Don't you think that war increases evolutionary pressure on unintelligent people/cleanses gene pool?

[Arsene]

I think that war boosts evolution, that war increases evolutionary pressure on unintelligence. If you were smart and would live in the middle east, you wouldn't risk your life for retarded ideologies. Retarded ideologies attract retarded people to die for their retarded ideologie. Natural selection.

There are some belgian muslims who went to the middle east to fight for ISIS, what would their average IQ be? You get what I mean?

Next to the fact that we had to survive in colder/rougher enviroments, do I think that this is why europeans score on average much higher on IQ tests than people from the middle east , simply because we had our wars in the past.

Theirfore I think that war is good, it cleanses the shitty genes out of the genepool (unfortunately also some good genes, of non-violent intelligent people, but you have to look at the average). If you wan't humanity to be less violent, than violent people have to die first, and they will care for it themselves, they will have wars. Just like football hooligans (unfortunately do they not die).

[dsayers]

I'm an intelligent person and I once believed in a deity and nationalism. I'm glad people like Pete Eyre, Larken Rose, and Stefan Molyneux made the case for property rights and rational thought rather than threatening to drone my neighborhood for being dumb.

 

I don't even get what your point is. Rape has benefits for the rapist. This doesn't mean it is a philosophically sound or consistent position.

[Lars]

It's a tough situation, though one cannot justify aggression though eugenics. Intelligent individuals do not resolve their conflicts using violence in the first place.

Keep in mind that direct involvement in war leads to higher rates of trauma and abuse which stunts IQ and promotes r-selection. It's not like the Middle East has historically lacked the "evolutionary pressure on unintelligence" you speak of.

The rise of the West is a deep topic which includes many coincidences in our favor. It isn't just a matter of when and where wars occurred. 

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

No. Cleanse is a matter of opinion. What if it was you who was to be cleansed? There is no better or worse in evolution; only those populations who most successfully adapt to heir environment. The most violent and stupid often win and spread their genes. What about the draft? The smart and the stupid were forced into war together. What about the collateral damage? I assume if you think war is good as long as it;s not you who's in one, right? 

I don't think you've thought this through. 

[Mister Mister]

these are two different things.  there is no good/bad in evolution, and evolution has no bearing on ethics.

[WasatchMan]

Genes are plastic to the environmental so any environmental hardship (war, famine, zombie apocalypse, etc.) would result in a set of genes better suited to surviving that hardship.  Does that mean smarter genes - maybe.  It would also mean more ruthless/less empathetic genes.

 

This is why philosophy is about universals and principles NOT pragmatism.  It doesn't care what is better - it cares about what is right.

[Arsene]

It's a tough situation, though one cannot justify aggression though eugenics. Intelligent individuals do not resolve their conflicts using violence in the first place.

 

Keep in mind that direct involvement in war leads to higher rates of trauma and abuse which stunts IQ and promotes r-selection. It's not like the Middle East has historically lacked the "evolutionary pressure on unintelligence" you speak of.

 

The rise of the West is a deep topic which includes many coincidences in our favor. It isn't just a matter of when and where wars occurred. 

"Intelligent individuals do not resolve their conflicts using violence in the first place." Exactly, getting into violence is unintelligent way of resolving conflicts because it lowers both your chances and the chances of your opponent in survival->procreation. People who tend to escalate disputes into violence have rudimentary minds->brains->genes. So them getting into war and dying from war is called darwinism. I say, let people die from their rudimentary genes/behavior.

No. Cleanse is a matter of opinion. What if it was you who was to be cleansed? There is no better or worse in evolution; only those populations who most successfully adapt to heir environment. The most violent and stupid often win and spread their genes. What about the draft? The smart and the stupid were forced into war together. What about the collateral damage? I assume if you think war is good as long as it;s not you who's in one, right? 

I don't think you've thought this through. 

If I would live in the middle-east, I wouldn't fight for anything, I would be a refugee and flee to the west. The fact that we tend to have wars is not good, it shows unintelligent we as species are. War is only good as long as I'm not in it? Exactly! Smart people will avoid war. Dumb people get attracted to it.

 

these are two different things.  there is no good/bad in evolution, and evolution has no bearing on ethics.

I Don't know what you mean with bad and good evolution. Let me tell you something about all those domestic dog species, take for example the chihuahua, do you know how genetically inferior those dogs are? If you would leave them in nature, they would die out . The only reason why they are still around and why they have evolved to be so genetically inferior in first place is because of domestication, the evolutionary pressure on you is totally different if you are domesticated than the evolutionary pressure if you are free in nature. Take a species, rid the evolutionary pressures of nature by providing them food, protection and health care, do this for over a million years, bad mutations will remain in the genepool, release them back into nature, and they will become extinct.

