I'm not sure Celestia would approve.

( I would not.)

I dunno the connection to MLP feels tangential to the depression wallow this story is, basically it's mention once, kind of insulted, and the drug the story teller is taking has a name that sounds like pony? Doesn't feel much like an alternate conversion bureau.

8914497

8914629

This story takes place in The Friendship Virus universe. Knowledge of that story, located earlier in this very collection, is necessary to understand this one.

I was wondering where this one was going, seeing that so little of it was left...

And then I got to that last sentence. Well played.

That story sums up my existence lately, except for the whole PNY-1 thing (which I'd probably be spreading if it was a thing). And I cackled so hard reading this, since I was picturing my local Cici's, which is usually full-to-bursting with indoctrinated fundies .... well done.

8915006
My Bad

8915259 What is an “indoctrinated fundie”?

8917146 A religious fundamentalist who is thoroughly brainwashed.

8915006
Is the other story needed to understand this one? Seems to me that, aside from the last half of the last sentence (the bit about PNY-1), this story stands on it's own.

9785293
Oh. I got that from you saying that evil men were more evil, then evil women.

You're saying “female hormones cause compassion, while male hormones cause violence and cruelty”? I don't think it's that simple. If it were: It'd be women rushing into burning buildings to rescue people (do to their compassion). Yet most firefighters are men. It'd be women giving their lives, to protect men. Yet it's usually men who die to protect women.

So a world with female hormones, instead of male hormones, would not be heaven. It'd be a world where (for example) neighborhoods would burn, because there aren't enough firefighters. Yes, male hormones can cause cruelty and violence. But they can also cause the kind of bravery and compassion that's needed, to risk your life to protect others.

So the real problem isn't male hormones. It's whatever causes male hormones to result in cruel violence, rather then brave compassion. If we eliminated that, if all cruel violent men became brave compassionate men, that would be a better world!

Edit: I said a couple of critical things about women. You literally think the world would be a better place, if all men got sex-change operations (sans surgery, but becoming hormonally female)! And I'm the “awful, terrible person”, who should be blocked from commenting on your stories and TCB group?

9786032
You can't even conceive of women firefighters being commonplace - and you've never even comprehended how savagely a woman will fight, tooth and nail, blood and bone, to protect their children, their friends, their family, or even their pet. You just can't imagine women as anything other than frail little homemakers, can you? Women are just token hilarity in the workplace of men to you, aren't they?

"So a world with female hormones, instead of male hormones, would not be heaven. It'd be a world where (for example) neighborhoods would burn, because there aren't enough firefighters. Yes, male hormones can cause cruelty and violence. But they can also cause the kind of bravery and compassion that's needed, to risk your life to protect others." - Solarfollow

Do you realize how sexist and misogynistic you sound here? Testosterone is not where courage and self-sacrifice come from. At all. That is a straight up sexist piece of crap. I've actually been bothering to try to educate you, but it is supremely misogynist to think women are innately cowardly and weak compared to men. It clearly isn't even inside your brain that women do these very jobs every day, in every city, in every nation that will let them. Women firefighters, women soldiers, women astronauts, women rescue divers, police women, women steelworkers, women boxers, women construction workers, women weight lifters - for all that is holy.

You just wrote a sexist screed. Look at your own words! Seriously.

Because anyone with estrogen dominating, instead of testosterone - like all women everywhere, always - wouldn't fill the ranks of any job that demands courage. I dare not tell you how little I think of you for putting forth such a backward, wrong, incorrect, and deeply hateful statement. If I did so, my message would mostly consist of many sequential 'fuck you' statements.

You need to change this attitude, because as it stands, your statement is exactly the same as one any unthinking sexist pig would make, and that is not the least bit acceptable. I hope you are not so shallow and ignorant of women, but your words would be difficult to imagine as not intended. Courage and self sacrifice are NOT the province of men alone, and in an all-woman world, every fire department would be fully staffed, because women already do that job, and with no men around, more would simply do so.

As has already happened, during World War Two, I might add. History: you should read some. Rosie The Riveter is not just a poster. Women always fill all the jobs men normally possess for themselves when they have the opportunity to.

To say otherwise, as you have, is an insult to all womankind, and makes you sound like a raving sexist asshole. You need to understand that. It makes you loathesome to say what you just said. Frankly, if you meant your own words there, you are an awful, terrible person, and, well, to hell with you.

