Edward O. Wilson: Marx was right, he had the wrong species
froes.dds.nl
froes.dds.nl
Also, on "A scientist would rather use another scientist's toothbrush than his terminology," I think that goes double for mathematicians. For instance, in complex analysis, "analytic," "holomorphic," "regular," "differentiable," and "complex differentiable" all mean the same thing in the context of functions/maps, with various subfields of mathematics adopting one or the other at various times.
"Some day, I will invent a machine that turns all marxists into ants. Then, we will all be happy."
I read The Insect Societies, and while I'm sure it was very useful for biologists, the ratio of detail to intellectual insight was much too large for me. I didn't dare to tackle the other ones.
http://www.atlassociety.org/cth--406-FAQ_Virtue_Selfishness....
The problem is that pure free markets allow those operating from base selfishness to prosper. You need a credible threat to keep these people in line. Rand perhaps hoped that an Atlas Shrugged style revolt of "prime movers" could provide that threat, but (1) it's much too blunt, (2) relies on Rand's simplistic view that humans are either ethical and productive or looters (which allows her to justify the consequences of that revolt), and (3) has very little chance of actually happening. Which means turning to the state to provide the necessary threat, compromising the cherished ideal of completely free markets. The state may operate imperfectly, and require an ever-vigilant electorate to ensure that it does not overstep its bounds and is constantly improving its methods in accordance with a well-specified set of metrics (which is true of just about any government function), but it's better than letting businesspeople run amok in the name of purity.
If you want to really understand humans, why ignore that fact?
We all know (from daily experience) that we need to trust / have faith / etc. in someone or something. No single human is able to start from 0 and to do it all by himself.
Now, the current faith of 'modern' (non religious) people seems to be one of: Science, Politics, Evolution (in the sense of: Nature will solve it all for us).
But: if the solution to a human problem can't really be found inside himself, that fact already excludes any possibility of being the human itself something similar to God (Batteries AKA All Solutions To All Problems Already Included).
Concluding: it's much more reasonable to actually believe in some God than the opposite. (And I really appreciate the intelligence/knowledge/wisdom of past generations.)
i.e. we are selfish and greedy.
If everyone recognized and accepted this we'd be able to move past fantasies like the free-market and "our leaders have our best interests in mind"
E.O. Wilson's point was that since each worker ant is closely related to the rest of the colony, and they can't reproduce themselves, it's in the best interest of their genes to look out for the colony. We could get a similar effect by sterilizing humans (perhaps this is why monarchies have used eunuchs as their closest advisors and attendants), but I don't think it'd go over well.
Ants are selfish and greedy too, when it comes to warfare between colonies.
The flip side is that human reason and imagination are powerful enough to be able to model socialist societies fairly well. You can actually build an army, or a Shaker community, out of genetically unrelated humans, which is more than you can say for, e.g., cats. But human large-scale social altruism is dependent on culture, law, ethics, and reason, which makes it much more unstable than the ant version.
Similarly, experiments that injected testosterone found that they could "manufacture" aggression in normally mild-mannered men (and women! that's one of the side-effects of steroid use in female athtletes).
Also, Shakers were celibate, which is perhaps more evidence for a connection between reproduction and aggression.
> At the end of the Ming Dynasty there were about 70,000 eunuchs ... Certain eunuchs gained immense power that occasionally superseded that of prime ministers.
The Wikipedia article goes on to make a few mistakes by suggesting that Eunuchs were the Emperors' henchmen, and doesn't mention the fact that several of the Ming emperors were in fact deposed, and more were politically neutered (hur hur) by palace eunuchs.
In other words, despite a total lack of testosterone, the eunuchs' behavior was still generally aggressive and status-seeking.
That makes a certain amount of sense, given the prevailing "design philosophy" [1] of evolved systems. Natural selection only produces incremental improvements, which means there are lots of little widgets doing similar things that are glued on in a half-random way. Self-interest and aggression are central to human behavior, so it seems silly to think --like alchemists who wanted to bottle essences like "heat" or "perfection"-- that all aggressive and self-interested behavior would disappear in the absence of one hormone.
[1] Creationism is bad, but sometimes its terms are handy.
For castration to have an effect on genetics, you'd need it'd need to be universal for hundreds, thousands or preferably, millions of generations. To affect memes it could happen within a few generations, but the science on that is a lot weaker.
That's why free markets work remarkably better than communism.
The command vs freee hand, particularly for physical goods production has been largely decided. I think very few politicians left that would directly control production in a red sort of a way. They might for micro political reasons, but probably wouldn't try to control the economy some other way.
Marx got moulded into a religious figure. But read in a similar context as Kant, Bentham, or even Ayn Rand, it's definitely interesting.
For example look at the "I, Pencil" essay (http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html) that argues that no single person knows how to make a pencil, at least not effectively. People of all walks of live contribute to our economy in varying degrees.
The history of science and technology is still told as the history of great men. Just look at the wealth of independent re-inventions, to see that seldom does progress hinge on individuals.
I still admire entrepeneurs and great scientists as great role models.
I think that being black-and-white in terms of your personal self is always a good way to be: if you always try to do the right thing for yourself regardless of what other people choose, then you're to be completely respected. But people who take that attitude and then try to cast it over an entire society (like Ron Paul, or Ayn Rand - though I think that the latter didn't actually think an entire society could work like that) ignore how incredibly complex any collection of people becomes, and how disastrous a black-and-white worldview would become.
I mainly read Ayn Rand as a criticism of the "truths" of the left wing, not as a very useful proponent of a laissez-faire society.
Anyway, free markets "punish" greed, by forcing those who want material wealth to work for it, instead of leeching of others. The reason taxation and politicians is a problem in free markets is exactly greed: anybody on the receiving end of public funds have little rational motive to seek to end that stream.
I would never call myself Republican (I hate social conservativism with a passion) nor libertarian (I hate that they've made such a mockery of themselves), but Rand certainly showed me that the far left was as crazy as the far right.
I think that free markets go too far in their "punishment" when they start punishing companies who ARE working for their wealth. As things stand right now, one side isn't being punished enough, while the other site is being punished too much.