@diplomat61 you said: 'do you call a few thousand years "relatively new"?' - when talking in evolutionary terms of our at least a million year old species then yes, a few thousand years is less than a half of a percentage; and evolution was working on us those species which we evolved from...

stereo typing is also usful for societies, you may not know what some other people are like, but you put them into groups and assume that all texans are like the ones you do know, or all americans, or all white americans, or all straight male white protestant texans... or whatever.

This means you can make an simplification about who to trust - and since we naturally form clannish mentalities in our heads (the 'us' concept is only useful because it distinguishs 'us' from 'them') Whether it is following your local sports team, or supporting your own clan/village/extended family it was useful in the past for protecting us from predators, and has been co-opt'd by as a religious or a national identity to make those social constructs function better.

@orathaic: yes, "relatively new" if your yardstick is the whole of human evolution but we have had laws and morality (often presented as religion) for pretty much all of the time that humans have been living in larger groups.

is it that we are were living in large groups because we invented these tools or we invented these tools to live in large groups? or does it even matter?

@Orathaic - a bit of both probably although "invented" suggests an active process, I think evolved is a better description.

A bit of both and "why" doesn't really matter. And I think "developed" is the best word there.

is evolved for biological systems?

is the mutation and spread of ideas a non-biological system? i'm sure ideas need host organisms to survive and spread, but so do viruses... hmm.

anyway, either way, ideas which are useful, which 'succeed' by some measure (in life the measure of success is that you are able to reproduce, in modern human society this means something more) These ideas are better able to adapt and sometimes even compromise to produce 'better' offspring ideas - however at some level of complexity they become more difficult to spread - because of the barrier to teaching them - specialisation can mean that only a small number of humans in any one group need to understand an idea for it's use to have it's full benefit for that group (and thus be worth sprreading).

Really these ideas are not like the information we spread in our genes...

@Draugnar: +1 for developed

Bloody hell is this thread still going?

first of all, things are invented from stuff laying around, once they are invented, ie the ax, they can only develop them more. and humans are intelligent, religion is a form of controlling a large population, if you can say agnor the great god brought upon us a flood people tend to not panic as chaotically.

Unles of course you say agnor the great god is angry and is bringing more floods and death and destruction and nothing you can do will appease him. Then the people panic even more.

why would Agnor be angry? i did everything he asked! I even brushed between his toes!

But did you spit shine his toenails?

Agnor works in mysterious ways. It is not our place to question him, just as an ant does not question us. Do good to others, without expecting reward... and you will be rewarded greatly! Those with faith have the power to do and have anything they ask. But you mustn't ask, for such is arrogance!

orathaic, you're talking about the concept of memes, outlined in Richard Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene". The internet has grabbed hold of the meme of 'the meme' and now uses it to describe anything that becomes virally popular, but the word has its roots in the attempt to describe ideas as subject to a sort of evolution.

There's nothign mysterious about Agnor. Agnor is the supreme god of destruction. He gave power to Gozer, also known as Gozer the Gozerian, Gozer the Destructor, Volguus Zildrohar, Gozer the Traveler and Lord of the Sebouillia. As such, all his actions are destructive whether intended or not. No good will ever come from Agnor. He will be your destroyer through Gozer. Now choose your destroyer.

yeah but how cultures adapt ideas and skills to how they operate and how these new ideas spread depends on the success of the idea, just as they do in genes. (with humans naturaly selecting those ideas which are compatible with their point of view and which are successful)

So someone who believes in the scientific method is likely to be skeptical of any method which hasn't been tested scientifically or which can't be explained. Or someone who believes communism is the antitesis to their way of life is unlikely to adopt an idea which smells of socialism...

Also an ant probably doesn't question us, but if it did we probably wouldn't listen....

I do not see much difference between physical and social adaptations. Some are successful and survive (I realise that this is almost tautological), others aren't and don't. For example, I see the decline of communism as an indication of it's failure. It's normal, it's right, it's how we got here.

P.S. The ant never answered my questions so I ignored his.

"I see the decline of communism as an indication of it's failure."

