patrick.net

Internally I'm racist to a large extent, but I also think this mindset is not productive.

https://cbssacramento.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/the-kings-team-144534172.jpg

It's OK to be racist if it's just looking at the world as you see it, but going on to be prejudiced, bigoted, and/or chauvinistic about it is where this racism tends to go.

It's very easy to take this racism to some very ugly places, to belittle and 'other' other people instead of improving the world by tolerating and appreciating our differences, and ascribing to racial differences what actually might be real socio-economic handicaps racial groups experience here, in the distant past, the recent past, and to today.

We're all in this together, especially here in the US, where we're all a nation of immigrants, since we largely slaughtered the people who were here first.

Looky here, more memes in action.

Three levels of thought, analytical which determines differences and similarities, associative which associates one thing with another, reactionary which is what animals do.

Racism is one of the latter two.

Bellingham Bill says

since we largely slaughtered the people who were here first

that's classic PC self-blame, and is not actually true for the most part. looking at race again, we note that the american indians are the genetically most homogenous group in the world since they are all descended from a rather small number which came over the bering strait 20,000 years ago.

what killed them for the most part was their homogeneity and lack of resistance to smallpox in particular. actual slaughter accounted for far fewer of their deaths than a simple germ.

sure, they were badly treated, but read the accounts of the time and you'll see that the spanish conquests were massively aided by slews of people just dropping dead.

we can look at this as sort of a diversity morality tale in itself: because the indians had low genetic diversity, they could not withstand smallpox. it gets worse: the children of indian women who had spanish husbands (or rapists) tended to survive better because of their resistance to smallpox. this happened so much that the male Y chromosome in lots of latin america was completely wiped out by the spanish Y chromosome. in mexico, the maternal line is mostly native, and the paternal line is almost all spanish. you can prove these things quite easily these days.

so why the very consistent self-blame in all things by the PC crowd? instead of a more nuanced truth, it's always "we slaughtered them". there must be some kind of pleasure in self-blame, but i don't get why exactly. theories?

Bellingham Bill says

ascribing to racial differences what actually might be real socio-economic handicaps racial groups experience

i'm with you on that point. the irish in particular were considered to be a separate and inferior race by the english, and incapable of accomplishment on their own (they conveniently ignored the fact that irish monks were very literate long before the english).

yet now the per-capita income and living standard in ireland has passed that of england. it's as if mexico surpassed the US.

because the indians had low genetic diversity, they could not withstand smallpox

this is the problem being a racist shithead, you get the cause/effect stuff wrong.

smallpox took out millions of old-world people, too.

http://www.infoplease.com/cig/dangerous-diseases-epidemics/smallpox-12000-years-terror.html

so why the very consistent self-blame in all things by the PC crowd?

I assigned no blame in my statement of fact, above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_Wiyot_massacre

to bind otherwise mutually hostile people together.

people aren't born to be hostile to other races. That's taught.

Bellingham Bill says

because the indians had low genetic diversity, they could not withstand smallpox

this is the problem being a racist shithead, you get the cause/effect stuff wrong.

smallpox took out millions of old-world people, too.

http://www.infoplease.com/cig/dangerous-diseases-epidemics/smallpox-12000-years-terror.html

so why the very consistent self-blame in all things by the PC crowd?

I assigned no blame in my statement of fact, above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_Wiyot_massacre

one reason white people had much higher immunity to smallpox at the time of the conquest of the americas was largely because they had already been through it (and the plague -- immunity to the plague is actually related to immunity to smallpox) and it had wiped out a lot of europeans who lacked that immunity.

so my arguments stands: white people did not eliminate the native americans for the most part. smallpox did that for them.

i didn't say there were no massacres and no discrimination, only that the principal cause was smallpox, and that PC people greatly enjoy self-blame and so generally ignore smallpox.

Within just a few generations, the continents of the Americas were virtually emptied of their native inhabitants – some academics estimate that approximately 20 million people may have died in the years following the European invasion – up to 95% of the population of the Americas.

No medieval force, no matter how bloodthirsty, could have achieved such enormous levels of genocide. Instead, Europeans were aided by a deadly secret weapon they weren't even aware they were carrying: Smallpox.

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html

Are the Ainu the only race officially designated ASSHOLES?

