Shower thoughts

[Hotel26]

23 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

go extinct one day

Let's first accept this as a premise.

Then ask the question about other intelligent life.  We feel it should be there but we have found no sign yet of intelligent life anywhere else, or ever.  See Fermi's Paradox.

Let's guess that there have been other intelligent species but none have surmounted the same challenges we (are said to) face: limited resources, nuclear weapons, climate change, artificial intelligence(?), genomic monkeying...

Odds then that we are going to share the same fate as our supposed predecessors.

Now let's ask "what would a truly intelligent species do?" -- realizing the above.

Firstly: pointing out that we are a product of natural evolution over hundreds of millions of years in a protective environment (Earth, unlike space itself).

Secondly: pointing out the anomaly that we accept that we are the product of a long chain of evolution but somehow think (selfishly) that we are now the immutable end of our line of evolution.

Thirdly: pointing out that we are not evolved for space, do not have time to "evolve" for space (before being overcome by our own limitations), and the chemical/cellular life form is never going to be universally efficient in space ... nor throughout the universe.

So the unthinkable next step is to do what every species does (given time), which is to produce its successor...  but in the radically intelligent case, do it sapiently...  thus: produce an artificially-intelligent elecronic form and endow it with imperatives:

1. preserve its existence
2. respect and preserve other life
3. explore the universe and share the knowledge

It would certainly utilize robotic instantiations but 'it' would be electronic, distributed and -- in a certain sense -- able to travel^[1] at the speed of light.

Homo sapiens sapiens might not survive (or perhaps it would, aided by its successor (but not replacement, see #2) but we would leave a sign in the universe that no other precedecessor intelligent species appears to have ever done before.  More importantly, by leaving that permanent entity in the universe, we would thus resolve Fermi's Paradox.

Quite an accomplishment.

[1] not necessarily 'propagate'

Edited April 17 by Hotel26

[DDE]

Shower thought: the Halo franchise has plenty of AIs, but there's not even a whiff of humanoid robotics - only incorporeal avatars. In fact, UNSC seems to have more "smart" AIs than they have Spartan-IIs, and they have no trouble putting the AIs in charge of extremely powerful armaments. At the same time, their power armor tech suggests a pretty extreme level of robotics-adjacent technology.

So why bother with the ethically dubious Spartans at all when you can build AI-driven Myrmidons? It's particularly laughable in hindsight, when you know that the later armor variants are able to accomodate both the wearer and the AI melded with their mind. Why even bother when you can have an extra set of metal hands?

Spoiler

And yes, I am thinking about Andromeda

Morning edit: to clarify, I don't even mean "human-passing" androids. When UNSC committed to superhumanly tall - never mind socially stunted due to abnormal upbringing - Spartans and power armor tech, they gave up on blending in with humans for infiltration purposes.

Edited April 18 by DDE

[SunlitZelkova]

What if we’re the ones in a fish tank, and fish control us? An inverse fish tank, to be exact.

They exist in a fifth dimension above our 4D world, and are the masterminds behind everything in history and the designers of the laws of physics.

[magnemoe]

On 4/17/2024 at 7:51 AM, Hotel26 said:

Let's first accept this as a premise.

Then ask the question about other intelligent life.  We feel it should be there but we have found no sign yet of intelligent life anywhere else, or ever.  See Fermi's Paradox.

Let's guess that there have been other intelligent species but none have surmounted the same challenges we (are said to) face: limited resources, nuclear weapons, climate change, artificial intelligence(?), genomic monkeying...

Odds then that we are going to share the same fate as our supposed predecessors.

Now let's ask "what would a truly intelligent species do?" -- realizing the above.

Firstly: pointing out that we are a product of natural evolution over hundreds of millions of years in a protective environment (Earth, unlike space itself).

Secondly: pointing out the anomaly that we accept that we are the product of a long chain of evolution but somehow think (selfishly) that we are now the immutable end of our line of evolution.

