I think it's evil the amount of energy and resources that go into creating unnecessary desires in people in order to cultivate a consumer class. It's time to reap the benefits of our technological advancements, by working shorter weeks, finding less expensive ways to build shelter (houses), and becoming more proficient in local food generation.
Ways to do these things have been around for decades, but it's not in the interest of the producers of homes and employers to do them.
Look into some of the inventions by R. Buckminster Fuller. He invented a house that cost thousands, easily transported, made of aluminum, and sturdy, but it never caught on. Probably because he didn't spend time marketing it, but the mobile home and large home manufacturing companies did.
Evolution contradicts the desire for smaller. Consider Peacock tails, the longer they are and the fuller they are, the more likely they are to mate, because peahens like them -- even though rationally, they increase the likelihood of death to predator. Turns out the offspring are in fact stronger, because it takes a lot of strength to maintain those long tails.
Similarly, it takes a lot of "strength" to maintain a large expensive home and accumulate a lot of unnecessary stuff and the chicks dig it. A guy with a fast car, excessive spending, and flashy clothes will go home from the bar with a girl before the geek with meek clothes and spending way below his means -- even if he is 1000x smarter than the flashy guy.
It simply takes too long to evaluate intelligence and that increased time to analyze the male by the female means the males could die.
Thus, it is a mathematical certainty that the world will continue towards excessive shows of strength rather than the rational conservative opinion that leads to storage of wealth -- which usually only happens after a mate is found.
"A guy with a fast car, excessive spending, and flashy clothes will go home from the bar with a girl before the geek with meek clothes and spending way below his means -- even if he is 1000x smarter than the flashy guy.
It simply takes too long to evaluate intelligence and that increased time to analyze the male by the female means the males could die."
This presupposes that women are selecting specifically for intelligence - or, said slightly differently, that maximizing (rather than merely satisficing) for intelligence is a better evolutionary strategy. Is that true in practice?
Women heavily select for intelligence when choosing egg donors. Eggs from high SAT donors go for many times more than normal. Then again, choosing an egg donor is much more cerebral than choosing a man. Not nearly as hormonal as sex.
Some women are selecting for intelligence, but they are rarer and more difficult to find and the increased acquisition costs also reduce the probability of creating offspring.
When the law of large numbers takes over, it's all probabilities. Consider life itself, which are more numerous: Intelligent species or unintelligent species?
The same math applies to the human species itself.
I agree with everything you say but question "it simply takes too long to evaluate intelligence". It's not like we are house flies with a day to find a mate. I think maybe the problem is intelligence (and other characteristics) are often hard to evaluate. Added to this, the intelligent meek geek isn't getting the girl because he isn't bold, but cognitive dissonance convinces him that there must be something wrong with the selection process, not himself.
We share common ancestors with houseflies who have a day to find a mate. We were at one point small furry proto-mammals who mated almost exclusively by smell and aggressiveness.
It no longer takes too long to evaluate intelligence. But when our mate evaluation systems were being designed, there were fewer available dimensions to optimize over. A woman's opinion of a man's smell still correlates strongly with both her menstrual phase and their mutual genetic suitability.
Look into some of the inventions by R. Buckminster Fuller. He invented a house that cost thousands, easily transported, made of aluminum, and sturdy, but it never caught on. Probably because he didn't spend time marketing it, but the mobile home and large home manufacturing companies did.
Or else it didn't catch on because people didn't like living in them. I assume you're talking about this:
Evolution contradicts the desire for smaller. Consider Peacock tails, the longer they are and the fuller they are, the more likely they are to mate, because peahens like them -- even though rationally, they increase the likelihood of death to predator.
This kind of crazy peacock behaviour is the exception rather than the rule among animals, though, which is why peacocks are so noteworthy. If pigeons had vast feathered tails too you might have a point.
Similarly, it takes a lot of "strength" to maintain a large expensive home and accumulate a lot of unnecessary stuff and the chicks dig it. A guy with a fast car, excessive spending, and flashy clothes will go home from the bar with a girl before the geek with meek clothes and spending way below his means -- even if he is 1000x smarter than the flashy guy.
You sound very convinced that intelligence is what women should be selecting for, rather than being one of many traits that is nice to have in a potential partner.
Personally I'd work hard to live in a big fancy house and drive a cool fast car even if there were no women in the world, because I just like 'em.
At least you think you would. I'm not saying you're wrong, or that I know you better than you know yourself (I definitely don't), but sometimes its hard to separate what you "like" from what is culturally sexually driven. Or rephrased, why do you like them? How did that come to pass? They came from the culture, which values them for reasons that benefit sexual reproduction, etc. If that wasn't an issue, society likely wouldn't value them, they'd stop being a status symbol, and you may no longer "just like them."
