[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TWilliam', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jlw61', ' ')EQ (emotional quotient) is how you react and THAT is far more important.

[Flowerr]

Actually you are right. The jocks loose.



$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'C')heck out the movie, Idiocracy. He explores this theme:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

I have always been smarter than my fellow humans (according to standardized tests). This hasn't lead to reproductive success. I am not particularly rich either. People who are dumber than rocks seem to succeed brilliantly.

We are a very adaptable species, but a hundred years of fossil fuel has made us too comfortable. We can figure out how to live without as much of it, but it takes planning.

In our household we managed to cut our fossil fuel use by half. It took some thinking and planning, but we live just as good a life, and in some ways much better with half the dinosaur juice.

Maybe there is some utility in being smart after all.

[gg3]

.
BigTex, there are a number of holes in your arguement, to the point where it doesn't hold water.

---

One: It doesn't take much intelligence to become a threat to every ecosystem in which the species in question (humans) is present. All it takes is the ability to reproduce in excess of replacement numbers, plus the opposable thumb, plus the ability to control fire.

Control of fire consists of two elements. One is the ability to make and use tools. That ability is present in chimps, bonobos, a couple of other ape species, and even some bird species. Two is the absence of a paralyzing fear of fire, which is not a function of intelligence as such, but of the feedback systems that produce fear, which are endocrinological. With those two elements, any dummy would be able to notice that a) some things burn (e.g. plant matter), others don't (rocks, water), and then figured out how to pick up a burning stick from a grassland fire or forest fire and use it to light some grass or twigs piled up with some rocks around them, and thereby keep warm at night and keep other predatory animals away.

Once that trick had been done the first time, it would spread rapidly to other humans. As human populations grew, the use of fire would increase, to the point where they could cause massive ecosystem damage. Think of Easter Island or the deforestation of Great Britain, on a global scale. Apes that could control fire, could effectively trash the planet.

And the reason that dolphins, whales, and elephants can afford to be as smart as they are without crashing their own ecosystems, is that they lack opposable thumbs. You can't do all that much damage with flippers or a prehensile trunk.

---

Two, intelligence is a check and balance against instincts that lead to ecological collapse.

The instinctive drive to reproduce is universal among all animal species and its effects are held in check only by superior predators at each step in the various food chains. Animals in food chains routinely suffer population explosions and collapses. Rabbits and wolves are a typical example, and no one would assert that wolves are too smart for their own good.

The instinctive desire to consume beyond actual physical need is present in most higher apes, certainly in chimps. A baby chimpanzee will instinctively reach out and grasp at any object that is shiny or sparkly and novel. The advertising phrase "shiny and new" is a direct expression of this instinct in its most raw form.

Among humans, there is a strong inverse correlation between intelligence and reproduction. To put it bluntly, smart people have few offspring and put more effort into raising each one, and stupid people have many offspring and put much less effort into raising each one. Also, at the present time (actually since about the 1950s), smart people tend to be more aware of the impact of overpopulation (foresight) and thus choose to have fewer offspring, whereas stupid people could give a flying f--- as long as they can f--- today and worry about the consequences tomorrow.

The element of foresight is also inversely correlated with consumption levels relative to other humans. Those with less foresight consume more, and those with more foresight consume less. The item "relative to other humans" is interesting, because it is also a function of intelligence: "somewhat smarter" humans will tend to use the "relative to other humans" metric, but "very much smarter" humans will tend to use a metric that is related to sustainability as a broader issue.

That is to say, a modestly smarter person will say "I'm doing my part, I use less of XYZ than my neighbors," whereas a much smarter person will say "I'm using X percent less than my neighbors but that's still not good enough since in order to be sustainable based on the latest findings I need to use Y amount or less."

Generally speaking, once humans recognize what their opposable thumbs are good for (aside from inserting into pies to pull out plums:-) and can control fire, it takes a substantial increase in intelligence to prevent overshoot and collapse.

