[ExI] Reason for religions, was riots

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 3:13 PM,  Mirco Romanato <painlord2k at libero.it> wrote:


>> But if you have a pointer to these findings, I would be very
>> interested.  Modern humans, even without guns, are more than a match
>> for lions.

I should have mentioned that the lions leave humans alone when they
are carrying long sticks with pointy things on the end.  Lions that
try out such humans don't live long.

snip

>> As I have pointed out, the behavioral switch was under a great deal of
>> evolutionary pressure to "get it right."
>
> My opinion is this "switch" is only apparent.

I am sure that you agree about animals having behavior switches.
Ducks fly south in the fall and north in the spring.  That's
definitely a behavior that depends on external conditions.  Drop a rat
in water and it swims.

> Cooperation allowed larger groups and languages allowed them to become
> even bigger.

The thing that limited hunter-gatherer group size was how far they had
to walk to collect food.

snip
>
> The "go at war" switch is, IMO, a consequence of "acts of exploiting"
> from a group against another. Just say group A is resource strapped and
> go hunting/gathering in the territories of Group B. Group B could see
> this as an "exploit" against itself and enter in punishing mode
> (sometimes a genocidal punishing mode).
>
> http://www.umass.edu/preferen/A%20Cooperative%20Species/ACS%20Ch%2013%20Human%20Cooperation%20and%20its%20Evolution.pdf
>
> Your "war mode switch" is, IMO, problematic because it require a cut off
> of cooperating between humans and I believe cooperation is instinctive
> in humans. So it is difficult to have a clear cut off (cooperation in
> group and war mode off group).

I don't know what that would be a problem.  Lions cooperate inside the
group but the groups do their best to kill each other.  So do chimps.

> If the "war mode" arise from a perceived exploitation from another group
> it would be a natural extension of our ancestors evolution of
> "altruistic punisher" traits.
>
> I would add that a "war mode" could be used by exploiters as a way to
> get rid of in group competitors. They push for a war against the other
> group not only to take their resources but to get rid of an excess of
> far relatives inside the group.

I don't follow your reasoning.

snip

>> I suspect that farming in northern temperate zones exerted a
>> considerable genetic selection on the people who lived there.  Beyond
>> that you need to read the works of Gregory Clark.  His book is good,
>> but here is a place to start.
>> http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Capitalism%20Genes.pdf
>
> I read this a few years ago. It was very interesting.
>
> Equally interesting reading was the theory of Psychohistory of deMause:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory

"In a 1994 interview with deMause in The New Yorker, the interviewer
wrote: "To buy into psychohistory, you have to subscribe to some
fairly woolly assumptions [...], for instance, that a nations's
child-rearing techniques affect its foreign policy".[2]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_deMause

I know a good deal about this topic.  I suggest that your detector for
nonsense needs to be improved if you take this guy seriously.

> if it true that early ways of childrearing caused a greater number of
> psychosis, it is understandable people heard voices and see things not
> there and evolved explanations for it. Evolution and selections would
> prefer the people hearing voices telling them the right things at the
> right times (not always the good things).

For a more recent and respected view of the topic try here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Harris

and here  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption

Keith