Humanity Will Destroy Itself Through Stupidity, Not Artificial Intelligence
In a small section of a recent personal blog post, I argued that science, medicine, & technology have, in a sense, failed humanity. I argued that they did so by defeating evolutionary pressures that generally lead to the death of people, populations, and genes that confer either no beneficial traits or even confer disadvantaging traits. And because such people, who likely would have died because they are unable to learn from events and knowledge bases like doctors, stay alive and reproduce, outlets like Goop thrive.
Important clarification, as several people have wondered if I am hinting at eugenics, or the idea that we need to deliberately remove a group of people from the genetic pool through such means as forced sterilization, etc as the Nazis envisioned, To be crystal clear, I am not suggesting anything like that at all. Eugenics in any form is an abomination and crime against humanity.. Rather, I am suggesting that humanity, through science, medicine, and technology, has exempted itself from suffering the natural consequences of poor decision-making.
It’s not an argument I’ve thoroughly fleshed out, but it seems quite plausible to me based on many issues currently facing our species.
Case in point: the remarkable success of vaccines has led to a world in which the diseases that vaccines overcame are so rare, that anti-vaxxers can claim that such diseases were never that severe in the first place. People can believe them for the simple reason that almost no one has ever seen whooping cough, measles, mumps, polio, smallpox, etc. If herd immunity didn’t exist and vaccines didn’t work, or even if they didn’t work quite as well as they do, it would be much harder to make those arguments.
Despite the many people working as hard as they can to stop the bullshit and nonsense of Gwyneth Paltrow and her motley crew of quackadoodle “doctors,”, it doesn’t seem to be working. Her followers continue to grow in number, and their stupidity grows instead of diminishes. They actively reject the knowledge, experience, and evidence that says that Paltrow and her ilk are ignorant, clueless, and only out to scam people out of their money and enrich themselves further.
I’ve grown so pessimistic about humanity, that I really think that it will take something cataclysmic, something that kills off large numbers of people, before this trend changes. Until it becomes inescapably obvious that Paltrow and everyone like her is nothing more than a modern-day snake oil salesperson.
And then I think about my 2 daughters, and I weep for the world they will apparently inherit as they grow up.
I wonder what some of the really smart & thoughtful people I know on Google+ think of my little theory? David Amerland Gideon Rosenblatt Gina Fiedel Mark Traphagen Yonatan Zunger Viana , Dave DeBaeremaeker Natassia Velez Bruce Marko
Originally shared by Charles Younger
“As the Goop website has emerged as a reliably laughable source of pseudoscience, a small army of journalists (myself included), doctors, researchers, and bloggers has evolved to pounce on Goop’s claptrap as soon as it’s out. We explain why jade eggs for vaginas, $30 sex ‘dust,’ and body stickers that ‘promote healing’ are misleading drivel. In the best cases, we use Goop’s bunk to teach people about how actual science works. It’s practically a parasitic relationship.
“Recently, though, I’ve been asking myself what impact all this debunking is having… “
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/7/19/15988180/gwyneth-paltrow-goop-jade-egg-debunkers