[Tainari88]

@blackjack21 wrote:

It's not purely reptilian. The mammalian brain is where you get emotions like hatred. That's in the amygdala. It's not trivial to change that sort of thing.

However, it's why I find CRISPR cas9 technology fascinating. We literally could change skin color now. How would you respond to that? What if people developed a CRISPR solutions for changing skin color? Would you be for that?

I will have time later to cope with the rest of your arguments directed towards me.

Because you suggested it I went and researched more on CRISPR.

All that skin color proves is that it exists to adapt to the environment and our {instructions or DNA is intelligent for that}. You live in a hot place and a place that unless you can tan or have dark skin you wind up uncomfortably burned and hurting. Got to make a protective mechanism for it.

That some artificial pecking order decided to use that as an excuse to enslave someone because they did not want to pay them a capitalist wage as a worker in a capitalist system and wanted to remain in feudal modes of production like slavery? Goes to prove how lies are the basis of why race is used to justify something that has very little real science behind it. You actually proved my point on this.

I am amazed that you revealed how you and I think so differently with this answer you supplied me.

How do I feel about skin color being changed? For what purpose? To make African descent people in places like Spain, or Cuba or the USA feel they can blend in more and be free if they were only light skinned or white?

No, what needs to change are the white people who are light skinned who think the African descent people are the ones who have to change their skin color so they can be more acceptable to others who want to be able to avoid confronting their own defective ways of thinking about other people.

CRISPR should be about helping humans combat defects in immune response, or lack of good eye sight. Something that enhances life. Not for trying to make people perfect specimens that imitate some artificial pecking order to serve an economic elite (late stage capitalism) @blackjack21 .

Beautiful aspects of human art, and human diversity and humanity's abilities to reason and be reasonable is the key to advancement BJ. Not thinking that dominating all the nations and cultures that are not about Empires needs to stay in power via coercion of the nation-state for liberal or other types of hegemony.

Eventually our species learns what should be the next step to take. They get tired of the disappointing results in remaining static in many ways and what used to work no longer does work.

By answering me with this? I finally understand where you get your position.

Though I knew it before. But this confirms it.

You still don't get it. People are not interested in becoming more like the most dominant or the most prosperous in a society. They only really want to be accepted and respected as they are. For who they are. Belonging and being who they are without having to change their identities to conform to an experience that they never lived. That is it.

You usually get that knowledge early in life. By being an outsider in a society that never accepts you.

I will be back later to address your points.

I got to take advantage of a small window of time where I can have the luxury of eating a great breakfast.

Lol. On my own.

[Pants-of-dog]

If anyone wants more information, I am basing this on the observations of Regis Debray.

[blackjack21]

All that skin color proves is that it exists to adapt to the environment and our {instructions or DNA is intelligent for that}. You live in a hot place and a place that unless you can tan or have dark skin you wind up uncomfortably burned and hurting. Got to make a protective mechanism for it.

That some artificial pecking order decided to use that as an excuse to enslave someone because they did not want to pay them a capitalist wage as a worker in a capitalist system and wanted to remain in feudal modes of production like slavery? Goes to prove how lies are the basis of why race is used to justify something that has very little real science behind it. You actually proved my point on this.

I am amazed that you revealed how you and I think so differently with this answer you supplied me.

What I'm pointing out is that it is arbitrary, and going forward we have the technology to change it without resorting to Michael Jackson-style techniques. There are other reasons for differences than skin color. You accept that skin color is definitively the criteria for a pecking order. I think it plays a role in Darwinian sexual selection and to a lesser degree socialization based on the same sort of thing. On slavery? All races have been slaves. You are focusing narrowly on the United States in North America, ignoring slavery in Hispanic countries, Arab countries, Asia, etc. whether the slaves were of African origin or not. In North America, they were trying to enslave both whites and Native Americans. Whites tended to die quickly of malaria and Native Americans could escape and rejoin native tribes--having a better knowledge of the land and how to live off the land than colonial plantation owners. The expense and collateral losses made it a bad investment. Remember, Georgia was founded as a prison colony for English criminals--including people who couldn't pay their debts.

