4 ms·

But maybe war is a territorial animal's instinct and once we have shaken up a bit more of our animality, we'd understand this makes no sense ? If we can contro

by xwolfi 5y ago

But maybe war is a territorial animal's instinct and once we have shaken up a bit more of our animality, we'd understand this makes no sense ? If we can control resource, exchange knowledge and techniques, and reproduce automatically (for instance if we become small electronic machines rather than the current inefficient chemical process we are), "war" might probably sounds both ridiculous and totally ineffective, both to cull us if we're abstract enough, and to cull potential enemies, probably just as impossible to reach "physically".

ithkuil 5y ago
OTOH animals evolved those instincts because they worked in the game-theoretical circumstances that competition with other animals. Perhaps we can shake off many emotional components of war (which would make war an irrational option in many of the cases that our monkey brain would have been dragged into) but that doesn't necessarily mean that war itself would be eradicated
- mLuby 5y ago
  Animals are stuck in local maxima (betrayal in the Prisoner's Dilemma). A more evolved group might discover and be able to reach the global maximum (solidarity in the Prisoner's Dilemma). Imagine if tigers or sharks developed pack hunting, or the octopus became more pro-social. Also, multi-species symbiotic relationships are quite common in the animal kingdom. It would be surprising if that weren't true at other scales (and if it were limited to the sci-fi trope of "worker species, soldier species, leader species").
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    I'm not saying it's not possible to find other equilibrium points. I'm just pointing out that there are more fundamental forces at play and it's not just because of our "monkey/animal brain". Selective pressures that permit the emergence of cooperative behaviour require participating individuals to exhibit a variation in behaviour and those who cooperate result in having a higher fitness in the environment than those who shun cooperation. The selection effect operates on over the whole population and over times that are longer than the life span of an individual. An individual that is implementing what ultimately will emerge as the winning strategy, may on average be better off, but it can (and it will) be also often worse off. Depending whose existence you're optimizing for (individual or species) changes the framing of what is the optimal strategy. An existential risk for a species changes the framing of what is rational to do quite a lot.

by xwolfi 5y ago

ithkuil 5y ago

OTOH animals evolved those instincts because they worked in the game-theoretical circumstances that competition with other animals. Perhaps we can shake off many emotional components of war (which would make war an irrational option in many of the cases that our monkey brain would have been dragged into) but that doesn't necessarily mean that war itself would be eradicated

mLuby 5y ago
Animals are stuck in local maxima (betrayal in the Prisoner's Dilemma). A more evolved group might discover and be able to reach the global maximum (solidarity in the Prisoner's Dilemma). Imagine if tigers or sharks developed pack hunting, or the octopus became more pro-social. Also, multi-species symbiotic relationships are quite common in the animal kingdom. It would be surprising if that weren't true at other scales (and if it were limited to the sci-fi trope of "worker species, soldier species, leader species").
- ithkuil 5y ago
  I'm not saying it's not possible to find other equilibrium points. I'm just pointing out that there are more fundamental forces at play and it's not just because of our "monkey/animal brain". Selective pressures that permit the emergence of cooperative behaviour require participating individuals to exhibit a variation in behaviour and those who cooperate result in having a higher fitness in the environment than those who shun cooperation. The selection effect operates on over the whole population and over times that are longer than the life span of an individual. An individual that is implementing what ultimately will emerge as the winning strategy, may on average be better off, but it can (and it will) be also often worse off. Depending whose existence you're optimizing for (individual or species) changes the framing of what is the optimal strategy. An existential risk for a species changes the framing of what is rational to do quite a lot.