Bellingham Bill says

people aren't born to be hostile to other races. That's taught.

that's just, like, your opinion, man. (credit to the dude) it's one more PC trope accepted as true just because it's more pleasant to believe it's true.

actually, there is evidence of innate hostility between races.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/racism-innate-human-brain-makes-unconscious-decisions-based-ethnicity-240970
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10770563/Babies-show-racial-bias-study-finds.html

yes, this is unpleasant, and it should be resisted, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

without acknowledging the truth, we are crippled in attempting to build something better. it's like closing your eyes and trying to find a path.

i didn't say there were no massacres and no discrimination, only that the principal cause was smallpox, and that PC people greatly enjoy self-blame and so generally ignore smallpox.

Also the native Indians massacred each other as well, as did pretty much every ancient civilization to some extent. Sacrifices, tribal wars etc. Ironically mostly Caucasians invented vaccines and cures for many plagues and have been passing those on happily as well.

and that PC people greatly enjoy self-blame and so generally ignore smallpox.

smallpox deaths, aside from the allegedly intentional transmission of smallpox virus to indian populations, are orthogonal to the following genocide committed on the indigenous peoples of the US.

We are a nation of immigrants, necessarily taking the land from the indigenous population that legally owned it all prior to our 17th century colonization. The indians ceded some land peacefully, e.g. Manna-Hata island to the Dutch, though of course especially back then to prove legal title to land you had to trace it to the man who stole it.

Being a nation of immigrants, we have had to evolve our social condition from a mix of inputs, from all over the world, for the past several centuries.

This has strengthened us as a culture, not weakened us.

Of course, immigrants can bring bad with the good, as Trump likes to point out to his equally racist supporters.

I was looking for a graph of hispanic population increase, but I like this one better:

Maybe Eugenenice was the right idea?

without acknowledging the truth, we are crippled in attempting to build something better

That's your frame of reference. My frame of reference is that you're a racist and that these obsessions of yours are a total waste, and help us in no way in understanding ourselves or planning for the future.

Methinks race is more like the breeds of dogs. Now dogs are an extreme-but you can still breed a male Chihuahua to a bigger dog and get puppies. The same with horses- draft horses were bred for work and strength-plow the fields, pull carts, logs etc. Lighter saddle horses were bred for riding and other tasks and then you had special breeds for pulling carraiges etc. Smooth gaited horses for carrying you along smoothly across long distances to get somewhere. Temperament was also important, with many breeders culling foul tempered foals-unless of course if they were pit ponies or consigned to some worthless task.

I am guessing, in the days of yore, humans evolved to their circumstances and geography. That we can interbreed and successfully produce babies, shows we are not that far removed.

I was in Jordan and really surprised at the number of white Jordanians-red heads and blue eyes. But given their history-it should be of no surprise. But their culture is what makes them different-that white jordanian is going to be very different than the white Midwestern fat dude-even though they may be the same race. The Muslim chechnyans are probably closer to Saudi wahabbists then their Russian brothers. germans are probably quite different than the French -race might and does have a difference-but methinks culture will have a bigger difference.

Now as with dogs, raise a Rottweiler in the most loving environment, it will still has its base tempermanet, but I wonder hwo much of a base tempermanet does each "race" have in ahuman and then does it vary by sub-race-for example is irish different from Scottish or Russian or german or Swedish? In the same way would blacks from Congo be different than south Africa, Tanzania or a black raised here in say Louisiana?

japan and germany are successful precisely because of their lack of diversity

This is one of those things that would seem to be self-evident. Diversity, which is a cousin to the word divisive, is by its very nature a negative influence because it emphasizes differences, which while they may be true, hardly lend themselves to harmonious relationships. I remember in the early 90's when our company jumped on board with the diversity business. We had a department of diversity which began the process of sending all the employees to diversity training. I never had to go because I guess they thought it would be a waste of time. I remember how every month when the diversity calendar (I'm not kidding) came around, how we'd laugh at it--every day was some hitherfore unknown day of importance to some unknown race or tribe somewhere.

Europeans were aided by a deadly secret weapon they weren't even aware they were carrying: Smallpox.

There also originated in those ancient times a Biblical custom of which the population could not have been aware of its practical benefit. It was noted during the plagues that the Jewish populations had noticably lower mortality rates than those of gentiles, adding further to the hatred of Jews as they believed they must in some way be complicit in the high death rates of non-Jews. The Jew's religion commanded them to pray before every meal, and since a Jew could not approach God with unclean hands, he symbolically purified himself by washing his hands in vessels filled strictly for that purpose--of course in the process, he was unknowingly washing away the contaminents that were being spread far and wide in the general population. And thus washing one's hands before a meal has become ubiquitous in this day of awareness of germs. I expect a lot of wisdom is contained in that admonition to avoid fornication as well, but that's not going to be accepted in this day and time either.

