jlc

This is an excellent question. I agree with CptKirk, "The whole point of a civil society is to spell out these kinds of things".

When we consider the environment of the society we are dealing with, we could hypothesize that it is entirely Objectivist or thatthe society is a mixture of the political philosophies we see 'in the wild' today. Let us assume that the person will not voluntarily move for any reason (eg this home location is his religious shrine). How can we approach this?

If we assume that the society of the dam is entirely Objectivist, it is easy to see - just from our experience here in this virtual Gulch - that this already includes a wide spread of opinions between philosophical purity and empirical functionality. Some of us think that the person can be involuntarily moved if the reason is great; some do not.

If we assume a 'wild group' of political philosophies, such as exists in the real world, then the range of opinions gets even larger. We have to live with all these groups and take into account their different philosophies - we cannot assume that they will agree with us.

I think that CptKirk is right in that, in order to live in the real world, the rules must be clear and consistent. As an individualist, I would prefer that these rules hugely favor the rights ot the individual, but if the outcome of WWII depended on moving 'that person from that bit of land'...then move the sucker!

Jan

It is not so much 'tech to the rescue' as 'tech will change the nature of the game.

Jan

I agree. What is even clearer is that a blastocyst is not a child.
Having a right to abort an early term fetus is not equivalent to killing a newborn child.

Jan

I think that people (ie psychologists) overlook the millions of hours of data that results from playing RPGs. This is possibly the best simulation of the different aspects of human consciousness and abilities that has been done.

It is true that there is a correlation between unmarried men and violence in a society. This is one of the reasons that polygamy - originally a way to compensate in a culture when many of the men had been killed via warfare - is a bad plan in today's world. One of the posiive side effects might be to make women more valuable and therefore more upwardly mobile.

Jan

Thank you for commenting, but there is a significant difference between lack-of-belief in physical laws, which then continue to operate just the same way they do when "believed' in and the actual negation of human rights under a regime that does not believe in them.

Jan

I found it interesting that China, for all its vaunted socialism, is still relying on personal family care to take care of the old people. Woops! Something must'a slipped up in the Socialist cradle-to-grave plan.

Jan

Thank you. I was not able to find this data before!

Jan

It is not necessary to 'control' population: If you make birth control available and provide good health care so that children survive, the individual people making individual decisions reduce the population on their own. This is what is actually happening in all of the first world nations.

Just a minor comment: While it is true that Malthusian predictions have been foiled by technology, the reason that this has happened is because Malthus' theory was inherently flawed. Malthus created a model in which changes occurred in quantity but not in quality. Predicting population problems from Malthusian calculations is like trying to figure the number of beehives we would need to provide candles to light all our homes if electricity had not been invented. Malthus was an 18th-19th C scholar...and should be left in those centuries.

Jan

Do you have data for this? I have looked (because this was the likely outcome) but I have never found actual figures to support this. (This is a genuine question; I am not being sarcastic.)

All of the published figures that WHO etc publish show a normal male/female balance, going back decades. This data comes from China gov, so it may deliberately be incorrect, but I have not found another source.

Jan

It seems to me, reading the above thread, that the word "responsibility" is being used to mean two different things. In one set of replies, it is used to represent 'imposed duties'; in the other the same word is used to mean 'natural consequences'.

Similarly, when one says that "freedoms are rights" it must be clear that this phrase does not refer to a natural law such as gravity or the speed of light, because for most of the world at most of the time, those freedoms are notable by their absence.

So what is strong enough to go against the current of most of human history and gain us these freedoms? I think it is the decision by individuals to choose such duties as voluntarily joining the military, in order to escape the natural consequence that would result from not doing so - namely, having these freedoms eradicated - that allows these freedoms to exist..

So I think that "responsibility" indeed includes 'duty' - but not imposed. Awareness of the consequences of choosing or not choosing an uncomfortable situation in order to gain a long-term benefit is not only responsible, it is wise.

Jan

That is a question we should ask. Another question is, "What is this music being used for?" Almost all pop music is made for dancing; 150 years ago, operas took the place of today's movies - but they often had a waltz in the second act (so people could dance to it?).

Another type of modern music to consider is 'movie music', which is the only worthy successor to the earlier classical music. You can't dance to it, but people do listen to soundtracks a lot.

Good topic, Carl.

Jan

The video may be accurate, but it is incomplete. I think it represents a microscopic view to a phenomenon that requires a broader perspective.

The earliest body of music we have is from the Renaissance. This was dance music, or song, or very closely derived therefrom. The orchestras were simple, more of a garage band size, and the musicians were classed as 'high level servants' as opposed to professional entertainers. The music was highly repetitive (as is necessary for dancing and/or singing!).

