I don't want this to go to the wayside. Please respond, Haglund. I wish for an answer, because I wish to prove to you that the concept "meaning of life" is basically a futile, meaningless concept, but you can only internalize that truth by answering my questions truthfully and honestly.

So please do answer my questions, otherwise face the fact that your opinion is undefended, and therefore false.

I asked a straight question, to which you answered (as far as I can see) that the meaning for your life is that the gods can watch us.

For me that is not a meaning, but a view. What meaning do you see there?

And if you don't see any meaning in "so that the gods can watch us" either, I'll ask you, to please tell us at least, what end does that non-meaning serve you with? The gods watch us. So what? What is your opinion on the gods watching us?

I am sorry, but I asked a straight question, to which you answered (as far as I can see) that the meaning for your life is that the gods can watch us.

And now that we settled that, I'll ask you, what end does that meaning serve you with?

For me that's not giving meaning to life. — Haglund

What is the meaning of life? In your own words or less.

If we reduce "religion" as a system of belief that invovles a supernatural deity, and we at the same time strip from "religion" the criteria of its social or rather sociological nature, then is it possible or impossible, for a person who is the only believer in his "religion" to know that it's nothing but mere phantasy? If yes, then why would he or she want to believe in it and follow its prescribed traditional behavior patterns? Some Jewish folks do that: they call themselves "tradition-following culturally Jewish atheists."

Well, depends on the size of the religion. If two followers, chances are only one is in the know. If two billion followers, then chances are that the number must be higher than one, you're right.

For me, even being atheist, philosophies of God and religions have their significance. Mostly when examining them through the transcedental human need and how they attempt to cover-describe it throughout history. Plus the moral base that humans try to establish via each religion. — dimosthenis9

This leads me to the consideration that just like in New-Age soothsaying and personality slating, the therapist/chart reader must be painfully aware that he or she is a despicable charlatan, so in old time religions there always must have been at least one person who knew that the whole supernatural superstructure over the domain of mankind was mere fantasy.

And certainly bad-faith discussion is certainly not limited to religious folks - if only! — StreetlightX

Was this pun intentional? Brilliant!

Have you ever been tempted to try stand up comedy? It is something I think about from time to time. — I like sushi

I don't know whom you are addressing there, as you did not refer to whose post you are responding to. But I find it rather odd and at the same time dangerously complimenting, that you think, from time to time, about my ever getting tempted to try stand up comedy.

I did not say sexual selection is unsupportable. I just said there is a chance that it does not work, and if we were to decide once and for all whether it works or not, we need more empirical evidence.

As to mega-mutations happening or not, you're right, their chances are very small, but then again, "regular" mutations that change human appearance and functionality in huge ways are not happening every five minutes either within a lineage of humans. Such as opposable thumbs, locking knees, or liking to do crossword-puzzles. When was the last time you witnessed a guy's child get born with non-opposable thumbs? It must be happening just as often as some Goffo-bodom monkeys in the Amazonas rain forest getting children with opposable thumbs. So declaring yourself that "such and such mutation can't happen" is like the story of the proverbial man, who comes to the big city from his farm, goes to the zoo, stands in front of the enclosure with the giraffe, looks at the animal, up and down, up and down, and they he solemnly and categorically declares, "Such an animal as this does not exist."

Knowledge is about how to do things.

Wisdom is about what to do. — Banno

Agreed. Wisdom is also about what not to do.

Similarly, knowledge is also what how to do it not.

Does crop insurance not take "too good competition" into consideration?

That's A. B. is that not all overabundant crop goes to no income or too little income. There are ways to preserve food these days; much more robustly and easily and cheaply than in the past. I have not heard of farmers dumping their crop into the garbage or the seas. Much like in the movie industry there are no losers for money-making by even the worst made movies.

Who is to say that god didn't create all the animals in their present form 5000 years ago, and leave fossils in the ground to tease heretical archaeologists. — hypericin

Are you saying that there are fossil records on ancient pre-historic man, where it is visible that hair disappeared first, then intelligence rose, then humour developed? Or the other way around? Or fossil record that ancient men did not like hairy ancient women? You are proposing an equivalence between supported theory (the world is older than 5000 years) and an unsupportable theory (that men did not like hairy women).

I put to you that there is no way we can say what men liked 200,000 years ago. We could say that, if only the sexual selection theory was available to explain why there are not hairy women these days; but there are other equally viable theories explaining that, namely, the hairiness accompanying low verbal skills and low IQ, just like you said.

I thought that crop insurance would have taken the teeth of risk out of the agriculture industry.

