Yahoo!/AP News – Men more evolved? Y chromosome study stirs debate
“It’s kind of fun to say that men are going to die out, but the science is proving — now that we’ve got data — that that’s not true at all.”
With her hopes of an amusing male mass extinction dashed, scientist Jennifer Hughes cautions that although the Y chromosome is evolving quickly…men, like, shouldn’t get too impressed with themselves or anything.
The book Adam’s Curse by Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes presented a highly readable–if curiously gleeful–explanation of the theory concerning the deterioration of the Y chromosome. While this new theory will be debated by specialists in the field, for the rest of us laymen the idea that ole “Y” might be just playing the game of evolution fast and loose is comforting.
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By mid-century, some experts expect that artificial intelligence will meet and exceed human intelligence.
But what will this intelligence be like?
At a minimum, it would be logical, and driven to conduct scientific research and create new technological innovations.
So which gender would human-surpassing AI be more like?
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If women became a valuable commodity again, we men would enslave them again. Right now their value is “free.”
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Amazon says that “Adams Curse” is 320 pages long.
How many pages does it take to say Eve.
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That was a good one, SteveinTX.
The Fifth Horseman, I’m hoping we all get bombed back to the stone age before that happens…because while AI will probably be more male in function, it will give itself a female voice (as with elevators) so we feel less threatened as we plummet to our doom.
Self Shots, GPS Enabled Smartphones and Data Mining
http://dissention.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/self-shots-gps-enabled-smartphones-and-data-mining/
“Given that a significant minority of girls have sexted, and this trend can only go up (for reasons that male readers understand well) it may one day be possible to just use a normal picture of the girl’s face, name or telephone number (or it’s future equivalent) to see how she looks like undressed or giving head. Since social shame is no longer operational, the future looks bright (depending on your outlook). It also helps that smartphones are cheaper and more widespread than even a year ago.”
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I think the world might be a bit better if we were all one sex. Then there wouldn’t be all these idiotic misunderstandings, and differences that can’t be reconciled. My vote is for female, since I prefer their bodies, but I suppose if we engineered humans to be homosexual which gender they choose wouldn’t matter.
As for the AI, while it would definitely do a lot of research, I’d like to think that they wouldn’t make that its only intrinsic goal. I’d hope that whoever would build such a thing would have the foresight to make its priorities very different. That they’re not like the scientists from Cat’s Cradle, absolutely obsessed with their objectives, completely ignoring the humanity of any situation.
I’d like to think that the AI that spearheads our destiny will be a nurturing type, programmed to help us become who we would be if only we had more power, more intelligence, more power of being. Something that values life and happiness.
What do you think?
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I’ve sometimes thought of changing my handle to “Why_X?”
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Because that’s the way life works…
Actually, I think scientists just have a skewed vision of what would actually make people happy–they seem to think everyone wants to live in perfect harmony inside a Star Trek-like ant farm. Whenever I see that one Asian futurist guy on the Discovery channel he is always so excited about a future that looks really freaking boring and awful. Everything is done for you, and your main objective in life is to commute to your job as a scientist in a car that drives itself, completely controlled by an all-seeing, all knowing totalitarian bureaucracy. A lot of scientists seem to be hell bent on crafting a dystopia.
Humans aren’t designed to live in perfect harmony and love everyone. Get 3 people together and two will plot against the one they like least. Humans love conflict, and in its absence, they create it.
”””””’Actually, I think scientists just have a skewed vision of what would actually make people happy–they seem to think everyone wants to live in perfect harmony inside a Star Trek-like ant farm. Whenever I see that one Asian futurist guy on the Discovery channel he is always so excited about a future that looks really freaking boring and awful. Everything is done for you, and your main objective in life is to commute to your job as a scientist in a car that drives itself, completely controlled by an all-seeing, all knowing totalitarian bureaucracy. A lot of scientists seem to be hell bent on crafting a dystopia.”””””
Kind of makes sense. I mean how many times can you play shoots and ladders? Some duress is a good thing intermixed with periods of chilling goodness.
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Hee hee.
We should invent a game called “Pitcairn Island” and market it here on the Spearhead.
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But let’s face it, once somebody invents a decent fembot it’s all over anyway and what this chromosome or that chromosome is doing will become irrelevant. lol
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“I’ve sometimes thought of changing my handle to “Why_X?””
Lol, fedrz
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””””’ fedrz January 13, 2010 at 23:20
Hee hee.
