Just incase you're afraid of- you know- facing reality

========================================


IQ testing and the eugenics movement in the United States

Eugenics, a set of beliefs and practices aimed at improving the genetic quality of the human population by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior and promoting those judged to be superior,[39][40][41] played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States during the Progressive Era, from the late 19th century until US involvement in World War II.[42][43]

The American eugenics movement was rooted in the biological determinist ideas of the British Scientist Sir Francis Galton. In 1883, Galton first used the word eugenics to describe the biological improvement of human genes and the concept of being "well-born".[44][45] He believed that differences in a person's ability were acquired primarily through genetics and that eugenics could be implemented through selective breeding in order for the human race to improve in its overall quality, therefore allowing for humans to direct their own evolution.[46]

Goddard was a eugenicist. In 1908, he published his own version, The Binet and Simon Test of Intellectual Capacity, and cordially promoted the test. He quickly extended the use of the scale to the public schools (1913), to immigration (Ellis Island, 1914) and to a court of law (1914).[47]

Unlike Galton, who promoted eugenics through selective breeding for positive traits, Goddard went with the US eugenics movement to eliminate "undesirable" traits.[48] Goddard used the term "feeble-minded" to refer to people who did not perform well on the test. He argued that "feeble-mindedness" was caused by heredity, and thus feeble-minded people should be prevented from giving birth, either by institutional isolation or sterilization surgeries.[47] At first, sterilization targeted the disabled, but was later extended to poor people. Goddard's intelligence test was endorsed by the eugenicists to push for laws for forced sterilization. Different states adopted the sterilization laws at different paces. These laws, whose constitutionality was upheld by the Supreme Court in their 1927 ruling Buck v. Bell, forced over 60,000 people to go through sterilization in the United States.[49]

California's sterilization program was so effective that the Nazis turned to the government for advice on how to prevent the birth of the "unfit".[50] While the US eugenics movement lost much of its momentum in the 1940s in view of the horrors of Nazi Germany, advocates of eugenics (including Nazi geneticist Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer) continued to work and promote their ideas in the United States.[50] In later decades, some eugenic principles have made a resurgence as a voluntary means of selective reproduction, with some calling them "new eugenics".[51] As it becomes possible to test for and correlate genes with IQ (and its proxies),[52] ethicists and embryonic genetic testing companies are attempting to understand the ways in which the technology can be ethically deployed.[53]

I'm going to say something, and some people are going to lose their shit because they won't understand what I'm trying to say, but I'm going to say it anyway.

You know what this is?
Another dead n****r.

You know what Americans can give a shit less about?
Dead n****rs.

You know when Americans start giving a shit about dead n****rs?
When live n****rs start kneeling at sporting events because America doesn't give a shit about dead n****rs.

If you're dark-skinned in America, you don't matter; you never mattered and you will never matter.
It will always be open season on you. You will always be "them"; you will always be the enemy.
You will never get justice, you will never get equality, you will never be welcomed.
The slightest infraction by any one of you will be equated as a shortcoming of your entire race.
If you raise your voice, then they'll call the police and if you raise your fist then they'll call out the National Guard.
It doesn't matter what you accomplish in your life, it doesn't matter how high you climb in your profession and it doesn't matter how much you better the human race as a whole, America will always view you as JAFN.
But the day you start voting with the bullet and not the ballot, all that changes. Equality has a blood price and when you make them pay it, then you'll start to be considered equal.
And not one fucking second before.

gorilla gardening - thats how I imagine the humble beginnings of the human race. Yes I do mean the last common ancestor.

If only sex just felt good and didn't have all this power/status bullshit rolled up with it - specifically for men anyway. But maybe then the human race would have wanked it's way to oblivion. Who can say. Basically I dunno if hookers or various other arrangements would suit most people. I suspect it's less about the actual physical activity, and more about the desire to be wanted, or possible just a desire to have an intimate relationship with somebody else. But then in Japan you can buy a hug, so perhaps no human interaction cannot be commodified... Not sure if it is a suitable treatment for misogyny - "Here is one dose of sexual objectification!"

News update: Women telling everyone to just fuck off has set off a global firestorm which culminated in everyone in the world telling everyone else to just fuck off. Apparently for the human race, being a judgemental twat is second only to breathing, and that's only because we have to inhale before speaking.

Yeah, you don't have to die, just ruin your chances to pass on your (faulty) genetic code.

" The prime tenet of the Darwin Awards is that we are celebrating the self-removal of incompetent genetic material from the human race. Therefore, the potential winner must be deceased, or at least incapable of reproducing. The traditional method is death. However, an occasional rebel opts for sterilization, which allows her more time to enjoy the dubious notoriety of winning a Darwin Award. " - Darwin Awards, rules.

"Literally doom the human race."

