[ExI] battle tanks to a five yr old

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Jun 2012, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>
>> On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 2:17 PM, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
>> > On Mon, 28 May 2012, Kelly Anderson wrote:

>> > To sum it all in short, I don't buy the idea that we, as a species, are to
>> > be less and less violent.
>>
>> I think it has more to do with memes than genes.
>
> Memes, really. We should already know ourselves better than hoping for
> good memes. We are prone to fabricate and believe all kind of memes
> whenever there is promise of any material gain in them. The truth or facts
> are expendable in such cases, of course.

Clearly. Meme does not equal truth. Even successful/popular meme does
not equal truth. Just look no further than Christianity or certain
aspects of Global Warming.

> Well, how can you be sure it works? You don't attend elementary school, do
> you? I would rather suspect some forms of bullying went underground.
> "Experts" cannot spot it now, so they can tout about success and receive a
> paycheck, perhaps?

I have four children in elementary school... So I'm likely closer to
this than you might be... but as you say the form of bullying has
probably evolved from physical and emotional to something a bit more
subtle. But that in and of itself might be considered a reduction in
violence. Name calling is less violent than fisticuffs, Facebook
bullying is less violent than name calling, and so forth.

>> But wars in out of the way places are fought with less scary weapons,
>> in areas with somewhat more sparse populations, and the total number
>> of deaths per capita, globally, goes down.
>
> Maybe it goes, but I would like to see a statistics saying so. Even if
> there is one that can't be questionned, all it is saying is something like
> "for now, in current conditions/economy violence per capita goes down".
> But statistics cannot identify reason for this, or predict the trend is
> persistent.
>
> The "end of violence" BS is touted from time to time. Guess what happens
> next.
>
> BTW, unless you have some kind of revolutionary data, "deaths per capita"
> is exactly 1.0 and this did not change AFAIK. :-)

Sorry, I meant violent deaths per capita. And yes, there are pretty
good statistics backing up this assertion.

>> You can worry about all of that stuff, OR you can say, it's been a
>> very long time (if ever for some risks) since we've faced that, so
>> statistically, we are reasonably safe.
>
> Statistically, we are not safe. We just happen to not know enough.

We are not safe, but we are safer than we have ever been, assuming
there isn't some big thing hanging out there we don't know about.

> I can learn, but I don't worry because it is useless.

I fail to see how learning is useless, perhaps I have lost context here.

>> And go on living. It's called optimism. It isn't hyperoptimism for me to
>> live in the kill zone radius of the Yellowstone volcano. If it goes off
>> most of you will die slowly, while I will have a merciful quickish
>> death.
>
> Uh, this is optimism? It looks more like a realism to me.
>
> Optimists are - to me only, I guess - a bit like mental cases. Something
> like, "property prices in Yellowstone went down 100-fold for no apparent
> reason, let's buy a house there, it's a bargain".

Optimists sometimes know that bad things are coming. Optimists can be
realists. The thing that differentiates an optimist from a pessimist
is that GIVEN the probability of a good and bad outcome is roughly
equal, the optimist will assume the good outcome is more likely, while
a pessimist will assume the bad outcome is more likely. Even an
optimist would not walk into South Central LA waving a confederate
flag and whistling dixie... the outcome is not probable to be good in
such a case... It is only a different approach to similar odds that
differentiate the two classes.

The optimist you describe is optimistic in the face of overwhelming
odds. These are the idiots that buy lottery tickets. Confusing lottery
ticket buyers with optimists seems somewhat tenuous.

>> > So, this idea that one day we will become those angelic creatures, good
>> > and nice... No, I don't think so. Rather, I think we humans are beasts and
>> > in best case, we can become self-controlling beasts.
>>
>> Or, eventually, they'll implant something in our heads to make us
>> controlled beasts. They'll take away our ability to react violently.
>> We may even sign up for it in exchange for something we can't imagine
>> at this point.
>
> This I can believe. But doing this kind of control will frak us out of
> history in not very long time. Few hundred years at best.

But without it, they might find it necessary to eliminate us even
sooner... Just saying, it's a possibility.

>> > Now, a problem. Self-control seems to be unfashionable.
>>
>> How so???? It's all the rage!
>
> I fail to see this "rage". Or we understand this differently. For me,
> self-control requires lots of work performed over oneself. Gallons of
> sweat, maybe spiced with tears. I am not granted this by watching TV and
> having Facebook page. BTW, I am not there yet.

But you are granted a portion of self control by taking the right mind
altering drugs, by attending the requisite anger management classes
should you fail to meet society's expectations, or you can be
controlled by society without self control by being incarcerated
should your violation of said expectations be serious enough. With the
highest incarceration rate in history, as well as the highest rates of
drug use (say for ADHD) and judges ordering people into anger
management, it has an effect, overall on violence. That effect has
been for violence to go down. For whatever reasons.

>> > I have, however, heard other stories, counterweighting those grim options
>> > mentioned. Like of Mr Gichin Funakoshi, who started learning Karate at the
>> > age of 13 to improve his poor health, later became master himself but
>> > fought his first real life fight age 72 (AFAIR - I have read it megayears
>> > ago and cannot find anything on the net) when he helped a woman attacked
>> > by a thug. Now that's the man. He did not go on killing journey, just
>> > practiced the art for his whole life.
>>
>> And as far as I know, self defense with the martial arts is a rarity,
>> statistically speaking. I'm not against the martial arts for self
>> control, for inner peace, for physical fitness. But to protect
>> yourself, it isn't the greatest bargain in the world in terms of money
>> or time.
>
> Maybe because learning MA makes one avoid "stressful situations" more and
> behaving better in those that cannot be avoided.
>
> But, for a successful defence, one needs to be in better shape and have
> more mental control of surroundings than attacker(s). MAs can deliver
> here. It can't guarantee anything, however :-).

The reality though is that there is no supporting evidence I am aware
of that knowing a martial art makes you any safer.

>> The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes explains a lot of the decrease in
>> violence. Before the dispassionate third party, in the form of the all
>> powerful state would dish out just rewards, there were cycles of
>> vengeance and revenge. The Leviathan stopped those cycles, and brought
>> with it a more peaceful way to deal with conflict.
>
> There were cases of all-powerful dispassionate states, which after all
> turned out to be something totally else. I don't think I will believe such
> state is possible, as long as it is constructed from selfish members,
> each trying to prolong their own genes at expense of everything else. If
> members cannot face what they are and what is their purpose, this doesn't
> make them better, only more ignorant and dangerous.
>
> Were there any cases of such states which did as they promised?

Even delivering a fraction of what they promise, which I believe they
have done, is improvement over the previous state of being in terms of
violence. Maybe not so much in terms of freedom...

>> > So, maybe one day I will go after this book but I doubt I will run after
>> > it.
>>
>> I hope to finish reading it in a few months... it takes a while when
>> you read ten books at a time...
>
> Well, if you read it and find something convincing, I will gladly read
> about it here. Especially if you can prove this is not some kind of shady
> propaganda aimed at monetary gains of some yet-to-be-seen group.

What I've read so far makes sense... but I'm not all that far into it.
As to the conspiracy theory behind the book, I have no clue what that
might be, LOL.

-Kelly