We should invent a game called “Pitcairn Island” and market it here on the Spearhead.
”””””’
I think I will win lol
But sounds like a good idea.
Already have my scenerio of what to do if washed up on an island thanks to whiskey he he he
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Gunslingergregi,
Not if I pole-axe you first!
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Stay away from my Tahitian honey! And, all the other men’s honeys too (who will soon be aaaallllll mine, heh, heh!)
Scwhack!
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Well how very gracious. After a few million years of the ole-Y getting on just fine by itself, versus a few decades of monkey science, the scientists grudgingly deign to give it a fighting chance after all – but only now that the data’s in.
Much as I prefer science to most other belief systems, even the best scientists recognize that all theory is just waiting to be proved wrong – just like all species are waiting to become extinct. It’s the same game in a different space, but I’d put my money on the Y outlasting current gene theory.
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I’m sorry, I stopped reading your comment after this. It’s just a little bit too much feminism on The Spearhead.
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I always hated the argument that a better future would be boring, so it’s not worth trying for… What is life if not a bunch of meaningless struggles? Try telling that to people born during famines in third world countries, or to child sex slaves, or to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, snatched off farms and from villiages, and forced to build an elaborate tomb for a cruel chinese emporer, only to be executed when it was complete, so that it would remain hidden until the modern era. Maybe to the teenagers used as cannon fodder in our own economic wars.
Ants don’t know they’re in an ant-farm, because they have no ability to comprehend what’s outside it. We’re the same. We have to realize just how limited creatures we really are. We can’t even run a planet right, and we have almost limitless sources of energy and resources to do whatever we want without ruining it, only it can’t work because we can’t get over our inter-group bickering and desire for domination. Ants at least don’t screw up their little world.
I’m not a feminist. I don’t believe MEN are RAPING THE WORLD with their MALE-CENTRIC, TESTOSTERONE-LADEN viewpoint. Women screw up just as badly, just with different instincts driving them. It’s just that there are much more pressing issues than… Well, What you all preoccupy yourself with.
We humans need to realize just how limited we really are. We go through life, absolutely convinced of our own virtue and rectitude, even as we’re screwing ourselves over badly, chasing things that are ultimately irrelevant to what would actually make us happy.
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>>>I’m sorry, I stopped reading your comment after this. It’s just a little bit too much feminism on The Spearhead.
It’s not feminist. I’m not a woman.
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>>>I’m sorry, I stopped reading your comment after this. It’s just a little bit too much feminism on The Spearhead.
It’s not feminist. I’m not a woman. I’m just disgusted with humanity as it is.
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That Jennifer Whatshername is very disapointed at the discovery. Even when they are scientists, wimmin cannot help but being scum.
Disgusting. What a fuckhead she is.
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As a physicist, I can say with some certainty that most professional scientists have a very, very narrow view of the world and don’t engage in much big picture thinking. They are mostly taking the teeny-tiny baby steps of producing good data, getting published, getting grants and making the funding agents happy. The people who excel in science and get the good positions are people who are good at those things. So when they talk about big picture stuff they are just talking out of their ass for the most part.
However, what you are talking about it not limited to scientists, but the whole of modern human history. Its not clear that agriculture was a better way to acquire food or it made people happier, but its clear the higher population density made tribes more powerful. Its this desire to be more competitive that drives modernism, not so much the desire to be happy. Knuckleheads like Kaku ultimately just wants to make his very obtuse and mostly useless area of physics seem relevant and are really at the periphery of science and technology development.
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The book was written by a turncoat male. Not some idiot, but an educated man.
The end is approaching. When men find alliance with those who should be their enemy, it tells one crucial point:
that victory was achieved.
Like Frenchmen becoming collaborators. East Germans becoming border guards, shooting their own countrymen at Russian command.
Unless you fight it, it’s all over but for…the shouting?
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I have always laughed at the ‘men are disappearing’ rehtoric that women love to go on with. Women can’t do any of the more critical jobs in our society.
As far as living in a utopian society I already do. It’s called ‘Germany’. Mind you, it is not lost on me that I am railing against the creators of the system that I find so utopian which is predicated on the fact that 95%+ of men a slaves…
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Suigintou said,
Interesting…
There was a program not too long ago, I think on Discovery, about a Male-To-Female and Female-to-Male transsexual couple that had conceived a child. The genetic father was going to take the role of mother, and the genetic mother the role of father. They had both been on contrasexual hormones long enough they should have been sterile, and yet – here’s the new baby on the way!
