Niko, I'm running out of superlatives to describe your newsletter! It just keeps getting better and better...
When are you going to accept levels of subscription? I'm totally opposed to paywalls and monetization of the forum... however, some of us I'm sure would love to support this effort you are making... So long as you keep all the information open to all, don't restrict comment privileges and all the other ills that bedevil the substack environment.
I'm curious as to your level of interest in the philosophy of progress. Or, to put it another way, the assumptions upon which a celebration of progress is built.
In your view, is more knowledge automatically a benefit? Do you see any limit to the amount of knowledge and power human beings can successfully manage?
Here's a kind of science fiction (?) biology question which you might use to further educate me. Imagine the plot of a movie...
Violent men drive some historic series of horrible events in the world. Say, nuclear weapons exchanges, or something of that scale.
These events cause some biologist to reflect that almost all the violence in the world at every level of society is committed by a small fraction of the human population, violent men. The biologist imagines a world with radically less violence, and thus, radically more money available for constructive purposes.
QUESTION: If this imaginary biologist decided to rid the world of violent men, or maybe men in general, how might they attempt to go about that?
So far I'm imagining something like they engineer a hyper transmissible virus which has no negative affect other than to prevent the infected from producing male offspring. I have no idea how realistic this is, or might become.
I'm in the middle of an article series about violent men and I'm attempting to obtain the most general understanding of where the field of biology is currently in relation to such questions, what possibilities the future might hold etc.
When readers ask me, "but how would we get rid of the men?" I'm interested in the degree to which current or future biology might provide one answer to that.
If such a question is at all realistic, either now or in coming years, this might illustrate the kind of radical social changes today's biology might lead to.
Niko, I'm running out of superlatives to describe your newsletter! It just keeps getting better and better...
When are you going to accept levels of subscription? I'm totally opposed to paywalls and monetization of the forum... however, some of us I'm sure would love to support this effort you are making... So long as you keep all the information open to all, don't restrict comment privileges and all the other ills that bedevil the substack environment.
I'm curious as to your level of interest in the philosophy of progress. Or, to put it another way, the assumptions upon which a celebration of progress is built.
In your view, is more knowledge automatically a benefit? Do you see any limit to the amount of knowledge and power human beings can successfully manage?
Are questions like this of interest to you?
Here's a kind of science fiction (?) biology question which you might use to further educate me. Imagine the plot of a movie...
Violent men drive some historic series of horrible events in the world. Say, nuclear weapons exchanges, or something of that scale.
These events cause some biologist to reflect that almost all the violence in the world at every level of society is committed by a small fraction of the human population, violent men. The biologist imagines a world with radically less violence, and thus, radically more money available for constructive purposes.
QUESTION: If this imaginary biologist decided to rid the world of violent men, or maybe men in general, how might they attempt to go about that?
So far I'm imagining something like they engineer a hyper transmissible virus which has no negative affect other than to prevent the infected from producing male offspring. I have no idea how realistic this is, or might become.
I'm in the middle of an article series about violent men and I'm attempting to obtain the most general understanding of where the field of biology is currently in relation to such questions, what possibilities the future might hold etc.
When readers ask me, "but how would we get rid of the men?" I'm interested in the degree to which current or future biology might provide one answer to that.
If such a question is at all realistic, either now or in coming years, this might illustrate the kind of radical social changes today's biology might lead to.