We all like to think our personal likes and desires are entirely our own creation, but this is a fantasy.
Edit: the fast car you still might like, as it has utility (getting places quickly), but a house beyond a reasonable size has little utility beyond status.
"Personally I'd work hard to live in a big fancy house and drive a cool fast car even if there were no women in the world, because I just like 'em."
Why yes, isn't that a great design? You don't even need to rationalize about what attracts a mate, you just like to do it by default, and most women just happen to be attracted to that by default also.
Certainly your chance of reproducing and passing down these default settings will be much greater than someone who has to rationalize about attractions, don't you think?
I don't think evolution has a whole lot to do with this. Evolution takes place on a much longer time frame, so we're mostly talking about cultural norms here. Furthermore, whatever "trait" leads to accumulating sports cars and mcmansions is not heritable.
There's something called the Matching Hypothesis in sociology that basically says people end up pairing with those on the same "level" (in whichever way that person's culture defines status). i.e. an 8 takes home an 8-ish from the bar, or rich guy gets supermodel. But most everyone ends up matching up with some one else, and flashy-guy isn't improving his gene pool by mating with brain-dead hottie, so I don't think nature is the culprit here.
(However, less educated (for simplicity, let's equate that to less intelligent) people do have a higher birth rate. So the world is getting dumber, but for different reasons! :) )
@euro, we need to work on changing cultural norms (more education, more sustainability, less consumerism) like you suggest in order to better the world.
And how can we communicate the desire for more education, more sustainability, less consumerism in order to better the world without reeking of progressive utopianism in our message? Sincerely doing this may very well benefit society and allow us to focus on the really amazing progressions in society and technology (like space colonization), but it's going to upset a whole lot of people who have invested time, money and energy to protect their anti-progressive infrastructures along the way.
I'd very much like to see us focusing on improvement of our societal and economical infrastructures (education, sustainability, personal growth, pursuit of happiness and purpose, medical & technological advancement, etc) than to stay victims of our "evil" infrastructures (overly influential political lobbyism, corporate en-slavery of its workforce, and greed/thirst for financial domination). But this isn't something that can happen until there are several societal shifts, and perhaps some cultural memory loss.
(Please note that my use of progressive and anti-progressive are apolitical references and should not represent actual values of political parties or interests!)
"It simply takes too long to evaluate intelligence...".
True. But even if intelligence is evaluated, it might not be in the interest of the female to go with the most intelligent mate.
What she prioritizes will be a combination of wealth, smartness, and other factors that will make her happy and her offspring "fitter", obviously often in a subconscious way.
Btw, I agree with all you are saying. I just thought I should support it, since even evaluating that someone is intelligent in our definition does not necessarily make them a good mate in the evolutionary sense.
The world will continue getting dumber... until we re-program our genes so that we won't perceive excess as attractive... We can also improve a few other human limitations such as keeping meaningful relationships with more than 150 people.
It's hard but it will happen eventually, or our species will die out before we get there, who knows.
tl;dr -- Evolutionary forces are far more complex and do not always select for strength over intelligence.
Evolution != bigger && stronger. If this were true, why aren't there still brontosaurus-sized creatures on land?
The truth is evolution selects the best adaptation for the specific ecosystem. Depending on the ecosystem, this could mean all sorts of adaptations, including more advanced intelligence and less advanced physical prowess, which is what happened with humans.
Your assertion that it takes too much time to evaluate intelligence is also not realistic. People spend years selecting mates, and there is nothing wrong with this. The average lifespan is 72-76 years and a good portion of that is fertile. We have plenty of time to select a mate and still have children to progress the genes.
What's unnecessary? I mean, we could all be wearing identical grey jumpsuits that fulfill the requirements of modesty and environmental protection, but we don't.
The most any advertiser can say to anyone is "this might give you pleasure, here's how to try it". The rest is up to you.
False dichotomy. If you start taking responsibility one step earlier, you realize it is your responsibility not to let yourself get put in that position, that is, to an extent, you chose to let him put that gun to your head.
Ostensibly, yes, but it was the other person's choice to produce the gun and raise it. To ensure total avoidance of such situations, you would have to make sure you never come into contact with any armed Pringles advertisers, and since you never know for sure who or where they are, you would have to live your life in complete physical solitude.
Don't underestimate persuasion techniques. If they can convince an entire group of people to simultaneously commit suicide, they can probably convince them to eat Pringles.
Though there is a degree of the desire to be persuaded in the first place that allows these sorts of people to actually become persuaded. Though because we live in a society, with others who are smarter or dumber or persuadable or not so persuadable, those that aren't easily persuaded are still concerned about the effects the persuadable have on the herd. The effect on the herd becomes a more meaningful point of interest than the persuadees themselves.