Two things must be true:
1. The agriculture industry is a positive-gain industry. That means, if one area is hit with drought or any sort of unpleasant thing that makes the product unprofitable, then there will be years, randomly occurring, that make up for the loss; and that if in one part of the country this happens, then a larger area than the "hit" area in other parts of the country will be still profitable.
2. The profit margin that is the difference between the losses and the gains, is large enough to sustain an insurance industry that can sustain all the settlements or benefits to insured farms.

If these two things are true, then the old, proverbial threat of bankers and lawyers taking over the old family farm with the apple orchard and the big oak tree where the green green grass of home grows with Mary running along, disappears.

The Origin of the Human Species

The human race is a mammalian species where the division of survival functionality is most specialized between the sexes. Their extent of gender-specific specialization places humans above not only mammals, but among all vertebrates. Every other species with spines in the animal kingdom has less division of labour between genders than us. (I'm a human.) The mammalian species with the closest approximation to our conspicuous sexism are lions. Lionesses do the job of hunting down a kill. The males' job is to chase away hyenas and other scavengers and to reign over the animal kingdom.

Everyone's heard of praying mantises that eat their mates after they've finished propagating their DNA. And everyone has also heard of black widow spiders that do the same. Or of the merry divorcee octopuses that take off with their mate's entire manhood from the act of consummation on their wedding night. Other forms of sexism exist among these animals. But they're invertebrates. They're less like mammals and more like wind-up toys. They fly because they've got determination, not because natural laws are on their side. They go through weird metamorphoses in their development. These insects have eight eyes and six legs, and some voted for George W. Bush.

Humans are mammals, not insects, yet very much a two-species species within their own species. Men are stronger and taller; women are softer and kinder. Men hunt and find bars easily; women are naturally-born healers and naturally-born educators. Guys care about sports and getting laid; women get true enjoyment from children and are more demonstrative emotionally. Some other differences developed through cultural and societal indoctrination and they make the gap seem wider than it actually is, though the actual gap is already wide. Sometimes it's the men whom societal pressures force to respect the differentness of women; other times it's the other way around.

But the differences are there, unmistakably, and the contrasts are sharp and very much in-your-face. It has been speculated by some theorists that men and women did not evolve from the same race, but were amalgamated into one species from two distinct groups.

More recent archeological evidence has unearthed support for the two-species theory of the origin of homo sapiens.

Evidence suggests that a coursing band of the species that gave rise to apes and man, and a herd of beautiful white fawns collided on the African savannah. The pre-apes eyed the fawns, their soft, white skin, their clearer-than-sky turquoise eyes, the graceful movements of the bodies and the regal stature of these noble and kind animals. So the apes went at the fawns and ravished them all. They ravished them mercilessly, vigorously, and with gusto. The mayhem went on with great enthusiasm by the apes, and with very little, almost none, by the fawns. It was not only the male apes that were ravishing the fawns; their females were ravishing them, too, and even the ape children were doing it. They ravished the fawns to rags, and then they ravished them again and again, and then again.

Slowly but surely, the intermixing of DNA structures allowed the two species to meld, and you guessed it, my gentle reader: the two created the human species, in which the men eerily resemble hairy-chested bow-legged apes with immense strength and egos, whereas the females are reminiscent of the white fawns in their personality, in their lack of ability to turn in the right direction when stepping out of an apartment elevator, and in their soft physical beauty.

It would be MUCH more meaningful if Oholibah was a male prostitute selling his stuff to ladies. Thus:

"20 There he lusted after his female lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emissions were like those of horses."

This would also put a dot on the i in my private argument with @hipericin.

Everyone you see is the product of rampant sexual selection. All the really "ugly" genes, unfavorable to sexual selection, have been weeded out already. — hypericin

That is a good argument. I have no counter argument.

How attractive do you think a hairy, minimally verbal proto-human would be to you? — hypericin

Thanks for arguing against your own point. I could not have come up with this myself.

A minimally verbal, hairy, proto-human would have been eliminated by warring tribes who fought over resources.

There is NO TELLING whether these MVHPHs died out because of their inferior other survival skills, or because of their unsexiness.

Other than that, by describing them as MVHPHs, you nicely described half of the males of the currently surviving specimens of the human race. (Joke.)

My counter point will be this: mutations occur randomly, and at times in groups. The more intelligent, more verbal, more sexy humans of today may have mutated from proto-humans all at once in these aspects: sexual features, sexual preferences for looks, intelligence, and verbal skills.

Who is to say this has not been one whopping mutation?

Who is to say this has been one whopping mutation?

I contest that this question can be decided.

And if it can't be decided with our present knowledge, then neither the theory of "sexual selection" must be accepted necessarily, nor must its opposite be accepted necessarily.