9786050
I’m just going to sit back and watch this fire burn.

Although the 3/4 of woman being raped in their lifetime statistic seems a bit extreme, is that 3/4 of woman historically, in the world over the past 80 years or so, or in first world nations?

Edit: Also I think testosterone has a non-negligible role in risk taking behavior, being a firefighter does qualify as that. Now this doesn’t mean that in a world without testosterone there would be no fire fighters, I think they would just be paid higher or maybe alternate solutions to fire management might be found, with fire fighters as a last resort due to high cost of deployment.

I think that kind of model could hold true for most high risk jobs. In general, a someone slower and more cautious approach may dominate in a world without male hormones.

9831730
I got the numbers backward, but the facts are no less horrifying:
https://www.cdc.gov/features/sexualviolence/index.html

Women in firefighting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_firefighting
Women in firefighting dealing with men thinking they are not tough or competent enough:
https://www.govtech.com/em/disaster/Female-Firefighter-Still-Fight-for-Equality-Were-assumed-Incompetent.html

How women in a nation without many men took over every occupation, especially the 'manly' ones', exactly the same, with no higher pay and no last resort anything:
https://www.history.com/news/how-world-war-ii-empowered-women

The definition of misogyny as a response to your core statement:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/misogyny

My ultimate response to you is: actual, factual history and reality.

To which, of course, there can be no rational counter argument.

And as for 'sitting back and watching the fire burn', you are in for a boring time - the fire was long ago put out with a large pile of salt.

9832134
1/3 woman is less, but still pretty horrific. You’re right on that.
It does say that 1/4 men have also been subject to sexual violence, I do actually suspect a large portion of that is man on man sexual violence though.

As for the firefighters, yes, woman firefighters do face discrimination. My argument was never that they don’t. It’s that if there were no males, and the same population, there would be at least slightly less firefighters unless wages increased dramatically due to less woman wanting to sign up due to lack of risk taking hormones. Not no woman, not woman can’t be firefighters, cause they can. They’re just less likely to want to in the absence of some market change.

The market changes part of my argument might be wrong, as your World War Two example might show, but I certainly wasn’t being misogynistic, or “hateful towards woman”. Although maybe you were saying that about the other guys, not me. Which I still don’t think is really that accurate, and even if it were, is not something you say to someone in a debate.

Im also not entirely sure if the World War One example is terribly useful for modeling an entirely female society, due to the short length of time, wartime conditions, and how higher management positions would still be held by men, who due to the time period have a good chance of being legitimately sexist. I just don’t think the example is a great model for wage pricing and other long term effects in an entirely female society. It does show that woman can do traditionally male jobs, and well, but that’s about all.

As for sitting back and watching the fire burn, yea I replied 3 weeks later so it was less a fire and more a left over pit of salt at that point.

9832264
It's... world war 2, not one. A big issue for women at the end of WW2 was that the men came home. The women wanted to keep working in heavy industry, they wanted to keep working in every other occupation - but they were forcibly fired. They were kicked out, so that the returning soldiers could steal their jobs because... because they were men. And the men wanted traditionally masculine jobs, and they wanted women to go back to making babies and staying at home. Women didn't want that and there was a lot of anger.

But, the women at the time couldn't do a damn thing. The owners of the factories and... basically everything else... were men. Rich men, who would never have to go to war, and who could stay home and profit. And, thanks to... patriarchy, basically... the women were forced out, against their will.

This was a problem for them. They really wanted to stay. They found freedom and opportunity in being able to work at all the jobs men normally kept only to themselves. They had developed skills, they liked their construction and manufacturing jobs, they liked being the breadwinners, they liked being in charge and having respect. Then it got taken away. A lot of women were straight-up broken by this sudden shift.

Misogyny is stereotyping women. It is the very act of saying that women would not want, nor be as effective and aggressive at being a firefighter - or a soldier - or any other occupation - as a man. It is the very act of thinking 'women would do it differently, less actively, less powerfully'. That is one of the definitions of misogyny. Look it up, I gave the link for a reason. It isn't just hating on women.

9832752
Whoops, put World War One the second time instead of World War Two. That was a miss type.

They were kicked out, so that the returning soldiers could steal their jobs because... because they were men.