Thirdly: pointing out that we are not evolved for space, do not have time to "evolve" for space (before being overcome by our own limitations), and the chemical/cellular life form is never going to be universally efficient in space ... nor throughout the universe.

So the unthinkable next step is to do what every species does (given time), which is to produce its successor...  but in the radically intelligent case, do it sapiently...  thus: produce an artificially-intelligent elecronic form and endow it with imperatives:

1. preserve its existence
2. respect and preserve other life
3. explore the universe and share the knowledge

It would certainly utilize robotic instantiations but 'it' would be electronic, distributed and -- in a certain sense -- able to travel^[1] at the speed of light.

Homo sapiens sapiens might not survive (or perhaps it would, aided by its successor (but not replacement, see #2) but we would leave a sign in the universe that no other precedecessor intelligent species appears to have ever done before.  More importantly, by leaving that permanent entity in the universe, we would thus resolve Fermi's Paradox.

Quite an accomplishment.

[1] not necessarily 'propagate'

Now Musk is correct in making us an multi planetary species, the problem is that this is ++100 year in the future, its not something he can do, making mining on the moon and asteroids to expand the starling fleet makes more sense today. 
If we had an second planet with life who we was a bit unlucky with, becoming an  multi planetary species would be much easier.
This let you bypass lots of the late filters. 

Now Homo sapiens will go extinct as the Neanderthal did, you want radical life extension and other obvious fixes. If you can not get them you want them for your kids.
If it require an species change its not an problem. 
The n you uplift cats, dogs and bears because you could. 
 

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

The n you uplift cats, dogs and bears because you could. 

[kerbiloid]

The Python language (not Parseltongue, but that one, with tabs) was invented by people, who were generating source code in excel sheet.

I see that because I did that.

Just my generated script language was close to Fortran.

[Hotel26]

50 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Just my generated script language was close to Fortran.

And even closer to CSV!   

Edited April 21 by Hotel26

[kerbiloid]

39 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

And even closer to CSV!   

I didn't knew CSV that time. But something like that was in the code body.

[Hotel26]

1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:

I didn't knew CSV that time. But something like that was in the code body.

Yes, CSV was a typical Intermediate Language; and 'Export' used to be known as 'Compile'.

With Commas most often used in the western hemisphere, whereas the Soviet Union and Friends used Tabs, preventing code interchangeability, for obvious reasons of national security.

[You might have known of it as '3PT']

Edited April 21 by Hotel26

[SunlitZelkova]

Is the right answer to put aside differences and cooperate even if it’s not what one personally desires, or to strive for your personal desires even if they come into conflict with those of others?

Is constantly changing your opinions based on interactions with others admirable, or a case of being at the whim of others’ ideas?

The discussions on this forum in recent days have been my first introduction to these issues in philosophy/ethics/whatever category.

More and more I’m seeing everything as relative; just a human construct. Things are what we make of them. There is no right or wrong but the rights and wrongs we (or one) decide(s) upon.

Humanity is complex and I’m all for it.

I had these thoughts while it was raining outside, so it counts as a shower thought, right?

[ColdJ]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Things are what we make of them. There is no right or wrong but the rights and wrongs we (or one) decide(s) upon

This delves into the morals vs ethics area.

Morals being that no matter what the society rules are, in the community you live in, You have a clear idea of what is good and right vs what is wrong and evil.

Ethics are the defined rules set out in a particular society, that say what is considered right and what is considered wrong. As such what one society might consider right, another might consider wrong.

Unfortunately ethical rules in modern society have been constantly erroded compared to what used to be and as such morals have been weakened. To grow up with a good moral compass one needs good examples to learn from. It is getting harder and harder to find good examples.

For me, the simplist way to try to be good is to use the question "Would I want someone to do this to me?" If the answer is "No" then to do that thing to someone else is most likely wrong.

