# How Can We Plausibly Best Improve Humanity **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 4, 2011, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297 "2011-01-04T02:16:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ecco477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b2d939/32.png) [@ecco477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ecco477)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/61 "2011-01-05T13:29:51Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > **ecco477** dares us… > > Far too many rabbit holes to choose from, so I’m stepping back from this particular path. You are making my point. Real science is possibility:D, not the **inability** to see possibility:p. Sorry to break it to you…but you’re… normal. Thinking…normal, Creativity…normal… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/62 "2011-01-05T14:36:30Z")
> [@ecco477](#): > > **ALL science was called quackery AT FIRST**. Science only is what it is now because of people like me. If science were left to people like you, we’d still be in the dark ages! Keep that in its proper perspective, **ecco477:** It is also true that quacks are **real,** and that quackery is a whole lot easier than science and often pays better, and that for every Galileo there are at least a thousand [TimeCube Guys.](http://www.timecube.com/) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/63 "2011-01-05T14:42:21Z")
> [@ecco477](#): > > Back to the original question about improving humanity…it will never happen as long as people have negative(or bad) attitudes. **Repairing a damaged area is far better than dousing it** …doesn’t it then seem to make far more sense to repair damage to keep people from being violent/angry/obsessive/etc? Why would you NOT vote yes to that kind of technology, whether it needs to be created or not. If you mean a technology that governs human emotional states . . . Well, many would object based on “liberty,” just as they would object to a government scheme to dose all our food and water with mellowing-out drugs, even if it would demonstrably reduce the crime rate to zero. Remember that _Brave New World_ was written as a **dystopia** and practically everybody reads it as one. And if the technology were simply marketed and its use left to the individual, not all would use it to **keep** themselves from being violent/angry/obsessive/etc. Some, far more than you might expect, would far rather use it like the berserkergang-inducing drug in [_Jacob’s Ladder._](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob%27s_Ladder_(film)) ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/64 "2011-01-05T14:58:14Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I’ll finish… God. > > That game was off-topic and silly, wasn’t it? Its about as silly as the position some people have about religion’s role in human suffering. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/65 "2011-01-05T15:02:35Z")
> [@ecco477](#): > > You are making my point. Real science is possibility:D, not the **inability** to see possibility:p. Sorry to break it to you…but you’re… normal. Thinking…normal, Creativity…normal… PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH: Nothing is impossible if you can imagine it! That’s what being a scientist is all about! CUBERT: No, that’s what being a magic elf is all about! ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/66 "2011-01-05T15:08:22Z")
From now on to hold a position of power, corporate or government, you must have ovaries, not balls! Yeah, I know, women can be corrupt too. But I say, roll the dice, they could hardly botch it up worse than the men have. Especially at peace talks - no men allowed! You want peace to prevail, put a mother to the task! You want education, healthcare for all, again, put a mother in charge. You know what else I think would improve the world? You know how you always see politicians being sworn into office? Hand on bible, very ceremonial, etc. I want some bite in that oath. I want consequences, clearly delineated for failure to deliver, for corruption etc. Harsh, swift consequences. I want the bastards to tremble when they take that oath, damnit! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/67 "2011-01-05T15:10:12Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > …really? I don’t hold that view myself anymore, but I was raised with it and most of the Christians I know have expressed the same. From [_The Next American Nation,_](http://www.amazon.com/NEXT-AMERICAN-NATION-Nationalism-Revolution/dp/0684825031) by [Michael Lind:](http://www.newamerica.net/people/michael_lind) > [@](#): > > Conservatives do not recognize how much the nation has changed since the fifties in its religious attitudes. It may be that the religion of nominal Christians in the United States can no longer be described as traditional trinitarian Christian. The scholarly term for their belief is henotheism, the belief that all ethnic groups and cultures have, and should have, their own gods and rites. In Christian theology, this is the heresy of indifferentism. Robert Linder and Richard Pierard have described the evolution of American civil religion: “Its umbrella has changed from evangelical consensus to Protestantism-in-general, to Christianity-in-general, to the Judeo-Christian tradition in general, to deism-in-general.” The decline