?
>>Oh, I begin to see... you are one of those people having children
>>*and* complaining about overpopulation. Do you see any discrepancy
>>between those two positions? (If you had more than 2, you should
>>have picked another topic for your speech.)
>No, I don't see any discrepancy between those. Unless you want to
>treat it as a moral issue. You could look at it that way, I guess.
>If a soldier points out that a military strategy isn't working you
>could say, "You're a soldier, you gave up any right to tell us about
>military problems when you swore to follow orders.". And if someone
>tries out a diet and it doesn't work and they start to tell us it
>doesn't, you could say, "You had the moral laxity to get fat, so you
>have no right to tell us what's wrong about any proposed solution to
>that.".
Not quite the same thing.
>I don't see it that way. I don't think a person's personal
>morals should determine whether I listen to their suggestions about
>solving technical problems. I want to consider the ideas on their
>own merit, and then separately consider the source and why that
>person would suggest that idea.
Tell me, are you related to Mr. Spock by any chance?
>>I think it's been documented that population growth decreases
>>according to the increase of available education.
>Yes. Rich people have fewer children than poor people, rich people
>get more education. Also students tend to put off getting married
>and tend to put off having children. And they get a grandiose idea
>of the lifestyle they deserve, so they put off children after
>graduation when they find they haven't achieved that yet. And when
>they do get the income they wanted, they tend to split up and start
>over with others, which delays things more.
Only now we have the new condition of these types taking fertility
drugs and making up for lost time with litters of quints. Progress...
I thought my comments suggested the saner, gentler, more effective
routes to achieve the objective. N'importe. A chaque a son gout.
Or something.
> He seems to be suggesting that we simply
>accept that we're going to get some level of starvation, and we
>should figure that this is unavoidable while the population explosion
>is avoidable. But he gives us no hint how we should control the
>world economy to stabilise the food supply. We aren't organised
>to do that any more than we are to enforce birth control.
>Here is one approach to do that which I think might be workable, given
>enough individual initiative. You'd petition Bill Gates to start a
>club of the 0.01% richest people in the world. These people already
>own more than half of the world's resources that are owned by
>individuals, outside of the XSSR and China. And they collectively
>have a lot of political influence. If they collectively worked to
>corner the agricultural markets, they could do it. They could destroy
>the family farms and make subsistence farming illegal. They could
>refuse to sell seed to individuals. They could work to concentrate
>the population in urban areas where there isn't even room for family
>vegetable gardens. All this would take time and money, but once they
>had it set up they could reduce the food supply and charge whatever
>they wanted for food. They would quickly own the other 47%, get
>absolute control of the governments, and then own the public property
>too. At that point anybody who wasn't in the Club would be out of
>luck, they'd need to come up with not just food money but rent, and
>the Club could charge whatever rents they wanted.
This is already how NYC works.
>If you weren't a member of the Club your only choices would be to
>get a job working for the Club doing whatever they wanted done, or
>else try to steal from the system and hope they didn't notice you.
>Since it would be illegal to be alive and not have a job, you'd need
>good fake ID. It would be completely obvious to everybody that they
>didn't have enough food to support more children than the Club wanted.
>But if the Club members wanted to take the trouble they could give
>people the right to have a child as a special reward. The population
>would drop to whatever the Club wanted it to be, within a generation.
>We're talking about a club with 600,000 members. It's hard to maintain
>a consensus in a group that large. But anybody who didn't go along
>would be thrown out of the Club and their assets impounded. Also,
>anybody who had more than two children would have to choose which two
>could be in the Club.
>I think this might be workable but it seems less than ideal.
I thought you said something about not being able to enforce
birth control. This scenario is as sci-fi as anything else along
those lines. (With the exception that it's already probably
partly true, just as it's true about inner city teen age girls
having been given Norplant.)
>Here's another approach: Persuade as many people as possible that
>their lives are intrinsicly meaningless, that the world is an awful
>place and they shouldn't have been born, that the best and only
>acceptable response to this is a continual sense of angst. Maybe
>that would cut the birthrate.
It certainly worked for me, and I don't even believe life is meaningless -
just more painful on balance than rewarding. Why would anyone want to
inflict that on anyone else?
>However, it isn't yet clear how
>much it contributes to angst to be a student or to live on a salary
>or other fixed income. If those are major factors then it might
>be better to encourage those directly and let the angst take care of
>itself.
--
Jennifer Faucher
> Anyway, I don't think you addressed the issue. This guy is hinting
> at a new way to solve the population problem. If we just stop
> increasing the amount of food, the population will stop growing.
> That's literally true. He seems to be suggesting that we simply
> accept that we're going to get some level of starvation, and we
> should figure that this is unavoidable while the population explosion
> is avoidable.
I have a better way! I think we should sterilize everyone
after they've had their 2nd child.
And we should sterilize all the rich people before they have
children at all, and nullify their wills, and redistribute
their wealth when they die.
My plan is no less feasible and far more humane.
Jennifer
waldby julian f
>Jonah Thomas wrote:
>> Anyway, I don't think you addressed the issue. This guy is hinting
>> at a new way to solve the population problem. If we just stop
>> increasing the amount of food, the population will stop growing.
>> That's literally true. He seems to be suggesting that we simply
>> accept that we're going to get some level of starvation, and we
>> should figure that this is unavoidable while the population explosion
>> is avoidable.
This is fascinating. It allows the Stoic in each of us to say that
there is no problem, because the problem solves itself. There is some
suffering involved, however, for those who exist beyond the
environment's capability to sustain them. These suffering people
should go into the recycling tanks and suffer no more.
Jules sans scrupules
> Jonah Thomas <jeth...@ix.netcom.com> writes:
>
> >They don't. But every year (on average) more children of rich people
> >slip out of being rich than almost-rich people become rich, more
> >middle-middle class people become lower-middle class than
> >lower-middle-class people become middle-middle, etc. Enough lower-lower
> >class people become totally impoverished to more than replace the ones
> >that starved.
>
> This is the way we want it. It seems that our equilibrium over time is
> 5% of the people very rich and 95% rather poor. Any other model is a
> waste of energy, because we will slip back into the 5-95 situation.
I don't think that is the 'problem', the real problem is *what* those
5% do with their money. I would do way more reasonably useful things
with it (I truly would), but maybe it takes a poor background
to be(come) like that. I see the richest act like total idiots
using their money for either solely themselves, or for stupid
causes that don't bring any real changes into this world.
For instance, one could easily BUY pieces of rainforest
and let others do research for some smarter alternative.
If you tell some scientist he gets a million dollars
if he succeeds to come up with something that would prolong
possible life on this planet, the scientist will surely
come up with it. Rich people are generally very stupid
and - of course - they never come up with good/new ideas.
> One has to accept this and see that it is good. One has to
> encourage one's children to strive, to do well in school and to make
> that salmon swim up to the top. It is a waste of time to lament the
> model. The logical step is to deal with it.
I don't entirely agree with that.
These kids become smarter than we are now, they will
all understand that life has no reason, that we don't know
why we're here, that their parents can't explain to them
why one would work for a future that has no future.
They'll start asking real tough things like:
If that asteroid will hit the earth, then what?
If these nuclear things go off, then what?
If the sun dies, then what?
In the end they want to know why they should
not enjoy the earth while it is still there
(and waste it as much and as fast as they can)
instead of 'work at their future and have a career'.
A few generations from now there are no careers to be made.
One can deny this, but one should not underestimate
young children's minds. They are factors ahead of us
in their approach to life's un-answerable questions,
you see this take its toll on the system already.
.J.
Jules sans scrupules
> I have some doubt too. People on salary, who have their lives planned
> out, tend to have one child or perhaps two or very occasionally three.
> People who're closer to reality tend to have more. Probably all it
> would take to reduce population growth, or even to reduce populations,
> would be to arrange to put the whole third world either on salary or
> on the dole, and give them just enough to support one child per woman.
> Once they give up the idea that they can feed themselves they'll be
> glad to be sterilised to avoid too many mouths to share with.
Well, I don't know if you've ever been to a third world country yourself,
but these women are actually too dumb to make such an assumption.
You'd have to be teaching them all this first. I'm always amazed
by their stupidity, usually I get angry at those people to stupid
to count, but of course, they can't help being raised stupid.
So what're you gonna do about it? Let them starve to death?
No, civilized people wouldn't agree with that,
what you should be doing is create a sterilizing
virus. Something built in some kind of influenza.
If I'd be extremely rich, I'd have some scientists
work on that. And you can say it's sick, the whole
world would be disapproving, but what can you say?
It's the only way out I kid you not.
> Here's another approach: Persuade as many people as possible that
> their lives are intrinsically meaningless, that the world is an awful
> place and they shouldn't have been born, that the best and only
> acceptable response to this is a continual sense of angst. Maybe
> that would cut the birthrate. However, it isn't yet clear how
> much it contributes to angst to be a student or to live on a salary
> or other fixed income. If those are major factors then it might
> be better to encourage those directly and let the angst take care of
> itself.
Think that might work to some degree, but doesn't take care
of the whole world's biggest problem. It's too slow, too late.
.J.
Jules sans scrupules
> Question 1) In this case, why do you claim later in the article
> that the people who are *not* getting their bales of hay can still
> reproduce at rates as if they were?
First off, *I* didn't write the piece myself, but okay..
Second, I don't see anything in it you could possibly argue with.
As I've seen by now, you're a regular anti-poster on almost every
subject posted in this group. I wonder if I should respond at all.
> Okay. So then, the ones who are starving can't reproduce - according
> to this logic. But they do, and I presume you're saying it is to
> these people that the extra 2% of food is going? (If that's true,
> we should have seen at least a minimal decline in the supply of
> chocolate fudge cake by now.)
Obviously you haven't read the piece as a whole.
> But who knows what's going to happen - I guess that's
> the point.)
Not really. He's making his point at the end, and it's
not something any of us could ever argue with if you ask me.
> Oh, I begin to see... you are one of those people having children
> *and* complaining about overpopulation. Do you see any discrepancy
> between those two positions? (If you had more than 2, you should
> have picked another topic for your speech.)
To my knowledge I don't have any children,
I don't even have a driver's license.
The guy who wrote it is sorry he has two, clearly.
Check out China, or was it Japan? A woman's not even
allowed to have more than 2 kids over there.
> I think it's been documented that population growth decreases
> according to the increase of available education. It's more
> complex, I think, than simply the rates of food production; factored in
> are things like religious mind control, ingrained cultural norms,
> little to no health care, etc.
He doesn't write he's mentioning every aspect playing a role in it.
I too hear people say "there's enough food for everyone on earth,
it's just not divided right", and that is the result of some
ingrained cultural norms I suppose. He wants that to change,
and I think he's done very well writing such a piece.
It works like that; People just don't know and don't realize it,
yet. Now they do. Or some more do.
> >written by: Daniel Quinn ( Kent State University, for Earth Day 1998 )
> >--
> >So nope, this is not by me, Julius, but it easily could have been,
> >that's why I'm posting it in usenet. (It's not copyrighted.)
My idea still is to try and cancel all reproductive capability
of humans, i.e. total sterilization, so that there will be
no-one left to KNOW or ask if we ever existed.
This idea has a great advantage over all others, because
one could think of accomplishing this sterilisation-bit
through viral contamination so that this virus will stay behind
to get that one idiot from a deserted russian space-craft that
might still land, or to revive if human life would eventually
evolve out of the sea again. We should try invent real stubborn
bacteria that eat their way through all reproductive hormonal
activities in all living organisms. Yet it should be harmless
at the same time for those already here.
I'm sure for real good money, one could get this done.
With a virus like that we as a species could set a date,
and it would actually truly mean that then we'd
be the last humans on earth. We can finally
go through all energy sources and food
because we'll be the last ones here.
Who cares about what we'll leave behind
if there'll be nobody left here?
Say we aim for total sterilization as of the year 2010.
If no child will be born after that, we can do some
interesting planning: How to finish it all before
the year 2130. That would be the one good solution.
I have a more detailed description of this concept
in dutch on one of my webpages.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jult/nl/0.htm
/\__/\
/(*)(*)\
===(..)===
\'.__,'/
__________________________mm____mm__________________________
*©*´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·- JBT -·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`*©*
Jonah Thomas
>>We've had large declines in tuna, salmon, cod, and haddock. It's because
>>traditional fish are becoming unavailable that we're seeing exotic fish
>>in the supermarkets -- those used to be "trash fish" that nobody wanted.
>>And the japanese are running out of whales to eat.
>Is this related in any significant way to the new dolphin protection
>laws? The supermarkets around here have had frequent sales of
>"Chicken of the Sea" - which don't mark their cans with the safe
>dolphin icon. Almost makes me want to picket.
I don't know in detail. But we have large fishing fleets that can't pay
their bills unless they catch enough, and there's less and less for them
to catch. So they see who can get the last fish the fastest, and if the
other guys go broke first they might be able to live on what's left.
>>We have plenty of chocolate because we keep cutting down rain forests
>>to make new cacao plantations. We have plenty of sugar for similar
>>reasons.
>The greater threat to the rainforests is the South American
>beef industry. Cattle and beef "production" are a major waste
>of resources.
Yes. Consider what that means to the original claim, though. If we put
that land to use for primary food production for poor people, more people
might get fed. The higher we eat on the food chain the less food there
is. For what it takes to produce pate de foi gras for one meal for one
rich person, a poor person could live for a week at least. So by doing
this sort of thing we slow the increase in the food supply and thus slow
the increase in population.
>>I have some doubt too. People on salary, who have their lives planned
>>out, tend to have one child or perhaps two or very occasionally three.
>>People who're closer to reality tend to have more. Probably all it
>>would take to reduce population growth, or even to reduce populations,
>>would be to arrange to put the whole third world either on salary or
>>on the dole, and give them just enough to support one child per woman.
>>Once they give up the idea that they can feed themselves they'll be
>>glad to be sterilised to avoid too many mouths to share with.
>Shouldn't this have already been seen in the 3rd world? Do we
>imagine that these women with skeletal, bloated, babies believe
>they can feed themselves and their kids? In South America, will
>women be glad to be sterilized - unless the pope tells them it's
>permitted?
They probably believed that when they got pregnant. Lots of places
we average a famine on average once every 20 years or so, due partly
to weather. If the weather supported good crops for the last 19 years,
why not expect it will this year too?
And the pope doesn't tell women to have more babies than they can feed,
he tells them to avoid pregnancy using abstinence. That's a workable
method for people who know how many children they want. And presumably
he knows that abstinence works because he does it.
>>I don't see it that way. I don't think a person's personal
>>morals should determine whether I listen to their suggestions about
>>solving technical problems. I want to consider the ideas on their
>>own merit, and then separately consider the source and why that
>>person would suggest that idea.
>Tell me, are you related to Mr. Spock by any chance?
No. People who haven't met me in person used to ask me that a lot.
Now that Spock is pretty much on the shelf it doesn't come up much.
>>Anyway, I don't think you addressed the issue. This guy is hinting
>>at a new way to solve the population problem. If we just stop
>>increasing the amount of food, the population will stop growing.
>>That's literally true.
>I thought my comments suggested the saner, gentler, more effective
>routes to achieve the objective. N'importe. A chaque a son gout.
>Or something.
Well, try this reasoning. The right population size would seem to be
*decided* by how much food we produce. If there's plenty of food,
why *not* have more people? His suggestion that we put the ecology
first and stop increasing the food supply doesn't really disagree with
any of your ideas. If we stop increasing the food supply and we also
increase education and wealth and medical care and all the things that
encourage people to have fewer children, and they have fewer children
due to those other things, then we'll still have enough food and nothing
is lost by it. And if the other methods fail, but we only have so much
food, then the population still won't increase and our damage to the
ecology won't increase as fast.
If your suggestions work then his suggestion is harmless. And if yours
fail then his is necessary.
>>I think this might be workable but it seems less than ideal.
>I thought you said something about not being able to enforce
>birth control. This scenario is as sci-fi as anything else along
>those lines. (With the exception that it's already probably
>partly true, just as it's true about inner city teen age girls
>having been given Norplant.)
Yes. The major difference with my (bad) plan is that it's something
that could be organised primarily by a few super-rich people, for
their own benefit. Most plans to end world hunger require that many
people cooperate extensively for somebody else's benefit. So I'm
afraid mine might have a better chance of happening.
Jonah Thomas
>Jonah Thomas wrote:
>> Anyway, I don't think you addressed the issue. This guy is hinting
>> at a new way to solve the population problem. If we just stop
>> increasing the amount of food, the population will stop growing.
>> That's literally true. He seems to be suggesting that we simply
>> accept that we're going to get some level of starvation, and we
>> should figure that this is unavoidable while the population explosion
>> is avoidable.
>I have a better way! I think we should sterilize everyone
>after they've had their 2nd child.
Your way takes far more organization, and people mostly don't make a
profit by doing it. It might be possible, though.
>And we should sterilize all the rich people before they have
>children at all, and nullify their wills, and redistribute
>their wealth when they die.
Rich people would be bitterly opposed to that. They would keep
you from publicising it over the mass media. If you kept working
toward it they would have you arrested and you might likely get
raped and impregnated in jail. If that didn't stop you they'd
likely have you committed "voluntarily" to a mental hospital to
be treated for your delusions. If you got out and kept going
you'd face the fact that they can buy votes and security guards
while you'd be relying on amateur voters and amateur assassins.
It looks hard. It would be best to strike suddenly while they're
in disarray about something else.
>My plan is no less feasible and far more humane.
Yours depends on a large number of fanatics, while mine depends on
a large number of rich people who want to make even more money.
It's hard to be sure which is more feasible, but I'd tend to bet
on the rich people who want more. They have gotten more often,
while things like the french revolution and the russian revolution
and the chinese revolution have been fairly rare. But the fact
that I can think of three examples in less than a second says
that it isn't completely out of the question.
Jonah Thomas
>>> Anyway, I don't think you addressed the issue. This guy is hinting
>>> at a new way to solve the population problem. If we just stop
>>> increasing the amount of food, the population will stop growing.
>>> That's literally true. He seems to be suggesting that we simply
>>> accept that we're going to get some level of starvation, and we
>>> should figure that this is unavoidable while the population explosion
>>> is avoidable.
>This is fascinating. It allows the Stoic in each of us to say that
>there is no problem, because the problem solves itself. There is some
>suffering involved, however, for those who exist beyond the
>environment's capability to sustain them. These suffering people
>should go into the recycling tanks and suffer no more.
That's precisely what's happening right now.
He claims that our attempts to provide more food result quickly in
more people, so those attempts consistently fail. This is like what
we've all seen with urban freeways, they spend a lot of money tearing
up a road to make it wider so the traffic will move faster on it, and
the immediate result is that more people move into the areas the
freeway serves until the traffic is as bad as ever. Traffic gets as
bad as people will put up with, and that determines how many people
will live in each area. Build new roads and you get more people
instead of faster traffic.
I think his reasoning is plausible. Things might not have to happen
that way, reasoning is always a bit unreliable. Come up with an
effective method and prove him wrong, and we'll all breathe a bit
easier.
