trump

[William Flynn Wallace]

He's still in the lead.  We know he's a liar, a sexist, perhaps a rapist, surely guilty of some of the charges against him now.  

Does  that show that those supporters just don't care about the law, the Constitution or anything else except their own opinions?  So if it isn't Trump it would be someone else?

That is really scary to me.  Is this as bad as it gets?  Have we been this way all along?  

In surveys people are asked about the past, and it's almost always better than now.  Statistics show that to be wildly wrong in every category, medical, technical, economic.

So rabble rousers are basing their stances on lies.  It's the little boy crying wolf when there's no wolf.

If I had a magic wand, I might include omitting credulousness from human characteristics in my top three.

We know that 'the many' in society are carried by 'the few' on their backs.  'The many' appear not to want to acknowledge how great we are, or care about the people who created all the toys they so dearly love, and may actually be antiscience.

'Level of expectation' is a term in social psychology.  When yours are met you are satisfied, but want more, and what 'more' means is now at a higher level than before because of the increased expectations.   Which leads to dissatisfactions with the current intake.

Will it ever end?  Or it is like a black hole which can take all you can throw at it?

bill  w

  

[Terren Suydam]

Hi William,

I agree with and relate to so much of what you wrote there. What does it say about America and humanity in general if we somehow re-elect someone who is at the very least indicted in four different jurisdictions, and likely to be convicted in at least one of them?  How strong is the desire to follow a charismatic cretin who says all the things you want to say but can't? As Hitler showed, it's very strong. It's a major problem of the collective human experience that we can be willingly led to evil by people appealing to our most base natures.

If I have hope here, it's not another politician or political movement, it's not AI. As crazy, naive, or idealistic as it may sound, my hope is the mainstreaming of psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted therapies. So much of the world's dysfunction is due to collective trauma. There's a saying, "hurt people hurt people". As more people find healing, over time, collectively, I see the potential for these kinds of maladaptive aspects of human psychology to ease. Of course, that's a decades-long dynamic and we may not have that much time.

Terren

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[Henry Rivera, PsyD]

To understand the mentality of the passionate Trump supporters, you have to understand their worldview, their sense of fighting for their lives at any cost. Haidt explains it in this seminal article among others “WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/ in the section on “devoted conservatives.” You can listen to the article even if you don’t have a subscription to read it. This article should be required reading for everyone in 2023 if you ask me. It explains why it feels like the world is going to Hell presently to so many people. 

From it I quote: “The “Hidden Tribes” study tells us that the “devoted conservatives” score highest on beliefs related to authoritarianism. They share a narrative in which America is eternally under threat from enemies outside and subversives within; they see life as a battle between patriots and traitors. According to the political scientist Karen Stenner, whose work the “Hidden Tribes” study drew upon, they are psychologically different from the larger group of “traditional conservatives” (19 percent of the population), who emphasize order, decorum, and slow rather than radical change.

Only within the devoted conservatives’ narratives do Donald Trump’s speeches make sense, from his campaign’s ominous opening diatribe about Mexican “rapists” to his warning on January 6, 2021: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.””

-Henry

On Aug 17, 2023, at 7:59 PM, William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:



--

[Keith Henson]

"Will it ever end?"

No. It is what happens when humans think they are faced with a bleak future.

We have been selected to go to war when we are faced with starvation.
I have a mathematical model if anyone cares.

What happens is that the first stage of the run-up to wars is the
circulation of xenophobic or just crazy memes. Commonly a cult-type
leader takes advantage of this or alternately, the memes take
advantage of someone (think of Hitler as a victim of this process).
If you don't believe the connection of a bad economic outlook to crazy
memes, just consider where the main support for MAGA or Qanon comes
from.

40 years ago I made the observation (without understanding) that
economic downturns correlated with upsurges of neo-nazi activity in
the midwest.

I don't expect any of you to understand this. People seem to have a
strong bias against understanding that they have evolved psychological
traits at all. Perhaps too much insight is not good for your genes.

Keith

[William Flynn Wallace]

I don't expect any of you (including me???) to understand this.  People seem to have a

strong bias against understanding that they have evolved psychological
traits at all.  Perhaps too much insight is not good for your genes. Keith

Keith I think you are seriously underestimating (or should that be misunderestimating? -   😆) the intelligence of the group we have here.  Anyone who doesn't believe in inherited traits, speak up!

In any case, wasn't it true that in Germany in the 30s they had inflation so bad that wheelbarrows were needed to cart around the money?  The only time I can think of where people are willing to lower expectations and make sacrifices is when we are in a war people support.  Will we have to go to war to adjust to lower levels of Medicare and Social Security?   bill w

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[Keith Henson]

I tried for more than ten years to convey the worldview that humans
have evolved psychological traits to the Extropians and utterly
failed.

Eventually, I lowered my expectations.

Keith

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 9:27 AM William Flynn Wallace

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAO%2BxQEa51r2O3Wj5BCnuojPtdo8xntrN%3DjQKBeZfvy0YHGjFXQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 12:14 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

> We have been selected to go to war when we are faced with starvation.

I don't think it's as simple as that, we're certainly much more peaceful than our closest relatives the chimpanzees. And there are counter examples to your idea, between 1959 and 1961 at least 30 million Chinese starve to death due to the idiotic policies of Mao Zedong, and yet China  didn't start a war with its neighbors. I think a greater danger is that most dictators and dictator wannabes, such as Donald Trump, when given a choice between being embarrassed and destroying the world, would prefer to destroy the world; of course they would not phrase it that way. they'd  call it "preserving our honor" or some other silly platitude. But there is some reason for optimism, despite all of the doom and gloom the fact remains that during the last 75 years, ever since the invention of the nuclear bomb, the human race has been more peaceful than it has ever been before.

