Young Master Smeet
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While he did support 'Humanitarian intervention' in Iraq, he did later regret the decision when the reports of half a million dead started coming in. He struck me as a pretty humane writer.
This seems like a good start:http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/earth-carrying-capacity.htmbasically, every additional mouth to feed is a pair of hands to work: poverty exists because of property distribution and politics, not because of the absolute number of human beings, even if we try not to reach the potential carrying capacity of 40 billion. Indeed, there is a strong argument that you are being robbed. Where countries have low life expectancies, such as Gambia at around 40, you are being deprived of the useful work, knowledge and skills of those people who are dying young. Calls to cut the population are calls to make us all poorer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24475342
Quote:Spencer Wells explained: "When you look at today's populations, what you are seeing is a hazy palimpsest of what actually went on to create present-day patterns."Dr Haak concurs: "None of the dynamic changes we observed could have been inferred from modern-day genetic data alone, highlighting the potential power of combining ancient DNA studies with archaeology to reconstruct human evolutionary history."So: 1) The genetic evidence alone isn't enough, we can only read it as part of a geographic/historic story in which we know otehr facts. 2) The Europeans only came up here 7,500 years ago. JBS Haldane measured the Darwin of humans to be about 70,000 years, so that's one tenth, which is almost an irrelevence in evolutionary terms.
Hrothgar wrote:This statement is incorrect. I have already explained why in this thread, but see also the below study as a referenced example.http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/8/68It's important to bear in mind that the Encyclopaedia Britannica is a general reference work rather than an authoritative text for any particular specialism.Erm,
Quote:Some have argued that the differences between continentally defined groups are relatively small and that it is difficult to distinguish groups without using large amounts of genetic data or specifically chosen markers. Our results show that continentally defined groups can be easily distinguished using only a small number of randomly selected SNPs. SNPs that are informative about ancestry are common and widely distributed throughout the genome and across SNP types. These findings illustrate the extent of genetic variation between continentally defined groups.That doesn't refute the Britannica article, unless you squint your eyes and tilt your head slightly to the left on second Tuesday of the Fourth month. No one disputes that contingent geographic/historic genetic differences exist, but the question is whether they are essential, never mind socially consequential. I also note from the article:
Quote:It could easily be extended to make predictions about smaller units of geography or individuals with a mixed background. This would require more extensive genotype data and well-characterized information about ancestral geographic origin from such individuals.That difficulty will increase as previously geographically distinct populations mix. That suggests to me that such differences are contingent.
Just to quote from Encyclopaedia Britannica:
Quote:Although most people continue to think of races as physically distinct populations, scientific advances in the 20th century demonstrated that human physical variations do not fit a “racial” model. Instead, human physical variations tend to overlap. There are no genes that can identify distinct groups that accord with the conventional race categories. In fact, DNA analyses have proved that all humans have much more in common, genetically, than they have differences. The genetic difference between any two humans is less than 1 percent. Moreover, geographically widely separated populations vary from one another in only about 6 to 8 percent of their genes. Because of the overlapping of traits that bear no relationship to one another (such as skin colour and hair texture) and the inability of scientists to cluster peoples into discrete racial packages, modern researchers have concluded that the concept of race has no biological validity.Oh what an evil man Ralph Miliband was:
Evil man wrote:This is in no way to suggest that electoral legitimation is all that a socialist party needs to seek or that a socialist party which means business can afford to rely on such legitimation alone. On the contrary, there is no question that an attempt at the radical transformation of the existing social order in socialist directions will require a lot more than this, within a complex and diffuse scenario that must include many different forms of action, pressure and struggle. But it also does need to include the attempt to achieve a measure of electoral legitimation at different levels and the achievement of a measure of representation in existing institutions. In the British context, as in the context of any other bourgeois democratic regime, this is an inescapable requirement for a socialist party, and needs to be treated as such, as a duty and as an opportunity, and not as a distracting and meaningless chore.In The British Road to Socialism, the Communist Party speaks of the creation by the labour movement, and as a result of a many sided struggle, of 'the conditions for the election of a Parliamentary majority and government pledged to a socialist programme';6 and it also suggests that 'when a socialist majority in Parliament is won it will need the support of the mass movement outside Parliament to uphold the decisions it has taken in Parliament. Conversely, the Parliamentary decisions will give legal endorsement to popular aims and popular struggles'.'It is very reasonable to argue that formulas such as these place too great an emphasis on the parliamentary and electoral aspects of a strategy of socialist advance; and also that they offer much too cramped a view of the meaning of socialist democracy. This is what the 'ultra-left' groupings have always claimed. But they have usually tended to spoil a reasonable case by arguing in terms which had little if any relevance to the real conditions at hand. They have rightly been concerned to warn against the dangers of 'parliamentary cretinism'. But they have themselves easily succombed to the temptations of anti-parliamentary cretinism and to the attractions of revolutionary phrase-mongering. There is no reason to think that this will change: it clearly answers the particular needs and wishes of a small and constantly changing but constant minority of militants on the British left.http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5397/2296#.Uk2G3Fv1D6U
twc wrote:I read those sociologists as asserting that natural scientists lack scientific integrity. This is I believe, for the reasons I gave, a quite undeserved charge against scientists of conscious human fraud.But that's precisely what they aren't alleging. Just as with, say, Chomsky's propaganda model, it works best when you assume that the scientist in question is arguing in good faith, from genuinely (however mistakenly held) opinions. The point is that the funders back and promote science based on their interest, and a scientist whose methods and results please them will be rewarded, while those that don't will be cast into outer darkness. There are other methods/faults. Humans are political animals, and rivalries mean someone might attack a theory because they don't like who propounds it (or, conversely, support it because of the personal authority of the propounder). No one has the time to carefully sift all research, we have to take a small amount of 'faith' in the practitioners, sometimes (often) that is misplaced. Only after all that do we throw in conscious fraud as a real risk.
