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Comment by neaden | Hacker News Reader

I feel like this article misses something obvious, which is that Hobbits aren't humans and the world of LotR includes people doing things that we would describe as magical. Hobbits for instance have a semi-magical ability to hide by how it's described in the books. If their society seems unrealistic for humans with medieval technology, I think that just shows us that Hobbits are fundamentally different from humans. The apparent almost total lack of Hobbit on Hobbit violence in the book also shows that Hobbits are just psychologically different from humans.

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Hobbits are pretty clearly intended to represent a kind of idealized English rural life. There would be little reason to for humans or hobbits to commit violence living in small villages or other kinship based settlements where everyone would know everyone. Smeagol killed for the ring just after discovering it so Hobbits are capable of violence but their way of life does not normally call for it. Also Hobbits are in no way innocent as they do pranks and commit petty theft from the farmer.

>There would be little reason to for humans or hobbits to commit violence

There's little, if any, reason for humans today to commit most of the violence they do, but they do it anyway. People don't usually commit violence for some understandable reason; they do it because they have psychological deficiencies. It's little different than a pitbull that randomly snaps and attacks a child in the family it's living with.

Clearly, based on Tolkein's depiction of them, hobbits are simply far superior to humans in this regard. And to be fair, the humans in Middle Earth don't seem to have so much of this problem as real-world humans either. Instead, I'd say the orcs sound pretty close to how many real-world humans today behave.

Most violence is committed between people that know each other rather than between strangers.

That may be but there were huge increases in homicide and other crimes in the UK from 1900 to present alongside urbanization. Tolkien would have grown up being familiar with a relatively safe type of rural life. There are even many small villages today with no recorded homicides populated by humans, so I think its fair to argue those kind of places inspired the Shire.

> no _recorded_ homicides

This aphorism does not take warfare into account.

Aphorism? There is substantial evidence supporting the statement that most violence is committed by people who know each other rather than by strangers. Here are some key findings from various sources:

- Sexual Violence: According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the majority of sexual abuse cases reported to law enforcement show that 93% of juvenile victims knew the perpetrator: 59% were acquaintances, 34% were family members, and only 7% were strangers¹.

- General Violence: Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) indicates that less than half of all violent crimes were committed by total strangers. A significant portion of violent crimes were committed by acquaintances, friends, and relatives⁵.

- Homicide: In 2004, only 23% of murders were committed by strangers, highlighting that a larger percentage of homicides occur between individuals who know each other⁴.

These statistics demonstrate that violence is more likely to occur within known social circles rather than between strangers. It's important to note that these findings are based on reported cases and surveys, which can have limitations, but they provide a general understanding of the patterns of violence.

Source: Conversation with Copilot, 6/3/2024 (1) Perpetrators of Sexual Violence: Statistics | RAINN. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violenc.... (2) Violent Crime by Strangers and Nonstrangers - Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vcsn.pdf. (3) VIOLENCE BETWEEN LOVERS, STRANGERS, AND FRIENDS. https://journals.library.wustl.edu/lawreview/article/6708/ga.... (4) Statistics In-Depth - National Sexual Violence Resource Center. https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics/statistics-depth. (5) STRANGER AND ACQUAINTANCE RAPE: Are There ... - University of Arizona. https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/stranger-and-acq....

"Aphorism" does not imply falsehood or that it is not supported by evidence. Actually, it implies a generally-known truth.

Indeed those citations exclude war.

Does this account for the fact that violence and murder committed by strangers is less likely to be solved?

Did you ask the LLM about how many people die in wars and other armed conflict or did you just ask it to back up your incorrect perception of reality?

I mean, Medieval English villages had violence, we have court records of it. People got drunk and got in fights, threatened to burn a neighbors house down, and all sorts of other reasons why people turn to violence that Hobbits seem to do only under extreme circumstances, like being under the influence of The One Ring as you point out.

it is surprising to find times of no violence, not times of violence. The history of the British Isles is filled with raiders and tribal conflicts, armies and their Lords. Peasants lived on the lands of their masters, while traders and pirates roamed.

Also I imagine a Hobbit's calorie requirements are substantially lower than a man 3 times their size. They're no less intelligent (indeed they are shown to be particularly clever), they have access to draft animals and basic machines, so their agricultural productivity is likely still high. This should allow for substantially greater surpluses even before we invoke magic.

