[ExI] a little essay on anger and respect

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] a little essay on anger and respect

On Wed, Apr 26, 2023 at 10:41 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

snip

>>... I will tread some dangerous ground here, for when I suggested the following twenty years ago, I was soundly scolded by Eliezer, who insisted that evolution does not operate at the group level.

>...It logically cannot exist in humans.  Eliezer, Richard Dawkins, and many others are right on this point...

So I am told, early and often.

>...I am not sure why the idea is so attractive that it comes up again and again among people who should know better...

Perhaps I should clarify, this selection process is primarily memetic rather than genetic.  In light of that, consider...

>...Assume that some group accumulated a bunch of favorable genes.  Humans practice exogamy, marrying outside the group, so shortly the favorable genes are spread to other groups...

Agreed.  Now replace genes with memes in the above, and ask yourself about English culture becoming more peaceful, and how English culture has long dominated North America.  

>... Clark makes the case that the whole UK population became less violent over 400 years of selection mostly for wealth.  Keith

Within a peaceful culture, there is a strong sense of personal ownership, relatively low risk of harm or death from the neighbors, etc.  These are memes that cause a group to expand, primarily memetically but also perhaps genetically.  Example: it was European genotypes and memetics which populated the Americas rather than Native American genotypes and memetics which populated Europe in the second millennium.

spike