(September 5, 2019 at 10:36 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: How many people trouble themselves with meaning when survival is convincingly imperiled but can still plausibly be fought for and maintained?   The dominant priority becomes clear when only one of the two two can sought.  

I guess we just have different feelings about the world. 

I don't feel my survival is imperiled, that I have to fight for it daily. Yes, I agree that if I were under attack by aliens I would stop playing and try to survive. 

There are existential threats, of course. Climate change is real. 

Quote:At basic level of reality effecting humans the search for meaning is the idle indulgence  in a set of tertiary urges ultimately implanted by the quirk of the genetics of neurological circuitry whose dominant shaping factor had always been adaptation to the need for survival.

It may be that a strong instinct to survive by manipulating the natural world to serve us is a good and useful thing that remains strong even when it's accomplished its goal. 

I mean, if you have everything you need, maybe it makes sense to stop manipulating the natural world and just enjoy yourself -- appreciate the natural world for what it is, rather than what you can make it produce. The unreasonable continuation of the desire to produce useful stuff means that we go on to produce stuff we don't actually need. And then we'll burn down Brazil in order to have cool leather goods and thick steaks. 

I think that a wise life would be to stop producing once you've got enough stuff, and enjoy the beauty in what there is.

(September 5, 2019 at 6:00 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(September 5, 2019 at 10:36 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: How many people trouble themselves with meaning when survival is convincingly imperiled but can still plausibly be fought for and maintained?   The dominant priority becomes clear when only one of the two two can sought.  

I guess we just have different feelings about the world. 

I don't feel my survival is imperiled, that I have to fight for it daily. Yes, I agree that if I were under attack by aliens I would stop playing and try to survive. 

There are existential threats, of course. Climate change is real. 

Quote:At basic level of reality effecting humans the search for meaning is the idle indulgence  in a set of tertiary urges ultimately implanted by the quirk of the genetics of neurological circuitry whose dominant shaping factor had always been adaptation to the need for survival.

It may be that a strong instinct to survive by manipulating the natural world to serve us is a good and useful thing that remains strong even when it's accomplished its goal. 

I mean, if you have everything you need, maybe it makes sense to stop manipulating the natural world and just enjoy yourself -- appreciate the natural world for what it is, rather than what you can make it produce. The unreasonable continuation of the desire to produce useful stuff means that we go on to produce stuff we don't actually need. And then we'll burn down Brazil in order to have cool leather goods and thick steaks. 

I think that a wise life would be to stop producing once you've got enough stuff, and enjoy the beauty in what there is.

The goal is a moving target, and so can not be accomplished per se.   One could only temporarily appear to have reached or gotten ahead of it.    But no complacency can possibly last because different unpredicted challenges are certain to arise and time spent standing still would likely come at the cost of increased acute effort required to meet the next unpredicted challenge.  

If you think climate change, easily predictable and predicted for a long time, is the major challenge to our desire to avoid large scale immiserating of humanity in the foreseeable future, I think you are far too complacent.    I think it is not excessive to say the most serious threat of widest and deepest immiserating and enormous death tolls we face today we could not have seriously foreseen only 5 years ago.   That is the unraveling of the world economic order which enabled the efficient utilization of skill, resource and competitive advantages through international trade and multilateral security.  That system had been in force and had had led to relative peace, and enormous enrichment of humanity during the last 70 years, and is largely responsible for perhaps half of the world having time and disposable income for middle class idleness and leisure.   Just a few years ago this system has been complacently envisioned to last into a star trek future bringing ever more of humanity into the happy state of smelling flowers.   But it is unraveling before out eyes, and the result could well herald fragmentation and decades of conflict and warfare in a age where nuclear weapon has already proliferated extensively and has few remaining barriers towards comprehensive proliferation to all significant powers.    


