[2012-Jun-27] The Neil DeGrasse Tyson argument

[Oldrac the Chitinous]

'sall good!

You gonna be at the cookout this weekend? There'll be Pentanque!

[Nada]

yes we cooperated with the passenger pigeon and the western black rhinocerous and the dodo and the great auk

he wasn't referring to competition within the species you fucking dolts which you would have understood if you used your Context Clues and actually followed the conversation which was specifically about how man rose to become the dominant predator on every continent and whether we should presuppose that sapient starfaring extraterrestrial life would be equally warlike and rapacious as man is in a weak attempt to justify why YHWH would make such vast gulfs of hostile space between us and anything else that may share this universe with us or if that gulf is in fact there to protect them from us

Sure we're predators. Hell, we're the only remotely natural predator of whales.

But we sure as hell don't exist in symbiotic relationships with animals like cows, chickens, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, etc. And we certainly haven't spread the genetic material of countless plant species and even pests all across the globe. I mean, geez, humanity got here all by its lonesome, we never cultivated ANYTHING like other species existence for our own survival.

God, I hate fucking arrogant idiots who are so busy trying to be right about everything that they can't follow a simple line of reasoning about the fact that evolution cares nothing about the survival of the individual, just the propagation of genetic material into the next generation.

[Edminster]

But we sure as hell don't exist in symbiotic relationships with animals like cows, chickens, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, etc. And we certainly haven't spread the genetic material of countless plant species and even pests all across the globe. I mean, geez, humanity got here all by its lonesome, we never cultivated ANYTHING like other species existence for our own survival.

No, we made the wild cow quite extinct as well. The wild horse is currently threatened, and we frequently kill wolves when they encroach on our territory (protip: it's all our territory). Fully half of your list there are of new creatures that we specifically made for our use as tools and the other half barely resembles its wild cousin. Domestication has until very recently led to the extinction (intentional or otherwise) of the base organism that we were culling from. Why do you think the Heirloom movement is so big among hobby farms? It's because that shit is in great danger of being lost forever because they don't produce as much as we want them to and are thus ignored by the marketplace (although frankly that segues into an argument that is entirely off the topic at hand).

God, I hate fucking arrogant idiots who are so busy trying to be right about everything that they can't follow a simple line of reasoning about the fact that evolution cares nothing about the survival of the individual, just the propagation of genetic material into the next generation.

I'm curious as to why you seem to think we're discussing individuals here. Perhaps you were confused by how Man is both a singular and collective noun?

This thread has long since served its purpose; what I do now is nothing more than a mercy killing.