'Fittest' means 'friendliest,' not 'most aggressive

[Jokodo]

You literally said "we live in an alien environment that prevents us to live out our true violent nature. We have the police to perpetually threaten us if we misbehave"

How does this not imply that "our true nature" is violence and the only thing that prevents us from being violent in all or most of our interaction is fear of a superior violence?

But yeah, I guess pointing out that being helpful is also part of our evolved repertoire (and a more prominent part than in our closest relatives) is the "black and white fallacy".

 

[Jokodo]

Well, there's the thing. "our true violent nature" is to some extent just a myth. Children as young as 14 spontaneously offer help to adult strangers in experimental conditions. When an adult accidentally drops a pen and is unable to reach it, children that age hand it to them 40% of the time. And it's not just because the pen is interesting in itself - when the adult experimenter intentionally drops it and makes no attempt to retrieve it, less then 10% of kids will hand it to them. So very young infants not only (a) understand others' goals but also (b) attempt to help them bring about those goals. That's in stark contrast to other apes (juveniles or adults): chimpanzees (or for that matter bonobos) are good at (a) but unmotivated for (b) - if anything, the experimenters' interest for the object will motivate them to retrieve and keep it for themselves, as if it suggested that the object was more valuable than it looks like at first sight.
https://www.eva.mpg.de/documents/Wiley-Blackwell/Warneken_Helping_Infancy_2007_1554773.pdf

Do you seriously believe 14-month-olds are motivated by fear of the police?

This is a black and white fallacy ie a human is sometimes cooperative and friendly, therefore all humans are cooperative and friendly all the time.

Humans are cooperative and friendly when it's in our best interest. Since humans have evolved for tribalism a child might as well any human they encounter will be part of their tribe. It's the safest bet. And therefore have a vested interest to make friends. This is why humans are super nice to complete strangers all the time. Mostly. Unless they feel they're in a superior position and will risk nothing when violent = violence.

The violence is always there, under the surface. Ready to explode at any moment. If the man (it's in 9 our of 10 cases a man) feels backed into a corner and threatened = violence. Our world has all the evidence you need. The prevalence of domestic violence alone is all the evidence you need. Men often turn to violence in their relationships for stupid reasons.

The books on the Gulag system and Concentration camps tells us what happens when one class of humans are able to commit acts of violence against another group and don't risk repercussions. What happens is that women become as violent as the men, and the violence spins out of control.

It's not a pretty picture. The Gulags and Concentration camp system wasn't that long ago. To think our socities have evolved out of this behaviour in any major way is delusional IMHO.

I just noticed a glaring omission in the above: "children as young as 14" needs to read "children as young as 14 months"

 

[Angry Floof]

What is the psychological term for someone who doesn't have the ability to recognize that other people don't think like they themselves do?

I was thinking about, for example, abusive, misogynistic men. One of the things such men have in common is the belief that all men think and feel the same way about women, and if some men are not acting in the same abusive ways, then they must be pretending or just so weak and cowardly that they hide their true hatred of women. They can't fathom that not all men think like they do.

Right wing authoritarianism suffers this same deficit. They think all people are just as black and white in their thinking as they themselves are. They think their outgroups all have the same motivations as they themselves do. If someone they don't like actually does something good for others, right wing authoritarian followers believe that person is just putting on a show to manipulate. They don't have the capacity to truly care about anything beyond the end of their own noses and so they have no framework through which to recognize when someone actually does.

So I'm sure you'll all understand why some of us are wary of the mentality that can't fathom how anyone could not be aggressive or not seek social dominance through violence, and that anyone who doesn't actively behave as animal brain aggressive dominators must be superficially conditioned to behave themselves.

And this inability to apply a different framework from what they themselves experience must also apply to those who say they don't believe primal aggression is the fundamental nature of humankind. We who believe that cooperation is not only fundamental to human nature but is the best survival tool in our adaptation repertoire must be just delusional or pretending or ignoring violence in some "hippy dippy" fantasy, right? If violence and aggression aren't front and center in your world view, then you must be purposefully ignorant of violence and aggression.

And yet we do not ignore violence and aggression. That's not possible. Violence and aggression impinge on our nervous system and animal brain in ways that comfort and cooperation can't ever do. There is no way to ignore the threat of violence or aggression. That's not possible for a human brain and body to do even if they just see violence happen. It doesn't even have to happen to us personally for us to be highly sensitive and easily traumatized by even witnessing violence.

Again, I'm sure a grownup thinking person can easily understand why some of us are wary of people who think we can just happily pretend otherwise when the alternative, that not all humans think the way you do and still are not delusional or ignorant, actually makes more sense when frontal lobes are applied rather than animal brain urge to dominate.

ETA. I believe much of this is cultural, where aggression is considered strength and cooperation is considered capitulation. I imagine, depending on how deeply such cultural attitudes run in a person's subconscious, that even talking about reducing aggression in the world must make them feel vulnerable and defensive.