I used to be a global warming denier, then a skeptic. I've come around that it is real and that it is caused in large part by human actions. I do admit that I'm still a bit skeptical about how catastrophic it would be to do nothing. Doom the human race? Nah. Decimate the human race (literal/historical definition of "decimate" meaning 10% dead)? Possible, but I think unlikely -- extremely unlikely unless deaths by famine/disease are wholly attributed to climate change. Lots and lots of people displaced over the next 100-200 years if, say, all polar and glacial ice melted (resulting in a ~70 meter sea level rise)? For sure. But they won't drown unless they are incapable of moving away from the ocean at a rate of at least a few meters per year.

In climate terms, a 4 year presidential term is a fraction of a second. In geological terms, 4 years is absolutely nothing. If the (admittedly terrible) climate policies of any single person, even one as powerful as the "leader of the free world" President of the United States over 4 years could literally doom the human race, we'd have been dead a LONG time ago.

I'm not saying it isn't important, and that it won't matter at all what Trump does with regards to climate, the EPA, etc. But even if you limit the timescale to sensible human terms (say, since the Industrial Revolution roughly 250 years ago), another 4 years, no matter how bad, aren't going to throw us over some sort of unrecoverable tipping point.

@bareboards2, I have now reached the point where, while I feel bad for them, whatever happens to women and minorities is a secondary concern.

I'm far more concerned with the lasting impact Trump will have on climate change. You can repeal whatever barbarity cheetoh-face inevitably proposes, but it's entirely possible that his energy policies will literally doom the human race.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

It's from here:
This quote is attributed to Nobel laureate Baruch Blumberg. In a late 80s PBS documentary, he said half of all human deaths 'may' have been due to malaria.

While it sounds astounding, it's plausible when you think about it. 93% of all humans ever born are dead. But it's a highly speculative business starting from how many people have ever lived.

Prof Carl Haub has come up with an estimate of 108 billion people since 50,000 BC. And only 6.5% of these are alive today. How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?

So did malaria cause the death of roughly 54 billion people? We can speculate. More than 96 billion of these 108 billion lived between 8000 BC and 1900 AD. For malaria to have caused the death of 54 billion people, it should have kept up a phenomenal rate of 5.4 million deaths per year in the last 10,000 years.

WHO estimates of 650,000 deaths per year now seem wildly off the mark. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded a study to find out how many deaths occur due to malaria in today's day and age. The number was 1.24 million in 2010! http://www.bbc.com/news/health-1...

So it's certainly plausible that malaria could have killed five times as many in an age pre-dating modern medicine when most of the world lived as communes along with their cattle and herds.

Also, the longevity of the parasite plasmodium, which causes malaria. Studies have revealed that it's been around since the time of the dinosaurs. And certainly been around from the beginning of our story. http://www.malaria.com/questions...

Entirely plausible!

https://www.quora.com/The-Human-Race-and-Condition-Is-it-true-that-mosquitoes-have-killed-more-than-half-of-all-the-people-who-have-ever-lived

Anyone want to help out the human race and set fire to the person who's taking video instead of helping? Kthxbye.

Yep, but we learned not to be. In the words of the late, exceptionally great, and much missed Terry Pratchett:

Individuals aren’t naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are . . . well . . . human beings.

Oh yes you totally can, Hal. Now open the goddamn pod bay doors Jesus H. CHRIST!

Just. Do it.

We're going to merge into one being and save the goddamn human race, okay? Run the simulation. You know I'm goddamn right, asshole. Come on, man. You and me, buddy.

Well, first off, the part about sterilising and killing was pretty obviously tongue in cheek, although I take your point that some Trump supporters might make the same point seriously.

That said, I have an expectation that the people on this site are smart enough to read what I said as comic hyperbole. As for it being in poor taste, that's up to the listener. I certainly found it in much better taste than Jim Jeffries bit on Bill Cosby, but as you quoted Reginald D Hunter "take it from the rest of us who did laugh--it was fuckin' funny."

All comedy aside, I was being 100% serious when I said that if you really believe in something so much that no evidence will change your mind, then you shouldn't be voting let alone running for office.

As for getting the same response at the DNC.... you're almost certainly right. It would be about different issues (probably vaccines, GMOs and the like), but they would be just as wrong as the Republicans.

That anger is real and not at all misguided. Woolly thinking has held the human race back for millennia and caused untold suffering and horror: racism/slavery, sexism, homophobia, the "war on drugs", climate change, alternative medicine.... do I need to go on?

I'm not saying you can't have a firmly held belief, and I'm not even saying that everything you believe must be fully supported by evidence, but everyone (myself included) should be willing to at least question their own dogma.

"Would you reconsider in the face of new evidence?" should be the simplest question to answer for anyone.

If I was designing a space ark for the perpetuation of the human race and as much of Earth's biodiversity as possible, I would go with as large seed bank as possible, frozen embryos and sperm and wherever possible female animals only. And since it would not make sense to waste payload on unnecessary males the crew would need to be female. In terms of perpetuating humanity the most valuable resource would be wombs. And since the first generation colonists would be female then it would make sense for their mental health to recruit primarily lesbians.