Controversy in Conversation

[MrHappy255]

First, there's a distinction between lesbian behavior intended primarily for male display (Girls Gone Wild much?) and being a lesbian. In your 1 guy/2 girl scenario above, if it is lesbian display behavior, then yes, he gets a two-for-one deal. However, if the women are lesbian, your dude gets no pussy. And while lesbian display behavior may make a girl very popular with the guys at the local nightclub, two women in an actual lesbian relationship historically generate a lot of hostility.

Also, and I'm really not asking this to be snotty, how do you come by your knowledge of comparative dressing room behavior? Because I readily admit I have no knowledge besides what I have heard from guys about locker room behavior and a lot of that is really contradictory. In the women's locker rooms that I have been in, the women are generally pretty modest, which I think has more to do with anxiety about weight and physical imperfection than sexuality.

And I believe that lesbianism was not added to the Victorian anti-homosexuality statute because it was believed that women had no sexuality of their own outside of the fulfillment of male desires, and so did not need to be prohibited.

I just wandered over to see what Cheeze was up to, so you needn't actually responde unless you wish to do so. This thread, from what I have seen, has unravelled in too many directions, some of them less productive than others, for me to resume participation in it again.

Since you may not read this as you will not participate I will only mention something that everyone else has missed on this rambling, disorganized thread and it relates to your statement.

Has no one heard of the Kinsey scale; Whereby, people will range from completely hetero to completley Homosexual. What Kinsey found was that very few were at one end or the other most were closer to the middle; However, females were closer to the middle of the scale than males in the largest proportion of his studies. Women are more willing to have and fulfill homosexual thoughts and tendencies than men.

Often the reason for this is societal reprecussions. In our society today which is still just barely male dominated homosexual males are still looked down upon as are hardcore or "non lipstick lesbians".

Anyway, not really good argument here but just a little bit of completely useless information, use it or ignore it at your leisure.

 

[Geoffrey42]

In short, I am who I have chosen to be.

Only if you can prove that you have free will. If the decisions you make are really just a manifestation of cause-and-effect occurring inside your body, there's nothing to say that those "decisions" you made weren't also the result of either Nature, or Nurture. Otherwise, your argument is somewhat moot. And in the end, your whole response seems targeted at people who are 100% Nature vs. 100% Nurture. I think the vast majority of people involved in this argument world-wide are just trying to decide which one is dominant, not which one is wholly responsible. Is there room for a 3rd variable? I don't know. People tend to get confused when you move graphs into 3D.

++ to what mshcherbatskaya (I managed that from memory for the first time!) said about lesbian acts for the purpose of male-attraction and lesbian acts for the sake of lesbianism. I know a guy who got into just such a situation with 2 decidedly lesbian individuals, and let's just say that it didn't live up to his expectations. And, I promise, I'm not referring to myself in the 3rd person.

@John Galt: I'm not even sure how to approach your proposition about living in a world where the primary purpose of fertilization was harvesting of genetic materials for purposes other than procreation, but it seems like you're saying "What if it were ok to murder people? Would you be alright with it then?" This is the world we live in, and the standards that have been set are the ones we have to deal with. Just because they are self-imposed does not make them any less relevant.

On to my real point though... what I find to be a more useful parallel is to consider that the process by which people have been attempting in vitro up until now required that the doctors fertilize and implant far more than they were actually trying to get, as a shotgun attempt to get at least one to successfully result in a viable pregnancy (resulting, as their techniques improved, in increasingly large articial twins/triplets/quadruplets/septuplets, etc). Those spare embryos were just considered collateral damage, in the overall goal to produce life. Similarly, when people end up with too many babies in the oven, they're presented with a fairly difficult choice of terminating one or more to increase the odds for the others, or not doing so, and running the risk of none of them making it. We sacrifice life for life all the time, and previously, had been doing so all the way back to the embryonic stages. Why the fuss now? If we were making lollipops out of hES, then maybe we could be outraged. As it is? Definitely a moral line in the sand, but drawn by people that aren't very good at lines.

 

[General Ma Chao]

I've been trying to read this topic and I have no idea where this discussion started or ended. Could someone help me out here?

 

[General Ma Chao]

So if some people are more "fit" than others as many in this thread are arguing, what do you do with those that are not "fit?" They're just not going to disappear or "improve" overnight.

 

[Geoffrey42]

Reading through your post, Cheeze_Pavilion, I couldn't help but be reminded of the tale of the Golgafrinchans and the telephone sanitizers.

 

[General Ma Chao]

So if some people are more "fit" than others as many in this thread are arguing, what do you do with those that are not "fit?" They're just not going to disappear or "improve" overnight.