 

[Worldtraveller]

I believe the psychological term is simply lack of empathy. To a large extent, you are correct in that it's cultural. In the US, empathy, particularly in men, is practically beaten out of us as children.

The toxic difference in how male and female children are treated is also reflected in the differences between autistic girls and boys. IMO, that is for much the same reason, empathy can be learned, but not if it's actively discouraged.

 

[bigfield]

What is the psychological term for someone who doesn't have the ability to recognize that other people don't think like they themselves do?

The closest thing I'm aware of is egocentrism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentrism

However, that also includes the inability of children to understand that other people can can physically see, hear and feel things that they don't. Like when a child hides their eyes and proclaims that no-one can see them. Children grow out of this conceptual model of the world in early childhood, during what Piaget called the preoperational stage of development, during which they also learn a language.

But people don't actually use the word egocentric that way. It usually just means "self-centred".

Right wing authoritarianism suffers this same deficit. They think all people are just as black and white in their thinking as they themselves are. They think their outgroups all have the same motivations as they themselves do.

This also explains why some religious people don't believe atheists can be good without God.

 

[bigfield]

The books on the Gulag system and Concentration camps tells us what happens when one class of humans are able to commit acts of violence against another group and don't risk repercussions. What happens is that women become as violent as the men, and the violence spins out of control.

It's not a pretty picture. The Gulags and Concentration camp system wasn't that long ago. To think our socities have evolved out of this behaviour in any major way is delusional IMHO.

Why is it delusional? You brought up Enlightenment Now, so why not take Pinker's approach: the amount of violence people commit is going down, and in the twentieth century some of the decreases were spectacular. (On top of that, our intuition is completely hopeless at actually recognising this trend.) Western society has major differences not only between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but it also has major difference from the societies that preceded them: Imperial and Weimar Germany, and Tsarist Russia.

I see your point that bestial human instinct is always lurking underneath the surface, and sometimes it pops its head out. But if we concern ourselves solely with how often this happens, whether we're counting riots or domestic assaults, we see it's happening less and less. We should expect that trend of pacification to continue.

 

[Angry Floof]

What is the psychological term for someone who doesn't have the ability to recognize that other people don't think like they themselves do?

The closest thing I'm aware of is egocentrism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentrism

However, that also includes the inability of children to understand that other people can can physically see, hear and feel things that they don't. Like when a child hides their eyes and proclaims that no-one can see them. Children grow out of this conceptual model of the world in early childhood, during what Piaget called the preoperational stage of development, during which they also learn a language.

But people don't actually use the word egocentric that way. It usually just means "self-centred".

Right wing authoritarianism suffers this same deficit. They think all people are just as black and white in their thinking as they themselves are. They think their outgroups all have the same motivations as they themselves do.

This also explains why some religious people don't believe atheists can be good without God.

There is definitely a level of immaturity in what I describe, and fundamentalist religion is infantilizing.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Humans are cooperative and friendly when it's in our best interest.

That's not how instincts work. We don't rent a super-computer to calculate the probability that being cooperative and friendly in a particular interaction is going to be in our best interest, and then consciously decide on whether or not to be cooperative and friendly. Evolution just doesn't work like that, it uses heuristics, cheap tricks, all over the place: We are emotionally drawn towards being cooperative and helpful in situations that contain certain triggers, where the triggers have been selected based on that they used to be moderately well correlated with situations where being cooperative and friendly tended to benefit our ancestors.

Yes, exactly. First you say that is not how instincts work and then you describe the same thing in other words. We seem to agree on how instincts work. But it does kill your argument. So I'm not sure what you are arguing for?

How, exactly, does the fact that certain extreme conditions bring more violent aspects of our behavioral repertoire to the fore than others make those aspects "our true nature"?

You are not making a rational argument at all here, let alone responding to what people are saying.

In evolutionary theory and game theory it's called tit-for-tat. If I'm in an unfamiliar encounter I start out nice. If you aren't nice back I become aggressive. If you're nice back I keep being nice. If it's a familiar situation where I can use violence with zero risk to myself then that will be a common strategy used.

Modern civilisation is built around making sure everybody is nice to one another, partly with the help of threats of violence from the police and partly by spreading propaganda/lies about human nature (to give us the illusion of that other people are more likely to be nice than what is warranted).

The tit-for-tat is a behavioural strategy that can be found in every living thing, right down to bacteria. Because it works. Any species or member of a species that isn't prepared to use violence to defend itself or is willing to use violence oppurtunistically when it's to their benefit is quickly removed from the genepool. Since we are a part of nature that includes us and our behaviour.

If you now claim that humans are special and that this doesn't apply to us, and that we've evolved away from this I'll call you a deluded religious nutjob.

 

[Jokodo]

Yes, exactly. First you say that is not how instincts work and then you describe the same thing in other words. We seem to agree on how instincts work. But it does kill your argument. So I'm not sure what you are arguing for?