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Is the right answer to put aside differences and cooperate even if it’s not what one personally desires, or to strive for your personal desires even if they come into conflict with those of others?

This is a complex question because, If everybody worked together for the common good then "to put aside differences and cooperate even if it’s not what one personally desires" would be correct.

But these days so many are selfish, so it might feel like "striving for your personal desires even if they come into conflict with those of others" is the way to go because everyone else is.

Trouble is that the second way always assumes there are enough people choosing the first way to keep everbody going.

Now imagine if everybody chose the second way. Everbody litters but nobody cleans up. Everybody consumes but nobody makes new things. Everybody takes what ever they want but nobody protects the vunerable.

Seems that human civilisation would be over pretty quick if we all chose the second option.

[SunlitZelkova]

4 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Unfortunately ethical rules in modern society have been constantly erroded compared to what used to be and as such morals have been weakened. To grow up with a good moral compass one needs good examples to learn from. It is getting harder and harder to find good examples.

Genuine question, what constitutes “ethical rules” and “morals” in “modern society?”

Take for instance polygamy. The idea that it is immoral comes from Christian ideas, which don’t really make it “modern” per se. Yet its growing occurrence in the West is cast down upon by traditional thinkers as immoral.

Meanwhile Nepal has had it forever, and such relationships are no more tumultuous than the average Western marriage. Nepal, obviously, is part of the modern world, given it still exists in 2024. Why does what happens in the West get called modern, and in other places it isn’t?

It’s even more ironic considering a lot of Western legal, political, and moral traditions date back to Roman times.

I myself don't have an answer to this question. I think making one would require a degree of myth making, as you would need to cast human culture into one monolithic story, when in reality the differences are varied. “Human culture” is a little like “desserts.” They wildly vary to the extent it’s questionable if they are related. That analogy is bad but I hope I get my idea across.

4 hours ago, ColdJ said:

For me, the simplist way to try to be good is to use the question "Would I want someone to do this to me?" If the answer is "No" then to do that thing to someone else is most likely wrong.

I agree.

I think the problem though is when the question is raised of whether we should protect others.

Take for instance polyamory as mentioned above. I personally would have major emotional stress if I tried to be in such a relationship. I wouldn’t want that done to me. Using the Golden Rule, that makes polyamory wrong. But what if someone else thinks differently? Do I have a right… is it right… for me to stop someone from having such a relationship just because I think it is “wrong” based on the Golden Rule, while that person might think it “right”… because as a matter of course they don’t mind having it done to them?

And to what extent is it okay to protect others? I think trying to over police what strangers do is a no-no, but what about family? If the person who thinks polyamory is wrong is a father, and the person who wants to partake in it is his daughter, does he have a right to stop her?

How would he feel if his father tried to stop him from doing what he wanted? BUT, there’s the Golden Rule! So isn’t it right to stop “wrong” things from occurring in the world? Because I would want someone to speak up and help protect me from another person trying to “wrong” me?

This dilemma brings me to what I said,

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

There is no right or wrong but the rights and wrongs we (or one) decide(s) upon.

I could say “the way to solve this is respect other’s autonomy and right to make their own decisions so long as those decisions don’t harm others,” but then there’s the question of what constitutes harm.

I think it would be very hard to solve this dilemma, because what constitutes harm and what constitutes non-harm is also relative.

Edited Saturday at 10:07 AM by SunlitZelkova

[ColdJ]

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Genuine question, what constitutes “ethical rules” and “morals” in “modern society?”

Important to remember that "A society" does not cover the whole of human civilization. So as I said before, what is considered right in one society, e.g Nepal, may not be considered right in say "The USA bible belt". But nobody has the authority to determine that one society is better than the other. And of course most of what you feel to be right is based on the society we were brought up in.

Your personal beliefs can then be further adjusted by your personal experience in the world so that people in your own society may hold differing views on certain aspects of the ethics that are the guide for your particular society.

