I'm pretty sure Frans de Waal has documented nonhuman coalitionary proactive aggression. Primates may not (stipulate it for now) do a lot of log carrying together, but they'll certainly politic and form coalitions: coalitions which can be relied upon when gangsta shit goes down.
Humans: "When the blood is on the wall, do you know who you side with?"
Chimps: "When we're biting the nuts off the [old] alpha, do you know who you side with?" (probably done more through picking lice than explicitly stated, but the end result is the same)
I just want to tell that absolute scarcity is true in a thermodynamic sense, but that isn't necessarily relevant to human experience since we are just a tiny fraction of the universe. So what matters instead is the concept of relative abundance and scarcity. If there are very few humans and lots of resources to the point where they can't be consumed at all, you get relative abundance from the viewpoint of humans.
I say this because I have seen a lot of people that argue absolute abundance cannot exist and they equate abundance with absolute abundance.
> Comparing the level of within-group physical aggression among chimpanzees with human hunter-gatherer communities, chimps are 150 to 550 times more likely than humans to inflict violence against their peers.
Are humans unusually peaceful, or are apes unusually violent (or maybe both)? They seem quite territorial. Maybe we’re just a typical regression to a less aggressive mean? Actually, I’m not sure if this is even a reasonable question, some sort of average level of animal aggression seems hard to define.
The article describes a campaign of execution against more aggressive members, but ... is there evidence that they were actually killed, vs. just not selected for mating? Both seem possible, but the article repeatedly emphasizes the killing, and that's a pretty bold claim! I'd just love to see the evidence at least mentioned.
This incongruity gives rise to the perennial question: Are humans naturally good or evil?
In the introduction of the book, Wrangham provides his answer: both.
and
Ever since the Enlightenment, as religion gradually fell by the wayside, people have been trying to ground their moral compasses in another prestigious entity—science. Sadly, this hasn’t really worked.
I immediately loose some respect for the author. Just assuming there is an objective definition of good and evil is so... religious? It's all about context, assumptions, models held in minds, zeitgeist, etc. I find Rutger Bregman (Humankind) much more enlightened on this issue.
Imho grounding our moral compasses in science is working, as Rutger Bregman indicates.
Richard Wrangham seems to think there is a one dimensional scale of evil -> good, Nazis -> 'People helping Jews hide from Nazis'. If only it were that simple, if only it were impossible to split twins and have one end up a Nazi and one helping Jews. If only the good and evil never changed over time.
If you get further down, they expand their view on Morality to be more nuanced, and something that sounds pretty reasonable. I think the core of their view is:
> My view is that morality is “real” in the same way that language is real. Both can change, but still operate within certain constraints. There are rules to every language, and rules to every morality.
> Saying morality isn’t real is like saying language isn’t real. And saying there is one true morality is like saying there is only one true language.
There's more to it than that, so it's worth reading that whole section if you want to give the author another chance.
Do you have any links with more background information?
Am curious.
It seems you are implying that maybe becoming a 'nazis' or 'helping a jew' could be genetically pre-determined. Or I might be reading your sentence more in a double negative and not catching the point.
I stopped reading when he drew conclusions from men's lower resting heart rate. Wanted to keep reading, but I don't know what other BS is going through my filters undetected.
The self domestication hypothesis is interesting, and it was probably a component of early social structures, but I think it is also overly simplified and not taking into account the complex and intertwined relationships and tradeoffs of those annoyingly domineering and violent individuals.
Within a group, so-called psychopaths/sociopaths are more likely to end-up as leaders or outcasts, outcasts were removed from the gene pool one way or an other, but leaders privileged access to females likely compensated for this "self-pruning".
I other words, this hypothesis seems overly simple and weak, from my perspective.
Readit News
Humans: "When the blood is on the wall, do you know who you side with?"
Chimps: "When we're biting the nuts off the [old] alpha, do you know who you side with?" (probably done more through picking lice than explicitly stated, but the end result is the same)
https://kemendo.com/Myth-of-Scarcity.html
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39569747
I should have a significantly revised version by July for publication (new anthropologist co author)
I say this because I have seen a lot of people that argue absolute abundance cannot exist and they equate abundance with absolute abundance.
Are humans unusually peaceful, or are apes unusually violent (or maybe both)? They seem quite territorial. Maybe we’re just a typical regression to a less aggressive mean? Actually, I’m not sure if this is even a reasonable question, some sort of average level of animal aggression seems hard to define.
This incongruity gives rise to the perennial question: Are humans naturally good or evil?
In the introduction of the book, Wrangham provides his answer: both.
and
Ever since the Enlightenment, as religion gradually fell by the wayside, people have been trying to ground their moral compasses in another prestigious entity—science. Sadly, this hasn’t really worked.
I immediately loose some respect for the author. Just assuming there is an objective definition of good and evil is so... religious? It's all about context, assumptions, models held in minds, zeitgeist, etc. I find Rutger Bregman (Humankind) much more enlightened on this issue.
Imho grounding our moral compasses in science is working, as Rutger Bregman indicates.
Richard Wrangham seems to think there is a one dimensional scale of evil -> good, Nazis -> 'People helping Jews hide from Nazis'. If only it were that simple, if only it were impossible to split twins and have one end up a Nazi and one helping Jews. If only the good and evil never changed over time.
> My view is that morality is “real” in the same way that language is real. Both can change, but still operate within certain constraints. There are rules to every language, and rules to every morality.
> Saying morality isn’t real is like saying language isn’t real. And saying there is one true morality is like saying there is only one true language.
There's more to it than that, so it's worth reading that whole section if you want to give the author another chance.
It seems you are implying that maybe becoming a 'nazis' or 'helping a jew' could be genetically pre-determined. Or I might be reading your sentence more in a double negative and not catching the point.
Within a group, so-called psychopaths/sociopaths are more likely to end-up as leaders or outcasts, outcasts were removed from the gene pool one way or an other, but leaders privileged access to females likely compensated for this "self-pruning".
I other words, this hypothesis seems overly simple and weak, from my perspective.