John K Clark

 

[John Clark]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 12:27 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

>  wasn't it true that in Germany in the 30s they had inflation so bad that wheelbarrows were needed to cart around the money?

The German hyperinflation happened in 1921 and reached its peak in 1923, but Hitler didn't take power until 10 years later,1933. 

John K Clark

[Brent Allsop]

I'd be interested in learning about who doesn't support the idea that we have evolved psychological traits, especially if it is me.

I have tried for more than ten years to convince people that if they build and track consensus around important ideas, they will see progress, as in that which you measure, improves.

To the still small degree that people participate, we're demonstrating a significant amount of consensus, in the most polarized field out there:  theories of  consciousness.

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[William Flynn Wallace]

Thanks for the history lesson, John.  So hyperinflation was earlier than Hitler.  But surely that started something that he later took advantage of.  bill w

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[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 9:27 AM William Flynn Wallace
<fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't expect any of you (including me???) to understand this. People seem to have a
> strong bias against understanding that they have evolved psychological
> traits at all. Perhaps too much insight is not good for your genes. Keith
>
> Keith I think you are seriously underestimating (or should that be misunderestimating? - 😆) the intelligence of the group we have here.

I don't think the bias against understanding EP topics is a function
of intelligence. See the account of Patty Hearst about her
capture-bonding. Or the accounts of the Rwanda killers. Then there
is the amusing account of the time I was lambasted from the bench by a
federal judge for the very thing (status) judges are known for.

> Anyone who doesn't believe in inherited traits, speak up!

What is the advantage to genes for going to war vs starving in place?
Why? When did most of this selection take place?

Keith

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/extropolis/CAO%2BxQEa51r2O3Wj5BCnuojPtdo8xntrN%3DjQKBeZfvy0YHGjFXQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[John Clark]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 8:43 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

> What is the advantage to genes for going to war vs starving in place?

There is evidence that, at least some of the time, nice guys do finish first because it's a fact that humans have fewer virulent warlike genes than any other primate. Chimpanzees, our closest living relative, are far more aggressive than we are, their group size never gets larger than about 120 individuals, if a group  gets larger than that a civil war is inevitable and the group splits. If you put 4 million chimpanzees on an island as small as Manhattan they would tear each other apart in a matter of hours, but during the entire year of 2022 only 78 humans out of the 4 million on Manhattan killed one of their fellow Homo sapiens.

As for our Neanderthal cousins (we had a common ancestor about 600,000 years ago), they seem to have been even more pugnacious than chimps because, according to the best evidence we have today, their typical group size was only 10 to 30 individuals and the DNA genetic evidence indicates there was little or no interbreeding between the groups. There is even a theory, unproven but I think plausible, that the reason Homo sapiens were able to outcompete the Neanderthals is that we could cooperate between ourselves and form much larger groups in pursuit of more grandiose goals than Neanderthals could. If true this would be an example of Survival Of The Friendliest.

 John K Clark

 

[William Flynn Wallace]

Keith, I clearly do not understand what you are saying.  Most or none of the group believes in intelligence, or openness, or agreeableness (those of the Big Five), you say?  That would truly be stunning, as some of us, like me, find evolutionary psychology full of valid ideas and data.  

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[Keith Henson]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 5:08 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 8:43 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > What is the advantage to genes for going to war vs starving in place?
>
> There is evidence that, at least some of the time, nice guys do finish first because it's a fact that humans have fewer virulent warlike genes than any other primate.

I don't think you can make such a case. The big difference is that
war mode is not on all the time as it is in the chimpanzees. It does
not help your genes one bit to fight unless the alternative is worse
for the genes. That understanding is one that I think I failed to
convey.

> Chimpanzees, our closest living relative, are far more aggressive than we are, their group size never gets larger than about 120 individuals, if a group gets larger than that a civil war is inevitable and the group splits.

Maximum group size is limited by the availability of food. In the
environment of evolutionary adaptiveness (Stone Age more or less),
human groups had to split as well.

> If you put 4 million chimpanzees on an island as small as Manhattan they would tear each other apart in a matter of hours, but during the entire year of 2022 only 78 humans out of the 4 million on Manhattan killed one of their fellow Homo sapiens.

If the food supply was cut off, what do you think the toll would be?
The point I have tried to make is that a bleak reality of even the
anticipation of a bleak future will shift humans into war mode.

>
> As for our Neanderthal cousins (we had a common ancestor about 600,000 years ago), they seem to have been even more pugnacious than chimps because, according to the best evidence we have today, their typical group size was only 10 to 30 individuals and the DNA genetic evidence indicates there was little or no interbreeding between the groups. There is even a theory, unproven but I think plausible, that the reason Homo sapiens were able to outcompete the Neanderthals is that we could cooperate between ourselves and form much larger groups in pursuit of more grandiose goals than Neanderthals could. If true this would be an example of Survival Of The Friendliest.

Perhaps. I don't think we know enough to confidently make such statements.

Keith

> John K Clark

>
>
>
>
>
>>
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[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 1:05 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

> There is evidence that, at least some of the time, nice guys do finish first because it's a fact that humans have fewer virulent warlike genes than any other primate.

> I don't think you can make such a case.  The big difference is that war mode is not on all the time as it is in the chimpanzees. 

I think you just made my case for me. If chimpanzees are always in the war mode and humans are not then chimpanzees are more warlike than humans.  

> It does not help your genes one bit to fight unless the alternative is worse for the genes. 

True but irrelevant, genes have no foresight. If in times of stress your genes give you a personality such that your tendency to cooperate with your fellow beings increases then you may very well end up with more descendants than somebody who becomes more aggressive in such a situation.   

> Maximum group size is limited by the availability of food. 

No. The maximum population is limited by the food supply but the maximum size that a social group can have before internal civic stresses cause it to split is not. 