In my personal moral model, I believe that doing anything that you know will definitely hurt alot of people is evil while doing things for others that would make life easier or make you yourself happy, is good.

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

And to what extent is it okay to protect others? I think trying to over police what strangers do is a no-no, but what about family? If the person who thinks polyamory is wrong is a father, and the person who wants to partake in it is his daughter, does he have a right to stop her?

This is an ethical question. So in that particular society the father has been brought up to believe that polyamory is wrong. Now generally speaking there is usually an age of consent. These exist because it has been proven that human brains go through stages and we don't fully comprehend long term risk when we are younger. ( I personally think that the age of consent is too young in most western society and that also it should be illegal to make  permanent modifications to your body until you are older and can better understand the long term consequences. But I also realise there is no stopping young people who are determined to try out risky things because they have been convinced it will feel great or is the fashion of the moment.) So if the youngster is under the legal age of consent then the father is backed up by the law in trying to stop their child from doing something that may cause long term harm to them, be it mental or physical. If the child is older than the age of consent then the father can try to warn of the dangers but cannot physically restrain the child, both morally or under the law.

Morally it goes back to the question "Would I like it if somebody did this to me." I feel pretty confident that the father would not like it if someone else forced their beliefs on to him and didn't let him make his own choices. So if the father wouldn't want to be controlled then morally he should not try control a child that has reached an age where they can make adult decisions. Being there for the child if their choice turns out to be bad for them and helping them out, is the good thing to do.

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

How would he feel if his father tried to stop him from doing what he wanted? BUT, there’s the Golden Rule! So isn’t it right to stop “wrong” things from occurring in the world? Because I would want someone to speak up and help protect me from another person trying to “wrong” me?

Warning people of dangers and actively doing things personally that can make life better for the whole is good.

Forcing people to do what you believe is right, is bad.

About to get a bit deeper but it is important to make clear something that many get confused about. Due to filters Any time you see "rope" replace the O with an A.

"What is Rope?" Many get confused and believe that rope is only about sexual things. Actually that is just a type of rope that is most noticed and reported.

Rope actually is any act where one or many force another do something against their will. In so doing causing them both mental and physical distress. Examples can include bullies forcing someone to commit a humilating act and hazing, like when apprentices are grabbed and restrained  to be hung up on hoists as a rite of passage. Rope can even be purely verbal. Forcing someone to do something through threats to ruin their life or harm another is also Rope.

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I could say “the way to solve this is respect other’s autonomy and right to make their own decisions so long as those decisions don’t harm others,” but then there’s the question of what constitutes harm.

That is the way to go, hopefully my examples above give you an idea of what constitutes harm.

Edited Saturday at 03:38 PM by ColdJ

[magnemoe]

13 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Genuine question, what constitutes “ethical rules” and “morals” in “modern society?”

Take for instance polygamy. The idea that it is immoral comes from Christian ideas, which don’t really make it “modern” per se. Yet its growing occurrence in the West is cast down upon by traditional thinkers as immoral.

Meanwhile Nepal has had it forever, and such relationships are no more tumultuous than the average Western marriage. Nepal, obviously, is part of the modern world, given it still exists in 2024. Why does what happens in the West get called modern, and in other places it isn’t?

It’s even more ironic considering a lot of Western legal, political, and moral traditions date back to Roman times.

I myself don't have an answer to this question. I think making one would require a degree of myth making, as you would need to cast human culture into one monolithic story, when in reality the differences are varied. “Human culture” is a little like “desserts.” They wildly vary to the extent it’s questionable if they are related. That analogy is bad but I hope I get my idea across.

One obvious problem with polygamy is that the powerful and rich would get most of the wifes. More so in an hierarchy male dominated society. This would easy generate lots of social instability more so as you could not manage an farm alone historical. 
Now if you had very high amount of combat deaths is start making some sense, but these sort of losses would not be sustainable. 
Do not know how Nepal avoid this trap but think it goes both ways for one, I also guess the relationships has been more fluid more like modern marriages. But it has never been common in the west at least not after the iron age. 

