[extropy-chat] The Funeral as an "act of conspicuous consumption"

[Adrian Tymes]

--- "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury at aeiveos.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Nov 2003, randy wrote:
> > Recent science seems to show that cannabalism was
> common in the past:
> 
> > "The question is why has cannibalism, by and
> large, stopped?
> 
> Couldn't the explanation be as simple as the fact
> that most
> of the people who practiced it have died out due to
> prion
> diseases (such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease)?

Simpler possibility: those who ate the dead might not
always have waited for death...or encouraged it, as a
personal food source at the expense of the community. 
Natural selection does the rest, to the detriment of
the community with fewer members.  (Parallel: witness
the spread of "thou shalt not kill" memes, at least as
applied to members of one's own community.)