"human nature"

zhao

there are no accidents
that article is very interesting HundredMillion. thanks for posting. it is at the heart of some of my thoughts and concerns. wish i had more time to research and study... and join in the fray in this thread.
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
Coincidentally, some years ago, in a very different context, I collated some of the anthropological research to which Pinker is alluding in his work, much of which I would now consider inherently problematical: [...]

What is it you find problematic about it today that you didn’t see then?

I haven’t seen the Cronenberg film you mention in your second post, but it sounds interesting. A girlfriend once went really upset when I went on an impromptu killing-spree—massacring pedestrians, even the odd boy-scout gang—while playing Grand Theft Auto. In her view, the game was far too realistic for me to consider it ‘just a game’. I had a moral responsibility for my actions despite their taking place in the world of pixels.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I think it's interesting that you mention capitalism. Yes, it is a system that certainly can allow people to be exploited by those in positions of wealth, which confers power, but violence has always been with us, since long before capitalism (as it is understood today) existed. People have been oppressing, dispossessing, enslaving, torturing and massacring each other since pre-history: if the scale has changed, I'd say it was primarily due to far larger populations fighting over the same amount of land and resources, and using much deadlier weapons to do it.

But we were talking about human nature and civilization...

I think there are some things which one can point to inside our animal-selves as being characteristics which are difficult (but perhaps not impossible to evade). One of the key things is the idea of nervous systems responding to change, not stasis. This has a large number of implications on the way that beliefs and practices (especially consumerism) are structured. Techniques to evade this (and the inherent disappointment/frustration of static conditions) would be eagerly noted...
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
A girlfriend once went really upset when I went on an impromptu killing-spree—massacring pedestrians, even the odd boy-scout gang—while playing Grand Theft Auto. In her view, the game was far too realistic for me to consider it ‘just a game’. I had a moral responsibility for my actions despite their taking place in the world of pixels.

Is there not an element of responsibility on the part of the creators of the game too? After all they have given you the option to do as such, and the necessary visual lures of such ultraviolence...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Is there not an element of responsibility on the part of the creators of the game too? After all they have given you the option to do as such, and the necessary visual lures of such ultraviolence...

This thread is skirting dangerously near "Doom turned my baby into a killer" territory for my liking. The old scapegoat of violent computer games, and before that violent films, as responsible for teenage massacres and so on is pure hogwash, in my opinion: parents of violent, fucked-up kids looking for anything to blame except their own poor parenting skills. Oh, and you can throw in Marilyn Manson and/or gangsta-rap, for good measure.

If you can't actually distinguish between make-believe violence (whether on a computer screen or a TV) and real-life violence, you're already pretty fucking messed up. Of course, this may apply to kids who aren't messed up (yet) but are simply very young, in which case it's up to parents not to let them be exposed to violent games or films. Of course, that would actually involve taking some responsibility for one's own actions, which is a bit more than some people think can be reasonably expected from them.
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
This thread is skirting dangerously near "Doom turned my baby into a killer" territory for my liking. The old scapegoat of violent computer games, and before that violent films, as responsible for teenage massacres and so on is pure hogwash, in my opinion: parents of violent, fucked-up kids looking for anything to blame except their own poor parenting skills. Oh, and you can throw in Marilyn Manson and/or gangsta-rap, for good measure.

If you can't actually distinguish between make-believe violence (whether on a computer screen or a TV) and real-life violence, you're already pretty fucking messed up. Of course, this may apply to kids who aren't messed up (yet) but are simply very young, in which case it's up to parents not to let them be exposed to violent games or films. Of course, that would actually involve taking some responsibility for one's own actions, which is a bit more than some people think can be reasonably expected from them.

But what happens the day computer games become so realistic that your brain cannot decide if you are ‘logged-in’ or nor?

