Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 5:30 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
Ludi wrote:
I question whether the increasingly violent, lying, cheating, raping group would successfully produce more offspring which live to reproductive age than the cooperative group. This seems unlikely to me.
Also, I should point out that successful "cheaters" never tip their hand, such as bobbyald did when praising the trait of "faking sincerity." Knowing now that bobbyald is likely insincere, I don't trust him, and so, in a group situation, would likely not support him. How successful has bobbyald been in a Darwinian sense? Has his fake sincerity enabled him to produce viable offspring which will live to reproductive age? That's the question. Does uncooperative cheating behavior enable the cheater to produce a larger number of viable offspring in real life? Or only in fictional models?
And where are the uncooperative cheating genes such as the one for faking sincerity ?
5 years after the end of the Human Genome Project ... no one has produced such a gene. In a broader perspective complex traits (behaviours, genes , diseases) cannot be nailed down to one or few genes. If such genes were there and extremely influential , the orgasism who harbored them would pay more attention to what is inside compared to what is outside (environment). A self-defeating survival strategy and one likely to be selected out IMHO. _________________ "Nuclear power has long been to the Left what embryonic-stem-cell research is to the Right--irredeemably wrong and a signifier of moral weakness."Esquire Magazine,12/05
The genetic code is commaless and so are my posts.
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 5:47 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
Good to see you in action, Energyspin. The bunch here is just not used to someone of your caliper, excellent points that you make, this site needs someone to kick those sleepy doomsdayers in the butt...
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 6:35 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
Jack wrote:
I would not dismiss Mr. Hanson's conclusions so lightly. I think his views are closer to the truth than most care to admit.
Thank you, Jack. I agree. _________________ "The world is changed... I feel it in the water... I feel it in the earth... I smell it in the air... Much that once was, is lost..." - Galadriel
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 6:57 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
bobcousins wrote:
Hanson is right to think that our behaviour is determined by our genes, but that article is mostly rubbish. He states that selection occurs at the genetic level, then apparently talks about selection of individuals, an error also made by posters here. The nature of genetic selection is really quite subtle and complicated, and it is quite difficult not to think about individuals. There is a complicated relationship between the organism and the genes. Hanson's article throws out some emotional arguments but sheds little light on what is really going on.
While thinking about collapse of society, I initially thought that maybe the reason is that in large groups cooperation is strained too far. If people then start to act selfishly, this causes the system to break down into smaller, more stable groups.
This hypothesis is I think quite wrong. You need to think of it in the opposite way. It is actually because humans are supremely cooperative that we grow into large civilisations in the first place. Because we cooperate so well, we are able to effectively exploit resources. While successful in the short term, this leads to overshoot. Civilisations break down because the underlying resource base is insufficient.
Hanson is following his own agenda to conclude that we destroy ourselves because we are dumb animals. True, we are dumb animals, but we are highly cooperative dumb animals. .
Highly cooperative at killing other dumb animals who are not members of our "tribe."
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 7:10 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
SarahC1975 wrote:
Highly cooperative at killing other dumb animals who are not members of our "tribe."
Sarah C.
Let me guess: a supporter of group selection theory?
Care to take my first point which will be restated for clarity:
What happens when the original rapists/looters/killers kill everyone else?
Why don't they turn against each other leading to the eventual demise of the tribe?
Of course you might argue that this is about to happen now . And yet from the original exposition of the "genetic model of human behaviour" one would expect this to have happened long time ago.
I am still waiting for an answer .... and a mechanism for all those genes.
It appears that even more elaborate (?false) constructs are proposed in the literature to account for the genetic basis of cooperation/competition.
And yet with the sequences of the human genome known ... no one still has a clue where such genes (altruistic or non altruistic) are located or which ones they are .
Till one provides a plausible biochemical mechanism for the operation of these genes, and show how they increase reproductive fitness, naive genetic models of human behaviour are simply mental, unsupported by data constructs.
And the whole business is reminsicent of an early episode in the history of Christianity, when people gave up on everything waiting for the Apocalypse. _________________ "Nuclear power has long been to the Left what embryonic-stem-cell research is to the Right--irredeemably wrong and a signifier of moral weakness."Esquire Magazine,12/05
The genetic code is commaless and so are my posts.
Last edited by EnergySpin on Sun Oct 09, 2005 7:24 pm; edited 2 times in total
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 7:19 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
Ludi wrote:
I question whether the increasingly violent, lying, cheating, raping group would successfully produce more offspring which live to reproductive age than the cooperative group. This seems unlikely to me.
All members of the White or European race raise their hand.
All Native Americans raise their hand.
Why the discrepancy? Because the Whites were the better killers. Not coincidentally, their descendents (that's us) are acting in a simliar fashion this very day.
