It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
That's why nature supplied us with another method. It's called natural selection. It's survival of the fittest and it's a method we've been turning our back on.
Something needs to happen that decreases our numbers to a very sustainable number. Unfortunatly, being the domininant species... this would have to repeat itself numerous times over the course of mankind. Either natural or manmade, something needs to ... and will happen to controll our numbers.
Originally posted by Lasheic
reply to post by tinfoilman
That's why nature supplied us with another method. It's called natural selection. It's survival of the fittest and it's a method we've been turning our back on.
Natural selection has nothing to do with "Survival of the fittest". Please stop spreading this fallacious meme. Thank you.
Originally posted by infolurker
I say we find all these people who want to lower the population of the planet through draconian means and let THEM "show us the way" by starting with themselves and their families......
Originally posted by Lasheic
Natural selection has nothing to do with "Survival of the fittest". Please stop spreading this fallacious meme. Thank you.
The concept of fitness is central to natural selection. However, as with Natural selection above, there is serious divergence of opinion over the precise meaning of the term, and Richard Dawkins manages in his later books to avoid it entirely. (He devotes a chapter of his The Extended Phenotype to discussing the various senses in which the term is used.) Although fitness is sometimes colloquially understood as a quality that promotes survival of a particular individual - as illustrated in the well-known phrase survival of the fittest - modern evolutionary theory defines fitness in terms of individual reproduction. The basis of this approach is: if an organism lives half as long as others of its species, but has twice as many offspring surviving to productive adulthood, its genes will become more common in the adult population of the next generation.
Originally posted by Lasheic
reply to post by tinfoilman
So you willfully admit to spreading disinformation and ignorance? I'm sorry, but I thought that was a morally dishonest and academically vile action which should be avoided.
Originally posted by delius
Population control is a reality, there's no way around it if this planet is to be inhabited 100 years from now.
Since there is no ability for the countries of the world to deal with this in any sort of coordinated way, the only option that some feel is achievable is for a non-governmental group to take things into their own hands. The methods used? Introduction of designer food additives; manufactured disease; poverty; drugs & alcohol; unhealthy food that is cheap; laziness & obesity; vaccines. You get the picture--make an effort with all available tools to control the population.
Are these methods acceptable? Not in my opinion. But from their perspective, who else is doing anything?
delius
Obviously there other ways natural selection can be achieved, but if I had to write out a high school text book of exactly what natural selection is every time I talked about it I'd never get anything done.
Originally posted by Lasheic
I support this message. Although I would add a sidenote that it may not be a conscious choice we are making as a society. Population decline is an example of emergence within a complex system, a consequential response to modernization and urbanization.
Originally posted by AmethystWolf
Makes me wonder what dis-ease might be coming next. It seems to me that the WHO was discussing population control in the seventies, then we suddenly had an AIDs epidemic in Manhattan and Africa...
In 2000, 2.9 billion people live in urban areas, comprising 47 per cent of the world population.
originally posted by Lasheic
So a more appropriate term to use is "Survival of the most well adapted". Albeit, that doesn't have the same catchy and empowering ring to it - which is likely why it's not as successful as a meme... despite the fact that "Survival of the most well adapted" is the most.. ahem... "fit"... to describe the term in regards to what we observe in reality.
Originally posted by Lasheic
reply to post by tinfoilman
Obviously there other ways natural selection can be achieved, but if I had to write out a high school text book of exactly what natural selection is every time I talked about it I'd never get anything done.
As demonstrated in my post above, the meme is inaccurate and insufficient to describe natural selection. You don't have to write out an entire textbook on evolutionary biology, but simply using the correct terms will do. Not doing so will simply perpetuate misconceptions which misrepresent what the science actually says - and that is promoting ignorance. It's also what anti-intellectuals and religious fundamentalists pick up on to try to "poke holes" in evolutionary theory - and they don't even understand that they're arguing against a false premise in the first place because people who think they understand evolution are unknowingly parroting a common meme rather than accurate terms.
It would never have occurred to me that "fit" had anything to do with greater size strength or intelligence. Fit as I understand it just means that those who have this trait reproduce in greater numbers than those who lack this trait.