I chance to think that the cumulate effect of increasingly (from a 50-year perspective, say) more violent entertainment is palpable. The old computer-games-playing-computer-nerds-don’t-kill-anyone argument is flawed in many ways; for one, not many ‘conventionally violent’ adolescents played computer games before the early 90s or so. Now, of course, everyone is doing it. It remains to be seen whether this has a noticeable effect or not.
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
This thread is skirting dangerously near "Doom turned my baby into a killer" territory for my liking. The old scapegoat of violent computer games, and before that violent films, as responsible for teenage massacres and so on is pure hogwash, in my opinion: parents of violent, fucked-up kids looking for anything to blame except their own poor parenting skills. Oh, and you can throw in Marilyn Manson and/or gangsta-rap, for good measure.

If you can't actually distinguish between make-believe violence (whether on a computer screen or a TV) and real-life violence, you're already pretty fucking messed up. Of course, this may apply to kids who aren't messed up (yet) but are simply very young, in which case it's up to parents not to let them be exposed to violent games or films. Of course, that would actually involve taking some responsibility for one's own actions, which is a bit more than some people think can be reasonably expected from them.

You can clearly see that's not what I am saying, lets not spend time endlessly rehashing old old debates, please... We're talking about the case where we presume inside-game violence does not lead to violence in the real world... and then seeing whether there is still a problem with its participative virtuality... if Guybrush's girlfriend blames HIM for the violence (within the game, obv), why not the creators themselves for laying open such possibilities (with the greater ease with which such violent activities might be exectuted than in "reality", of course) within increasingly realistic environments? (Cf the whole moral dimension to the ending of Existenz...)
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
stealing a few minutes thus sorry for inarticulate fragmentary nature of post:

to me it makes sense that we think man has always been violent because we are violent now, because of our incredibly short attention span. the farthest we can remember back is within the bounds of the history of civilization, which may NOT be the same as history of man.

history of man may be 4,000,000 (4 million) years on earth. while history of civilization is only the most recent 10,000.

isn't it coneivable that there was a time when resources were much more plentiful (before the last short lived ice-age, after which was the advent of agriculture), and thus no need for competition? no hierarchy, no hunting, mostly foraging and gathering; no division of labor, no "work", no written or systematic language because unnecessary, thus the egalitarian, "noble" savage.

the "violence in nature same as human violence" argument is not valid the same way "we all want the last piece of bread = selfishness" is invalid ---- a wolf killing a dear for food as part of eco-system is not comparable to the Armenian genocide or Rwanda 94.

i believe "civilization" certainly "trains" us and conditions our thinking. and all we see are the trees not the forest.

....
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
"isn't it coneivable that there was a time when resources were much more plentiful (before the last short lived ice-age, after which was the advent of agriculture), and thus no need for competition? no hierarchy, no hunting, mostly foraging and gathering; no division of labor, no "work", no written or systematic language because unnecessary, thus the egalitarian, "noble" savage."
Obviously it's literally conceivable but that is no argument to say it happened, it's equally conceivable that there wasn't such a time. The only argument that you're putting forward seems to be "it's theoretically possible and I'd like it to have been like that".

"to me it makes sense that we think man has always been violent because we are violent now"
And because there is no reason to think otherwise. Why are you so keen to believe in a past utopia?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
history of man may be 4,000,000 (4 million) years on earth. while history of civilization is only the most recent 10,000.
There were NOT 'human beings' 4 million years ago. There were primitive hominids that lived much like modern apes do today. In fact the last common ancestor of chimps and humans lived as little as 5 million years ago.
isn't it coneivable that there was a time when resources were much more plentiful (before the last short lived ice-age, after which was the advent of agriculture), and thus no need for competition? no hierarchy, no hunting, mostly foraging and gathering; no division of labor, no "work", no written or systematic language because unnecessary, thus the egalitarian, "noble" savage.
"Noble savage"? What is this, the 18th century?
Certainly, resources were more plentiful relative the number of (proto-)people when there were far fewer individuals competing for them - but at the same time, those resources were much harder to obtain and exploit because of the extremely limited technological and social sophistication of the time. I'm also at a loss as to how you seem to think we all lived in some vegan paradise before 'civilisation' appeared and turned us all into Big Mac-munching monsters. Humans and their ancestors have hunted animals and eaten meat since the very beginning: the very earliest proto-humans' tools were simple stone choppers for butchering meat, our large brains and probably even spoken language itself evolved in order to facilitate coordinated hunting strategies and finally, you have to wonder why, if we're 'not supposed' to eat meat, it tastes so damn good. The answer is, of course, that it's packed with nutrients, making it a far more valuable food source than plant material. This is well known to chimps, our closest living relatives, who are themselves omnivorous.
the "violence in nature same as human violence" argument is not valid the same way "we all want the last piece of bread = selfishness" is invalid ---- a wolf killing a dear for food as part of eco-system is not comparable to the Armenian genocide or Rwanda 94.