Exactly--that was what the original poster was angling towards, that money spent on an achievement gap that can be entirely explained by nature is really just money being thrown away.

The issue is any real-world application of that truth stumbles before it even gets out of the starting blocks because of the paucity of direct evidence for it and the huge leaps in the chain causation it has to make which are contradicted by just about everything we know about the real world.

And that even if genetics plays a part, nurture plays a part in the outcome of our nature: from what I'm to understand the same genes that produce some criminals also produce some firemen. The same gene that makes someone not fear the consequences of breaking the law makes them not fear running into a burning building. Nurture, not nature accounts for the difference: an good upbringing results in a pro-social individual who becomes a fireman; an bad upbringing results in an anti-social individual that becomes a criminal.

In other words, no matter how 'fit' your nature may be in theory, nurture sometimes decides if you wind up as fit as your genetic potential, or even *less* fit than someone without as much genetic potential.

And sometimes they can disappear in a generation: I can't find the link right now, but among the Jewish population there's a Tay-Sachs database potential parents can check against to see (if they've both been tested for whether they are carriers) if they would run the risk of children inheriting from both parents.

I came across this information when pissing off a white power discussion board. Someone brought up Tay-Sachs, and so I looked into the disease a little more and found that it might be one of those 'diseases' like malaria where it's actually beneficial to be a carrier (it's possible that parents who pass along only one gene have smarter kids than those who don't pass along any).

Let me tell you, there's not much you can do on the internet that doesn't require a webcam that is more satisfying than telling a bunch of neo-Nazis that if they want to produce a race of supermen they should start having half-Jewish kids.

Oh wait, there is: when the people you're arguing with claim Irish ancestry, and you point out that people of Irish ancestry are five times more likely to be carriers of Tay-Sachs than non-European Jews; that going by Tay-Sachs, Irish people are four times closer to European Jews than to any other Europeans.

Well said. The main problem with it is also this. Certain jobs carry stigmas. If you're a pizza delivery guy and past college age, you are branded as a loser, for example. Why are you in this job? Because you're not "fit" enough for something better. You're barely making minimum wage, which goes nowhere in the USA, and likely treated like an indentured servant by your boss and your customers. It's the kind of thing that can completely crush a man's spirit. Before we can go back to higher standards, we have to do the following:

1) Get rid of the social stigma attached to failing or underacheving in these systems (not making the team won't turn you into a social pariah, people won't look down on you for hauling garbage for a living)
2) Wages go up so that a person at least support himself without living in a craphole

 

[mshcherbatskaya]

So if some people are more "fit" than others as many in this thread are arguing, what do you do with those that are not "fit?" They're just not going to disappear or "improve" overnight.

Exactly--that was what the original poster was angling towards, that money spent on an achievement gap that can be entirely explained by nature is really just money being thrown away.

The issue is any real-world application of that truth stumbles before it even gets out of the starting blocks because of the paucity of direct evidence for it and the huge leaps in the chain causation it has to make which are contradicted by just about everything we know about the real world.

And that even if genetics plays a part, nurture plays a part in the outcome of our nature: from what I'm to understand the same genes that produce some criminals also produce some firemen. The same gene that makes someone not fear the consequences of breaking the law makes them not fear running into a burning building. Nurture, not nature accounts for the difference: an good upbringing results in a pro-social individual who becomes a fireman; an bad upbringing results in an anti-social individual that becomes a criminal.

Regarding genetic pre-dispositions and performing to full potential, there are also issues not only of nurture directing people towards productive or destructive manifestations of their genetic presets, there are also ongoing conditions in which any given individual performs. My sister has classic ADHD, so much so that they were even recognizing it in her in the mid-80's when she was in school. One of the factors in her ADHD is that she simply thinks better while she is moving. If you were to put her on a treadmill and administer an IQ test, I would bet good money that she would score higher than if you made her sit in a seat and take the same test. So in an environment that employs people in physically active work, my sister would better manifest her full potential intelligence than she would in a sedentary environment. When she was a waitress, she remembered who ordered what without fail at every one of her tables. The only reason she needed to write down an order was for the sake of the cooks. As long as she is being run off her feet, she is brilliant. And then she went to college and could not remember what she had read at the top of the page by the time she got down to the bottom of the page. I almost bought her a treadmill with a bookstand on it, just so that she could "run around" and read textbooks at the same time.