It doesn't kill my argument. Quite the contrary. Humans have evolved in an environment where almost all people you interacted with face to face where band members you would likely meet again. In such an environment, the one-time benefit of getting what you want through violence is, as a rule, lower than the long-term benefit of being seen as a reliable cooperator by the very same people who might help you in the future when you need it. Therefore the same cheap trick logic that leads us to err on the side of jumping when unsure whether that elongated thingy on the ground is a snake or an odd-looking branch leads us to err on the side of cooperating rather than being violent when we're unable to instantly determine whether this is a situation where the cooperating or forcing our way is what benefits us most.

This doesn't imply that we're unable to employ violence to get what we want in specific conditions, just like erring on the side of "this is a snake" doesn't mean we jump at every branch, but it does make it absurd to claim that "our true nature" is violence.

How, exactly, does the fact that certain extreme conditions bring more violent aspects of our behavioral repertoire to the fore than others make those aspects "our true nature"?

You are not making a rational argument at all here, let alone responding to what people are saying.

In evolutionary theory and game theory it's called tit-for-tat. If I'm in an unfamiliar encounter I start out nice. If you aren't nice back I become aggressive. If you're nice back I keep being nice. If it's a familiar situation where I can use violence with zero risk to myself then that will be a common strategy used.

I'm not going to take lessons on evolutionary theory from someone who fails to understand that humans have a propensity for cooperation in most day-to-day interactions that qualitatively distinguishes us from other apes, and that this propensity is built into our genes and co-opted by by culture (and to some extend foundational for the emergence of culture, since accumulation of cultural knowledge is greatly enhanced by altruistic sharing of information) as much as it is produced by culture.

And once again, before you run off with your strawman again, this does not imply that cooperation is the only tool in our behavioral toolbox. I don't think anyone claimed it is.

Modern civilisation is built around making sure everybody is nice to one another, partly with the help of threats of violence from the police and partly by spreading propaganda/lies about human nature (to give us the illusion of that other people are more likely to be nice than what is warranted).

That's just false. Most of the time, we don't even notice all the ways we are nice to strangers (or strangers nice to us), from holding open an elevator door to moving to the side when passing someone on the pavement, that we don't even notice them. Cooperating is second nature to us, to the point where we sometimes even interpret doing nothing (i.e. a failure to cooperate) as a hostile act. This confirmation bias if anything leads us to underestimate the degree to which we cooperate in most day-to-day interactions.

The tit-for-tat is a behavioural strategy that can be found in every living thing, right down to bacteria. Because it works. Any species or member of a species that isn't prepared to use violence to defend itself or is willing to use violence oppurtunistically when it's to their benefit is quickly removed from the genepool. Since we are a part of nature that includes us and our behaviour.

Category error. Species aren't "removed from the genepool". A genepool is an attribute of a species.

If you now claim that humans are special and that this doesn't apply to us, and that we've evolved away from this I'll call you a deluded religious nutjob.

If you want to argue with what is actually being said rather than your strawman, You're welcome to do so.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The books on the Gulag system and Concentration camps tells us what happens when one class of humans are able to commit acts of violence against another group and don't risk repercussions. What happens is that women become as violent as the men, and the violence spins out of control.

It's not a pretty picture. The Gulags and Concentration camp system wasn't that long ago. To think our socities have evolved out of this behaviour in any major way is delusional IMHO.

Why is it delusional? You brought up Enlightenment Now, so why not take Pinker's approach: the amount of violence people commit is going down, and in the twentieth century some of the decreases were spectacular.

I brought it up because it refutes the argument the article is making. I think Pinker supports my argument.

(On top of that, our intuition is completely hopeless at actually recognising this trend.) Western society has major differences not only between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but it also has major difference from the societies that preceded them: Imperial and Weimar Germany, and Tsarist Russia.

We're still human, so those differences are only superficial. Very little was required to attract a bunch of young people to Syria and fight for ISIS. Very little. If that doesn't alarm you, then I can't help. No, the problem isn't Islam. The problem is humans. This shit isn't going to continue.

I see your point that bestial human instinct is always lurking underneath the surface, and sometimes it pops its head out. But if we concern ourselves solely with how often this happens, whether we're counting riots or domestic assaults, we see it's happening less and less. We should expect that trend of pacification to continue.

I don't agree. We're living in weird times. Wealth has increased explosively at an ever increasing rate. Which means that people in general have every reason to be hopeful about their future. The immense destruction of WW2 was like a reset button given plenty of space for growth and the fact that USA was the hegemon with a myth about itself as the protector of other peoples freedom. The collapse of the USSR gave us another breather. China rolling over and going capitalist is another one. We've been exceptionally lucky.