---

By the way, at present, Cuba is the only country that is on an exact par with what is globally sustainable on a planet of 6.5 billion humans. That means among other things, no private automobiles, and an average monthly household electricity consumption level of at most 72 KWH. Note that 72 KWH means you cannot have your own refrigerator/freezer.

I'm a conservation freak to the point where I built my own high-efficiency fridge/freezer system, and the best I can achieve so far is a total of 109 KWH/month, which would be on par with sustainability on a planet with at most 4.3 billion humans. For comparison, the average household power consumption in the US is in the range of 500 KWH/month, which is on par with sustainability on a planet with at most 937 million humans. That shows you how far we have to go.

---

Suicide has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with emotional state. The degree of intelligence it takes to comprehend the idea of putting oneself out of one's own misery is less than that needed to do the things that trash the planet.

---

Where you say "the ultimate elegance in a life form is how long it is able to survive," you disprove your own starting hypothesis conclusively. At some point the sun will go nova and take out the inner planets. At that point the ability to survive will depend upon humans having had the intelligence and the foresight to have taken all of the numerous steps needed to diversify far beyond Earth and into other star systems. When the sun goes nova, either our intelligence will have enabled us to survive longer than that, or our lack of intelligence will have led to our extinction.

[MrBill]

The best thread I have read in stoneages. So many good perspectives. Thanks! ; - )

[gg3]

.
Plants, your veterinarian who stuck a nail into the drill to use as a bit, was engaged in tool making behavior, which is a specific manifestation of intelligence, not dumb-assness. Thanks for helping prove my point.

---

Music, as with other arts, is a means of communicating ideas and emotions. Each of the arts has a range of ideas and emotions for which it is best suited, and a range for which it is not particularly suitable. Attracting mates is one of those functions but is hardly significant compared to the function of music as a religious expression similar to prayer, with the same variations of "petition" (asking a deity to do something for oneself), "intercession" (asking a deity to do something for someone else), "devotion" (expressing one's love for or obedience to a deity) and "contemplation" (expressing deep thought about the nature of the deity).

In an oral-tradition culture, songs are often used as a means of conveying instructions for important tasks from one generation to another. In a written-tradition culture, there is less need for songs to fulfill this function, thus a greater amount of the culture's music can serve other purposes.

But as for music being relatively harmless, don't forget the ways it has been used to inspire the public to support all manner of despotic regimes throughout history, thereby facilitating the atrocities of those regimes. Music is a means of liberation in the hands of the free, and a tool of propaganda in the hands of the tyrant. Relevant to sustainability it may be used to promote increase in consumption (advertising jingles) or abstinence from consumption (folk songs criticizing the consumer culture).

---

BigTex, men and women alike find pleasant voices attractive and unpleasant voices unattractive. That much is axiomatic. The characteristics that are held by a given culture to be attractive in a voice, apply to the speaking voice as well as to the singing voice. Generally someone with a good singing voice will also have a good speaking voice, though the reverse does not necessarily follow due to issues such as melodic range.

---

Nicholai, I'm with you in more ways than one. But the 150 IQ is only one element of the necessary change in the species. Another is a reconfiguration of emotional states to moderate certain reinforcing feedback functions and enhance certain limiting feedback functions. I use the term "Homo Noeticus" to refer to the next stage in human evolution, literally "God-knowing human" (in a Deist sort of way) and also "reasoning human" (a non-religious way of putting it), a memetic rather than genetic evolution (at first anyway). H. Noeticus is already present though a small minority, and you write as if you're also one.

---

Plants, you forget that the Founders of the US and other Western democracies were also up there on the charts. As a generalization, greater intelligence tends to be necessary among political leaders. There are exceptions.