 

This is also what is happening to humans due to all the biomedical sciences allowing humans with all kinds of inferior traits to procreate, like for example females with very narrow hips, what would be the evolutionary reason to why we find females with very narrow hips ugly? Because females with very narrow hips are not able to push a child out naturally, having very narrow hips and being pragnant will result in a miscarriage and a maternal death. But because of fucking biomedical sciences we are allowing those genes of women with very narrow hips to procreate by performing a caeseraen section on them. Because of biomedical sciences we have removed the evolutionary pressure on woman with a bad morphology to reproduce. And this will result in filling the gene pool up with inferior genes that causes bad morphologies to reproduce. 

 

Why does evolution has no bearing on ethics? Never heard about the scientific field evolutionary ethics, and the science of morals? Evolution has to do with everything. Escalating disputes into violence is unethical because it lowers the chances of humanity to procreate, intelligent behavior/superior genes tend to resolve their disputes in much more intelligent ways.

[Will Torbald]

Why does evolution has no bearing on ethics? Never heard about the scientific field evolutionary ethics, and the science of morals? Evolution has to do with everything. Escalating disputes into violence is unethical because it lowers the chances of humanity to procreate, intelligent behavior/superior genes tend to resolve their disputes in much more intelligent ways.

 

Because consequences are not arguments. Morality works from the bottom-up, not the top-down. We don't set an arbitrary goal and say that whatever reaches that goal is ethical. We set the initial conditions and let things play out within the moral boundaries, regardless of the outcome. Evolution is a consequence of selection of mutations, therefore it doesn't enter the field of ethics.

[Mister Mister]

I Don't know what you mean with bad and good evolution. Let me tell you something about all those domestic dog species, take for example the chihuahua, do you know how genetically inferior those dogs are? If you would leave them in nature, they would die out . The only reason why they are still around and why they have evolved to be so genetically inferior in first place is because of domestication, the evolutionary pressure on you is totally different if you are domesticated than the evolutionary pressure if you are free in nature. Take a species, rid the evolutionary pressures of nature by providing them food, protection and health care, do this for over a million years, bad mutations will remain in the genepool, release them back into nature, and they will become extinct.

 

This is also what is happening to humans due to all the biomedical sciences allowing humans with all kinds of inferior traits to procreate, like for example females with very narrow hips, what would be the evolutionary reason to why we find females with very narrow hips ugly? Because females with very narrow hips are not able to push a child out naturally, having very narrow hips and being pragnant will result in a miscarriage and a maternal death. But because of fucking biomedical sciences we are allowing those genes of women with very narrow hips to procreate by performing a caeseraen section on them. Because of biomedical sciences we have removed the evolutionary pressure on woman with a bad morphology to reproduce. And this will result in filling the gene pool up with inferior genes that causes bad morphologies to reproduce. 

 

Why does evolution has no bearing on ethics? Never heard about the scientific field evolutionary ethics, and the science of morals? Evolution has to do with everything. Escalating disputes into violence is unethical because it lowers the chances of humanity to procreate, intelligent behavior/superior genes tend to resolve their disputes in much more intelligent ways.

Your use of the words inferior and superior need clarification.  But my impression is, that this is not a philosophical issue, but an emotional one.  The way you use the word "inferior" implies that you experience a visceral horror towards physical weakness.  I'm just guessing of course, but I don't want to dwell on abstractions with you if the real issue is something else.

 

What I mean by there being no good or bad in evolution, is that evolution describes what IS, whereas ethics describes how humans OUGHT to behave.  To elaborate, evolution is a process whereby genes and organisms adapt to survive and procreate in different environments.  There's nothing moral or immoral about this.  Genghis Khan was very successful in terms of evolution, by committing mass murder and rape he propagated his genes across continents, and they have survived for many centuries.  But we wouldn't call him a moral person.  S

 

Furthermore, there are conflicts of interest in the biological world, just like there are conflicts of interest in an economy.  Saying something is "good/bad" for evolution is just like saying something is good/bad for the economy, it's mostly nonsense people use to claim their own interests and preferences as universal.  What's good for mammals was bad for dinosaurs, what's good for rabbits was bad for many now extinct species in Australia, and so on.  It's true that competition drives evolution as well as economies, although both involve a great deal of cooperation as well.