How do I feel about skin color being changed? For what purpose? To make African descent people in places like Spain, or Cuba or the USA feel they can blend in more and be free if they were only light skinned or white?

Anybody could adopt any skin color they like. I'm sure people will argue against it for a host of reasons. It's primarily a cosmetic thing, but maybe it could be used to attenuate the effects of skin cancer or excessive exposure for fair-skinned whites.

No, what needs to change are the white people who are light skinned who think the African descent people are the ones who have to change their skin color so they can be more acceptable to others who want to be able to avoid confronting their own defective ways of thinking about other people.

Ha ha! I knew you would go down that road. I don't think anybody should be compelled against their will to change their skin color. What do you think about white people choosing to go darker?

CRISPR should be about helping humans combat defects in immune response, or lack of good eye sight. Something that enhances life.

For the most part, that's how it will be used initially. Sickle cell anemia is one of the early candidates--something that primarily affects a subset of sub-Saharan African populations. Emmanuelle Charpentier thinks it shouldn't be used to pass on new mutations. Yet, I think it would be absurd to preserve the gene for cleft palate for example. Why?

Not for trying to make people perfect specimens that imitate some artificial pecking order to serve an economic elite (late stage capitalism) @blackjack21 .

IQ distributions aren't artificial, anymore than superior physical strength, aerobic endurance, ability to empathize and so forth. What if your brand of socialism will only be embraced by people who are as empathic as you are, and what if there is a genetic component to that disposition?

People are not interested in becoming more like the most dominant or the most prosperous in a society. They only really want to be accepted and respected as they are. For who they are.

There are a lot of pretenders out there, and there are plenty of people who would look different if they could. There are a lot of people out there with purple hair. It's not natural.

This is the whole debate about homosexuality over the last 50 years. Is it a choice? Or are you born that way? We've decided to come down on the side of "you're born that way." Well, that's quite a leap when the liberal ideology still clings desperately to a human behavioral tabula rasa.

Viva Frei and Robert Barnes had a side bar with Gad Saad.

He makes that clear distinction I make about the human frontal cortex earlier at about 41 minutes--what makes us so different than all the other animals out there. He also makes the point I was making here, and went right over your head--that there is an evolutionary basis to behavior too. I've teed it up for you at 51:00 minutes in. Barnes characterizes it as biophobia. Gad Saad calls it "evolution stops at the neck," or the "human reticence effect." You do this too--willing to explain the behavior of all species on the planet using evolutionary biology--except for humans. Everything is a social construct with you when it comes to humans.

[jimjam]

In the closing days of his administration Eisenhower gave the ok to have Castro taken out. Unsurprisingly the job was given to America's reigning Nazi, Alan Dulles and his secret government. Upon taking office the plan was foisted upon JFK as a fait accompli. Eisenhower's final words to JFK were to take out the Cuban leader and he left behind an invasion plan and an assassination plot to do just that. The CIA's ongoing plot using Mafia to kill Castro would be coordinated with the invasion of Cuba by 1400 CIA trained invaders at the now infamous Bay of Pigs …….. an invasion that was planed from the get go to fail. The Joint Chiefs chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, in an act of insubordination to JFK, had positioned two battalions of marines on US battleships just off the coast of Cuba whose job it was to be to "rescue" the CIA trained invaders after the Cuban army had surrounded them and, then, proceed with the invasion of Cuba by the American military. Eisenhower had, essentially, handed JFK a hand grenade with the pin pulled. After enduring a browbeating by pentagon and CIA officials, JFK stood fast and refused to turn the US military loose on Cuba. Dulles had seriously under estimated the young man in the White House. "Well they had me figured wrong. We're not going to plunge into irresponsible action just because a fanatical fringe in the country puts so called national pride above national reason." JFK

Unsurprisingly JFK's lack of cooperation with the Dulles plan played no small part in his subsequent murder by Dulles. That is another story ….. for sure.

