Mathematical models indicate that at least some of this vagabond debris still harbored living microbes. The asteroid may have sown life throughout the solar system, even as it ravaged life on Earth.
I had not thought of that.
That article presents (in the introduction) one of the best descriptions of the actual aftereffects of the asteroid strike. I could feel it happening, almost.
life finds a way.
There we go.
Is there any doubt??
ETA: I remember watching a documentary by Louis Theroux where he interviewed a bunch of white supremicists. They seemed like the dumbest people Iâd ever seen on TV (non-fictional that is).
I always think âYou Have To Be Carefully Taughtâ gets it all wrong. Weâre born biggots and have to learn to accept other people.
I remember this lesson from Mr. Rogers: You shouldnât expect everyone to be the same as you â weâre all different, and thatâs good.
There we go.
Dunno. It strikes me that, during my childhood in the '60s in Montreal, the new kid in school was, for a period, the most popular. (âWhere you from? Whatâs it like there? Wow!â) The new kid wasnât always white.
By the same token, when my family moved to Philadelphia for a year in 1961, I had to fight (literally) for acceptance at my new school. There was a societal difference at work there, and I do suspect the behaviours that caused that difference were taught to kids at a very young age. Young kids are colossal egotists, to be sure, but they are also colossally curious, and that can balance the egotism. Bigotry pretty much requires that this curiosity is shut down or fed carefully chosen answers.
No? Itâs a social construct meant to protect the people in power?
Yes?
Makes sense to meâŚ
This too.
I agree the people in power keeping racism going arenât low in intelligence (just sociopathic). However, I think the world is sufficiently interconnected (by information if not by people themselves) that a lot of the people subscribing to it are of low intelligence. Not all of them. And a lot of other factors contribute to it.
Youâre right in that Iâm over-generalizing. Itâs because I get angry at the fact that racism is rearing its head so blatantly nowadays thanks to 40 years of dog-whistling and especially our current regime.
That program I saw was amazing, though. The interviewees just seemed so lacking in cognitive ability.
I think that youâre ignoring that the whole concept of intelligence is a social construct in and of itself, with itself a long history of racism and classism, too. Intelligence tests (like many other things) were crafted by academics and scientists earlier in the century who were drawing from a very white, male, upper class selection bias in the first place. If you were to give an intelligence test to one of those Native people who has no interaction with what we think of as modernity, theyâd âfailâ it because of the social biases in the tests⌠but the same applies. All of us living in a modern environment would likely suck at the things that the native people are adept at (hunting, making pottery, etc). Intelligence and the ability to function within a given environment is generally historically contingent and is a moving target due to that.
I mean the very people who created the concept of racial difference were themselves highly âintelligentâ and part of the academic landscape of their day.
Sure, but how much of that is confirmation bias on our part. I think most of us here consider ourselves to be smart and well rounded individuals, and I assume most of us realize that racism is a social ill that should be eradicated from the face of the earth⌠So it probably makes us feel better about ourselves to see people with racist views as less smart than us⌠but then you have people like Jordan Peterson or Richard Spencer, who would all likely ace any intelligence test that you gave them⌠but look at some of the racist bullshit that they constantly put out there.
And, anecdotal, I know, but Iâve known plenty of folks who werenât possessed of a high IQ, who were incredibly sweet, nice, and accepting people.
The whole point, though, is that this is a long term mega study done with careful consideration to ensure that cultural biases are NOT involved. They worked very hard to make it as objective an observation as possible.
That doesnât rule out bias, though. Nothing can ever entire eliminate bias, as Iâm sure you know.
But I suppose Iâm just bring my biases to my views, so take it or leave it, I guess. Anecdotally, Iâve known plenty of smart racists and dumb anti-racists. Again, take that as you will.
Perhaps, but who is it that is being coopted by this construct to do the protecting? Understand, I think calling these people unintelligent is a bit facile, but it strikes me that bigotry and the authoritarianism it serves is a case of the sociopathic leading the uninformed, unimaginative and intellectually lazy.
Edit: Note that all of these traits can be encouragedâŚ
I agree with that⌠The whole concept of intelligence is itself social constructed and historically contingent, too, which is part of my argument here. Intelligence is more about being able to navigate successfully a particular environment, and in the current modern world, that means successfully negotiating a world largely built by a particular group of people in a particular way. My real problem here is that by saying that racism comes from low intelligence pretty much lets the rest of the world off the hook and it means weâre all less likely to do the hard work of actually dismantling racist social structures, because we no longer see it as our collective problem.
But yes, people who are uninformed, unimaginative, and lazy can be led astray by racist grifters (witness our current situation here in the states). But that often ends up being blaming the white working class for this current state of affairs and it letâs the people who largely are responsible for putting Trump in office (white, middle class people who style themselves self-made people) and for maintaining white supremacy. These are people who would likely do well on IQ tests, because they are familiar with the social contexts of those tests.
Yup, which is why I call that argument a bit facile.
I recall reading a study (switched if I can remember where now) stating that a united 30% of a given society is sufficient to change the course of that society. That sounds about right in the case of the Western countries (and likely others as well). The point here is that the population as a whole can be kept to varying degrees of âuninformed, unimaginative and intellectually lazyâ, allowing the leaders of the 30% a divide and conquer strategy when dealing with the 70% who might otherwise oppose them. Thatâs to say, for instance, that someone who might be sympathetic to ideals of racial equality might find themselves coopted by a racist agenda because they hold very simplistic ideas about crime and its causes (and of course, those simplistic ideas are available everywhere within the society).