An ethical rule has to work in real life and preferable has to be beneficial but not required. Rule of law survives for good reasons, if rulers play Tommyball all the time you liquid people of and running some sort of business would be very hard. 
This is why even Pharaohs tended to play by the agreed rules. 

And not all people in an society share the same ethical rules. Lots of sub cultures or even professions, pilots and used car salesmen are different.  

 

[magnemoe]

8 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Important to remember that "A society" does not cover the whole of human civilization. So as I said before, what is considered right in one society, e.g Nepal, may not be considered right in say "The USA bible belt". But nobody has the authority to determine that one society is better than the other. And of course most of what you feel to be right is based on the society we were brought up in.

Your personal beliefs can then be further adjusted by your personal experience in the world so that people in your own society may hold differing views on certain aspects of the ethics that are the guide for your particular society.

In my personal moral model, I believe that doing anything that you know will definitely hurt alot of people is evil while doing things for others that would make life easier or make you yourself happy, is good.

This is an ethical question. So in that particular society the father has been brought up to believe that polyamory is wrong. Now generally speaking there is usually an age of consent. These exist because it has been proven that human brains go through stages and we don't fully comprehend long term risk when we are younger. ( I personally think that the age of consent is too young in most western society and that also it should be illegal to make  permanent modifications to your body until you are older and can better understand the long term consequences. But I also realise there is no stopping young people who are determined to try out risky things because they have been convinced it will feel great or is the fashion of the moment.) So if the youngster is under the legal age of consent then the father is backed up by the law in trying to stop their child from doing something that may cause long term harm to them, be it mental or physical. If the child is older than the age of consent then the father can try to warn of the dangers but cannot physically restrain the child, both morally or under the law.

Morally it goes back to the question "Would I like it if somebody did this to me." I feel pretty confident that the father would not like it if someone else forced their beliefs on to him and didn't let him make his own choices. So if the father wouldn't want to be controlled then morally he should not try control a child that has reached an age where they can make adult decisions. Being there for the child if their choice turns out to be bad for them and helping them out, is the good thing to do.

Note its perfectly legal to have 5 girlfriends and 2 boyfriends and living together, you can however not be married. Now in this case I suspect you are leading an cult who is concerning, but its pretty common for student to share the rent of an house who tend to be cheaper than renting multiple apartments more so if you don't care if the house is a bit run down. 
And parents still hold plenty of power if they pay for you. 

And teens will teen, probably way worse now with social media and all the fake stuff and getting exposed to people way richer than you all the time. 
But you do stupid stuff. 

---But 35 years ago getting beer was easy if you had money, its probably an mistake to make drugs easier to get than beer, yes that one is political. 

[kerbiloid]

For the non-rich (i.e. most of men) in the world it's a problem to feed even one wife and children from her.

For the rich men, it's problematic to split their property between the children without hurting anyone and/or eliminate the family business.
For everything other they have concubines and young perspective girls with bright corporative career.

The tribal men (again, almost a half of them) have to stand in queue to get some family money to marry, so when their turn comes again, they already have several children from the previous wife, and are mostly busy with feeding them all rather than doubling their problems.

The Tibetan society was phenomenally poor and deeply medieval just a pair of generations ago, so they didn't solve the problems, they just had enough high mortality, and didn't face the developed society problems yet.

Also the so-called "female character" is actually a form if infantile behavior together with adult duties.
In particular, it means jealousy, greed, passive aggression and so on.
It turns a competitive female collective into a serpentarium, including the polygamic marriage, where they traditionally have "the senior wife", "the young wife" and so on, when the youngest wife is either the husband's toy, or the elder wife's slave.
And vice versa, when a woman throws away the gender chains, she faces the typically male problems, and isn't going to share her enslaved male resource unit with somebody else.

