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Jan 31, 2008
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#1
I want to see where all your heads are at, all the while discussing core questions that might benefit us after this shit-hole society crumbles.

Why is humanity living such an empty state of being, deprived of its capacity to reach its full potential?

What is the solution to why you think this is the case?



You can answer however you like, and you might even have a problem with the implications of the questions, but I still would like to see where your heads are at nonetheless.
 

ThaG

Sicc OG
Jun 30, 2005
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#2
What do you mean by full potential?

Because the answer would be that human nature is primarily shaped by our evolutionary history and very little by the consciousness we're so proud of, which drives us towards collectively suicidal behavior.

But then one can say that we actually do not have the potential to do the great things we see in science fiction because those features of our behavior are just as much characteristic of who we are as our inventiveness and other good traits
 
Jan 31, 2008
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#4
By full potential , I am speaking of the process of evolution that has gotten us here, and the potential of where it might take us.
You might believe that it's destination for us as a civilization is towards our own self destruction, and that is fine.
 
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ThaG

Sicc OG
Jun 30, 2005
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#6
By full potential , I am speaking of the process of evolution that has gotten us here, and the potential of where it might take us.
You might believe that it's destination for us as a civilization is towards our own self destruction, and that is fine.
The process of evolution is what is responsible for our self-destructive behavior.

Indeed, one can quite convincingly argue that the process of evolution itself is the explanation for the Fermi paradox. Because any life that appears will evolve inclusive fitness maximization as the overarching principle guiding its behavior and because the process of evolution while very slow in terms of rate of change is very short-termistic in terms of its action - it acts on the transition from one generation to the other. Thus the only way an advanced civilization could evolve and not self-destruct is if conscious awareness of the ultimate self-destructiveness of short-term inclusive fitness maximization-seeking behavior that is strong enough to overcome that behavior develops and becomes the social norm before the civilization destroys itself.

But that's unlikely.
 
Jan 31, 2008
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#8
The process of evolution is what is responsible for our self-destructive behavior.

Indeed, one can quite convincingly argue that the process of evolution itself is the explanation for the Fermi paradox. Because any life that appears will evolve inclusive fitness maximization as the overarching principle guiding its behavior and because the process of evolution while very slow in terms of rate of change is very short-termistic in terms of its action - it acts on the transition from one generation to the other. Thus the only way an advanced civilization could evolve and not self-destruct is if conscious awareness of the ultimate self-destructiveness of short-term inclusive fitness maximization-seeking behavior that is strong enough to overcome that behavior develops and becomes the social norm before the civilization destroys itself.

But that's unlikely.

So if we were to overcome that behavior, would you say that it is part of the evolutionary plan for those species to overcome their self-destructive set-back, making the evolutionary process a lot more than a count-down to the species' extinction?

Speaking about humans, would you say that we have reached a stage in our evolution(social or biological) to where the movement of evolution would be acting through us if we were to consciously make the changes that are needed for our species' survival?
We cannot separate the species' mind and 'will' to change from the way evolution in the universe has always been.
I think once this part is cleared up, then we can agree that there does exist a potential in humans, and if you agree with this, what will it take for us to do so?
I know you are saying it will take our becoming conscious "of the ultimate self-destructiveness of short-term inclusive fitness maximization-seeking behavior" but I may be asking you to get a little philosophical and speculative as to what you think it will take for humans to do so in the first place.
Why are we so self-complacent and content enough with our state of being that we don't do anything about it?

I would like to trace back these obstacles to a root conflict. For instance, one can look at how ignorant and dumb everybody around them is and make the claim that people are dumb because they have been conditioned to be brain dead consumers by those who have capitalized on the earth's and the humans' resources.
But what I would like to see is tracing the issue as far back as we can so we can understand fully why we are so susceptible to this corrupt-ability.
What is it that these advertisements fill us up with that we feel to be lacking? Why do we think we are lacking image, prestige? Is this all about needing acceptance from our fellow brethren?


I know I asked too many questions, and I am not looking for answers to these specific questions, I am just drawing an example of what kind of dialogue I would be interested in having with everybody here about this subject, no matter what angle you come from.
 