>> If you put 4 million chimpanzees on an island as small as Manhattan they would tear each other apart in a matter of hours, but during the entire year of 2022 only 78 humans out of the 4 million on Manhattan killed one of their fellow Homo sapiens.

> If the food supply was cut off, what do you think the toll would be?

About 4 million but there is a difference. If you put 4 million chimpanzees on Manhattan Island they would start killing each other even if the food supply was infinite, but humans would not.  

> The point I have tried to make is that a bleak reality of even the anticipation of a bleak future will shift humans into war mode.

From an evolutionary point of view it's very clear that increased aggression is not always, or even usually, the best strategy to take in times of increased stress. I suggest you read Robert Axelrod's wonderful book "The Evolution Of Cooperation". 

The Evolution of Cooperation 

Or read evolutionarily biologist Richard Dawkins masterpiece "The Extended Phenotype". 

The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene

Both books talk about something called an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS), if an individual in a population has genes for a ESS then after a few generations it will become the most popular strategy in that population and it can't be upset by a mutant that follows a different strategy. The simplest and also one of the most effective ESS is called "Tit For Tat", the idea is to start off friendly but if somebody does something mean to you then do something mean to them, but don't hold a grudge, after you have retaliated go back to being friendly.  

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

itt  

[Lawrence Crowell]

Don-the-con t'Rump is not an ordinary sort of candidate. Prior to 2015 political candidates for high office and president had some ideological stance, some policy objectives and so forth and election campaigns were based on that. t'Rump is not so much a political candidate and former president as he is in the minds of about 1/3rd of American voters a national messiah. He fits with what George Orwell saw as the "Big Brother" who is always right and the party of true believers behind him as infallible. In the history of the United States we have never had this sort of person run or vie for power, and ultimately this is about absolute power. This is probably the biggest recent test to the durability of our representative Republic and democratic ideals.

LC

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[Lawrence Crowell]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 12:28 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

Indeed true, and Germany by 1928 was looking pretty good. The thing that happened after the first world war was the leading currency in the world shifted from the British Pound Sterling to the American Dollar. Then what happened? The black Friday of October 1929 sent world markets into a tumble, and Germany had an economic fall as well. That is the thing Hitler built his 3rd Reich on.

LC

 

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[William Flynn Wallace]

I strongly recommend Matt Ridley's books, which discuss a lot of these ideas and EP.  bill w

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[Keith Henson]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 11:45 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 1:05 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> > There is evidence that, at least some of the time, nice guys do finish first because it's a fact that humans have fewer virulent warlike genes than any other primate.
>>
>>
>> > I don't think you can make such a case. The big difference is that war mode is not on all the time as it is in the chimpanzees.
>
>
> I think you just made my case for me. If chimpanzees are always in the war mode and humans are not then chimpanzees are more warlike than humans.

I am not sure how one would even measure this, but I note that humans
in war mode can be ferocious on a scale that I don't think chimps can
match.

>> > It does not help your genes one bit to fight unless the alternative is worse for the genes.
>
> True but irrelevant, genes have no foresight.

No, but they can be selected to build brains with foresight. Not that
I think the runup to wars in the EEA involved much if any rational
thought. Based on rational self-interest, going to war (in the model)
was as bad as starving.

That was the bizarre thing that came out of the selection model. In
the context of wars, the interest of humans and their genes diverge.
The reason this happens is that gene copies are absorbed into the
winner's tribe through the young women of the losers. It turns out
that from the gene's viewpoint, going to war is about 40% better than
starving in place.

> If in times of stress your genes give you a personality such that your tendency to cooperate with your fellow beings increases then you may very well end up with more descendants than somebody who becomes more aggressive in such a situation.

The model does not show this.

>> > Maximum group size is limited by the availability of food.
>
> No. The maximum population is limited by the food supply but the maximum size that a social group can have before internal civic stresses cause it to split is not.

There is a lot of data on group splitting. I contend that the group
size before splitting was largely set by food. If you could not
collect enough food within a day's walk, it was time to split. YMMV.

>> >> If you put 4 million chimpanzees on an island as small as Manhattan they would tear each other apart in a matter of hours, but during the entire year of 2022 only 78 humans out of the 4 million on Manhattan killed one of their fellow Homo sapiens.
>>
>> > If the food supply was cut off, what do you think the toll would be?
>
> About 4 million but there is a difference. If you put 4 million chimpanzees on Manhattan Island they would start killing each other even if the food supply was infinite, but humans would not.

Neither would bonobos who are closely related to chimps. The
difference is chimps are intensely territorial, every bit of suitable
territory is occupied and defended.

Bonobos evolved in an environment with a huge difference. They can
easily spread out into resource-rich adjacent territories, but
sleeping sickness kills them when they go much beyond the core area.
Thus they have never seen a situation where defending territory is
cost-effective.

>> > The point I have tried to make is that a bleak reality of even the anticipation of a bleak future will shift humans into war mode.
>
> From an evolutionary point of view it's very clear that increased aggression is not always, or even usually, the best strategy to take in times of increased stress.

Going to war is a widespread, almost universal, trait. All I did was
model how the trait was selected. If you want to make a different
model showing how this or some other trait became common, be my guest.

I might note that the San people do not seem selected for wars. They
also have the lowest known human fertility rate.

> I suggest you read Robert Axelrod's wonderful book "The Evolution Of Cooperation".
>
> The Evolution of Cooperation

Cited it many times over the decades.

> Or read evolutionarily biologist Richard Dawkins masterpiece "The Extended Phenotype".
>
> The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene

I have an autographed copy. Not only have I cited Dawkins's work a
lot, but Dawkins also acknowledged my work in the second ed of "The
selfish gene."

