Evolution of Sexual Intimidation: Male Baboons Beat Up Females, Increases Mating
newsweek.com
newsweek.com
Tribalism is easily the most destructive of our impulses, especially in the way in which it can interact with ideology. Through ideology, such tribal impulses can camouflage their own effects and short circuit the "better angels of our nature" to excuse the dehumanization end even the slaughter of the out group.
I think that's the last great barrier to humans finally "waking up from history."
In particular, the way tribalism and in-group/out-group psychology interposes itself into political discussions is especially pernicious -- especially in the ways it manifests over the internet in social media. Fear isn't the mind killer. It's ideology combined with tribalism! If humankind ever destroys itself, in all likelihood, some group will have ideologically convinced itself that it should do so for some incredibly noble reasons.
"Climate change is a natural process and we shouldn't interfere with it."
There's a word for this happening throughout human history. It's called "government."
You mean like the people commenting here advocating replacing us with AI?
Pretty much anyone on the internet that gets traction is using outrage to spread their message. Since the emotions that cause viral spread on the internet are only outrage, lust, and awe, some huge whopping fraction of all communications on the internet through social media results in positions so extreme, someone eventually basically advocates destroying the human race or some large swathe of it.
It's like Godwin's Law. It's most certainly related to that, come to think of it.
Douglas Adams was a prophet! http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6458-meanwhile-the-poor-babe...
However, Kirk was supposed to be the moderate one that didn't give-way to pure logic or emotion and find the best solution somewhere in between. Which was the moral of the story of the week.
The older I get, the more Stratfor's geographic interpretation of history and geopolitics makes sense.
1. Understand anything
2. Understand the rules
3. Follow the rules
4. Break some of the rules
5. Make new rules
Note: I'm not claiming the article is "proof" of the contention, just that it indicates support for the parent's assertion. Other items may counter the assertion, of course.
I look forward to the day a majority of people realize that our biology is something that cannot be overcome. You work with mother nature or you get crushed by her. Those are the only choices available to us.
Once you overcome the 'hurdle' of 'undesirable' behaviors, you just adopt a new set of behaviors, which could be, in the long run, just as detrimental as the ones we have now.
I think Brave New World describes this quite well. The world where everyone is happy isn't necessarily the one that wouldn't be shocking to us in its behavioral patterns.
Perhaps machine intelligence will be the better version of ourselves; we're just the bootstrap code.
What makes us human? We know from experience that children are often cruel towards other animals, even other children,and get drunk on power too easily. So this kind of aggression is something innate, right?
But we have learned from experience that it's not good for us as a society, so we train them( at least in most cultures) to be kind and compassionate.
Now what is more human then- brutality or compassion? Of course compassion. It doesn't matter that this trait is not innate. What matters is that we have consciously chosen to cultivate and promote this trait. Call it "conscious" evolution, if you will. But it doesn't make us any less of a human. It makes us more human- the human that has collectively evolved using transfer of experience through language.
If you keep going with the theme of 'the changes we come up with are more human than what is innate', where does it end?
Where does it end? Who knows? At this point, Isaac Asimov's The Last Question comes to my mind.
Being human is not about being nice and living in harmony. It's about struggle and unfairness, compassion, competition, fights, power, tranquility, hate, love and war. I don't think there is anything rational or reasonable about it.
Ultimately, any sort of action increases entropy. So might as well enjoy it while it lasts instead of thinking of the greater good and how to force humans into this hegemony of cooperation and sustainability.
This is not to say that some of the more base instincts/behaviors shouldn't be squashed, but I think we should stop short of suppressing most of them.
Human cultural evolution has already created self-proclaimed "perfect" cultures that went on to attempt exactly this. The Nazis were only the most recent notable example. There are many examples in history of groups who considered it their holy duty or moral duty to take over the world. Fortunately, for most of human history, this hasn't been feasible, but technology is changing this equation.
then the AI-human race will create a perfect society and branch off to explore the universe.
Physics tells us that the "speed of light" is actually the absolute speed of causality for mass-energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msVuCEs8Ydo
So until consciousness can inhabit a substrate independent of mass-energy and based on space itself, and thus not subject to the light speed limit, any intelligent civilization which expands is doomed to create its own rivals. In Michael Swannick's Vacuum Flowers the Earth is taken over by a hegemonic super-intelligence, but it's forever trapped there, because when attempting to expand, the light-speed lag will cause a sub-part of it to bud off and immediately attack its greatest rival -- which is always the rest of itself.
In any case, civilizations are clearly not stable on cosmic time scales. Who in their right mind would think that billions of interacting sentients with their own agendas would produce any stable organization? It's ridiculous on the face of it.
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-to-call-bullshit-...
> In the final chapter, Alex finds himself halfheartedly preparing for yet another night of crime with a new gang (Lenn, Rick, Bully). After a chance encounter with Pete, who has reformed and married, Alex finds himself taking less and less pleasure in acts of senseless violence. He begins contemplating giving up crime himself to become a productive member of society and start a family of his own, while reflecting on the notion that his own children will be just as destructive as he has been, if not more so.
Broadly speaking, the whole sentiment makes me uneasy, especially given how powerful a tool the internet can be for consensus building.
The latter makes it sound like a much worse version of ourselves.
Whether our "natural" impulses are destructive, they were evolutionary advantages when it comes to pure survival for long periods of history. Craving sugar was a good thing until the last century. The sexual impulses that lead to higher mating success are also evolutionary advantages despite their being destructive and socially unacceptable.
There are known parallels in humans to what this article is talking about. The book "Sperm Wars" mentions many of them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_Wars The authors go to great lengths to denounce violent behavior, but nonetheless discuss the evolutionary advantages of some behaviors that we do not allow socially.
If you recognize it you can vaccinate yourself.
If not evolution, then what? Doesn't all behavior have an evolutionary basis?
Selflessness?
Sacrifice?