Oh, god, too many quotes. I'm not using them to reply-- sorry, I'm a dick and am getting out of the office in ten minutes.


Means of reproduction did not hinge on rape, meaning that we could have children without rape.

However, rape was a necessary function to our current society and population distribution as we know it.

They're two separate ideas.

As for your reference to "today's society", you're being incredibly ethnocentric. What is "today's society"? Does "today's society" only include Western individualistic culture, or are we also including collectistic cultures (which have a radically different set of social values)? Does "today's society" include third world countries? If so, does being particularly good at performing infibulation count as a talent?

Universal laws are so much under debate that I could not genuinely give you one. I suggest Googling something like (sociology "universal laws") or ("universal laws" "human behavior"). Or if you have access to JSTOR, their library is amazing.

You don't care about behaviors?? This entire thread was started on evaluating behaviors. Check the OP.

You're trying to assign stats to talents like we're playing D&D. It doesn't work that way. We've established that some talents are good and others... not so much. How do you assign those values in a study? I'm specific because I've had to do this, because people think it's so easy to design some half-assed study because they want to know the answers or prove a point. So they do and then churn out some incredibly inaccurate information that they go screaming from the rooftops is the honest truth of the world and then people like Fox News and Yahoo! go putting it on the front page and warp the next generation.

Also, IQ tests are inherently flawed and were one of those piss-poor designs I mentioned in the above paragraph.

All the talents you listed (run-time, approach, fights) are all physical stats that can be improved with practice, not something that is necessarily going to be innate. Which leads them back to behaviors and personality traits along the lines of "desirous of personal growth" which others can read as "never self-satisfied" or "overachieving tendencies" (which are negative traits).

And I'm not arguing that we're all the same.

I'm just arguing that your blase approach to designing such a study and how easy it would be to determine talents and assign them values in such a way as to provide an accurate sense of a person's value with a total picture of each person shows a desperate need of education in the field of social science.

nuh-uh!

haha ok dude i'm getting tired of trying to get my point across, you win

---------- Post added at 06:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:48 PM ----------

and i was referring to just American society, isolationism ftw

While you guys argue the merits of the case, I'm waiting to see those pics OP mentioned. :D

back in the mood to debate i guess.... and to see OPs pictures


whats wrong with being ethnocentric?

also, i'm not saying that such a study would be easy at all, it would take generations to get it down. however i disagree with you that "never self satisfied" and "overachieving tendencies" are always negative traits. to me those both sound like traits of innovators who want to improve the world, but to someone else it might sound like someone with low self-esteem. i think we have two different ideas about what "talent" is. from what i understand of your posts, its the ability to perform a task. i dont completely disagree with that but i think the word "talent" relates more to things people are born with like a quicker wit etc...

since when do actions need to be good or bad? someone's ability to memorize text can be good or bad depending on what they use it for, but it'd still be possible to test them on that and quantify how good they are at it (how many characters/words/whatever they can memorize until they mess up). i challenge you to name one characteristic (not task) that a person can have a natural advantage for, and not be able to quantify it.

---------- Post added at 12:12 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:10 AM ----------

EDIT: i found a cool book on my shelf that i havent picked up in a long time called "The Measure of Man" by a dude named Stephen Jay Gould. its very relevant to this thread

LOL. That would get the thread going in a whole other direction. I don't have rights to post pictures yet, sorry:devious:

Surely the more well rounded people would have more of a place than you are giving them credit for event :-) . I also dont understand on like this totem pole of qualities, you rank as a skill 'ability with the ladies'. Like thats something incredibly special - not 'fantastic interpersonal skills that can get the most out of those the person is working with' but 'good at pulling the ladies'.
I am afraid you would think I mix with wierdos - people who judge a person - as we all do when we are deciding what we think of them - by 'heart and intent'. Maybe the fact that most of them are 'more mature' and closer to the grave gives them a different perspective on life and the world.

This, and several other things in your most recent post, illustrate to me that you're never going to grasp concepts basic to social science. Hopefully you'll end up being forced to take a class or two and something will sink in.

Until then, I'm out of this thread.

i've taken soc sci 101, i just dont see how making claims that something being "bad" or "good" is scientific at all. when was the last time any textbook made a prescriptive statement about a condition, viewpoint, or event? its personal opinion that makes certain things good or bad. but then again maybe i'm wrong and it sounds like you've spent alot more time studying this than i have. would you care to make like a DJ and break it down for me? (sorry for the terrible jokes, Jazz's influence is irresistible)

moving onwards:
@ChineseCrested, i completely agree with you. picking up girls isn't the ONLY thing that should be quantified; i was just throwing out examples. "competency at making friends" and "propensity to use words, not fists" are right up there too but being a 21 year old who is young, dumb, and full of common sense, that's what my mind jumped to first.
@Baraka, just you saying those things makes me think that you're reciting a creed for a secret guild of assassins... bookish assassins

Back to the original post. Not good taste to send a co worker unsolicited swimwear shots and that sort of thing. Chatting about how well you feel your work out stuff is going, and how much better you feel physicaly and emotionaly to fellow staff over coffee - thats acceptable. You might well look good in a bikini - but you wouldnt really expect to wear one to a Buck House tea party and be let in - unacceptable dress code.

Yes, a "better person," in general, is very hard to recognize. On the other hand, I see a lot of people who are better than I am in terms of specific attributes--better memory, better physical strength, better health, etc.

Ludwik Kowalski (see Wikipedia)
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