Erm, I linked to an article that demonstrated that Lbird's view was already incorporated into maintream academic discourse on the theory of science. I feel I have no need to: "confess that you’ve ignorantly sided with the terrified capitalist" ; "admit you’ve fallen hook, line and sinker for the belly-aching of a capitalist industry"; nor "propose, in this rapacious capitalist world, who has the integrity to diagnose the cause, and solve the problem". Indeed, that the apiarist industry is a party to a power struggle to defend itself was, kind of, part of the point.Now, TWC, will you:Admit that you started the Peloponnesian war.Apologise for the Bee Gees.Accept that only John Hurt can save the world, and cure all its ills?
https://theconversation.com/sometimes-science-cant-see-the-wood-for-the-bees-18532
Quote:Among those researching the field of science, technology and society, it is argued that scientific knowledge is never just about facts, but also about power. Facts are not simply discovered by science as absolute truths, but are instead constructed in social contexts that are riddled with power relations. As the old adage suggests, knowledge and power are always intertwined.What becomes a fact and what does not is a social and political issue that is concerned with what kind of knowledge – and importantly whose knowledge – acquires legitimacy and therefore authority.The full article is interesting on this question with regard to nicotinoid pesticides, the precautionary principle and bees.
Oh, this is pleasing. Anthropogenesis is available online.i was looking for this quote:
Quote:The transmission of the nervous current often works as a relay, whereby a very feeble electric current opens the track for a stronger current. Each consecutive step in the connected track increases the available energy. Therefore the cerebral cortex does not only act as a switchboard with millions of fuses, but also is an amplifying apparatus through which almost imperceptible energy impulses coming from outside or from within the body are increased to great effects. “The whole cortical apparatus is wound up and set on a trigger so that its latent reserves of motor power and memory patterns may be released by the slightest impulse set in motion by some external event or some change in the interior of the body.” (Judson Herrick, 24, p. 122). Herrick quotes the example of a man on a ship. When this man sees a faint spot of light in the distance (effecting perhaps only a millionth of an erg on to the retina) the whole of his brain apparatus comes into action and thereby the muscle apparatus of his body is set in efficient motion. This can even cause the great engines of the ship to function.A good materialist account of how we cannot be passive observers, the energy from the eye is less than the signal to the brain, our brain adds energy to the system, and thus, what we see is as much a construction of our brains as it is a reception of enviornmental data.http://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1944/anthropogenesis.htm
https://theconversation.com/machines-on-the-march-threaten-almost-half-of-modern-jobs-18485
Quote:The threat of computerisation has historically been largely confined to routine manufacturing tasks involving explicit rule-based activities such as part construction and assembly. But a look at 700 occupation types [link, PDF] in the US suggests that 47 per cent are at risk from a threat that once only loomed for a small proportion of workers.Abstract of the article linked to:
Quote:We examine how susceptible jobs are to computerisation. To assess this, we begin by implementing a novel methodology to estimate the probability of computerisation for 702 detailed occupations, using a Gaussian process classifier. Based on these estimates, we examine expected impacts of future computerisation on US labour market outcomes, with the primary objective of analysing the number of jobs at risk and the relationship between an occupation’s probability of computerisation, wages and educational attainment. According to our estimates, about 47 percent of total US employment is at risk. We further provide evidence that wages and educational attainment exhibit a strong negative relationship with an occupation’s probability of computerisation.Hrothgar,given that you use those categories, in order to communicate with you, I have to deploy them. While you or I can and will differentiate between lemons and limes, in many countries that distinction isn't recognised, they could still use those words to us, in order to communicate.Population genetics is very like those colour charts you get on computer programmes for choosing the font colour, at one end there may well be red, and at the other blue. There are no boundaries at any stage, and selecting any section will include a variety of components (which will merge at the edges with any neighbouring sets within arbitrarily drawn boundaries). There is no essential difference at any point on the scale, merely greater or lesser concentrations of particular traits.I present, btw, the ancestor paradox as a major scientific refutation: there are more people alive than pairs of ancestors to produce them, within relatively recent history (about 20 or 30 generations) we all share common ancestors.