Joseph Hayden moved music from the small band of Elizabethan era performance to what is now called the 'sonata form', which forms the basis of the symphonies of the next few centuries. He also increased the size of the band to that of a small orchestra. Similarly Bach's fugues and meditations move music from dance and song into pure music.

If the video had included music from the 17-18th centuries, it would have shown (I think) the rather simple and repetitive tunes from those eras giving way to the more complex Baroque and Classical works - the reverse of what he shows for the modern music.

After the Classical era, the Romantic era of music began, with huge orchestras playing complex music to a musically educated audience. Even workmen, going to lay bricks at their job, were whistling motifs from the symphonies or singing parts from the operas.

This era ended with the invention of recorded music, which made it socially unnecessary for 'everyman' to know how to play a musical instrument (hence decreasing overall musical knowledge). Increasingly distanced from the common audience, the early 20th century, Classical music drifted off into the appalling hinterlands of dissonance via Scriabin and other such composers, ending in the slo-mo-car-crash 'music' of the current classical music vogue.

It is no wonder that everyman turned away from this dissonance into pop music, which then became the hum and whistle music of everyman.

It is at this point that the video picks up, but if you were to extrapolate what the curve might have looked like were the past of music included, you would probably see a double wave-form, with high points of complexity and sophistication during the 19th Century (for classical music) and the 20th Century (for pop music). I suspect that the height of the wave for pop music is far lower than that of the classical. That would be interesting to investigate, but not so long as the researcher only took a tiny view of a short span of the history of music, as this video unfortunately did.

Jan, a fan of the 19th century's music

I just added a comment to puzzlelady's post, then turned my attention elsewhere and did some work. Then an email came in with an interesting subject; I clicked on it. Ha! Nothing is certain any more!
(quote of Abstract)
"Female longevity is observed in humans and much of the animal kingdom, but its causes remain elusive. Using a genetic manipulation that generates XX and XY mice, each with either ovaries or testes, we show that the female XX sex chromosome complement increases survival during aging in male and female mice. In combination with ovaries, it also extends lifespan. Understanding causes of sex‐based differences in aging could lead to new pathways to counter age‐induced decline in both sexes."

I had to post this here...

Jan

I agree...If you mean 'cyclic behavior' or even 'cyclic behavior with a periodicity of 20-40 days', then this would be an interesting study. Unfortunately, the agenda of this in the article seems to be to socially smudge gender lines and not to improve knowledge with science.

It is also possible to take the other tack. Most people do not realize that female birth control pills do not need to have a 'skip' phase to allow for a woman to have a period. This was done by Dr Rock in hope that it would persuade the Pope that birth control was natural and gain his endorsement of it. There are now (since ~2005) oral contraceptives that eliminate the period totally.

So perhaps the best solution is to make these contraceptives easily available to young women and skip the annoyance of periods altogether.

Jan

Uhm...no. Not even slightly.

Jan

Not quite. Group O blood results from a genetic deletion that removes the precursor of the A and B antigen - so no A or B can be produced.

AB blood is just a statistical outcome of having both A and B people in a breeding population. B blood type is pretty rare here in the US - less than 10%. Functionally, we are a population that is about half A and half O. I know this well, because part of my job was crossmatching blood for emergency transfusions; I worked in a hospital for 17 years.

I have not heard about A blood group disappearing and then being dying off. Thank you for a topic to research.

Jan

It looks like the A and B blood types are ancient enough that they have homologues in chimps; Group O is post-hominin breakoff from the chimpanzees. At least 2 Neanderthals have the genetic deletion for O group blood. >50% of the early Europeans had Group O; >50% of the ancient Stepps population were Rh neg; the Basques are an anomaly, as per usual.

Neanderthals also had red hair, but whilst I liked to tease my red-headed friends about this, I had to stop because: (1) the mutation for red hair in modern humans is different from the one in Neanderthals (ie we re-invented it), (2) I discovered that I am 3% Neanderthal.

There is a pretty good article here: http://mathii.github.io/2017/09/21/bl....

Jan

This clarifies a lot: You are aware of the historical antecedents of bisexuality in many of our ancestral societies. I do not consider homo/bi/trans-sexuality to be a perversion. I do not think that they are in the slightest bit harmful and hence I regard those options as an expression of free will which, as an individualist, I support. It is of great benefit to the individual to have these choices available.

I assume your reference to the Nephilim is a religious one - I recall having looked them up as a result of a posting of yours some years ago. I do not think they exist, except as a metaphor for intermarriage between various human populations.

Thus, instead of Celine's fashions outraging me, my reaction is - Fine. Who cares?

