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ruveyn
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11 Apr 2011, 10:55 pm

Vigilans wrote:

Its not about strength, its about the right traits at the right time. Mammals were weaker then dinosaurs and yet now they dominate the world because their penchant for burrowing to avoid dangerous predators (among other reasons) let them survive an asteroid impact and the subsequent impact winter. There are many other examples of 'weak' species 'winning'. Then again, do mammals really 'dominate'? What is the most numerous, dangerous type of organism on the Earth? It certainly is not Man


A cosmic disaster about 65 million years ago gave mammals a leg up.

ruveyn



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11 Apr 2011, 10:55 pm

Orwell wrote:
What the hell does shooting a cow have to do with anything that was previously being discussed?

It's the underlying metaphor undergirding this discussion.



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11 Apr 2011, 10:56 pm

LibertarianAS wrote:
Vigilans wrote:
LibertarianAS wrote:
ok i'll take my gun and kill some cow

How can you stop me without using violence?

you can't

LOL Wow great point!

How could I stop you without violence? I would point out that somebody owns that cow, and that you'll owe them money if not get in trouble with the law for destroying that property. Since you probably aren't interested in paying for said cow, or spending the evening in jail, you will probably go home and sulk like a good lunatic


I was speaking about an unowned cow

obviously I respect property rights(unlike you socialist)


How do you get the idea that I don't respect property rights, considering I just criticized you for not respecting property rights? Crazy idiot


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Awesomelyglorious
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11 Apr 2011, 10:57 pm

LibertarianAS wrote:
I was speaking about an unowned cow

obviously I respect property rights(unlike you socialist)

How many unowned cows do you know of?



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11 Apr 2011, 10:59 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
LibertarianAS wrote:
I was speaking about an unowned cow

obviously I respect property rights(unlike you socialist)

How many unowned cows do you know of?


Seriously. Cows are domesticated... I'll let this slide though. He can change it to another example, like monitor lizard. How will I stop him from killing a monitor lizard without violence?
I would probably let a really nasty fart rip. That would clear him out real fast


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11 Apr 2011, 11:03 pm

LibertarianAS wrote:
Vigilans wrote:
LibertarianAS wrote:
ok i'll take my gun and kill some cow

How can you stop me without using violence?

you can't

LOL Wow great point!

How could I stop you without violence? I would point out that somebody owns that cow, and that you'll owe them money if not get in trouble with the law for destroying that property. Since you probably aren't interested in paying for said cow, or spending the evening in jail, you will probably go home and sulk like a good lunatic


I was speaking about an unowned cow

obviously I respect property rights(unlike you socialist)


I doubt you're going to find an unowned cow anywhere - at anytime, as they are a domesticated animal. Less than a hundred years ago, you could have been strung up in the western half of this country for rustling.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



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12 Apr 2011, 12:20 am

Give away the cow argument - how about bedbugs? Can humans be said to 'dominate' bedbugs, which are weaker by several orders of magnitude, in any meaningful sense? We knocked them back for a while with pesticides, but now they've evolved a way back and we are their prey.

Fitness has nothing to do with strength and everything to do with endurance over generations.



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12 Apr 2011, 1:22 am

LKL wrote:
Give away the cow argument - how about bedbugs? Can humans be said to 'dominate' bedbugs, which are weaker by several orders of magnitude, in any meaningful sense? We knocked them back for a while with pesticides, but now they've evolved a way back and we are their prey.

Fitness has nothing to do with strength and everything to do with endurance over generations.


I think the cow argument is more about the gun than the cow.

Our collective intelligence as human beings has allowed us to develop tools to dominate other creatures, that we would never be able to dominate, given our inherent physical weaknesses. And the same collective intelligence creates an infrastucture that many humans cannot survive without.

We have created a culture so complex that we identify more with the culture than our place in nature; it takes a hurricane, an earthquake, a tsunami, or other natural disaster to remind us, but the lesson is on TV, and is not real until we are personally impacted. Many humans are never cognizant that they are an animal during the span of their lifetime.

But, per your post the bed bug wins with no concern over tools, infrastructure, or culture. The same applies to a Virus or Bacteria. And these examples are only a tiny sample of the thousands of actions we as a species take everyday in what we see as progress, that may eventually reduce our endurance as a species. And there may be a synergetic effect that is too complex for anyone to ever understand.

While we try our hardest to make life as easy as possible for ourselves, the other forms of life, focus on one thing; survival. In many cases our efforts have led to extinctions, but in other cases we have strengthened the resilience of those life forms that survive the challenges we present for them.

At some point there may be a tipping point where our challenges are meaningless.

We have the potential to influence our future, if through collective critical consciousness, we understand that nature has dominion over us.

This may be harder for those of us that refuse to admit we are just another primate dressed in clothing.



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12 Apr 2011, 2:11 am

aghogday wrote:
LKL wrote:
Give away the cow argument - how about bedbugs? Can humans be said to 'dominate' bedbugs, which are weaker by several orders of magnitude, in any meaningful sense? We knocked them back for a while with pesticides, but now they've evolved a way back and we are their prey.

Fitness has nothing to do with strength and everything to do with endurance over generations.


I think the cow argument is more about the gun than the cow.

Our collective intelligence as human beings has allowed us to develop tools to dominate other creatures, that we would never be able to dominate, given our inherent physical weaknesses. And the same collective intelligence creates an infrastucture that many humans cannot survive without.