i believe "civilization" certainly "trains" us and conditions our thinking. and all we see are the trees not the forest.
....
I think the seeds of civilisation are our own instincts expanded and elaborated on a massive scale. Your analogy is flawed, since in war we're talking about conflict between two groups of animals from the same species, and human beings are by no means the only species that exhibits this behaviour.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
You can clearly see that's not what I am saying, lets not spend time endlessly rehashing old old debates, please... We're talking about the case where we presume inside-game violence does not lead to violence in the real world... and then seeing whether there is still a problem with its participative virtuality... if Guybrush's girlfriend blames HIM for the violence (within the game, obv), why not the creators themselves for laying open such possibilities (with the greater ease with which such violent activities might be exectuted than in "reality", of course) within increasingly realistic environments? (Cf the whole moral dimension to the ending of Existenz...)

I know that's not what you said, but it seemed to me we were headed in that direction. There's a moral dimension to computer games only in so far as they (supposedly) influence the player's behaviour outside the game. There is no moral dimension to 'killing' a bunch of pixels, and if someone finds it disturbing or distasteful, it's up to them not to play the game or watch someone else play it. The same argument goes for any other medium with a violent make-believe content, be it a novel, play, film or whatever.
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
There's a moral dimension to computer games only in so far as they (supposedly) influence the player's behaviour outside the game. There is no moral dimension to 'killing' a bunch of pixels, and if someone finds it disturbing or distasteful, it's up to them not to play the game or watch someone else play it. The same argument goes for any other medium with a violent make-believe content, be it a novel, play, film or whatever.

Does the same go for an ultra-realistic VR-game where the player indulges in rape, torture, cannibalism, etc.? I’m sorry if the examples are over the top, but it seems to me that a line possibly must be drawn somewhere.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Does the same go for an ultra-realistic VR-game where the player indulges in rape, torture, cannibalism, etc.? I’m sorry if the examples are over the top, but it seems to me that a line possibly must be drawn somewhere.
I think that it's an interesting question. My gut feeling (and it is really just that) is that one is ok with Grand Theft Auto but if (when?) they get to the stage of creating an "ultra-realistic VR-game" where you can, say, rape someone and it feels in every way just like it would in real life then there is a question - I think I would feel very icky about someone who wanted to "play" that game.
Regarding what Gek-Opel (I think) said, in such a scenario there is definitely some responsibility resting with the game's creators but that doesn't absolve the "player".
 

zhao

there are no accidents
I am not "keen to believe" anything. but very much interested in alternatives to the commonly held beliefs about our origins, the widely accepted constructions of how our ancesters lived.

what Mr. Tea believes is what we were all taught to believe. i grew up thinking exactly the same as he does.

but no one can deny that there is the possibility that this view is tainted by the times we live in now, and by the system in which we live now.

we all know that historical representation is more often than not, flawed and biased. written by the victors and whatnot, but also, present-day ideology always makes itself felt through the representations it deploys. for example: the evolution of how the T-Rex is represened in natural history museums in America -- 1950s was all about the nuclear family, thus always represened as a nuclear family living peacefully with male as head -- 1980s was all about business, thus T-Rex was represented as a lone aggressive hunter. while many biologists and archeologists say none of this is accurate -- that the T-Rex may have been nearly blind, very slowly moving, with no hunting capacity, and mostly feeding on corpses.

in the same way construction of our ancesters as brutal, violent, competetors may be a false representation motivated by ideology.

this is the main point.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"we all know that historical representation is more often than not, flawed and biased. written by the victors and whatnot, but also, present-day ideology always makes itself felt through the representations it deploys"
Fine, but if you want to have a different version don't you need some reasons or arguments to support it as opposed to just picking a history that you would like because it's "not inconceivable"?
I mean it could well be that man was a lot less brutal than we have believed, it could be that he was in fact much more so - why pick one over the other?
 

vimothy

yurp
There is no moral dimension to 'killing' a bunch of pixels, and if someone finds it disturbing or distasteful, it's up to them not to play the game or watch someone else play it. The same argument goes for any other medium with a violent make-believe content, be it a novel, play, film or whatever.