---

Nicholai, if we were all at 150, that would become the new mean average or 100, and IQ 180 - 200 would become the new threshold for relative genius. Self-interest disclosure: Yes, I would like to live in a world like that; among other things it would make it a heck of a lot easier to find a partner (I'm gay, thus my range is limited to the 5% of my generation who are male and gay, whereas you presumably have a range of the 45% of your generation who are female and hetero). That being said, my primary selection criterion for interest in other people is brains rather than sexuality, thereby opening up the range somewhat:-)

---

Plants, I agree it's batshit crazy to think we can upload our minds into machines. Mind is not software (that position is naive dualism), but an interaction between information-as-such and the brain itself. To the extent that the information aspect of mind can be detached from the brain, there would also be a permanent hereafter, rendering mechanized immortaility more akin to a voluntary amputation and prosthesis by comparison.

However it's hardly batshit crazy to want to colonize the stars, since doing so extends the survival of the species beyond the point where the sun goes nova. Given the choice between pouring resources into warfare, and pouring the same resources into a space program with interstellar goals, clearly the latter is the more sane choice.

---

Lawnchair, "we burned through (our energy endowment) flinging poo at each other and being too lazy to walk." Very well said.

TJ and his peers did worry about what would happen when the frontier closed, and recognized that an expanding frontier was a necessary or at least contributory condition for a society in which liberty and equality both could flourish and become engrained in the culture.

"There is a whole, whole lot of stupid running around." True, and also very well said. Yo, I like your writing style, and don't try to hide amongst the stupid, the way you put words together identifies you as a fellow smarty. And as for "At 1% annual growth, human bodies will incorporate every gram in the observable universe in approximately 10,170 years," if that one is yours, you probably already know you're a member of the 4SD club (4th standard deviation above the mean).

---

Re. Mr.Bill re. "We are perhaps one of the first - or few generations - that is actually looking forward at the sustainability of (our) actions..."

Europeans following the cholera and dysentery epidemics of the 1800s no doubt asked similar questions. It's well known that certain Native American cultures routinely consider the impact of their actions out to five generations, which is quite an accomplishment in terms of the ability to extrapolate from trends.

The human race will be suffering "mortality rates similar to the rest of the anmal kingdom," this century. That will be interesting.

Though, I disagree with you about nuclear energy. (Insert my usual rant here about "a climate-clean energy mix requires nuclear fission for the foreseeable future." But let's not digress the topic via a nuclear debate here...)

"We're born, we eat, we shit, we screw, we die!" Some of us also create enduring memes that last, in some cases, centuries or millennia. That's worth something. Quite a bit in fact.

---

More later; tasks at hand to do now...

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'T')he best thread I have read in stoneages. So many good perspectives. Thanks! ; - )

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gg3', '.')
BigTex, there are a number of holes in your arguement, to the point where it doesn't hold water.

---

One: It doesn't take much intelligence to become a threat to every ecosystem in which the species in question (humans) is present. All it takes is the ability to reproduce in excess of replacement numbers, plus the opposable thumb, plus the ability to control fire.

Control of fire consists of two elements. One is the ability to make and use tools. That ability is present in chimps, bonobos, a couple of other ape species, and even some bird species. Two is the absence of a paralyzing fear of fire, which is not a function of intelligence as such, but of the feedback systems that produce fear, which are endocrinological. With those two elements, any dummy would be able to notice that a) some things burn (e.g. plant matter), others don't (rocks, water), and then figured out how to pick up a burning stick from a grassland fire or forest fire and use it to light some grass or twigs piled up with some rocks around them, and thereby keep warm at night and keep other predatory animals away.

Once that trick had been done the first time, it would spread rapidly to other humans. As human populations grew, the use of fire would increase, to the point where they could cause massive ecosystem damage. Think of Easter Island or the deforestation of Great Britain, on a global scale. Apes that could control fire, could effectively trash the planet.

And the reason that dolphins, whales, and elephants can afford to be as smart as they are without crashing their own ecosystems, is that they lack opposable thumbs. You can't do all that much damage with flippers or a prehensile trunk.

---

Two, intelligence is a check and balance against instincts that lead to ecological collapse.

