Is remilie’s question trying to ask whether man will ever ‘evolve’ into something similar to Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’?
“Progress”, what an amusing little bedtime story we like to tell ourselves. It seems, from my perusal of history, that there will never come a time in which we do not find stupid things to argue about. Indeed, if the doomsayers are right, and we have a general resource collapse, expect there to be a great deal of “regression” on social issues. Generally, rarified discussions like “gun control” and “gay marriage” are the luxuries of a very affluent society.
So, in a sense, the richer we get, the more able we would be to insulate ourselves from people we don’t much like–and thus less likely to care about what they do if they don’t do it in front of us. This leads to a “toleration by default” attitude. It’s not “progress”, it’s a luxury.
It seems that ideological arrogance may very well be an instinctive human trait, given that it is the one thing that all people share–my dogmas are innately right and represent the pinnacle of human thought while all other dogmas are “degenerate”, “less evolved”, “primitive”, or some other insult that boils down to “not like me am be bad”.
Now, if we ever shed ideological arrogance–THAT would be a groundshaking event. Unfortunately, there may be a real survival need for it–can’t go around testing every single possible proposition every single time: Is that food this time? Will stepping into THIS pit break my leg? We may be hard-wired to be dogmatic simply to keep us from killing ourselves through excess metaphysical skepticism.
I would say not. The Übermensch is not merely someone unfettered by “old-fashioned” moral strictures. He also does not allow himself to be weakened by pity, love, or concern for his inferiors. The Nietzschean model is actually surprisingly Christian in its anthropology. Modern humanity is debased, inferior to its original forebears. It requires the presence of the Übermensch to have any sort of progress. The difference is pretty much in the details.
I don’t know how much of a factor it is, but the internet/information stage of the world’s societal evolution definitely has a role in destroying Fundamentalism and other totalitarian modes of thought control.
Then I see the 60 Minutes story last night on North Korea’s brainwashing tactics, and it looks like it’s gonna be 2 steps backward before mankind moves on. (The story showed NK’s youth being drilled that Americans are the new Nazis, and the method of teaching them this is…you won’t believe it…Anne Frank’s Diary.)
To me this sounds more like a case of your meme being more or less evolutionarily advantageous than a religious meme. In which case there are some pretty strong arguments both for and against your case. Religious memes generally have the following traits which tend to make them highly successful at transmitting to others. [ul]
[li]People with a religious meme are more likely to try to convert someone to their way of thinking than people without a religious meme. (You hardly ever see atheist missionaries.)[/li][li]Religious meme’s appeal to people who are disenchanted with life, or the world around them, and offer the promise of escape.[/li][li]Religious memes tend to encourage the holder of the meme to feel superior to those who don’t share the meme.[/li][li]A religious meme tends to offer some code of morality as a condition to the promised paradise/reward/payback. This helps establish a more stable society as long as the meme is not threatened by outside influences or competing memes.[/li][/ul]
That having been said, religious memes are also responsible for a lot of ugly historical happenings (i.e. Crusades, persecution, intolerance, repression of ideas. etc.), as well as some ugly current happenings, such as the proposed violation of the American constitution. There must be an alternative meme which would be as successful as religion without the bad stuff. Find it, and the world will forever thank you.
Okay.
If you accept that:
Intelligence has an evolutionary advantage;
and
Intelligence tends to effect more sophisticated belief systems;
and
That which has an evolutionary advantage tends to become more common, and as it does so, its effects become more common as well;
Then:
Intelligence will become more common, and as it does so, more sophisticated belief systems will become more common as well.
There are of course some problems with this.
First, it is possible that there is something other than intelligence that affects our belief systems. But if the thing has any selective advantage, we can replace “intelligence” with it in every instance above and it still works. It is when it doesn’t have any advantage that we have a problem: it is possible, for instance, that it is affected simply by skepticism or a lack thereof, which has no evolutionary advantage. If that is the case then the conclusion above is invalid.
Second, there is the problem that even if intelligence is what affects our belief systems, it doesn’t have any selective advantage. This is especially true in modern society, where we try to make sure that everyone, intelligent or stupid, has enough means to support a family.