But that won't continue for ever. When the poorest become discontent about their lot in life they become dangerous. Society becomes unstable and governments get more authoritarian. That is normality of human society. We live in very weird times indeed. And to think that isn't what we're going to back to, sooner or later, is crazy IMHO. And now with the robotics revolution eating up low end jobs at an increasing rate... yeah... it's ain't going to be pretty.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It doesn't kill my argument. Quite the contrary. Humans have evolved in an environment where almost all people you interacted with face to face where band members you would likely meet again. In such an environment, the one-time benefit of getting what you want through violence is, as a rule, lower than the long-term benefit of being seen as a reliable cooperator by the very same people who might help you in the future when you need it. Therefore the same cheap trick logic that leads us to err on the side of jumping when unsure whether that elongated thingy on the ground is a snake or an odd-looking branch leads us to err on the side of cooperating rather than being violent when we're unable to instantly determine whether this is a situation where the cooperating or forcing our way is what benefits us most.

This doesn't imply that we're unable to employ violence to get what we want in specific conditions, just like erring on the side of "this is a snake" doesn't mean we jump at every branch, but it does make it absurd to claim that "our true nature" is violence.

Again, here you go with the black and white interpretation of what I said. Stop it.

In evolutionary theory and game theory it's called tit-for-tat. If I'm in an unfamiliar encounter I start out nice. If you aren't nice back I become aggressive. If you're nice back I keep being nice. If it's a familiar situation where I can use violence with zero risk to myself then that will be a common strategy used.

I'm not going to take lessons on evolutionary theory from someone who fails to understand that humans have a propensity for cooperation in most day-to-day interactions that qualitatively distinguishes us from other apes, and that this propensity is built into our genes and co-opted by by culture (and to some extend foundational for the emergence of culture, since accumulation of cultural knowledge is greatly enhanced by altruistic sharing of information) as much as it is produced by culture.

And once again, before you run off with your strawman again, this does not imply that cooperation is the only tool in our behavioral toolbox. I don't think anyone claimed it is.

You seem to need a lesson in evolutionary theory. I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings.

Modern civilisation is built around making sure everybody is nice to one another, partly with the help of threats of violence from the police and partly by spreading propaganda/lies about human nature (to give us the illusion of that other people are more likely to be nice than what is warranted).

That's just false. Most of the time, we don't even notice all the ways we are nice to strangers (or strangers nice to us), from holding open an elevator door to moving to the side when passing someone on the pavement, that we don't even notice them. Cooperating is second nature to us, to the point where we sometimes even interpret doing nothing (i.e. a failure to cooperate) as a hostile act. This confirmation bias if anything leads us to underestimate the degree to which we cooperate in most day-to-day interactions.

Yes. So what? What does it prove? How does it prove me wrong?

The tit-for-tat is a behavioural strategy that can be found in every living thing, right down to bacteria. Because it works. Any species or member of a species that isn't prepared to use violence to defend itself or is willing to use violence oppurtunistically when it's to their benefit is quickly removed from the genepool. Since we are a part of nature that includes us and our behaviour.

Category error. Species aren't "removed from the genepool". A genepool is an attribute of a species.

lol

If you now claim that humans are special and that this doesn't apply to us, and that we've evolved away from this I'll call you a deluded religious nutjob.

If you want to argue with what is actually being said rather than your strawman, You're welcome to do so.

I don't think I am. My claim is that the article this thread is based on is bullshit.

I maintain that if a member of a species has no reason to refrain from violence it goes with violence. Most often cooperation is less risk as well as more energy efficient. But that's a different argument.

This is why we swat flies without hesitation. Friendly cooperation and us letting them do their thing has zero cost to us. But also no benefit. Since flies are slighly annoying and a fly poses zero physical threat to us we'll almost always opt for violence against them. This is how our propesity for violence works. The evidence of this is all around, if you care to pay attention for it. This is also backed up by human behaviour in war zones and concentration camps. Abu Grahib wasn't a freaky one off. That's what often happens when we're given a free pass to use violence against other people.

 

[Jokodo]

Again, here you go with the black and white interpretation of what I said. Stop it.

That's not an interpretation. "[O]ur true violent nature" is literally what you wrote.

I'm not going to take lessons on evolutionary theory from someone who fails to understand that humans have a propensity for cooperation in most day-to-day interactions that qualitatively distinguishes us from other apes, and that this propensity is built into our genes and co-opted by by culture (and to some extend foundational for the emergence of culture, since accumulation of cultural knowledge is greatly enhanced by altruistic sharing of information) as much as it is produced by culture.

And once again, before you run off with your strawman again, this does not imply that cooperation is the only tool in our behavioral toolbox. I don't think anyone claimed it is.

You seem to need a lesson in evolutionary theory. I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings.

Or maybe you do? If you think that anything I said is incompatible with (or even hard to explain within) evolutionary theory, can you point out what and where? Preferrably, something I actually said, not your freakish interpretations.

Modern civilisation is built around making sure everybody is nice to one another, partly with the help of threats of violence from the police and partly by spreading propaganda/lies about human nature (to give us the illusion of that other people are more likely to be nice than what is warranted).

