climate & food insecurity

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

The "education is the best contraceptive" idea seems insufficient as an explanation, as if knowing how babies are made or something is the primary limiter of birthrates.

The reason education limits birthrates is because it's expensive and takes all of a woman's reproductively prime years. No time or money for children. The last thing a woman learns as she finally finishes school and establishes a career is what geriatric pregnancy is, followed by reproductive therapy. That is of course, if she can attract a male whom she also finds attractive.

It's learning that birth isn't an automatic death sentence for as many infants which creates the inflexion point in birthrate.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

No, and it was more sophisticated because it was on topic to each thread it responded to.

Problem was, they were all 2 sentence throw-away statements.

I actually responded to the first one as if a human had wrote it, but then read the other ~7 posts and they all took on the same form as the one op4 quoted. I then revised my comment in light of the Turing Test failure.

As SA has been discussing lately about how artificial relationships will be preferred by some people, I had the thought that someday we'll come to prefer bot posts to human ones.

While humans can "read the room" and adjust strategy to improve effectiveness, bots will be deadly precise at that, learning exactly what motivates people and how to reward folks with dopamine when they respond the way the bot has been designed persuade.

I don't know what the counter to highly effective mind control will be. Those highly susceptible to programming, which is the majority of people, would need to be programmed at an early age in counter mind control, and I'm not sure that would be very effective because their very nature is such that it conforms to external suggestion.

Maybe in the future we just plug those people into the Matrix because that's where they want to be, and the few that want to pursue truth and new frontiers can adventure on.

Even PhD Vance Packard, who wrote in the 1950s about the psychology of advertising, admitted that he had no superpowers to protect himself from all manner of come-ons.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by aerohead

It's learning that birth isn't an automatic death sentence for as many infants which creates the inflexion point in birthrate.

I don't like that explanation either. I don't think people consciously decide to have more babies because a lot of them don't make it, nor do I believe they limit their reproduction consciously by knowing they have access to better medical care. Maybe that can factor in, but primary explanations have to reside outside of conscious decision-making.

Our time has to be filled by something. For almost all of human history, that has been making babies and dying relatively young. Some cultures are still more like those primitive ones. When opportunity to do other things presents itself, more of us take those alternatives.

There's nothing special about school compared with other similar alternatives.

If I had another program that required one to give all they had (both time and money) for the promise of being better off in the future, we'd get similar results.

As a thought experiment, I'm imagining what would happen if women went to school when they were young, but were most attractive and reproductively fit when they were older, like 65 after they retire (and they would live healthy to a hundred or something). Would education primarily limit their birthrates?

Alright, it's a bit of a stretch to imagine.

Originally Posted by aerohead

Even PhD Vance Packard, who wrote in the 1950s about the psychology of advertising, admitted that he had no superpowers to protect himself from all manner of come-ons.

Some protection can be learned.

Mostly it's a disposition. My nature is to assume anything being pitched at me is a deception, and to question all authority. Being told isn't good enough for me, I need it explained.

The other thing is I value understanding over knowledge. While they are codependent, those more inclined to settle for knowing something are likely more susceptible to deceit since they don't understand the systems in which they interact. Their ability to think sophisticatedly is limited to what they know.

[freebeard]

I don't know what the counter to highly effective mind control will be.

Countervailing forces....

Variety of sources...

Adams points to techniques that work even when you know how they work.

[redpoint5]

The most important part is being aware of the devil within, and being more afraid of that then the devils around.

Jordan Peterson talks about how he studied the biggest human atrocities and asked himself how a majority of a population could abide in such evil. He realized given all the same exact circumstances, it's highly probable he would succumb to the same evil.

Simply not deceiving oneself about what darkness lay in wait within them helps to prepare a response. Decide beforehand what lines cannot be traversed and fear the consequences of allowing that to happen more than the transgressors.

[freebeard]

https://www.goodreads.com › quotes › 450864-the-line-separating-good-and-evil-passes-not-through-states
Quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: "The line separating good and evil ...
6 Sept 2022"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained"

.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by freebeard

.

'Gulag Archipelago'?

[freebeard]

One of Jordan Peterson's most significant sources.

[aerohead]

It's a worthwhile read.

[redpoint5]

All those brilliant authors are in my read queue... except I keep distracting myself with important things like Technology Connections explanation of how a dishwasher works, and why detergent pods are inferior to plain ol' powder.