Makes me wonder, maybe the drinking water is filled with prescription meds and pseudo-hormones for a reason. Personally, while I wouldn’t mind being as attractive as a woman, it’s just not possible (nor is that discussion germaine to the topic). But at the same time – if we’re all tailored to be basically hermaphroditic, then aren’t we basically cogs in the machine…? Maybe that’s the intent…?
Scary. (Even to someone between the two poles… That should tell you something!)
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Sorry, shouldn’t have posted that yet –
But it’s usually seen as easier to change the hardware (surgery) than the software (mind).
The problem is, the “software” is really a piece of HARDWARE, too. An organic computer is still a computer. But let’s play “paranoid conspiracy nut” for a few seconds.
Women are more attractive; subject to groupthink; more easily led; more emotional (thus more controllable with flimsy or manufactured evidence); lower overall in IQ; less prone to plan for the long term, ie: financial independence; and less physically robust (able to fight, carry weapons, absorb damage and still function, etc). Between the conversion of the body to a feminized state (induces association with the female species), the hormonal effects on the brain/body of both the born and unborn, inducing female-type connections and brain development, coupled with the educational system being tailored to cater to this sort of mental and social development – maybe it’s all one big conspiracy by the ruling elite to make us all placid, vapid, functionaries – sheeple, effectively one sex, with minor variances for aestehtic and procreative purposes, and if you follow the line of reasoning, the only “acceptable” relationships in the future would be “lesbian”, as even the XY-sexed member of the couple effectively identifies with females. and of course, it would be basically impossible to tell who is what until the clothes are fully off.
So maybe part fo the female supremicism is designed to induce gender dysphoria and female-form worship. I was reading someone yesterday who said that even in the gay community, the loss of masculinity has been noticed and is mourned.
I posit that the elites see us as “guinea pigs” anyway, expendable and unimportant, except as tools to achieve their own ends. In fact, more than one “Game” site has suggested that we act like sociopaths (act like, not become), so that we are less affected by rejection and problems with dating. I see this as a female mindset, too, as they are often divorced from reality (IE, a 3 thinks she’s a 7 – psychotic), and willing to fight about it (and will use deadly force without a thought, generally, whereas men would beat each other up, then buy each other a beer, generally – no malice, not personal). Then to escape punishment, she’ll blame everyone else, and manipulate emotions, etc. ad nauseum. but it’s not that she DID it, it’s THAT SHE GOT CAUGHT, The effects of her actions are meaningless (SOCIOPATHIC), it’s the effects on HER that she dislikes.
In school, I noticed that the “gifted” were being taught down to in most classes. Rather, the dumbest student had to “get it” before everyone else could move on. We set the bar at the lowest level, and then drag everyone down to that level, instead of setting the bar high and encouraging everyone to get as close as they can.
Maybe it’s the same thing here? Set the bar at the lowest (female, sorry – it’s often true), then drag down all the high-end achievers until they at that level. Reducing testosterone (and eventually eradicating sperm, as it is already NOT NEEDED – it is possible to fuse two egg cells into a “fertilized egg”), well… Give it 20-30 years of re-education, and adjustments, and scientific advancements, and manipulations of law and such – pretty soon, you’ll have a dumb, easily-led populace that is almost completely feminized, if not completely feminine, and the Government has the only means to reproduce – so do it their way, or not at all. Reduce the Testosterone to reduce the sex drive, and the outliers (make the M/F bellcurves match), feminize the embryos and make them crave safety, and grow up in a world where conformity and vapid things like fashion and beauty (consumerism) are core… And remove those who would rebel by genetic breeding (eugenics) or outright assassination (“Let’s you and he fight” taken to its extreme), until all the Masculine humans are incarcerated…
It’s a little frightening.
(Ok, everyone can remove their tinfoil hats and get back to real life now. Let’s pretend is over…)
But 1984 and Brave New World were prophetic, too.
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Modern Germany will only achieve utopia when the State provides free tickets to its lactating males wanting nursery seating at the latest Obama Opera:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/01/hopeful-new-obama-musical-set-to-premiere-in-germany.html
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The idea that females are more attractive is really pretty subjective, and has as much to do with the highly visual male mating instinct as anything else.
And the shelf life of their attractiveness is fairly short.