Mostly agree

Misogyny is stereotyping women. It is the very act of saying that women would not want, nor be as effective and aggressive at being a firefighter - or a soldier - or any other occupation - as a man. It is the very act of thinking 'women would do it differently, less actively, less powerfully'.

But isn’t this true, at least to some extent? Not that woman would firefight or do construction work or whatever other field worse then men, but that they would do it at least somewhat differently? After all, you yourself said that men are the cause of most violence, and if that’s true then doesn’t there have to be some difference between how men and women will approach a situation?

9833265

I think you are conflating violence with forcefulness. They are not the same thing. Women who are firefighters, and the women of WW2 who did ALL the jobs that the men used to do, don't and didn't do anything different at all. They did the jobs exactly the same. Why? Because that is how the jobs are done. If you have to axe your way into a burning house, you grab that axe and chop like hell. If you have to get seventeen seams welded before quitting time, then you get those seams welded. If you have to belt-climb the tree to cut down the upper part first, you strap on the belt and cleats.

Forcefulness and the use of force is not the same thing as violence.

The one difference would be where violence was required: you can be certain that most (so far all) women cops are not going to arbitrarily shoot innocent children in the back "because they felt threatened". And we know that is true, because we have records that show which cops shoot which innocent people. And it is white male cops shooting black children and women and men. So far, for the past decade, exclusively.

Women don't do that. So that is the one way they do the job differently: they don't shoot children in the back.

But otherwise, women do the same jobs men do the same way men do them, because the most efficient way to do the jobs has already been worked out.

Forcefulness is not violence. Violence - such as shooting children in the head, or raping women, or beating innocent people until they die - is violence. And that is what women don't do. As for hard work involving rough effort - women do that just the same as men.

9833342
What if during World War Two woman did work exactly the same way as men because their male administrators made them?

And it’s not that I’m saying that woman can’t do jobs exactly the same way as men, I’m saying they’d prefer to do some jobs different ways and that I’d love to see a resulting economy from that.

You say that during World War Two they did all the jobs exactly the same because “that is how the jobs are done” but with most jobs there isn’t one right way to do it.

To go back to the fireman example, woman on average weigh less and are somewhat less strong then men of a similar age. While this wouldn’t stop woman from being effective firemen, it does require changes in tactics, i.e lighter protective garb (firemen’s cloths are very heavy), or at the more extreme end of tactics change, better building codes to reduce the demand and danger for firefighters.

most (so far all) women cops are not going to arbitrarily shoot innocent children in the back "because they felt threatened".

The sad thing is that this is probably true, and yet we still use mostly male cops.

9833874
At this point, I have to ask, what in all that is good or kind is your point with any of this? I have provided historical proof that women do the same jobs as men, they do them the same way, with the same dedication and the same forcefulness, zeal, and toughness, and that the ONLY thing that keeps women from doing such jobs commonly is patriarchy. These matters are fact.

So, what is your goal here? Apart from trying to find something -anything - besides a propensity for violence in the jobs that women and men both do, I can't see your issue. And if that is what you are looking for - something, anything different in the way men and women do jobs in the real world OTHER than a tendency towards aggressive violence, then you have already lost - the evidence is there. No difference. There's nothing.

So, what else, besides looking for some vaguely misogynistic way to stereotype women workers are you after? Jobs, and the way they are done are GENDER NEUTRAL. The way a job is done has nothing to do with sex or gender, it is always whatever is the most efficient, the way that makes the most money. That is what determines how to do a job. Men or women would HAVE to do it the same way because that would be the way already determined to be the most efficient and profitable.

No matter how you ask this, women being cops or firepersons or astronauts or steel workers or construction workers are going to do their jobs exactly the same way as men, using the same equipment, the same way, for the same purposes. Exactly the same. This isn't some 1950's sitcom where women are going to somehow daintily feminize digging a ditch. They aren't going to tie ribbons around the shovels, they aren't going to take special time-outs to decide on the most decorative way to dig that ditch. They aren't going to throw a prissy fit because the jumpsuits only come in orange. They are going to grab shovels and muscle their way through the gravel just like men. Because that is what digging a ditch is.

And yes, before you even ask, there are muscled women ditch diggers. They exist. Also heavily muscled women weight lifters. And tree cutters. And every other god damned job there is in the whole entire world.

