Mostly Hairless Apes

I've reached my limit for tolerance of social stupidity. It's time to wake up to the reality of the basic functions of life. It's not that hard to see where the billionaires are leading us. They'll have there stuff, and most of what should be ours. most of us will be fighting over the scraps. Off with their heads is the only option, or else pick your dystopian sci-fi future.

The evolutionary node is nigh. We are nearing the end of the dominance of colonialism as our main form of civilization. Thinking humans realize in our modern world we need professionals, but we don't need kings...or dictators.... or maybe even presidents, or CEOs or any other anal aperture that doesn't understand the distinction between 'management' and 'ruling'.

It's time for those new year resolutions. Think global, act local is my current motto. I'm focusing some on me, and some on everything else. As ever, what the split is becomes the key variable.

Revelation. Religious ecstasy. Fun stuff. I've had one, when I realized the critical role of belief in establishing any civilization. Everyone that I consider civilized shares a belief system with me. We accept that there is probably no personal magical entities out there, wherever. We accept that science is the best social adaptation that humans have evolved to solve problems. Science yields knowledge - information about our shared reality. And the unknown can be packaged into our belief system. The belief system in the Evolving Church of Science says only that we should minimize belief. Accept the probability that there aren't any magic gods out there who have our backs. We are on our own here on our wet little planet. And we should start taking better care of it and each other.

Welcome to an evolutionary journey as a member of the Evolving Church of Science. New memberships will be available as soon as I figure out one of those cash internet thingies. It came to me in a revelation. I see clearly now. The cash will follow from a good idea. People like good ideas because that's how evolution progresses. Ideas are information, the 'coin of the realm' for biological evolution via natural and artificial selection. Whether the information is in DNA or libraries, Ideas are functionally no different than alternative genetic sequences. The ongoing questions are merely to assess what happened when that information got deployed through some technology. Be it our cells, our hands, our machines or our churches, each manifestation can alter our evolutionary journeys.

Thinking is the adaptation that truly makes us civilized humans. I wish more people did more of it....

How much diversity can you handle? That's the issue today.

So I've been thinking about retirement. So many 'pearls of wisdom' are trickling through my gray matter about what it was going to be and what it is.Work is life. If you're not working at something, solving some problem, making something better or beautiful, WTF are you doing? You want to take me through the mental processes that allow you to think you deserve to be a lard-ass?

Why am I angry? Let me explain...

Home can be different things, ranging from where you sleep to the entire planet. All of it requires care and maintenance. We should do more of that.

Stand up for something. What do you need to have explained? Have a frickin' backbone. Decide what is important. Fight to keep it or work to change it. Figure it out.

In the evolving church of science, we understand our mental information is sorted into personal beliefs (which are not verified) and knowledge (which is verified through multiple external sources). When we make choices about our actions, we are encouraged to use as much information as we can, because that makes the actions more likely to reach the desired goals. We should all be doing a little more math...

An analysis of artificial selection. When we think about 'domestication', altering the life histories of various species to meld into our human civilizations, we don't always appreciate the repercussions. We use our consciousness to direct our actions. We work with available information, knowledge and belief, to raise crops and so much more. Artificial selection is really just propagating ideas about how we should organize the world.

My Goodness! What is that? Good is such a relative term for so many things in our lives. If you are a believer in Science, a member of the Evolving Church of Science, what do you think is good. Here's what I think...

Why are you here? Who knows? Well, you are the only one who can give meaning to your life. You have to look around and figure out what are the current forces active around you and how they influence you. You have to understand your past, and how things shaped who you are. Then, if you can take time, you can find out what is good in life and work toward that.

Everyone should be able to look at their personal history and understand where they came from. Otherwise, how can you figure out where you're going?

How can we make a better world? We need to agree on what is ethical. We may never agree on what's moral - whatever each of us thinks is 'good vs evil'. But we can agree on some rules so that we can get along and work together. We might even be able to solve some problems that way.

I've retired, but now I'm committing to this - Science! And I'm ready to offer up a better explanation for some of our problems. Guess what's not included?

The tenth commandment from the Bioble, the holy book of the evolving Church of Science is reviewed.

Chaos is the opposite of order. Kaos was the opposition to Control in the old TV series Get Smart. That show was a spoof on the Cold War actions represented in mass media back in the 1960's - which I grew up with. The Cold War was the last act of the 20th century conflict that started in Serbia and ended in Berlin. The Great War, its sequel WW II, and The Cold War were the summation of evolutionary selection for democracy over autocracy. Prior to the 20th century, we had aristocratic autocracies running their colonial empires. What we ended up with in the 1990's and moving forward were civilizations with a preference for democratic governments and capitalist market economies. For the last forty years, the evolutionary competition has been between democratic governance and open markets. The markets are winning. Democracy requires stability so that we can have reasonable discussions about problems. Markets are managed by economic aristocrats who prefer short term profits to worrying about long term problems. That's why the economic forces favor chaos. As long as they keep people arguing and worrying about whatever issues can be dredged up, there are fewer opportunities to Question Authority, and change the rules.

When you're hungry, it's harder to make decisions. Judges assign longer sentences before lunch than they do after lunch. Humans build civilization to stabilize life, we try to minimize hungers and biological impulses. We try to make better decisions to have more resources, and stabilize our lives. But that's not what we have in America. We have decided on chaotic rules based on unregulated capitalism and mystical beliefs. We select for social patterns that isolate people and encourage greed and envy. We'll all get to see how that plays out starting Jan. 20th of next year.