Jonah Thomas
>For instance, one could easily BUY pieces of rainforest
>and let others do research for some smarter alternative.
It isn't enough to buy it, you have to pay guards to keep
guarding it, and you have to personally check up on the guards.
Otherwise you'll find out that while you weren't looking somebody
clearcut it, and then somebody else raised beef on it until they
couldn't anymore, and what you have left isn't worth much. And
you won't even be able to sue, they'll be long gone.
So you need to pay your guards well enough and indoctrinate them
so they'll stand off loggers who have automatic weapons, and you
have to check up on them so they don't take bribes, and then you
have to expect that your guards will shoot the place up. And if
you make yourself too unpopular the local government will
confiscate your land and auction it off to their logger friends.
When you look at how effectively we preserve redwood forests here,
it's no surprise it's even harder there.
Jonah Thomas
>With more on that story, here's correspondent **Jonah Thomas**:
>> I have some doubt too. People on salary, who have their lives planned
>> out, tend to have one child or perhaps two or very occasionally three.
>> People who're closer to reality tend to have more. Probably all it
>> would take to reduce population growth, or even to reduce populations,
>> would be to arrange to put the whole third world either on salary or
>> on the dole, and give them just enough to support one child per woman.
>> Once they give up the idea that they can feed themselves they'll be
>> glad to be sterilised to avoid too many mouths to share with.
>Well, I don't know if you've ever been to a third world country yourself,
>but these women are actually too dumb to make such an assumption.
>You'd have to be teaching them all this first.
Yes, you would.
>I'm always amazed
>by their stupidity, usually I get angry at those people to stupid
>to count, but of course, they can't help being raised stupid.
Here's one possible way to look at it: They're used to living with
a lot of uncertainty. Even if they don't have any children they could
still starve to death. And if they have a lot of children they might
luck out and feed most of them. What they're doing *works* for them
on average, better than most of their other individual choices would.
So what you do is you *reduce* the uncertainty. If you can get them
into a situation where they can depend on a check every two weeks,
and they *know* it won't be less and it won't be more, they know
just how much money they have to live on every two weeks, and they
don't have any other good way to get money, then they'll wise up
pretty quick.
You don't give them extra money for extra children. And you keep
it stable. If you ran it as a lottery where every now and then they
don't get enough to eat but every two weeks *somebody* gets ten
million dollars, then it won't work.
>So what're you gonna do about it? Let them starve to death?
>No, civilized people wouldn't agree with that,
>what you should be doing is create a sterilizing
>virus. Something built in some kind of influenza.
>If I'd be extremely rich, I'd have some scientists
>work on that. And you can say it's sick, the whole
>world would be disapproving, but what can you say?
>It's the only way out I kid you not.
Many people believe this. It will probably be attempted, maybe
multiple times. This is something that's hard to get right. If it
doesn't spread well enough then it won't sterilise very many people.
Why would your changed virus outcompete the ones that have been
breeding on their own? The more virulent you make it, the better
chance it has to spread, and the more people you'll kill quick.
Kill too many people and sterilise too many of the remainder and
it might take humanity 200 years to build back.
waldby julian f
>Well, I don't know if you've ever been to a third world country yourself,
>but these women are actually too dumb to make such an assumption.
>You'd have to be teaching them all this first. I'm always amazed
>by their stupidity, usually I get angry at those people to stupid
>to count, but of course, they can't help being raised stupid.
>So what're you gonna do about it? Let them starve to death?
>No, civilized people wouldn't agree with that,
>what you should be doing is create a sterilizing
>virus. Something built in some kind of influenza.
>If I'd be extremely rich, I'd have some scientists
>work on that. And you can say it's sick, the whole
>world would be disapproving, but what can you say?
>It's the only way out I kid you not.
You are insane and need to be sterilized. I believe we can agree, as
we saw in a previous post, that there is no problem - obviously the
starvation problem cannot exceed a certain threshold because starving
people die. One can look at it as a necessary part of a ecosystem.
Starving has constantly throttled down species and brought things into
balance. There will always (well, at least for a very long time) be
starvation, and all you can do about it is make sure you are not one
of the starving.
Jennifer Faucher
> There will always (well, at least for a very long time) be
> starvation, and all you can do about it is make sure you are not one
> of the starving.
Obviously, if you can keep yourself from starving, it is
sometimes possible to keep people you like from starving
too. "All a person can do" is keep as many people from
starving as he or she can.
The arguments you present are routinely deficient in logic.
Trust me. I'm a logician.
Jennifer Faucher
Jules sans scrupules
> You are insane and need to be sterilized.
I'm not insane and you are very well aware of that.
Perhaps I'm a few decades ahead of what your mind
seems to be capable of comprehending. And for now,
I have no intentions of breeding either. So, please
explain to me what's so wrong with sterilization?
> I believe we can agree, as we saw in a previous post,
> that there is no problem - obviously the starvation problem
> cannot exceed a certain threshold because starving people die.
Of course these starving people will not like the way they
have to die. (i.e. slowly, of hunger and food-shortages)
One can prevent this by anticipating on that:
Sterilize as many people while we can, while there's
still reasonably little starvation-rates on earth.
> One can look at it as a necessary part of a ecosystem.
And now take it a step further:
What is the goal? What's the great plan behind that ecosystem?
How long will you suppose it will all last for us humans here?
How many generations after yours will have a future, you think?
Why keep on preserving a planet, a being, that is bound
to once be destroyed in a very painful manner?
Why not plan for a painLESS ending, a final generation.
Do you want to say life is so precious it should not end?
Why do you feel YOUR species is better than any other?
Is your reason to be here the fact that you're afraid
of the thought dying? Are you scared I could be right?
Who do you believe in? Why are you here, you think?
> Starving has constantly throttled down species and brought things into
> balance. There will always (well, at least for a very long time) be
> starvation, and all you can do about it is make sure you are not one
> of the starving.
Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.
Eventually no matter what else happens, the Earth will be destroyed.
Some of us don't want the ultimate fate of our world to be left
to the hands of nature. We seek to shape the inevitable,
thus leaving the mark of humanity upon the universe forever...
> Julian
Julius
Jennifer Faucher
> >And we should sterilize all the rich people before they have
> >children at all, and nullify their wills, and redistribute
> >their wealth when they die.
>
> Rich people would be bitterly opposed to that. They would keep
> you from publicising it over the mass media.
I just did publicize it over the mass media, and I don't
see any rich people preventing me. I could even put it
on my web page. If socially-conscious angsters would SEND
ME MONEY, I bet I could even get a TV or radio commercial
without too much trouble.
> If you kept working
> toward it they would have you arrested and you might likely get
> raped and impregnated in jail.
You are so subtle.
> If that didn't stop you they'd
> likely have you committed "voluntarily" to a mental hospital to
> be treated for your delusions. If you got out and kept going
> you'd face the fact that they can buy votes and security guards
> while you'd be relying on amateur voters and amateur assassins.
Amateur assassins are better. We do it for love not
money. It's art, man.
Jennifer Faucher
waldby julian f
>Obviously, if you can keep yourself from starving, it is
>sometimes possible to keep people you like from starving
>too. "All a person can do" is keep as many people from
>starving as he or she can.
>The arguments you present are routinely deficient in logic.
>Trust me. I'm a logician.
I thought Jonah was Mr. Spock.
Jonah Thomas
>Jonah Thomas wrote:
>> >And we should sterilize all the rich people before they have
>> >children at all, and nullify their wills, and redistribute
>> >their wealth when they die.
>> Rich people would be bitterly opposed to that. They would keep
>> you from publicising it over the mass media.
>I just did publicize it over the mass media, and I don't
>see any rich people preventing me. I could even put it
>on my web page.
Those aren't mass media. Those are things that many individual
crackpots could do.
>If socially-conscious angsters would SEND
>ME MONEY, I bet I could even get a TV or radio commercial
>without too much trouble.
I expect you'd have trouble. The mass media people try very hard
not to offend their big advertisers. When the PLO wanted to
publish an ad explaining that they wanted peace with Israel and
they wanted their own little country, they tried for more than a
month to find somebody who'd publish it. Finally the Christian
Science Monitor changed their mind and agreed to take the PLO
money. The CSM got a whole lot of criticism for it and they lost
a lot of ad revenue.
>> If you kept working
>> toward it they would have you arrested and you might likely get
>> raped and impregnated in jail.
>You are so subtle.
Thank you.
>> If that didn't stop you they'd
>> likely have you committed "voluntarily" to a mental hospital to
>> be treated for your delusions. If you got out and kept going
>> you'd face the fact that they can buy votes and security guards
>> while you'd be relying on amateur voters and amateur assassins.
>Amateur assassins are better. We do it for love not
>money. It's art, man.
Yes, but amateurs don't have a prayer at protecting you, they're
best at attacking random targets. And unless your timing is
perfect you'll need amateur voters more than anything, and the
mass media will be 100% against you, as will the churches. Not
to mention the yacht clubs. The other choice is to organise the
whole thing very fast *during* a moment of social breakdown.
That's unprecedented, but you need something unprecedented.
Jonah Thomas
>> You are insane and need to be sterilized.
>I'm not insane and you are very well aware of that.
If you feel the need to argue the point then you ought
to admit there is some doubt.
>> I believe we can agree, as we saw in a previous post,
>> that there is no problem - obviously the starvation problem
>> cannot exceed a certain threshold because starving people die.
>Of course these starving people will not like the way they
>have to die. (i.e. slowly, of hunger and food-shortages)
>One can prevent this by anticipating on that:
>Sterilize as many people while we can, while there's
>still reasonably little starvation-rates on earth.
I'm reasonably sure that anybody in the USA who wants to be
sterilised can arrange it. And it's increasingly available
in many third-world nations. At this point the problem isn't
so much that we aren't providing enough sterilisation as that
there aren't enough volunteers. Since the birthrate mostly
isn't due to people who're sure they don't want children, who
have them anyway because they can't arrange to be sterilised,
to make a difference that way we'd need to sterilise a lot
of people who didn't want it and many of them would be
violently opposed. That is not workable.
>> One can look at it as a necessary part of a ecosystem.
>And now take it a step further:
>What is the goal? What's the great plan behind that ecosystem?
Ecosystems are made of whatever smaller systems have been able
to maintain themselves this long. Human beings have managed to
disrupt things that have been reasonably stable for 50,000 years,
by using a lot of fossil fuels. We can't keep doing that.
>How long will you suppose it will all last for us humans here?
No telling. Five years? Ten? A thousand? If we manage to
disrupt ourselves back to the stone age we might keep a small
population going for a very long time.
>How many generations after yours will have a future, you think?
No telling at all. We don't know how to predict. Say you were
trying to predict that in 999 AD, what information would you
have used? In 1499? Our current information systems have no
track record for that sort of thing, they're probably completely
inadequate to the task.
>Why keep on preserving a planet, a being, that is bound
>to once be destroyed in a very painful manner?
How do you know it will be painful? Put it this way -- if you
have a mostly-painless method to destroy it now, how do you
know there won't be an even less painful method available in
ten years? If you do nothing and somebody else sets off a
painless destruction in the last year before a very painful one
would have happened, what have you lost?
>Why not plan for a painLESS ending, a final generation.
Because you're basically stupid, you have no talent for planning,
and you don't know how to make it work anyway. If you botch
the job and wind up with a bunch of survivors frantically running
around doing painful desperate things that eventually result in
some sort of clumsy continuation, and you accidentally wind up
surviving long enough to see that, you'll feel like a total idiot.
>Do you want to say life is so precious it should not end?
It isn't my choice whether life ends. I can try to kill
everything and fail, or I can try to keep particular things
alive and fail. It's a silly question.
>Why do you feel YOUR species is better than any other?
Who cares whether he feels his species is better? What
difference does it make what he thinks? Do you feel that
your species is on a par with Diphyllobothrium latum the
tapeworm of fish that can grow to 20 feet? There's never
been a 20 foot human. So which is worse?
>Is your reason to be here the fact that you're afraid
>of the thought dying? Are you scared I could be right?
You're asking questions that don't have right or wrong
answers. Is this art?
>Who do you believe in? Why are you here, you think?
I'm doing my part. You're doing your part. If you figure
out a way to destroy all the eucaryotes and I live long
enough to see it happen, I'll be sad about it. If I
think you have a reasonable chance at it I'll try to stop
you. If humanity doesn't have what it takes to avoid
killing itself off on purpose, then we'll have weeded
ourselves out of the ecosystem. I don't want that but
I can't say it won't happen, it's happened to the majority
of other species.
>Eventually no matter what else happens, the Earth will be destroyed.
>Some of us don't want the ultimate fate of our world to be left
>to the hands of nature. We seek to shape the inevitable,
>thus leaving the mark of humanity upon the universe forever...
When the earth is a sun-scorched cinder what kind of mark do you
think you'll have left? If you want to leave a mark forever, you
should root for us to find out how to reach other star systems.
And later other galaxies. There was a time when europeans didn't
know that the western hemisphere was there, or australia. Not so
very long ago there weren't any humans in the western hemisphere.
The universe is a big place, we don't know just how big, we guess
at it entirely from patterns of electromagnetic radiation we
imagine come from elsewhere. There could be places to go that we
don't know about at all, any more than the europeans knew about
cuba. So we don't know what our limits are. We might not be stuck
on a single planet for even another hundred years. We don't know
where we'll be in 500 years. Maybe we'll have killed ourselves
for lack of any better idea, or because some of us are convinced
it's all hopeless.
Jules sans scrupules
> >> One can look at it as a necessary part of a ecosystem.
>
> >And now take it a step further:
> >What is the goal? What's the great plan behind that ecosystem?
>
> Ecosystems are made of whatever smaller systems have been able
> to maintain themselves this long. Human beings have managed to
> disrupt things that have been reasonably stable for 50,000 years,
> by using a lot of fossil fuels. We can't keep doing that.
What makes you so certain human beings are to blame for all that?
It is never proven to be just humanity what's responsible.
And why can't we keep doing that? Why should we stop that?
Why should we prolong an ecosystem that would have abandoned
humans a long time ago if we hadn't been so dumb as to think
our existence is worth more ?
> >How many generations after yours will have a future, you think?
>
> No telling at all. We don't know how to predict. Say you were
> trying to predict that in 999 AD, what information would you
> have used? In 1499? Our current information systems have no
> track record for that sort of thing, they're probably completely
> inadequate to the task.
My point was that we have no future, even if we try to create one.
There's absolutely no reason whatsoever you can think of
why humans and why planet earth should be maintained.
> >Why keep on preserving a planet, a being, that is bound
> >to once be destroyed in a very painful manner?
>
> How do you know it will be painful? Put it this way -- if you
> have a mostly-painless method to destroy it now, how do you
> know there won't be an even less painful method available in
> ten years?
Why wait? the longer we wait, the more critical it becomes,
the more difficult it becomes to think straight, to get
something done in time. If you ask me, we're already far
too late setting "The Final Date" for human existence.
If we set off some global sterilization, obligatory and inevitable
(put out with no negotiations or compromises --the final birth
is the final birth, period--), the one "pain" necessary is an
ethical one. I could live with the fact that I could not
have children anymore, a lot of people, mostly women,
presumably will have great difficulties accepting that
they can no longer bare children.
> If you do nothing and somebody else sets off a
> painless destruction in the last year before a very painful one
> would have happened, what have you lost?
This is all way too dependent on luck and chance.
You should avoid that as much as possible. And you could.
I'm absolutely positive science can NOW easily set a date
for a final human birth and make that work foreverlasting
as far as this solarsystem is involved.
Once this date is known we can plan our consumption,
and it would be way easier and more fun to live.
Finally, no more worries, no more environmental matters
colliding with everything. I'm sure every human can then
have a very high standard of living just because of that.
> >Why not plan for a painLESS ending, a final generation.
>
> Because you're basically stupid, you have no talent for planning,
> and you don't know how to make it work anyway.
I'm sorry, but I don't consider myself 'basically stupid'.
Maybe you are, but I'm not. I've even teached on these particular
topics in dutch, on a university here. About our extinction.
The one clear thing I've gotten out of that was
that most people indeed are too stupid (and lazy)
to think about their existence in terms of it not being
certain at all. They block it away. I can plan it too,
better than any politician we have on this planet.
The only missing ingredient is money.
> If you botch
> the job and wind up with a bunch of survivors frantically running
> around doing painful desperate things that eventually result in
> some sort of clumsy continuation, and you accidentally wind up
> surviving long enough to see that, you'll feel like a total idiot.
Non-sense. My plans never involve survival of the human race at all.
An end is an end to me. You're immediately thinking about all kinds
of bloody and disastrous endings, I'm not.
You're thinking it will be difficult to accept extinction,
I no longer think it will be; People can accept the fact
humanity wasn't something to always be here.
And if they can't, they better start to.
> >Do you want to say life is so precious it should not end?
>
> It isn't my choice whether life ends. I can try to kill
> everything and fail, or I can try to keep particular things
> alive and fail. It's a silly question.
If you're sterilizing, you're not killing anyone.
You're the one being silly. There's no murder involved
in sterilization. The only thing you will kill is this planet,
our existence. Nobody needs to feel pain. Better yet;
Just because of such good planning, we could avoid
many kinds of pain more than we can ever do now.
We'd be free of most worries. Imagine the lives we'd lead!
> >Why do you feel YOUR species is better than any other?
>
> Who cares whether he feels his species is better?
I care. If he didn't feel like that, he would accept
a plan for total extinction of his species easier.
After we're gone, then we can't care,
cause we're not here anymore.
> What difference does it make what he thinks?
It slows down the process of making this world
politically ready for a final date of existence.
> You're asking questions that don't have right or wrong
> answers. Is this art?
No, I'm trying to make him think. It works on you, obviously.
> >Who do you believe in? Why are you here, you think?
>
> I'm doing my part. You're doing your part.
Part of what? You make it sound like we're obligated
to do our parts, while we're not. Nobody is.
There's no reason. We're nothing, useless,
and we will never be of use to the universe.
There's nothing holding us back or down.
> If humanity doesn't have what it takes to avoid
> killing itself off on purpose, then we'll have weeded
> ourselves out of the ecosystem. I don't want that but
> I can't say it won't happen, it's happened to the majority
> of other species.
Again: With what goal in mind? Why should human kind
survive longer than necessary? Because you 'like it' ?
> If you want to leave a mark forever, you
> should root for us to find out how to reach other star systems.
Let them reach us. (Presumably they have already..)
> The universe is a big place, we don't know just how big, we guess
> at it entirely from patterns of electromagnetic radiation we
> imagine come from elsewhere. There could be places to go that we
> don't know about at all, any more than the europeans knew about
> cuba. So we don't know what our limits are. We might not be stuck
> on a single planet for even another hundred years. We don't know
> where we'll be in 500 years. Maybe we'll have killed ourselves
> for lack of any better idea, or because some of us are convinced
> it's all hopeless.
It is.
Even if we find answers to our questions, nobody will like them.
I'm convinced that the more answers people get for their
seemingly unanswered ones about the why, when and how of life,
the more they agree with total sterilization. Higher intelligence
and more knowledge are not agreeable with humanity.
