[extropy-chat] 'a process of non-thinking called faith' 2 (2)

[Keith Henson]

At 06:14 PM 11/17/2006 -0600, Kevin wrote:

snip
>
>But I do not subscribe to your notion of a lower level gene driven program 
>of genocide.

Ok, though you might note that chimps practice genocide on neighbors.

>If anything it's a defense mechanism where they feel that if they do not 
>kill, they will be killed.

And that defense mechanism is *not* the result of genes that build brains?

>I think that even if they were all genetic clones, after years of being 
>taught different things, living in different cultures and experiencing 
>different lives, they would still be killing each other.

Oh.  I misunderstood your meaning.  What I guess you mean is a 
disinclination to kill those closely related even when there is a massive 
resource crunch.  Humans don't have genetic analyzers so we make do with 
proxy information that was reliable enough when we lived in hunter gather 
bands.  All those in the band could be considered related, family members 
were close relatives.

Easter Island was settled by about 20 people, probably already closely 
related.  There followed about 400 years of peaceful population growth, 
reaching perhaps as many as 20,000 people and grossly over exploiting the 
resources of the island.  One day they downed the tools they had been using 
to make the statues, and went at each other with rocks till 95% of the 
population was dead.  At that point the wars ended.  A generation or two 
later Europeans visited (a disaster in itself).

The point here is that there was a *long* period with little or no 
warfare.  What turned it on and what turned it off?

Keith