It's odd factors like this which throw curves into the idea of intelligence testing and whether people get to fully express the potential intelligence loaded into their genes. This thread got rather ungainly, so perhaps this was addressed and I missed it, but was the idea of "multiple intelligences" addressed? The idea that the ability to learn physical skills quickly, to store and recall factual information, artistic ability, and the ability to negotiate social environments are all different kinds of intelligence, and that one can be a genius in one and deficient in another? I realize there are practical limitations to the multiple intelligences theory, but when one is talking about social darwinism and genetic "fitness", it seems logical to ask "fit to do what?"

EDIT: And, yes, it would appear that I am participating again. As fara as I can see, there are not 25 different people arguing about 5 different things simultaneously any more, so I have some hopes of actually being able to follow this thread again.

 

[werepossum]

Exactly--that was what the original poster was angling towards, that money spent on an achievement gap that can be entirely explained by nature is really just money being thrown away.

The issue is any real-world application of that truth stumbles before it even gets out of the starting blocks because of the paucity of direct evidence for it and the huge leaps in the chain causation it has to make which are contradicted by just about everything we know about the real world.

And that even if genetics plays a part, nurture plays a part in the outcome of our nature: from what I'm to understand the same genes that produce some criminals also produce some firemen. The same gene that makes someone not fear the consequences of breaking the law makes them not fear running into a burning building. Nurture, not nature accounts for the difference: an good upbringing results in a pro-social individual who becomes a fireman; an bad upbringing results in an anti-social individual that becomes a criminal.

In other words, no matter how 'fit' your nature may be in theory, nurture sometimes decides if you wind up as fit as your genetic potential, or even *less* fit than someone without as much genetic potential.

And sometimes they can disappear in a generation: I can't find the link right now, but among the Jewish population there's a Tay-Sachs database potential parents can check against to see (if they've both been tested for whether they are carriers) if they would run the risk of children inheriting from both parents.

I came across this information when pissing off a white power discussion board. Someone brought up Tay-Sachs, and so I looked into the disease a little more and found that it might be one of those 'diseases' like malaria where it's actually beneficial to be a carrier (it's possible that parents who pass along only one gene have smarter kids than those who don't pass along any).

Let me tell you, there's not much you can do on the internet that doesn't require a webcam that is more satisfying than telling a bunch of neo-Nazis that if they want to produce a race of supermen they should start having half-Jewish kids.

Oh wait, there is: when the people you're arguing with claim Irish ancestry, and you point out that people of Irish ancestry are five times more likely to be carriers of Tay-Sachs than non-European Jews; that going by Tay-Sachs, Irish people are four times closer to European Jews than to any other Europeans.

For once you and I are in total agreement. I don't feel qualified to quantify the degree of the genetic component, and Seldon seems to be. Yet it seems to me that if the nature component can be swamped by the nurture component, then it can't be that significant. It's much easier to take a student in a failing school system and make her achieve than it is to take a student from the best and brightest parents, put him in a shit inner city warzone school, and have him succeed on his own. I can't really back it up with studies, but I think the real world speaks volumes about the relative importance of genetics versus environment. Nothing against Seldon; I just don't agree with him that genetics plays an important part in the success or failure of schools.

Furthermore, the fact that a genetic component may or may not explain the achievement gap doesn't mean that money fixing it is thrown away. You could argue that spending a sum of money to raise a failing school from 40% to 70% would be more beneficial to society as a whole than spending that same amount of money to raise a successful school from 80% to 90%. Most of the 80% students will already go one to be productive, law-abiding citizens. Many of the 40% school will go on to become burdens on society through welfare programs or criminal activity. I could argue that raising the percentage of successfully educated children in the failing school has a disproportionally large beneficial effect on society. Boosting the passing school increases average productivity; boosting the failing school can change a negative or low positive average to a higher positive average.

Also, consider our own mshcherbatskaya, product of a great school system but screwed up family and grinding poverty. How much harder would it have been for her to get her life in order if she'd been zoned into a war zone school, the way most welfare children are? Then consider children whose parents are not just screwed up, but actively evil, or just absent. Love is a great equalizer itself. There will always be some brilliant children even in the most static welfare district. Some of those children will always rise out of poverty, and some never will, but the majority I think are simply possibles. If we at least try to uplift the failing schools, maybe some of those students will be inspired to reach for a better life. The alternative is to become a criminal, and we really don't need smarter criminals.

That said, from working with the local school district I'd say the limiting factor in those schools is not money or good intentions so much as it is the parents and the community. If the parents back a child who attacks a teacher, the other children soon learn teachers are not to be respected. If local leaders insist on using the schools as a jobs program, then the children will be stuck with teachers unqualified to teach.
[/soapbox]

And for what it's worth, I don't look down on either pizza deliverymen or garbage collectors. Both can earn a decent wage if they hustle, and both do an honest day's work.