I now officially hate Texas, for thinking of a law to ban thinking, for filing a lawsuit against Mojang, and all the other pointless things they will do and make us go mad!

hermitcrab1234 wrote:I now officially hate Texas, for thinking of a law to ban thinking, for filing a lawsuit against Mojang, and all the other pointless things they will do and make us go mad!

That's odd, since you spent no thought at all writing this post. I would think you would be totally fine with the ban.

I'm trying to understand the motivation behind this, but I think most of my energy is being redirected trying to figure out how one could think up a policy like this...

Voter wrote:I'm trying to understand the motivation behind this, but I think most of my energy is being redirected trying to figure out how one could think up a policy like this...

It's quite simple really:

Studies have shown that people with more advanced analytical and critical thinking skills tend to be less religious and more liberal.

For a religious, conservative political party like the Republicans that means you lose votes if you teach critical thinking skills.

More than half of the scientific community reports to have no religious affiliation, compared to only about 15% of the general populace. The Texas republican party (correctly) fears that raising a generation of scientists, engineers, and thinkers will render their party obsolete.

Now, rendering their party obsolete isn't necessarily a bad thing, but like any group, self-preservation is important to them.

SporeMasterSlyth33 wrote:

Voter wrote:I'm trying to understand the motivation behind this, but I think most of my energy is being redirected trying to figure out how one could think up a policy like this...

It's quite simple really:

Studies have shown that people with more advanced analytical and critical thinking skills tend to be less religious and more liberal.

For a religious, conservative political party like the Republicans that means you lose votes if you teach critical thinking skills.

More than half of the scientific community reports to have no religious affiliation, compared to only about 15% of the general populace. The Texas republican party (correctly) fears that raising a generation of scientists, engineers, and thinkers will render their party obsolete.

Now, rendering their party obsolete isn't necessarily a bad thing, but like any group, self-preservation is important to them.

so they makeing people less smart for self-preservation

Now hold on you darn Yankees inbreeding is a rare occurrence in Texas first off, and I don't agree with the Creationist madmen who came up with a law like this, and it doesn't reflect the attitude of the people of my state as a whole.
And I do not think Bush was a good president...

napolean8929 wrote:Now hold on you darn Yankees inbreeding is a rare occurrence in Texas first off, and I don't agree with the Creationist madmen who came up with a law like this, and it doesn't reflect the attitude of the people of my state as a whole.
And I do not think Bush was a good president...

The only close friends I have in TX are married first cousins, but both of them taught at MIT, are very pretty people and now have beautiful and brilliant kids in grad school. So in that case, line-breeding was quite successful.

Linebreeding ain't quite the same as inbreeding.

ashkelon wrote:

napolean8929 wrote:Now hold on you darn Yankees inbreeding is a rare occurrence in Texas first off, and I don't agree with the Creationist madmen who came up with a law like this, and it doesn't reflect the attitude of the people of my state as a whole.
And I do not think Bush was a good president...

The only close friends I have in TX are married first cousins, but both of them taught at MIT, are very pretty people and now have beautiful and brilliant kids in grad school. So in that case, line-breeding was quite successful.

The whole "your kids will be mutants" thing is something of a myth anyway. The chance of genetic disease is not significantly increased in the vast majority of cases.

When you consider the fact that early humans lived in small tribes and rarely intermingled with other tribes, they must have been interbreeding with close relatives fairly frequently for a very long time with no ill effects.

SporeMasterSlyth33 wrote:

ashkelon wrote:

napolean8929 wrote:Now hold on you darn Yankees inbreeding is a rare occurrence in Texas first off, and I don't agree with the Creationist madmen who came up with a law like this, and it doesn't reflect the attitude of the people of my state as a whole.
And I do not think Bush was a good president...

The only close friends I have in TX are married first cousins, but both of them taught at MIT, are very pretty people and now have beautiful and brilliant kids in grad school. So in that case, line-breeding was quite successful.

The whole "your kids will be mutants" thing is something of a myth anyway. The chance of genetic disease is not significantly increased in the vast majority of cases.

When you consider the fact that early humans lived in small tribes and rarely intermingled with other tribes, they must have been interbreeding with close relatives fairly frequently for a very long time with no ill effects.

There is no successful animal breeding program that doesn't depend on line breeding to fix characteristics of the breed. It's the reason Thoroughbreds have stamina and Quarter Horses are fast out of the gate. Incorrectly or irresponsibly applied, of course, it can be very detrimental, but correctly applied you can fix desirable traits or eliminate problematic ones in very few generations. Then judicial outcrossing (preferably to related lines) expands the gene pool whilst keeping desired characteristics and minimizing detrimental ones.

Linebreeding also is valuable in pointing up where a characteristic comes from -- good or bad.

As you point up, when available populations are small, it happens anyway. Where it gets rough is when some characteristic gives such an advantage that it squeezes out other lines -- or more often, populations are artificially restricted (like cheetahs) and linebreeding too radically restricts diversity. This doesn't happen that often or on a grand scale in the field because no trait exists in a vacuum -- that keratin overgrowth that gave bird A access to the nectar of flowers also increases nail and feather overgrowth, impacting the ability to perch and fly...

I know this thread is old, but this was so a pro pos...

Lol, silly Texas.

Silly? That's terrifying! Is that even real? And wouldn't "thinking is a gateway to doubting" make more sense?

Silly republicans.

Triop5 wrote:

Silly? That's terrifying! Is that even real? And wouldn't "thinking is a gateway to doubting" make more sense?

Education? It's not your Socratic method anymore... sadly.