NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
You are assuming that humans are going to *evolve* in a certain direction.
There is no data to indicate that humans will change given our current environment of limited resources and space.
Monsanto cannabis yes or no? The DNA Protection Act of 2013
- Thread starter DNAprotection
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There is no data to indicate that humans will change given our current environment of limited resources and space.
DNAprotection
Well-Known Member
No species is exempt from extinction in nature.
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
Dr Kynes
Well-Known Member
every 30 minutes in india a pedicab driver kills himself, and it's schwinn's fault. they dont sell their bicycles cheap enough so the pedicab drivers get depressed and commit suicide...'Bitter Seeds' Film Tells of Suicide and GMO Effects on India's Farmers
"Every 30 minutes a farmer in India kills himself ..." This frightening fact is pointed out in "Bitter Seeds," the third documentary in "The Globalization Trilogy" directed by Micha Peled. The 12-year project aims to generate debate about public policy and consumer choices in some complex issues relevant to all of us. Peled is the founder of the nonprofit Teddy Bear Films, which he created to make issue-oriented films such as "Will My Mother Go Back to Berlin?" and "Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town."
"Bitter Seeds" follows a season in a village in India from planting to harvest. There are three important stories in this film, each revolving around the multinational corporate takeover of India's seed market and the effect it has on farmers and farming all over India and the world.
Like most of his neighbors, the protagonist in the film, Ram Krishna, must engage a money-lender to pay for the mounting costs of modern farming; he puts his land up as collateral."
The article goes on...but hopefully you get the point.
i can make up shit too.
india still has the largest % of it's farm land held by small family operations in the world. their family farms are doing well as a class, but you can always find one or two who fail in any group. if you want to see some troubles look at small farms in america britain and other western liberal progressive nations.
the film company you cite,, and call "issue oriented" is a propaganda production company. the make and sell manufactured outrage to the gullible leftist public who need something to shake their fists at. they are less credible than Fox News.
OGEvilgenius
Well-Known Member
According to you, because the yields will be better and so will the nutrition. Of course, that's not true at all. So the only incentive is to monopolize. Exactly why patent law should be abolished. It would kill two birds with one stone - stifling innovation and almost the entirety of the GMO industry.
Nope. Copyright and patent law only stifle innovation and/or lead to monopolization of resources.
OGEvilgenius
Well-Known Member
Sorry, PCBs, dioxins, agent orange. All approved thanks to misleading studies courtesy a company that specializes in them.
OGEvilgenius
Well-Known Member
Your ego needs to shrink about 10 sizes. Religious thought, not just for Christians.
DNAprotection
Well-Known Member
Well I guess my first point would be to pose that your statement before your question here is probably impossible to ever verify lol and from there we would need a definition of the word 'Nature' because to me nature is not limited to planet 'earth' lol...but earth does exist in nature.
Even 'dark mater' is nature, and your stating as fact that 'Nature' can go extinct?
Whatever would be left anywhere in the possible infinity of nature to be able to make such a conclusion if nature could go extinct?
So back to your question, my point is that there is no 'short cuts' (pun intended lol) in this deal of being born off the planet, we either earn it the hard way or die banging our beaks against the glass.
OGEvilgenius
Well-Known Member
Indeed, or you can parrot stuff that's been fabricated by the biotech companies you apparently invest in.
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/failure-to-yield.html
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
OK I'll nibble. How am I being egomanic here? cn
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
Your point seems to be that humans must evolve in some way to become *good* and thus able to go into space or wherever.
My point is that over the documented course of human history we havent changed a bit... To expect us to change our nature at this time seems wishful thinking...
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
I see two distinct issues here, DNAp ... one practical, one philosophical. They are of course inextricable, but i will still try to treat them in order.
The practical (strategy, logistics, economics and engineering) has to do with our "window" for high-energy pursuits like planetary spaceflight. Our technology has come far and fast because we harnessed an outstanding source of possil energy: crude oil. We've slurped up the best bits and are now scrambling after or own leftovers. And the spectre of global warming will probably make the indiscriminate burning of coal, the other great source of fossil energy, casus belli.
I currently believe that we have two options. We can make sustainability job 1, and descend for the foreseeable future below the level needed for advance to spacefaring status.
Or we can do our damndest to use this impressive boost cheap oil has given us and leverage it into the Next Step. Because unless/until a better hotter energy source comes along that can propel us into and beyond orbit (and fission nuclear won't do. Nuclear thermal is good in deep space but still isn't energetic enough to make for, say, a practical Mars mission.) Fusion is the best candidate here, and i am frankly appalled there isn't a more urgent national or international push to bring fusion practically on line for our electric needs at least.
But I would rather make the attempt at a leap and fail ... than recoil and then spend centuries teaching our children the grapes were sour. That would be neo-Medieval in attitude and practice imo.