Yeah but also what about second breakfast

There's a reason why hobbits use round doors. ;-)

The way I see it, all the fantasy races ARE humans, just humans with a different emphasis. The ones called "humans" are the vanilla people that have average human qualities, and then every other has its own slant on humanity. They all still have recognizably human emotions, desires, social structures, and so on, they are just each a study in some particular area. Maybe you have a race of people who are more spiritual, or a race of people who are more warlike, or hierarchical, or egalitarian, and so on.

Sure, it's fantasy and you could stop there. But the story often treats them as little people in a medieval setting and I think it wouldn't be enjoyable without that point of reference. So it's worth making comparisons.

I do wonder, just a little, if rather than fantasy this touches on the idea that a homogeneous people in w well-ordered society with a functioning economy might not commit much violence among themselves. If such were the idea being espoused, then whether or not the idea was valid, it would be difficult to talk about openly in our current political climate. If it could be shown to be invalid for whatever reason, then the idea might be attacked that way, but it'd be better still if it could just be dismissed as childish drivel.

The most important aspect would be the functioning economy. Crime rate drops with higher income.

>homogeneous people

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/06/in-ethno-nationa...

> In numerous cases of apparently ethno-nationalist conflict, the deepest hatreds are manifested between people who—to most outward appearances—exhibit very few significant distinctions. It is one of the great contradictions of civilization and one of the great sources of its discontents, and Sigmund Freud even found a term for it: “the narcissism of the small difference.” As he wrote, “It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of hostility between them.”

It's just a part of the human condition, sadly, to hate others based on the smallest of differences. And you will always find a difference, even among the most homogeneous of societies - be it the color of your hair, the pigment of your skin, your accent... it follows then that a homogenous society is not a solution; rather, fostering awareness and understanding around discrimination is the way forward.

> It's just a part of the human condition, sadly, to hate others based on the smallest of differences.

Part of me wants to agree with you, but you're using a very broad definition of hate for this to be true. This isn't the visceral hatred of the kid who bullied you all through school stealing your girlfriend in college, getting you framed and expelled from university, and then ending up your boss at the one place you could get a job. Such hatreds have been known to result in murder, after all. They're intense, they burn hot, and if the feeling manifests, a person seems unable to resist acting.

It's the "hate" of making the occasional (once every few years) joke about the village 10 miles down the road, and playing (good natured) pranks on them if/when they show up in your village. Someone else might insist that it's not hatred at all, but something more like "mistrust of strangers" or "self-sequestration". The choice of "hatred" isn't so much linguistically sensible, as it is about staking out a political position. And you just can't do that unless you've characterized this intrinsic human hesitation when dealing with strangers as "hatred". Can't really stand up on the podium and rant about how those other guys are stand-offish and don't make friends quickly.

The late 20th century Swedes weren't raping each other to any great degree. Homogeneity served them well. There wasn't any large degree of arson and assault in Japan in that same period. And while I might agree with you that homogeneity isn't a solution for any of their current problems, zealous heterogeneity of the sorts being pursued today might well be an anti-solution to be avoided.

> rather, fostering awareness and understanding around discrimination is the way forward.

The way forward to what, exactly? When you say things like this, it indicates that you have some vision of the future. I am not party to that vision, I do not know what it is, and no one else has bothered to describe it to me very much. Then, even if I do know this vision (and agree with it, I might not), I have to determine for myself whether or not your methods align with your aims. It might very much not ne the "way forward", you might be going backwards and believing you're going forward.

You've chosen a couple of very specific examples here (coincidentally, the same ones often chosen by neo-nazis). There are many well-known examples of very similar peoples hating each other and leading to widespread violence, several of which are mentioned in the linked article.

Characterizing these as "good natured pranks" seems to deliberately miss the point in favor of reinforcing your priors.

It'a a priori obvious that this is valid, but politics, propaganda etc do not run for the benefit of the common man.

We also see, in the Amazon series, a group of apparently hunter-gatherer hobbits with iron and textiles.

The conclusion I come to is that Hobbits magic up manufactured goods from the idealized English countryside of Tolkien’s imagination. If you have some English ancestors who lost a pot, it time-slipped into Middle Earth. Presumably they are where the socks go. Ever notice an excess of old keys around the house? Hobbits need boxes!

Tolkien is hardly responsible for the Amazon writers' unwillingness to think about the logic of the setting and abide by it.

In the Amazon series are proto-Hobbits, before they settled down. So, they had a different society from the ones we read about in the books.

But, yeah, the time travelling pots and socks must be how it worked :) Kind of like Skynet in the future compiling our C++ code :)

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