I love sports. The process of playing or watching people compete within a defined set of rules is so marvelously civilized. Way different than warfare, where life and death are the measures of success. Sports are based on intellectual agreements that define the physical and behavioral parameters for a competition. I want to examine sports from the perspective of evolution, and look at how the major social adaptations play out in that aspect of our modern civilizations.

I don't know if it happens to others, but when I hear certain terms mangled in usage by non-professionals, it bothers me. One of the things that happens in any professional field is certain words are invested with specific meanings. Words capture ideas, which is mental information in the purest form. Since I've been trying to build a model for artificial selection based on mental information, it's important to clarify terms. A hypothesis, in science, has a very specific definition. A testable hypothesis is the only pathway to increasing the amount of knowledge from science. Knowledge is what we need more of in order to control artificial selection. The current upcoming reign of Donald I in Amerika will be an interesting test of one hypothesis. What will happen when the regulations on a capitalist economy are lowered within a democratic society? As opposed to having ideas generated from belief in democracy, the main ethical code for the next four years (hopefully it will only be 4...) will be to grab as much as you can. How will that turn out?

Probabilistic Ethics, that's the ticket. I have a plan...

Well, it's done. All sales are final. We made the decision in America to trust the orange parasite to lead us to a promised land. I plan to try to watch and report on as much as I can stomach. America altered its evolutionary path, and is now going toward a less perfect union in my humble opinion.

Well, I was hoping that it wouldn't happen, but it did. A human who is most qualified to be the leader of the Thieves Guild has been elected, again. If one is a mature responsible adult, often referred to as a professional, I can only imagine you are as stunned as I. During this phase of human civilization, the Colonial Era, we are still allowing the misconception to be spread through our social messaging that there shouldn't be any limits. We should keep pushing for what we want, and if something breaks along the way we will deal with it then. This allows the economy to ultimately drive all of our decisions. But a professional gets the job done, within whatever limits there are. Because reality gives us limits, and professionals deal with reality.

The last podcast before the 2024 US election. I can't wait to see what happens. Things seem a little stressed in my neck of the woods. But I live in 'MAGA' country, and the locals are acting like they're worried. So, that's a good thing from my perspective. Maybe we'll take a step back toward a more reasonable civilization. We will see....

A good scientific theory should be able to make accurate predictions. Can the Evolving Church of Science use Probabilistic Ethics to solve problems? I think it can. We can build from the ground up, work with each other when we share a belief system and fix things. Hopefully this will help get us started.

Now is the time to appreciate that science reveals limits. There is only so much matter and energy that can flow through a given ecosystem. Human civilizations depend on the ecosystem, no matter how artificially we alter our environments. That's the problem with religious belief systems - they reinforce the idea of infinity. If you have those magical thoughts, you can ignore rational discourse that tries to tell you about reality as measured by science. When you join the Church of Science and understand we need limits, we can finally reasonably discuss limiting capitalism. Not throwing it out, don't scream 'socialism' or 'communism'. I'm just saying we got rid of monarchs and dictators in the 20th century so we could have democracy. Now we have to limit the robber barons from stepping into those shoes, and let the economy work on smaller scales. Give me an ethical rationale as to why anyone is worth more than $10 million dollars a year while we have poverty, crime and all the social ills of the current era. Cap capitalism now.

I'm still writing but I think I have the good book. The Bioble is a holy book in the Evolving Church of Science. It settles the age-old chicken and egg question. It gives some rules to live by based on ethics from a scientific perspective of life. The evolutionary transitions of life provide guideposts for how we could behave in a global civilization of humans.

Only one month until the election that will change the trajectory of America. And the only real question is which is more important, money or people?

The Bioble is coming! I think I have the commandments for the Church of Science. What good is a belief system if it doesn't provide some guidance? We need to take care of life, know ourselves, stand for something, celebrate diversity, be professional, go to work, and ask questions. Oh, happy day.

The presidential debate revealed the starkest contrast I can think of between two different worldviews. It does boil down to what really matters. If you think there is some magical being out there who provides leaders so that you don't have to think, you are a dysfunctional American. If you accept that our social ills will only be solved if we actually choose to do something, like tax the rich and redistribute some resources, then I'd like to shake your hand, my fellow American.

Just some talk about equity, diversity and inclusion. The evils that are inherent in democracy, as any good misogynistic racist will tell you.

The age-old battle of the sexes includes both natural and artificial adaptations. The biological contributions of different parents to the well-being of offspring varies among species. In humans, a simple analysis reveals a bigger biological commitment for females. Many a comedian has noted the minimal requirements for male contributions to reproduction. The artificial social adaptations that generated a patriarchial society will be introduced. This will take at least another episode to unravel.

The Democrats have moved the target in this political season. The raucous democratic convention in Chicago has shifted perceptions about the political season here in America. What if there was a 'blue wave' in November? If we could actually move a little closer to agreeing that people are more important than money, perhaps we could do a little better job of distributing resources in the economy.

Humans are shifting away from familial aristocracies, and currently follow the lead of economic aristocrats. Perhaps in the future we could build an aristocracy based on professional behavior. If we could agree on common standards for behavior, and gave a distinct status to people who uphold those standards, maybe that would be a little bit better.

So, do you want to hear the plan? How could belief in science help to improve human civilization? You have to start with the basics, and biology doesn't get much more basic than family when we want to figure out social organization.

To your health! How can we build a 'healthier' ecosystem? Humans have taken over the planet, and we cause the major changes to the biosphere. Is there a better way to do that?

I have a recipe....

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.8937.2Early embryo mortality in natural human reproduction: What the data sayGavin E. Jarvisa,1 Univ. of Cambridge