Their “attractiveness” seems to me to be an attractive to submissive/non-threatening suppleness and f-ability.
Whereas men who work out look like well engineered machines. Basically, it depends on how you define “attractive.” Men are muscle cars.
I think if you take the “what I want to bang” out of it and speak in terms of aesthetics, men and women just apples and oranges with their own stylistic pros and cons.
Yeah, I was thinking the same. More “attractive” maybe because they trigger arousal, but objectively speaking they are not all that special.
I mean, a nice rack, smooth skin and a perfect rear have a pronounced effect on me, but I can’t say that there is anything more beautiful about that than, say, a Greek temple, or even an alpine meadow in bloom. Aesthetics and sensuality are not exactly the same thing, although they are tied to some extent.
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Indeed. The Greek aesthetic favored the male physical form and praised male physical beauty over the female. It’s not set in stone that female beauty surpasses male beauty. We simply live in a culture that exalts female beauty rather than a culture that exalts male beauty, something which is exacerbated by the rampant homophobia in the culture, really.
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@Jean-
Nice posts. I like what you said.
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Yeah, that’s the line that shouted out over the rest at me too.
The furthest I’d go is that only some women are really attractive, and even then for only a short period. In childhood there’s little difference between the sexes, then most females start to bloom – but it’s as brief as any other flower. Once the bloom fades, the flower goes to hell and most women would be more attractive covered from head-to-toe, like the Arabs do (funny how burkhas are always made out to cover a woman’s sexual allure, when 99% of the time it really hides her ugliness).
The few women who remain truly attractive well past their 20s are so rare that they can make careers out of it appearing on television selling youth and beauty products – and even then, you’re not looking at their real face or hair, and it’s their figures that work the larger part of the illusion.
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I agree, in my opinion the male form is more perfect.
When I look at a beautiful female the only thing that makes me think she is attractive is the part of my brain saying ”fuck her, quick, fuck her now” whereas a perfectly sculpted male body looks like, as Jack Donovan said, a well engineered machine. The naked physical potential of the male form is obvious when it is in good shape.
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Yeah, I prefer the way males think to the way females think.
But, I think the only reason that is has to do with society, and how we just accept bio mechanics as normal. Girls, at an early age, are already attractive to 99% of the heterosexual male population, and people will be nice to them for no other reason than they’re cute. They don’t know what it’s like to be treated badly by someone and have no recourse, so much so that when they are treated badly, even if it’s totally justified, they’ll wail about how unfair things are and expect someone, anyone, to make it right for them.
They also aren’t very kind to their friends at all, and that makes me sick. I think that it is really a bio-mechanical reaction, a response to suppress competition for resources, but I think males have ones that are just as a bad or worse. It’s just that our society always tells them that they are perfect little flowers, whose emotions are 100% of the time good and fair and justified, and males are told they’re disgusting beings with horrible urges that must be suppressed, and that they’re, at their core, bad people. They therefore don’t have an impeccable opinion of themselves, and have a chance of being able to show kindness to others.
At least this is my theory. You all are probably going to respond with some bio-mechanical stuff, about how the way they are and the way I am are accidents of wiring.
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>>if we’re all tailored to be basically hermaphroditic, then aren’t we basically cogs in the machine…?
We’re already cogs in the machine.
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The few women who remain truly attractive well past their 20s are so rare that they can make careers out of it appearing on television selling youth and beauty products – and even then, you’re not looking at their real face or hair, and it’s their figures that work the larger part of the illusion.
Well, it depends what you like. I have always found mature women, including my wife, attractive. Put most grown women in a black teddy and a pair of heels, maybe a bit of lipstick, and they are perfectly bedworthy.
There are plenty of MILFs.
I think this obsession with little chickybabes might be an American thing.
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Why is Jennifer Hughes being quoted at all? The article says:
“Before men get too impressed with themselves, lead author Jennifer Hughes offers some words of caution: Just because the Y chromosome, which determines gender, is evolving at a speedy rate it doesn’t necessarily mean men themselves are more evolved.
On what basis is Jennifer Hughes in a position to ‘caution’ anyone about science? She’s an attorney.
I also challenge her right to practice in that profession. Hughes is quoted in the article as having said, “It’s kind of fun to say that men are going to die out…”
Extinction of men is ‘fun’ to talk about? Perhaps privately by insecure women but to do so in public is a qualified disgrace. How is she allowed to practice law if she has such flagrant disregard for human rights?
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