The things won't function together within this species.
You're an example of that; No doubt you will avoid this subject
any further. You don't like writing about it, even though
it's all toying with you deep inside. Day in and day out
you wonder. It should be the most important thing for us,
but people are afraid of it. The truth will stand though;
6 billion of us need food, there's not enough planet left
in no time.
waldby julian f
>What makes you so certain human beings are to blame for all that?
>It is never proven to be just humanity what's responsible.
>And why can't we keep doing that? Why should we stop that?
>Why should we prolong an ecosystem that would have abandoned
>humans a long time ago if we hadn't been so dumb as to think
>our existence is worth more ?
Our existence is worth more than any other animal due to the fact that
we are the most highly developed, exhibiting signs of intelligence. This
doesn't make it right for us to destroy the other animals, however. One
could argue against our greater worth by saying that we are destructive
and selfish with the world. However, this is likely to be a stage in any
creature's development, and it is best to get over the hump (if such a
thing is possible) and move beyond the destruction. Most of us are smart
enough to feel some guilt for the environmental destruction.
>My point was that we have no future, even if we try to create one.
>There's absolutely no reason whatsoever you can think of
>why humans and why planet earth should be maintained.
What proof do you have that we have no future? What do you mean by we
have no future? I assume that you mean our future is below some
standard you would set for us. The reasons humans should be maintained
is because they are the most intelligent species for probably light
years. It is controversial to say that we are the best, because
captialistic greed and human failings such as jealousy, murder and war
reduce our qualities. However, as above, I contend that this is a step
in any developing intelligence. Your genocide of the humans is like
taking your favorite CD and smashing it, or like finding one nice
shiny red apple amongst a bin full of rotten ones and dropping it to
the ground and stepping on it. Is it your idea to perform abortion on
every developing species until the perfect one is found?
Jonah Thomas
>> >What is the goal? What's the great plan behind that ecosystem?
>> Ecosystems are made of whatever smaller systems have been able
>> to maintain themselves this long. Human beings have managed to
>> disrupt things that have been reasonably stable for 50,000 years,
>> by using a lot of fossil fuels. We can't keep doing that.
>What makes you so certain human beings are to blame for all that?
We have disrupted ecosystems by introducing foreign plants and
animals. There is no question of this.
We have disrupted ecosystems by killing the native plants and
planting our crops or our suburbs in their places. There is no
question of that either.
>It is never proven to be just humanity what's responsible.
That's silly.
>And why can't we keep doing that? Why should we stop that?
Because we're running out of fossil fuels. Each year we have to
dig deeper and look harder to find more oil outside the middle
east. It gets more expensive but because we need it, we
distribute the costs over everything else -- the result is that
everything gets more expensive. We can't keep doing this
indefinitely, we will run out of oil. Unless we can replace the
oil with some other energy source (and plutonium reactors are
our most workable choice at the moment) we will have to severely
reduce our transportation.
There are a collection of other things that are likely to stop
us. The central point is that the old ecosystems were very
stable given the situations they faced, and we are not stable at
all.
Given a traditional ecosystem it was predictable that it could
handle (and use) most of the disruptive events it was likely
to meet. We have no track record; we have been pretty good at
building something new and different after we disrupt our own
cultures, and when it hasn't worked the survivors have changed
things around again and have given it another try.
There is very little reason to think we can keep doing what we're
doing now -- we'll have to do something different.
>Why should we prolong an ecosystem that would have abandoned
>humans a long time ago if we hadn't been so dumb as to think
>our existence is worth more ?
I remember a novel, in which the main character got involved with
a woman who tried to get him killed so she could get his money
plus an object of power, a McGuffin, he carried. (A McGuffin
is a generic prize, something people want, where for the purposes
of discussion it isn't important what's important about it.) She
used a series of tricks and each one somehow failed to kill him.
He kept thinking he wanted her, but he started to lose patience.
Finally, after one spectacular murder attempt failed he got her
helpless and considered killing her just to get it over with.
She knew she was helpless and she faced the other way, waiting
for him to cut her throat. Then he thought it over. There was
a question he hadn't asked her, and he couldn't remember the
question. So he tiptoed away and left her there.
Our ecosystems are preserving a tremendous amount of genetic
diversity, four billion years of evolution in each genetic line.
I say, don't throw those away unless we know we'll never need
them. It's OK to throw away the smallpox genome, we've recorded
it and if we do ever need it we can reconstruct it (unfortunately).
I don't see it as a moral issue, it's a matter of our long-term
best interest. If you don't care about the long-term then you
could have a different conclusion. For example, if you don't
care about the next generation at all, it would make sense to
arrange things so just before you died you ate the last baby
in the world, a nice tender last meal.
>> >How many generations after yours will have a future, you think?
>> No telling at all. We don't know how to predict. Say you were
>> trying to predict that in 999 AD, what information would you
>> have used? In 1499? Our current information systems have no
>> track record for that sort of thing, they're probably completely
>> inadequate to the task.
>My point was that we have no future, even if we try to create one.
>There's absolutely no reason whatsoever you can think of
>why humans and why planet earth should be maintained.
If you're asking why we *ought* to keep going, that's a choice. No
right or wrong answer, we each get to choose and then do whatever
we think best in line with our choices. If you're asking how long
we're *likely* to keep going, I say we don't nearly have the data
we'd need to predict that, and rather than making choices based on
some half-assed prediction on utterly inadequate information, we'd
do better to spend at least the next few hundred years collecting
the info first and then decide. Supposing we last that long. If
we get killed off before we can figure out whether we're likely to,
that's an answer to your question that doesn't demand any particular
work from you.
>> >Why keep on preserving a planet, a being, that is bound
>> >to once be destroyed in a very painful manner?
>> How do you know it will be painful? Put it this way -- if you
>> have a mostly-painless method to destroy it now, how do you
>> know there won't be an even less painful method available in
>> ten years?
>Why wait? the longer we wait, the more critical it becomes,
>the more difficult it becomes to think straight, to get
>something done in time. If you ask me, we're already far
>too late setting "The Final Date" for human existence.
De gustibus. You seem to have some goal here that you haven't
said yet. Why is it critical? What difference does it make
to you? If humanity were to do an extra hundred years of global
destruction before we disappeared, why would you care? You say
you don't care about the ecosystems we're damaging, so what's
the problem?
>If we set off some global sterilization, obligatory and inevitable
>(put out with no negotiations or compromises --the final birth
>is the final birth, period--), the one "pain" necessary is an
>ethical one. I could live with the fact that I could not
>have children anymore, a lot of people, mostly women,
>presumably will have great difficulties accepting that
>they can no longer bare children.
Yes, some of them would want to kill you on sight and others would
want to torture you to death very slowly. Better to kill yourself
first, even before you find out whether it works, to keep from being
found by the wrong ones. Better still, kill yourself before you even
get started.
>> If you do nothing and somebody else sets off a
>> painless destruction in the last year before a very painful one
>> would have happened, what have you lost?
>This is all way too dependent on luck and chance.
>You should avoid that as much as possible. And you could.
>I'm absolutely positive science can NOW easily set a date
>for a final human birth and make that work foreverlasting
>as far as this solarsystem is involved.
I looked into it and I'm not at all certain of that. My best guess
is that we could very likely do something that would kill 90% of
the population and make 50% of the rest infertile. It *might* do
what you say, but there's no way to do lab tests and the simulation
results are notoriously unreliable. If you failed to get everybody
you'd get no second chance -- the resources you'd need would no
longer be available. So you could try, and if you failed completely
you could try again, and you could keep trying until you got
something that stopped you. Anything that gave you important info
about how to do better would be big enough to stop you. So it's
very uncertain.
>Once this date is known we can plan our consumption,
>and it would be way easier and more fun to live.
>Finally, no more worries, no more environmental matters
>colliding with everything. I'm sure every human can then
>have a very high standard of living just because of that.
Ah! So that's what you're bothered about! A lot of people have a
very high standard of living and no environmental worries right
now, just by not thinking about it. If you have the resources to
do what you say, you could be one of them simply by putting your
morbid ideas aside.
>> >Why not plan for a painLESS ending, a final generation.
>> Because you're basically stupid, you have no talent for planning,
>> and you don't know how to make it work anyway.
>I'm sorry, but I don't consider myself 'basically stupid'.
Of course you don't.
>Maybe you are, but I'm not. I've even teached on these particular
>topics in dutch, on a university here. About our extinction.
>The one clear thing I've gotten out of that was
>that most people indeed are too stupid (and lazy)
>to think about their existence in terms of it not being
>certain at all.
I agree, it isn't certain at all. Personally I don't see that a
certainty of failure would be better than leaving it uncertain.
De gustibus.
>They block it away. I can plan it too,
>better than any politician we have on this planet.
That could easily be true. When I said you were stupid and you
have no talent for planning, I hope you didn't take that to mean
that I thought you were worse than a politician! I intended a
very mild insult, not one of that magnitude.
>The only missing ingredient is money.
Good!
>> If you botch
>> the job and wind up with a bunch of survivors frantically running
>> around doing painful desperate things that eventually result in
>> some sort of clumsy continuation, and you accidentally wind up
>> surviving long enough to see that, you'll feel like a total idiot.
>Non-sense. My plans never involve survival of the human race at all.
>An end is an end to me. You're immediately thinking about all kinds
>of bloody and disastrous endings, I'm not.
No, I'm talking about the chance that you botch it and get something
that isn't an end at all, only a bloody and disastrous continuation.
>You're thinking it will be difficult to accept extinction,
>I no longer think it will be; People can accept the fact
>humanity wasn't something to always be here.
>And if they can't, they better start to.
If I have to, I will. It doesn't look like a sure thing to me either
way, at this point. Humanity as we know it is unlikely to last more
than another ten million years or so, but we might likely evolve into
something else that keeps going. Too soon to tell.
>> >Do you want to say life is so precious it should not end?
>> It isn't my choice whether life ends. I can try to kill
>> everything and fail, or I can try to keep particular things
>> alive and fail. It's a silly question.
>If you're sterilizing, you're not killing anyone.
>You're the one being silly. There's no murder involved
>in sterilization. The only thing you will kill is this planet,
>our existence. Nobody needs to feel pain. Better yet;
>Just because of such good planning, we could avoid
>many kinds of pain more than we can ever do now.
>We'd be free of most worries. Imagine the lives we'd lead!
You're assuming you know how to make a plague that would sterilise
everybody without killing anybody. You seem to be unfamiliar with
the ecological principles involved. Plagues mutate, variations get
selected. If you use something that people have already been exposed
to there are usually a lot of resistant people around. Lots of
people stay uninfected or fight off very mild infections. If you use
something that people haven't been exposed to it tends to be rather
virulent -- it hasn't had time to adapt to us. Likely any effective
plague would kill a significant number of people. There are various
ways to try for sterilisation, you could for example use antigens from
human sperm or eggs in your vector, hoping that people would build up
autoimmune diseases. This would most likely be painful. Or you could
try to get something that would specifically target reproductive tissue
and destroy it. This would most likely be painful too. Etc. But in
each case, what you do to create reproductive damage would be a side
issue for your plague organisms. They mutate and they're selected to
infect easier, to spread more. Damaging human reproductive tissue is
a side issue for that goal -- unless you make it an STD. If it doesn't
further the spread of the plague it's likely to lose out, be replaced
by a variant form that doesn't do that. 100% success is very unlikely.
>> >Why do you feel YOUR species is better than any other?
>> Who cares whether he feels his species is better?
>I care. If he didn't feel like that, he would accept
>a plan for total extinction of his species easier.
He could just as easily accept a plan for total extinction of
everything. But what for?
>> What difference does it make what he thinks?
>It slows down the process of making this world
>politically ready for a final date of existence.
That's silly. The world isn't going to get ready for that.
You have to do it sneaky, and then kill yourself before they
catch you. Better yet, kill yourself now.
>> >Who do you believe in? Why are you here, you think?
>> I'm doing my part. You're doing your part.
>Part of what? You make it sound like we're obligated
>to do our parts, while we're not. Nobody is.
>There's no reason. We're nothing, useless,
>and we will never be of use to the universe.
>There's nothing holding us back or down.
In that case, quit. You don't sound like you're having
a lot of fun doing what you're doing, and nobody needs you
to. If you don't do your part nobody will care.
>> If humanity doesn't have what it takes to avoid
>> killing itself off on purpose, then we'll have weeded
>> ourselves out of the ecosystem. I don't want that but
>> I can't say it won't happen, it's happened to the majority
>> of other species.
>Again: With what goal in mind? Why should human kind
>survive longer than necessary? Because you 'like it' ?
De gustibus.
>> The universe is a big place, we don't know just how big, we guess
>> at it entirely from patterns of electromagnetic radiation we
>> imagine come from elsewhere. There could be places to go that we
>> don't know about at all, any more than the europeans knew about
>> cuba. So we don't know what our limits are. We might not be stuck
>> on a single planet for even another hundred years. We don't know
>> where we'll be in 500 years. Maybe we'll have killed ourselves
>> for lack of any better idea, or because some of us are convinced
>> it's all hopeless.
>It is.
How could you know?
>Even if we find answers to our questions, nobody will like them.
>I'm convinced that the more answers people get for their
>seemingly unanswered ones about the why, when and how of life,
>the more they agree with total sterilization. Higher intelligence
>and more knowledge are not agreeable with humanity.
De gustibus.
>The things won't function together within this species.
>You're an example of that; No doubt you will avoid this subject
>any further. You don't like writing about it, even though
>it's all toying with you deep inside. Day in and day out
>you wonder. It should be the most important thing for us,
>but people are afraid of it. The truth will stand though;
>6 billion of us need food, there's not enough planet left
>in no time.
The original idea presented in this thread was that it's OK
that there are more people who need food than will get food.
We could build an equilibrium around that, if we wanted to.
I'm not sure I go along with that but it's another alternative
to what you say. There isn't one way it has to happen.
waldby julian f
First of all, what does 'De gustibus' mean? I can't find it in the oed.
>The Dutch Guy:
>>And why can't we keep doing that? Why should we stop that?
>Because we're running out of fossil fuels. Each year we have to
>dig deeper and look harder to find more oil outside the middle
>east. It gets more expensive but because we need it, we
>distribute the costs over everything else -- the result is that
>everything gets more expensive. We can't keep doing this
>indefinitely, we will run out of oil. Unless we can replace the
>oil with some other energy source (and plutonium reactors are
>our most workable choice at the moment) we will have to severely
>reduce our transportation.
This is a beautiful predicament. Our boats are burned for us, as in
the old Chinese general's army. We are forced to implement more
efficient methods, and technology should be boosted a great deal in a
short amount of time. Transportation is not going to go quietly into
the dark night, but will be a strength as people continue to desire
to zoom all over town with 1 person per vehicle. Transportation is
perceived as a necessity and necessity is the mother of invention.
There is, of course, a downside that fuel reserves will be enormously
wasted, but that's the price we must pay to increase our capabilities.
It will be okay that they have made countless species extinct, when
they develop the ability to clone rabbits using human zygotes.
Jules sans scrupules
> We have disrupted ecosystems by introducing foreign plants and
> animals. There is no question of this.
You haven't been doing your homework on this.
There are many facts that prove otherwise.
It is very arrogant to think we are that influential.
By saying this you exclude humans as part of this ecosystem.
Humans are more important to you, otherwise you wouldn't
try and prolong our possibility to live (and outlive)
other species and try and preserve the planet
to your likings. Maybe planet earth never
wanted to be so beautiful for all this time.
> We have disrupted ecosystems by killing the native plants and
> planting our crops or our suburbs in their places. There is no
> question of that either.
This is still small influence, and still proof you think
you are more important (and not part of) natural evolutions
that take place on this planet.
> >It is never proven to be just humanity what's responsible.
>
> That's silly.
It's true. You should get into just that a little more,
there's a lot to find on this on the www.
> >And why can't we keep doing that? Why should we stop that?
>
> Because we're running out of fossil fuels.
Yeah so? Why can't we run out of them for once?
It would stop population growth, right?
> The central point is that the old ecosystems were very
> stable given the situations they faced, and we are not stable at
> all.
Not true at all. If humans would not have been on this planet,
it would probably look very similar by now, that is if earth
would still contain life at all.
All it needed was a little larger asteroid back when
sauriers ruled over the planet.
> There is very little reason to think we can keep doing what we're
> doing now -- we'll have to do something different.
Like stopping our existence. Ending the sick history of humankind.
> Our ecosystems are preserving a tremendous amount of genetic
> diversity, four billion years of evolution in each genetic line.
> I say, don't throw those away unless we know we'll never need
> them. It's OK to throw away the smallpox genome, we've recorded
> it and if we do ever need it we can reconstruct it (unfortunately).
But for what would who need them?
Why think there's use in living if there has never proven to be any?
Why bother saving things at all? I don't see the gods yelling
at me I should stop my raving about the uselessness of life.
I'm not cursed, I'm not unhappy either. No real bad luck.
> If you're asking why we *ought* to keep going, that's a choice.
Choice comes forth out of humans thinking they need to choose
to make something worthwhile out of their lives.
Meanwhile the universe does not give a flying fuck
what careers we have, what cars we drive, how bad
we handle earth's resources. Tomorrow we're still
unimportant assholes trying to win battles.
I say: Get rid of the guilt-trips,
let's all just spend it while we're here.
Set a final date, sterilize our species
and escape from this idiocy, end that crap.
I have a new home to build up here, have to
unpack stuff, make daily life more pleasant,
so I bud out for some days.
Sorry guys, thanks for having me.
That Faucher-chick made sense to me.
"Because Julius is such a dimwit and likes to snort peoples underwear,
he is forced to hide his head in shit-buckets at the drop of a hat so
that his grotesquely deformed face won't scare children who are easily
frightened by the mental midgetry he seems to splatter all over USENET."
- repoMan, in <5uunq8$no$5...@nntp1.ba.best.com> http://come.to/my.island
waldby julian f
>But for what would who need them?
>Why think there's use in living if there has never proven to be any?
If you think life is so useless, why not end your own life. I don't
understand why you feel it is your right, nay, your obligation, to end
everyone else's as well.
>Why bother saving things at all?
Because it would piss a lot of people off if you destroyed
life. Including me. That has a lot of value. I find life meaningful
and useful. I enjoy life. I am sorry that you don't, but I'm not going
to let your dissatisfaction with life give you the right to take mine
away. Perhaps you are fond of the Littleton boys, nicely extinguishing
lives. Perhaps you are sick.
>I don't see the gods yelling
>at me I should stop my raving about the uselessness of life.
>I'm not cursed, I'm not unhappy either. No real bad luck.
We are the gods, you and I, for who knows how many light years. And I
am yelling at you. I can understand lamenting life and wishing to be
done with it, but I don't understand how you can think you have the
right to take away anyone else's.
Satanas Uxora
> >Who's the sick one here, pal?
> >You hypocrite.
>
> It is clear that you feel threatened by my logic,
That was not logic. Neither of you are exhibiting
much logic.