Like playing chess!

Anyone remember that scene in the invisibles (ruling '90s comic by Grant Morrison) where Dane is playing chess with the blind dude and he asks if he's ever got so caught up in a game that he experiences existential angst with the loss of a piece?
 

zhao

there are no accidents
Fine, but if you want to have a different version don't you need some reasons or arguments to support it as opposed to just picking a history that you would like because it's "not inconceivable"?
I mean it could well be that man was a lot less brutal than we have believed, it could be that he was in fact much more so - why pick one over the other?

there are many reasons. just a few main ones off the top of my head:

1. since the 1970s, much archeological study have suggested, and many scientists have come to agree, that Homo Erectus had the same upper cranial capacity and indeed the same brain as Homo-Sapien - a view very different from that we had come to accept up to that point (see Mr. Tea's comments) -- they had more hair, yes, but was just as "intellegent" as us -- extending the history of man on earth to 4,000,000 years.

2. it is commonly accepted that vegetation was much more abundant prior to the last ice-age (10,000 years ago) - thus it is likely that food was everywhere for the taking - thousands of kinds of fruits within reach or an easy climb, leaves, etc., etc. -- I'm sure many thousands of species of these plants did not survive the ice-age.

3. the same brain as us but zero advancement of technology - no tools, no advanced language system, etc., why? only conceivable reason is there was no need.

4. what we do know for certain is that civilization began about 10,000 years ago - agriculture, division of labor, advanced language systems, centralized power, hierarchy, domination, exploitation, slavery, and technology -- our of necessity, because of dwindling resources.

5. also it is commonly accepted that major diseases such as cancer did not exist prior to agriculture, when our diet changed from consisting of thousands of kinds of plants to a dozen or 2, and the advent of large quantities of cooked animal protein.

6. studies of tribal and other societies of today which have more or less retained the characteristics of the way of life of ancients seem to at the very least partially agree with this view -- the tribes of Indonesia, Africa, etc. again, there are volumes to be said about this, but i don't have time here to even cover my own very, very limited research and knowledge.

7. lastly, and fully realizing that this is the easiest one for people to ridicule, but should be mentioned none the less -- the myths and stories of all peoples and civilizations on earth: China, Egypt, Maya, Aztec, Aboriginal Australia, Persia, Greece, etc., etc, etc, all contain a form of paradise-lost theme. much like the garden in the christian bible.

of course myths of paradise can be attributed to the nostalgic nature of humans and a number of other explanations, but the possibility that these alarmingly similar stories coming from remote parts of the earth, from disparate cultures having no connection to eachother for thousands of years, were actually derived from some kind of memory, or even direct oral tradition originating from our ancesters, should not be dismissed.
 

zhao

there are no accidents

of course a myriad of questions, not the least of which regarding the nature of evolution itself, is raised by such a suggestion. many would probably say that faculties would not evolve unless they are necessary for survival... all i can say is that evolution itself is much more complex, and allows much more room for indescrepancies to perceived "laws" than we prolly think.

i think the general gist of this angle is that the developed brains were used for 4 million years, but not to develop "tools" as we know it. proponents of this school maintain that the majority of time these pre-civilized ancesters spent on leisure activities, inventing games to play, etc. much more far out ideas about their life-span (a lot longer than ours), abilities which we would consider to be "psychic" or "para-normal", etc., etc., but i won't go into detail because i know people will quickly jump on these as reason to dismiss everything i'm relating to so far as "Kooky Californian Drivel", as the late Gay-Punk put it.

once again, i don't necessarily "believe" any of this whole-sale. I am primarily interested in exploring alternative versions of the story of our ancesters to the commonly accepted version.
 
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