Supreme Court of the United States

[onejayhawk]

If I burn your year's worth of grains then quibbling that I killed you in the cold 2 months from now instead of with a rock now seems a bit... immaterial to the point debated, being cooperation/competition and the great ape.

Most examples I'm coming up with are also kind of besides the point. Something greater in here re "subjugation" not being either 100% adversarial or cooperative?

If you restrict it to killing people you leave out other forms of attack. Most of the cold war was about information, misinformation, political posturing and finance. Actual casualties were rare.

Here is a broader look at Senate rules and how they evolve. For over a century, filibusters were rare and ended off the floor. In its day, cloture was the nuclear option, though nuclear power had not been discovered. The article suggests that it is time to remove the filibuster option for nominations.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...nuclear-option-james-robbins-column/97713586/

J

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If you restrict it to killing people you leave out other forms of attack. Most of the cold war was about information, misinformation, political posturing and finance. Actual casualties were rare.

J

The cold war was about the threat of ultimate violence; extermination. Everything else was window dressing.

 

[onejayhawk]

The cold war was about the threat of ultimate violence; extermination. Everything else was window dressing.

Yes. I see you are a Nixon fan. Go on.

J

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yes. I see you are a Nixon fan. Go on.

J

How does stating a fact make me a "Nixon fan"?

Of course you have no personal experience with stating facts, so such a misunderstanding on your part is understandable. Go target someone else with your false narratives.

 

[Flying Pig]

We're as closely related to Bonobos, which don't engage in war.



https://blogs.scientificamerican.co...s-claim-that-war-has-deep-evolutionary-roots/

This is true, but forgets that we don't have a lot of evidence for anything before about 15,000 years ago. People left smaller traces on the landscape: archaeological sites older than the Neolithic tend to be very small. When people find remains that are older than that, they come in tiny bursts. I'd like to see the data that those people looked at, but 2,900 skeletons for millions of years would be tiny anyway, and my bet is that they overwhelmingly concentrate on the near side of that 10,000 year mark.

 

[Lexicus]

This is true, but forgets that we don't have a lot of evidence for anything before about 15,000 years ago. People left smaller traces on the landscape: archaeological sites older than the Neolithic tend to be very small. When people find remains that are older than that, they come in tiny bursts. I'd like to see the data that those people looked at, but 2,900 skeletons for millions of years would be tiny anyway, and my bet is that they overwhelmingly concentrate on the near side of that 10,000 year mark.

We have enough evidence to make the lack of evidence for warfare clear.

I understand that it is considered "common sense" by most people that we must have been fighting wars for tens of thousands of years but the evidence just doesn't bear that out. We can discuss reasons for it - personally I think it's likely to be more due to low population density than anything else - but to characterize this as you've done is already an argument rejected by archaeologists.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

We have enough evidence to make the lack of evidence for warfare clear.

I understand that it is considered "common sense" by most people that we must have been fighting wars for tens of thousands of years but the evidence just doesn't bear that out. We can discuss reasons for it - personally I think it's likely to be more due to low population density than anything else - but to characterize this as you've done is already an argument rejected by archaeologists.

I'm not trying to argue this point, but what sort of "evidence of war" would you expect? As you point out, with the low population density a "war" between neighboring clans, to extinction of the losers, would leave what evidence that would be available today?

 

[Lexicus]

I'm not trying to argue this point, but what sort of "evidence of war" would you expect?

I already posted this, but...

"...warfare clearly appears in this historical record of specific societies and is marked by skeletal markers of violence, weapons of war, defensive sites and architecture, etc."

 

[Sommerswerd]

Now that I think about it... there's really no reason for "war" until people start settling down. Sure, two guys in one nomadic group might get into a fight over the girl they both want, but that's not a "war" right? If population density is virtually non-existent, and everyone is just in small nomadic, hunter-gatherer groups, then the most likely result of a large scale disagreement, between two large families in the group for example, is just that one group splits off... Until you make the leap to "This whole area is our hunting/gathering land to the exclusion of anyone else" and a group of someone elses comes along that is big enough and well established enough in the are to say the same thing... there isn't going to be much cause for war.

In any case, I am still feeling like the Democrats need to prepare to retake power by baiting the Republicans into nuking the filibuster. As it stands now, Republicans (by virtue of their nuke threat) only need 50 votes to confirm a Presidential nominee, while the Democrats (by virtue of their unwillingness to nuke the filibuster, always need 60 votes to confirm. That reality will inevitably lead to a pro-Republican balance on the Court.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I already posted this, but...

"...warfare clearly appears in this historical record of specific societies and is marked by skeletal markers of violence, weapons of war, defensive sites and architecture, etc."

Skeletal markers of violence - in a pre technology society where everyone lives at the edge of starvation anyway the objective of "war" would be to just push the neighbors over that edge. That would leave no skeletal markers since by and large the casualties would just starve to death.

