[ExI] Evolutionary psychology and recent selection was trump

[William Flynn Wallace]

I'm not sure how much these play in militarism though. After all, if you
have a population that's well behaved, they might have good genetics in one
sense that makes for higher social cohesion: obedience to authority.
(Presuming there's some genetic control there.) If so, then it just takes
bad policy to send a very cohesive society down a militaristic path. How
so? Most people will obey and you only need a tiny fraction to carry out
actual brutality. There seems to be some data that the average person
anywhere can be trained to obey to kill someone. Sure, there are outliers,
but, again, only a small fraction of the population needs to beat, shoot,
or bomb others. (And bombing is actually one of those things that's so
remote, I'm betting it's far easier to do without much psychological
blockage -- unlike shooting, stabbing, or beating someone.)

This is leaving aside the usual problems with evo psych arguments.

Regards,

Dan

Certainly even a very cursory view of the literature on conformity and
persuasion can scare the pants off of anyone doubtful that good people can
do bad things.

Otherwise, I'd be wise to leave this discussion to those of you who are
likely (that is, probably all of you) to know more military history than I
do,

bill w

On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 4:03 PM, Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 6, 2016 at 10:01 AM, William Flynn Wallace <
> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Does anyone want to go to war when they are rich?  Well, historically, I
> suppose
> > many did, but now it would just hurt trade.  So much interdependency.
>
> I think there's the paradox that being more market-oriented -- even back
> in ancient times -- generates more wealth and that can fund militarism.
> Maybe I'm cherry picking examples, but ancient Athens was probably the
> wealthiest Greek city-state when it started building its empire. (And I
> mean on a per capita basis here. Someone pointed out that in absolute
> wealth, the Persian empire probably had more overall wealth, but the
> average Persian subject was living at a subsistence level compared to
> average Athenian subject who was likely living two times above subsistence
> level. So, in Persia, a tiny ruling class was fabulously wealthy, but the
> per capita wealth was small, but in Athens there's was more distributed
> wealth and per capita wealth was much larger, probably double or more above
> that of the Persian or Spartan, etc. Cf. Jonah Ober's _The Rise and Fall of
> Classical Greece_ on the wealth comparisons.)
>
> > There are some very interesting statistics on genetics and crime which
> would likely
> > startle everyone in this group.  Plays a small role at best.
>
> I'm not sure how much these play in militarism though. After all, if you
> have a population that's well behaved, they might have good genetics in one
> sense that makes for higher social cohesion: obedience to authority.
> (Presuming there's some genetic control there.) If so, then it just takes
> bad policy to send a very cohesive society down a militaristic path. How
> so? Most people will obey and you only need a tiny fraction to carry out
> actual brutality. There seems to be some data that the average person
> anywhere can be trained to obey to kill someone. Sure, there are outliers,
> but, again, only a small fraction of the population needs to beat, shoot,
> or bomb others. (And bombing is actually one of those things that's so
> remote, I'm betting it's far easier to do without much psychological
> blockage -- unlike shooting, stabbing, or beating someone.)
>
> This is leaving aside the usual problems with evo psych arguments.
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>   My latest Kindle book, "The Late Mr. Gurlitt," is free today PDT from:
> http://mybook.to/Gurlitt
>
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> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
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>
>
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