We have created a culture so complex that we identify more with the culture than our place in nature; it takes a hurricane, an earthquake, a tsunami, or other natural disaster to remind us, but the lesson is on TV, and is not real until we are personally impacted. Many humans are never cognizant that they are an animal during the span of their lifetime.

But, per your post the bed bug wins with no concern over tools, infrastructure, or culture. The same applies to a Virus or Bacteria. And these examples are only a tiny sample of the thousands of actions we as a species take everyday in what we see as progress, that may eventually reduce our endurance as a species. And there may be a synergetic effect that is too complex for anyone to ever understand.

While we try our hardest to make life as easy as possible for ourselves, the other forms of life, focus on one thing; survival. In many cases our efforts have led to extinctions, but in other cases we have strengthened the resilience of those life forms that survive the challenges we present for them.

At some point there may be a tipping point where our challenges are meaningless.

We have the potential to influence our future, if through collective critical consciousness, we understand that nature has dominion over us.

This may be harder for those of us that refuse to admit we are just another primate dressed in clothing.



Being that the bedbug is a parasite living off of human blood, I would think if we ever became extinct as a species, it would soon follow us.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer



aghogday
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12 Apr 2011, 2:54 am

Kraichgauer wrote:
aghogday wrote:
LKL wrote:
Give away the cow argument - how about bedbugs? Can humans be said to 'dominate' bedbugs, which are weaker by several orders of magnitude, in any meaningful sense? We knocked them back for a while with pesticides, but now they've evolved a way back and we are their prey.

Fitness has nothing to do with strength and everything to do with endurance over generations.


I think the cow argument is more about the gun than the cow.

Our collective intelligence as human beings has allowed us to develop tools to dominate other creatures, that we would never be able to dominate, given our inherent physical weaknesses. And the same collective intelligence creates an infrastucture that many humans cannot survive without.

We have created a culture so complex that we identify more with the culture than our place in nature; it takes a hurricane, an earthquake, a tsunami, or other natural disaster to remind us, but the lesson is on TV, and is not real until we are personally impacted. Many humans are never cognizant that they are an animal during the span of their lifetime.

But, per your post the bed bug wins with no concern over tools, infrastructure, or culture. The same applies to a Virus or Bacteria. And these examples are only a tiny sample of the thousands of actions we as a species take everyday in what we see as progress, that may eventually reduce our endurance as a species. And there may be a synergetic effect that is too complex for anyone to ever understand.

While we try our hardest to make life as easy as possible for ourselves, the other forms of life, focus on one thing; survival. In many cases our efforts have led to extinctions, but in other cases we have strengthened the resilience of those life forms that survive the challenges we present for them.

At some point there may be a tipping point where our challenges are meaningless.

We have the potential to influence our future, if through collective critical consciousness, we understand that nature has dominion over us.

This may be harder for those of us that refuse to admit we are just another primate dressed in clothing.



Being that the bedbug is a parasite living off of human blood, I would think if we ever became extinct as a species, it would soon follow us.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer


They also feed off the blood of pets, mice, rabbits, sparrows, poultry, pigeons, etc. I understand that we by far are their easiest meal, because we trap them in our beds. :wink: Other than domesticated animals; there are probably only a few forms of life that will find life harder without us, in comparison to those that might thrive without us.

I think it would be interesting to travel to the future to see what the earth might look like in one hundred thousand years. It is easier for me to imagine humans here in one hundred thousand years, if our population and civilization is pared back significantly by some kind of natural disaster.

It might be our only chance for long term survival as a species.



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12 Apr 2011, 12:41 pm

aghogday wrote:
I think it would be interesting to travel to the future to see what the earth might look like in one hundred thousand years


Image

Image

"YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"


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12 Apr 2011, 12:55 pm

Aaaaanyway.

Ironically enough,
the right wing IS more likely to view man as having rightful dominion over everything else,
but less likely to believe in evolution, whether it can be accurately characterized as dominance or not (that'd be not).

Left-wingers overwhelmingly accept evolution, yet reject most "might makes right" ethical philosophies.


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12 Apr 2011, 1:01 pm

Quote:
Aaaaanyway.


:lol: Bethie is not amused!

Quote:
the right wing IS more likely to view man as having dominion over everything else,


This of course stems from religious belief, which is unscientific at best. So if we are to refer to such as 'right wing-science' I suppose that lumps it into the 'pseudoscience' category


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aghogday
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12 Apr 2011, 1:16 pm

Vigilans wrote:
aghogday wrote:
I think it would be interesting to travel to the future to see what the earth might look like in one hundred thousand years


Image

Image

"YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"


One of my favorite movies of all time. Crossed my mind more than once, when thinking about this topic. More analogies in that movie with our present day society than there were back in the sixties.



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12 Apr 2011, 1:47 pm

In 100,000 years I can almost there being an entirely new genus of Homo assuming we aren't the last
Perhaps we will genetically engineer ourselves into extinction


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JakobVirgil
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12 Apr 2011, 2:06 pm

Vigilans wrote:
In 100,000 years I can almost there being an entirely new genus of Homo assuming we aren't the last
Perhaps we will genetically engineer ourselves into extinction


no we got off of the evolution train 1.5 million years ago.
Our number one selective pressure today is disease resistance
that and the ease of gene movement makes speciation unlikely.
unless . . .


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