in belief in Christianity as the only true religion has been extraordinarily rapid in the United States. In a poll taken in 1924 in Muncie, Indiana, 94 percent of high school students agreed that “Christianity is the one true religion and all peoples should be converted to it.” By the late 1970s, merely 38 percent of respondents in a later poll in Muncie agreed that Christianity was the only true faith. Two-thirds of the respondents in a 1991 poll agreed that Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists “pray to the same God.” And that’s America. Europe is far, far more “post-Christian.” Don’t really know as to Latin America, but I’ve never heard of any zealous missionary movements coming out of there. And the Catholic doctrine of [_Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_salvation_outside_the_Church) **as officially interpreted,** now includes loopholes for pagans. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/68 "2011-01-05T15:15:16Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > From now on to hold a position of power, corporate or government, you must have ovaries, not balls! > > Yeah, I know, women can be corrupt too. But I say, roll the dice, they could hardly botch it up worse than the men have. > > Especially at peace talks - no men allowed! You want peace to prevail, put a mother to the task! > > You want education, healthcare for all, again, put a mother in charge. Paging Margaret Thatcher . . . ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/69 "2011-01-05T16:58:48Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > From now on to hold a position of power, corporate or government, you must have ovaries, not balls! > > Yeah, I know, women can be corrupt too. But I say, roll the dice, they could hardly botch it up worse than the men have. > > Especially at peace talks - no men allowed! You want peace to prevail, put a mother to the task! “Come back with your shield or on it.” - _Spartan mother to her son_. Women have historically been as fond or more so than men of warfare. The idea that women are more peace loving than men is nonsense; they are only less willing to risk themselves personally. Which IMHO is why women suddenly collectively decided they were pro-peace as soon as aerial bombing and long distance artillery was invented; suddenly they were at risk of harm even if their side was winning, it wasn’t a matter of just sending men out to die for them anymore. That doesn’t apply to some female leader sitting in a bunker or thousands of miles away though. As said, look at Margaret Thatcher. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/70 "2011-01-05T17:02:22Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > The idea that women are more peace loving than men is nonsense; they are only less willing to risk themselves personally. You could make a case that this is perfectly in accord with biological imperatives: A man’s duty to the community is to fight, a woman’s is to breed, and of the two the woman is less expendable. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2011, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/71 "2011-01-05T18:27:34Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You could make a case that this is perfectly in accord with biological imperatives: A man’s duty to the community is to fight, a woman’s is to breed, and of the two the woman is less expendable. Certainly. And the irrational behavior here is men throwing their lives away, not women declining to do so. I was just objecting to the attempt to portray women as morally superior. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2011, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/72 "2011-01-06T01:57:53Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > From [_The Next American Nation,_](http://www.amazon.com/NEXT-AMERICAN-NATION-Nationalism-Revolution/dp/0684825031) by [Michael Lind:](http://www.newamerica.net/people/michael_lind) > > And that’s America. Europe is far, far more “post-Christian.” Don’t really know as to Latin America, but I’ve never heard of any zealous missionary movements coming out of there. And the Catholic doctrine of [_Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_salvation_outside_the_Church) **as officially interpreted,** now includes loopholes for pagans. Perhaps it shows that more high school students are ignorant of what various religions actually believe since Buddhists do not have an official deity and even bodsitavvas (yeah I spelled it wrong) are more accurately saints rather than gods. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2011, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/73 "2011-01-06T02:45:10Z")
Not morally superior, just more trustworthy and less inclined to violence. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2011, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297/74 "2011-01-06T05:00:13Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > Not morally superior, just more trustworthy and less inclined to violence. That is portraying them as morally superior. I see no evidence that women are less warlike than men, and I have no idea where you got the impression they are more trustworthy. Women lie and betray as enthusiastically as any man. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-plausibly-best-improve-humanity/566297.md?page=3)