That's just false. Most of the time, we don't even notice all the ways we are nice to strangers (or strangers nice to us), from holding open an elevator door to moving to the side when passing someone on the pavement, that we don't even notice them. Cooperating is second nature to us, to the point where we sometimes even interpret doing nothing (i.e. a failure to cooperate) as a hostile act. This confirmation bias if anything leads us to underestimate the degree to which we cooperate in most day-to-day interactions.

Yes. So what? What does it prove? How does it prove me wrong?

Well you did say, and that is again a literal quote, that we're being lied to "to give us the illusion of that other people are more likely to be nice than what is warranted". That's kind of the opposite of being under the illusion that others tend to be more hostile than they actually are.

The tit-for-tat is a behavioural strategy that can be found in every living thing, right down to bacteria. Because it works. Any species or member of a species that isn't prepared to use violence to defend itself or is willing to use violence oppurtunistically when it's to their benefit is quickly removed from the genepool. Since we are a part of nature that includes us and our behaviour.

Category error. Species aren't "removed from the genepool". A genepool is an attribute of a species.

lol

If you now claim that humans are special and that this doesn't apply to us, and that we've evolved away from this I'll call you a deluded religious nutjob.

If you want to argue with what is actually being said rather than your strawman, You're welcome to do so.

I don't think I am. My claim is that the article this thread is based on is bullshit.

I maintain that if a member of a species has no reason to refrain from violence it goes with violence.

And I maintain that most of the time, an animal doesn't evaluate (with any degree of accuracy) the actual situation at hand, it subconsciously decides whether this feels like a be-friendly situation or a be-hostile situation based on, at best, whether it clusters more with the situations where its ancestors (in the case of instincts) or the individual itself (in the base of conditioning) benefitted from being friendly or with the ones where they benefited from being hostile, as per its salient sensory characteristics. If you don't understand that, you need a lesson in cognitive evolution.

In the case of the human animal, it is a priori more likely to cluster with the be-friendly type (whether or not being friendly actually benefits the individual in the specific situation at hand) of situation simply because of the fact that we evolved (as a species) and grew up (as individuals) in an environment where cooperation was frequently life-saving. The fact that there are also situations where we are drawn to hostility doesn't negate that, nor has anyone denied it.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Or maybe you do? If you think that anything I said is incompatible with (or even hard to explain within) evolutionary theory, can you point out what and where? Preferrably, something I actually said, not your freakish interpretations.

I think I have already. Go back and read them again perhaps?

And I maintain that most of the time, an animal doesn't evaluate (with any degree of accuracy) the actual situation at hand, it subconsciously decides whether this feels like a be-friendly situation or a be-hostile situation based on, at best, whether it clusters more with the situations where its ancestors (in the case of instincts) or the individual itself (in the base of conditioning) benefitted from being friendly or with the ones where they benefited from being hostile, as per its salient sensory characteristics. If you don't understand that, you need a lesson in cognitive evolution.

Yes, that is what I have written all along.

In the case of the human animal, it is a priori more likely to cluster with the be-friendly type (whether or not being friendly actually benefits the individual in the specific situation at hand) of situation simply because of the fact that we evolved (as a species) and grew up (as individuals) in an environment where cooperation was frequently life-saving. The fact that there are also situations where we are drawn to hostility doesn't negate that, nor has anyone denied it.

I think the article does deny it. I'm not saying that book does. But the article certainly does. How about you trying to defend the article instead of just agreeing with me?

At this point I get the feeling you're just arguing for the sake of arguing with me. You don't seem to have any substance to your objections.

 

[Jokodo]

I think I have already. Go back and read them again perhaps?

No, you haven't. Maybe you think I've written something that's incompatible with evolutionary theory, but if I actually have, not just in your imagination, it should be easy to provide a direct quote. If you can't, more likely than not you're hearing voices.

Yes, that is what I have written all along.

You've consistently written that we become violent in situations where we can get away with it. Not in situations that resemble ones where our ancestors got away with it/benefitted from it. This may seem like semantic nitpicking but I really don't think it is - it's symptomatic of taking the computer metaphor of our behaviour too far.

In the case of the human animal, it is a priori more likely to cluster with the be-friendly type (whether or not being friendly actually benefits the individual in the specific situation at hand) of situation simply because of the fact that we evolved (as a species) and grew up (as individuals) in an environment where cooperation was frequently life-saving. The fact that there are also situations where we are drawn to hostility doesn't negate that, nor has anyone denied it.

I think the article does deny it. I'm not saying that book does. But the article certainly does. How about you trying to defend the article instead of just agreeing with me?

Exactly where? The article even explicitly states that "we can become unbelievably cruel." It merely points out that we can also be very cooperative, and that this degree of cooperation, more than the violent aspects of our behavioral toolbox, made us much more successful than chimps and earlier earlier hominid species. Now that may be false empirically, but it doesn't amount to claiming violence doesn't exist.