It's kind of ironic that Germany and Japan, being so wonderful because of relative homogeneity, also are both countries that had plans of subjugating or killing all of the *inferior races*, not so very long ago.

Was that a feature or a bug ? ( Did it prove they really are superior ? Or that they really aren't ? I say the latter. Sometimes everyone thinking the same way is very very bad )

I think high on the agenda if we were planning for our future is figuring out how humanity is not going to destroy itself. And I'm pretty sure that concluding that we really are the superior race ( whomever "we" represents ) is not a key to doing this. On a related note, it's interesting that the Arabs, that Patrick spends a lot of time railing against and obsessing about, have a lot in common with him, when it comes to ideas about race, and the superiority of their group.

1. The "race" mentioned in the article is very different from what the vernacular concept of race is. There is statistical distribution of alleles (alternative possible DNA bases at a specific location on the chromosome) exhibited by difference races. That is a far cry from saying what most people's concept of "race" is real. For example, each "race" has different bell curves on IQ; however, it would be absurd to say a person is White just because his IQ is 100, or Asian if his IQ is 110, or Black if his IQ is 85. On top of that different chromosome sites in the same individual may correlated statistically with different "race" groups.

2. "Eugenics" is what every man and woman does in picking and choosing mate(s): better/healthier looks, smarter, higher income, etc. etc. Government-run "Eugenics" however is a whole different ball of game: because government bureaucrats would have a very strong incentive to cheat and give reproductive advantages to themselves and their friends. It's just like market/exchange/trade is a good thing, but government-run market with price fixing is a terrible corruption of market process; science is a good thing, but government-run big-science is what gives you new theology like AGW.

3. It's interesting to note that the biggest historical break-through in standards of living and productivity came about because the more intelligent, hard-working and capable of delayed gratification got to reproduce more, and had their offsprings gradually pushing down the relative social standing and displacing the less competent. This is exactly the opposite process of what the modern welfare state does: incetivising the bottom of the gene pool to reproduce more and hope they could replace the reduced fertility among the more competent that are too heavily taxed and regulated.

Diversity introduced by the market place is a good thing: it offers genetic as well memic robustness. Diversity introduced by government coercion is counter-productive.

Germany and Japan were able to develop quickly in the late 19th precisely because they had relatively diverse and fragmented polities: Germany had zillions of principalities that had quite different geography as well as different populations; Japan's "reformation" was once again possible because of powerful local lords that could challenge and overthrow the central government. The "unified centralized homogeneous" Germany and Japan are fictions created in the 20th century for political reasons, and it didn't take long before both became fascist and counter-productive.

Reality says

This is exactly the opposite process of what the modern welfare state does: incetivising the bottom of the gene pool to reproduce more and hope they could replace the reduced fertility among the more competent that are too heavily taxed and regulated.

THe flaw in your very right wing biased view is that with automation and technology, we have some big decisions to make. One of the more humane choices is going to include a guaranteed income of some kind. You suggest the kneejerk right wing view that:

Reality says

because government bureaucrats would have a very strong incentive to cheat and give reproductive advantages to themselves and their friends

I don't see that that is clearly true at all. And to the somewhat small extent that it may be, only if we allow it to be, how is it worse than all of the corruption that naturally takes place (people taking care of their own and their friends) in the market place ?

Yes, designing and implementing an institutional process for deciding who can reproduce would be difficult and possibly somewhat of a bureaucratic nightmare, making the DMV look like a picnic. But there are so many problems that it eliminates over time. IT would actually go a long way towards decreasing the polarization and income equality that we deal with today.