Keith

> Both books talk about something called an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS), if an individual in a population has genes for a ESS then after a few generations it will become the most popular strategy in that population and it can't be upset by a mutant that follows a different strategy. The simplest and also one of the most effective ESS is called "Tit For Tat", the idea is to start off friendly but if somebody does something mean to you then do something mean to them, but don't hold a grudge, after you have retaliated go back to being friendly.
>
> John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
> itt
>

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 6:26 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

>I note that humans in war mode can be ferocious on a scale that I don't think chimps can match.

If you're talking about the absolute number of individuals killed in war then that is true, but if you count the percentage of the species that have been killed in war it's not. This has been especially true for the last 75 years which has been the most peaceful time in all of human history.

> gene copies are absorbed into the winner's tribe through the young women of the losers.  It turns out that from the gene's viewpoint, going to war is about 40% better than starving in place.

Sure, if starving to death or going to war were the only two alternatives then I'm sure that's true, but I don't think such a clear-cut binary choice occurs very often in the real world. The historical record backs me up on this, wars have produced starvation but none of the major wars during the last 400 years (and probably further back than that but the records are less clear) have been caused because one side was starving, and huge famines have occurred that have killed millions but have caused no wars. The major cause of war has been religion, Protestants fighting Catholics, Christians fighting Jews,  Muslims fighting Christians, Muslims fighting Jews, Muslims fighting Hindus, Muslims fighting Buddhists, Buddhists fighting Hindus, Sunni Muslims fighting Shia Muslims...

>> If in times of stress your genes give you a personality such that your tendency to cooperate with your fellow beings increases then you may very well end up with more descendants than somebody who becomes more aggressive in such a situation.

> The model does not show this.

I don't know what you mean by "the model". I can make a model of a dragon but that doesn't mean it exists. 

> I contend that the group size before splitting was largely set by food.  If you could not collect enough food within a day's walk, it was time to split. 

Humans have had groups far larger than that for many thousands of years, and it has become the norm not the exception. So if humans have genes for splitting they can't be very strong and they can be easily overcome by other factors.  

 

>>  If you put 4 million chimpanzees on Manhattan Island they would start killing each other even if the food supply was infinite, but humans would not.

> Neither would bonobos who are closely related to chimps. 

True. We are as closely related to Bonobos as we are to Chimpanzees because they split from each other after they split from the line that produced us. 

 

> The difference is chimps are intensely territorial

Yes, physically there is very little difference between Chimps and Bonobos, the big difference between the species is behavioral. There must be advantages and disadvantages in both aggression and cooperation, but overall which has been shown to be a more effective strategy? Chimps took the aggressive path, humans and Bonobos took the cooperative path, and today humans outnumber Chimps and Bonobos combined by about 10 million to one; so the evidence seems to indicate that cooperation is the better strategy.  I also believe that if a species has a tendency towards cooperation and likes to form large social groups then there would be increased environmental pressure placed on it to evolve more intelligence because there would be more ways to make use of smart new ideas in a large group then there would be if you were just a solitary individual.  

> Bonobos evolved in an environment with a huge difference.  They can easily spread out into resource-rich adjacent territories,

That doesn't sound radically different from the environment humans are currently living in.  

> Going to war is a widespread, almost universal, trait. 

But it has become far less universal ever since the nuclear bomb was invented.  

 John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

666

[Stuart LaForge]

On Friday, August 18, 2023 at 5:43:20 PM UTC-7 hkeith...@gmail.com wrote:

What is the advantage to genes for going to war vs starving in place?
Why? When did most of this selection take place?

 

I am not sure if this is a rhetorical question or not, but I will bite. For most of human history,  war was advantageous to genes because it  only strongly selected the Y chromosome. That is to say that most of the genes of the losers of the war survived through fertile females who were considered part of the "spoils of war". Therefore the interbreeding and survival of two genetic populations was preferable to either or both dying out due to starvation. Modern warfare no longer fulfills this function due to weapons of mass destruction, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and international laws of warfare forbidding raping and pillaging. But, from an evolutionary point of view, this makes perfect sense because it is still evident in chimpanzee warfare today.

Stuart LaForge 

[Keith Henson]

On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 4:24 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 19, 2023 at 6:26 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >I note that humans in war mode can be ferocious on a scale that I don't think chimps can match.
>
> If you're talking about the absolute number of individuals killed in war then that is true, but if you count the percentage of the species that have been killed in war it's not.

I am thinking about Rwanda and Cambodia.

> This has been especially true for the last 75 years which has been the most peaceful time in all of human history.

If you can state why it has been a peaceful time, you will have a
handle on my thinking and modeling of the subject. But I am talking
about the last 100,000 years or so.

>
>> > gene copies are absorbed into the winner's tribe through the young women of the losers. It turns out that from the gene's viewpoint, going to war is about 40% better than starving in place.
>
> Sure, if starving to death or going to war were the only two alternatives then I'm sure that's true, but I don't think such a clear-cut binary choice occurs very often in the real world.

It does not need to happen very often to have selection effects on
human genes. 1000 centuries is around 4000 generations. I guess that
a weather event that caused the food supply to collapse happened about
once a generation (this could be estimated by tree rings, and was in a
Chinese study I have referenced> ). 20 generations of selection can
dramatically change the psychological traits of foxes, there is no
reason to expect it would have less effect on humans.

> The historical record backs me up on this, wars have produced starvation but none of the major wars during the last 400 years (and probably further back than that but the records are less clear) have been caused because one side was starving, and huge famines have occurred that have killed millions but have caused no wars.