Thus, the polygamy was a mostly declarative thing almost everywhere, a useless toy for the rich, and an inaccessible toy for the poor.

***

The polyamory has several disadvantages in long perspective.

First, the female reproductional resource is limited, so usually she has to find a husband until she losts market condition, and while her organism can make a healthy child.
So, the polygamy is a loss of time in this sense.

Second, the antibiotics have numerous negative effects, from affecting the organism itself, to training the super-resistive bacteries.
Also, they don't affect fungi.
While their absence was making the free-lovers natural venerous infection incubators.
Thus, it was a question of hygiene and mass survival to break the chain of infection.

Third, a man has limited money, and usually wants to share it with limited amount of children, so beyond the limited rich society of overconsumption, it makes a child a lonely woman's problem in searching for marriage.
And the polyamory often makes the unexpected children results.

***

It's easy to live together even 5 male + 7 women + 3 non-binary.
Until you have to decide, which children will ancest your tiny piece of plowland, while others will go away to find some food (usually standing or lying by the side of the road).
So, it's just a rich society local fun, while it's staying rich.

Edited Sunday at 04:18 AM by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

17 hours ago, ColdJ said:

That is the way to go, hopefully my examples above give you an idea of what constitutes harm.

I think my main concern that causes me to question definitions of harm is people being overbearing.

I think people (above the age of consent/legality or whatever) should be allowed to make their own decisions, but given a good education of the pluses and minuses of the possible choices at hand.

Unfortunately I feel people (at least my age, early 20s) don’t really get taught the skills necessary to properly weigh pros and cons and end up going more with their emotions.

It’s hard to find the balance between a warning and an order.

9 hours ago, magnemoe said:

One obvious problem with polygamy is that the powerful and rich would get most of the wifes. More so in an hierarchy male dominated society. This would easy generate lots of social instability more so as you could not manage an farm alone historical. 
Now if you had very high amount of combat deaths is start making some sense, but these sort of losses would not be sustainable. 
Do not know how Nepal avoid this trap but think it goes both ways for one, I also guess the relationships has been more fluid more like modern marriages. But it has never been common in the west at least not after the iron age.

I am terribly sorry but I must now correct myself. I was using the wrong term. Some families in Nepal practice polyandry, not polygamy, although polygamy can be found in Nepal too, it is not what I studied about.

The way it works is one wife usually marries an entire family’s brothers. The husbands are not drawn from different families.

Tension is mainly around personal issues. It’s been several months since the anthropology class and I don’t seem to have taken notes on the subject, but I recall that having two males helps raise lots of farm hands and keep the population stable.

I’ve found the TED Talk I watched during my studies. I don’t know if it’s okay to post it, so just Google “Are five husbands better than one TED Talk” and you can find it if you’re interested.

[ColdJ]

4 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Unfortunately I feel people (at least my age, early 20s) don’t really get taught the skills necessary to properly weigh pros and cons and end up going more with their emotions.

Going with your emotions is the norm in your 20's. Been that way since humans began.

You are right about the lack of good advisement these days. It used to be that parents would both advise and set good examples as their child grew, so that when they went out on their own the would have a good foundation on which to build. Sadly the push to rampant consumerism, the "I want everything instantly" movement means that most people have to over work to get by and their kids suffer for it. Add in the trend to put young children in front of an electronic pad to keep them busy rather than interact with them. It is sheer luck that we get any stable human beings entering adulthood these days.

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I am terribly sorry but I must now correct myself. I was using the wrong term. Some families in Nepal practice polyandry, not polygamy, although polygamy can be found in Nepal too, it is not what I studied about.

The way it works is one wife usually marries an entire family’s brothers. The husbands are not drawn from different families.

Tension is mainly around personal issues. It’s been several months since the anthropology class and I don’t seem to have taken notes on the subject, but I recall that having two males helps raise lots of farm hands and keep the population stable.

