[ExI] Just some thoughts, nothing new really

Fri May 10 19:31:57 UTC 2019

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace
Subject: Re: [ExI] Just some thoughts, nothing new really

>…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 …

Awwww BillW, you’re no fun.

>…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…

Sure, but would it not be cool to be among the few left with sex drive?  Oh wait, already there, never mind.

>… So - no more nooners…

You were doing so well up that point.

>…  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)

If taken out of context, certainly this is a good example of a scary comment.

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

bill w

There ya go BillW, you are among those who still have sex drive.  

Those nooners you are dismissing have big advantages.  My bride and I are less tired then.

Interesting commentary however.  I might go over to Quora and follow that discussion.  

We dang near have already gotten rid of aggression.  My great grandmother wrote a book about growing up in the early 1900s, being a young parent, what it was like.  She had 6 sons, all of whom loved baseball.  All the local boys liked baseball, but they seldom got past about the 4th inning before a fight would break out, and naturally all the boys would join the fray.  She didn’t recall a ball game every finishing 9 innings.  Her comment was most entertaining: them boys loved their fighting, but there was seldom any serious damage.  Black eyes, broken noses or teeth, seldom any serious injury.  They didn’t bring their guns or knives ever, and didn’t use the bat on each other. 

I couldn’t help noticing the difference between my son’s middle school now vs mine, tragically many years ago.  Back then, fights would happen about on a weekly basis in those testosterone-fueled years.  Now they are rare.

So now we must make up for it by amping up sex drive (what else is there to do?  (Hey, some of us pay good money for that sex drive ( {8^D)))

Fun thought: imagine a guy from the pre-industrial age, a couple hundred years ago, before any combustion prime movers.  Think of their lifestyle, muscle and grit running everything, constant hard labor.  Now imagine what it would feel like to them if they could be brought forward to now: we live in houses that are always right at a comfortable temperature year around, we are clean always, machines wash and dry our clothing, we have all the food we need of any variety we want, any time we want.  We are healthy.  We can go anywhere we want, any time we want.  We now have cars in which we can copulate if we choose (hey cool!) and it carries no risk of pregnancy or disease (possible risk of a violent crash (if the participant’s knee hits the steering wheel.)) 

Can you imagine an old-timer brought forth to now?  You know the first thing he will want to do when he sees all this luxury.  And second, and third, and not stop.

If you think about it that way, it is entirely possible that our collective sex drive, along with our aggression, may have already subsided considerably as well.

spike

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

On Fri, 10 May 2019 at 15:28, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com <mailto:sparge at gmail.com> > wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 9, 2019 at 10:42 PM Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com <mailto: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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