Nevertheless, I think the OP’s argument is perfectly valid, although I think it is more likely that social change will be what ultimately causes humans to reject their ignorant beliefs.
That and the Straight Dope, of course.
Then how would evolution take place? A species as a whole doesn’t march in unison towards further change. There would have to be differing individuals whose relative advantage favours them to spawn a larger “survivable” family tree than others.
A very questionable assumption. I don’t have a cite, but I would suspect that if you looked at IQ* vs number of children produced, you’d find that there was a positive correlation in pre-industrial societies, but a negative correlation in modern industrial societies. Since we’re talking here about the latter type of societies, I don’t see the evolutionary advantage.
*Defining intelligence is very difficult. For this purpose of this debate, I think we can use IQ as a good working definition.
A few terms used in the original post rankle me.
Species do not have “infancies” or “childhoods”, nor, for that matter, do they have an “adult” stage. Those are not evolutionary terms at all. These terms presume some sort of pre-set development, and evolution is not pre-set.
That being said, yes, we are culturally evolving. That doesn’t mean we’re getting “better” or “more mature”, it just means that we are changing over time. Only time will tell if these changes are “better” or if the most survival-strong changes actually fit with one ideology’s or another’s standards of “improvement”.
Evolution’s kind of scary that way–there’s no guiding hand to ensure that things get “better”.
Unfortunately I don’t think there are any such statistics.
To address the matter deductively, then, I think there would still be an evolutionary advantage in intelligence, albeit a slight one, in modern societies, for obvious reasons. At the very least I don’t see any reason to think that there is a negative correlation between intelligence and reproduction, unless you can give me one.
But again, I’m not trying to advocate the OP’s ideas, just explain where I think they come from.
And thirdly, I think I should point out, simply for the sake of my fragile ego, that I already acknowledged that point in my post, down toward the bottom. You did read the entire post, didn’t you, John Mace?
Dogface I understand your point, and we could discuss how “better” is subjective and there is no universal “better”, but I want to focus on another aspect of my question; which is:
I am sure that most everybody agrees with me that the fact that the vast majority of people do not believe that thunder is a God being angry is probably a good thing. Also, you would probably agree with me that the fact that we no longer burn witches at the stake is also a good thing.
So, what I am trying to ask is: Will we ever culturally evolve to something where we leave the bad/mean/opressive behaviors and false beliefs behind? Will we evolve towards more truth and away from myth??
I think you all know what I mean by the question above. This community is made up of some of the best thinkers I have ever had the pleasure to read - Is there a way to answer the essence of my question without debates about evolution, truth, or whether ‘better’ is actually ‘better’?
What makes you think that isn’t already happening? Judging simply from the events of the past hundred years, I would say we’ve moved forward quite well, and there is no reason to think it won’t continue.
I read your whole post, and you said you didn’t think intelligence had any selective advantage. That’s a bit different from my point. I believe it is negatively correlated, at least to a small degree. And if you look at memes, instead of genes, the correlation is pretty strongly negative-- in contradiction to the OP. The culturally religious groups are the ones that tend to encourage and produce larger families.
What makes you think that such a direction would be “beyond” anything? Or that it would lead us to anything “higher”?
One thing’s for sure: higher education strongly correlates with less belief in religion. It also correlates with fewer children. If anything, we’re evolving away from atheism.
And that difference is called “variation”. Individuals vary, and those variations that impart some edge in the competition for resources are more likely to be passed on to the next generation. Slowly, the average phenotype of the population changes from generation to generation. But no single individual guides the path of change; indeed, a single individual does not change at all, in any meaningful evolutionary way. Evolution is what happens when populations change.
That is a good point, and one I had not thought of. (If someone mentioned it earlier in the thread, I forgot it.)
Still, I would have to see statistical evidence of a correlation (with either the meme or the gene) to be convinced of it.
At any rate I think we can agree that biology does not have much to do with it compared with social factors.
Someone did mention it earlier. Me. 
Well, no one has produced any hard data either way in this thread. I think it’s a very reasonable assumption-- much more reasonable than the opposite.
Agreed.
Now, how does that differ from consensus gentium? If many people agree on something, that doesn’t necessarily make it true–or false.
You still abuse the term “evolution” as you have before. Your question cannot be validly answered until it is validly framed.