At this point I get the feeling you're just arguing for the sake of arguing with me. You don't seem to have any substance to your objections.

 

[DrZoidberg]

You've consistently written that we become violent in situations where we can get away with it. Not in situations that resemble ones where our ancestors got away with it/benefitted from it. This may seem like semantic nitpicking but I really don't think it is - it's symptomatic of taking the computer metaphor of our behaviour too far.

You seem to understand my point. Finally. And as you've agreed to, over and over, it's instinct. Not any rational calculation each time. INSTINCT. And you seem to understand how instinct works. So I don't understand what your problem is?

In the case of the human animal, it is a priori more likely to cluster with the be-friendly type (whether or not being friendly actually benefits the individual in the specific situation at hand) of situation simply because of the fact that we evolved (as a species) and grew up (as individuals) in an environment where cooperation was frequently life-saving. The fact that there are also situations where we are drawn to hostility doesn't negate that, nor has anyone denied it.

Until it's not beneficial. Picking the wrong moment to be friendly can likewise be lethal. Humans are tribal. For good and for bad. Which leads to all manner of nastiness and unfriendliness when a person is identified as "the other". There's no shortage of examples.

When a country goes to war humans seem fully capable to turn into murderers en masse at the drop of a hat. I don't think that is in any way an unnatural behaviour for humans. We are both. Aggressive when it pays to be, friendly when it pays to be. That's not a particularly friendy species. Nor unfriendly. That's just opportunism. Which is what is expected in world where there's competition for resources.

I think the article does deny it. I'm not saying that book does. But the article certainly does. How about you trying to defend the article instead of just agreeing with me?

Exactly where? The article even explicitly states that "we can become unbelievably cruel." It merely points out that we can also be very cooperative, and that this degree of cooperation, more than the violent aspects of our behavioral toolbox, made us much more successful than chimps and earlier earlier hominid species. Now that may be false empirically, but it doesn't amount to claiming violence doesn't exist.

I don't think you're interpreting it right. I think the article looks like a new take on the old Rousseauist hippie bullshit, but dressed in a sciency evolutionary garb. That's my interpretation.

 

[DrZoidberg]

What specifically made me react against to the article is the prevalence of domestic violence. Men who engage in domenstic violence are treated as freaks of nature or people who have something wrong in the head. While a comforting thought, prevents us from taking necessary steps to protect victims of it. It's endemic in every culture. While, in the west, it's at least condemned, it's extremely common. As is rape.

This needs to be explained somehow. We can do better than that these men weren't raised right. If that was the case wouldn't there be cultures without it? Why is it common in every culture?

When we were hunter/gatherers men had less oppurtunities to beat their or rape the women of the tribe. Since the men all lived together they could keep an eye on each other. But since modern humans insist on living isolated in couples this social mechanic is missing. If my view is correct the results are predictable.

 

[Jokodo]

You seem to understand my point. Finally. And as you've agreed to, over and over, it's instinct. Not any rational calculation each time. INSTINCT. And you seem to understand how instinct works. So I don't understand what your problem is?

The problem is that the fact that we're instinctively drawn towards cooperation at least as often as towards hostility belies the claim that violence is, in any meaningful and when contrasted with cooperation, our "true nature". That's your problem, not mine - you explicitly claimed it is. I didn't claim that, and neither did I claim the opposite, that cooperation is our one "true nature". Nor did the article. What I did claim is that cooperation is also part of our instinctive repertoire, and what the article claims is that our propensity played a major role in making us so successful compared to our instinctively less cooperative relatives. Those are empirically valid observations or at least well-informed hypotheses that in no way whatsoever conflict with the theory of evolution, much less require Lamarckian mechanisms.

Until it's not beneficial.

That's a simplistic way to phrase it. More accurate would be: unless in a situation that clearly *feels* like it's not going to be beneficial. We're animals, not omniscient gods.

Picking the wrong moment to be friendly can likewise be lethal.

Sure. And since we're animals and only have our gut feelings to go by, evolution has led us to pick the option where being wrong is less likely to harm us when unsure - which is most of the time.

Humans are tribal. For good and for bad. Which leads to all manner of nastiness and unfriendliness when a person is identified as "the other". There's no shortage of examples.

When a country goes to war humans seem fully capable to turn into murderers en masse at the drop of a hat. I don't think that is in any way an unnatural behaviour for humans. We are both. Aggressive when it pays to be, friendly when it pays to be. That's not a particularly friendy species. Nor unfriendly. That's just opportunism. Which is what is expected in world where there's competition for resources.

I think the article does deny it. I'm not saying that book does. But the article certainly does. How about you trying to defend the article instead of just agreeing with me?

Exactly where? The article even explicitly states that "we can become unbelievably cruel." It merely points out that we can also be very cooperative, and that this degree of cooperation, more than the violent aspects of our behavioral toolbox, made us much more successful than chimps and earlier earlier hominid species. Now that may be false empirically, but it doesn't amount to claiming violence doesn't exist.