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 7:31 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
All of this talk of genetics seems to be akin to sophism.
Consider:
Quote:
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor, and even today 99 percent of the two species' DNA is identical. But since the paths of man and chimp diverged 5 million years ago, that one percent of genetic difference appears to have changed humans in an unexpected way: It could have made people more prone to cancer.
So, the key point is that the two species' DNA is 99% identical.
We don't begin to know what makes the critical difference between the two. We are not unlike Plato who described man as a featherless biped, only to have Diogenes show up with a plucked chicken which he described as Plato's man!
This suggests that no one knows - not yet anyway - whether man (or chimpanzee) is hard-wired for conflict or cooperation. Historical evidence suggests that man cooperates only to gain ascendancy over rivals.
So, genetic discussions aside, Hanson's predictions cannot be dismissed. Perhaps his genetic model is more akin to epicycles in the Ptolemaic universe than to the more accurate Newtonian mechanisms; but that does not mean that reasonable predictions can not be made. _________________ Dieoff. Fun to watch. Better with hot buttered popcorn!
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 7:34 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
Quote:
[quote="EnergySpin"]
SarahC1975 wrote:
Highly cooperative at killing other dumb animals who are not members of our "tribe."
Sarah C.
Let me guess: a supporter of group selection theory?
Care to take my first point which will be restated for clarity:
What happens when the original rapists/looters/killers kill everyone else?
The tribe will break into two (or more) new tribes. Whichever tribe is more effective at eliminating the other will see its genes passed on. The other goes the way of the Dodo bird.
Joined: Sep 06, 2004 Posts: 5315 Location: Smalltown New Zealand
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 7:37 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
Jack wrote:
All of this talk of genetics seems to be akin to sophism.
Consider:
Quote:
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor, and even today 99 percent of the two species' DNA is identical..
So, the key point is that the two species' DNA is 99% identical.
Historical evidence suggests that man cooperates only to gain ascendancy over rivals.
So, genetic discussions aside, Hanson's predictions cannot be dismissed. Perhaps his genetic model is more akin to epicycles in the Ptolemaic universe than to the more accurate Newtonian mechanisms; but that does not mean that reasonable predictions can not be made.
I was reading the other day that chimps and gorillas only have 30 years left on this planet. _________________ "Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 7:37 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
[quote="Jack"]All of this talk of genetics seems to be akin to sophism.
Consider:
Quote:
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor, and even today 99 percent of the two species' DNA is identical. But since the paths of man and chimp diverged 5 million years ago, that one percent of genetic difference appears to have changed humans in an unexpected way: It could have made people more prone to cancer.
So, the key point is that the two species' DNA is 99% identical.
We don't begin to know what makes the critical difference between the two. We are not unlike Plato who described man as a featherless biped, only to have Diogenes show up with a plucked chicken which he described as Plato's man!
quote]
(Wo)man is hardwired for both. Have you ever competed with somebody in school or at work? Of course you have. Have you ever cooperated with somebody in school or at work. Of course you have.
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 7:41 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
SarahC1975 wrote:
All members of the White or European race raise their hand.
All Native Americans raise their hand.
Why the discrepancy? Because the Whites were the better killers. Not coincidentally, their descendents (that's us) are acting in a simliar fashion this very day.
Sad but true.
Were they better killers or did they just have better killing technology? American Indians are by and large much better hunters than Europeans.
You're also discounting the role that disease played. You have provided a very simplistic view of European conquest of N. America. I would reccomend reading Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2005 7:52 pm Post subject: Re: Jay Hanson speaks up
Jack the discussions about genetic are not irrelevant because in his reasoning the predictions appear them as an inevitable conclusion of his genetic behavioural model.
It is only if the genetic model is correct that the conclusions are true (and inevitable).
If the genetic model is incorrect,then there is no guarantee that his conclusions/predictions will be verified or not because No reasonable conclusions can be drawn from a wrong model . A false statement implies all other statements (true or false).
If the model is wrong one is left reasoning about his own system of beliefs which existed before the model was created wich puts us back to square one: a thermonuclear Fark extravaganza is only of the possible outcomes but not the only one and various people give different degrees of possiblity to this outcome. I do not know ... but if one holds this statement to be 100% certain given a wrong model, then one is not defending it on the basis of reason but on the basis of faith.
Closing note: It is interesting that you used the epicycle example. This is a n example of totally wrong model; it is not like the relation of Newtonian mechanics to Quantum Physics where the former is an approximation to the later. I wonder what Freud would have said _________________ "Nuclear power has long been to the Left what embryonic-stem-cell research is to the Right--irredeemably wrong and a signifier of moral weakness."Esquire Magazine,12/05
The genetic code is commaless and so are my posts.
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