This is a debate that needs more empirical evidence for the theory ("sexual selection") to stand on its own two feet and to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

the people who run money run it on behalf of people who have money, not on behalf of those who do not. — unenlightened

Well said.

Sri Lanka, being a Buddhist nation, should have zero or negligibly small karmic debts and, at the end of the day, that's what counts, oui? — Agent Smith

Not really... if it's only the thought that counts, for instance, there should be very many more good looking women pregnant than there are actually. It's not always what counts that counts.

I wonder how long before it's Hungary's turn to declare bankruptcy.

And how long before Canada's and The United States of America's.

Because I somehow can't escape the feeling that the credit floating around the world is larger than the debit. In other words, there is more outstanding debt than equity that had loaned the debt.

Of course I can't prove this, but this is my gut feeling.

Maybe it's China, where the equity is located? Certainly not in the USA??? I don't know. Who here on this forum knows that reliably? All I hear every year is that the deficit is growing, "BUT ONLY FOR THE TIME BEING, BEFORE IN 5 YEARS WE'LL HAVE BALANCED THE BUDGET AND AFTER THAT WE'LL REDUCE THE DEBT" is what all governments are saying, now, tomorrow, and five years ago, too.

@Hanover I read your profile. I had to check Deuteronomy 25. I found another juicy bit:

"However, if a man does not want to marry his brother’s wife [ed: after the brother dies], she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.” 8 Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, “I do not want to marry her,” 9 his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.” 10 That man’s line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled."

What if there is more than one brother of the dead husband? What if he is still alive, but she is not a widow but a divorcee? What if she is SEXY?

You are arguing against sexual selection in its entirety, which is a non-starter. — hypericin

You bet I am arguing against that. Have you been able to read my posts in their entireties, or just skimmed them over?

The sexiest will couple with the sexiest.
The unsexiest will couple with the unsexiest.

EVERYONE will couple.

It's not rocket science. Even unsexy-looking people have the sexual urge, and they will choose whoever is purchasable by their "sex dollars", so to speak.

Just because someone is totally unsexy, it does not stop him or her from coupling. That is a MAJOR logical and empirical fault in the sexual selection myth.

Clincher: Think about it another way: let's suppose that you were right. Therefore the "unsexy" gene ought to have been eliminated from the gene pool by now, 100,000-300,000 years after the first humans appeared. So... then why do we still have unattractive / unsexy people on the face of the planet? This is clear empirical proof that the sexual selection theory is false.

it's enough you've called them ugly — Hanover

I dunno... I looked at my post, read it really closely four times. Then I ran a search for the word ugly. No hit.

Maybe in a previous post?

dated ugly girls. — god must be atheist

You win.

Barney is a big purple dinosaur and he loves you. — Hanover

Barney.

But we evolved as tiny, polygamous populations. There, fucking of the fittest reigns. — hypericin

There is another logistics-related argument against "only the best-looking and sexiest" survive. Or humorous, intelligent, etc., as the case might be.

The sexiest male will couple with the sexiest females. The sexiest females will couple with the sexiest males. (Promiscuity assumed, as per your theory.) There is a stratum which is least sexy, both genders. What are they going to do? Live a celibate lifestyle? No, life is better with bad sex than with no sex. So the unsexiest members of the small populations still made babies.

These were funny. My favourite... Why did the chicken cross the road twice? Because it was a double-crossing chicken.

But I still don't know which character was Barney, after which the show had been named.

Barney's jokes were.... not violent? I don't know Barney(*). Looked in members' list but he must have got out in time.

I still maintain that puns hurt. You hear that all the time. Groaners, too. They are normally not violent, but they do cause pain with their forcing incongruency on the audience, because that is one thing humans don't abide by: self-contradiction, incongruency, atavism, coupling of ideas or things in impossible ways.

(*) I am only half-joking. I actually don't know who Barney is / was as a celebrity. I did not grow up in Canada. The entire childhood and babyhood culture is wasted on me, and references to it don't tell me anything... not your fault, it's just that that's how it is. I was 18 when I came to Canada, and had no language skills in English whatsoever.

There are lots to be said for monogamous marriages in the evolutionary line. One thought is that it takes a long time to raise a human child; two are quite a handful, when resources are scanty; people coupled up to raise children.

Polygamous marriages gained popularity with the emergence of civilization, where there were enough resources to keep some people in the population idle.

But there is evidence that there had been both poly- and monogamous marriages in our pre-historic past (before agriculture). They measured the gonads of chimpanzees and of gorillas. Chimpanzees are promiscuous, gorillas are polygamous. Chimpanzees have much larger gonads in proportion to their bodies than gorillas. Humans? they are halfway between chimps and gorrs in this aspect. So human beings tend to have covered both lifestyles.