The other question I have is philosophical. I notice essentially animistic attitude "between the lines", e.g. when you personify Nature to the extent that you'd suggest she'd frown upon our doing it in an unspiritual way (I paraphrase). You bring up the example of first nations in the USA. While I have great sympathy for their plight, it is not unique or unprecedented. While my inner human is horrified at what happened to them as individuals and peoples, theirs is the universal lot of the conquered. And we all know who gets to write history, obscuring the thousands of similar instances since the great ice sheets receded. It's nature in action ... human nature.
So here we arrive at a probable point of disagreement. I have never seen an instance of nature acting like an engaged entity. I cannot imagine that she would approve, disapprove or give a moldy hoot how we comport ourselves, because even with all our artifice we are still nature. I see no penalty to going for the fast lane, and tremendous possible benefit.
I contend that nature red in tooth and claw respects nothing so much as a winner. Even a dirty win is still a win. Questions of its morality are not natural at all imo but a thoroughly anthropic overlay. We are predisposed to anthropomorphizing, personifying nature and imbuing it with purpose, a completely artificial and unnecessary deed.
But to synthesize these two views, the thing with which i most deeply disagree is your claim that we must first evolve, then reach beyond the cradle. This places the cart before the horse and imposes an intolerable burden on us. Without gen.eng. turned vigorously toward the task of improving our natures, we simply will not have time. And of course the evolutionary pressures on a planetary surface (with or without the selective breeding championed by eugenicists not even a century ago) won't be of any use in preparing us for space. As I believe that ultimately there are no crimes against nature because nature isn't conscious in any way that makes sense to us ... I also believe that the penalties for doing or not doing are not karmic in nature(!), but logistical. I don't want to completely squander the gift of cheap energy as long as it's still ours to squander. cn
DNAprotection
Well-Known Member
Firstly that would depend on your definition of the word 'good' and secondly, no my point was that running blind into a perceived shortcut chasing 'gold' (be that money or genetic traits) is not the responsible way to get your children to a place of survival, as well exampled in this bit:
Donner Party
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Page 28 of Patrick Breen's diary, recording his observations in late February 1847, including "Mrs Murphy said here yesterday that thought she would Commence on Milt. & eat him. I dont that she has done so yet, it is distressing."
The Donner Party was a group of 87 American pioneers who in 1846 set off from Missouri in a wagon train headed west for California, only to find themselves trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada. The subsequent casualties resulting from starvation, exposure, disease, and trauma were extremely high, and many of the survivors resorted to cannibalism.
The wagons left in May 1846. Encouraged to try a new, faster route across Utah and Nevada, they opted to take the Hastings Cutoff proposed by Lansford Hastings, who had never taken the journey with wagons. The Cutoff required the wagons to traverse Utah's Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert, and slowed the party considerably, leading to the loss of wagons, horses, and cattle. It also forced them to engage in heavy labor by clearing the path ahead of them, and created deep divisions between members of the party. They had planned to be in California by September, but found themselves trapped in the Sierra Nevada by early November.
Most of the party took shelter in three cabins that had been constructed two years earlier at Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake), while a smaller group camped several miles away. Food stores quickly ran out, and a group of 15 men and women attempted to reach California on snowshoes in December, but became disoriented in the mountains before succumbing to starvation and cold. Only seven members of the snowshoe party survived, by eating the flesh of their dead companions. Meanwhile, the Mexican American War delayed rescue attempts from California, although family members and authorities in California tried to reach the stranded pioneers but were turned back by harsh weather.
The first rescue group reached the remaining members, who were starving and feeble, in February 1847. Weather conditions were so bad that three rescue groups were required to lead the rest to California, the last arriving in March. Most of these survivors also had resorted to cannibalism. Forty-eight members of the Donner Party survived to live in California. Although a minor incident in the record of westward migration in North America, the Donner Party became notorious for the reported claims of cannibalism. Efforts to memorialize the Donner Party were underway within a few years; historians have described the episode as one of the most spectacular tragedies in California history and in the record of western migration.[SUP][1][/SUP]
DNAprotection
Well-Known Member
cb, while I can appreciate (not necessarily agree) with what you have written here, I think maybe you have a missperception of my perception of 'how things are'.
I see everything in numbers you might say, like a gigantic endless in all directions equation where the numbers are continually adding up every second and when I write about 'nature not letting us be born until we are ready' (which I figured you would go to lol
) I'm simply speaking of numbers adding to their sum totals at any given moment in time.I'm just saying that if it is our nature to act like a threat within nature then the numbers of nature will add up to treating us as a threat, just as a human body has an immune system etc.
'Survival of the fittest' also depends on ones definition of the word 'fittest' because it doesn't always mean who can kill the most or the most efficiently, especially at the level of evolution that your implying we need to suddenly leap to.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
My assigning spirit or a discernible moral center to your view of nature may indeed be my own internal straw man. Even so I would invite you to expand on that bit of it. I don't see nature punishing us for bad acts or rewarding us for good ones. Heck; she blindly helped the cause of the conquerors with the nasty diseases we brought to this land under our square sails. I grew up near a river called Patuxent. I found out that it means "place of death' or something similarly holocaustic. Seems the early settlers caused the local tribe to be almost wiped out with measles or a flu; not sure which any more.cb, while I can appreciate (not necessarily agree) with what you have written here, I think maybe you have a missperception of my perception of 'how things are'.