I don't think you're interpreting it right. I think the article looks like a new take on the old Rousseauist hippie bullshit, but dressed in a sciency evolutionary garb. That's my interpretation.

Maybe you should go by what it says?

 

[Angry Floof]

What specifically made me react against to the article is the prevalence of domestic violence. Men who engage in domenstic violence are treated as freaks of nature or people who have something wrong in the head. While a comforting thought, prevents us from taking necessary steps to protect victims of it. It's endemic in every culture. While, in the west, it's at least condemned, it's extremely common. As is rape.

This needs to be explained somehow. We can do better than that these men weren't raised right. If that was the case wouldn't there be cultures without it? Why is it common in every culture?

When we were hunter/gatherers men had less oppurtunities to beat their or rape the women of the tribe. Since the men all lived together they could keep an eye on each other. But since modern humans insist on living isolated in couples this social mechanic is missing. If my view is correct the results are predictable.

I still don't understand your objection, though.The article and the research and book behind it claim that friendliness and cooperation have been our most successful strategy for survival and for thriving, not that humans are not aggressive.

Are you saying that aggression and rape have been our most successful strategy? That we not only survive but thrive and build complex systems and civilizations wherein millions of humans go about their lives in an overall peaceful fashion due to the aggressive side of our nature? Has rape produced more offspring than friendly relations?

I'm sorry, but your comments throughout this thread have sounded emotional and a bit confused as to what exactly you're objecting to.

 

[DrZoidberg]

What specifically made me react against to the article is the prevalence of domestic violence. Men who engage in domenstic violence are treated as freaks of nature or people who have something wrong in the head. While a comforting thought, prevents us from taking necessary steps to protect victims of it. It's endemic in every culture. While, in the west, it's at least condemned, it's extremely common. As is rape.

This needs to be explained somehow. We can do better than that these men weren't raised right. If that was the case wouldn't there be cultures without it? Why is it common in every culture?

When we were hunter/gatherers men had less oppurtunities to beat their or rape the women of the tribe. Since the men all lived together they could keep an eye on each other. But since modern humans insist on living isolated in couples this social mechanic is missing. If my view is correct the results are predictable.

I still don't understand your objection, though.The article and the research and book behind it claim that friendliness and cooperation have been our most successful strategy for survival and for thriving, not that humans are not aggressive.

That's not how I interpretted it. I interpretted it as violence being counterproductive strategies and that evolution is pushing towards peacefulness. As if that's the end goal of evolution. Evolution doesn't have an end goal.

And besides, if the book was about that sometimes friendliness can be a good strategy for a species is nothing new. The Nazis thought that survival of the fittest meant the strongest. I don't know of anybody else who has ever thought that. It's not news.

Are you saying that aggression and rape have been our most successful strategy? That we not only survive but thrive and build complex systems and civilizations wherein millions of humans go about their lives in an overall peaceful fashion due to the aggressive side of our nature? Has rape produced more offspring than friendly relations?

I think the degree of civilisation among humans is to a large degree illusory. We spend a lot of time hiding our violent nature. We're all super accute all the time for detecting traces of agression. That's why so many are horrified about the uncivil way people communicate on social media. When there's no repurcussions about being aggressive, people very quickly become aggressive en masse. I think this is how humans would behave if civilisation didn't constantly whip us into place. And we don't like being reminded by it.

It think the algorithm works like this.

1. Be friendly
2. if it doesn't work then evaluate if violence is likely to succeed
3. if yes, then violence.

Step 2 is important. It's striking how meek men who would never win a fight no matter what are the ones who so emphatically claim that violence is never the answer, and think humans can evolve beyond it. While men who might actually win a fight have to make a conscious effort from keeping themselves from using force. It's also striking how the second category of men are 1. way more happier than other men and 2. are almost universally seen as more attractive by women. Women seem to like men who can fight in spite of this putting themselves in harms way.

On a more basic evolutionary level. Humans are tribal. The way hunter/gatherers work is that women from the own tribe are protected while women from other tribes are fair game. Humans can use all manner of cognitive tricks to expand the tribe. This is how nationalism works or religion. But it can also easily be reversed. We can put people who should be close to us in "the other" simply by thinking they are. We've still got the same brains. We still function like this. But civilisation has come up with a bunch of cognitive tricks to fool us into behaving more... well.. civilised. But very little is needed to reverse the effect.

There's also the male attractiveness level to consider. As made clear in books like "Dataclysm". About 80% of all men are sexually uninteresting for all women. Women might settle for one of the less attractive ones, because they can't do any better. But they don't want to. Men are much more just about gunning for what they can get and grateful for it. They rarely dream about getting women that they'll never get anyway. Our genders are different this way.

The bottom 80% of men get very little action from women. Very little. The top 20% get almost all of it.

This seems to be just basic human nature.