I sympathize with this view, but the problem is, all it takes is someone else willing to work longer hours in the same role to make you undesirable as an employee.
Never underestimate the power of the illusion of getting more done by working longer hours. Many employers find people who work shorter hours to be snide or arrogant even if they're accomplishing more. Many employers still think that they need an army of complacent slave horses working at top speed to be an effective way to eliminate contempt and organic corruption in their employee pool.
It's the wrong way of thinking of course, but it's rampent.
And think about it this way... if a company was full of amazingly productive people who got 40 hours worth of work done in 20 hours, do you think they'd let them leave at 20 hours into the week but still pay them for 40 hours worth of work? No, they'll just find a way to double the workload to make even more maximization of their production capability.
Yes it seems to be human nature to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, unfortunately.
I remember even reading about a company that years ago cut back everyone to 30 hours per week (with 3/4 pay) due to a recession at that time. They discovered that everyone was more productive at 30 hours and happier as well. Once the recession ended and the company was on more solid ground, they went back to 40 hours. Go figure.
37 signals doesn't keep office hours and I'm sure there are others out there. Just gotta keep looking.
If you want to consume less and work a shorter work week, then do it. Save money and buy store brands rather than advertised brands, don't buy as much, etc.
The majority of people will be unable to work a shorter work week, even if they all wanted to. Our system isn't setup for shorter work weeks and less "productivity" hours. It's frowned upon by upper management at most companies, and is thus enforced by middle and lower management tiers.
Our system rewards timeliness over nearly anything else. Home construction companies bid on how quickly they can build the property while staying "on quality" and "on track." Therefore they're not going to let their blue collar guys work less hours per week. They want to churn out as many houses as quickly as they can.
This strategy of working less will only work for a select few, who have the nerve, smarts, and strategy to design a custom life that permits it. They'll have to be bold and push against the grain, and inform anyone they conduct business with how they operate. It won't be easy. And that alone will make it less likely that it will happen for a large number of people to do it.
The connection is likely that the article bleeds the idea that most people are putting their dreams (and thus happiness and satisfaction) on hold while pursuing societally driven career choices, most of which are based on financial desires, which require (in most cases) excessive dedication and time commitments that further pull people away from what might really make them happy.
> It's time to reap the benefits of our technological advancements, by working shorter weeks, finding less expensive ways to build shelter (houses), and becoming more proficient in local food generation.
There's nothing stopping you from doing all those things right now. It'll take a little creativity, but they've all been done already in various places so you've got a blueprint on how to do it. For my part, I'm more interested in working lots of hours on really fascinating projects, taking shelter/housing in different places while staying mobile, and so I've got different goals. But you can go after yours right now - nothing is stopping you, in fact, they've all been done before so there's already a reasonable roadmap on how you can do it.
Yeah, I'm certainly not going to be calling my congressman and asking for France-style work week legislation, and I am a staunch proponent of freedom, including the freedom to be stupid and be separated from your money because of that stupidity.
I'm with ya all the way brother, just hoping to inspire people to reap the benefits of technology, and not get caught unwittingly in a rat race.
Almost all of the people I interviewed found their calling ! after great difficulty ...the catfish farmer used to be an investment banker, the truck driver had been an entertainment lawyer, a chef had been an academic, and the police officer was a Harvard MBA.
Hmm, I think there might be some inherent bias here. These people were so interesting because Bronson chose the interesting ones (he says he selected 70 out of hundreds).
He's also has the distinction of being the author of my favourite novel. Here's the first chapter: http://pobronson.com/filth.htm (love that first line!).
It came out at the wrong time - people didn't want to believe that the financial industry was screwed up. If it got re-released now (or if someone finally made a movie of it) people would probably be more receptive.
Pointless anecdote: went to see him give a talk a few years back in London. I bought his new book, got him to sign it, and then whipped out my first edition hardback of Bombardiers that I picked up in Oz years previously. He seemed surprised(/touched) to see it, we had a little chat, and then he wrote a genuinely nice message in the book.
Not really related at all to this discussion, and not technically the first line (though its on the first page), but this line from Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer was the most captivating book starter for me ever:
"I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive."
I like the general idea of making stuff which makes people spending less time at a computer, not more. Like giving the information they need and can use in daily life.
This approach excludes working on most social network stuff or things built on the top of it just for the sake of being another 'social' thing.
Cmon people, what's 'social' is happening behind the scenes in our lives, not in teh networkz.
The misconception of the 90s dot-com era was that Success = IPO. People had to learn (the hard way) that a business' value is related to the actual value it creates in the market, not in the speculative value it generates in the minds of investors.
