From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Tue Mar 16 2004 - 00:16:03 MST
At 04:32 PM 15/03/04 -0600, you wrote:
>Is it just my imagination, or didn't we (CoV) used to spend a lot more
>time on subjects like science, history of science, separating
>pseudo-science from empirical science, evolutionary biology, genetics,
>astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, written history, ancient history,
>biochemistry, complexity theory, memetics, etc.?
>Nowadays, it seems like we spend an inordinate amount of time on
>SUBJECTIVE, GEOPOLITICAL FU*KING HORSESH*T!!!!
You can raise any post about current events to a meta level. What is going
on is not hard to understand in memetics and evolutionary psychology terms.
For example, take the recent train bombings in Spain and the reaction to them.
EP theory says our psychological traits were shaped by millions of years of
living and (most important) reproducing in small tribes. When the game was
hunted out, the berrys all picked and starvation looming it was time to
move on if you could.
If (as was usually the case) there were other tribes blocking your movement
in all directions, your tribe picked one of them, dehumanized them with
xenophobic memes and attacked.
If you were attacked you fought back.
Now if Spain had been attacked *before* they took part in Iraq, they would
have gone on the warpath fully justified on stomping the "rag heads." But
they were not. They joined the US (which was attacked and thereby
motivated) and took part in an attack on Iraq which really wasn't
justified--especially in the post analysis. (Other than speaking the same
language, Iraq didn't have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks nor did
they have any nukes, poison gas or germs.)
So in EP/tribal terms, the "Spanish tribe" was none too happy about being
sucked into the Iraq mess. Ghod knows they have their own crew of trouble
makers. Given a chance, a swing segment of the population voted for the
party that would get them out.
(An interesting side effect is that the "Spanish tribe" has lumped Iraq and
bin Laden's cult into one tribe--just like the bin Laden cult leaders wanted.)
It probably isn't going to get Spain out of the line of fire, because
according to the theory what drives the bin Laden cult is the realization
that "income per capita" has been falling. I make the case from EP that
this maps into the same motivation as looming starvation did when we were
living in small tribes.
What bin Laden is after (though he certainly does not know this
consciously) is for his tribe to kill all of the males in our tribe and
take the women and resources, or failing that, for the males in his "tribe"
to be wiped out and those he attacked to absorb his tribe's women, thus
saving his genes from starvation.
The particular xenophobic memes of Islamic fundamentalism don't matter. If
they didn't have those memes, other xenophobic memes would have "justified"
attacking. The Easter Islander's sorted themselves out into "long ears"
and "short ears" and went at it till 90-95% of the population was gone and
the badly damaged ecosystem could recover a bit.
The fact that this entire business is just insane is to be expected. Genes
that induced this kind of meme based insanity in the face of periodic
downturns in the productivity of the ecosystem did better than genes for
being rational.
How does the US get out?
Darned if I know.
Rising income per capita in the Islamic world would do the trick, like it
eventually did in Northern Ireland. But to do that requires rising
productivity and falling birth rates, neither of which look likely in that
culture. Birth control wouldn't get any support from the current US
administration either (especially if based on an evolution theory!). A
major epidemic perhaps. (If there are any historians around who want to
research if wars become less common after a major die off, please contact me.)
I don't see any way to get rid of the responsibility the US took on in Iraq
either. It would have to be something in the same insanity class as
9/11. We could, I suppose, punish the people of Iraq for not being
grateful enough for our invasion by putting Saddam back in power. But
that's probably not insane enough.
Swapping half (or more) of the people in Iraq with US citizens just might
be insane enough to work.
All of this is going on far out of our environment of evolutionary
adaption--so take even the humor parts with a grain of salt.
Keith Henson
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