If your outlook is merely three generations, one ahead, one behind,  with heavy emphasis on the current status of the one in the middle, then perhaps it seem not too much of importance is risked by being satisfied with what we have and while away in idle indulgence.   But although it may seem we natively try to be short sighted and colloquial in outlook, it appears we do tend to have an noticeable innate urge to also consider maximizing chance of survival over long run by doing more of what had worked before even if there is less need.   So I don't suppose the world in the next decades will be characterized by idle search for beauty and meaning.

(September 5, 2019 at 7:20 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: That is the breakdown of the world economic order which enabled the efficient utilization of skill, resource and competitive advantage through international trade and multilateral security which had been in force for 70 years, and which had just a few years ago been complacently envisioned to last into a star trek future.  

Ah, well. 

It's the (former) status quo economic situation of the last 70 years which got us into the present mess. 

The Star Trek future was an impossible fantasy held out as a carrot for the gullible. I never understood what good it would do to fly off to distant stars, when everywhere you go is just like a different neighborhood in LA. Genuine difference and strangeness is found on earth, and is far from exhausted. 

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Here's an alternate fantasy about the ideal future, that's about as serious as Star Trek, but less technological and more humanist. It doesn't require that we join a quasi-militarist organization, put on uniforms, and obey a benign captain. Nor does it imply that a fierce instinct for survival is all that we are capable of.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archi.../soul-man/

A focus on what's valuable in life that wasn't purely economic could have different values.

(September 5, 2019 at 4:33 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: The fundamental criteria is survival of the genes that underlies the trait in the individual undergoing selection somewhere in the gene pool.  I might give my life to save my sister because my sister likely bear most of the same genes as me.   So giving my life ensures genes similar to mine, including the one that encourages me to sacrifice myself for my sister, survive.   

Cute story bro, but we don't have gene detecting genes, or even sister detecting genes, or even a "sacrifice myself for someone" gene.

You probably have to think a bit harder, about what type of gene and how it's expressed actually looks like? Love/Compassion, and its genetic makeup, is probably a good place to start. I'm willing to sacrifice myself for those i love and care about, even if they don't share my genes. I'd be more willing to risk my life to save my dog, than you, even though we share more in common genetically.

We also seem prone to feel more compassion for the innocent, defenseless, probably as a result the need for such compassion when raising children and babies. A mother more willing to die for the life of her child, than a grown brother. A man more willing to die for woman, than a grown man, etc...

Quote: It is the ability to account for the possibility that the objective of preserving their own direct gene line, which is the fundamental reason why there is instinct to preserve own life, does not necessarily provide the highest possible guaranty for the survival somewhere in the gene pool of genes defining one's own behavior, that facilitate the behavior you mention.

Evolution made it possible for humans to be convinced that the most fundamental objectives of survival, the survival of the genes underlying one's own behavior, is not necessarily best served by the survival of the individual in each circumstances.    It is sometimes best served by facilitating the survival of some perceived to have enough in common with us at the possible expense of our own survival.

No it didn't. We don't have gene detectors, let alone any favorability dependent on such gene detectors. It's not as if my sisters genetic makeup, gives off a distinct scent, that my brain subconsciously detects, and responds in ways favorable to insuring the survival of our mutual genetic makeup.

If I was switched a birth, I would be none the wiser.

Evolution paints in very broad strokes, and quite blindly. The fact that it favors reproduction and survival, is more or less just coincidental, because of the nature of the environment we find ourselves in, rather than the genes themselves. It's only because for most of us, our primordial tribe is our family, those that share our genetic makeup benefit the most from such elements. Not because we're biological aware of those who share our genetic makeup the most.

Human beings, have a variety of unique features, that are more or less byproducts of evolution, rather than directly selected for, that creates a great deal of divergences, and evolutionarily unintended pathways. Our recognition of our own mortality, appears to be a byproduct of having rational/conscious minds, rather than a feature directly selected for.