I have already pointed out examples of *your* illogic.
As for *him*: it is not logical to suppose that a virus
could be engineered that would sterilize absolutely every
human being. Genetic diversity forbids it.
If some people did get technology to overcome that
impossible obstacle, some other people would probably
get technology to overcome being sterilized.
Jules sans scrupules
> If you think life is so useless, why not end your own life. I don't
> understand why you feel it is your right, nay, your obligation, to end
> everyone else's as well.
You still don't understand it, Julian: Sterilizing does not involve
'ending' *a* life, it stops new lives from possibly beginning. And
it's not that I *think* life is so useless, it is fact that it is.
I don't need your approval or disapproval for that, nobody does.
I'm not ending anyone's life, I'm making it better by giving
everybody a secure and clear perspective on the future.
A better option than we have now.
If you really think you know why we are here, please tell us now.
> >Why bother saving things at all?
>
> Because it would piss a lot of people off if you destroyed life.
> Including me. That has a lot of value. I find life meaningful
> and useful.
Oh really? Then what is the meaning of life? Come on, tell us all!
I'm not destroying life, I'm closing down a system you are used to.
You're scared of that because you can't comprehend the fact
a planet earth would do just fine without humans on it.
Life does not need you. The universe could not care less.
> I enjoy life. I am sorry that you don't,
Huh? What makes you think I don't enjoy life???
Here's where you're so wrong. My goal is to make the lives
of me and everybody else even better than they are now.
> but I'm not going to let your dissatisfaction with life
> give you the right to take mine away.
Let me give it to you once again: (and please READ it for once)
My idea still is to try and cancel all reproductive capability
of humans, i.e. total sterilization, so that there will be
no-one left to KNOW or ask if we ever existed.
This idea has a great advantage over all others, because
one could think of accomplishing this sterilisation-bit
through viral contamination so that this virus will stay behind
to get that one idiot from a deserted russian space-craft that
might still land, or to revive if human life would eventually
evolve out of the sea again. We should invent some stubborn
bacteria that eat their way through all reproductive hormonal
activities in all living organisms. Yet it should be harmless
at the same time for those already here, or even to all
other species if that is wanted.
I'm sure for real good money, one could get this done.
With a virus like that we as a species could set a date,
and it would actually truly mean that then we'd
be the last humans on earth. We can finally
go through all energy sources and food
because we'll be the last ones here.
Who cares about what we'll leave behind
if there'll be nobody left here?
Say we aim for total sterilization as of the year 2010.
If no child will be born after that, we can do some
interesting planning: How to finish it all before
the year 2130. That would be the one good solution.
I have a more detailed description of this concept
in dutch on one of my webpages.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jult/nl/0.htm
> Perhaps you are fond of the Littleton boys, nicely extinguishing
> lives. Perhaps you are sick.
Please explain us all: Why am I sick exactly?
You are comparing violent acts with smart thinking
and putting them on the same scale, so you don't
have to worry at night. The bad guy is a bad guy.
He does not belong here. His ideas are sick to you.
I'm not a killer, I'm just very smart.
> We are the gods, you and I, for who knows how many light years.
Yeah, right.
> And I am yelling at you.
No you're not. YELLING LOOKS MORE LIKE THIS!!!
> I can understand lamenting life and wishing to be done with it,
No, my poor friend; I want to live as long as possible. I like life,
probably even more than you do. That's where my ideas come from:
I'm thinking about our future as a species, you aren't, you seem
to be solely thinking about your own petty little life, you don't
seem to give a shit about the problems next generations run into.
I say: If y'all are that selfish and stupid, fine, so be it,
but then make something good out of it, be sure there's no-one
left here when it's too damn hard to have a good life here.
Sterilize human kind. Easy, painlessly, smoothly.
.-.
Julius /|||\
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.-. /|||\ /|||||\ /|||||||||\ /|||||\ /|||\ .-.
-----x---x-----x-------X-----------X-------x-----x---x-----
`-' \|||/ \|||||/ \|||||||||/ \|||||/ \|||/ `-'
`-' \|||/ \|||||||/ \|||/ `-'
`-' \|||||/ `-'
\|||/
http://come.to/Julius `-' email: thij...@usa.net
Jules sans scrupules
> Our existence is worth more than any other animal due to the fact that
> we are the most highly developed, exhibiting signs of intelligence.
Oh wow, does it excite you to write that down?
Are you jerking off over these facts?
Does it make you feel good about yourself?
Want to control the weather now, don't you?
Who's the sick one here, pal?
You hypocrite.
-- http://come.to/my.island
In <34f0f1cb...@NNTP.IX.NETCOM.COM> "The Prof" wrote about me:
"You, sir, are polar. Generally, we all muddle about living our lives
without the benefit of such instruction as yours, but occasionally it makes
its way through to the hoi polloi. It did this time. We're grateful.
You have the best writing style and the clearest thinking of anyone with
organic brain syndrome I've ever run across. Congratulations. I hope I've
given you some encouragement to reflect upon as you nibble your bed rails."
waldby julian f
>With more on that story, here's correspondent **waldby julian f**:
>> Our existence is worth more than any other animal due to the fact that
>> we are the most highly developed, exhibiting signs of intelligence.
>Oh wow, does it excite you to write that down?
>Are you jerking off over these facts?
>Does it make you feel good about yourself?
>Want to control the weather now, don't you?
>Who's the sick one here, pal?
>You hypocrite.
It is clear that you feel threatened by my logic, and you resort to
inanity. If you dispute the facts, you should present dispute. If you
want the argument to degrade into foolishness you should, well, do
what you did.
waldby julian f
>With more on that story, here's correspondent **waldby julian f**:
>You still don't understand it, Julian: Sterilizing does not involve
>'ending' *a* life, it stops new lives from possibly beginning. And
>it's not that I *think* life is so useless, it is fact that it is.
>I don't need your approval or disapproval for that, nobody does.
>I'm not ending anyone's life, I'm making it better by giving
>everybody a secure and clear perspective on the future.
>A better option than we have now.
You are destroying the future. You wish to make intelligent life
impossible, starting after the last currently living human dies.
>If you really think you know why we are here, please tell us now.
We are here because we're here. That's one explanation. There are
many, depending on how far into the past you want to look. Merely not
knowing the reason for existance does not justify destroying it. A
better question is 'why do you ask irrelevant questions?'
>Oh really? Then what is the meaning of life? Come on, tell us all!
>I'm not destroying life, I'm closing down a system you are used to.
>You're scared of that because you can't comprehend the fact
>a planet earth would do just fine without humans on it.
>Life does not need you. The universe could not care less.
I see no point in closing down the system. The end results have no
effect on humans, because there are no humans to experience them.
This is absurd. I am not the universe. I do not directly care what the
universe cares about my existence. I care what I care about my
existance.
>> I enjoy life. I am sorry that you don't,
>Huh? What makes you think I don't enjoy life???
>Here's where you're so wrong. My goal is to make the lives
>of me and everybody else even better than they are now.
It improves some people's lives knowing there is a future for their
descendants. Even though we don't live forever, the generations beyond
us can live forever.
>I'm sure for real good money, one could get this done.
>With a virus like that we as a species could set a date,
>and it would actually truly mean that then we'd
>be the last humans on earth. We can finally
>go through all energy sources and food
>because we'll be the last ones here.
>Who cares about what we'll leave behind
>if there'll be nobody left here?
Beyond all your posturing about life being meaningless and the
universe uncaring, this is your entire reason for wanting the human
race to be sterilized, so that we can use all the resources without
guilt. Jonah has already said that you could use the resources and
ignore your guilt as it is. I am of the mindset of increased
technology. As resources are deplenished, more efficient methods are
required for garnishing usefulness out of those resources. This
technology will bring great benefit to humanity. Once we move on to
other planets, the increased resourcefulness will allow humans to take
great advantage. Perhaps technology will catch up with resource
elimination. Perhaps it will fall behind and there will be drastic
cutbacks in capability. However, I believe it will always be neck and
neck because shortage leads to innovation and little else motivates.
It is interesting to wonder at the meaningfulness of humanity and
whether it would be a loss to end it. Perhaps this is a good argument.
However, it should be written somewhere in our genes that we desire to
propogate humanity.
>I have a more detailed description of this concept
>in dutch on one of my webpages.
>http://www.xs4all.nl/~jult/nl/0.htm
Sorry, I don't understand Dutch.
Jonah Thomas
>First of all, what does 'De gustibus' mean? I can't find it in the oed.
Short for "de gustibus non disputandum" (disputandam?) which means
"Don't argue about esthetics" or maybe "There's no accounting for taste".
Jonah Thomas
>With more on that story, here's correspondent **Jonah Thomas**:
>> We have disrupted ecosystems by introducing foreign plants and
>> animals. There is no question of this.
>You haven't been doing your homework on this.
>There are many facts that prove otherwise.
Tell me about it. Do you have a fact? Do you have some reason
to think humans weren't responsible for the spread of chestnut
blight or dutch elm disease or kudzu into the western hemisphere?
>By saying this you exclude humans as part of this ecosystem.
When we look at our choices we need to think in terms of what we
do. There's no reason not to.
>> We have disrupted ecosystems by killing the native plants and
>> planting our crops or our suburbs in their places. There is no
>> question of that either.
>This is still small influence, and still proof you think
>you are more important (and not part of) natural evolutions
>that take place on this planet.
Why do you call it small? Kentucky used to be covered with
canefield marshes, and now it's mostly bluegrass. Does that
seem small to you?
>> >And why can't we keep doing that? Why should we stop that?
>> Because we're running out of fossil fuels.
>Yeah so? Why can't we run out of them for once?
>It would stop population growth, right?
When we run out we have to stop doing what we're doing and do
something else instead. My answer to your question was that
we can't keep doing the same things, we don't know how to keep
on.
>> The central point is that the old ecosystems were very
>> stable given the situations they faced, and we are not stable at
>> all.
>Not true at all. If humans would not have been on this planet,
>it would probably look very similar by now, that is if earth
>would still contain life at all.
This does not make sense. We have cities that glow in the dark,
we have giant irrigated fields in giant rectangles and little circles,
we have great big natural-gas fires in some of the oilfields where
it isn't worth collecting the gas, we've cut down the forests in
east-coast north america and in east-coast china, our agriculture
has changed things around most places there's plenty of water, and
where there's marginal water our irrigation has changed things quite
visibly. I have no idea where you're getting this idea.
>> There is very little reason to think we can keep doing what we're
>> doing now -- we'll have to do something different.
>Like stopping our existence. Ending the sick history of humankind.
That's one possibility.
>> Our ecosystems are preserving a tremendous amount of genetic
>> diversity, four billion years of evolution in each genetic line.
>> I say, don't throw those away unless we know we'll never need
>> them. It's OK to throw away the smallpox genome, we've recorded
>> it and if we do ever need it we can reconstruct it (unfortunately).
>But for what would who need them?
If we keep refining our sciences, at some point we'll need a wide
variety of evolved genes for our chemical engineering. As it is now
most of our chemical engineering involves high temperatures and nasty
organic solvents and fossil fuel derivatives. We don't use a lot of
biochemistry except for biomedical uses, because we think of it as
involving dilute water solutions, and it's impractical. When the
costs go up on the fossil fuels the current methods will get less
affordable and we'll look for ways to do cheaper biochemical
engineering, and then a lot of variant forms of genes will start
getting useful.
Later, when we learn to design ecosystems, we'll need the climate
information stored in the genomes and also the adaptations.
I could be wrong. We could go extinct without ever reaching this
point. We tend to think short-term, so we don't mind squandering
this wealth.
>Why think there's use in living if there has never proven to be any?
De gustibus.
>> If you're asking why we *ought* to keep going, that's a choice.
>Choice comes forth out of humans thinking they need to choose
>to make something worthwhile out of their lives.
No, whatever you choose is your choice. You talk like you think
it would be worthwhile to kill off humanity. That's another choice.
By some views that wouldn't make any difference, it simply doesn't
matter at all whether humanity goes extinct this generation or not.
Why does it matter to you?
>Meanwhile the universe does not give a flying fuck
>what careers we have, what cars we drive, how bad
>we handle earth's resources. Tomorrow we're still
>unimportant assholes trying to win battles.
Exactly. In trying to drive humanity extinct, you're an
unimportant asshole trying to win a silly battle.
An...@cable.a2000.nl
> That was not logic. Neither of you are exhibiting
> much logic.
Now here we have a new contributor convinced that humans need logic.
Please, explain to us why humans need to exhibit any logic at all.
They never did before. Life is not a logical result of anything.
> I have already pointed out examples of *your* illogic.
And I've ignored these points on purpose.
Existence is not logical. So none of us ever exhibits logic.
It just does not apply. And you know it doesn't.
> As for *him*: it is not logical to suppose that a virus
> could be engineered that would sterilize absolutely every
> human being. Genetic diversity forbids it.
Ha! You'd be amazed how similar all human beings are
inside, especially when it comes to reproduction.
> If some people did get technology to overcome that
> impossible obstacle,
It's already there, it needs to be developed.
> some other people would probably
> get technology to overcome being sterilized.
You can't overcome an irreversible chemical reaction,
you'd have to be creating functioning reproductive organs
in some kind of robot able to give birth. A very thin line.
The thing is, one can take this into account beforehand;
There are enough viruses out there for which there's no
reverse action thinkable. And another thing, you just
make it show up too late. I've been told by an expert
on disease-control this takes place naturally very often.
Create a carrier that spreads a catalyst for sterilization,
something very common like just some cold, or influenza,
and you will have no antidote. Those few that will be
left uncontaminated by it, will never be able to think
of (or work out and develop) a scheme against it in time.
This was a 100% certain fact according to the same expert.
If everyone's kids kids become sterile, and many of them
already will be by the way (a natural cause of overpopulation),
you first need to do research to know which ones aren't.
Of course, it goes without saying that a lot of criminal elements
need to be involved in such a thing. Politicians and many civilians
will never agree with it (at least not before it's too late),
so you will have to do it in secrecy, and place the carrier
as smooth as possible. Think it out real good with some
smart people passionate about ending human existence
and when it's too late inform the authorities and media
about the final date and off you go. Life would be grand!
http://come.to/us | http://see.mypage.org/ | love/hate-mail: j...@rock.com
"Geniuses and prophets usually do not excel in professional learning,
and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact
that they do not." (J.A. Schumpeter)
Matthew R. Sheahan
"of taste, there is no disputing." i.e. you can tell someone what's
technically well-done and technically poorly-done, and so forth, but you
can't tell them what they do and don't like.
chiaroscuro
cut by a penny from heaven
Satanas Uxora <st...@m-net.arbornet.org> wrote:
> As for *him*: it is not logical to suppose that a virus
> could be engineered that would sterilize absolutely every
> human being. Genetic diversity forbids it.
hmmm. i think YM "it is not very bloody *realistic or practical* to
suppose" that a virus could be engineered that would sterilize everybody,
unless the following nigh-unto impossible criteria were met:
1) the virus would have to be developed;
2) tested, and revised (repeat this step as many times as it takes);
3) assuming 100% effectiveness, a delivery system would have to be
developed which would deliver the virus, infect the target, _and_ not let
anyone have time to adapt to it or develop effective countermeasures.
this does not necessarily mean speed of delivery; it could also include
some stealth component.
otherwise...
> If some people did get technology to overcome that
> impossible obstacle, some other people would probably
> get technology to overcome being sterilized.
yup.
lord clod
where is the
natural world
in this discussion?
--
"You *can* be angry."
-Harlan Ellison
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
waldby julian f
>I have already pointed out examples of *your* illogic.
>As for *him*: it is not logical to suppose that a virus
>could be engineered that would sterilize absolutely every
>human being. Genetic diversity forbids it.
Your logic routinely lacks discretion, or whatever it was you said to me.
Human genetic diversity is not infinite. There is a fundamental
pattern. You have not presented data on this diversity. It is not a
matter of *logic*, which you seem so enamored with. Some diseases
wipe out or affect 10% of the people, others affect 75% or more.
Genetic diversity is certainly a safeguard, but it's not foolproof.
waldby julian f
By itself, 'de gustibus' means 'to eat'. Perhaps you should write
'de gustibus nd'.
waldby julian f
>As for *him*: it is not logical to suppose that a virus
>could be engineered that would sterilize absolutely every
>human being. Genetic diversity forbids it.
I wrote about this in a previous article. It is true that a 100% virus
could not likely be engineered today. This sort of accuracy will
probably not be available for at least 100 years. Julius will have to
place himself in the deep freeze to carry out his wild plans.
loosel...@my-deja.com
cut by a penny from heaven <lord...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <375495...@m-net.arbornet.org>,
> Satanas Uxora <st...@m-net.arbornet.org> wrote:
>
> > could be engineered that would sterilize absolutely every
> > human being. Genetic diversity forbids it.
Logic is a formal system we impose on language to enable us to guess at
the truth values of statements. It has bugger all to say about virii
or our ability to engineer them. As for genetic diversity, I'm having
to reach back a bit but as far as I remember no more than 10% of the
human genome is coding (any animal species actually) and of the total
(that is including the non-coding 90%) there is <2% difference between
us and chimps and probably < 20% between us and amoebas. The basic
biochemistry of life is remarkably consistent.
The crucial thing that one must understand is that virii are obligate
intercellular parasites. As such their survival depends on the
survival of their hosts. Even populations exposed to novel pathogens
evolve resistence surprisingly quickly (see for instance the drop in
mortality due to myxomatosis in rabbits from > 95% in the year of its
introduction to ~70% over 10 years). This is as much due to viral
evolution (selection of relatively more benign strains) as it is to
evolution of resistence in the rabbits.
None of which means that *engineering* a pathogen is impossible.
Indeed with their much longer gestations, age to maturity and
globetrotting tendancies humans are acutely vulnerable to an aggressive
pathogen.
> hmmm. i think YM "it is not very bloody *realistic or practical* to
> suppose" that a virus could be engineered that would sterilize
> everybody, unless the following nigh-unto impossible criteria were
> met:
Why bother with sterilization? Just kill everyone.
> 1) the virus would have to be developed;
Several highly infectious virii are available. All that is required is
the addition of 'payload' DNA to attack the host - since gene therapy
using viral vectors is already being discussed by medical science I
cannot see that is a real issue. It's a lot easier to break things
than to fix them after all...
> 2) tested, and revised (repeat this step as many times as it takes);
Big deal. Use the mice as a testbed to get basic technique down.
Refine on monkeys and chimps and then let the Africans have it...
if all goes well hit the rest of the world.
> 3) assuming 100% effectiveness, a delivery system would have to be
> developed which would deliver the virus, infect the target, _and_ not
> anyone have time to adapt to it or develop effective countermeasures.
> this does not necessarily mean speed of delivery; it could also
> include some stealth component.
The virus is it's own delivery system. Many virii infect humans
endemically (e.g. Epstein-Barr which can be found in close to 100% of
the population). The sterilization part is really the hardest since
you have to target a single function of the organism.
I'm now desperately trying to remember viral illnesses which can
sterilize... mumps perhaps?
