[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 109, Issue 15

[Keith Henson]

On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 1:12 PM,  Charlie Stross
<charlie.stross at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 6 Oct 2012, at 19:55, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'll propose that we (US, the west, etc) feel threatened by religious
>> ideology that is not our own simply because it's unknown.[1]  I
>> consider this the driving xenophobia that Keith has been talking about
>> for years.
>
> Yup. This.
>
> And we're getting a lovely display of racist xenophobia from John, Mirco, and their allies along the way.

More or less to be expected of humans whose psychological modules were
shaped in the stone age.

But the point I make is that the xenophobic (religious) memes are
secondary to causal economic and economic prospects--even in the US.
Where they are not, in first world countries, the xenophobic memes are
due to threats and actual attacks such as the WTC and the London tube
bombings.

It's almost funny how poorly genes fit in the modern world.   WWII was
about the last time there were significant numbers of war brides.
OBL's genes (psychological mechanisms built by genes that is) made him
irrational in a way that would have worked well in the stone age.  Bad
economic situation/prospects, attack neighbors.  Even with *no* chance
of winning, the female offspring of the warriors (like OBL) would wind
up as wives of the winners after the attackers were killed and their
genes would go on.

The theory explains what's going on and allows predicting that things
are going to get much worse in a lot of places unless there is
something which brings population/population growth in line with
economics/economic growth.

Population growth in most places is declining, but as that article I
quoted pointed out, the local meme set isn't very conducive to the
things (particularly education of women) that are thought to be
strongly associated with lower birth rates.

Of course we are all in a jam if we don't solve the energy problem.

Keith