[ExI] Just some thoughts, nothing new really

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Fri May 10 17:37:49 UTC 2019


I answered a question the other day on Quora.  I was asked what trait that
humans have had forever would I get rid of or change.

My answer:  aggression.  It's news to no one that humans have too much
aggression (and sex drive) for the modern era (OK, so it's always the
modern era, nitpicker).

So let's get rid of it almost entirely.  What we need now is cooperation.
The trick would have to be, though, to get rid of it in everyone at the
same time, or those left with a lot of aggression would take advantage.
(or would they?  Do we need aggression to combat aggression?  Maybe not.
We could dispatch the aggressors calmly and rationally the way we kill
rabid animals, which many humans resemble)

I had an idea and asked my endocrinologist about it:  "Is it possible in
the future to program the hypothalamus to release the chemicals that
stimulate testosterone production starting at 7. p. m. and stopping at
midnight and cleaning all of it out of the bloodstream after that."  She
said Yes.

So - no more nooners, but also no more hormone-fueled aggression during the
day.  We'd just have to get by on assertiveness.  The hypothalamus could be
programmed to stay turned off for days or weeks or whenever. The
combination of lust and aggression is a very bad one.

That opens the possibility of changing the hormones of criminals, perhaps
on a permanent basis, such as for serial rapists.

Fallen?  I don't remember falling. I've always been up.  Up for just about
anything.

bill w

On Fri, May 10, 2019 at 11:59 AM BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 10 May 2019 at 15:28, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, May 9, 2019 at 10:42 PM Rafal Smigrodzki <
> rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Just some comments I posted somebody's blog today:
> >>
> >> While a culture change towards a nirvana of reason, compassion and good
> cheer would be nice, I wouldn't keep my fingers crossed.
> >>
> >> We are all human, therefore fallen.
> >
> > Fallen? Sinners? I'd say we're all human and carry evolutionary baggage.
> >
> >> Evolution optimizes for individual survival in a social context, and
> the payoff matrix of this game, given the very physical underpinnings of
> our reality, does reward mendacity, manipulativeness and mayhem under many
> circumstances.
> >>
> >> It's a simple fact that lying jerks exist, that they flock to power,
> and that coalitions of jerks controlling sheeple have been in constant
> warfare since time immemorial. As long as lying jerks exist and are able to
> gain power, the underlying mechanism at the core of social dysfunction will
> not change. Sure, the content of what lying jerks say changes all the time
> - it used to be that they spoke a lot about piety and god, when the social
> Zeitgeist was of a sacerdotal persuasion. Now lying jerks are staying out
> of the pew and flock to the NGO, the campus and to Twitter.
> >>
> >> The old Soviets wanted to create the homo sovieticus, well-adapted to
> run in the vanguard of the proletariat. They failed but they were onto
> something: You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. A society made
> of humans will necessarily simmer with constant low-level warfare of
> everybody against everybody, with occasional catastrophic upheavals. But
> technology will come to the rescue - genetically engineered Good People
> will eventually replace the wild type. I hope.
> >
> >
> > I'm not sure how you go from a world of wild humans to a world of man
> made Good People, but we're a way off being able to create Good People. And
> a single Bad Person could easily take over a planet full of Good People.
> >
> > -Dave
>
> Once we have Total Surveillance and become cells within the AI Borg
> Hive Mind we will all be Good People.
> Bad People are so dangerous that they will be treated as cancer cells
> and destroyed.
>
> Humans simmering with constant warfare cannot survive as their
> weaponry becomes more and more powerful. The human species will change
> dramatically or become extinct.
>
>
>
> BillK
>
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