[Julian658]

In the closing days of his administration Eisenhower gave the ok to have Castro taken out. Unsurprisingly the job was given to America's reigning Nazi, Alan Dulles and his secret government. Upon taking office the plan was foisted upon JFK as a fait accompli. Eisenhower's final words to JFK were to take out the Cuban leader and he left behind an invasion plan and an assassination plot to do just that. The CIA's ongoing plot using Mafia to kill Castro would be coordinated with the invasion of Cuba by 1400 CIA trained invaders at the now infamous Bay of Pigs …….. an invasion that was planed from the get go to fail. The Joint Chiefs chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, in an act of insubordination to JFK, had positioned two battalions of marines on US battleships just off the coast of Cuba whose job it was to be to "rescue" the CIA trained invaders after the Cuban army had surrounded them and, then, proceed with the invasion of Cuba by the American military. Eisenhower had, essentially, handed JFK a hand grenade with the pin pulled. After enduring a browbeating by pentagon and CIA officials, JFK stood fast and refused to turn the US military loose on Cuba. Dulles had seriously under estimated the young man in the White House. "Well they had me figured wrong. We're not going to plunge into irresponsible action just because a fanatical fringe in the country puts so called national pride above national reason." JFK

Unsurprisingly JFK's lack of cooperation with the Dulles plan played no small part in his subsequent murder by Dulles. That is another story ….. for sure.

That is a nice summary. However, as always it is hard to judge the past with present day knowledge. Nevertheless your presentism is mild.

pres·ent·ism

uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts.

Nikita Khrushchev delivered missiles to Cuba because he thought Kennedy was weak. Some could say IKE was correct in his judgement of the issue. There was a time when the West thought communism would spread like wildfire in the world. Today we could laugh at them, but we were not there. We do not want to judge the past with today's knowledge.

[Tainari88]

What I'm pointing out is that it is arbitrary, and going forward we have the technology to change it without resorting to Michael Jackson-style techniques. There are other reasons for differences than skin color. You accept that skin color is definitively the criteria for a pecking order. I think it plays a role in Darwinian sexual selection and to a lesser degree socialization based on the same sort of thing. On slavery? All races have been slaves. You are focusing narrowly on the United States in North America, ignoring slavery in Hispanic countries, Arab countries, Asia, etc. whether the slaves were of African origin or not. In North America, they were trying to enslave both whites and Native Americans. Whites tended to die quickly of malaria and Native Americans could escape and rejoin native tribes--having a better knowledge of the land and how to live off the land than colonial plantation owners. The expense and collateral losses made it a bad investment. Remember, Georgia was founded as a prison colony for English criminals--including people who couldn't pay their debts.


Anybody could adopt any skin color they like. I'm sure people will argue against it for a host of reasons. It's primarily a cosmetic thing, but maybe it could be used to attenuate the effects of skin cancer or excessive exposure for fair-skinned whites.


Ha ha! I knew you would go down that road. I don't think anybody should be compelled against their will to change their skin color. What do you think about white people choosing to go darker?


For the most part, that's how it will be used initially. Sickle cell anemia is one of the early candidates--something that primarily affects a subset of sub-Saharan African populations. Emmanuelle Charpentier thinks it shouldn't be used to pass on new mutations. Yet, I think it would be absurd to preserve the gene for cleft palate for example. Why?


IQ distributions aren't artificial, anymore than superior physical strength, aerobic endurance, ability to empathize and so forth. What if your brand of socialism will only be embraced by people who are as empathic as you are, and what if there is a genetic component to that disposition?


There are a lot of pretenders out there, and there are plenty of people who would look different if they could. There are a lot of people out there with purple hair. It's not natural.

This is the whole debate about homosexuality over the last 50 years. Is it a choice? Or are you born that way? We've decided to come down on the side of "you're born that way." Well, that's quite a leap when the liberal ideology still clings desperately to a human behavioral tabula rasa.

Viva Frei and Robert Barnes had a side bar with Gad Saad.

He makes that clear distinction I make about the human frontal cortex earlier at about 41 minutes--what makes us so different than all the other animals out there. He also makes the point I was making here, and went right over your head--that there is an evolutionary basis to behavior too. I've teed it up for you at 51:00 minutes in. Barnes characterizes it as biophobia. Gad Saad calls it "evolution stops at the neck," or the "human reticence effect." You do this too--willing to explain the behavior of all species on the planet using evolutionary biology--except for humans. Everything is a social construct with you when it comes to humans.

