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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 10/29/2006 : 00:07:07
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Oliver Curry thinks it's likely. He thinks that within 100,000 years, there might be two human races, evolved from the upper and lower classes: An intelligent, gracile, but weak race descended from today's upper classes, and a race of robust, short dullards descended from today's workers.
I think Curry's completely full of crap, but then I'm descended from troglodyte working class dullards, so what could I know? I'd be interested in hearing other opinions.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2006 : 00:18:43 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by HalfMooner
I think Curry's completely full of crap.
I concur. For this to happen, human beings would need to be segregated to the point where it prevents cross-breeding. This didn't happen even when class was more valued than it is today. It also supposes that stupid people can never birth gifted children, which we know to be complete nonsense.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 10/29/2006 00:19:51 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2006 : 00:27:06 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by HalfMooner
Oliver Curry thinks it's likely. He thinks that within 100,000 years, there might be two human races, evolved from the upper and lower classes: An intelligent, gracile, but weak race descended from today's upper classes, and a race of robust, short dullards descended from today's workers.
I think Curry's completely full of crap, but then I'm descended from troglodyte working class dullards, so what could I know? I'd be interested in hearing other opinions.
Curry's completly full of crap.
In order to split, one population would have to be isolated enough that little or no interbreeding could take place.
The opening paragraph from the link says a lot:
quote:
Could the human species split in two over time due to evolutionary pressures as predicted by science fiction writer H.G. Wells?
Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics believes it could happen in 100,000 years. I couldn't resist this story, even though Dr. Curry's degree is apparently a Ph.D. "on the evolution of human moral sentiments" rather than in evolutionary genetics.
Why do these people insist on publishing such nonsense? Don't they ever research before they write? And shame on Live Science for giving him the space!
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2006 : 00:34:15 [Permalink]
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To be fair to LiveScience, the Bill Christensen article there tore Curry a new cloaca.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2006 : 05:38:01 [Permalink]
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| So how does one get a Ph.D. "on the evolution of human moral sentiments"? |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2006 : 06:24:28 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by pleco
So how does one get a Ph.D. "on the evolution of human moral sentiments"?
Y'know, I was wondering that very thing. So I looked him up. quote:
Oliver Curry received his PhD in 2005 from the Government Department of the London School of Economics. He currently teaches Political Theory at New York University in London. Oliver is interested in evolutionary explanations of behaviour, especially human social, moral and political behaviour. He is also interested in how evolutionary explanations of moral and political thought and behaviour shed light on problems in moral and political theory. He is currently working on turning some of the predictions that evolutionary theory makes about human moral and political psychology into tractable experiments, and putting them to the test. (For more information, see the website of the Evolutionary Moral Psychology Group: www.empg.org.)
I fear that the good doctor, the ink scarcly dry on his PhD, has been talking when he should be listening. An evolutionary scientist, he ain't. Better he should stick to economics, something he, one hopes, knows something about until he learns a bit about the ToE.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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| Edited by - filthy on 10/29/2006 06:25:46 |
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2006 : 06:31:21 [Permalink]
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| Perhaps he read The Time Machine a bit too literally...well, he isn't the only one with literal problems, but statements like his do not help "the cause" very much... |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2006 : 11:13:11 [Permalink]
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Thanks for looking up Oliver Curry, fil. Sounds like the young political philosopher is one of those contemporary people who are trying to jump-start the unmourned corpse of Social Darwinism.
I wish them none of the luck in the world. Indeed, pleco, this is the kind of nonscience nonsense that Creationists will try to twist and use to discredit real evolutionary biological science.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 10/29/2006 : 18:45:15 [Permalink]
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quote:
Oliver Curry thinks it's likely
Oliver Curry obviously doesn't have the first clue about evolution and the forces that drive it.
What possible mechanism would cause half of the human race to lose their innate intellect? What selection pressures would cause the other half to lose their innate physical survival adaptations?
What an absolute piece of crap that article was.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2006 : 01:13:10 [Permalink]
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That would be the sci-fi version of evolution not the science version.
What causes species to split is time and isolation. If rich smart weak people never mingled with the rich or poor dumb strong people it could happen. But currently the gene pool is well represented in both rich and poor.
You could get an upper class that stopped mingling with the lower classes in theory, especially given 10,000 years. To fit the prediction you'd then have to have the upper class gene pool lose the attraction to those physically fit guys and gals. There is a school of thought that keeping people alive with modern medicine who would otherwise die will eventually have a significant affect on the gene pool. So the prediction I assume is claiming the poor won't get the same medical care as the rich.
To lose intelligence the lower class would have to only survive if they were good at manual labor. The industrial revolution has made heavy work less for humans in all economic levels.
Sounds to me like the guy might be looking at the tribal societies that aren't keeping up with the modern ones. But those groups are merging or dying out as the land they need to survive as agricultural or hunter-gatherer societies is disappearing. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2006 : 03:33:34 [Permalink]
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The idea that people would become less intelligent over time is fatally flawed.
There is no circumstance I can think of where intelligence is a disadvantage to survival. I can think of no circumstance where intelligence isn't a major boon to survival.
I guess you could selectively breed intelligence out of a population... same for strong physical traits.
But back in reality the only likely way that humans will split into seperate species is via spatial seperation of populations. i.e. If we are ever able to get off planet earth, and only then if there is very limited ability to travel between the various populations.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Vegeta
Skeptic Friend
United Kingdom
238 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2006 : 04:10:21 [Permalink]
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the sad thing is that this article made headlines on news sites such as BBC.co.uk with no rebukes or anything. No wonder the majority of people talk such crap all the time when the media is not presenting them with good science. Hmmm I think I'll complain to the BBC, I haven't done that in a while
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6057734.stm |
What are you looking at? Haven't you ever seen a pink shirt before?
"I was asked if I would do a similar sketch but focusing on the shortcomings of Islam rather than Christianity. I said, 'No, no I wouldn't. I may be an atheist but I'm not stupid.'" - Steward Lee |
| Edited by - Vegeta on 10/30/2006 04:48:43 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2006 : 05:16:29 [Permalink]
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That BBC article is even worse than the scoffing LiveScience one, because it includes more unquestioned details of Curry's nonsense. Pure, groundless speculation, all of it.
Oliver Curry should be run out of academia impersonating a scientist (and for plagiarizing HG Wells). Anyone want to bet he will be?
At the very least, biological scientists should take this guy to task, and start asking pointed questions about what that team of political scientists, economists, philosophers, and who knows what else (bishops and psychics?) are doing playing at being scientists there at the London School of Economics.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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