Feral kids are cool because they can teach us things about every human's innate linguistic capabilities... because they don't learn language during the crucial period of childhood and so... anyways they are cool and we should make more of them. Ethics be damned.

I think they're interesting because they show us how much of an influence society has on us.

For example, the site says that clothed feral kids tear their clothes off and prefer to be naked.

The site teased me though, not enough info.

People who are deprived of one sensory organ make up for it with their others and so some blind people have a much more acute sense of hearing.

I found this bit fascinating:

Over the next couple of years, some scientists concluded that Genie was not mentally retarded, even though she was still unable to master language. She was brilliant at nonverbal communication.
Sometimes she would be so frustrated at not being able to say what she wanted that she would grab a pencil and paper and in a few strokes, illustrate fairly complex ideas and even feelings. She
scored the highest recorded score ever on tests that measure a person's ability to make sense out of chaos and to see patterns.

I want to take the chaos test.

I haven't had a chance to look at the feral children site much, but I've been thinking about the influence of society on us a lot lately. Capitalism tells us that we have no choice but to compete, but capitalist societies have to keep telling people that to get them to compete. Assuming this wouldn’t be unethical, I’d like to see groups of people separated from society to see how their societies would evolve over time. I’m sure some of the societies would be capitalist, but not all.

I don't see why you would need to do such an experiment. There is plenty of real world data to support your claim. There are many societies detached from the rest of the world.

I don't think that capitalism tells us that we can't survive without competing. I think it is the idea that it is the fastest way to evolve. On a grand scale (say a country the size of the US), I tend to agree.

I guess I just want to know the odds of societies evolving this way.

I didn't mean to imply that capitalism tells us that we can't survive without competing, but that it tells us that that competition is the "best" way to be. Do you agree because you've been told that or because you've found it to be true?

Well, taking a quick scan of the world it seems that the countries that follow the capitalism model are the world leaders. I know this is a simple answer to a complex question, but for the moment it is all I feel like giving. Here is what is interesting me now that you have my brain working:

On a much smaller model it would be interesting to study productivity and innovation with regards to collaboration vs. competition:

Lets say you have a group+resources of size N, and a goal G. Which group will reach the goal first:

1) A group of size N working without competition toward goal G.

2) Either of 2 groups of size N/2 working in direct competition toward goal G.

What about X groups of size N/X?

World leaders defined by whom? And is it sustainable?

That study is more what I'm interested in. The non-competition groups should be allowed to break up into smaller groups, try different things out and then regroup to figure out what works best.

You've got me on the "defined by whom". There is a joke about a global test in there somewhere.. Anyway, no society is going to provide everyone with everything they want.

Is it sustainable? I don't know, time will tell. As humans we have been around for a long time and we have run the gamut as far as how we organize and run societies. In all honesty, nothing we do seems to be sustainable. All the empires fall at some point.

In the study I propsed, all groups whether they are on the collaborative or competitive side should be able to organize how they see fit.

I think I've mentioned before the idea of using detailed simulation (SimSoc) to do these kinds of experiments. Having real humans to do this would be more ideal. Let's steal Iraqi babies and try this... nobody will ever notice.

Ryan, are there really many detached societies? I know that we've discovered people in recent times.. but of course by discovering them they become that much less detached. I don't think we have any sort of Star Trek prime directive that's enforced.

Also, I think it's premature to say that because capitalism and world leadership correlate that there's definitely causation because world leadership also correlates with lots of other stuff, like conditions in the country before turning capitalist, democracy, not getting fucking attacked by the United States (countries thrive more after the U.S. stops bombing them it turns out).

Anecdotally, I think cooperation works better than competition in many situations.

However, I am kind of a fan of states' rights for the reason that each should be able to play with their own economic models so that there is diversity in that area in this country and people could choose to live based on that. On the other hand, I hate how suburbs race each other to the bottom to provide their residents less services (and giving corporations larger handouts) instead of cooperating as a region.

I suppose it depends on your definition of detached. You are right, I don't think there are many/any left that haven't had any contact from modern society. However I still think there are plenty of tribes around the globe that live out their lives in the same manner and ritual as they always have, regardless of the contact they have had with modern life.

I don't think it is premature to attribute capitalism to the position of world leadership we have assumed over the past 250 years. I'm not saying that capitalism = guaranteed power, and I am not saying this this power we have today will be here 50 years from now. What I am saying, is that up to this point I believe democracy and capitalism have gotten us to where we are. I also believe that many other countries who have followed this model in recent times have experienced these fruits as well.

That being said, I don't believe the best way to bring democracy to other parts of the world is by dropping bombs on them and then handing them a ballot for their "election". Democracy needs to come from the people of those societies, not from the US or anyone else forcing it upon them.