Again, the easy solution is to simply kill everyone (effectively what
you're attempting in any case) - this has the added advantage of
stopping people developing the countermeasures alluded to above. It
would of course be preferable to have a fairly long incubation ensuring
dispersion. Highly aggressive pathogens such as Ebola have a tendancy
to kill their hosts far too early... which of course acts to limit the
spread of the virus.
> > If some people did get technology to overcome that
> > impossible obstacle, some other people would probably
> > get technology to overcome being sterilized.
Not if you killed them all. Regardless, if the damage was organic
(i.e. your virus induced testicular cancer (entirely possible)) it
might well be impossible to reverse the damage.
Jonah Thomas
>>As for *him*: it is not logical to suppose that a virus
>>could be engineered that would sterilize absolutely every
>>human being. Genetic diversity forbids it.
>Human genetic diversity is not infinite. There is a fundamental
>pattern. You have not presented data on this diversity. It is not a
>matter of *logic*, which you seem so enamored with. Some diseases
>wipe out or affect 10% of the people, others affect 75% or more.
>Genetic diversity is certainly a safeguard, but it's not foolproof.
It isn't completely foolproof but it makes the likelihood extremely
small that this plot would succeed.
We have the example of myxomatosis which killed 99%+ of laboratory
rabbits, which didn't come close to killing off the australian
rabbits. But this crackpot is proposing something much harder, he
wants not just to kill everybody but to sterilise everybody without
killing any of them. He has to contend with not only the diversity
of humanity but also the diversity that his disease vector will
develop as it spreads. If he uses a vector that doesn't hurt people
much it will have ten thousand competitors already, there's no
particular reason to expect his version to spread much. You can't
take a lab strain of influenza and expect it will spread, it mostly
won't. The version that spreads this year will be something new
and you can't tell which one will spread any more than you can
predict who'll win the lottery. If you handicap it with extra genes
that make it do something that doesn't help it spread, its chances
are even less.
On the other hand if he uses something that people don't have defenses
against like Ebola, he has his work cut out for him to reduce its
lethality without reducing its ability to spread.
He'd do better to try the simpler goal of simply making a plague that
would kill everybody. If he got enough funding and put a lot of money
into releasing it into all the cities at the same time, he could very
likely kill 50% of the world population. If he had good access to the
more closed societies like China and North Korea he could likely get 80%.
To bring it to 100% he'd do better to buy a few thousand cobalt bombs or
something, biological agents are an extremely long shot.
Alternatively, he could adopt. Deciding that it's healthier to be
sterile and trying to make everybody else sterile is unhealthy.
cut by a penny from heaven
appropriate:
[snip pompous bearing]
> The crucial thing that one must understand is that virii are obligate
> intercellular parasites. As such their survival depends on the
> survival of their hosts.
i think you mean their *continued survival* as a discrete thing. virii
survive all sorts of situations, but may or may not reproduce and spread
copies of themselves -- you see what i mena here -- to other times or
places.
> Even populations exposed to novel pathogens
> evolve resistence surprisingly quickly (see for instance the drop in
> mortality due to myxomatosis in rabbits from > 95% in the year of its
> introduction to ~70% over 10 years). This is as much due to viral
> evolution (selection of relatively more benign strains) as it is to
> evolution of resistence in the rabbits.
and in the context of the rest of your post, this means nothing. what's
your point?
[snip]
> Why bother with sterilization? Just kill everyone.
would that i could... and that i could start with those near and not so
dear.
> Several highly infectious virii are available. All that is required is
> the addition of 'payload' DNA to attack the host - since gene therapy
> using viral vectors is already being discussed by medical science I
> cannot see that is a real issue. It's a lot easier to break things
> than to fix them after all...
[aside] here's where the drool leaking from your mouth and hitting the
keyboard gets really murky...
> Big deal. Use the mice as a testbed to get basic technique down.
> Refine on monkeys and chimps and then let the Africans have it...
> if all goes well hit the rest of the world.
maybe you didn't understand -- the point of developing a virus or
whatever infectious agent was not to spend o lot of time sterilizing test
subjects, but to deliver a sterilizing agent that was 100% effective to
every target in such a manner that it would be completely irresistible.
> The virus is it's own delivery system. Many virii infect humans
> endemically (e.g. Epstein-Barr which can be found in close to 100% of
> the population). The sterilization part is really the hardest since
> you have to target a single function of the organism.
you seem to have many threads and points of discussion in your mind at
the same time, which may be due to you having a minimum of sensory input.
i know -- check and see if your head is up your ass, and if it is, i
think that if you remove it, you might be able to discern what is going
on when the adults talk.
> Again, the easy solution is to simply kill everyone (effectively what
> you're attempting in any case) - this has the added advantage of
> stopping people developing the countermeasures alluded to above. It
> would of course be preferable to have a fairly long incubation ensuring
> dispersion. Highly aggressive pathogens such as Ebola have a tendancy
> to kill their hosts far too early... which of course acts to limit the
> spread of the virus.
so if the tendency to kill off the host too early (sterilzation will kill
off the host {the host *organism*} too) is a bad thing, hnow might one
overcome it?...
> Not if you killed them all. Regardless, if the damage was organic
> (i.e. your virus induced testicular cancer (entirely possible)) it
> might well be impossible to reverse the damage.
what about cloning, you dumbass?
oh, what's the use?
lord clod
i hope you're
not
someone i know
--
"You *can* be angry."
-Harlan Ellison
loosel...@my-deja.com
Jonah Thomas <jeth...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> We have the example of myxomatosis which killed 99%+ of laboratory
> rabbits, which didn't come close to killing off the australian
> rabbits.
Mortality in the Australian rabbit population was close to 99% in the
first year. It wasn't the rabbits genetic variability which saved them
but that of the virus.
(Which stands to reason when you think about it)
> He'd do better to try the simpler goal of simply making a plague that
> would kill everybody. If he got enough funding and put a lot of money
> into releasing it into all the cities at the same time, he could very
> likely kill 50% of the world population. If he had good access to the
> more closed societies like China and North Korea he could likely get
> 80%.
Yah.
> To bring it to 100% he'd do better to buy a few thousand cobalt bombs
> or something, biological agents are an extremely long shot.
I disagree. Infecting a susceptible population with a long incubation,
high mortality virus (I'd suggest something incorporating a strong
promoter targeted at one or more (use several strains) known oncogenes)
could concievably kill a vast number of people. Combine that strategy
with a subsequent release of a really aggressive pathogen (something
like ebola or a human myxomatosis) in urban centres and you kill all
the medical personnel worth speaking of and prolly everyone else too.
> Alternatively, he could adopt. Deciding that it's healthier to be
> sterile and trying to make everybody else sterile is unhealthy.
I agree wholeheartedly. If this is really the opinion of anyone out
there I'll be more than happy to cut their balls off.
Any volunteers?
loosel...@my-deja.com
r...@sass.nl (Jules sans scrupules) wrote:
> Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.
Speak for yourself chuckles.
> Eventually no matter what else happens, the Earth will be destroyed.
> Some of us don't want the ultimate fate of our world to be left
> to the hands of nature. We seek to shape the inevitable,
> thus leaving the mark of humanity upon the universe forever...
And some of us are aware that forever is a meaningless term except in
relation to the present. I, particularly, am aware that my every
moment marks the universe forever. With that in mind, I say this to
you:
fuck you and the horse you rode in on you freak...
David O'Bedlam
Hash: SHA1
You Neopseudomalthusians, in concentrating on the amount of food
anyone gets, are forgetting a far more important factor: the
distribution of whatever food there is -- and who controls that
distribution. As a case in point, I -- tho poor by U.S. standards --
still do reside in a place where food is plentiful and cheap, and
where "charitable institutions" are able to glean "surplus" food to
distribute at low cost or free; consequently I, though poor by U.S.
standards, in contradistinction to too many of the world's people, am
trying to _lose_ weight by _eating_ less. I have this luxury because
those who exercise high-level control of food distribution in the U.S.
are in many cases the same greedy power-hungry bastards who control
food distribution between most (and within some) of the countries over
the Earth, who have decided to let most Americans eat all we want --
to bribe us, through an overstuffed contentment that many millions of
the world's people can hardly imagine, into supplying technicians and
troops to buttress and increase their control of world-wide food
distribution and hence their power over the world's population (not
coincidentally including us in the U.S.).
Due to the "purchasing power" (i.e. the bribe-price) of us in America
a drought anywhere in the world affecting one or two crops (e.g.,
potatoes or coffee) will not affect us too horribly: the `Produce
Princes' simply release a little of what they've already stockpiled
and/or procure food from someplace else (say coffee from Zambia
instead of from El Salvador) and, after raising the price a few cents
per unit as compensation for all their "trouble", release the food
here in the "normal channels" -- so until another army can beat NATO
and until another country generates more greedy power-hungry bastards
than the U.S. does we Americans will continue to be able to drown
ourselves in Folger's Special Roast (which, though "agricultural
produce", isn't -- strictly speaking -- even food).
As a quick glance at conditions in "the Third World" will show, hunger
is a political tool used to maintain control -- of poor people by rich
people within a country, and of poor countries by richer ones. One can
safely bet that any country whose children Sally Struthers must whine
for is a country with less power than the U.S. and its NATO allies --
and that countries the U.S. hegemonists don't like don't get too many
massive airlifts of Nebraskan grain when their own rains fail to fall.
And that, due to the Produce Princes' control of food distribution, a
lot of food will rot in U.S. warehouses instead of being handed out in
"humanitarian gestures." This is because, in order to stay rich and
get richer, these greedy power-hungry bastards are willing to doom
millions of people to starvation if it keeps them rich and helps them
get richer.
Also, because of the Produce Prince's need to sell food to somebody in
order to get rich by selling food, if all the fat people in the U.S.
(such as myself) were to slim down to what the medical tables say is a
desireable weight (in my case 140 lbs. for a small-boned 5'7" man)
then the greedy power-hungry bastards who profit by food would have to
try some "desperate measures" to keep doing so "comfortably" --
including (at least as a "humanitarian gesture") selling cheap or even
"donating" a lot of the food we're not eating anymore to other
countries (perhaps to those countries where the rains ain't been
falling often). Therefore all Neopseudomalthusian propaganda means,
for an "ordinary" person, is a pathetic attempt to "justify" your
"need" to be a weak bribed fat pig.
The amount of food on Earth has nothing whatever to do with anything.
(You may now continue showing us how mean-spirited and stupid you are,
and how fiercely you'll insist on remaining such an evil shit.)
TheDavid
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Jonah Thomas
>You Neopseudomalthusians, in concentrating on the amount of food
>anyone gets, are forgetting a far more important factor: the
>distribution of whatever food there is -- and who controls that
>distribution.
A similar argument has been made before, and in fact the person who
started the thread mentioned it. The idea is, we have enough food now
that nobody has to starve. All that's required is that we distribute it
"better". The trouble with this idea is that we never have distributed
it "better", and there's no particular reason to think we will this
year. That suffers the same inadequacy that other "solutions" do. If
we want to do improved contraception or sterilisation so that the best
number of people will be born instead of some other number of people,
we have to get six billion people to go along with it and to pay for it
for those who're too poor or unwilling to pay for it themselves. If we
want to limit the food supply so the population will by one means or
another fail to increase, we have to come up with some method to limit
it. And if we want to distribute food differently again we need a way.
>As a case in point, I -- tho poor by U.S. standards --
>still do reside in a place where food is plentiful and cheap, and
>where "charitable institutions" are able to glean "surplus" food to
>distribute at low cost or free; consequently I, though poor by U.S.
>standards, in contradistinction to too many of the world's people, am
>trying to _lose_ weight by _eating_ less. I have this luxury because
>those who exercise high-level control of food distribution in the U.S.
>are in many cases the same greedy power-hungry bastards who control
>food distribution between most (and within some) of the countries over
>the Earth, who have decided to let most Americans eat all we want --
>to bribe us, through an overstuffed contentment that many millions of
>the world's people can hardly imagine, into supplying technicians and
>troops to buttress and increase their control of world-wide food
>distribution and hence their power over the world's population (not
>coincidentally including us in the U.S.).
Incidentally, they mostly don't use troops to control food distribution.
It's enough to manage the money. There are examples where they blockade
a food-importing rich country for control -- Iraq and North Korea come
to mind. But usually that isn't needed, when a nation lacks foreign
exchange they can't pay to import food. Then they get only the food that
people will give out of loving-kindness, and there's no surplus of that.
>Due to the "purchasing power" (i.e. the bribe-price) of us in America
>a drought anywhere in the world affecting one or two crops (e.g.,
>potatoes or coffee) will not affect us too horribly: the `Produce
>Princes' simply release a little of what they've already stockpiled
>and/or procure food from someplace else (say coffee from Zambia
>instead of from El Salvador) and, after raising the price a few cents
>per unit as compensation for all their "trouble", release the food
>here in the "normal channels" -- so until another army can beat NATO
>and until another country generates more greedy power-hungry bastards
>than the U.S. does we Americans will continue to be able to drown
>ourselves in Folger's Special Roast (which, though "agricultural
>produce", isn't -- strictly speaking -- even food).
The government used to stockpile a lot of food. They do a lot less of
that these days. It's expensive to store food and it mostly doesn't get
used. The Reagan administration particularly tried to apply economic
theory to the practice. If there's a shortage we can pay for what we
need on the world market, and when we set the price high consumers will
try to substitute things that are cheaper. If potatoes are expensive
people will use more wheat and rice and corn. If coffee is expensive
people will drink more tea and some coffee addicts will go through
withdrawal. If there's some big disaster this will hurt us badly but
in the meantime we're richer than we'd be if we paid for that insurance.
>As a quick glance at conditions in "the Third World" will show, hunger
>is a political tool used to maintain control -- of poor people by rich
>people within a country, and of poor countries by richer ones. One can
>safely bet that any country whose children Sally Struthers must whine
>for is a country with less power than the U.S. and its NATO allies --
>and that countries the U.S. hegemonists don't like don't get too many
>massive airlifts of Nebraskan grain when their own rains fail to fall.
Yes. It was one of those peculiar twists of fate or something, that the
government of Ethiopia, our ally, wasn't able to stop a famine even with
our help (they didn't understand and refused to ask for it) and went
communist. Suddenly we were supporting the freedom-loving people of
Eritrea and we wanted Ethiopia's neighbor Somalia as an ally. Somalia
had been a soviet ally by default -- because we didn't want them. Then
the USSR collapsed and somalia had a famine just when we needed a military
mission other than fighting the USSR. What a mess. Similarly, after the
1973 oil embargo we declared that we'd use food as a weapon. When our
ally Iran went fundamentalist moslem, we wanted Iraq as an ally. Iraq
had been a USSR ally because we didn't want them, but then we did want
them. But after the USSR collapsed we needed a new threat more than we
needed an ally that couldn't beat Iran on the ground....
>And that, due to the Produce Princes' control of food distribution, a
>lot of food will rot in U.S. warehouses instead of being handed out in
>"humanitarian gestures." This is because, in order to stay rich and
>get richer, these greedy power-hungry bastards are willing to doom
>millions of people to starvation if it keeps them rich and helps them
>get richer.
Too often they've noticed that "humanitarian" food gets shipped right
back and sold on the world market in competition with them. Because the
rich people in poor countries want foreign exchange more than they want
to keep a bunch of starving peasants alive. And there isn't that much
food rotting in US warehouses any more. We have occasional surpluses
but nothing like the old days.
>Also, because of the Produce Prince's need to sell food to somebody in
>order to get rich by selling food, if all the fat people in the U.S.
>(such as myself) were to slim down to what the medical tables say is a
>desireable weight (in my case 140 lbs. for a small-boned 5'7" man)
>then the greedy power-hungry bastards who profit by food would have to
>try some "desperate measures" to keep doing so "comfortably" --
>including (at least as a "humanitarian gesture") selling cheap or even
>"donating" a lot of the food we're not eating anymore to other
>countries (perhaps to those countries where the rains ain't been
>falling often).
You know better than that. If we ate less they'd grow less.
>Therefore all Neopseudomalthusian propaganda means,
>for an "ordinary" person, is a pathetic attempt to "justify" your
>"need" to be a weak bribed fat pig.
I'll think about that. You might be onto something there. On the other
hand there could be something to their thinking even though they neglect
the things you think are central.
>The amount of food on Earth has nothing whatever to do with anything.
Well, but it does. When there's plenty of cheap food fewer people
starve. The first guy recommended manipulating the food supply to
control the population. You say the food supply is being manipulated.
I say you two are heading toward a core agreement.
David O'Bedlam
Hash: SHA1
Jonah Thomas <jeth...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> David O'Bedlam <thed...@tsoft.com> wrote:
[...]
>>The amount of food on Earth has nothing whatever to do with anything.
> Well, but it does. When there's plenty of cheap food fewer people
> starve.
Which segment of "society" sets food prices and controls distribution?
Who determines what's a "cash crop" and what isn't? (And don't give me
that "invisible hand of the market" bullshit.)
> The first guy recommended manipulating the food supply to
> control the population.
Actually, I'd hope his point was the other way around.
> You say the food supply is being manipulated.
It is. (I say it should be manipulated more equitably.)
> I say you two are heading toward a core agreement.
What, "get rid of all the poor people"? There'll be glaciers
in Hell before I'll come to "a core agreement" on that one.
The
- --
"One reason for you to go on living is to learn to write well enough so
that your suicide note is not unintentially funny." -David P. Gollub
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loosel...@my-deja.com
cut by a penny from heaven <lord...@my-deja.com> tried thinking but
found it too difficult:
> In article <foo>, loosel...@my-deja.com proved that its name may be
> appropriate:
>
> [snip pompous bearing]
Hey, I was in a hurry. No time to copy edit for tone.
> i think you mean their *continued survival* as a discrete thing.
I think that if I could parse that sentence it might make sense.
> virii survive all sorts of situations, but may or may not reproduce
> and spread copies of themselves -- you see what i mena here -- to
> other times or places.
Hokey dokey. Replace survival 'continued evolution' if you like.
> > Even populations exposed to novel pathogens
> > evolve resistence surprisingly quickly (see for instance the drop in
> > mortality due to myxomatosis in rabbits from > 95% in the year of
> > introduction to ~70% over 10 years). This is as much due to viral
> > evolution (selection of relatively more benign strains) as it is to
> > evolution of resistence in the rabbits.
> and in the context of the rest of your post, this means nothing.
> what's your point?
Why does it mean nothing? It's badly put I agree but the points are
relevant to any discussion of viral pathology.
> [aside] here's where the drool leaking from your mouth and hitting the
> keyboard gets really murky...
I'm an ex-Microbiologist mate. I like the little bugs - I think
they're fascinating and I don't apologise for it to clueless fuckers
like your good self.
You seem to have a real problem with being disagreed with.
> > Big deal. Use the mice as a testbed to get basic technique down.
> > Refine on monkeys and chimps and then let the Africans have it...
> > if all goes well hit the rest of the world.
