[Game] Last one to post wins!

[Guest]

*8 billion 

[Yakumo]

3 hours ago, Luminesce said:

I've been wondering recently why humans avoid mental effort even though it's literally exclusively a positive or neutral thing.

Keep in mind that in evolutionary terms the only relevant parameter is reproductive success, meaning how many of your offspring reach a state in which they are able to reproduce themselves. The organisms with the highest reproductive success inevitably become dominant in a population. Everything else like personal well-being or morality is irrelevant in this regard.  And from this perspective too much mental gymnastics aren't positive or neutral at all, they're deeply negative.

 

Look what sort of people statistically have the most children in modern society. The busy high performers and elites? The great thinkers? Rather not. It's poor uneducated people hooked on welfare. Actually mental effort is an enormous hazard to reproductive success because those evaluating consequences will not engage in risky sexual behavior, use contraception and thus have significantly fewer children. There's a reason sex drive relies on powerful drugs because from a sober individual perspective, reproduction is about the most dangerous and dumbest thing an organism can do. It wastes enormous resources on offspring which the parent then lacks. Many organisms put all available energy into reproduction and die afterwards. They do so on instinct which evolved because it brings the highest reproductive success and not because the animal thought things over. So there you have it. Sadly being dumb and lazy is the most successful reproductive strategy for humans everywhere on this world. Thinking too many dangerous thoughts is the worst.

 

Just look what's happening in western societies, minus immigrants we have a reproduction rate close to 1 here, meaning a couple has 1 child on average. This halves the population in one cycle (2 parents die, only 1 child remains). Meanwhile in poor countries people still have >4 children on average meaning population doubles with each cycle, like in Afghanistan. Those are evolutionary successful and become dominant, we're dying out.

 

So yeah, regarding the future of your genes (and memes aka culture) there's a massive downside in being conscious and thinking too much instead of procreating like an animal. At least as long as you freely allow others to do so.

 

[Breloomancer]

13 minutes ago, Yakumo said:

meaning how many of your offspring reach a state in which they are able to reproduce themselves

well it's really not about descendance as much as genes. most of the time, your kids share the most genes with you, but in nature you will also find siblings and such looking after each other because they are more closely related, and while your sibling having successful offspring may not be as good as having successful offspring of your own, it's better than anyone else having successful offspring. and there can also be genes that only activate occasionally that don't benefit one's own reproductive chances, but that benefit the reproductive chances of people with the gene inactive, and thus get passed on, like with gay penguins (iirc)

 

also, while the middle class many not be having that many children, the average among the ultra rich is much higher

[TB]

GER

[TB]

I guess today's discussion is about reproduction or something. It's all over my head 

 

Or no NVM it was about mental and physical effort

Edited December 6, 2022 by TB

[Breloomancer]

it's about evolutionary psychology; a popular pseudoscientific theoretical framework among armchair psychologists

[TB]

A hwat

 

Bobby what did I tell you about making up words

[TB]

God it's only tuesday ugggghhhhh

[Breloomancer]

what I'm saying is that a lot of the hypotheses of evolutionary psychology are controversial and very difficult to test, in a field that already has difficulties with reproducibility, and we're just schlubs on the internet, so any theory presented from an evolutionary psychological framework should be viewed with a high degree of skepticism

[TurboSimmie]

Good morning everyone! 😁

 

5 hours ago, Miichu said:

What are you all getting for Christmas?

 

I kinda want Phil to get me books that we can cuddle up and read together. 🥰📚