I am really happy to be here. I love this planet, I love this species, and I love this universe. Sometimes (often) I get so overwhelmed by this place that I feel like I am going to explode. Tonight my barriers holding the excitement back fell to the jumping, pacing, happy, overwhelmed Grayson within. First it was negligible senescence, then it was multiverse theory, then it was genetics, then neutron stars. I got excited and giddy as hell. I couldn’t even stay seated. I don’t know why it is that this happens. It is like a tick, crippling if held back. Continue reading Bursting at the seams
Tag Archives: humanity
Charitable Walmart
I’m about to make an argument on a premise that not many people agree with me on. I guess that’s a pretty silly idea but hell, I’m doing it anyways. I wrote a post not long ago encouraging people to be more selfish. You can read it here. But the general gist of it is that selfishness is not synonymous with greed and that if one is truly concerned with oneself, then they will inevitably help everyone more than someone who strives for selflessness. An analogy would be to giving an employee a higher wage so they can come to work without hunger and therefore, be more productive. Sometimes, I understand that this is not the case, that to the employer, the benefit of satiety is minute in comparison to the cost of feeding. But I argue that this is a dynamic stage, not a homeostatic one. I believe from fundamental logic of thermodynamics that an economy can reach equilibrium unless restrained by external interference. Of course there will be unemployment but there will be less than if restricted by regulation.
So here I go. Grant me that initial premise and you may realize this one. Or maybe the combination of two seemingly faulty premises will help with acknowledging that I may not be a quack after all.
Walmart is actually an awesome corporation. There I go; I said it. I know I’m not the first one and I imagine (I hope) I won’t be the last. Why is Walmart awesome despite the overwhelming hatred for it and its customer base to be, shall we say, less than classy and occasionally inbred? Walmart is great exactly because it is as selfish as it can possibly be.
The truth about the natural world
The natural world is a threatening, hostile, deadly place. Nearly everything wants to prey on our flesh and steal our life. It knows not love nor compassion and was not made for us. I know it is deceptively beautiful and its fruits are deceivingly delicious. But if nature has no use for us, it will consume us, digest us, and crap us out like we never existed.
I am sick of this idea of nature as our medicine or this concept of this home as a peaceful abode. This is a hostile world, full of death and disease. A shark doesn’t keep from eating a human from some obscure sense of respect for humanity; it refrains because a human is foreign and strange and the risk of poisoning is not worth the reward of an easy meal. Continue reading The truth about the natural world
In support of gene therapy
I have kept no secret of my support for genetic modification in solving many of the world’s problems. But that support, being incredibly controversial outside of the scientific community, has brought to my attention many misconceptions about genetic modification of humans or other organisms. I have received many arguments against my beliefs on the internet as well as in discussion with my friends. I wanted to address one of those misconceptions here to present, in an organized fashion, where I stand and why my platform shouldn’t be so lonely. Continue reading In support of gene therapy
Time to graduate
Illogical thinking is the cause of war. So does that mean logic and reason would result in world peace? I believe it would.
Animals follow simple rules of nature. Animals have a desire to reproduce and a desire to survive. They have adapted to environments to best suit their needs and grow to allow them to spread their genetic code. These are traits of every productive animal. That is, it was consistent until education and logic. Humanity is the first and only species on this planet to have overcome these animalistic cravings. That is not to say that everyone has overcome them. The world is littered with people who believe these rebellions to be satanic, preaching birth control and other modern advancements as evil. But I do believe that the overcoming of primitive urges will be the cure to every problem the world faces. I am no hippie. Hear me out. World peace is a product. But the change itself is the real goal. Continue reading Time to graduate
Post Script
I feel the need to clarify some things written in a post titled “My reason for god” as well as state some things I forgot to mention and highlight some other points.
To me, god is not defined in the undefined. God is not limited to what we cannot explain. In that, we would simply be admitting to inadequacy. Instead, I believe in those points, god can be evident. However, what I really see as god is a belief that this is all too strange to have been an accident. With that said, I believe that thought can be left at that. I do not have claim to have conversations with this force nor do I claim to be able to define it. I simply filled in the three letter word in place of my amazement of existence.
When I was younger, I abandoned the term god for that word above, existence. Continue reading Post Script
Reinstating selection
Humanity needs survivors. No one can deny that. We need people who are strong, people who are smart and healthy. We need people who are hard working, compassionate, and logical. All these qualities arguably can result from natural selection. However, in current American society, we have all but completely suppressed natural selection and are heading towards a complete abandonment of artificial selection. Continue reading Reinstating selection
Hitler was a jackass
Natural selection, the process that has the greatest influence on evolution of species has, for the most part, stopped occurring for the human species. This is nothing new. It can occur in any population or species when there are unlimited resources and insignificant predation. On the surface, infinite resources seems like a blessing to humanity, and in almost all cases, it is. However, the one exception to the rule is a frightening one and one that we will eventually have to deal with.
The end of illogical thinking
I want you to just imagine for a moment. Imagine every word I am saying. Pause with each sentence and see the image I challenge you to see. I want you to separate yourself from this world and imagine yourself as god-like. First you are observing yourself from behind, watching you at your computer.
Then imagine the world. You are between the earth and the moon, floating in a black emptiness, looking down at our blue-green lush planet with white clouds swirling about. It is an amazing celestial body, surely one of the greatest. It is floating in this vast darkness just as you are, with no hand of Atlas holding it nor a web to keep it suspended. It simply floats, orbiting an even more massive body that illuminates our earth and provides it with the energy that allowed life to flourish.This is our home. This is where we and everyone who has ever existed was born, lived, and died. Alongside the young species of man are millions of other creatures. It is an extremely vast community, one that we struggle to see as a whole. Imagine for a moment that there are no Saddam Husseins or Osama bin Ladens or Adolf Hitlers. The world is peaceful and everyone is amazed with their predicament. We are united on this globe. Everyone, all seven billion of us are content for these moments in peace.
Interstellar travel
I was rereading the Wikipedia page “Interstellar Travel” earlier today and was very frustrated about their discussion of impossibility. I guess this could be a recurring theme in my life. The only thing that is impossible is that something could be impossible. Everything instead can be discussed in the range of probabilities. It is possible for me to walk through a wall. Seriously I can do it, it just is highly improbable. But the writers of this article talk about interstellar travel as if it should be relegated to science fiction. Why then are hundreds if not thousands of physicists and engineers around the world searching for better methods to accomplish such travel? Someone has hope and at the expense of increasing my rank of nerd, I am one of them. I almost wish Wikipedia was not ever changing so that we could reflect like a textbook on the progression from impossible to reality. Impossible has become a word that is illogical to use. Everything is a theory. At one point in time there was a theory that it was impossible for a human to pass the sound barrier. Since that belief we have created a commercial airliner that could travel faster than that. And now there are physicists (who may truly be insane) that believe that the “light barrier” is only fictional.