> maybe you didn't understand -- the point of developing a virus or
> whatever infectious agent was not to spend o lot of time sterilizing
> test
> subjects, but to deliver a sterilizing agent that was 100% effective
> every target in such a manner that it would be completely
> irresistible.
Your prototypical mad scientist might decide that he'd like to know if
his agent worked or not chief. He might like to establish a couple of
other facts while he was at it. What proportion of a given population
was infected over x period of time, what proportion of those infected
exhibited damage as a result, time to onset of illness... such testing
would be vital in developing the vector regardless of your
argumentative needs.
You had a point maybe?
> > The virus is it's own delivery system. Many virii infect humans
> > endemically (e.g. Epstein-Barr which can be found in close to 100%
of
> > the population). The sterilization part is really the hardest since
> > you have to target a single function of the organism.
>
> you seem to have many threads and points of discussion in your mind at
> the same time, which may be due to you having a minimum of sensory
input.
The voices say: fuck you. Just FYI...
> i know -- check and see if your head is up your ass, and if it is, i
> think that if you remove it, you might be able to discern what is
going
> on when the adults talk.
Oh yeah. I should apply to you right now for lessons in discerning
what's going on when adults talk eh? I might even be able to pick up
some of that fine rapier wit you're displaying above. Right after I
finished your course in reading comprehension and balanced quotation
maybe?
> so if the tendency to kill off the host too early (sterilzation will
> kill off the host {the host *organism*} too) is a bad thing, hnow
> might one overcome it?...
Sterilzation will kill off the host species but will do so over a long
period of time. Something like Ebola w/80-90% mortality within ~4 days
of infection obviously acts to limit it's own spread (it's killing its
primary vectors).
This is not a good thing or a bad thing. It's epidemiology.
Something you might like to read about before you go waving your dick
about. Oh but wait, let me guess, you can't see the relevence of a
discussion of epidemiology and pathogenesis in a thread centering on
the potential use of a virus as a sterilising agent or vector for same?
Your mind is like a shield of steel(tm).
> > Not if you killed them all. Regardless, if the damage was organic
> > (i.e. your virus induced testicular cancer (entirely possible)) it
> > might well be impossible to reverse the damage.
>
> what about cloning, you dumbass?
Fair enough. We are in the lands of fantasy here after all.
Which is something you could remind yourself of every now and then ugly
one. Before the stress kills ya like.
> oh, what's the use?
I don't know. Were you hoping to contribute something or just trying
to impress me with the size of your asshole?
> lord clod
> i hope you're
> not
> someone i know
You're someone I know if it's any consolation.
cut by a penny from heaven
[snip]
when you start talking about my penis and my ass, i know you've missed
the point.
> You're someone I know if it's any consolation.
and hopefully you've already been infected with a sterilizing agent...
lord clod
and
haven't
bred
--
"You *can* be angry."
-Harlan Ellison
cut by a penny from heaven
[snip]
i wrote:
> > i hope you're
> > not
> > someone i know
it answered:
> You're someone I know if it's any consolation.
[from deja.com member profile]
looselyfused
loosel...@my-deja.com
Status: Public
Personal Information
Name: no name specified
Country:
Region:
Postal Code: NW10 4HH
Business Information:
Online Information
Email: loosel...@my-deja.com
ICQ: none given
Member Bio
actually, i know who you are now.
lord clod
you're nobody, from nowhere special,
you do nothing and you got no job,
and you only have an online life
--
"You *can* be angry."
-Harlan Ellison
loosel...@my-deja.com
cut by a penny from heaven <lord...@my-deja.com> got straight to the
point:hair: <---- eeeeeew! you might have crabs
> when you start talking about my penis and my ass, i know you've missed
> the point.
I shall make it my life's work to miss the point of your penis.
Really though, you're wrong, it happens to everyone, you'll get over it.
> and hopefully you've already been infected with a sterilizing agent...
Nah. We're spawning already. So sorry.
Jonah Thomas
>[...]
>>>The amount of food on Earth has nothing whatever to do with anything.
>> Well, but it does. When there's plenty of cheap food fewer people
>> starve.
>Which segment of "society" sets food prices and controls distribution?
Big farmers, "agribusiness". Governments. Occasionally arbitrageurs.
Weather has a lot to do with it, though. One of the big deals with
the NSA is that they figured out ways that sometimes can estimate crop
yields from satellite photos, so they get better estimates of world
food production earlier than anybody else. That information is kept
secret partly so people who have it can use it to speculate on the
commodity futures markets. They can't "control" the food supply but
they get something by *predicting* it. But then, the government by its
price supports etc can also influence national crop yields. They can
influence how much US farmers try to produce. When the farmers produce
too much they suffer, and when they produce too little the ones who
produced the most win.
>Who determines what's a "cash crop" and what isn't? (And don't give me
>that "invisible hand of the market" bullshit.)
There's certainly some of that going on. You can't make something be a
cash crop unless you can sell it to someone who wants it. On the other
hand the commodities markets want a standard product so they can play
numbers games. They want to play with options on railroad-cars of food
and they want the cars to be equivalent and interchangeable. So if you
have a specialty food it doesn't fit into the system very well. So that
part is inertia. If you have a special crop that isn't produced in
large quantities you can't sell it on the mass market at all. What you
can do, though, is sell it through specialty stores at exceptionally
high prices, mostly to rich people. There are people who'll pay for
quince jam or spelt bread, and pay very well. You just need to find a
way to do the marketing.
>> The first guy recommended manipulating the food supply to
>> control the population.
>Actually, I'd hope his point was the other way around.
It clearly wasn't the other way around.
>> You say the food supply is being manipulated.
>It is. (I say it should be manipulated more equitably.)
I also have a long list of things I think other people should do
differently.
>> I say you two are heading toward a core agreement.
>What, "get rid of all the poor people"? There'll be glaciers
>in Hell before I'll come to "a core agreement" on that one.
You agree that the food supply should be manipulated. That's a
start toward an agreement.
loosel...@my-deja.com
cut by a penny from heaven <lord...@my-deja.com> coughed up this
hairball:wrote:
> [from deja.com member profile]
[ooooooh! aaaaaaah!]
> lord clod
> you're nobody, from nowhere special,
> you do nothing and you got no job,
> and you only have an online life
Awww. Now you're hurting my feelings grasshopper.
Jonah Thomas
>> We have the example of myxomatosis which killed 99%+ of laboratory
>> rabbits, which didn't come close to killing off the australian
>> rabbits.
>Mortality in the Australian rabbit population was close to 99% in the
>first year. It wasn't the rabbits genetic variability which saved them
>but that of the virus.
>(Which stands to reason when you think about it)
Yes. The rabbits evolved too, but the virus could evolve faster.
>> He'd do better to try the simpler goal of simply making a plague that
>> would kill everybody. If he got enough funding and put a lot of money
>> into releasing it into all the cities at the same time, he could very
>> likely kill 50% of the world population. If he had good access to the
>> more closed societies like China and North Korea he could likely get
>> 80%.
>Yah.
>> To bring it to 100% he'd do better to buy a few thousand cobalt bombs
>> or something, biological agents are an extremely long shot.
>I disagree. Infecting a susceptible population with a long incubation,
>high mortality virus (I'd suggest something incorporating a strong
>promoter targeted at one or more (use several strains) known oncogenes)
>could concievably kill a vast number of people.
Maybe 50%? Your point above is that the virus evolves as it spreads, and
you could expect versions to quickly arise that behaved differently.
>Combine that strategy
>with a subsequent release of a really aggressive pathogen (something
>like ebola or a human myxomatosis) in urban centres and you kill all
>the medical personnel worth speaking of and prolly everyone else too.
Maybe 80%? The aggressive pathogen is going to be evolving too.
loosel...@my-deja.com
Jonah Thomas <jeth...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Maybe 50%? Your point above is that the virus evolves as it spreads,
> and you could expect versions to quickly arise that behaved
> differently.
Sure. Those virii that code their on RNA/DNA Polymerases have a fairly
low fidelity replication so you get lots of variants within a
relatively short period of time.
However the most lethal variants of a 'slow' virus which is what we're
talking about as our 'sterility vector' will be retained and spread (no
selective pressure in terms of host population size) for at least the
incubation period.
> >Combine that strategy
> >with a subsequent release of a really aggressive pathogen (something
> >like ebola or a human myxomatosis) in urban centres and you kill all
> >the medical personnel worth speaking of and prolly everyone else too.
>
> Maybe 80%? The aggressive pathogen is going to be evolving too.
Humans have two distinct disadvantages on these maths: we breed slowly
and take a long time to rear our young. Look at the records for the
outbreaks of ebola in Zaire in about 1979: 90% mortality, most medical
personnel dead within the first 3-7 days, world saved by virus not
being very transmissable.
Think what 90% of 6,000,000,000 is. Then start drinking.
loosel...@my-deja.com
David O'Bedlam <thed...@tsoft.com> wrote:
> (You may now continue showing us how mean-spirited and stupid you are,
> and how fiercely you'll insist on remaining such an evil shit.)
Davy there are times I could kiss you.
If I didn't think I'd catch something.
Incidental point: the GM food lobby in the UK is currently arguing that
we need GM food in order to feed the worlds population. Certain people
(including in a rare moment of media genius the Prince of Wales) have
had the bad taste to point out that this was exactly the argument used
to ride over any concerns about the use of organophosphates in the '50s
and '60s.
Plus ca change...
Mirage
>You agree that the food supply should be manipulated. That's a
>start toward an agreement.
I disagree. The food supply should not be manipulated, but divided
equally amongst people. This is the distribution that will allow the
most humans to survive. Clearly there should be a cost for this
distribution. This encourages production, since people need to work
for their food supply. When a person cannot pay the food fee, he/she
goes hungry. Perhaps he/she dies. This is good, because he/she was
unproductive. The elderly would need to make savings to ensure that
they will have food money for life.
One problem with this idea is that as time goes by, it is possible for
the food per person to dwindle due to population growth. This could
result in revolution. It is hoped that as time goes by, food
production increases with population.
As time goes by, increased technology should allow greater Earth
capability for food production. However, it is likely that population
growth, being exponential for the most part, will catch up with
capabilities. Barring revolution, food per person will then begin to
dwindle. Eventually, it will weed out people with fast metabolisms.
This is unfortunate. I will talk with the other Produce Princes and
see if we will be able to set up some kind of per kiloTonnes of food
burned off method. This assumes that by the time food supplies are
dwindling we are capable of determining a person's rate of metabolism
with reasonable accuracy.
Mirage
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
[...]
>here in the "normal channels" -- so until another army can beat NATO
>and until another country generates more greedy power-hungry bastards
>than the U.S. does we Americans will continue to be able to drown
>ourselves in Folger's Special Roast (which, though "agricultural
>produce", isn't -- strictly speaking -- even food).
[...]
So how do we go about beating NATO? I think we should have heart.
Although it appears impenetrable, the Roman Empire probably appeared
infallable at the time. Perhaps we will see a revolution in our
lifetimes.
Julian
ps; does this automatically insert my name as a Communist in the CIA
files?
loosel...@my-deja.com
wal...@uiuc.edu (Mirage) wrote:
> ps; does this automatically insert my name as a Communist in the CIA
> files?
'Absolutely not!' they said, 'this is a democracy and your freedom of
speech is protected by the first amendment'.
Further down the hall someone wrote 'Room 101' against his name...
Jonah Thomas
> cut by a penny from heaven <lord...@my-deja.com> tried thinking but
>found it too difficult:
>> In article <foo>, loosel...@my-deja.com proved that its name may be
>> appropriate:
>> > Big deal. Use the mice as a testbed to get basic technique down.
>> > Refine on monkeys and chimps and then let the Africans have it...
>> > if all goes well hit the rest of the world.
>> maybe you didn't understand -- the point of developing a virus or
>> whatever infectious agent was not to spend o lot of time sterilizing
>> test
>> subjects, but to deliver a sterilizing agent that was 100% effective
>> every target in such a manner that it would be completely
>> irresistible.
>Your prototypical mad scientist might decide that he'd like to know if
>his agent worked or not chief. He might like to establish a couple of
>other facts while he was at it. What proportion of a given population
>was infected over x period of time, what proportion of those infected
>exhibited damage as a result, time to onset of illness... such testing
>would be vital in developing the vector regardless of your
>argumentative needs.
>You had a point maybe?
Here's one central point -- to find out whether your agent works it
isn't enough to test it on mice -- any more than you could find out
how well myxomatosis worked on rabbits by testing it on mice. You'd
have to test it on humans. If you tested it on 100 humans and 99 of
them became sterile (how easy is it to tell whether a woman is sterile?
I guess that depends on the method of sterilisation) then you'd know it
was 99% effective and it wouldn't work. If you tested it on 1000 humans
and all of them became sterile then you could figure it was likely at
least 99.95% effective and you wouldn't have any idea whether it was
100% effective. But to do a real test you'd have to get away from
prison populations and test it on human beings in the wild. And you
can't do that until you're ready to do it for real, when you try to
test it on humans in the wild you *are* doing it for real. So you
can find out about gross problems with what it does after it infects
someone by looking at individual infected humans, but you can't find
out what you need to know that way. And you can't test the epidemiology
at all, you can only give it your best shot.
David O'Bedlam
Hash: SHA1
lordclod wrote to looselyfused:
> you're nobody, from nowhere special,
> you do nothing and you got no job,
> and you only have an online life
No no no, Clod: that's ME you've described.
The
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Jonah Thomas
>> Maybe 50%? Your point above is that the virus evolves as it spreads,
>> and you could expect versions to quickly arise that behaved
>> differently.
>Sure. Those virii that code their on RNA/DNA Polymerases have a fairly
>low fidelity replication so you get lots of variants within a
>relatively short period of time.
>However the most lethal variants of a 'slow' virus which is what we're
>talking about as our 'sterility vector' will be retained and spread (no
>selective pressure in terms of host population size) for at least the
>incubation period.
I didn't quite catch that. Are you saying that if you release it a lot
of places at once, it will infect a whole lot of people in the early
generations before it has time to mutate? Or are you saying there will
be something special about the genes that result in sterility that will
keep them from mutating? I just didn't quite catch your drift here.
>> >Combine that strategy
>> >with a subsequent release of a really aggressive pathogen (something
>> >like ebola or a human myxomatosis) in urban centres and you kill all
>> >the medical personnel worth speaking of and prolly everyone else too.
>
>> Maybe 80%? The aggressive pathogen is going to be evolving too.
>Humans have two distinct disadvantages on these maths: we breed slowly
>and take a long time to rear our young. Look at the records for the
>outbreaks of ebola in Zaire in about 1979: 90% mortality, most medical
>personnel dead within the first 3-7 days, world saved by virus not
>being very transmissable.
90% mortality is common for diseases that haven't had time to adapt to
us and us to them. Syphilis had 90% mortality for a human generation or
two.
>Think what 90% of 6,000,000,000 is. Then start drinking.
That leaves 600,000,000 people, assuming everybody gets infected which
is a wild assumption. Then we should figure that up to 95% of the
survivors die during the disorganisation. That leaves 30,000,000
people. That's few enough that they can come close to living off the
land with primitive technology. It would be a big change but not
particularly threatening to the species. It might improve the
species's chances in the long term. I wouldn't do it on the chance that
it would be an improvement though.
cut by a penny from heaven
long enough to type:
> Hash: SHA1
> lordclod wrote to uglyfaced:
> > you're nobody, from nowhere special,
> > you do nothing and you got no job,
> > and you only have an online life
>
> No no no, Clod: that's ME you've described.
yeah, but you say you can configure linux.
even though you are apparently, *ahem*, lovers with J!E!THOMASS! say it
ain't so, cuppa joe!
> The
lord clod
Die ganze
Welt liebt
einen Liebenden.
--
"You *can* be angry."
-Harlan Ellison
Jules sans scrupules
> In article <3758c0dc...@news.xs4all.nl>,
> r...@sass.nl (Jules sans scrupules) wrote:
>
> > Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.
>
> Speak for yourself chuckles.
I stole that part of my post from John E. Chapman. Hey,
why don't you go lay down in the midst of some crop-circle
and pray 'they' will beam you up before it's all too late?
> > Eventually no matter what else happens, the Earth will be destroyed.
> > Some of us don't want the ultimate fate of our world to be left
> > to the hands of nature. We seek to shape the inevitable,
> > thus leaving the mark of humanity upon the universe forever...
>
> And some of us are aware that forever is a meaningless term except in
> relation to the present.
Oh really? If that is the case, what is your problem
with nothingness you dumb fool ?
> I, particularly, am aware that my every moment
> marks the universe forever.
It did not say that wouldn't be the case.
You're way too edgy and triggerhappy.
Relax and read it again.
> fuck you and the horse you rode in on you freak...
oh *I'm* a freak now? Ever look at your fromfield?
Please explain to me as of when will a person be a "freak".
And after that, explain to me why that is something bad,
something I should try not to be, or something
that separates you from me.
I expect no responses to my requests from someone like you.
You're just a stupid motherfucker, living in a dreamworld,
thinking it makes a difference. Get offa that clowd why don't you?
Planet earth will vanish, and will take all human life with it.
Wanna bet it will? No, sure, YOU will make a difference,
oh absolutely, mister cool will leave a mark. The sun will remember
it for all eternity. Of course, how could I possibly forget?
However, the universe thinks otherwise, you will die soon
and the universe could not care less about what you have done
in your whole damn life. All your marks will disappear into
nothingness. Suddenly time stops, no more clocks, no more
space, no more arrogant thinking species on earth,
no more useless crappy posts in alt.angst,
no-one living to tell. All for nothing.
/\__/\
/(*)(*)\
===(..)===
\'.__,'/
__________________________mm____mm__________________________
*©*´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·- JBT -·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`*©*
Jonah Thomas
>Planet earth will vanish, and will take all human life with it.
That's an assertion you have utterly inadequate evidence for.
A thousand years ago they thought about the same thing, the
Second Coming would come and the earth would be destroyed, and
everybody who didn't wind up in Heaven would wind up in Hell.
Four thousand years ago they thought the gods had already decided
to destroy humanity once and they sent a big flood. But then
they changed their minds, and put off killing humanity by fire
for awhile.
Well, I'm sure you figure they're wrong and you're right. We're
smarter than they were, *we* can tell the future! But it doesn't
work. We can do physics. You can predict what path a laser will
take through a maze of mirrors, if you measure everything
carefully and the mirrors are made precisely enough. We can do
chemistry. You can predict the ratio of products from a chemical
reaction if you start with pure enough reactants and you fix the
temperature etc just so. We have some ideas about how stars
behave over their lifetimes that are really pretty new ideas. They
haven't begun to withstand the test of time in terms of scientists
picking at them, much less the time it takes to follow some
particular star's life history. We make plausible ideas but
there's no particular reason to think they're correct.
>Wanna bet it will? No, sure, YOU will make a difference,
>oh absolutely, mister cool will leave a mark. The sun will remember
>it for all eternity. Of course, how could I possibly forget?
There's no particular reason to think he's right. But then, there's
no particular reason to think he's wrong.
>However, the universe thinks otherwise,
Who are you to speak for the universe?
