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#212571 - 09/22/13 11:06 AM
Re: Would Understanding Evolution add anything ?
[Re: jenny jenny]
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Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
BranShea
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295
Netherlands, the Hague
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Just some first lines from Noam Chomsky's 'Hegemony or Survival'
"Priorities and Prospects
A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst Mayr, published some reflections on the likelihood of success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
He considered the prospects very low. His reasoning had to do with the adaptive value of what we call "higher intelligence," meaning the particular human form of intellectual organization. Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life
at about fifty billion, only one of which "achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization." It did so very recently, perhaps 100,000 years ago. It is generally assumed that only one small breeding group survived, of which we are all descendants. Mayr speculated that the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that "it is better to be
smart than to be stupid," at least judging by biological success: beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the rather somber observation that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years." We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid. The most hopeful prospect is that the question will not be answered: if it receives a definite answer, that answer can only be that humans were a kind of "biological error," using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves and, in the process, much else. The species has surely developed the capacity to do just that, and a hypothetical extraterrestrial observer might well conclude that humans have
demonstrated that capacity throughout their history, dramatically in the past few hundred years, with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity of more complex organisms, and with cold and calculated savagery, on each other as well."
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#212584 - 09/23/13 02:32 PM
Re: Would Understanding Evolution add anything ?
[Re: BranShea]
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Joined: Jun 2010
Posts: 1,554
jenny jenny
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jun 2010
Posts: 1,554
Lower Aberdeen, Mississippi
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Just some first lines from Noam Chomsky's 'Hegemony or Survival'
A few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst Mayr, published some reflections on the likelihood of success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
He considered the prospects very low. His reasoning had to do with the adaptive value of what we call "higher intelligence," meaning the particular human form of intellectual organization. Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life
at about fifty billion, only one of which "achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization." It did so very recently, perhaps 100,000 years ago. It is generally assumed that only one small breeding group survived, of which we are all descendants. Mayr speculated that the human form of intellectual organization may not be favored by selection. The history of life on Earth, he wrote, refutes the claim that "it is better to be
smart than to be stupid," at least judging by biological success: beetles and bacteria, for example, are vastly more successful than humans in terms of survival. He also made the rather somber observation that "the average life expectancy of a species is about 100,000 years." We are entering a period of human history that may provide an answer to the question of whether it is better to be smart than stupid. The most hopeful prospect is that the question will not be answered: if it receives a definite answer, that answer can only be that humans were a kind of "biological error," using their allotted 100,000 years to destroy themselves and, in the process, much else. The species has surely developed the capacity to do just that, and a hypothetical extraterrestrial observer might well conclude that humans have
demonstrated that capacity throughout their history, dramatically in the past few hundred years, with an assault on the environment that sustains life, on the diversity of more complex organisms, and with cold and calculated savagery, on each other as well."
Doctors Noam Chomsky and Enrst Mayr both seem to have a poor, and less than scientific, opinion of mankind and of, therefore, themselves. Notwithstanding the egoic pronouncements given above, their understanding of man's Evolution is more indicative of their own cultural funk than any insight into man's role in nature.
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#212598 - 09/24/13 03:40 PM
Re: Would Understanding Evolution add anything ?
[Re: Buffalo Shrdlu]
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Joined: Jun 2010
Posts: 1,554
jenny jenny
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jun 2010
Posts: 1,554
Lower Aberdeen, Mississippi
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No Buffalo, Jenny Jenny - day Mayr and Chomsky -night Especially Chomsky. Chomsky is a phoney prophet who pontificates yesterday's politics and a contrived explanation of language to pseudo-intellectual tenured teenyboppers. As for me I will kindly summerize and conclude my thoughts about Language, Mankind and Evolution here tommorow.  *Yes, BranShe, you do have a point. But let me me be clear: So did Marx and 100 million people have been murdered because of his clear words afterwards.
Last edited by jenny jenny; 09/24/13 03:52 PM. Reason: to answer BranShea
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#212610 - 09/25/13 01:27 AM
Re: Would Understanding Evolution add anything ?
[Re: Faldage]
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Joined: Jun 2010
Posts: 1,554
jenny jenny
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jun 2010
Posts: 1,554
Lower Aberdeen, Mississippi
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As for me I will kindly summerize and conclude my thoughts about Language, Mankind and Evolution here tommorow. Indeed. The chill of winter is coming here in the North. We could use with a little summerizing.  Say, Fallacy, do you up North find your amusements in misspellings? Gee, Faldo, how often you must giggle.
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