[ExI] Rick Warren on religion (Stuart LaForge

Sat Dec 15 17:46:56 UTC 2018

keith wrote

Capture-bonding is one of the few psychological traits that have an
obvious selection mechanism.

I would really like to know more about these traits.  Will you send me a
link or what to put in the search field (assuming EP traits won't do) to
find info on them?

Thanks!  bill w

On Sat, Dec 15, 2018 at 9:55 AM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 9:52 PM  "Stuart LaForge" <avant at sollegro.com>
> wrote:
>
> > From:
> > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> > Subject: Re: [ExI] Rick Warren on religion
> > Message-ID:
> >         <
> 2e66e7dd71506cb95a7c49743fe4f09b.squirrel at secure199.inmotionhosting.com>
> >
> > Content-Type: text/plain;charset=utf-8
> >
> > Keith Henson wrote:
>
> snip
>
> > > Translating into something that could be measured, your expectation
> > > would be that the percentage of captives (almost all women) who
> adapted to
> > > being captured would have gone up over the period where the brain
> > > expanded.
> >
> > But capture bonding is just a single EP trait,
>
> I wish you would be more careful with the terminology.  "EP trait"
> doesn't work.  A psychological trait that resulted from evolution
> works.
>
> As for it being a single trait, if you want to measure a number of
> traits, you do it one at a time.
>
> Capture-bonding is one of the few psychological traits that have an
> obvious selection mechanism.
>
> unless there are
> > differences between sexes in which case there may be two different
> traits.
> > But I think rather than trying to measure individual traits you would be
> > better off counting the number of traits by keeping track of when they
> > emerged.
>
> We don't have the time machine to go back and see, so this is entirely
> academic   But I do wonder what others you would put in a list to see
> when they emerged.?
>
> > Incidentally one of the tenants of Evolutionary Psychology (this time I
> > mean the discipline) that I hold exception with is that "our modern
> skulls
> > house stone age minds". If minds could not evolve faster than genes, then
> > there would be no point to having evolved minds in the first place. Minds
> > went from cave paintings
> >
> > >> How do you distinguish this capacity for religion from any other
> > >> cultural phenomena that allows memes and social constructs to override
> > >> genes? It is certainly more sophisticated in humans but it occurs
> across
> > >> the spectrum of social animals.
> > >>
> > >> In wolves for example, typically only the dominant pair of alpha male
> > >> and female breed.
> > >>
> > >> Why would the average (non-dominant) wolves in the pack allow this?
> Why
> > >>  would these average wolves cooperatively hunt, protect, and help feed
> > >> pups that are unrelated to them effectively throwing their own genes
> > >> under the bus?
> > >
> > >> Sure one could argue that they are related so this is some kind of kin
> > >> selection going on but this is typically true only of the females who
> > >> tend to be siblings. The males are typically completely unrelated and
> > >> randomly get adopted into packs.
> > >
> > > Can you provide a URL for these statements?  It's been a while since I
> > > read up on the subject.
> >
> > https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/5210739
> > http://zbs.bialowieza.pl/g2/pdf/1495.pdf
> >
> > >> The upshot of the Nature article is that humans are about six times
> > >> more likely than the average mammal to die by the actions of a member
> of
> > >> our own species. Based upon paleontological and archaelogical evidence
> > >> during the Stone Age about 3.5% of humans died by the hand of another
> > >> human. This fluctuates throughout history, with a maximum during the
> > >> middle ages where approximately 12% of humans died by another's hand.
> > >
> > > Some places much higher
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization
> >
> > >From what I have been able to gather, Keeley's claims in "War Before
> > Civilization" rest more on the behavior of tribes that remained
> > isolationist all the way into the 20th century. That likely means there
> > would a heavy bias toward xenophobia. The only ancient evidence he touts
> > are remains from a single grave site in the Sudan. From what I have been
> > able to gather independently from this source:
> >
> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/new-study-of-prehistoric-skeletons-undermines-claim-that-war-has-deep-evolutionary-roots/
> >
> > "The most ancient clear-cut evidence of deadly group violence is a mass
> > grave, estimated to be 13,000 years old, found in the Jebel Sahaba region
> > of the Sudan, near the Nile River. Of the 59 skeletons in the grave, 24
> > bear marks of violence, such as hack marks and embedded stone points."
> >
> > So the only hard evidence Keeley has is 59 skeletons 24 of which were
> > killed by violence.
>
> He has a lot more:
>
> For example, at Crow Creek in South Dakota, archaeologists found a
> mass grave containing the remains of more than 500 men, women, and
> children who had been slaughtered, scalped, and mutilated during an
> attack on their village a century and a half before Columbus's arrival
> (ca. 1325 AD). The Crow Creek massacre seems to have occurred just
> when the village's fortifications were being rebuilt. All the houses
> were burned, and most of the inhabitants were murdered. This death
> toll represented more than 60% of the village's population, estimated
> from the number of houses to have been about 800. The survivors appear
> to have been primarily young women, as their skeletons are
> underrepresented among the bones; if so, they were probably taken away
> as captives. Certainly, the site was deserted for some time after the
> attack because the bodies evidently remained exposed to scavenging
> animals for a few weeks before burial. In other words, this whole
> village was annihilated in a single attack and never reoccupied.[7]
>
> snip
>
> > On the other hand, one planet can only sustain so many of us sacred
> > monkeys when even the insects are dying. So we are going to have to make
> > some tough choices soon. But a war to thin the herd is not the best or
> > only option.
>
> I would really like to know what you consider other options.
>
> Keith
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