At this point, I am at the point of throwing up my hands. Either you can see your own misogyny here, or it's probably hopeless, and you will need more real-life experience (and dating rejection) before you finally get what I am saying here. Women and men working at jobs are exactly the same except that statistically, men are vastly more violent and commit almost all the violent crimes. That's it. That's the only difference. Period. Case closed. No exceptions. The end. Over and done with. End of line.

9834717
Define “exactly the same”

9836653
"Exactly The Same" - identical, similar in every detail; exactly alike.

synonyms: similar, alike, (exactly) the same, indistinguishable, uniform, twin, interchangeable, undifferentiated, homogeneous, of a piece, cut from the same cloth; corresponding, correspondent, commensurate, equivalent, matching, like, parallel, analogous, comparable, cognate, equal; informallike (two) peas in a pod, much of a muchness, (like) Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

similarity, resemblance, likeness, similitude, semblance; affinity, approximation, parallelism; agreement &c. 23; analogy, analogicalness^†; correspondence, homoiousia^†, parity.

connaturalness^†, connaturality^†; brotherhood, family likeness.

alliteration, rhyme, pun.

repetition &c. 104; sameness &c. (identity) 13; uniformity &c. 16; isogamy^†.

analogue; the like; match, pendant, fellow companion, pair, mate, twin, double, counterpart, brother, sister; one’s second self, alter ego, chip of the old block, par nobile fratrum [Lat], Arcades ambo^†, birds of a feather, et hoc genus omne [Lat]; gens de meme famille [Fr].

parallel; simile; type &c. (metaphor) 521; image &c. (representation) 554; photograph; close resemblance, striking resemblance, speaking resemblance, faithful likeness, faithful resemblance.

V. be similar &c. adj.; look like, resemble, bear resemblance; smack of, savor of; approximate; parallel, match, rhyme with; take after; imitate &c. 19; favor, span [U. S.].

render similar &c. adj.; assimilate, approximate, bring near; connaturalize^†, make alike; rhyme, pun.

Adj. similar; resembling &c. v.; like, alike; twin.

analogous, analogical; parallel, of a piece [Fr]; such as, so; homoiousian^†.

connatural^†, congener, allied to; akin to &c. (consanguineous) 11.

approximate, much the same, near, close, something like, sort of, in the ballpark, such like; a show of; mock, pseudo, simulating, representing.

exact &c. (true) 494; lifelike, faithful; true to nature, true to life, the very image, the very picture of; for all the world like, comme deux gouttes d’eau [Fr]; as like as two peas in a pod, as like as it can stare; instar omnium [Lat], cast in the same mold, ridiculously like.

Adv. as if, so to speak; as it were, as if it were; quasi, just as, veluti in speculum [Lat].

Phr. et sic de similibus [Lat]; tel maitre tel valet [Fr]; tel pere tel fils [Fr]; like master, like servant; like father, like son; the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree; a chip off the old block.

9836785
So no difference what so ever?

Zilch, nada, 0, in a literal sense not a metaphorical sense, 0.000000000000000000000000000000 doesn’t even have a 1, continues on forever.

9836818

Zip. Zippo. The whole nine yards.

9837336
I’m sorry but that’s factually incorrect.

9839768
You are right - nine yards is not nothing. I looked it up. Apparently, nine yards is something, a specific distance, and thus cannot be zippo. I sit corrected.

9840014
That is definitely not what I meant.
True, though.

9853711

You need only to understand one thing: the difference between 'violence', which any human is capable of, and 'extreme violence'.

Well, yes, that does change everything about my post, from the ground up. It wasn't clear to me that this is what you were talking about in those years-old comments until you said so in this post. I was coming from reading quite a bit, lately, about a universe where there is a better world, one so much more fundamentally kind that any human violence looks pretty bad by comparison. I wasn't coming from a place of reading much in the way of TCB-related forums and comments. And so I misunderstood, leading to further misunderstanding.

In consideration of this clarification there is no counter-argument I will make, for two reasons. One, facts. Two, I already agreed with the point you were making, I had just misunderstood what the point was. So, I'm sorry about the misunderstanding and the consequent text wall.

(Although some of the post was about neither violence nor supporting the arguments made about violence.)

You do seem over-prepared for the eventuality of someone attacking you based on various opinions, which might explain the odd progression of your post from addressing possible misunderstanding to, well, the rest of it. It's understandable considering what little context I do know and the nature of the internet, but... I'm not here for that. Please be a little patient with me? I'm weird, but I don't mean you any ill, and wouldn't even if my previous post had not been mostly a misunderstanding.