The instinctive drive to reproduce is universal among all animal species and its effects are held in check only by superior predators at each step in the various food chains. Animals in food chains routinely suffer population explosions and collapses. Rabbits and wolves are a typical example, and no one would assert that wolves are too smart for their own good.

The instinctive desire to consume beyond actual physical need is present in most higher apes, certainly in chimps. A baby chimpanzee will instinctively reach out and grasp at any object that is shiny or sparkly and novel. The advertising phrase "shiny and new" is a direct expression of this instinct in its most raw form.

Among humans, there is a strong inverse correlation between intelligence and reproduction. To put it bluntly, smart people have few offspring and put more effort into raising each one, and stupid people have many offspring and put much less effort into raising each one. Also, at the present time (actually since about the 1950s), smart people tend to be more aware of the impact of overpopulation (foresight) and thus choose to have fewer offspring, whereas stupid people could give a flying f--- as long as they can f--- today and worry about the consequences tomorrow.

The element of foresight is also inversely correlated with consumption levels relative to other humans. Those with less foresight consume more, and those with more foresight consume less. The item "relative to other humans" is interesting, because it is also a function of intelligence: "somewhat smarter" humans will tend to use the "relative to other humans" metric, but "very much smarter" humans will tend to use a metric that is related to sustainability as a broader issue.

That is to say, a modestly smarter person will say "I'm doing my part, I use less of XYZ than my neighbors," whereas a much smarter person will say "I'm using X percent less than my neighbors but that's still not good enough since in order to be sustainable based on the latest findings I need to use Y amount or less."

Generally speaking, once humans recognize what their opposable thumbs are good for (aside from inserting into pies to pull out plums:-) and can control fire, it takes a substantial increase in intelligence to prevent overshoot and collapse.

---

By the way, at present, Cuba is the only country that is on an exact par with what is globally sustainable on a planet of 6.5 billion humans. That means among other things, no private automobiles, and an average monthly household electricity consumption level of at most 72 KWH. Note that 72 KWH means you cannot have your own refrigerator/freezer.

I'm a conservation freak to the point where I built my own high-efficiency fridge/freezer system, and the best I can achieve so far is a total of 109 KWH/month, which would be on par with sustainability on a planet with at most 4.3 billion humans. For comparison, the average household power consumption in the US is in the range of 500 KWH/month, which is on par with sustainability on a planet with at most 937 million humans. That shows you how far we have to go.

---

Suicide has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with emotional state. The degree of intelligence it takes to comprehend the idea of putting oneself out of one's own misery is less than that needed to do the things that trash the planet.

---

Where you say "the ultimate elegance in a life form is how long it is able to survive," you disprove your own starting hypothesis conclusively. At some point the sun will go nova and take out the inner planets. At that point the ability to survive will depend upon humans having had the intelligence and the foresight to have taken all of the numerous steps needed to diversify far beyond Earth and into other star systems. When the sun goes nova, either our intelligence will have enabled us to survive longer than that, or our lack of intelligence will have led to our extinction.

[MrBill]

I am having a hard time envisioning the Wildebeest being so sanguine about his own sustainability issues as he is being eaten by the Lion or Crocodile. Is he thinking, 'oh well, it is for the greater good of the species'?

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'I') am having a hard time envisioning the Wildebeest being so sanguine about his own sustainability issues as he is being eaten by the Lion or Crocodile. Is he thinking, 'oh well, it is for the greater good of the species'?

[MrBill]

But is it not really a glass half-full argument to say, "we have only been around for a couple hundred thousand years and some reptiles have been here for millions, and look at only what we have achieved?"

I mean I am not sure what some posters want? That unlike other animal species that a couple of hundred thousand of years should have been enough to make us omnipotent, and therefore protect our species from each and every eventuality including the sun going supernova or whatever?