I see everything in numbers you might say, like a gigantic endless in all directions equation where the numbers are continually adding up every second and when I write about 'nature not letting us be born until we are ready' (which I figured you would go to lol
I'm just saying that if it is our nature to act like a threat within nature then the numbers of nature will add up to treating us as a threat, just as a human body has an immune system etc.
'Survival of the fittest' also depends on ones definition of the word 'fittest' because it doesn't always mean who can kill the most or the most efficiently, especially at the level of evolution that your implying we need to suddenly leap to.
So i cannot imagine nature or any extrahuman agency "taking sides". Worse, I can imagine squandering opportunities in this possible twilight of our high-energy lifestyle out of a sincere but misguided reverence for the natural. I love wild nature as much as the next guy, and would look approvingly on our getting our collective ass (and the heavy industry needed to keep that ass fat&happy) entirely off the planet and restoring it (or allowing it to restore itself) to a wild state. Wouldn't it be a trip if we met previous tenants, such as the distant offspring of Velociraptor sapiens, once we learned how to reach the cosmic doorbell? cn
OGEvilgenius
Well-Known Member
We MUST genetically engineer for the greater good. We MUST do it to advance ourselves beyond this planet. You believe we can do it safely too. More likely? Extinction. Because we're not that intelligent and we do not understand the things we dabble in, but we just do it anyway.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
I am not saying a declarative MUST. I do think it is worth thinking about however.
And I do not believe that we can necessarily do it safely. I see tremendous risk alongside tremendous opportunity.
And yes, I think extinction is the enemy here. I consider it more likely achieved by embracing stasis than by boldly, even recklessly, seeking the way up and out. Have I somehow failed to qualify these visions as my opinion, that you are correct in assigning "mustness" to them? cn
DNAprotection
Well-Known Member
I feel that there is still a bit of missperception of my perception cb, I don't in any way shape or form see nature as punishing or rewarding in that sense, its all just numbers to me.
For example some see the 'conquering' of this continent by Europeans in over all outcome to be just an advantage that one 'variety' of human had over another and therefor to the victor go the spoils, but from my view the traditionally perceived 'victor' usually spoils the true 'spoils' = knowledge and understanding of the culture they just destroyed.
Natives of this land once welcomed all who appeared because in that past culture we are all relatives just as science now has verified (means H is dr kynes distant or not so distant cousin
lol) and if Europeans had reciprocated, the best of both cultures could have resulted...a lost opportunity and possibly fatal because that which existed genetically in the behaviors and cultures of the first peoples of this land are exactly the traits that are needed when taking steps like genetic engineering but are completely void from this culture like a missing gene, otherwise you are just another conqueror that most often by the numbers in the end dies by the same sword he kills with.
NLXSK1
Well-Known Member
You talk about numbers but your rhetoric is full of value judgements. Your example indicates that understanding destroyed cultures is always the "spoils" so to speak.
Look at nature from the smallest microbe to the largest animal. You will see those creatures compete with their peers and nature to excel and multiply. The earth is replete with millions of species that have succumbed to other species. If only those conquering species had taken the time to know and understand the species they just destroyed.... LOL!
All nature follows the same path. Competition for limited resources. Species win, species lose, species become extinct.
There is no morality involved in any of it. You talk about numbers and then start in about value judgement that are based on emotions and not logic. Therefore, your verbose posts are interesting but illogical.
Really? Indians were not the peaceful hunter gatherers you picture them as for the most part. They raided and killed other indian tribes on a regular basis. I think you are romanticizing dead cultures and that isnt a numbers game.
DNAprotection
Well-Known Member
Well apparently your reading level leaves something to be desired.(thats ok me2 lol)
Morals?
Who ever said anything about morals accept you?
The reason some don't understand the 'numbers' concept is usually ego...'morals' mean nothing in nature, numbers mean everything and if you can't even understand the failures of a conqueror compared to success of lets say bonobo's for example then for sure we should not be gene splicing yet if ever.
You and others want to bake a cake, yet in your rushing and even slaughtering your way to get to the stove you neglected to pick up some of the main ingredients along the way and therefor your cake will flop no matter how fast you made it to the stove...at this point in our evolution (unless you are still a 'caveman' and I'm not saying your not) the competition you speak to is not a component of the equation.
Also anything seen through your eyes and then spued out your mouth or fingtips in the form of representing a knowing or a proper interpretation of the behavior of Indians before the European invasion is about as accurate as your cultures reading and understanding of the Mayan calender etc...you probably thought it was the 'end of the world' as well lol