 

Also, evolutionary traits are good/bad in different niches and environments.  To take your chihuahua example, it's true a chihuahua couldn't survive in nature.  Neither could most humans.  But they/we didn't survive in isolation.  Chihuahuas were bred for a specific purpose (sheep herding I think?), in a specific environment, to which they are well adapted.  That's why there is such a thing as a chihuahua.  When you call them "inferior" this has no meaning to a biologist, again I think you just don't like them.  Which is fine, it's just your aesthetic preference, not ethics.  But from the perspective of evolutionary biology, there is only superior/inferior, or good/bad with regards to a specific niche in a specific environment.

 

Can I ask what do you think ethics is?  Because it sounds like we are coming from different starting points.

I really appreciate the question though.  The dynamics between ethics and evolution are really fascinating and complicated, and are central to understanding the modern world I think.

[Carl Green]

"Don't you think..." should be a warning sign that the OP isn't here to 'discuss' the topic, only to stick to their opinion/idea. I guess we shall see.

[regevdl]

This is borderline circular logic.  The more war the more smart people the more smart people the more war.

 

I live in the Middle East and none of what you said is what is happening how you think it's happening or why it's happening nor is good that it's happening.  FIrst off, I guess if we go by the Rvs K analysis war and chaos actually make dumb people breed MORE... when resources seem finite, smart people anyway conserve and R (usually lesser intelligent and impulsive) breed more.  So out of the gate there is a disparity in logic.

 

The Arabs and Muslims live in very dictatorial, not free societies...so basing their behavior as if it's totally free will and without detrimental consequences (honor killing, martyrdom, etc) is very careless.  This in itself shows a low IQ population compared to other parts of the world and thus is the cause of these irrational behavoirs.  The higher IQs in the Arab nations typically focus on higher education or get the hell out of dodge which leaves the dumb people behind, to breed.

 

But again, because of the social and political pressures in most of those countries, even the smart people become ensnared...so they aren't doing it out of believing in the ideologies, but rather coersion. 

 

The middle east has been at war for a long...long....long...long time so if your theory is true, then we would have so many smart people on this planet and probably the Arabs would have founded Democracy or Liberty and Philosophy etc but they didn't.  There are some really intelligent ARabs...don't get me wrong... but when we think of the Golden Ages and Renaissance periods, ARabs don't usually jump first in your mind.  

 

Lastly your theory forgets one critical element.  War is win-lose.  Meaning if war draws in the shitty genes and ideological fanatics, then of them one will win and one will lose.  And since BOTH are willing to use violence and shed blood from their own and others then the victor will use that tactic on the smart genes of his 'tribe' or society to pass on the idiotic ideologies and propaganda, etc

 

 

There is a reason why smart people avoid war...they don't have the stomach, it's too risky for very little to no personal or long term benefit.  However that is the reason why smart people are always ruled by the dumbest of society because the dumb use violence and threats over the smart. 

[Troubador]

War will actually lower IQ across a population. Environment plays a much greater role in brain development than your original post would allow. If smacking has a negative result on IQ, what do you propose growing up in a full blown war zone will do?

 

War and violence perpetuates itsel ad nauseum until enough right thinking people decide enough is enough, and are listened to. The solution to war is not more war, that is quite frankly an absurdist position.

 

Also in the brains of present and developed people fear has an affect on iq. Whilst it's true that short acute periods of stress can increase your capacity for creative thought and productivity, labouring under constant and chronic fear and uncertainty actually has the reverse result.

[regevdl]

I just listened to one of the recent podcast interviews "On the Brink of War and Economic Collapse"  Very interesting analysis on how a war by the "R"s plays out (current M.E. situation) versus a war run by the "K"s.... yes, the end result in any case is dumber people because the R-gene pool is most advantageous and prudent when war kills everyone around them, so it's a fast way to breed the population back to life.  But beyond that, a K gene pool is more intelligent, forward thinking, etc and war just doesn't produce that....if anything it kills off the Ks because the Rs are too timid to fight or don't have the guts for it.  

[AvidGamer]

Putting aside the moral outrage others have espoused, time to put on the honesty cap.

Does war actually have the most intelligent survive through the most?

Look throughout history and you will see time and time again that the dumb conquer the intelligent.

War is more like random chance, it happily kills off both the intelligent and the dim witted alike.

So in answer to your question no I don't think it is a good cleansing method to weed out the "weakest" in the gene pool.

Also I always love how everyone is willing to define themselves or others as smart or not without defining what intelligence is.

Seems a little too subjective a definition to me to be making any serious argument with.

Seriously does everyone know why the IQ test was created?

It was never meant to be a test of the higher end, only a common denominator of the low end.... just saying IQ is not intelligence and we will all be better off when we realize that.