[ExI] Trump suggests letting Iran ‘take out’ Los Angeles and San Diego

[Keith Henson]

" *why they find him so mesmerizing, and to this day I've never been able
to receive a coherent answer. *"

The reason is rooted in evolutionary psychology and the genetic selection
of humans over at least 100,000 years, i.e., since before the migration out
of Africa. I have talked about this for decades, but people even here don't
understand that humans have evolved mechanisms that account for MAGA or
Nazies social movements. I have published twice on this subject, a pointer
to the last time you can locate at the bottom of Works on the Wikipedia
page about me.

What happens to human groups, from small tribes up to nations, is that when
they think they are facing a bleak future, this turns on psychological
mechanisms that, among other things, increase the circulation of xenophobic
memes. In tribal days, this eventually resulted in killing the targets.
This was selected because, on average, going to war, losing or winning, was
better for your genes. (When the alternative was starvation, which it was
in those days.)

The other thing is that animals, including humans, respond to relative
changes. So you don't need actual starvation to trip the psychological
mechanisms, just conditions getting relatively worse.

If you doubt this account, consider where MAGA is strongest.

As to why those sections of the country are relatively worse off than they
were, you can blame the Harvard Business School and legal decisions that
put the stockholders' interest first. Plus, technology advances, of which
low-cost container shipping is high on the list.

The mechanisms involved lead up to war. In the lead-up to wars, crazy
leaders become attractive. I can't make as strong an argument for this as
genetic selection for wars, but I think observations support it.

Not all wars are the result of this process; we no longer live in small
tribes, but the psychological mechanisms are baked into our genetics.

I should add that understanding the mechanisms behind social movements (or
cults) does not help that much to cope with the social world we are in. At
best, you are not so surprised because the craziness you observe makes
sense in evolutionary terms, including supporting the current US
leadership, no matter how irrational that might be.

Keith


On Thu, Oct 8, 2026 at 8:23 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> *From:* John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Trump suggests letting Iran ‘take out’ Los Angeles
> and San Diego
>
>
>
> *>…A person that was truly neutral would not jump to Donald's defense 100%
> of the time regardless of what new outrage he had committed. *
>
>
>
> *John K Clark*
>
>
>
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>
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> *John it only appears to be jumping to the defense if we don’t agree with
> you.  But really all you are doing is channeling Meidas Touch, which this
> forum isn’t about.  Disagreeing with you isn’t necessarily jumping anyone’s
> defense.  It really is only disagreeing with you.*
>
> *So John, in any case, why do you suppose an unpopular former POTUS won
> that last election?  If that party fails to figure it out, they will lose
> again and again.*
>
> *spike*
>
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>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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