It's not hard to imagine that in a world where some men aren't getting any sexual attention at all from women then rape is the best option, evolutionarily. Which is why so many social rules and regulations are about just this, regulating human sexuality to create less friction in society.

For example, socially encouraged monogamy. Humans clearly aren't monogamous. We don't stop finding others sexually attractive when we fall in love. But in a world of free love we'll get a few men with harems of all the women. Not great, for anyone. So now we have a society where everybody pretends to be monogamous and high status men are unfaithful with unfaithful women who have settled for a less attractive but safe man. There's many examples of how we've designed society to reduce social friction.

I'm sorry, but your comments throughout this thread have sounded emotional and a bit confused as to what exactly you're objecting to.

I'm sorry for being a bit unclear then. I have tried my best though. I'm objecting to portraying nature as a nice place. I think it's a hippie fantasy, and believing in it is dangerous. We don't create a better world by ignoring the darkness. If we do the darkness festers unchecked and we're at an absolute loss when men behave in the way nature intended them to.

 

[Jokodo]

That's not how I interpretted it. I interpretted it as violence being counterproductive strategies and that evolution is pushing towards peacefulness. As if that's the end goal of evolution. Evolution doesn't have an end goal.

And besides, if the book was about that sometimes friendliness can be a good strategy for a species is nothing new. The Nazis thought that survival of the fittest meant the strongest. I don't know of anybody else who has ever thought that. It's not news.

Are you saying that aggression and rape have been our most successful strategy? That we not only survive but thrive and build complex systems and civilizations wherein millions of humans go about their lives in an overall peaceful fashion due to the aggressive side of our nature? Has rape produced more offspring than friendly relations?

I think the degree of civilisation among humans is to a large degree illusory. We spend a lot of time hiding our violent nature. We're all super accute all the time for detecting traces of agression. That's why so many are horrified about the uncivil way people communicate on social media. When there's no repurcussions about being aggressive, people very quickly become aggressive en masse. I think this is how humans would behave if civilisation didn't constantly whip us into place. And we don't like being reminded by it.

It think the algorithm works like this.

1. Be friendly
2. if it doesn't work then evaluate if violence is likely to succeed
3. if yes, then violence.

This sounds like a pretty straightforward reversal of what you said earlier. Being friendly as the default hardly reflects a "true violent nature".

Step 2 is important. It's striking how meek men who would never win a fight no matter what are the ones who so emphatically claim that violence is never the answer, and think humans can evolve beyond it. While men who might actually win a fight have to make a conscious effort from keeping themselves from using force. It's also striking how the second category of men are 1. way more happier than other men and 2. are almost universally seen as more attractive by women. Women seem to like men who can fight in spite of this putting themselves in harms way.

On a more basic evolutionary level. Humans are tribal. The way hunter/gatherers work is that women from the own tribe are protected while women from other tribes are fair game. Humans can use all manner of cognitive tricks to expand the tribe. This is how nationalism works or religion. But it can also easily be reversed. We can put people who should be close to us in "the other" simply by thinking they are. We've still got the same brains. We still function like this. But civilisation has come up with a bunch of cognitive tricks to fool us into behaving more... well.. civilised. But very little is needed to reverse the effect.

There's also the male attractiveness level to consider. As made clear in books like "Dataclysm". About 80% of all men are sexually uninteresting for all women. Women might settle for one of the less attractive ones, because they can't do any better. But they don't want to. Men are much more just about gunning for what they can get and grateful for it. They rarely dream about getting women that they'll never get anyway. Our genders are different this way.

The bottom 80% of men get very little action from women. Very little. The top 20% get almost all of it.

This seems to be just basic human nature.

It's not hard to imagine that in a world where some men aren't getting any sexual attention at all from women then rape is the best option, evolutionarily. Which is why so many social rules and regulations are about just this, regulating human sexuality to create less friction in society.

For example, socially encouraged monogamy. Humans clearly aren't monogamous. We don't stop finding others sexually attractive when we fall in love. But in a world of free love we'll get a few men with harems of all the women. Not great, for anyone. So now we have a society where everybody pretends to be monogamous and high status men are unfaithful with unfaithful women who have settled for a less attractive but safe man. There's many examples of how we've designed society to reduce social friction.

I'm sorry, but your comments throughout this thread have sounded emotional and a bit confused as to what exactly you're objecting to.

I'm sorry for being a bit unclear then. I have tried my best though. I'm objecting to portraying nature as a nice place. I think it's a hippie fantasy, and believing in it is dangerous. We don't create a better world by ignoring the darkness. If we do the darkness festers unchecked and we're at an absolute loss when men behave in the way nature intended them to.

Nature doesn't "intend" anymore than it has an end goal. You explicitly make the same fallacy you accuse the article of implicitly engaging in.

I also find it quite telling that hardly anywhere in your elaboration, women show up as agents. That alone should give you pause that maybe your picture is incomplete?