>you will die soon
>and the universe could not care less about what you have done
>in your whole damn life.
You're doing it again, you're speaking for the universe as if you
knew everything. Be careful with that.
>All your marks will disappear into
>nothingness. Suddenly time stops, no more clocks, no more
>space, no more arrogant thinking species on earth,
>no more useless crappy posts in alt.angst,
>no-one living to tell. All for nothing.
Well, while we're at it, isn't your idea of sterilising everybody
intended for you to leave your own mark on things? You've argued
that with no children to take care of we'd all be rich, but if it
takes you twenty years to get your plan in motion by the time it
makes you rich you'll be mostly too old to enjoy it. Why aren't
you out enjoying yourself right now instead of wasting your time
arguing about the waste of everything against people who'll never
be convinced?
Well, now I'm speaking for those people which is presumptuous of
me. They can speak for themselves, maybe you'll convince them
and get that much further along in your plan for world domination.
Jules sans scrupules
> Sure. Those virii that code their on RNA/DNA Polymerases have a fairly
> low fidelity replication so you get lots of variants within a
> relatively short period of time.
Trust me, I suppose I'm not in a position to speak about it like this
(or even discuss it openly), but we're looking in the wrong places.
> However the most lethal variants of a 'slow' virus which is what we're
> talking about as our 'sterility vector' will be retained and spread (no
> selective pressure in terms of host population size) for at least the
> incubation period.
This was just an idea I thought of, I'm having a similar
discussion at another channel with what I would call *real*
experts, and it seems that there's something else involving
some small insect bite a swedish guy has thought of years ago,
which is already produced and tested on voluntary humans:
They're still alive and well, but their (future)
children will not be able to give birth..
> > >Combine that strategy
> > >with a subsequent release of a really aggressive pathogen (something
> > >like ebola or a human myxomatosis) in urban centres and you kill all
> > >the medical personnel worth speaking of and prolly everyone else too.
Killing really isn't necessary. As we speak there are functioning
concepts of actual NEW non-existing insects that would have no impact
on any ecosystem other than affecting the reproductive organs.
They thought of releasing some in several over-populated
third-world areas, but so far no government has approved
such actions (according to the finish guy named Emsii).
I first thought they were talking about some X-Files scripts,
but they weren't. You will probably find proof of it
somewhere on the web. When I bump into the URL
I'll post it here. It's fascinating material.
.J.
Jules sans scrupules
> fa...@i.am (Jules sans scrupules) wrote:
>
> >Planet earth will vanish, and will take all human life with it.
>
> That's an assertion you have utterly inadequate evidence for.
This is an assertion I have heard/read before, and, well,
as far as I see it, there's only one way to look at this:
We weren't here since day one. Time was already there though.
As time went by, we appeared in that particular type of time.
We can and have measured this by our standards, and it still
matches later findings. The one assumption we can make of this
is that either we're being fooled all along, or we're
eventually bound to vanish the way everything does (and did).
Do you really think that at the rate this species is going
humans will have the time, money and power to leave this planet
and survive in this universe? Think again: ALL our time,
money and power is needed to keep the billions of us alive
while left on this globe.
Unfortunately it's (and we are) going downhill, not uphill,
even though many are convinced everything is OK, it isn't.
That must be the main reason I started this thread.
> A thousand years ago they thought about the same thing, the
> Second Coming would come and the earth would be destroyed, and
> everybody who didn't wind up in Heaven would wind up in Hell.
> Four thousand years ago they thought the gods had already decided
> to destroy humanity once and they sent a big flood. But then
> they changed their minds, and put off killing humanity by fire
> for awhile.
Of course, but I'm not saying anything about the when,
I'm saying we cannot be so stupid as to think humans will
always survive, and should not ever pretend or assume we will.
All it takes is a very very tiny 'mistake' and all will be over.
Not only do we have the large dangers of some nuclear weaponry
going off, but also we have so many natural disasters
lurking at us to strike any moment now.
We know too little about what keeps this planet in place.
Did you know it will take 1% off-axis rotation for earth
to make it impossible for us to stay alive any longer?
And are you aware what on average the chances are
that some asteroid will hit some planet near us
changing gravitational forces causing such a move
in earth's rotational axis?
We are by far not prepared (yet) for anything
remotely close to such forces.
The russians and NASA can shoot and calculate
asteroids heading for planet earth, but we will never
catch those heading for the planets around us.
Not in time anyway.
Then, we have the ozone layer. Did you know what
types of radiation are coming through since 1996?
You really don't want to know the figures and
possible results for young generations.
You will definitely decide not to have (more) children
or you're a real selfish s.o.b.
> Well, now I'm speaking for those people which is presumptuous of
> me. They can speak for themselves, maybe you'll convince them
> and get that much further along in your plan for world domination.
I'm not after world domination. I'd much rather be famous
for being early with these ideas, which I seem to have been,
since I thought of this in the late seventies already.
I don't want power, I want to lead a better life.
And I will lead a better life if everyone around me is
happier with life, and that's the whole idea.
You're still assuming I have a destructive mind,
while the opposite is the case. I want to save us
the misery we're surely heading at.
You might not understand it, but it's true.
Jonah Thomas
>With more on that story, here's correspondent **Jonah Thomas**:
>> fa...@i.am (Jules sans scrupules) wrote:
>> >Planet earth will vanish, and will take all human life with it.
>> That's an assertion you have utterly inadequate evidence for.
>The one assumption we can make of this
>is that either we're being fooled all along, or we're
>eventually bound to vanish the way everything does (and did).
You don't have evidence to make a decision about that. You're
using silly abstractions about eternity to decide what should
happen this generation. That's absurd.
>Do you really think that at the rate this species is going
>humans will have the time, money and power to leave this planet
>and survive in this universe? Think again: ALL our time,
>money and power is needed to keep the billions of us alive
>while left on this globe.
The same argument made sense in the year 1000 and in the
year 1500. There were somewhat tough times and then
people got over them, they found temporary measures that
would let them manage just fine with more people.
If you'd managed to kill off humanity in the year 1000 we'd have
missed out on a thousand years that I'm glad we had.
>Of course, but I'm not saying anything about the when,
>I'm saying we cannot be so stupid as to think humans will
>always survive, and should not ever pretend or assume we will.
So what? We shouldn't assume we won't survive to any particular
date either.
>> Well, now I'm speaking for those people which is presumptuous of
>> me. They can speak for themselves, maybe you'll convince them
>> and get that much further along in your plan for world domination.
>
>I'm not after world domination. I want to save us
>the misery we're surely heading at.
You aren't going to save people without dominating them a lot.
You don't know how.
>You might not understand it, but it's true.
I understand that you've rationalised it that way. Why not get
some professional help? It might not seem like it to you, but
this is a symptom.
Elendil022
>From: David O'Bedlam <thed...@tsoft.com>
>Date: 6/3/99 4:59 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <92840397...@news.remarQ.com>
<snip, snip>
>(in my case 140 lbs. for a small-boned 5'7" man)
Well, gleaning this information has irrevocably ruined my evening.
The similarities are startling....
I think I may be one of your little bastards, surely there must be some sort of
reasonable explanation.... I can only discern two so far.
One being that you did in fact have some sort of romantic dalliance with my
mother a little over 23 years, 2 months ago.
Which, while being quite vile intrinsically, certainly seems preferable to the
second alternative, and that is...
That I am the incarnation of your battered, beleagured, and besmirched
spirit... How this can be while you live yet still, of course, only leads to a
more chilling conclusion...
I am accursed!
That one sentence of yours has now provided me with additional evidence
regarding my theory that my life is nothing more than a cruel, cruel joke. My
life is indeed the result of a god's sick, demented, and heinous whim..... I
exist, I suffer, I sob for nothing more than than to appease the wicked
pleasure of some greater being that is deriving immense gleefullness from my
plight as I fall ever lower & lower.
It is becoming all to obvious that Zues must be the one that presides over my
existance, as history shows that only he could be so stupid, and yet, so cruel.
I must have displeased him in some way, humiliated him in the presence of his
peers, refused him sexual favors...... *something*.
I'm being punished, and surely there can not be a more abominable way to
'discipline' a fellow god than by making him human, and increasing his
suffering 10-fold; forever blighting me at every opportunity, demonstrating his
sheer spitefulness at every hint of joy I may have.
My god is a fucking cretin.
Although I can derive a tithe of comfort from the fact that I do have a few,
slight differences... one being I weigh a mere 115lbs. However, even this
glimmer of hope is dashed upon reading the statement that you are now striving
to lose weight!
Do not do this. Resist him. He is manipulating your mind. You cannot allow
his plots to come to fruition, as only ruination can result from this. Do not
lose weight, gain weight, damn you! I pray that you will not allow yourself to
be his puppet, his tool, his instrument to wield against one from whom he
despises (probably because I wouldn't give *him* a blowjob).
Don't you see? He is exerting some sort of malicious influence upon your
psyche in order to assuage the little remaining discord that seems to be
disrupting this wicked harmony he wishes so ardently to attain.
Nothing but evil can result from this.
I can not send you money, but, I would be willing to send you copious amounts
of foodstuffs in order to ensure that you are well-fed, and able to (at least)
keep your current paunch, and hopefully, expand your girth even more.
If you drop anywhere near my weight, I then would have to lose weight myself,
and then I would be hovering dangerously close to the 100lb mark, which would
not please me at all as I am much too slender as it is. Emaciation is not what
I desire!
.
.
.
On a side note, in many countries, a rather robust man is considered to be
quite attractive, and looked upon with much distinction. Women would fawn over
you, offering their bodies to you in exchange for merely sharing in your wealth
of perishable goods, and having the privilage of sitting at your dinner table.
You would indeed have the respect and adoration of a public that most men seek!
Surely a 'well-rounded' man with your prodigious wit would have no problems at
all seducing any women you desired in any third-world country of your
choice.... you would be a king!
Eat, man, EAT
Elendil Voronda
spu...@my-deja.com
elend...@aol.com (Elendil022) wrote:
>
> <snip, snip>
Good Lord you read like that baby that speaks on "The family man"
SHEESH!
ma...@sprint.ca
Satanas Uxora <st...@m-net.arbornet.org> wrote:
> waldby julian f wrote:
> >
> > r...@sass.nl (Jules sans scrupules) writes:
>
> > >Who's the sick one here, pal?
> > >You hypocrite.
> >
> > It is clear that you feel threatened by my logic,
>
> That was not logic. Neither of you are exhibiting
> much logic.
>
> I have already pointed out examples of *your* illogic.
SPOCK? Is that you?
Jules sans scrupules
> fa...@i.am (Jules sans scrupules) wrote:
> >The one assumption we can make of this
> >is that either we're being fooled all along, or we're
> >eventually bound to vanish the way everything does (and did).
>
> You don't have evidence to make a decision about that. You're
> using silly abstractions about eternity to decide what should
> happen this generation. That's absurd.
Abstractions about eternity? Really, wake up, pick a piece of paper
and write down everything able to destroy (human) life as we know it.
The list is so large, the 'dangers' are so near to us, and
aside from that I can't really see the connection to
"this generation" in my ideas. Where did you get that from?
I'm targeting on future generations and wanting to make sure
*they* will still lead some kind of pleasant lifestyle.
I don't think I'm being so absurd at all. I might be early.
> >Do you really think that at the rate this species is going
> >humans will have the time, money and power to leave this planet
> >and survive in this universe? Think again: ALL our time,
> >money and power is needed to keep the billions of us alive
> >while left on this globe.
>
> The same argument made sense in the year 1000 and in the
> year 1500.
Yeah so? We're only a century away from that now. That's nothing.
One thing which has evolved and developed is that humans
are actually thinking better than before, they're smarter
than ever before, even though many would think otherwise.
This now brings us to a point where we can finally start
doing some real good thinking about our existence here.
> If you'd managed to kill off humanity in the year 1000 we'd have
> missed out on a thousand years that I'm glad we had.
Yes, so far they were reasonably nice years to be alive on earth,
but again, the dangers now are too close to us to keep it that way.
> >Of course, but I'm not saying anything about the when,
> >I'm saying we cannot be so stupid as to think humans will
> >always survive, and should not ever pretend or assume we will.
>
> So what? We shouldn't assume we won't survive to any particular
> date either.
Why not? That way we'd simply outsmart all the dangers ahead of us.
Now we can think and act on ideas like that. I guess a few decades
from now there's more important things on our minds, like
"where's my food?" to spend time on annihilation of existence.
> >I'm not after world domination. I want to save us
> >the misery we're surely heading at.
>
> You aren't going to save people without dominating them a lot.
Why not? Secrecy is the key here. I'd say it's exactly which is
convenient for the matter also (to not have to be dominating people).
You develop such a thing in silence. I should probably not even
have told you about it here, I notice some of you embrace it
just a little too much to not like it all.
> You don't know how.
But I do. And we have something called communication,
and development. Meet the right people, talk it through etc.
> >You might not understand it, but it's true.
>
> I understand that you've rationalised it that way. Why not get
> some professional help? It might not seem like it to you, but
> this is a symptom.
Give me a break. *I* need help??? Really, not one shrink
on this planet would be able to change my mind on this.
I'm living a fine healthy life right now, healthy body
healthy mind (don't even smoke, very seldomly drink),
don't make weird mistakes in daily life, I'm not fat,
not crazy, not stupid. Everything in my life is going
just fine to me. So, this is a symptom of what exactly?
My experience is the opposite, that I'm one of the few
sane people when talking about such matters.
Usually you indeed have idiots out for world domination
or something that just does not apply to reality.
I end it here. You're obviously too stubborn and
captivated by your history-teachers to ever change.
I've discovered you're a very old-fashioned kinda guy,
and advice you to go a little deeper into astronomy, it
could clear your mind from these outdated views on life.
Julius
--
http://2u.i.am
loosel...@my-deja.com
Jonah Thomas <jeth...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> >> > Big deal. Use the mice as a testbed to get basic technique down.
> >> > Refine on monkeys and chimps and then let the Africans have it...
> >> > if all goes well hit the rest of the world.
>
> isn't enough to test it on mice -- any more than you could find out
> how well myxomatosis worked on rabbits by testing it on mice. You'd
> have to test it on humans. If you tested it on 100 humans and 99 of
> them became sterile (how easy is it to tell whether a woman is
> sterile?
I was taking a long term view of the problem actually. To develop this
kind of agent would take quite a lot of basic research. Mice are a
good research system for reasons I'll skip going into now. The plan
would be something along lines of developing a vector using a known
mouse virus, testing and refining and then repeating the procedure for
systems closer to humans (maybe just moving direct to humans?) - hence
the Africa comment (low standards of public health, no one in the west
pays very much attention to the place (see responses to the AIDS
epidemic in west Africa)). You'd then need to monitor (insofar as you
were able) reproductive rates in a subsection of the population (via
census information or WHO figures?).
It would be a long haul sort of operation.
> I guess that depends on the method of sterilisation) then you'd know
it
> was 99% effective and it wouldn't work. If you tested it on 1000
humans
Lies, damned lies and statistics. <grin>
99% would be adequate. It leaves 60,000,000 breeders worldwide and
everyone gets to live the Handmaids Tale...
> at all, you can only give it your best shot.
I wouldn't dispute that for a second. My only argument in fact is that
the project is a technical possibility - unfortunately my guess is that
if there is any research into this subject it will be carried out by
Governments and I will be one of the test bunnies (as will you all).
The Swedes, incidentally, had a national sterilization program until
the 1970's (?)
A eugenics hangover, you might say.
loosel...@my-deja.com
> I didn't quite catch that. Are you saying that if you release it a
lot
> of places at once, it will infect a whole lot of people in the early
> generations before it has time to mutate? Or are you saying there
will
> be something special about the genes that result in sterility that
will
> keep them from mutating? I just didn't quite catch your drift here.
No, the genes will mutate at roughly the rate dictated by the fidelity
of the DNA/RNA polymerase. Unlike the myxomatosis example however the
virii will not be killing their hosts so there is no pressure selecting
for less effective variants - you see this type of host/virus
interaction in things like Herpes simplex I or Epstein-Barr (the virus
is not lethal, has a relatively stable genome and infects humans
endemically ).
Does that make sense?
You would want as many people infected as soon as possible for one
reason I can think of: since the 'sterility gene' does not contribute
(or detract) from the viruses fitness it will accumulate mutations at a
far higher rate than the remainder of the viral genome (nothing is
selecting it == no feedback loop).
You'd expect to see your virus lose the gene over time as it is
'unneccessary'. Hence multiple release and as many early infections as
possible is the aim.
> 90% mortality is common for diseases that haven't had time to adapt to
> us and us to them. Syphilis had 90% mortality for a human generation
> or two.
You have to look at rates of infection too. Syphilis is a sexually
transmitted disease and was releases into a susceptible population
which at least claimed to value monogamy in marriage and chastity
pretty much everywhere else. Compare that to a virus spread by aerosol
(e.g. the Spanish flu epidemic (mortality ~25% but high tranmissibility)
25,000,000 over ~9 months in 1919. More than the total killed in WW1.
If memory serves.
> >Think what 90% of 6,000,000,000 is. Then start drinking.
> That leaves 600,000,000 people, assuming everybody gets infected which
> is a wild assumption. Then we should figure that up to 95% of the
> survivors die during the disorganisation. That leaves 30,000,000
> people. That's few enough that they can come close to living off the
> land with primitive technology. It would be a big change but not
> particularly threatening to the species. It might improve the
> species's chances in the long term. I wouldn't do it on the chance
> that it would be an improvement though.
You've got to view it in the round: you'd lose almost all the medical
personnel for a start (due to their increased exposure to the pathogen)
- people aren't just numbers, they have skills and in our modern world
an increasingly small subset of skills. I would guess that you'd lose
a fair portion of that 600,000,000 to disease, famine and war in the
first generation...
And of course you could also release multiple pathogens on 'in for a
dime, in for a dollar' basis.
Elendil022
>From: spu...@my-deja.com
>Date: 6/4/99 1:11 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <7j7qmm$4iv$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
>Good Lord you read like that baby that speaks on "The family man"
>
>SHEESH!
I have no idea what you are referring to as TV is not a reference point in my
life.... as it would seem to be in your case. Consequently, it would probably
benefit all concerned if you bestowed the fruits of your stupendous wit on
someone with not only the spare time to give them the consideration they
doubtlessly deserve, but, also with someone that shares your expertise
regarding the 'enlightening' programming on the 'boob tube', which you seem to
be versed in so well.
Surely there must be a kindred spirit available to you out there, somewhere....
a semi-sentient being that is as well versed in prime-time sit-coms as you are!
Have hope!
Elendil Voronda
*Do you read the 'literature' in the TV Guide, Spud?
*Or are my assumptions true, and, are you indeed a half-wit?
Jonah Thomas
> Jonah Thomas <jeth...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>> loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
>> I didn't quite catch that. Are you saying that if you release it a
>>lot of places at once, it will infect a whole lot of people in the
>>early generations before it has time to mutate? Or are you saying
>>there will be something special about the genes that result in
>>sterility that will keep them from mutating? I just didn't quite
>>catch your drift here.
