Mostly Hairless Apes

The political season is upon us, slowly building drama like lots of other entertainment options. A sniper shot at the orange parasite. The sitting president has Covid, along with lots of other people. What exciting things will happen next on the campaign trails?

America is meandering through this stage of history. Will there be any reasonable discussion of actuals problems, or will we spend more time ignoring the need to address energy use, housing, education and health care?

I'm off on the campaign trial. I will be following the 2024 election in the US and talking about evolving artificial adaptations. We have built up our current civilization with a balancing act of conservative and progressive ideas. How much old stuff should we keep vs. how much new stuff should we try to incorporate? That is the essential question for any evolving civilization.

In the US, the conservative side is anchored in old school religion and capitalist ideas. Progressives use science to expand democracy. America was built on the inertia of European Colonialism, where the aristocrats (mostly old white folks) made the rules and harvested the majority of resources. Money trickled down to non-land-owning white guys, then non-whites, then to non-guys. Eventually everybody got to vote and play in the capitalist economy. We knocked down those silly communists.

Since the 1980's, the basic question has been = Should democracy be more powerful than capitalism? I vote yes, and say no own should own more than $10,000,000 of property until everyone has full access to a personal home, education, medical care, and can fund their retirement (and an annual vacation). Then we can let rich people off the tax hook.

I know it's easy to think about dysfunctionality. But in the grand scheme of things humans have taken over the planet. That implies some degree of enhanced functions. We have a global economy. Now we need a global government, which requires a common belief system with a code of ethics.

My suggestion? Probabilistic Ethics - a system developed in the Church of Science which says minimize assumptions, and use the best available knowledge to plan your course of action. RFPs to follow.

I just took a break. Drove around the US east coast, saw friends and family and recalibrated myself a little bit. Now I'm going with the nuclear option. I've been inhibited from saying it, but the biggest problem humanity has right now is the lack of a shared belief system.

Civilizations start with belief systems. The religious people are right in so far as social unity is much easier when everybody accepts the same fundamental beliefs. When it is a specific god-like being, we argue. That's why the Church of Science is better! In the Church of Science, we start by saying maybe there aren't any gods. Maybe we mostly hairless apes are just evolving social primates who need to get along.

It's time to start the political campaign. Vote for the Garden Party! We want ecological prosperity.

Let's mutate the economy. Once you realize that civilization is just an agreement among conscious individuals, you understand that if we can all agree to something we can cause change. It seems to me that the majority of today's problem's go back to economic issues, so let's change the economy. Just by 1%, if you think you can handle that. If you wish, you can take this as my 'white guilt' apology, because saying you're sorry about something without offering up a solution is BS.

How much is enough? What makes you satisfied? If we used some ideas from evolution, could we figure out a better way to structure our civilization? The idea for today is runaway selection, a type of evolution that produces some quirky adaptations. If it is acting in our economic adaptation of capitalism, is there a way to fix it?

How can we change the current capitalist economy to make life better for more people? That communism thing didn't work very well. What if we just put a 'cap' on capitalism? What if we opened up all the financial records for individual accounts over $100,000, and we let everybody see where the money goes? Do we really need billionaires telling us what we should be doing? Because that's what we have right now - you can buy the politicians of your choice, and get them to vote for what you want, if you have the money to spend. I think we should be spending a little bit more of it on payrolls and healthcare and education and retirement accounts for everybody, not just the 1%.

What would it take to have a global civilization? Join The Church of Science to find out!

What would we like to have in our civilization? I think more recreation would be a good thing. That's how I can pursue happiness. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can be achieved if we just change the world. Easy-peezy.

Abortion is a major social issue in the US, because some people believe that a single cell is a human. I disagree. I think the categorization of an organism classified as Homo sapiens does not achieve 'human' status until they develop consciousness.

Think about that. If you were only considered human based on your ability to think, imagine how many politicians would be unemployed?

Humans build civilizations based on ideas. We think and generate new combinations of information. We share those ideas and use them to keep trying for a more perfect union. But some people want to resurrect an old idea here in America. They think we should bring back some of that old time religion.

I thought we had freedom of belief in America. If you believe that a one-cell embryo is a human, you go right ahead. I do not believe that. If you believe that the reason an embryo is a human is that it has a 'soul', or some magical connection with a deity, prove it. Until someone can prove the existence of this or that deity, any argument based solely on belief should not be the basis of laws.

So, get out of people's bedrooms, and leave the reproduction to the people that want children, not the ones that don't.

Version 2. F1000Res. 2016; 5: 2765.

Published online 2017 Jun 7. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.8937.2

Early embryo mortality in natural human reproduction: What the data say

Gavin E. Jarvisa,1 Univ. of Cambridge