It is a pretty tall order. I think we have done a lot of good and a lot of bad on this planet. As each group of humans before us has done. And we're still here to talk about it despite being a fragile organism. I think there is a world of difference to learning how to make fire and communicating around the world via the Internet. One does not stem naturally from the other.

With the human population threatening to reach 9-10 billion it is not exactly that we're unique, but we seem to be successful enough.

RE men and women: Umm, thought about this for a while and concluded that the argument that women are in charge of their reproduction and therefore by default the world is pure fantasy!

Basically, leaving morals aside, I can have as many children with as many women as I want, so long as I have something to offer like money or a passport.

Show me an unmarried women that is 35+ and I will show you a walking, talking, biological time bomb! I can go anywhere in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe or Latin America and have as many children as I want! Just by being a nice guy that appears to have a good job and a little cash. Very little effort if my only objective is to have children.

My theory is that men figured out pretty quickly that once they left the farm that children were not a status symbol, but a financial liability, and that is why family sizes are shrinking. Easy divorces should have made it possible for a man to have multiple partners and therefore children from multiple marriages. That should biologically ensure his genes are circulated more widely. On the other hand I have met very few women who can honestly say that they do not want children. Sure there are a few, but then there are a few who change their minds at some point.

I am not saying this is right or wrong! I have been known to go to great lengths to get laid, but once a woman is past her sell-by date or obviously is not interested in me then her behavior or approval of me diminishes to next to zero as a mate. If I walk past 99 out of a 100 women on the street es ist mir scheiss egal what they think of me. And certainly I am not working hard or working out either to impress them or to improve my biological chances of spreading my genes around. They wish! ; - )

That we do everything to get laid is a gross over-simplification! Especially, once were already married and quite satisfied at home. Actually, I think quite the opposite. I think many men spend way too much time at the office because in their work they are in control, and at home their relative nobodies! ; - )

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'B')ut is it not really a glass half-full argument to say, "we have only been around for a couple hundred thousand years and some reptiles have been here for millions, and look at only what we have achieved?"

I mean I am not sure what some posters want? That unlike other animal species that a couple of hundred thousand of years should have been enough to make us omnipotent, and therefore protect our species from each and every eventuality including the sun going supernova or whatever?

It is a pretty tall order. I think we have done a lot of good and a lot of bad on this planet. As each group of humans before us has done. And we're still here to talk about it despite being a fragile organism. I think there is a world of difference to learning how to make fire and communicating around the world via the Internet. One does not stem naturally from the other.

With the human population threatening to reach 9-10 billion it is not exactly that we're unique, but we seem to be successful enough.

[MrBill]

BigTex wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') am not saying that as a species we have not come a long way in a short time (as some professional athletes may go from the ghetto to the big time in a similarly short period). What I am saying is that being on top of the world right now should not make us feel that our intelligence will somehow insulate us from the harshness with which nature often deals with those who wander away from their balanced ecosystems (in our case, population overshoot is probably going to ultimately be the greatest foil to our great intelligence).

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'B')igTex wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') am not saying that as a species we have not come a long way in a short time (as some professional athletes may go from the ghetto to the big time in a similarly short period). What I am saying is that being on top of the world right now should not make us feel that our intelligence will somehow insulate us from the harshness with which nature often deals with those who wander away from their balanced ecosystems (in our case, population overshoot is probably going to ultimately be the greatest foil to our great intelligence).

[efarmer]

It hurts to fail and I think we don't even try sometimes to avoid the
pain. Evolution is not about how smart we are but how successful we
can be at adapting as required. (Smart helps though if you use it.)
Mr. Bill is very correct that we do not take sound economic practices
as a foundational element of being successful in the long term.

[bodigami]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nicholai', 'T')here's a flip side to the argument. What if we all had IQ's of 150 and we understood the nature of complex societies and long-term sustainability? What if this new intelligence gave us the ability to develop societies and communities among the most rational and sustainable grounds? What if this led us to simply understand our paramount and continuous relationship as mere cog of the natural environment?

Just looking at the flip side, see what you guys think...