9855777

You do seem over-prepared for the eventuality of someone attacking you based on various opinions...

I was the target of a truly massive abuse campaign here, one that had my family servers under attack, my spouses threatened in the real world, and many death threats to myself. All because I wrote pony stories that somebody apparently didn't like. At it's peak, there were several hundred people involved, all after my blood. It... seriously traumatized me, and I am still not entirely over it. If you are curious, here is the story, below, if not, then, yeah, I completely understand. But if I have a chip on my shoulder the size of an iceberg, that... is why.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four (and why I left for a while)

... actually nearly missed this last part, because I saved my copy in early 2018.

On jobs and everything - may be whole capitalist (as in - only _monetary_ profit matters, and such profit must grow over time no matter that) thing has something to do with it. Like, everyone forced to do jobs to the extreme, yet paid just barely enough to stay above line. So, they send childrens to schools, because they have no time for them, and school tuned for making more industrial workers.. and may be become resonance chamber in amplifying those violent tendencies. And of course narrative from the top demand humans to behave in way supportive of current exploitative system, and most of them eat poison wholly.

On male/female thing ...I don't know, sometimes I think my whole (practically speaking) asexaulism has something to do with my worldview, and some of my long-term reactions to it. But then I know PeachClover is not asexual, so whole problem of what drives us into being somewhat demonstrably different from rest of humanity is not that simple .. May be dynamics? Like, how all those waves of hormonal influence during our development interfere with real-world events around us....

Thing with kids vs adults, apart from adults today being quite heavily lied to for decades (in many types of relations) - kids usually cared for, yet adults assumed to be ok all by themselves (USA meme, but not strictly limited to USA or even english-speaking world?)? So,may be if adults will try to support each other CONTRA this meme of individualism they will got better atmosphere first around small group, and second around bigger group?

For example I found this idea in comments (#72 here):

John Atkeson | March 24, 2011 23:01
I always wanted to try an experimental 'dinnerocracy'...

The rules are: once each month you pull the name of a random participant in your area, and you go eat a meal with them. Once a year you pull the name of someone from outside your city and have a meal with them.

Everyone who participates in 'dinner club' pays $5 a month to a common pool, and once a month everyone votes on what to do with that money. The rest of the year they continue meeting the other members face to face. I'm betting that the group decisions made will be significantly better than those made by our own (US) democracy.

Why?

In a population of about 30 hunter-gatherers, the strongest man would still see the hungriest child almost every day. Empathy would be hard to resist, hardwired by mirror neurons.

Modern society is big enough to separate people, but a much bigger problem is that we've sequestered ourselves into completely disconnected islands. Whole subcultures now pretend the poor aren't really human. With only 4 degrees of separation between *everyone* and a Katrina victim, those illusions would be much harder to maintain.

11453516

My background is in medical biochem, and there is a vast gulf - as you will learn over decades - between stats and studies and overall reality.

In my experience, those in "primary" fields such as chemistry and physics are often subject to erroneous binary thinking. Life is an emergent property of chemistry, and behavior is an emergent property of life. Behavior cannot be completely explained by hormones alone.

The interplay of chemistry, culture, genes and Evolutionary developmental biology are complex. But the result in the real world is what I presented in my defense of those who were critical, and that result is that every police force, everywhere, in all the world, over all time, has one single conclusion. That conclusion outweighs any study you might want to present, every lecture you or I may have attended, and every text we have ever read.

The absolutely overwhelming majority of violent crime is committed by men, and men nearly alone.

This is an undeniable fact that cannot be understated, and cannot be dismissed. It is objectively true.

Yes? I agree. Violent crime is largely perpetrated by men.

Is it that testosterone working on the Y chromosome alone is the culprit? We don't know. Would the same fact happen if all women in the world were given testosterone levels as high as their male counterparts? We will never know that. Is it partly because of patriarchal culture? That has to be a factor, but it clearly cannot be the only one.

But one thing is very clear: crime rates for trans people, who are taken entirely off testosterone, drop to the level of the normal baseline for cis women. That is interesting, because trans women have Y chromosomes (usually, not all, but usually). That is not proof - but it is strongly indicative - that the problem is related to testosterone.