Ay Relampaguito, that man you are using is a very liberal liberal. Lol. He is not you! Lol. You got a long way to get to be the Professor. I am smiling. Behavior is evolutionary BJ yes, it is. But a lot of what social beings like humans pick up on and believe is subjective and constructed socially and are malleable. Basic stuff like which language you speak in your household, or how you apply your moral sense or identity to certain learned behaviors. Humans have bad habits they want to rid themselves of and they have to work on that or they suffer the consequences of the bad habit BJ.

You make me laugh with this. Because you are using people who are socially liberal and yet they are nuanced about what parts of biology is fact and not open to argument, and what parts are about rights that are ruled by social consensus that is about politically agreed upon structures. I distinguish that all the time.

You rail against liberals? But use one to try to convince me that I am the one who is not accepting fact based biological behaviors?

No, BJ. I am telling you simply that a lot of what is class-based is not based on natural states it is based on socially constructed stuff. You are the one that keeps thinking that once someone becomes a what? A low-skilled worker is all that person will ever be because if he could do better or could not do better, she or he would have done better. Lol. Do you see the defect in that kind of thinking? The Economist was the one that thought CRISPR technology could fix things like height or IQ or pitch in hearing or x or y? Have you ever listened to people born deaf or born blind and have to describe how it felt when their hearing was restored or their blindness was corrected? The disability they had provided them with an experience they found meaningful and they MOURNED it. They did. WHY??! Because it taught them to live with imperfection and with struggle and with an attitude of flexibility about when life gives you a challenge. That is incredibly useful. To read with your fingers and to be reliant on interpreting life through unconventional means. Not all defects are meant to be eradicated. Everything that is about learning how to adapt to changing conditions is MEANINGFUL to humans.


People who insist on only one meaning as the one all aspire to be? Are the ones who have strange ideas of what the idea of being human is about. No crees Relampaguito?

People who are light-skinned that want a CRISPR thing to get naturally tanned or dark skin and turn their blue eyes brown and or their white hair dark? Are manifesting a lot of insecurities about how they perceive themselves. And not being very objective about what their hair is supposed to do for them. Objective truth about hair is that it was evolved to protect a fragile organ that is very important. The cranium and brain. To cushion blows to the head because the brain is a vital organ and without it we die or slip into comas easily.

[Pants-of-dog]

The USSR tried to put missiles in Cuba because Cuba asked them to.

The presence of WMDs seems like the only surefire way to stop an invasion from the USA.

[Julian658]

The USSR tried to put missiles in Cuba because Cuba asked them to.

The presence of WMDs seems like the only surefire way to stop an invasion from the USA.

I don't recall the details, but you may be correct. This the closest we have ever been to a nuclear holocaust. At the end it turns out that JFK a Democrat had bigger testicles than Nikita. BTW, by the standards of today JFK would be considered a NAZI.

[XogGyux]

The USSR tried to put missiles in Cuba because Cuba asked them to.

The presence of WMDs seems like the only surefire way to stop an invasion from the USA.

The second most powerful power of the time risked global nuclear war that could put the human race to extinction because a crazy dude in a small island half a world away requested it?
The USSR wanted it, period.

[Pants-of-dog]

Anyone who supports JFK supports a man who tried to invade Cuba and take it over to support a dictatorship.

@XogGyux

The fact that the USSR also gained an advantage does not contradict my point in any way.

[Potemkin]

The second most powerful power of the time risked global nuclear war that could put the human race to extinction because a crazy dude in a small island half a world away requested it?

Essentially, yes. Khrushchev thought that this would give the Soviet Union a toehold in Uncle Sam's Caribbean backyard. But given the fact that such a toehold would only be of any value during a full-scale war between the US and the Soviet Union, and given the fact that ICBMs are purely offensive rather than defensive weapons, it was an incredibly stupid move on Khrushchev's part. The humiliation the Soviet Union suffered after backing down was a major factor in his fall from power just a few years later. The Cuban Missile Crisis did neither JFK nor Khrushchev any good at all.

The USSR wanted it, period.