"The causality analysis of climate change and large-scale human crisis"
David D. Zhanga,b,c,1, Harry F. Leea,b, Cong Wangd, Baosheng Lie, Qing
Peia,b, Jane Zhangf, and Yulun Anc
aDepartment of Geography and bThe International Centre of China
Development Studies, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; cSchool of
Geographic and
Environmental Sciences, Guizhou Normal University, Guizhou 550001,
China; dDepartment of Finance, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632,
China;
eDepartment of Geography, South China Normal University, Guangzhou
510631, China; and fSouth China Morning Post, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong

Recent studies have shown strong temporal correlations between
past climate changes and societal crises. However, the specific causal
mechanisms underlying this relation have not been addressed. We
explored quantitative responses of 14 fine-grained agro-ecological,
socioeconomic, and demographic variables to climate fluctuations
from A.D. 1500–1800 in Europe. Results show that cooling from A.D.
1560–1660 caused successive agro-ecological, socioeconomic, and
demographic catastrophes, leading to the General Crisis of the Seventeenth
Century. We identified a set of causal linkages between
climate change and human crisis. Using temperature data and climate-
driven economic variables, we simulated the alternation of
defined “golden” and “dark” ages in Europe and the Northern Hemisphere
during the past millennium. Our findings indicate that climate
change was the ultimate cause, and climate-driven economic
downturn was the direct cause, of large-scale human crises in preindustrial
Europe and the Northern Hemisphere.
climate-driven economy | Granger Causality Analysis | grain price
Debate about the relation between climate and human crisis
has lasted over a century. With recent advances in paleotemperature
reconstruction, scholars note that massive social disturbance,
societal collapse, and population collapse often coincided
with great climate change in America, the Middle East,
China, and many other countries in preindustrial times (1–5). Although
most of these scientists believe that climate change could
cause human catastrophe, their arguments are backed simply by
qualitative scrutiny of narrow historic examples. More recent
breakthroughs came from research adopting quantitative approaches
to all known cases of social crisis.

These studies show that,
in recent history, climate change was responsible for the outbreak
of war,

dynastic transition, and population decline in China,
Europe, and around the world because of climate-induced shrinkage
of agricultural production (6–15). However, the underlying
causal linkages from climate change to agricultural production and
various human catastrophes in history have not been addressed
scientifically. Hence, this climate–crisis relationship remains obscure.
Incomplete knowledge of the topic has led to criticism that
the notion of climate-induced human crisis neglects historical
complexities or relies on weak evidence of causality (16, 17).

> The major cause of war has been religion, Protestants fighting Catholics, Christians fighting Jews, Muslims fighting Christians, Muslims fighting Jews, Muslims fighting Hindus, Muslims fighting Buddhists, Buddhists fighting Hindus, Sunni Muslims fighting Shia Muslims...

I think you are conflating the xenophobic meme step in the progress to
war with the root cause. In any case, humans did not have religions
(as we know them) over most of the 100,000 years I am talking about.

>>> >> If in times of stress your genes give you a personality such that your tendency to cooperate with your fellow beings increases then you may very well end up with more descendants than somebody who becomes more aggressive in such a situation.
>>
>>
>> > The model does not show this.
>
> I don't know what you mean by "the model". I can make a model of a dragon but that doesn't mean it exists.

I will email you the paper.

>> > I contend that the group size before splitting was largely set by food. If you could not collect enough food within a day's walk, it was time to split.
>
> Humans have had groups far larger than that for many thousands of years,

I am talking about hunter-gatherers, pre agriculture.

> and it has become the norm not the exception. So if humans have genes for splitting they can't be very strong and they can be easily overcome by other factors.
>>>
>>> >> If you put 4 million chimpanzees on Manhattan Island they would start killing each other even if the food supply was infinite, but humans would not.
>>
>>
>> > Neither would bonobos who are closely related to chimps.
>
>
> True. We are as closely related to Bonobos as we are to Chimpanzees because they split from each other after they split from the line that produced us.
>
>> > The difference is chimps are intensely territorial
>
> Yes, physically there is very little difference between Chimps and Bonobos, the big difference between the species is behavioral. There must be advantages and disadvantages in both aggression and cooperation, but overall which has been shown to be a more effective strategy? Chimps took the aggressive path, humans and Bonobos took the cooperative path, and today humans outnumber Chimps and Bonobos combined by about 10 million to one; so the evidence seems to indicate that cooperation is the better strategy. I also believe that if a species has a tendency towards cooperation and likes to form large social groups then there would be increased environmental pressure placed on it to evolve more intelligence because there would be more ways to make use of smart new ideas in a large group then there would be if you were just a solitary individual.

Not all human groups took the large group path. The San did not, they
lived in small encampments for perhaps 200,000 years.

>
>> > Bonobos evolved in an environment with a huge difference. They can easily spread out into resource-rich adjacent territories,
>
> That doesn't sound radically different from the environment humans are currently living in.

Right. That is entirely due to science and engineering. But it is fragile.

>> > Going to war is a widespread, almost universal, trait.
>
> But it has become far less universal ever since the nuclear bomb was invented.

We are talking about a couple of generations and no particular
selection pressure. Whatever genetic traits people have for wars have
not changed.

Keith

> John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis
> 666
>
>>

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[John Clark]

Hi Keith

I'll comment about your post but first I want to thank you for being kind enough to send me your paper, I read it and found it very interesting.  In your paper you say:

"we need to generate a model from the "viewpoint" of such genes in a typical warrior 50,000 or 100,000 years ago."

But I think to understand what's going on we need to go back a lot further than that, before our ancestors even figured out how to use stones for tools.  In your model you assume that if two tribes go to war then the winning tribe will be the one that is most aggressive, but is that necessarily true? Could it be that the winning tribe is the one that was more intelligent? Could it even be that the tribe that passed more of its genes to the next generation is the one that was smart enough to tell the difference between when it's a good idea to go to war and when it is not? If any of this is the case then it would help explain why the enormous increase in brain size, and presumably intelligence, started to occur about 1.5 million years ago when primitive stone tools started to show up. Of course that alone can't explain why such a massive increase in intelligence does not routinely happen to all species over evolutionary time, but your theory can't explain that either.