I can perceive the significance of losing my mother, not just when I've lost her, but it contemplating her loss as well. I can conceive of being and not being. Contemplate the idea of dying, and even desire death over living as a result.

Our ability to recognize being and not being, is byproduct, but it's also the foundation of our dependency on meaning. Meaning isn't a disguise for survival, anymore so than any other byproduct is, and things that arise from them are. They're emergent elements.

And they produce their own unique set of challenges when it comes to our survival, that are not addressed by our genes. The awareness of death, of not being, needs an awareness of what keeps us planted on the platform, what we call "Meaning". The something to live for, rather than merely just surviving. Without it, our ancient brothers, in that dire world of the past, would probably have chosen collective suicide, when they learned that death was an option.

It's why we recognize that if our friends feel irresolvabley hopeless, or see life as irresolvabley meaningless, that we should probably get them some help before they jump off the platform. Creature unaware of the concept of the death, will just go on living, no dog will line up to be euthanized.

Sharing genes always seemed too abstract for me. My genes don't survive if my sister survives. My genes die with me, they don't benefit from her surviving. You have to go very meta and talk about the idea of a sequence in the genes surviving in some kind of ethereal relm of information for it to make sense.

The genes you and your sister have in common (and most of the ones you don't ) are copies of your parent's genes. There are no extant 'original genes' to survive. It's all copying and copy errors. Genes don't care about anything, but it's a brute fact that if your sister survives to have children, some copies of your genes will be passed on, even if you die before reproducing. If instinctive family bonding influenced by a complex of genes increases the odds of more copies of those genes being passed on, the predisposition to bond with close family members will be passed on. The same is true if bonding in bands or larger groups conveys similar benefits. It's information, and it's math, but it has a concrete expression in phenotypes.

(September 6, 2019 at 10:33 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Sharing genes always seemed too abstract for me. My genes don't survive if my sister survives. My genes die with me, they don't benefit from her surviving. You have to go very meta and talk about the idea of a sequence in the genes surviving in some kind of ethereal relm of information for it to make sense.

Heard of kin selection?

(September 6, 2019 at 10:43 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: The genes you and your sister have in common (and most of the ones you don't ) are copies of your parent's genes. There are no extant 'original genes' to survive. It's all copying and copy errors. Genes don't care about anything, but it's a brute fact that if your sister survives to have children, some copies of your genes will be passed on, even if you die before reproducing. If instinctive family bonding influenced by a complex of genes increases the odds of more copies of those genes being passed on, the predisposition to bond with close family members will be passed on. The same is true if bonding in bands or larger groups conveys similar benefits. It's information, and it's math, but it has a concrete expression in phenotypes.

The predisposition to bonding. 

There's no reason to believe we developed separate bonding mechanisms for family, for community, friends, or even with my dog. Closeness seems to be good term for what influences our bonding.

It's not instinctive family bonding, but more like instinctive bonding with those close to us, even if they are other animals. Families just benefit from the fact that they tend to be the people we're closest to, from conception.

(September 6, 2019 at 10:46 am)Grandizer Wrote: Heard of kin selection?

Of course, that's why I'm saying the continuity of it doesn't make sense. You have to enter an abstract realm where, say, sequence ATT is considered "my gene" regardless of where and why in the universe it appears. Otherwise there's no continuity between my genes and my sister surviving; they may as well be competing against each other.

My clone isn't me, in other words, and for all I know he may be trying to kill me, or take my girlfriend.

Which isn't far fetched either. I think there are bacteria that produce toxins against members of their own kind, a genetic free for all.

My guess is that kin selection, or just a general preference for the survival of kin even, has some better explanation than the evolutionary genetic narrative.

Our of curiosity, how do people in here determine which evolutionary explanation of how features like sacrificing our lives for others developed, is the correct one? We clearly can't repeat the process, and have no video tape of how it all took place?

So what determines whether one explanation is more likely to be true than another? Is it just a matter of cherry picking the one we like the best?