I don’t see how it makes any sense to suggest that physical exhaustion is a precursor to laughter. We do know that hyperventilation can induce certain states, and that physical exertion can create a certain high. In what you are saying there is a very tenuous link at best. — I like sushi

It was a precursor at the time when humour developed. Strenuous exercise before laughter is not a prerequisite any more. Although laughing audiences at comedy clubs will tell you that it is heavy physical and mental labour to listen to comedians who are not funny, and you feel compelled to laugh.

How do you make a handkerchief dance?
Put a little boogie in it. — Hanover

I think the recipient of the joke's "hurt" is the audience himself or herself. The relief comes from not hurting that much actually. The audience feels that the joke and the joke teller outsmarted him or her... and the relief comes from the fact that it's not really antagonistic but rather friendly.

So, are fat people legitimate targets of humor? — Bitter Crank

in the Dilbert cartoon strip, the head of HR explains to the employees whom they can't discriminate against: "disability, religion, age, political views, education level, racial or ethnic origin, first language spoken, and sex or sexual orientation; gender."
Somebody pipes up in the audience: "So we can still discriminate against poor people?" The presenter looks at her list, and says, "Yep, they are not on the list. You can also discriminate against fat people, short people and ugly people. They are fair game for discrimination." Wally, a character in the strip, who is fat, ugly and short, says as he is walking out of the meeting with his buddy, "Well, that is a nice how-do-you-do."

whoever wrote that humour and IQ are correlated: how did they measure the humour level of a joke? Unless that is established, correlation can't be established. (Thanks, Sushi, for the insight.)

How numerous are these studies? — I like sushi

Sorry, Sushi; my "measurement of humour" were ad-hoc ideas by myself. Humour is an art form as well as a form of pushing the limits of good taste; both have marks at different levels by each human being.

I don't think there is a metric to measure humour. My measurements were taken from American sit-coms, from high-school giggles in class, and from actually generating laugher in crowd. The measurements I offered were not scientific or objective, because humour is an art form, and the humour lies in the eye of the beholder.

First, your theory is less implausible than limited, and unless I get the whole picture, I can't really judge your theory. — Dawnstorm

I like this very much.

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I'll start with laughter. You say, laughter is the natural response to humour - so what's the relationship between laughter and humour? If I'm not mistaken, babies start laughing at around 3 to 4 months. I'm sure they're not old enough to understand narrative jokes, which your theory seems to rely on. Laughter seems to be more basic, to me, than what you seem to be interested in. — Dawnstorm

Laughter is an expression of delight. It could be due to many things, one being enjoying a joke that hits your funny bone.

As for the final quesiton: I think people shouldn't laugh at someone else's expense. — Dawnstorm

I was the acquaintance of a university professor who specialized in jokes. He categorized the morality of jokes into three sections. I forgot what the first two sections were, but his thesis hinged on these three things. And the last one was that there are some jokes that are not made on anyone's expense, they are kind, gentle jokes. I wrote back to him (we were in email correspondence as well as meeting once a month at secular humanists' meeting in town) and asked him to send me two gentle jokes that exemplify the "no victim". He was unable to, I suspect, and he never talked to me again. It hurts when one's life-work is shot down with one question or request.

I can see your theory making sense under a more abstract mother theory: for example - humour involves the unexpected - unexpected stuff can be dangerous - relief when it isn't. — Dawnstorm

I agree with this. I think the laughter at the peril TRANSMOGRIFIED into other senses of humour. I believe humour was STARTED with relief from danger; and the skill or trait became transferable and applicable to some (but not all) other reliefs.

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Dawn, I liked your response the best. You

1. dealt with my proposition and you did not use the post to promote your own theory
2. did not use quotes, jargon or theory already uttered or established by philosophers but used your own brain and explained from a reasonable point of view that has not been gleaned from years of study, but was gleaned (to me obviously) by thinking about the topic
3. stated your criticism not as judgment, but as a series of objections, well explained, and finally
4. put your opinions in a format that were easily answerable by their enticing response.

Thanks!!

This same process selected, secondarily, for taking pleasure in hurmor: after all, it was the females who enjoyed humor the most who selected the funniest guys. They bore both the funniest and smartest guys, and the smartest girls who loved their guys the funniest. These outcompeted their duller contemporaries, both due to the intelligence for which humor is a pretty reliable marker, and because of the growing population-wide preference for funny men, resulting from this same process.