Weapons of war - my tribe shows up with a half dozen more hunters than you have at your tribes' kill. All we have is the same basic hunting tools that we always use. Your tribe starves. That was war, to extermination, and we won.

Defensive sites and architecture - for nomadic peoples there are no fixed sites to defend.

Etc - etc.

Again, I'm not arguing that there was certainly "warfare," at least in any modern sense of the word. But to argue that there certainly wasn't "warfare" in the sense of basic mammalian competition for food, territory, and mates based on a lack of concentrated radioactive fallout is a big leap.

 

[onejayhawk]

Skeletal markers of violence - in a pre technology society where everyone lives at the edge of starvation anyway the objective of "war" would be to just push the neighbors over that edge. That would leave no skeletal markers since by and large the casualties would just starve to death.

Weapons of war - my tribe shows up with a half dozen more hunters than you have at your tribes' kill. All we have is the same basic hunting tools that we always use. Your tribe starves. That was war, to extermination, and we won. Defensive sites and architecture - for nomadic peoples there are no fixed sites to defend. Etc - etc.

Again, I'm not arguing that there was certainly "warfare," at least in any modern sense of the word. But to argue that there certainly wasn't "warfare" in the sense of basic mammalian competition for food, territory, and mates based on a lack of concentrated radioactive fallout is a big leap.

The purpose of war is to possess the wealth of the other group. This is measured in animals, shelter, slaves and women. It tends to be almost exclusively raid and run. Nomadic people had a good concept of defensive position, wood and dirt fortifications, recon, surprise and intimidation. War to extinction was typically not possible because of the time constraints of seasons and movement. Total war required permanent structures.

J

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The purpose of war is to possess the wealth of the other group. This is measured in animals, shelter, slaves and women. It tends to be almost exclusively raid and run. Nomadic people had a good concept of defensive position, wood and dirt fortifications, recon, surprise and intimidation. War to extinction was typically not possible because of the time constraints of seasons and movement. Total war required permanent structures.

J

In a nomadic society where group starvation is one failed hunt away one successful "raid and run" is a war to extinction.

 

[Flying Pig]

I already posted this, but...

"...warfare clearly appears in this historical record of specific societies and is marked by skeletal markers of violence, weapons of war, defensive sites and architecture, etc."

OK, but indulge me - what are you using as the 'historical record' of societies from before (say) 20,000 BC? If there's a near-negligible amount of data (as I think there is), you can't set much in store by the absence of anything in that record. The oldest known settlements are about 10,000 years old. That doesn't mean that people didn't have homes before then: it only means that they didn't build them in places and ways that are visible today.

 

[Lexicus]

In a nomadic society where group starvation is one failed hunt away one successful "raid and run" is a war to extinction.

This is a tremendous assumption that has been demonstrated in many cases to be untrue. The anthropological consensus is actually that most of the food came from gathering, with hunting more of a bonus/prestige activity that supplemented this.

OK, but indulge me - what are you using as the 'historical record' of societies from before (say) 20,000 BC? If there's a near-negligible amount of data (as I think there is), you can't set much in store by the absence of anything in that record. The oldest known settlements are about 10,000 years old. That doesn't mean that people didn't have homes before then: it only means that they didn't build them in places and ways that are visible today.

Not being an archaeologist, I can't really give a detailed answer to this question. But I do know enough to tell you that it just simply isn't true that there is no evidence of anything from 20,000 years or even longer ago. Even nomadic settlements without permanent dwellings leave archaeological evidence.

In any case, the point here is not to say that violence never occurred prior to ten or thirteen thousand years ago, but simply to say that war (as distinct from individual acts of violence) appears to have been rare or non-existent before then.

I think in virtually any other setting your argument that we have no evidence of anything therefore we must have been waging war would be seen by everyone (including you) as ridiculous. It is only otherwise here because the assumptions about "human nature" that lead people to believe war must have been ubiquitous are so deep-seated.

 

[Flying Pig]

Not being an archaeologist, I can't really give a detailed answer to this question. But I do know enough to tell you that it just simply isn't true that there is no evidence of anything from 20,000 years or even longer ago. Even nomadic settlements without permanent dwellings leave archaeological evidence.

In any case, the point here is not to say that violence never occurred prior to ten or thirteen thousand years ago, but simply to say that war (as distinct from individual acts of violence) appears to have been rare or non-existent before then.

I think in virtually any other setting your argument that we have no evidence of anything therefore we must have been waging war would be seen by everyone (including you) as ridiculous. It is only otherwise here because the assumptions about "human nature" that lead people to believe war must have been ubiquitous are so deep-seated.

