Wow!!! Its weird how one off comment can totally drag the conversation in an odd direction.

I by no means wish to suggest myself as any kind of Evolutionary or Sociology expert. I don't know what will happen here with the Evolutionary Process. It is my Horribly Uneducated opinion that we will not form divergent species of man thanks to a few factors.

First: I’ve been to Wallmart, and from my observations there, I can say that the Unattractive, Unintelligent, Unathletic Mouth-Breathing breeding pool is alive and well. In fact its growing by leaps and bounds. Shows like Jersey Shore also encourage me to believe that Idiocy is not just tolerated, but in some ways it is oddly idolized.

Second: Thanks to things like Alcohol, Drugs, Spring Break, and the chance at 15 minutes of Fame, we will continue to see the Smart, Attractive, Athletic, Wealthy Uber-Man continue to dilute their Gene Pool with the members of my first group.

Again I’m just an average dude who likes to “Poke the Bear”, and makes a living looking at Fiber Optic Networks and trying to find potential problems. This means I’m a bit of a Pessimist Jerk. Know Yourself!!! I really have high hopes for us, but I think some form of Transhumanism will take over before any kind of significant evolutionary forces kick in.

I'll limit myself to one post on this concept, because I hate arguing on the Internet, but feel free to continue this discussion. I'll watch from the sidelines after throwing that last bit of charcoal on the fire.

If its a Military Question though, I'll definitely answer any questions, or offer thoughts.

Sorry if I came off as confrontational on that point. That wasn't my intent; if anything I tried to very carefully word it to indicate that no one really knows what is going to happen with human evolution.

As for the military questions, does the saying, "Promoted to incompetence" hold true? It's the idea that able, competent people will continually be promoted until they reach the point of incompetence. Since they are obviously very competent and able, they are given more and more responsibility until finally it's too much and they aren't able to perform a job adequately.

There is some truth in that, but not so much that it becomes an issue. If you prove yourself to be competent, you will get promoted over time, but the Army has rules regarding the number of available promotions each month.

Here’s a great explanation for the formal system:

http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/armypromotions/a/armypromotions.htm

Then we add in some mitigating factors to the process:

300 of the points come from the Promotion Board, and your Unit Commander. These points are extremely subjective, and while there are guidelines to how they should be awarded, this can be an avenue for Cronyism to get involved in the selection process. Since they represent over 1/3 rd of your possible points, its very easy for senior personnel to tank someone they do not like, or boost someone they do like.

Also since the Army will only promote as much as they need, its very easy to have people languish in an MOS (Military Occupation Specialties) for years without the possibility of real promotion since that MOS is “fat”, and they just don’t need anymore E-6s in your job field.

Assuming we do promote someone to a place above their capacity… that person’s monthly reviews will eventually reflect their diminishing performance. Once you get a certain number of negative or low reviews, the Army will take action to reduce your responsibilities, or get you greater support.

It can be fairly amorphous and subjective in many ways, but the Army usually does a really good job of putting good people in the right position to succeed. That being said, every GI knows at least one NCO somewhere that does not deserve his Rank/Position, and is inept, but protected by cronies who doctor his reviews and promotion boards. The evidence for all of that is very anecdotal, and should be considered fairly uncommon, but makes for really great story elements. The bumbling idiot Commander or Platoon Sergeant that is at risk of getting his men killed, but is rescued by a smart hardworking junior enlisted man is the stuff of legend, and beloved by all dreamers and writers.

Dude, I totally didn't take it as confrontational. I hope I didn't come off that way either.

I was just fascinated by how one of my weird Micro-Rants spun off a whole discussion.

I often make off comments that are entirely opinionated and odd, but when you are Podcasting, they can easily spin off and have lives of their own. Its really neat and interesting.

Given my general joy in being at least slightly irritating, I'm kind of moved to try and figure out at least one weirdly controversial comment to make each recording just to see how the community reacts to it.

I won't do it, but some part of me kind of wants to experiment with the process.

Thanks for the explanation. That's handy for modern or future campaigns. Do you have any knowledge of historical military organizations? My 4E D&D game (currently on hiatus until January while I run a short Spirit of the Century campaign) has the premise that the PCs are an elite squad in the army. How can I believably improve this aspect of the game for them? Keep in mind that it's D&D so it's medieval fantasy with insanely high magic.

One thing I noticed throughout the episode was that "military" and "Army" were used interchangeably, even when it's not actually accurate (petty example: not everyone in the military has to qualify with a rifle; Navy basic only trains you in the M9 and combat shotgun, and you only need to receive rifle training if there's a specific reason, like, say, you're a seabee on the ground in Afghanistan).

Not a big deal, but it does sidestep the topic of the differences between the branches.

That's totally true. I think we'd need to actually get different people from different branches on the mic's at once. I only have experience through friends, most of whom were in the Navy. I used to work with a couple of guys in the Air Force, but that was years ago. Jim is speaking from his own, personal, experience in the Army ... but that limits us to only being able to explore the Army. Further, even that experience was pre-Gulf War II and Afghanistan. Today's Army is probably doing some things different then it was when Jim was active duty.

For the historical armies, we'd need to get a military historian on to speak to that. Ironically, a lot of the people I know who went to college so they could become officers, majored in history. So, there should be people out there who know both their branch of the military and military history!

Hmmm... I could have sworn I said something about my perspective as being from the Army.

Regarding evolution of humanity. I think it's pretty ineffective to predict a millions-year process by trends developed in the last hundred. Economists and similar pundits do this all the time, but on a much smaller time scale.

I believe some changes can happen in significantly less time than 1M years. When did the first humans make it to northern climates and then begin losing their skin pigmentation as an adaptation to the reduced sunlight? [I honestly don't remember the answer, but I thought it was like 30k to 50k ago? Maybe?] The problem, is that even a change that takes 10,000 years (a moment in evolutionary time and blink in geological time) is something like 50 times longer than any great civilization has lasted.