From a purely evolutionary advantage perspective, mixing races is the way to go! Bottling up people in racially homogeneous nations keeps them stuck at one point with nowhere to go, and no way to introduce the genetic diversity that's needed for evolution to proceed to improve the species. I also think this is true of culture, where racially homogeneous societies have proven poor at adapting to change or encouraging innovation. In fact, they usually tie the old ways of doing things with racial identity, thus reinforcing their supposed superiority while crippling themselves and avoiding positive change.
Change is painful and so is evolution. America has chosen to embrace change and give its people every opportunity to improve themselves.
My kids are mixed race white Germanic and Asian. They're fantastic, combining beauty, brains, and athletic ability. Plus they're cute as heck. I see plenty of pure breed people who lack even one of the genetic advantages my kids have. Their being somewhat unique in appearance is also a plus. I consider my kids a step forward on the ladder from either of their parents, and I'm glad we could combine to give them their advantages. They're going to need them.

marcus says

It's all ridiculous and outrageously racist to even ponder such things.

ah, so even pondering "bad thoughts" as you define them is blameworthy. interesting. that fits very well with the PC attempt to control language as a way of controlling thoughts.

fwiw, i don't consider myself a racist except in the scientific sense of admitting that people from different places in the world are genetically different. that's not a value judgement, just a fact.

i know this fact can rapidly lead to bad behavior, like a ban on intermarriage, or even slavery or fascism and genocide. but to lie about reality erodes your credibility and moral authority.

of course there's a whole other level of argument going on as well, not rational at all, just subtext or assumptions about subtext. eg, if i post something pointing out that race is real, i must have some agenda of oppressing races that are not like me. not true, but of course PC sensitivities in this country are really twitchy and shoot first with accusations and labels, asking questions later.

i have no problem with arabs per se. christian arabs are genetically the same people, but gosh, they have a record of what, absolutely zero terrorist attacks? this is one reason i conclude that islam itself is a major factor in islamic terrorism. that's not racism, just a willingness to cross the PC line and talk about reality.

i'm also a fan of genetic diversity in general, because it really does help (a select subset of lucky) people cope with new diseases and other adversity.

the second image would be somehow less racist if it used "you're" instead of "your".

but i totally agree with the top image. being a "proud white man" is utterly forbidden by PC culture. it's an invitation to get fired from your job, even though racism against whites is itself is pure racism.

japan and germany are successful precisely because of their lack of diversity.

Shhh! That's dangerous talk!.

Seriously, by having a largely homogeneous population, it's easier to solve problems as everybody is unified. You can't blame various social problems on another race, since there really aren't any sizable numbers of them, and since it's not an issue, improving things is actually a lot easier. Businesses can't play the "Insert Name of Latest Immigrant Group" is hard working, but "Other Groups" are lazy game.

I try to explain to my wife that having an easier time getting along when you are a member of the majority is called "normal", not a "privilege".

Han Chinese, Japanese, etc. are not "privileged" when they live in China or Japan.

Japan now takes in about 10 refugees per year - and they handpick the ones with Japanese Ancestry. That isn't a typo.

Assholes are now complaining that being asked "Where are you from?" is a microaggression.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC299980/

The CCR5-Δ32 deletion allele is currently under intense selection in populations with a high prevalence of HIV-1 (14). However, HIV has not infected humans long enough to account for the selective rise of this resistance allele, the frequency of which is estimated at an average of ≈10% in European populations (4, 12, 15-18). The allele is virtually absent in African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and American Indian populations, suggesting a recent origin, specifically estimated at 700 years based on coalescent theory (16). The assertion that the high frequency of the variant in Europe arose through strong selection from bubonic plague (16) has become known as the classic example of the signature of historical selection on a clinically important locus. This hypothesis has been gaining widespread acceptance in both population genetic and medical literature, despite the absence of quantitative assessment. Here, we evaluate the feasibility of the hypothesis that bubonic plague provided the selective pressure that brought CCR5-Δ32 to high frequencies in Caucasian populations. Three lines of evidence indicate that the smallpox Variola major virus is a more likely candidate

looks like plague and/or smallpox immunity also protects against HIV. but only about 10% of europeans seem to have that protective gene.

the second image would be somehow less racist if it used "you're" instead of "your".

It is a narrow mind that thinks there is only one way to spell a word.

marcus says

Was that a feature or a bug ?

Racism is the easiest thing to bamboozle the masses with.

The left half of the IQ curve wants to feel special too, so even if they placed relatively low in the IQ lottery you can still bullshit them about winning the race lottery, get them punching down at inferior races instead of kicking up at their economic betters.

I'm a middle-class middle-age white man and oh I'm so oppressed. I can barely get out of bed some mornings when I think about how the entire society is now structured to oppress me.

It's been an unending struggle since day 1, I tells ya.