Can't really sat I disagree. but this begs the question, what does the crash of the globalized economic system say about free trade and modern 'capitalism'? or socialism? or social fascism. whatever you want to call it

The thing about memes is that while they are to a certain degree selected for by humans if they are useful, they are more strongly selected for being memorable (longevity), likely to spread by people telling other people or on larger scales like advertisement or endorsement (fecundity), and the accuracy with which the ideas are replicated when spread (faithful of reproduction). I chose these traits to have analogues to biological evolution, and it's true that natural selection doesn't necessarily select for traits that we as humans believe to be "good" traits. A Nobel laureate or an olympic athlete with only one child each is blindly considered to be less evolutionarily fit than the high school drop out with six kids.

Useful memes obviously have the advantage of their practicality, but that doesn't compete with the memes that are simply more fertile. For example, if you have a plant that you want to grow more bushy, rather than taller, you can cut off the top of the plant to reduce apical dominance, which allows more lateral growth. This can be pretty handy knowledge, I used it the other day so that a basil plant would grow more leaves instead of grow taller. However, I almost never share this knowledge with anyone, because honestly, the opportunity doesn't present itself much. I'll tell a less-than-tasteful joke way more often than I tell people about this information, and I'm sure that the joke is a much more successful meme, despite being of less practical value. Slogans and catchphrases and jingles can have ridiculous longevities, and are spread widely through advertising. People reading this post will probably forget about the gardening tip I just gave before they forget that KFC is finger lickin' good!

A lot of people have also pointed out the power of the idea of "faith". From a memetic point of view, faith represents the rejection of all memes contradictory to its own meme. This makes the religious meme extremely powerful, as by its very nature, it demands that you reject all contrary memes. These memes are also spread all over, door to door, from country to country through missionaries, from one concerned person of faith to someone who hasn't really given it much thought, from parent to child, from television, radio, the internet. Almost every channel of memetic spread you can think of is used to spread the Word.

Sic, such a discussion probably warrants it's own thread, but since we've gone through so many topics in this one, I might as well say a short piece. The global financial crisis is linked to the American credit crisis due to the consequent tightening of credit and the decreased faith of investors. I would say the credit crisis was due to unrealistic speculation in real estate, and extremely loose credit due to the fact that the Federal Reserve set an artificially low interest rate. It's worthwhile to read up on the Dutch tulip crisis to see the devestating effect of runaway speculation and the very real effect on the real sector by the financial sector. Despite being a capitalist, I would not say that the decline of communism is proof that it is a flawed system.

"what does the crash of the globalized economic system say about free trade and modern 'capitalism'? "

What crash was that?

What does government abuse since forever say about statism?

;]

What does human abuse of humans say about people? Blaming government for human flaws seems, well, just like you. Half-truths and conspiracy theories, twisting 'facts' to suit your ends.

what does the continued survival of states say about the success of such systems? The natural evolution of all staist systems to replace functioning anarchys?

We don't see many anarchist groups around because they were all replaced by a more successful nation-state based government - one which has the ability to co-operate to meet the end goals rather than an anarchy which assumes all people have their own goals and there should be no over-riding authority which determine a group's goals.

So what government abuse says is that statism allows for corruption while still producing a more effective* system than an anarchy.

*where 'effective' just means exists...

wow, what happened to this thread? Anyway, @orathaic: States continually survive because of the massive illegitimate power they have acquired. They have so much power, and have brainwashed so many people to think government is alright, that it is almost impossinle to take them down.

Those who have such a problem with states, government, etc. - did you know you can just leave and go some place else where there's no such thing at all. I can recommend a lot of places in Africa, Somalia might be a good start. If Africa is too hot ... Antarctica would be also an option.

You won't be missed...

Currently, any country without a stable government is a third-world country. I don't want to live there. Once a first-world country doesn't have a government, I would move there without hesitation. (and it will happen eventually)

"wow, what happened to this thread? Anyway, @orathaic: States continually survive because of the massive illegitimate power they have acquired. They have so much power, and have brainwashed so many people to think government is alright, that it is almost impossinle to take them down."

LOL. This made me chuckle. I actually feel sorry for you CM, that you live in that kind of world, in that kind of state. If only you could live in the real world with the rest of us...