Indeed they did, but they shouldn't have. And Castro wanted it much more than the Soviet Union. In fact, Castro kept urging Khrushchev to start WWIII throughout the Crisis. The tail was trying to wag the dog.

[Pants-of-dog]

Indeed they did, but they shouldn't have. And Castro wanted it much more than the Soviet Union. In fact, Castro kept urging Khrushchev to start WWIII throughout the Crisis. The tail was trying to wag the dog.

I can understand why. It would have ended the neo-imperialism of the Yanquis and the US missiles would have rained down on the USSR, not Cuba.

Considering the authoritarian nature of the USSR, that could easily be seen as win-win for Cuba.

[Potemkin]

I can understand why. It would have ended the neo-imperialism of the Yanquis and the US missiles would have rained down on the USSR, not Cuba.

Considering the authoritarian nature of the USSR, that could easily be seen as win-win for Cuba.

Which is why Khrushchev didn't fucking do it. Lol. After that, Khrushchev (and Brezhnev after him) stopped taking Castro's advice, and Castro went off and more or less did his own thing foreign-policy-wise.

[XogGyux]

Anyone who supports JFK supports a man who tried to invade Cuba and take it over to support a dictatorship.

@XogGyux

The fact that the USSR also gained an advantage does not contradict my point in any way.

Such a simplistic, almost childish view, about such a complex issue. Just because overall you support a person does not mean you support every single action that they have ever done. There is value at evaluating people in the context that they lived.
Furthermore... what dictatorship do you reckon Kennedy was trying to support? Many cubans that fled the country back then actually despise Kennedy because to their eyes Kennedy didn't do enough to prevent Fidel from taking over.
Then there is the elephant in the room. You have painted Fidel with a rossy brush... One of the most notorious dictators in modern history, certainly in the top 10 in this hemisphere and you trying to take a cheap bite at Kennedy?

Essentially, yes. Khrushchev thought that this would give the Soviet Union a toehold in Uncle Sam's Caribbean backyard. But given the fact that such a toehold would only be of any value during a full-scale war between the US and the Soviet Union, and given the fact that ICBMs are purely offensive rather than defensive weapons, it was an incredibly stupid move on Khrushchev's part. The humiliation the Soviet Union suffered after backing down was a major factor in his fall from power just a few years later. The Cuban Missile Crisis did neither JFK nor Khrushchev any good at all.


Indeed they did, but they shouldn't have. And Castro wanted it much more than the Soviet Union. In fact, Castro kept urging Khrushchev to start WWIII throughout the Crisis. The tail was trying to wag the dog.

Was it stupid? Not sure. Perhaps reckless, but probably not stupid. Did they mean for the missiles to be discovered by the US? Perhaps they just wanted to have them there in secret... perhaps they were meant to be a bargains to negotiate, perhaps it was simply a publicity stunt, a show of force and might. Who knows... very secretive state. One thing is certain, it was USSR and not Cuba that wanted that done. Fidel asking for shit wouldnt have made that happen. Another thing... it harmed Cuba far more than it helped, they dind't get anything more than tanking even further international relationships.

[Pants-of-dog]

Such a simplistic, almost childish view, about such a complex issue. Just because overall you support a person does not mean you support every single action that they have ever done. There is value at evaluating people in the context that they lived.

Then there is the elephant in the room. You have painted Fidel with a rossy brush... One of the most notorious dictators in modern history, certainly in the top 10 in this hemisphere and you trying to take a cheap bite at Kennedy?

This is not an argument.

Furthermore... what dictatorship do you reckon Kennedy was trying to support? Many cubans that fled the country back then actually despise Kennedy because to their eyes Kennedy didn't do enough to prevent Fidel from taking over.

Batista, obviously.

[
Was it stupid? Not sure. Perhaps reckless, but probably not stupid. Did they mean for the missiles to be discovered by the US? Perhaps they just wanted to have them there in secret... perhaps they were meant to be a bargains to negotiate, perhaps it was simply a publicity stunt, a show of force and might. Who knows... very secretive state. One thing is certain, it was USSR and not Cuba that wanted that done. Fidel asking for shit wouldnt have made that happen. Another thing... it harmed Cuba far more than it helped, they dind't get anything more than tanking even further international relationships.