Bellingham Bill says

The left half of the IQ curve wants to feel special too, so even if they placed relatively low in the IQ lottery you can still bullshit them about winning the race lottery, get them punching down at inferior races instead of kicking up at their economic betters.

is that a good reason to lie about the truth that race exists?

if you say it is a good reason to lie, isn't that a kind of bigotry in itself, assuming that dumb white people are incapable of critical thought, and incapable of knowing when they're being used? why not just put those dumb white people in concentration camps if you don't trust them at all?

marcus says

It's all ridiculous and outrageously racist to even ponder such things.

ah, so even pondering "bad thoughts" as you define them is blameworthy. interesting. that fits very well with the PC attempt to control language as a way of controlling thoughts.

You could use THE EXACT same reasoning to claim that there is no such thing as an evil thought, or an evil proposition.

Also, my observing that such thinking is ridiculous and outrageously racist doesn't mean I'm trying to control or blame your thinking. But I guess I am judging you for thinking in this way, just as you are willing to judge one race as inferior to another (or defend those who judge one race as inferior to another).

marcus says

just as you are willing to judge one race as inferior to another (or defend those who judge one race as inferior to another).

uh, never judged any race as inferior, or defended anyone for doing that.

uh, never judged any race as inferior, or defended anyone for doing that.

Then what was this ?

marcus says

How would one measure superior ? What qualities are most important in being human ? Once you have a metric for the quality of a human (which is ridiculous), then you'd have to ask, what's better, a group (i.e. race) that has a high standard deviation for this metric ? A low standard deviation ? It's all ridiculous and outrageously racist to even ponder such things.

ah, so even pondering "bad thoughts" as you define them is blameworthy. interesting. that fits very well with the PC attempt to control language as a way of controlling thoughts.

nothing about race in my reply, only pointing out that you have appointed yourself the thought policeman.

uh, never judged any race as inferior, or defended anyone for doing that.

And yet the whole point of this thread is something along the lines that it's so important that we are honest with ourselves about differences that race bring to a person, strictly in the biological sense (not due to relatively short term cultural differences).

nothing about race in my reply, only pointing out that you have appointed yourself the thought policeman.

Either a lie, or you're stupid. Go back and read it. If you said that you think grilled human baby legs are delicious, and I comment that that's fucked up, it doesn't make me some kind of thought policeman, it makes me an observer of the truth, which you claim to respect, when it's your incorrect truth.

By your reasoning, this whole thread is about your policing the way people want to think. A certain kind of thinking is PC BS in your view because it doesn't fit your prejudice.

By the way, I have never heard the phrase that "race doesn't exist," other than from you. OF course it exists. But this accepted view:

A longstanding orthodoxy among social scientists holds that human races are a social construct and have no biological basis

Is a view that I more or less agree with. To the extent that it's not true, this can be overcome (if it were desired ) in a few short generations of adapting to another culture. The authors point about recent changes in the human genome, supports rather than contradicting this point.

No less than 14% of the human genome, according to one estimate, has changed under this recent evolutionary pressure.

IF change can happen so quickly, in just hundreds of years, again, this supports the idea that the behavioral differences from one race to another are indeed primarily a social construct.

Clark has documented four behaviors that steadily changed in the English population between 1200 and 1800, as well as a highly plausible mechanism of change. The four behaviors are those of interpersonal violence, literacy, the propensity to save, and the propensity to work.

Profound events are likely to have profound causes.Homicide rates for males, for instance, declined from 0.3 per thousand in 1200 to 0.1 in 1600 and to about a tenth of this in 1800. Even from the beginning of this period, the level of personal violence was well below that of modern hunter-gatherer societies. Rates of 15 murders per thousand men have been recorded for the Aché people of Paraguay.

Social scientists are going to use this notion of short term evolutionary changes in the genome as evidence that they are right that significant differences are due to culure and social differences. But that's not saying that "race doesn't exist."

thunderlips11 says

japan and germany are successful precisely because of their lack of diversity.

Shhh! That's dangerous talk!.

Seriously, by having a largely homogeneous population, it's easier to solve problems as everybody is unified.

Yes. WW2 proved what awesome problem solvers the Germans and Japanese are.

The PC view is not to have a view . Which renders anyone who subscribes to this BS, moronic.

A longstanding orthodoxy among social scientists holds that human races are a social construct and have no biological basis. A related assumption is that human evolution halted in the distant past, so long ago that evolutionary explanations need never be considered by historians or economists.