The Y-chromosome does not encode anything significant outside of the testes. The most important genes upon it are SRY and around two for sperm formation. It cannot be responsible.

Crime is perpetrated by a minority of the population. Truly violent crime is a minority among crimes as burglary and theft are commonly used to inflate the statistic. Since the vast majority of the male population are not criminals, it can safely be assumed then that testosterone has very little to do with it. Poverty, low education, and bigotry are far greater indicators of crime than testosterone.

More than that, studies of violent criminals consistently show higher testosterone levels than the average. That too is strongly indicative.

It is a strong indicator of status-seeking behavior. It just so happens that status for some can only be obtained through illicit means. People who commit crimes for the sake of it, who have truly antisocial behavior, are an extreme rarity. Crime is a means to an end. Domestic abusers look to elevate their status and assert authority through the beating of their families. Murderers look to elevate their status through the wanton killing of others.

Even in history, the vast majority of humans were not slain by violence. Indeed, I can tell you as a biologist that aggressive behavior is usually selected against nature. Even among species where sexual selection occurs through violence, the results are rarely lethal or seriously injurious to either party.

Looking at things in isolation leads to a narrow vision unable to encompass the entire globe - and that is what we are talking about in all of this. The entire human species, taken as a whole.

And taken as a whole, for the human species, males, and males alone, commit virtually all violent crime. Period. There is no debate about that.

And you are looking at things in isolation. You are blaming a single hormone for centuries of human behavior and the mechanisms of complex societies which are almost their own superorganisms. The reality is that patriarchal agrarian societies won the arms race. They were more successful, and just so happened to be in right place at the right time to attain dominance. When one could own animals and own crops, it was an easy leap to assume one could own other people and obtain status that way. And so violent crime truly came into being.

This reality is true whether it is cited by a trans person or a cis person. It is true whether cited by a black person or a white one. Or by a Muslim or a Christian. It is true whether cited by a woman or a man, or by a machine printing out data. It just simply is true.

There is nothing to discuss here. I maintain that objective reality exists and is real (if not locally, but that is a separate issue!).

Yes, violent crime is perpetrated overwhelmingly by men. You are incorrect in assuming that testosterone is the causative agent.

11453590
In every animal species testosterone is the primary cause of aggression.

It is why they geld horses. It is why they geld bulls.
It is why deer clash horns in the rut.
It is why male animals fight each other for dominance.

And when they castrate animals they become docile and calm and nonviolent.
Before it was made illegal, it was done to men, and it had the same effect, which is why the law proscribed it in many civilizations throughout time.

There is no doubt on this topic, it has been written about and documented since Mesopotamia. This is nothing new. You are arguing against something documented, studied and proved for over four thousand years. And the people who did all the studying? Men. Males are the ones saying this.

I need to state that again. MALES are saying, for 4000 years, that testosterone is the reason for most violence. Men themselves. This isn't some brand-new, gender-issue, feminist-derived concept. This is men, themselves, saying that testosterone is the primary reason for violence.

You have a very weird axe to grind, and it involves somehow defending testosterone, in opposition to history and all reason, and I have no way to comprehend why this would be important to you but your argument is empty. The fact is, and has always been, that testosterone and violence are linked, and always have been linked, and there is no way around this fact.

I don't have any more time to spend arguing this with you. The facts speak for me, history itself speaks for me, every rancher and herder in all of agriculture speaks for me, your attempt to deny them all are getting silly, and a little desperate.

Just stop. You have no case. Just stop.

11610876

Brainwashing, and changing human drives enough to make conquest, murder, rape and pillage intolerable are vastly different things.\

Think about what you are arguing for. You are effectively arguing for the preservation of violence and slaughter, cruelty and hatred. That is the world we have now. Constant warfare - around the planet, roughly one hundred wars and conflicts are always in process at any given time.

If there was a way to make humanity not want to murder, rape, harm, and conquer each other, would you not want that change to happen? And it would be a change. Humanity became intelligent by the evolutionary pressure of needing to murder each other. Once Nature is conquered, the only threat that could drive an arms race of intelligence is needing to kill each other. It worked, in the ancient world.

But now, we stand on the nuclear precipice, 90 seconds from midnight. If I could fix that with a retrovirus, I would do so in a heartbeat. Because whatever else changes, if humanity does not change, there will be no world at all.