But there is another hypothesis that perhaps can, the idea is that for reasons unrelated to war or intelligence our ancestors started to walk upright freeing two limbs that can be used for manipulating objects instead of locomotion. This is important because a zebra with a large brain and great intelligence would not have a greater chance of getting its genes into the next generation because it has no hands and so would have no way of moving a brilliant plan from the theoretical into the actual. In fact a genius zebra would be at a disadvantage compared to a regular zebra because the brain is an energy hog;  the human brain is only 2% of the body weight and yet it uses 20% of the energy.  There are ideas but there is no consensus about why our primate ancestors started to walk upright, but the fossil record makes it very clear that for whatever reason bipedal locomotion, and something that looked a lot closer to a human hand than anything a chimp has, evolved BEFORE the huge increase in brain size started.

You also talk about "Genes for not fighting when attacked", but I don't think genes with anything near that sort of specificity exist, instead I think there are genes for how much risk you should take; if you're too brave you're likely to get eaten by a sabertooth tiger and if you're too cowardly you're likely to starve to death, there is a sweet spot that all animal species must find and it has nothing to do with war. The sweet spot will change as environmental conditions change and in a population there will be individuals with various levels of bravery, if you happen to run across a individual who is significantly braver than you it would be wise to start to hang around with him and let him take most of the risk when the two of you attack a dangerous Mammoth with stone tools, if he survives he will get the glory and the most delicious parts but the beast is so big you'll be able to fill your belly with the scraps, and if he doesn't survive you probably will.  This may be the source of the  "genetic selection for supporting authoritarian leaders" that you speak of.

On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 3:17 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

>  I am talking about the last 100,000 years or so.

I think the last 1.5 million years is more important, the time when the brain of our ancestors started to get dramatically larger. 

>> The major cause of war has been religion, Protestants fighting Catholics, Christians fighting Jews,  Muslims fighting Christians, Muslims fighting Jews, Muslims fighting Hindus, Muslims fighting Buddhists, Buddhists fighting Hindus, Sunni Muslims fighting Shia Muslims...

>I think you are conflating the xenophobic meme step in the progress to war with the root cause. 

In 1968 the conflict in Northern Ireland didn't flare up because one side was starving, the root cause was that protestants and Catholics believed in different forms of idiocy. 

>> Chimps took the aggressive path, humans and Bonobos took the cooperative path, and today humans outnumber Chimps and Bonobos combined by about 10 million to one; so the evidence seems to indicate that cooperation is the better strategy.  I also believe that if a species has a tendency towards cooperation and likes to form large social groups then there would be increased environmental pressure placed on it to evolve more intelligence because there would be more ways to make use of smart new ideas in a large group then there would be if you were just a solitary individual.

> Not all human groups took the large group path.  The San did not, they lived in small encampments for perhaps 200,000 years. 

If true, that would seem to indicate that the maximum size of a social group is not genetically determined because the San people are members of the same species as everybody else, so genetics can't be the only thing that determines the size of groups.  

>> war has become far less universal ever since the nuclear bomb was invented.

> We are talking about a couple of generations and no particular selection pressure.  Whatever genetic traits people have for wars have not changed.

I don't claim the change was caused by genetics, but something caused nations to become less warlike, and it was a change for the better. I think that should give the human race some reason to be optimistic about its future, or at least it would if it wasn't for the recent explosive improvement in AI.

Best wishes

John K Clark

[Keith Henson]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 11:02 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Keith
>
> I'll comment about your post but first I want to thank you for being kind enough to send me your paper, I read it and found it very interesting. In your paper you say:
>
> "we need to generate a model from the "viewpoint" of such genes in a typical warrior 50,000 or 100,000 years ago."
>
> But I think to understand what's going on we need to go back a lot further than that, before our ancestors even figured out how to use stones for tools. In your model you assume that if two tribes go to war then the winning tribe will be the one that is most aggressive, but is that necessarily true?

Take another look at the model. There was no such assumption, each
tribe had a 50% chance of winning in the model. Genes have to play
the odds.

> Could it be that the winning tribe is "the one that was more intelligent? Could it even be that the tribe that passed more of its genes to the next generation is the one that was smart enough to tell the difference between when it's a good idea to go to war and when it is not?

That is mentioned in the paper, "This places the detection of looming
starvation under intense selection to get it right. (This is a
challenging cognitive task and possibly a driver of human
intelligence.)"

Also, as mentioned in the paper, it is a monumentally stupid move
(from the gene's viewpoint) to go to war when not facing something
worse.

> If any of this is the case then it would help explain why the enormous increase in brain size, and presumably intelligence, started to occur about 1.5 million years ago when primitive stone tools started to show up. Of course that alone can't explain why such a massive increase in intelligence does not routinely happen to all species over evolutionary time, but your theory can't explain that either.

It's not intended to. The model is only about how psychological
traits for war were selected. The question is do more gene copies
exist after going to war or starving in place?

> But there is another hypothesis that perhaps can, the idea is that for reasons unrelated to war or intelligence our ancestors started to walk upright freeing two limbs that can be used for manipulating objects instead of locomotion. This is important because a zebra with a large brain and great intelligence would not have a greater chance of getting its genes into the next generation because it has no hands and so would have no way of moving a brilliant plan from the theoretical into the actual. In fact a genius zebra would be at a disadvantage compared to a regular zebra because the brain is an energy hog; the human brain is only 2% of the body weight and yet it uses 20% of the energy. There are ideas but there is no consensus about why our primate ancestors started to walk upright, but the fossil record makes it very clear that for whatever reason bipedal locomotion, and something that looked a lot closer to a human hand than anything a chimp has, evolved BEFORE the huge increase in brain size started.

Human hands are not that much different from the rest of the primates.
William Calvin proposed that human brain expansion was due to
projectile hunting. We are much better than chimps at accurate
throwing. Calvin makes the case that release accuracy involves a lot
of the brain in parallel to get the jitter down. Calvin's books used
to be open on his website, I don't know if they still are. I am
highly impressed by his work.