Jan 31, 2008
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#9
human kind is fucked...no ands,if's,or buts
could you tell us why you think this is so? I am not in disagreement with you, but I am also not in agreement.
I bend more-so towards believing that this society and it's ideology needs to die out, and with it many of us of course.

My stance on this is relatable to this excerpt from Hermann Hesse's Demian:

Yet in Demian's words an intimate connection became evident. He spoke about the spirit of Europe and the signs of the times. Everywhere, he said, we could observe the reign of the herd instinct, nowhere freedom and love. All this false communion--from the fraternities to the choral societies and the nations themselves--was an inevitable development, was a community born of fear and dread, out of embarrassment, but inwardly rotten, outworn, close to collapsing. "Genuine communion, " said Demian, "is a beautiful thing. But what we see nourishing everywhere is nothing of the kind. The real spirit will come from the knowledge that separate individuals have of one another and for a time it will transform the world.
The community spirit at present is only a manifestation of the herd instinct. Men fly into each other's arms because they are afraid of each other--the owners are for themselves, the workers for themselves, the scholars for themselves! And why are they afraid? You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them! They all sense that the rules they live by are no longer valid, that they live according to archaic laws--neither their religion nor their morality is in any way suited to the needs of the present. For a hundred years or more Europe has done nothing but study and build factories! They know exactly how many ounces of powder it takes to kill a man but they don't know how to pray to God, they don't even know how to be happy for a single contented hour. Just take a look at a student dive! Or a resort where the rich congregate. It's hopeless. Dear Sinclair, nothing good can come of all of this. These people who huddle together in fear are filled with dread and malice, no one trusts the other. They hanker after ideals that are ideals no longer but they will hound the man to death who sets up a new one. I can feel the approaching conflict. It's coming, believe me, and soon. Of course it will not 'improve' the world. Whether the workers kill the manufacturers or whether Germany makes war on Russia will merely mean a change of ownership. But it won't have been entirely in vain. It will reveal the bankruptcy of present-day ideals, there will be a sweeping away of Stone Age gods. The world, as it is now, wants to die, wants to perish--and it will. "
"And what will happen to us during this conflict?" "To us? Oh, perhaps we'll perish in it. Our kind can be shot, too. Only we aren't done away with as easily as all that. Around what remains of us, around those of us who survive, the will of the future will gather. The will of humanity, which our Europe has shouted down for a time with its frenzy of technology, will come to the fore again. And then it will become clear that the will of humanity is nowhere--and never was--identical with the will of present-day societies, states and peoples, clubs and churches. No, what Nature wants of man stands indelibly written in the individual, in you, in me. It stood written in Jesus, it stood written in Nietzsche. These tendencies--which are the only important ones and which, of course, can assume different forms every day--will have room to breathe once the present societies have collapsed. "
 

ThaG

Sicc OG
Jun 30, 2005
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#10
So if we were to overcome that behavior, would you say that it is part of the evolutionary plan for those species to overcome their self-destructive set-back, making the evolutionary process a lot more than a count-down to the species' extinction?
Not really, the vast majority of species never reach the capacity to self-destruct. They either evolve into different species or go extinct due to factors other than the overshoot-and-collapse cycle (it has to be noted that they actually often do both).

Overcoming the selfish behavior for the common good has been done by many species - ants, bees, etc., i.e. what we call eusocial species. The problem with those species, however, is that as far as we can tell, they do not have the capacity to evolve consciousness and develop advanced civilizations. Precisely because they are eusocial - once you confine individuals to strictly defined roles, it is very difficult to see where the cultural innovation that drives the development of civilization would come from. That view, of course, may just be the result of our human bias, after all we are the only conscious beings with a civilization we know of, but it seems more likely to be a general rule.

Speaking about humans, would you say that we have reached a stage in our evolution(social or biological) to where the movement of evolution would be acting through us if we were to consciously make the changes that are needed for our species' survival?
It does not work that way - what you have right now is a tiny number of people who are "getting it" and the vast majority who are not. Now, since "getting it" goes against the core animal instincts that drive our behavior, it take an enormous amount of effort (i.e education and training) to convert people who are not "getting it" into people who are, and it's pretty much impossible after a certain age. The entropic cost of controlling human behavior is quite high.