Social scientist is almost an oxymoron. Has anyone ever heard a biologist say that evolution in our species has come to a halt? I didn't think so.

Clearly our species is still subject to evolution and natural, as well as artificial, selection. And clearly there were, and to a much lesser extent still are, isolated lines of lineage along which the filtering of genes has happened within our species. One need only look at red hair or blue eyes as examples of this.

I don't read too much about what social scientists say, but the biologists, anthropologists, and geneticists all agree that the historical notion of race is largely arbitrary. That's not to say that one could not come up with a definition of race that is scientific and precise and models our species genetic diversity, but so far no one has come up with a scientific definition of race.

What we call race is like what we call continents and oceans. What is the definition of a continent? A large land mass? That's not a definition. It does not let you distinguish continents from each other or from other things. Is India part of the large land mass that includes Europe and Asia? What's the criteria for deciding that?

The Webster definition is

one of the great divisions of land (such as North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, or Antarctica) of the Earth

That's not a real definition either! It's a list! And going by that "definition", no other planet in the universe would have continents even if it were an atom for atom copy of Earth because by definition only Earth has continent.

And oceans are no different. Planet Earth has only one ocean, but we give it several different names, which vary across the world, even though they are all one body of water. The division between the Atlantic and the Pacific is an imaginary and arbitrary line that all the fishes ignore.

So what is race? If race is defined by physical characteristics like it has been traditionally, then shouldn't red heads be considered the Ginger race? Red hair sticks out more than skin color especially on the battlefield. Shouldn't blue-eyed blondes get their own race? And such physical characteristics contradict the genetic lineages shown in the original post. I know many Indians (hey, I work in IT, what do you expect?) that are darker than the average African American, yet they are Caucasians like me. I know many Chinese women who are far whiter than me. I mean porcelain white. We Italians look like Mexicans compared to them. So skin color, the defining characteristic of race historically, clearly isn't an accurate genetic/lineage based grouping.

And if we are going by genetic code, which seems reasonable and the point of this thread, then why are Africans only one race even though Africans, being the oldest population, is also by far the most genetically diverse. Shouldn't there be several races instead of one African race?

Furthermore, Caucasians like us of European stock, are genetically closer related to Africans and Indians (India, not Native American) than Asians and Native Americans are. I'm not sure I'd like buying into the 19th century theories that the further way from Africa your lineage is, the more evolve you are. That would make Native Americans the most evolved, followed by Asians, and then us Europeans far behind. Yet, we Europeans were the ones who created democracy, rational philosophy, and science. Not bad for a third-place race.

I have no problem with a scientific definition of race, but I sincerely doubt that any scientific, genetically meaningful definition of race would generate the same groupings that human history has, just like the definition of continental plate does not remotely relate to the continents we historically named.

WTF? That looks nothing like the seven continents!

Since any scientific grouping of people by genetics and lineage isn't going to look anything like the historic races, why even use such a loaded word that will cause everyone to reject it? Why not come up with a new word that represents the criteria for the grouping and carries no historical baggage. I think that is what scientists would most likely do.

Of course, today populations are interbreeding and people are moving away from their region of origin by hundreds, thousands, and even over 10 thousand miles for work or seeking a better life. The little genetic diversity our species has, and it's damn little compare to our closest relatives the chimps, is going to be eliminated over the next few hundred years anyway.

In time, the genetic difference from different lineages will all be piled into a single group, the world population, and the same filters will apply to the entire group. Diversification requires time and isolation, and we have lost isolation. So eventually, we'll all look Brazilian, a country full of interbreeding of various ethnicities. And given how hot Brazilians are, maybe that's not a bad thing.

Of course, we could take an even better route. Let's get rid of these organic bodies, digitize the human mind, and run our brains as virtual neural networks that can
- be backed up
- be downloaded into robotic bodies
- spawn multiple instances of ourselves
- periodically synchronize those instances so we retain a single identity

If we do that, we cure death along with so many other problems our world has.

This single statement irrefutably validates your severely handicapped rose colored glasses tainted intellect.

Dan8267 says

If we do that, we cure death along with so many other problems our world has.

www.youtube.com/embed/iauIP8swfBY?start=13&end=37

SoftShell says

This single statement irrefutably validates your severely handicapped rose colored glasses tainted intellect.

In your worthless opinion. What is an organic body other than a machine subject to disease and decay? What thought or sensation could not be experience through technology instead of biology? The answer is none.