>No, the genes will mutate at roughly the rate dictated by the fidelity
>of the DNA/RNA polymerase. Unlike the myxomatosis example however the
>virii will not be killing their hosts so there is no pressure selecting
>for less effective variants - you see this type of host/virus
>interaction in things like Herpes simplex I or Epstein-Barr (the virus
>is not lethal, has a relatively stable genome and infects humans
>endemically ).
>Does that make sense?
Yes, but you *would* get some pressure selecting for less effective
variants, a variant that deleted the whole thing would likely reproduce
more effectively (having a smaller genome) and faster. Also it can't
be pleasant having a disease that burns out your reproductive organs,
so a version that didn't make people as sick would leave those people
out running around being better vectors.
It would be a challenge to develop a *new* virus that would be both
highly infective and mostly avirulent. If you tried to use something
like Epstein-Barr you'd expect no success because everybody already
has been exposed to it, to the versions that are most infective.
>You would want as many people infected as soon as possible for one
>reason I can think of: since the 'sterility gene' does not contribute
>(or detract) from the viruses fitness it will accumulate mutations at a
>far higher rate than the remainder of the viral genome (nothing is
>selecting it == no feedback loop).
Yes, even worse it's being selected against. Every secondary infection
would be a potential ineffective but immunising infection.
>> 90% mortality is common for diseases that haven't had time to adapt to
>> us and us to them. Syphilis had 90% mortality for a human generation
>> or two.
>You have to look at rates of infection too. Syphilis is a sexually
>transmitted disease and was releases into a susceptible population
>which at least claimed to value monogamy in marriage and chastity
>pretty much everywhere else.
The upper classes particularly valued female monogamy. The society
developed much stronger biases for monogamy and chastity when they
had an STD that was 90% lethal in two months. Seeing people get the
"pox" and then their noses fell off and then they died, that was
kind of scary.
>Compare that to a virus spread by aerosol
>(e.g. the Spanish flu epidemic (mortality ~25% but high tranmissibility)
Note that it died out pretty quick too.
>> >Think what 90% of 6,000,000,000 is. Then start drinking.
>> That leaves 600,000,000 people, assuming everybody gets infected which
>> is a wild assumption. Then we should figure that up to 95% of the
>> survivors die during the disorganisation. That leaves 30,000,000
>> people. That's few enough that they can come close to living off the
>> land with primitive technology. It would be a big change but not
>> particularly threatening to the species. It might improve the
>> species's chances in the long term. I wouldn't do it on the chance
>> that it would be an improvement though.
>You've got to view it in the round: you'd lose almost all the medical
>personnel for a start (due to their increased exposure to the pathogen)
>- people aren't just numbers, they have skills and in our modern world
>an increasingly small subset of skills. I would guess that you'd lose
>a fair portion of that 600,000,000 to disease, famine and war in the
>first generation...
Yes, I estimated 95%.
>And of course you could also release multiple pathogens on 'in for a
>dime, in for a dollar' basis.
Sure, but the one that spread the fastest would probably bring the
population down to the point that the others didn't spread. The less
contact with strangers, the slower the incidence. If you could spread
the others starting in the remote areas farthest from where you spread
the first, they'd make a difference. But you can't. It's like the US
policy of assigning multiple nuclear warheads to the same targets --
you increase the chance that at least one gets through, but the second
one that gets through mostly just pulverises the rubble. (But then, the
reason to do it was that we had assembly lines to build the weapons and
couldn't shut them down without making it look like the Russians were
getting ahead, and we'd run out of targets.)
ma...@sprint.ca
elend...@aol.com (Elendil022) wrote:
> >Subject: Re: An Affirmation of Gluttony
> >From: spu...@my-deja.com
> >Date: 6/4/99 1:11 AM Central Daylight Time
> >Message-id: <7j7qmm$4iv$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
>
> >Good Lord you read like that baby that speaks on "The family man"
> >
> >SHEESH!
>
> I have no idea what you are referring to as TV is not a reference
>point in my life.... as it would seem to be in your case.
can't afford cable eh?
>Consequently, it would probably
> benefit all concerned if you bestowed the fruits of your stupendous
>wit on someone with not only the spare time to give them the
>consideration they doubtlessly deserve,
You know, you just might have more time if you weren't such a windbag.
> but, also with someone that shares your expertise
> regarding the 'enlightening' programming on the 'boob tube', which
>you seem to be versed in so well.
> Surely there must be a kindred spirit available to you out there,
>somewhere.... a semi-sentient being that is as well versed in prime-
>time sit-coms as you are!
>
> Have hope!
You really don't get out much do you pal?
This is really quite a wonderful medium, one little sentence commands
an entire diatribe by someone who really has much too much time on his
hands.
thanks for your energy pal....you shouldn't give it away like that
makes you look like a whore.
>
> Elendil Voronda
> *Do you read the 'literature' in the TV Guide, Spud?
Oh should I defend myself to you?
Someone who is so pathetic that he believes that if one syllable is
good why 3 must be even better...forget about the content he says
why if I write sentences the size of a paragraph perhaps they won't
notice that I don't really have anything to say.
> *Or are my assumptions true, and, are you indeed a half-wit?
You should never assume anything about anybody, especially you...since
you have no job, no friends, and since your family is ashamed of you,
since you can't keep it together to finish your easy courses......uh oh
where was I ? Oh yeah, hey never mind I'll take that as a compliment
from you.
waldby julian f
>With more on that story, here's correspondent **Jonah Thomas**:
>> fa...@i.am (Jules sans scrupules) wrote:
>> >The one assumption we can make of this
>> >is that either we're being fooled all along, or we're
>> >eventually bound to vanish the way everything does (and did).
>>
>> You don't have evidence to make a decision about that. You're
>> using silly abstractions about eternity to decide what should
>> happen this generation. That's absurd.
>Abstractions about eternity? Really, wake up, pick a piece of paper
>and write down everything able to destroy (human) life as we know it.
>The list is so large, the 'dangers' are so near to us, and
>aside from that I can't really see the connection to
>"this generation" in my ideas. Where did you get that from?
>I'm targeting on future generations and wanting to make sure
>*they* will still lead some kind of pleasant lifestyle.
Haven't you ever seen 'Jurassic Park'? Listen to Jeff Goldblum.
Life follows chaos theory. It will cling to survival with its
fingernails. People will eat their children (actually its more
likely they will eat other people's children) before they just
go hungry and fall over dead. There are only a few things that
are likely to destroy human life as we know it:
1. nuclear war - probably the most likely of all end-of-humanity
scenarios.
2. A disease - These may end life 'as we know it' but are unlikely
to end life completely, because disease in general is a parasite,
that requires the life of its host to carry on.
3. The sun expanding and enveloping Earth - this is a long long
ways off, by the rate that our technology is developing. We went
from Earthbound to space capable in one century, and the sun
expansion is on the order of billions of years away.
So, there's your list. I didn't include starvation, because it is
clear from ecology models that as beings starve, the derivative of the
food function increases, so that the equilibrium is something
resembling a sine wave for predator and prey, one following the
other. I didn't include elimination of resources, because humans have
survived in the past with little use of natural resources. Lack of
resources would end 'life as we know it', but it is something humans
are capable of handling and they would move on.
You want to make things pleasant for future generations. How do you
know the function of pleasure over time? It could be steadily
increasing, in a curved manner (I wish I could include some plots), or
it could be on a downward trend, still convex that takes it somewhat
low, but then rises again as the hardships are overcome with
technology or alternate resources. It is highly unlikely that there is
going to be a point in the human timeline where forever after humans
are condemned to horrible suffering. I believe there will always be ups
and downs. Eternity is a rather long time.
Julian
--
senseless, no apparent self-control
waldby julian f
>loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
>> Jonah Thomas <jeth...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>> loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
Perhaps a more reasonable possibility than Julius' is to eliminate
vaccination. In some ways, vaccination could be a buildup to the
elimination of the human race. If it were to become unavailable
for a generation, that generation might have problems surviving.
Pro: It could develop the immunities of the human race, making us
more resistant and likened unto the Aliens who spurt acid when
they bleed.
The reduced population would reduce Julius' food and resources
problems.
Cons: Many people would die, and civilization might collapse.
At some point, going off vaccinations might open us to so many
diseases that humans could be eliminated. The people with resistances
to some diseases such as AIDS are few and far between, and if there
were multiple diseases unleashed with this demographic, no one
may be left standing.
----
I think more people might agree to this option than the sterilization
option. I have known some strange people who were diametrically
opposed to things such as the flu shot or some other prevention
methods, because they "don't want [their] bodies invaded by the
commercial man."
loosel...@my-deja.com
> why don't you go lay down in the midst of some crop-circle
> and pray 'they' will beam you up before it's all too late?
Honest answer? Because I don't worry about armageddon. When the four
horsemen come riding by they'll find me with a gin and tonic in one
hand, a spliff in the other and enough LSD to stop a small horse in my
brain.
I will then try my jedi mind powers on them.
> Oh really? If that is the case, what is your problem
> with nothingness you dumb fool ?
How can you have a problem with something that isn't?
> > fuck you and the horse you rode in on you freak...
> oh *I'm* a freak now? Ever look at your fromfield?
I happily admit my freakiness. Me and Frank are down.
> Please explain to me as of when will a person be a "freak".
When I feel like calling them one. Or they join the Mothers.
> And after that, explain to me why that is something bad,
> something I should try not to be, or something
> that separates you from me.
I think we're all one substance so none of those questions make any
sense from my perspective. Life is harsh.
> However, the universe thinks otherwise, you will die soon
> and the universe could not care less about what you have done
> in your whole damn life.
This part of the universe disagrees.
> All your marks will disappear into
> nothingness. Suddenly time stops, no more clocks, no more
> space, no more arrogant thinking species on earth,
> no more useless crappy posts in alt.angst,
> no-one living to tell. All for nothing.
Am I supposed to feel something? Can you explain why I'm supposed to
care? Do I feel a sense of tragedy when my footprints are wiped from
the beach by the ocean?
The waves might erase the evidence of my existence but I'll still have
felt cool sand moving underfoot. Looking at nature under the aspect of
eternity is fun, you should try it.
What's that all about man?
Jules sans scrupules
> In article <375adf65...@news.xs4all.nl>,
> fa...@i.am (Jules sans scrupules) wrote:
> > Oh really? If that is the case, what is your problem
> > with nothingness you dumb fool ?
>
> How can you have a problem with something that isn't?
Good answer. Can't beat that.. (i.e.: How the HELL should I know man!)
> I think we're all one substance so none of those questions make any
> sense from my perspective. Life is harsh.
Well thanks for taking it the way you're taking it; Very light.
> > However, the universe thinks otherwise, you will die soon
> > and the universe could not care less about what you have done
> > in your whole damn life.
>
> This part of the universe disagrees.
This part does too.
I want to outlive everyone and everything.
If I could, I would, I swear. (Rule the universe I mean)
> > All your marks will disappear into
> > nothingness. Suddenly time stops, no more clocks, no more
> > space, no more arrogant thinking species on earth,
> > no more useless crappy posts in alt.angst,
> > no-one living to tell. All for nothing.
>
> Am I supposed to feel something? Can you explain why I'm supposed to
> care? Do I feel a sense of tragedy when my footprints are wiped from
> the beach by the ocean?
It seems to me that thou arest cureth by now.
> The waves might erase the evidence of my existence but I'll still have
> felt cool sand moving underfoot. Looking at nature under the aspect of
> eternity is fun, you should try it.
Looking at life (and/or nature) under the aspect of it not being eternal
is even more fun. At least to me it is. Enjoying the moment
a lot more and all that.
> What's that all about man?
Task completed. Operation succesful.
My work on you is done. :-}
David O'Bedlam
Hash: SHA1
loosel...@my-deja.com wrote:
> Why bother with sterilization? Just kill everyone.
Yeah! And y'all can start with me!
Sterilely,
TheDavid
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David O'Bedlam
Hash: SHA1
Dear Clod and Loosely:
Oh c'mon, you're both too *adorable* to be arguing with each
other, so I propose the following: Clod admits he doesn't know
everything about epidemiolgy, and Loosely admits Clod's weenie
is bigger. (The bigger the penis is, the less blood gets to the
part of the brain in control of stuff like, oh, "expertise in
epidemiology.")
You both might unite fight the REAL enemy: Jonah E. Thomas!
Gesturingly,
The
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loosel...@my-deja.com
David O'Bedlam <thed...@tsoft.com> wrote:
> Dear Clod and Loosely:
>
> Oh c'mon, you're both too *adorable* to be arguing with each
> other, so I propose the following: Clod admits he doesn't know
> everything about epidemiolgy, and Loosely admits Clod's weenie
> is bigger. (The bigger the penis is, the less blood gets to the
> part of the brain in control of stuff like, oh, "expertise in
> epidemiology.")
I the undersigned, being of sound mind and body (despite speculation to
the contrary), do hereby endorse the following statement:
LC's peezil was the probable inspiration for the Washington monument
except they ran out of stone and had to go forward on a smaller scale,
that he could satisfy a frigid elephant if he so desired and that John
Dillinger is turning green with envy *as we speak*...
Can't say fairer than that eh?
> You both might unite fight the REAL enemy: Jonah E. Thomas!
Setting my toes on fire would be less painful than reading Jonah.
cut by a penny from heaven
> Oh c'mon, you're both too *adorable* to be arguing with each
> other, so I propose the following: Clod admits he doesn't know
> everything about epidemiolgy
yep. that was never really the point tho'. st. jen said that it was
illogical to suppose that someone could sterilize everyone. i said that
it wasn't illogical, just extremely improbable. i then listed some
reasons why ithought that it would be nigh unto impossible to get
everyone, and looselypuisse went off on some irrelevant epidemilogical
crusade. i do notice, however, that it wound up at the same conclusion
i did after talking it out with J!E!Thomass...
> and Loosely admits Clod's weenie is bigger.
who cares? i can't type with it, so what USENET good is it?
> (The bigger the penis is, the less blood gets to the
> part of the brain in control of stuff like, oh, "expertise in
> epidemiology.")
or perhaps, the smaller the penis, the more likely one is to be able to
get laid by one of the bugs one so publicly admires.
> You both might unite fight the REAL enemy: Jonah E. Thomas!
he's already infected everything. i even found myself _vaguely amused_
at something he said recently.
> Gesturingly,
> The
enduringly,
lord clod
extremis
uber
alles?
--
"You *can* be angry."
-Harlan
loosel...@my-deja.com
cut by a penny from heaven <lord...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <92881120...@news.remarQ.com>,
> David O'Bedlam <thed...@tsoft.com> wrote:
>
> > Oh c'mon, you're both too *adorable* to be arguing with each
> > other, so I propose the following: Clod admits he doesn't know
> > everything about epidemiolgy
>
> yep. that was never really the point tho'. st. jen said that it was
> illogical to suppose that someone could sterilize everyone. i said
that
> it wasn't illogical, just extremely improbable. i then listed some
> reasons why ithought that it would be nigh unto impossible to get
> everyone, and looselypuisse went off on some irrelevant epidemilogical
> crusade. i do notice, however, that it wound up at the same
conclusion
> i did after talking it out with J!E!Thomass...
"well nigh impossible" you said and gave some reasons, none of which
were convincing. Your characterisation of my response as an irrelevant
crusade is simply ad hominem and as such deserves no further
consideration. I note that you never answered on any point of
substance - which was hardly surprising since you hadn't a leg to stand
on.
As for agreeing w/JET, god help us, wouldn't you to shut him up?
I agreed it would be difficult. Not "well nigh impossible" or even
"extremely improbable". Most intelligent people can tell the
difference between those phrases.
[other nonsense deleted]
> "You *can* be angry."
> -Harlan
"Fuck you trollboy" - ME.
If you like though you can explain why epidemiology is irrelevant to a
discussion on the potential use of virii as disease vectors.
Thought not.
Jonah Thomas
>> i then listed some
>> reasons why ithought that it would be nigh unto impossible to get
>> everyone, and looselypuisse went off on some irrelevant epidemilogical
>> crusade. i do notice, however, that it wound up at the same
>> conclusion i did after talking it out with J!E!Thomass...
>"well nigh impossible" you said and gave some reasons, none of which
>were convincing.
I found his reasons convincing, but he didn't spell out the details.
When we looked at it in more detail you didn't come up with any reasons
to oppose his arguments.
>I agreed it would be difficult. Not "well nigh impossible" or even
>"extremely improbable". Most intelligent people can tell the
>difference between those phrases.
What makes it extremely improbable is that you only get one chance.
If you got to try over and over until you got it right then it would
only be difficult.
cut by a penny from heaven
of beer in a dirty glass, nearly puked, and right before passing out
managed to type:
> I note that you never answered on any point of
> substance - which was hardly surprising since you hadn't a leg to
> stand on.
here it is again, in words with three or less syllables.
this was never a discussion of _how_ to make everyone in the world, or
at least one of the sexes, sterile (we'll leave aside just what is
sterile, for now) so that after the last generation (translation, the
group of people born within a certain time period, or in this case, the
group of all people born right before the agent which made people unable
to breed was delivered) no more humans would be born. it was merely a
discussion of it would be feasible; your later examples simply
highlighted -- in support of the original premise, i might add -- how
difficult it would be.
> As for agreeing w/JET, god help us, wouldn't you to shut him up?
>
> I agreed it would be difficult. Not "well nigh impossible" or even
> "extremely improbable". Most intelligent people can tell the
> difference between those phrases.
can you show me that, given the level of technology present in the world
today, a 100 percent effective sterilizing agent can be designed and
delivered before any counter-measures -- whether natural or man-made --
could be developed?
> If you like though you can explain why epidemiology is irrelevant to a
> discussion on the potential use of virii as disease vectors.
simple: wrong discussion, sport.
> Thought not.
that much was obvious at least a week ago.
lord clod
oooo
oooo
oooh
--
"You *can* be angry."
-H
loosel...@my-deja.com
fa...@i.am (Jules sans scrupules) wrote:
> This part does too.
> I want to outlive everyone and everything.
Did I forget to mention that I believe that humanity is going to punt
itself onto silicon in the next 50 years? Personally I want to be
embedded in an asteroid and go and explore space...
I've thought about writing a book about that.
Newsgroup scifi buffs can tell me if I'm too late with that idea.
> If I could, I would, I swear. (Rule the universe I mean)
Ah. You'll have to fight the things that were and shall be again then.
You'll lose.
Elchami
<loosel...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:7jtlao$9fh$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Did I forget to mention that I believe that humanity is going to punt
> itself onto silicon in the next 50 years? Personally I want to be
> embedded in an asteroid and go and explore space...
Science fiction authors have long spoken of crystal-based life forms.
One reading of Genesis has it that the serpent offers life continuance
through crystalization into a higher soul then reincarnating.
To God, this is known as "death"
Programmers: Coders, encrypters, transubstantiators?
Computers and the internet are already just an extension of the human
nervous system.
--
Elchami...
(Blowing through your garden,
can't afford the angst to stay)