Why would Castro not want the missiles? They would have been a great deterrent to US invasion.

How did it harm Cuba?

[XogGyux]

I can understand why. It would have ended the neo-imperialism of the Yanquis and the US missiles would have rained down on the USSR, not Cuba.

Considering the authoritarian nature of the USSR, that could easily be seen as win-win for Cuba.

That is nonsense. In the event of a first strike from cuba, cuba would have been annihilated quickly. There is no strategic advantage of leaving a potential enemy, no matter how weak you perceive it to be, alone to their own devices when you can easily conquest them. Even large armies have taken high casualties to tiny less powerful forces that hit you over and over relentlessly. The best thing to do is to get rid of them if you have the option.
In the event of war, even nuclear war in the 1960's, the confrontation with cuba would have taken days, maybe weeks, the confrontation with the USSR would have taken years. The idea from movies in which "nuclear war" means the whole country or planet is engulfed in flames and everyone dies quickly is a myth. You would certainly kill millions with the nuclear weapons, but they only cover a couple miles. The real battle would ensue and would be fought with conventional weapons.

[Pants-of-dog]

That is nonsense. In the event of a first strike from cuba, cuba would have been annihilated quickly.

I doubt it. Those missiles were all aimed at the USSR.

There is no strategic advantage of leaving a potential enemy, no matter how weak you perceive it to be, alone to their own devices when you can easily conquest them. Even large armies have taken high casualties to tiny less powerful forces that hit you over and over relentlessly. The best thing to do is to get rid of them if you have the option.

Yes, this is why there was a Bay of Pigs invasion and why the US continued a war against Cuba for decades.

And this is also why Castro wanted a deterrent.

In the event of war, even nuclear war in the 1960's, the confrontation with cuba would have taken days, maybe weeks, the confrontation with the USSR would have taken years. The idea from movies in which "nuclear war" means the whole country or planet is engulfed in flames and everyone dies quickly is a myth. You would certainly kill millions with the nuclear weapons, but they only cover a couple miles. The real battle would ensue and would be fought with conventional weapons.

Yes, the main targets would have been military and government installations in the USSR.

[jimjam]

The most reliable way to find the truth is, simply, follow the money. Who stood to make the most money by keeping the Red Scare alive and well? Could it have been the military industrial complex which could count on an unlimited flow of billions upon billions by virtue of maintaining a perpetual state of war? One result of the Cuban missile crisis was that it brought JFK and Khrushchev closer together. They actually developed a relationship and had discussions . To the military industrial complex this was an alarming and dangerous development. The possibility of less money loomed . Long story short, improved relations with Russia and JFK's already in progress withdrawal from Vietnam had to be stopped. What better way to accomplish this than to put JFK's brains on the street.

Upon hearing of JFK's murder Khrushchev cried and paced his office for days.

[XogGyux]

This is not an argument.

Yes it is, you might not like it... Does not change anything.

Batista, obviously.

Oh wow. This is nonsense. When Batista was in power, there was a different pressident. You know, a fellow by the name of Eisenhower. This fellow didn't like Batista much, in fact the first embargo on Cuba was under this fellow. It was focused on weapons and presumably actually helped Fidel's cause. Kennedy did not come into the picture until much later, at this time Batista was well out of the picture. Obviously, this is nonsense.

How did it harm Cuba?

By putting a target on its back?

[Pants-of-dog]

Yes it is, you might not like it... Does not change anything.

No, it is merely a failed attempt at a personal attack. I will ignore this tangent from now on.

Oh wow. This is nonsense. When Batista was in power, there was a different pressident. You know, a fellow by the name of Eisenhower. This fellow didn't like Batista much, in fact the first embargo on Cuba was under this fellow. It was focused on weapons and presumably actually helped Fidel's cause. Kennedy did not come into the picture until much later, at this time Batista was well out of the picture. Obviously, this is nonsense.

And then JFK got into power and supported the Bay of Pigs invasion to get Batista back into power.

By putting a target on its back?

Cuba did that by declaring its freedom and defending its sovereignty.