Just my theory. — hypericin

This does make sense, exept for one glitch. The same glitch that all theories presented about selection of the survival of the fittest to fuck.

The problem is that less funny guys dated less good looking girls, and Borons (boring morons) dated ugly girls. They all had children, who survived to adulthood.

There is no indication that a pretty woman with a funny husband will have more children than a less attractive woman will with a boring and dull husband.

The trickle-down effect. Each person will find a partner who is available for the amount of "sex dollars" they are willing to or are capable to pay. And I believe everyone has a sexual socio-economic class to find a mate to reproduce with.

Here is one which both describes the link between humor and verbal/logical reasoning, and... completely supports my theory!! — hypericin

You've gotta be right. I met my present girlfriend six or seven years ago at a garage sale. I made a joke, everyone laughed, she too. I asked her out for breakfast. She has never done anything like that ever, but she accepted.

The thing was that the joke was not even all that funny, but the timing was good.

I think a good joke-teller exudes self-confidence and laisses-fartire or however it's spelled. A healthy dose of "I don't care attitude" that signals a healthy ego, while at the same time not beating up on your wife, or children, which is also a sign of strength and ability. In cavemen days, there was no TV or Internet, so the only form of entellectual entertainment was story telling. A good one-liner went a long way. Oh, and there was no alcohol, either. So if you wanted to engage in the only other activity available that passed the time, you had better pay your dues with hilarious jokes. Or poetry, actually, too.

I am curious about measurements of humour. — I like sushi

One measurement is the recipient's admittance to the level of the humour in a joke.
One other measurement how loud, long, and tearfully one laughs. Some people die during a good laughing session: their asphygos clams on their dorsal step muscles, they can't breath from being paralized, and they die.
One measurement is cross-cultural: tell an English joke to a Papuan, in original Sanskrit, and see if it makes him react any way, other than saying "do you wanna come over for dinner tonight at my house?"
One must account as well for Borons. Borons are boring morons. They think a joke, any joke, at any time, is a frivolous piece of despicable garbage. Thus was the owner of the Plenty of Fish website equipped. He was a stupid fucking idiot who deleted some of my BEST one-liners.

Everything is funny to someone. — Tom Storm

There are moods, as well, that fluctuate within an individual. One day life may seem funny, the other day, vexing, the third, sad. "You can't step into the same life twice."

Wow! Thanks for all your replies.

In my original post I tried to point it out how it all started. I touched on some aspects of humour, true, but the main thrust of the post was to show how it may have started. I mean, sea urchins don't laugh and tigers have no sense of humour at all.

I contest though, that humour is an intellectual faculty. I have seen really dumb people make really good jokes. And my girlfriend of the distant past, Ruth, pointed out to me that the difference between domesticated animals and wild animals is that the domesticated ones "have a sense of humour". If you think about it, it's true. You can tease a dog or a cat, but you can't tease a chimpanzee or whale, because they will tear you to pieces in the end. And both of these two species are smarter than either of the other two species.

Many respondents raised some really good points, I'll read them all (sorry, I can't promise a response to each) in the next few days.

Aristotle was truly ahead of his time. — chiknsld

but Democritus was even more ahead of Aristotle's time. Aristotle's doctrine was almost immediately accepted. So he was about 5 minutes ahead of time. Democritus' doctrine had to wait about two thousand years to be accepted.

So who was more ahead of his time? Which is earlier: 5 minutes early, or two thousand years early? If you don't agree that 2000 years is earlier than 5 minutes is, then get out of here.

New atheism is the same as old atheism: belief that there is/are no god(s).

No matter how you slice it, it's still baloney. No matter what name you give it, it still is the same thing: the belief that there are no gods / god.

What's the point of slicing it thin, or thick, or square, or semi-circularly? There is no god, that's a belief, and people who believe that are atheists.

Period, full stop, end of paragraph.

I totally don't understand this yammering about no gods. The four horsemen have been preempted by Marx, Engels, and the larger portion of the population in the entire eastern block, including China. What's the point in talking it to death?

Exploitation occurs when an owner of production means and production tools hires workers to work for a wage that is low and provides the owner with high income.

Who owns healthcare? Who owns cleanliness? Who owns sanitation?

True enough, one person may buy up all buckets and mops, and hire other persons to do the cleaning of dirty places, and exploit them.

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How do you set the minimum wage? At one billion dollar per hour for each worker? Surely no exploitation would occur. At a dollar an hour? Exploitation will occur. How do you set the minimum so it returns as much of the profit to the workers per head as it returns to the owner of ambulance vehicles, hospitals, lab equipment, beds, supplies, drugs and invoicing apparatus. This is also an incredibly hard situation to establish.

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