[extropy-chat] Resurrection and leaders.

[Keith Henson]

At 08:01 AM 4/24/2007 -0400, Heartland wrote:

snip

>First of all, there's no such thing as a resurrection. Things can only be 
>destroyed
>or created.

It's not commonly called that, but in what respect does rebooting your 
computer in the morning after if being off over night differ from the 
description of "resurrection"?

Re Hitler, I wouldn't run an instance of him, but some graduate student 
might.  I think we may be giving him far too much credit (or blame).  The 
same may be true of Stalin, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, and even the current US 
president.  What evolutionary psychology is likely to do is to take a lot 
of importance away from leaders and put it on the situation.  Getting into 
wars may be almost as mechanical (on a social level) as drawing back from a 
hot stove is for an individual.

Ultimately an EP model fails to put blame anywhere.  What we blame on 
Hitler most likely resulted from excess population growth and especially 
without cheap and effective birth control, who can you blame for that?

This social level trait isn't objectively good or bad, it just is.  But it 
is something you definitely want to understand if only to stay out of the way.

Keith