[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 77, Issue 47

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 10:06 PM,  Christopher Luebcke
<cluebcke at yahoo.com> wrote:

snip

> I am deeply concerned that the inability to agree without trying to generate the maximum anger possible is going to doom many of us to a very dark future.

> The last thing I'll mention is that the issue has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the existence or scale of global warming, nor whether such warming (if it exists) is human-caused. It is simply a disagreement over data or the interpretation thereof. Yet some can't resist the opportunity to throw kerosene on the fire.
>
> Somebody, some day, is going to lose a life over this. Or more than one.

On the substance (global warming/climate change/whatever) I doubt it
will be easy to sort out global warming deaths from the much larger
and sooner problem of running out of cheap energy.

But the "dark future" is something that might be addressed with
evolutionary psychology.

If some behavior is widespread, it's probably due to positive
selection for that behavior or the underlying physical brain
structures over a long evolutionary time.

Humans seem to have psychological mechanisms that are rarely switched
on in full force.  The mechanism behind Stockholm syndrome
(capture-bonding) is one of them.  I make that case that it manifests
as BDSM and is mildly switched on in military basic training.

It's fairly easy to see that there was fairly intense selection for
this (conditionally turned on) mechanism when our ancestors lived as
hunter gatherers.

It's fairly easy to see where human "war mode" would be switched on by
anticipation of a bleak future or (much faster) by being attacked.

I don't have any good ideas about why people get so angry over global
warming arguments.

Keith