>
> You also talk about "Genes for not fighting when attacked",

The paper says "Genes for not fighting when attacked rapidly disappear
from the population"

"Attacked" in this context implies killed. That takes the genes of
the attacked person out of the gene pool.

but I don't think genes with anything near that sort of specificity
exist, instead I think there are genes for how much risk you should
take; if you're too brave you're likely to get eaten by a sabertooth
tiger and if you're too cowardly you're likely to starve to death,
there is a sweet spot that all animal species must find and it has
nothing to do with war. The sweet spot will change as environmental
conditions change and in a population there will be individuals with
various levels of bravery, if you happen to run across a individual
who is significantly braver than you it would be wise to start to hang
around with him and let him take most of the risk when the two of you
attack a dangerous Mammoth with stone tools, if he survives he will
get the glory and the most delicious parts but the beast is so big
you'll be able to fill your belly with the scraps, and if he doesn't
survive you probably will. This may be the source of the "genetic
selection for supporting authoritarian leaders" that you speak of.

I mentioned this in passing. Have not put much effort into it.

> On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 3:17 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > I am talking about the last 100,000 years or so.
>
> I think the last 1.5 million years is more important, the time when the brain of our ancestors started to get dramatically larger.

See comments about Calvin above.

>>> >> The major cause of war has been religion, Protestants fighting Catholics, Christians fighting Jews, Muslims fighting Christians, Muslims fighting Jews, Muslims fighting Hindus, Muslims fighting Buddhists, Buddhists fighting Hindus, Sunni Muslims fighting Shia Muslims...
>>
>> >I think you are conflating the xenophobic meme step in the progress to war with the root cause.
>
> In 1968 the conflict in Northern Ireland didn't flare up because one side was starving, the root cause was that protestants and Catholics believed in different forms of idiocy.

I make a case that the bleak future behavior switch is tripped in the
current world by changes or anticipated changes in the income per
capita. People don't need to be starving, poor economic prospects
will do it. Improving prospects will turn off population support for
wars or similar social disruption. I think that's what put the IRA
out of business. But perhaps you have another theory.

>> >> Chimps took the aggressive path, humans and Bonobos took the cooperative path, and today humans outnumber Chimps and Bonobos combined by about 10 million to one; so the evidence seems to indicate that cooperation is the better strategy. I also believe that if a species has a tendency towards cooperation and likes to form large social groups then there would be increased environmental pressure placed on it to evolve more intelligence because there would be more ways to make use of smart new ideas in a large group then there would be if you were just a solitary individual.
>>
>>
>> > Not all human groups took the large group path. The San did not, they lived in small encampments for perhaps 200,000 years.
>
>
> If true, that would seem to indicate that the maximum size of a social group is not genetically determined because the San people are members of the same species as everybody else, so genetics can't be the only thing that determines the size of groups.

They are a highly divergent branch. Because of their very low
fertility, the evolutionary pressures on them are more like bonobos.
They don't have wars and I don't think they have been selected for
wars. You might read into the literature.

>
>>> >> war has become far less universal ever since the nuclear bomb was invented.
>>
>>
>> > We are talking about a couple of generations and no particular selection pressure. Whatever genetic traits people have for wars have not changed.
>
>
> I don't claim the change was caused by genetics, but something caused nations to become less warlike, and it was a change for the better.

The model indicates that a steady increase in the income per capita
will keep the psychological traits leading to war turned off.

> I think that should give the human race some reason to be optimistic about its future, or at least it would if it wasn't for the recent explosive improvement in AI.

I can't read the future well enough to be optimistic or not. However,
the cluster of blinking stars around Tabby's star indicates to me that
something got through the difficulties and expanded around 24 stars.
That's good in that it says we have a chance of doing it as well and
bad in that we seem to have close-by competition.

Best wishes,
Keith

> Best wishes
>
> John K Clark
>

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 3:24 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

 

>> There are ideas but there is no consensus about why our primate ancestors started to walk upright, but the fossil record makes it very clear that for whatever reason bipedal locomotion, and something that looked a lot closer to a human hand than anything a chimp has, evolved BEFORE the huge increase in brain size started.

> Human hands are not that much different from the rest of the primates.

Humans have an opposable thumb, no modern primate does but our small brain ancestors did, or at least they had something close to it.  

 

> William Calvin proposed that human brain expansion was due to projectile hunting.  We are much better than chimps at accurate
throwing.  Calvin makes the case that release accuracy involves a lot of the brain in parallel to get the jitter down. 

I read Calvin's book "The Throwing Madonna" more than 20 years ago but I didn't buy his theory then and I still don't. I think even a major league baseball pitcher, who is better at throwing things than 99.99% of human beings, would starve to death if he tried to make a living by throwing irregular shaped rocks at animals.  

>> In 1968 the conflict in Northern Ireland didn't flare up because one side was starving, the root cause was that protestants and Catholics believed in different forms of idiocy.

> I make a case that the bleak future behavior switch is tripped in the current world by changes or anticipated changes in the income per capita. 

I don't think it was a coincidence that the two sides in that conflict just happened to be of different religions.  

> People don't need to be starving, poor economic prospects will do it. 

You also said "it is a monumentally stupid move (from the gene's viewpoint) to go to war when not facing something worse" and I agree with that, but how is the smart from a genes point of view to go to war because you can only afford to buy a Chevrolet and not a Cadillac?

 

> the cluster of blinking stars around Tabby's star indicates to me that
something got through the difficulties and expanded around 24 stars.

I'm even more skeptical of that theory that I am of Calvin's theory of rock throwing ancestors.  