I’ve found the TED Talk I watched during my studies. I don’t know if it’s okay to post it, so just Google “Are five husbands better than one TED Talk” and you can find it if you’re interested.

Brothers makes sense, more so in an agricultural society where it was hard to find work outside of farming and you avoid splitting the farm who is bad if its already small. 
Add that marriage was much more an convenience thing than today. 

[Ryaja]

On 5/4/2024 at 4:06 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

Genuine question, what constitutes “ethical rules” and “morals” in “modern society?”

Take for instance polygamy. The idea that it is immoral comes from Christian ideas, which don’t really make it “modern” per se. Yet its growing occurrence in the West is cast down upon by traditional thinkers as immoral.

Meanwhile Nepal has had it forever, and such relationships are no more tumultuous than the average Western marriage. Nepal, obviously, is part of the modern world, given it still exists in 2024. Why does what happens in the West get called modern, and in other places it isn’t?

It’s even more ironic considering a lot of Western legal, political, and moral traditions date back to Roman times.

I myself don't have an answer to this question. I think making one would require a degree of myth making, as you would need to cast human culture into one monolithic story, when in reality the differences are varied. “Human culture” is a little like “desserts.” They wildly vary to the extent it’s questionable if they are related. That analogy is bad but I hope I get my idea across.

Good must comes from somewhere, In the end it is what tops you moral hierarchy in your view. Be it God, money, or something else. Jordan Peterson has talked about this in his maps of meaning talks I believe, it's interesting. And sure I believe in an absolute good and evil, that's why I said in your view. This is why everyone views themselves as a hero in their own story, they follow what is on top of their moral hierarchy.

[kerbiloid]

The polyandry is an alternative to the monasteries, which accumulate the excessive reproductional potential, among other purposes.

Afair, In early XX Mongolia up to every third man was a (Buddhist) monk, living in a monastery.
Because even when you can split your herd, the steppe doesn't grow, the amount of the water source is limited, and the grass area as well.

So, Mongolia and Tibet were using opposite methods.
While in Mongolia they were sending excessive boys into the monastery in childhood, and then bringing food there, in Tibet they were living at home, but the family reproductional potential was limited by the only woman organism.
(Probably because, thanks to the Tibetan conditions, it's hard to distinguish a monastery from a non-monastery, lol).

Edited Monday at 04:44 AM by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

(Unrelated)

The origin of Shelob is simple.

While being the Utumno gardener, Bombadil tried to create a highly productive GMO She-Lob(ster).

Something went wrong.

The offsprings of the wrong had also occupied Mirkwood.

[Ryaja]

Is "reverse entropy" a valid definition of life? Life is constantly increasing in complexity. Like humans grow and increase in complexity. The opposite of a disordered state, and life draws towards it.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, Ryaja said:

Is "reverse entropy" a valid definition of life? Life is constantly increasing in complexity. Like humans grow and increase in complexity. The opposite of a disordered state, and life draws towards it.

Quote

In conclusion, xenologists suspect that there are two fundamental properties any system must possess before it can be considered alive. First, it must be thermodynamically negentropic, establishing an entropy gradient between itself and the environment. Second, it must utilize the entropy gradient to create or to maintain structural order internally -- that is, it must be autonegentropic or self-organizing. Then there is the quality of organization, known as complex interrelatedness or aperiodic crystal, which reflects the intensity of the life process displayed by a given entity.

For those who prefer succinct and pithy definitions, the author would life to offer the following as a starting point for further discussion: Life is negentropic and self-organizing aperiodic crystal.

- Robert A. Freitas Jr., Xenology: An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, and Civilization, First Edition, Xenology Research Institute, Sacramento, CA, 1979; http://www.xenology.info/Xeno.htm

 

[kerbiloid]

10 hours ago, Ryaja said:

Is "reverse entropy" a valid definition of life?

delta-entropy =by definition= - delta-information (in the thermodynamical sense of it)