Yes, but they leave very little of it. The sort of chimpanzee warfare I was talking about would leave almost no archaeological evidence. We have evidence for warfare from the Neolithic onwards because that's when human populations started to grow dramatically, and people started living in communities that leave strong traces (mostly by being denser and more permanent), and they started doing things that leave greater traces, such as building monumental tombs and using metal in place of wood. There isn't any evidence for war, but there are plenty of plausible scenarios by which war happened and hasn't left a trace visible today. Pretty much the only evidence for anything to do with Neanderthals boils down to a couple of hundred skeletons (between 100 and 400, depending on where you look on the internet). To use a skeleton as evidence for violence, you really need to find traces of weaponry (usually, an arrowhead still in it). If we're separating violence and warfare as you are, you need to find lots of them with the same evidence. Yet if fewer than 1 in 400 (or 1 in 100, again depending on your choice of numbers) Neanderthals died violently, you wouldn't expect to find a single trace of violence in the skeletons. You need to make the expected death rate a lot higher to find unequivocal evidence of war.

This isn't to say that warfare definitely happened, but it's worth thinking about what the evidence actually looks like before you lean too heavily on the assumption that the first evidence of something marks the first time that it happened.

 

[metalhead]

"War" in any meaningful sense requires a sense of territory. Ultimately, isn't that the defining aspect of "war?" Group B has territory which group A wants, so group A attacks group B in order to claim that territory. Nomadic peoples would have no use for a territorial dispute unless perhaps there was a shortage of water in a given location. Our bodies evolved to store excess energy, so it is unlikely that nomadic groups had much food lying about unless there was a successful hunt.

"War" almost seems an absurdity to me, at least until humans numbered enough such that land in proximity to fresh water was in short supply.

 

[Lexicus]

The sort of chimpanzee warfare I was talking about would leave almost no archaeological evidence.

Yeah, but chimpanzees, unlike humans, haven't been using stone tools for millions of years.

There isn't any evidence for war, but there are plenty of plausible scenarios by which war happened and hasn't left a trace visible today.

Any number of things are plausible.

This isn't to say that warfare definitely happened, but it's worth thinking about what the evidence actually looks like before you lean too heavily on the assumption that the first evidence of something marks the first time that it happened.

I have very little doubt that the first evidence of war lags the first occurrence of war. What the evidence looks like is not just skeletons but tools, art, even settlements. And we would expect to see some evidence of war in these things, if it were a significant pursuit in prehistory.
But we just don't see it. Again, I'd argue that part of the reason for this is that prehistoric population densities were low enough to prevent intergroup encounters (whether violent or otherwise) from occurring very often.

"War" in any meaningful sense requires a sense of territory. Ultimately, isn't that the defining aspect of "war?" Group B has territory which group A wants, so group A attacks group B in order to claim that territory. Nomadic peoples would have no use for a territorial dispute unless perhaps there was a shortage of water in a given location. Our bodies evolved to store excess energy, so it is unlikely that nomadic groups had much food lying about unless there was a successful hunt.

"War" almost seems an absurdity to me, at least until humans numbered enough such that land in proximity to fresh water was in short supply.

This sort of thing seems plausible but is undermined by the fact that we do have unambiguous evidence of nomadic cultures engaging in warfare for reasons apparently unconnected to the possession of territory or fresh water.
This book (on my reading list) has conclusions directly bearing on this issue:

He makes three conclusions which the New York Times considers unexpected:

• that the most important part of any society, even the most war-like ones, are the peaceful aspects such as art
• that neither frequency nor intensity of war is correlated with population density
• that societies frequently trading with one another fight more wars with one another

 

[onejayhawk]

That NYT considers any of those surprising says more about NYT than about the conclusions. All are blazingly obvious to anyone that studies history or human nature.

J

 

[Sommerswerd]

The irony of this article amused me... enjoy:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/j...flaged-the-gorsuch-filibuster/article/2614697

TL;DR - It basically says that a Democratic Senator is promising to treat Gorsuch fairly, for the sake of appearances/public opinion, while fully intending to filibuster him...

Imagine that... misleadingly portraying a complex matter as simple in order to court public opinion , saying one thing to appeal to the public sense of fairness, while planning to do rough and tumble politics as usual behind the scenes...

Pfft that stuff never works... Oh wait...

 

[Lexicus]

The irony of this article amused me... enjoy:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/j...flaged-the-gorsuch-filibuster/article/2614697

TL;DR - It basically says that a Democratic Senator is promising to treat Gorsuch fairly, for the sake of appearances/public opinion, while fully intending to filibuster him...

Imagine that... misleadingly portraying a complex matter as simple in order to court public opinion , saying one thing to appeal to the public sense of fairness, while planning to do rough and tumble politics as usual behind the scenes...

Pfft that stuff never works... Oh wait...

One thing that article doesn't mention is the Sword of Damocles hanging over the whole thing - the nuclear option.