While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

[Gem Hound]

@SymphonyD
Hmm, so you are saying that I am me only because of society? Now what could have possibly given you that idea? According to what you call "programming" I should be a peaceful human that is content with going to work, sleeping, and going to work again. No. That is not the way I am at all. Also: Pizza Hut and Coca Cola are really horrible, Skippy Peanut Butter is not the best peanut butter, and I am not impressed by your assumption that humans kill for amusement.

Now. Most humans, that have stable minds, only kill because they have no other choice. Killing is the last resort. It is the thing that doesn't flit through your thoughts until you are looking down the barrel of a gun. It is called survival. There is no inherent need for humans to kill other humans. There is no true desire within humans that are of stable minds, that compels them to kill other people. Sure, people think about it, but I do not think purposeful murder is a part of the human genome, but is a learned behaviour, taught either by others or by oneself.

@Thlayli
Women are sometimes violent over very very trivial things.

 

[Symphony D.]

Psychology is still a biological phenomenon, albeit one that we talk about in pseudo-scientific generalities since we don't understand the underlying neurology very well.

This is all a physics problem because it's just applied physics. We just need to figure out how to reduce Human society to a random-walk simulation to explain these processes. Brownian motion. Shut up, Math Guy, nobody asked for your input or matrices.

amusement

As I said to LoE, I have not even once suggested that, and you people have abysmal reading comprehension.

Now. Most humans, that have stable minds, only kill because they have no other choice.

Did you know the interesting thing about most psychological disorders being spectrums is that it being a spectrum means that everyone has some element of it, just usually not enough to be a significant or notable impediment? No, you didn't, because you're not a psychologist and don't have a clue what you're talking about. (Nor, for that matter, am I, and so I'm not going to sit here and proclaim I know what a "normal" "healthy" mind looks like and does.)

 

[Lord of Elves]

Psychology is still a biological phenomenon, albeit one that we talk about in pseudo-scientific generalities since we don't understand the underlying neurology very well.

All I'm saying is that a violence gradient exists between males and females. I'd be willing to postulate back to saying that, in early humanity, the role of 'violence-doer' was restricted to a fairly small caste of males within the group, while other males were able to pass on their genes through other methods.

The fact that some men aren't as physically tough as others means that other genes besides the strength necessary to do violence are being selected for. Which means that, in that distant past, not all human males were equally violent. But this is conjecture.

What isn't conjecture, however, is the biological truth that not all humans are equally violent, due to gender differences.

This isn't conjecture, this is just straight up pseudo-science combined with pleasant banalities and generalizations.

The NES forum lacks for people well-versed in evolutionary science to go into detail about how horribly, horribly wrong this is. Doesn't Iggy have a background in biology? I look forward to him eviscerating this properly.

@Thlayli
Women are sometimes violent over very very trivial things.

Aren't you just a lion of a man. Tell us more about women and their weird, tricksy ways.

 

[Gem Hound]

Aren't you just a lion of a man. Tell us more about women and their weird, tricksy ways.

Well, for one thing, the most violent gang in town in the Girl Gang. It is a group of First Nations women who like putting random people in the hospital.

Trivial:
1. Someone is wearing the same shirt as you. Self Explanatory.
2. There was a book lying on the floor instead of on the shelf, you proceeded to go insane, throw the book across the room, and literally boot the person out of the house.
3. My arms. -> I have a little sister that gets worked up about the stupidest things, even by being looked at sometimes. She gets away with it though since I don't hit back against her.
4. Need I say anymore? I could continue.
Women are very violent, in some ways, just as violent as men can be.

 

[Potateo]

Well, for one thing, the most violent gang in town in the Girl Gang. It is a group of First Nations women who like putting random people in the hospital.

Trivial:
1. Someone is wearing the same shirt as you. Self Explanatory.
2. There was a book lying on the floor instead of on the shelf, you proceeded to go insane, throw the book across the room, and literally boot the person out of the house.
3. My arms. -> I have a little sister that gets worked up about the stupidest things, even by being looked at sometimes. She gets away with it though since I don't hit back against her.
4. Need I say anymore? I could continue.
Women are very violent, in some ways, just as violent as men can be.

I have been enjoying this conversation and would like to add my two bits.

a. i like apples
{tab}ii. do you like apples
b. I have a pencil
4. womens are mean & ultra-violet

P.S. I love people, and would totally murder them for no reason because I have gender problems.

P.P.S. Genetic diversity can determine the prevalence of hormones which cause increased tendencies for violence but do not lead to more violent actions. People have to ability however limited of controlling their impulses to many types of actions, these things can be negativity impacted through the use of drugs, lack of sleep, and general non-normative situations.

P.P.S.S.T.Q.V Hi

 

[bombshoo]

The hell is going on in here?

 

[Masada]

I think Symph has more or less won the debate, even if he is wrong, because the other side has shown a singular unwillingness to provide any sort of evidence outside of "ur wrong".

(And I'm saying this as someone who only sorta agrees with Symph).

 

[Kozmos]

Women love murder, was what that tribe? Cimbri? Where the women straight up murdered their men who fled from battle and then threw themselves armed with whatever at invading forces.

Also we talked about about SLA Marshall and On Killing so many times in the past and their authors.

 

[Symphony D.]

3/3 the dream!

 

[Luckymoose]

I think Symph has more or less won the debate, even if he is wrong, because the other side has shown a singular unwillingness to provide any sort of evidence outside of "ur wrong".

(And I'm saying this as someone who only sorta agrees with Symph).

There is no point in debating it. I gave up because no one will take a social historian's knowledge on social history serious.

 

[Masada]

You didn't argue. You went "I'm right, your wrong, vague appeal to authority".

 

[Luckymoose]

You didn't argue. You went "I'm right, your wrong, vague appeal to authority".