There are two ways for a species to avoid the overshoot-and-collapse cycle caused by inclusive fitness maximization-driven behavior is the following:

The first is the following:

1) A civilization emerges
2) The civilization develops a sufficient amount of knowledge to understand its relationship with the environment and to realize infinite growth is suicidal.
3) The small number of people who initially understand that have sufficient power to impose the corresponding behavioral changes on the rest of the population.
4) After that, through enormous amount of effort, that behavior is maintained on the cultural level. Eventually, technology may advance sufficiently to engineer it genetically, at which point the change becomes stable.

The problem here is that the maintenance of that behavior against the basic animal instincts of people is enormously entropically expensive and therefore highly unstable.

The second scenario goes like this:

1) A civilization emerges
2) The species evolves eusociality before it self-destructs
3) Meanwhile, ecological understanding develops and as eusociality has already evolved, it is fairly easy to instigate and maintain the behavioral change

The problems here is that the emergence of civilization is a fast process because it happens on the cultural level while the evolution of eusociality occurs on the genetic level and is thus several orders of magnitude slower, i.e that scenario is highly unlikely

We cannot separate the species' mind and 'will' to change from the way evolution in the universe has always been.
That's a LaMarckian misunderstanding of how evolution works - the species has no "mind" or "will" to change. It all happens on the level of how genes distribute in the population

I think once this part is cleared up, then we can agree that there does exist a potential in humans, and if you agree with this, what will it take for us to do so?
Our only chance is the first scenario I described. But the probability of it being successfully implemented is vanishingly small

I know you are saying it will take our becoming conscious "of the ultimate self-destructiveness of short-term inclusive fitness maximization-seeking behavior" but I may be asking you to get a little philosophical and speculative as to what you think it will take for humans to do so in the first place.
I already said it

Why are we so self-complacent and content enough with our state of being that we don't do anything about it?
Because it takes a lot of knowledge to figure these things out. And acquiring knowledge is expensive - it takes effort and time, which could be better spent directly maximizing inclusive fitness. That's why most people spend as much of their as possible time trying to accomplish sexual intercourse with members of the opposite sex and very few spend that time to educate themselves into these issues (which the educational system does not cover at all).

In the long term, it is hugely beneficial for the species to spend that time reading and learning instead of going to clubs trying to pick up something to fuck. But evolution does not work in the long term, it works on the current generation, at the moment.

I would like to trace back these obstacles to a root conflict. For instance, one can look at how ignorant and dumb everybody around them is and make the claim that people are dumb because they have been conditioned to be brain dead consumers by those who have capitalized on the earth's and the humans' resources.
There's an element of that. But that's not the main reason - the main reason is that, as I said, most people will only learn as much as is directly necessary for them to survive and reproduce and that issues of intraspecific competition, i.e. inclusive fitness maximization, are much more important to them than abstractions about the long-term future

But what I would like to see is tracing the issue as far back as we can so we can understand fully why we are so susceptible to this corrupt-ability.
What is it that these advertisements fill us up with that we feel to be lacking? Why do we think we are lacking image, prestige? Is this all about needing acceptance from our fellow brethren?
Basic human, i.e. animal instincts, simple as that.
 
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May 14, 2002
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#11
We would live that way because if ignorance.

I think there are a number of things we could do to expand our potential.

One would be to start in the educational system with children and exploit the fuck out of their interests.
People tend to soak in a lot more information when their curiosity about a certain subject is entertained.
Resulting them to know better what they would want to do for a steady income. Instead of today were people seem to wander around soulless because they got stuck in some dead end job they never wanted in the first place but did not got other opportunities in life.

Change the way we eat. How could one possible even think about living up to ones full potential if most of us eat meals with the same nutritious value as a newspaper.

It should become more standard to think about what is good for the collective species instead if thinking what is good for 'me'.

Also I think that all politicians everywhere should not earn more then the minimum income of that country.
Should live in backwards or problem neighborhoods, and scratch all their benefits.
This way we should end up with politicians that acts in the interest of their country not in the best interest of themselves.

These are just a few quick thoughts tho
 
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