[ExI] The mosque at Ground Zero

[Keith Henson]

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 3:04 AM,  John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> And Mayor Bloomberg is free to say what's on his mind because of something that is in that very same Constitution; just as I am free to say that Islam is a collection of repulsive and amazingly stupid ideas that is causing great harm to the world,

Sigh.  Islam is a meme set that affects humans the same as every other
religious meme set.  The current xenophobic nature of it to be
expected since the majority of its holders are facing a bleak future.

The same goes for the fundamentalist sects in the US for exactly the
same reason.  A majority of them were members of the middle class, now
much shrunken.  Between fundamentalist Islam in Arab countries and
fundamentalist Christianity in the US, can you really make a judgment
call as to which is worse?  At least Islam (here) isn't trying to take
a major part of science out of the curriculum

Unless economic conditions get substantially better, wired in human
psychological mechanisms from the stone age will make memes like those
of John increasingly common and eventually lead to wars.

> as are weak minded effetes in the west, who would label themselves a bad person in their own mind, if they did not defend the actions of a gang of thugs and drooling imbeciles from criticism.

Political correctness is part of the "prosperous times between wars"
ways that we try to pretend that groups of people are essentially the
same to reduce the xenophobia that builds up in times leading up to
wars.  Groups are *not* the same, having been under different
selective pressures at least since the beginning of agriculture.

Even the evolutionary psychologists are caught in this.  Depending on
when selection for specific traits happened, humans can be very
similar.  Nazi Germany, Cambodia and Rwanda are examples of "evolved
in the stone age" psychological mechanisms.

Without some wild card such as nanotech, AI or other aspects of the
singularity, the odds are that John's attitude will eventually become
dominate in the US.  The end point is the US going to war with Islamic
populations and being responsible for the deaths of perhaps a billion
people (or more).  Or maybe the Russians will do it instead.  They
have more Islamics and a common boarder with some of the Islamic
countries.

So far, EP is a really unsatisfactory field of study.  It is
relatively easy to understand such things as the current direction of
Islamic memes or the meme set that has captured John, but it doesn't
suggest courses of action that are sensible or acceptable.

Stone age psychological mechanisms and weapons for killing masses of
people are an explosive mix.

Keith