I am right. I said why I'm right. I don't have to explain myself to people with incorrect views on human history or society.

 

[Masada]

I rest my case.

 

[JohannaK]

"I don't have to explain myself to the people who need me explaining them."

 

[TaylorFlame]

A quick aside on the topic of women, history has shown that many women, when given the chance, have proved to be just as violent, bloodthirsty and aggressive as men when they haven't been socially conditioned to a place of subservience or 'femininity'. While I have no evidence to provide right now to back me up and this is mostly just conjecture, I'd argue this lends a lot of support to the whole "a major reason why women aren't seen to be as violent as men is social conditioning which has been proven to play a major role in the development of a persons personality" argument.

 

[Crezth]

A close study of humanity would inform you that killing is not the norm. Soldiers in modern scenarios missing on purpose is no different than it has been for thousands of years. Human beings do not want to kill other human beings. There is a reason people have to find justifications for it. Most religions and philosophies are founded around the idea that killing is bad. You can't ignore the vast majority of human civilization for some bullcrap modern view on killing. It is awful and it isn't academic.

Well, you keep saying that, but I think finding a justification and killing someone is a step above not bothering and not killing someone, in terms of the results i.e. someone getting killed.

 

[erez87]

To add to Sym's argument:

Evidence are that when human bones are found, about half are found to have died from being killed by another human. Half! We aren't talking about 2000 years ago, but about 100000 years ago.

In hunter gatherer communities women also fight. They also die, in fact when human bones are found women tend to have a higher percentage of being killed by other humans. They also had a shorter life expectancy back then (unlike today).

In modern hunter gatherer tribes killing is very widespread. There are tribes that kill the sick, tribes that kill the elderly, tribes that kill both. In modern societies that are non-western they kill female children after the first one is born (China, India).

Giving examples of how people in armies don't want to fight is meaningless to the conversation, because we are talking about humans in their original way of life - that of hunter gatherer groups. They formed no armies. They fought competing groups for the same resources, and kill each other, many times massacring each other. They kill their sick, disabled and elderly too.

Today people abhor killing, in the western world. Well most of them. Some still want to kill, the gays, the disabled, the foreign, the different colored etc...


If someone wants to claim humans aren't killing machines, he will need to explain the killing rates in hunter-gatherer groups, killing of baby girls in India, and those high death rates by human violence in skeletons found.
And for the religious - an explanation why the bible say "Do not kill" but a chapter after gives a list of hundreds of situations where it is OK to kill.

 

[Wrymouth3]

A quick aside on the topic of women, history has shown that many women, when given the chance, have proved to be just as violent, bloodthirsty and aggressive as men when they haven't been socially conditioned to a place of subservience or 'femininity'. While I have no evidence to provide right now to back me up and this is mostly just conjecture, I'd argue this lends a lot of support to the whole "a major reason why women aren't seen to be as violent as men is social conditioning which has been proven to play a major role in the development of a persons personality" argument.

Did you just seriously post this? I guess you make a point, crazy people like Patty Hearst and Empress Anna existed, but this is not a gender issue as so much as it is an issue of psychology. It makes no sense just to post the "women can be as terrible as men" argument.

 

[Crezth]

Did you just seriously post this? I guess you make a point, crazy people like Patty Hearst and Empress Anna existed, but this is not a gender issue as so much as it is an issue of psychology. It makes no sense just to post the "women can be as terrible as men" argument.

I thought Thlayli came in first with that, except, of course, he went in the exact opposite direction and said men are more terrible than women. Or something.

 

[Daftpanzer]

I don't think Symphony said anything false, its just that I don't agree with his conclusions and assumptions.

Humanity has never, let me repeat, never been okay with violence within communities. Exceptions to the rule come up for religious reasons or for economic gain, but it isn't the norm. Humanity is inherently social, and a social species does not continue being a social species if everyone is murdering their neighbor.

Sincerely yours,
A social historian.

I agree with this. I think violence within a community is usually a method rather than an objective. There can be upheavals and transitions but our drive for security and easyness has always won out.

Symph also raises good points about inter-group violence and how it has shaped our whole evolution (I'd already read about relationship of skull thickness to upper body strength before Symph shared it - apparently we only slimmed down again once we started using spears?).

But you should never forget that while you pronounce such judgment you're doing so from what's functionally a throne of skulls held together by congealed gore on a raft of bones drifting down a river of blood, and that even now simply by breathing air and eating food you are both a beneficiary of and an accomplice to a system of mass exploitation and murder that makes all of it possible and has trundled on for literally tens of millennia and to which there has never been any alternative in the entirety of all Human experience. We call this civilization.

And a proud heir to the British Empire. Every day, I'm barely containing my urge to shoot some tribal natives in the face and claim their land while peddling drugs to destitute asians. The actions of my predecessors defines me totally as an individual and I'm unable to make any choices of my own free will.

Watching Symph 0wn nuubs has become my evening entertainment.

Fanboy much?

I think the efforts to generalize any sort of attitude or behavior across humanity are as doomed to failure as inflexible ideologies are.

My argument is that we as a species have very adaptable brains, and in the post-internet world its pretty much up to us to decide how to evolve collectively. We've been through the stages of tribes and nations and all the wars that were perhaps inevitable. But saying 'oh we're a violent species' is not an excuse for anything at this point in time, IMO. For anyone with a passing awareness of the world around them. If you choose tribalism and conflict and dominance as a paradigm then that's your choice, dress it up however you wish.

I think this got started when Symph proposed that if the current world political/economic system falters then we will all start killing each other. Of course we can only guess and it depends entirely on how that scenario is fleshed out, but I like to think we would find new ways of doing things after a period of turmoil. Yes it would be bad, but it would not be the end - might even lead to something better, having learnt the lessons of the past (again).