Jan

And I, your insights and rational arguments.

I do medieval reenactment as a hobby. In this venue, male pipe-layers, accountants, programmers, and FBI agents all wear tights and dresses and hug each other - because this is what our European ancestors wore and did. Most of the time these heterosexual macho men do not wear makeup...but I have seen it happen. You don't want to meet these guys in a dark alley, because they are tough. And they have wives and families and go to work and raise their children etc.

Are you aware that the Special Forces of the ancient world, the Sacred Band of Thebes, were all primary homosexuals? (They had wives they visited a couple of times per year to beget the next generation of warriors.) This is within the parameters of the culture of our ancestors. The Sacred Band was defeated by Alexander...who was bisexual, but primarily homosexual. Do we need to talk about Julius Caesar, who was, "Every woman's husband; every man's wife."?

The microcosm of our recent past far from defines normal human behavior. And - as I mentioned before - an increasing number of men and women are voluntarily not following that recent tradition. This is probably because our old-age social security does not any longer lie in having a ton of children in hope that one of the ones who survives will actually take care of you when you are old and toothless. Dental work and retirement plans are a better bet!

Jan

I think that your statement is an accurate representation of our society as it is now. I would remind you, however, that we are trying to overturn at least a couple thousand years of conditioning that firmly told women that their only role was to nurture. Culture also told men that their role was NOT to nurture. Thankfully, men are also breaking out of that pigeonhole. Remember when a man in a birthing room was considered scandalous?

Please take into consideration that the birth rate in Singapore is below replacement rate. Women in Singapore are freely choosing to not nurture to even the extent necessary to replace the population. I, as an individual, do not have a maternal instinct; I have a number of female friends, happily married, who feel the same way. We are normal women; we just don't have any desire to have children.

I believe that it is an error to equate 'an accurate report on how things are now' with 'an inherent predisposition'. I certainly do not consider it any more harmful for a child to follow this generation's dress styles than it was in the 1950's.

Mostly, I wrote on this thread to express that having such an anguished, doom filled, discussion because of 'how children are dressing' is not worthy of this list. I am more than willing to have children (and adults) dressing whichever way the gender-whim-of-the-moment takes them, as long as they work for a living and take responsibility for their own deeds.

Jan

Likewise. Ha. If you define special effects as 'magic' then we are indeed rife with it in all media.

If we focus our ire on irrelevant or even beneficial aspects of social change, we shift our focus from the actually relevant issue: that biological differences exist, but that a statistical norm does not apply to the individual. Science first; all else is subsidiary.

If the only people who wear spike heels are those who love the 'costume' of them, then that is a step forward, in my opinion. If women are not, statistically, as good at math as men (which is quite possible, but not certain) it still does not keep the most brilliant mathematician I have personally met from being a woman.

Insofar as the genders of children are concerned, let the kids run around in jeans and t--shirts until they decide what role they want - and it does not matter a particle to me if the role agrees with their chromosomes or not.

Jan

The Swedish report is of a study; the variables are uncontrolled. The conclusions do not follow the data. For example, it is possible that gender-equality nations also have better economies for non-stem grads and more women choose to take easier classes and still be able to earn a good living.

Also: Since when did the Gulch become anti-choice? I do not know anything about Celine, but the short video did not mention magic or anti-science. Clothes for women are stupid and have been for about 500 years. Women's clothes are based on the assumption that the only thing a woman can do to support herself is sell herself. It is not surprising that, increasingly, 'jeans and t-shirt' are the clothes of choice for people in general.

Jan

There are so many things wrong with this that it was wonderful. I could not keep track, let alone keep score.

Jan

That is not actually accurate in English grammar. "We" can, in English, be either inclusive (We picked up the couch.) or exclusive (We are going to dinner - you are not invited.) It can also apply to groups. Here are some of the definitions of "we" from grammar sites on the Internet.

-Used by the speaker or writer to indicate the speaker or writer along with another or others as the subject: We made it to the lecture hall on time. We are planning a trip to Arizona this winter.
-Used to refer to people in general, including the speaker or writer: "How can we enter the professions and yet remain civilized human beings?” ( Virginia Woolf).
-The plural nominative case of the pronoun of the first person; the word with which a person in speaking or writing denotes a number or company of which he is one, as the subject of an action expressed by a verb.
-We is sometimes, like they, vaguely used for society, people in general, the world, etc.; but when the speaker or writer uses we he identifies himself more or less directly with the statement; when he uses they he implies no such identification.

Example: We drove through the valley. (Only one of us was driving the car, but the whole group was present.)
Example: We discovered how to make fire a million years ago. (That is, ‘we humans’; I was not personally present.)

Jan