John K Clark

[Keith Henson]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 1:16 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:>
> On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 3:24 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

snip

>> > William Calvin proposed that human brain expansion was due to projectile hunting. We are much better than chimps at accurate throwing. Calvin makes the case that release accuracy involves a lot of the brain in parallel to get the jitter down.
>
>
> I read Calvin's book "The Throwing Madonna" more than 20 years ago but I didn't buy his theory then and I still don't. I think even a major league baseball pitcher, who is better at throwing things than 99.99% of human beings, would starve to death if he tried to make a living by throwing irregular shaped rocks at animals.

Your experience is different from mine. A friend of mine long ago in
college could and did kill rabbits with rocks. He was also
astonishingly good with a sling. Calvin advanced his work on this
topic a great deal from his early book, but I can't remember which
one.

>>> >> In 1968 the conflict in Northern Ireland didn't flare up because one side was starving, the root cause was that protestants and Catholics believed in different forms of idiocy.
>>
>> > I make a case that the bleak future behavior switch is tripped in the current world by changes or anticipated changes in the income per capita.
>
> I don't think it was a coincidence that the two sides in that conflict just happened to be of different religions.

What is a religion? What evolutionary selection, direct or indirect,
caused humans to be able to have a religion? I think it is a side
effect of the selection for war. YMMY, I would like to know if you
can account for religions in another way.

>> > People don't need to be starving, poor economic prospects will do it.
>
> You also said "it is a monumentally stupid move (from the gene's viewpoint) to go to war when not facing something worse" and I agree with that, but how is the smart from a genes point of view to go to war because you can only afford to buy a Chevrolet and not a Cadillac?

When this evolutionary selection was going on neither Chevrolet nor
Cadillac was part of the EEA.

From Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War

"Further, like most psychological responses, this one is almost
certainly tripped by relative changes, here in income per capita,
(originally game and berries), especially by sharp downturns after a
long ramp-up (Cialdini 1984, p 249, quoting J. C. Davies)"

Keith

> John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2023 at 10:38 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:

> What is a religion?  What evolutionary selection, direct or indirect,
caused humans to be able to have a religion?  I think it is a side
effect of the selection for war.  YMMY, I would like to know if you
can account for religions in another way.

I don't know for a fact that religion confers any genetic advantage, it could be an evolutionary spandrel. But assuming for the sake of argument that it is not, I have a few ideas why no culture is devoid of a history of religion. The most obvious explanation is fear of death but I have another.  In general it would be a Evolutionary advantage for children to listen to and believe what adults, particularly parents, have to say; don't eat those berries they will kill you, don't swim in that river, there are crocodiles, etc. Most people may not be born with innate religious feelings and visions but some have a brain abnormality and are psychotic, so they teach their children as if these psychotic visions are true and the children believe them.  

 And when those children grow up they in turn teach their children those screwy beliefs, and that's why religious belief displays such a strong geographical pattern, that's why all religions want to start indoctrinating children when they are as young as possible, they want to start "educating" them before their critical thinking abilities become more developed. So the root cause of religion may be that most people have a tendency (which started out as an advantage) to believe into adulthood whatever they were told as children.And thus ridiculous religious ideas (Noah's ark) start small but then grow to gargantuan size in just a few generations.

  John K Clark

[William Flynn Wallace]

In some African tribes paranoid schizophrenia is highly prized.  They see and hear hallucinations which the rest of us don't.  Ergo - they are in touch with the spirit world and are made the spiritual leader in the tribe, often called the witch doctor (a powerful position - he can order witches to be killed or kicked out of the tribe).  So the witch doctor only is able to deal with actions taken by the spirits and communicate with them.  I say this is a religion.  bill w

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[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 10:21 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 12:14 PM Keith Henson <hkeith...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > We have been selected to go to war when we are faced with starvation.
>
> I don't think it's as simple as that,

It's easy to describe, but flat-out rejected, regardless of the logic.

The trick to understanding it is the cultural practice of
incorporating the young women of the defeated group into the winner's
group. If you work the math, the effect is that genes for going to
war in a resource crisis are almost 40% more successful than the
alternative of not going to war.

> we're certainly much more peaceful than our closest relatives the chimpanzees.

We are equally related to bonobos.

And there are counter examples to your idea, between 1959 and 1961 at
least 30 million Chinese starve to death due to the idiotic policies
of Mao Zedong, and yet China didn't start a war with its neighbors.

That's true. Just because we have been selected for psychological
traits for war does not mean they always happen.

Also, the path to war starts with circulating xenophobic memes. It is
possible that the Mao memes were so pervasive that there was no room
for memes that would lead to war.

> I think a greater danger is that most dictators and dictator wannabes, such as Donald Trump, when given a choice between being embarrassed and destroying the world, would prefer to destroy the world; of course they would not phrase it that way. they'd call it "preserving our honor" or some other silly platitude. But there is some reason for optimism, despite all of the doom and gloom the fact remains that during the last 75 years, ever since the invention of the nuclear bomb, the human race has been more peaceful than it has ever been before.

An alternative cause might be increasing wealth. Increases in per
capita income tend to shut off war behavior. The fading of the IRA is
an example.

Keith
>
> John K Clark

>
>
>
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[Dan TheBookMan]

Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict by Ara Norenzayan makes the case that specific forms of beliefs in gods seem to foster social cooperation — particularly by when people share belief in supernatural beings that enforce social and ethical norms. See:

The book also argues that while these beliefs increase social cooperation between fellow believers, they can also increase social conflict with non-believers or with anyone seen as outside the belief community… and by enshrining certain things as sacred this can also be a site of intense conflict because compromises become far less likely.

Finally, the book isn’t arguing humans must needs be religious to have high levels of social cooperation. When large-scale societies become more law-oriented, then this can substitute for religion. 

I’m not going to expend effort defending the book. Just offering up for you (plural) to consider.

Regards,

Dan

On Aug 23, 2023, at 3:48 AM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote: