The Error that is Man

[Rodion Romanovich]

I disagree - adaption is a necessary and good thing. In fact, it seems mankind is doing it's best in societies where survival is barely granted - on some piece of floating ice near the North pole or in some isolated rain forest with poisonous snakes and frogs.

But we are really bad at adapting to having a too easy time surviving - then competition, bloodshed, war, genocide, rape, slavery, repression and fundamentalism arises. The only changes we've seen since the dark ages is different labels for the same concepts, and slightly more complex methods for in the short term demming it up (to create larger avalanches of evilness and atrocities once the dams break). And in the process, we create our own unnatural selection which in each generation selects two types of people: the most evil, and the most obedient, doglike droners who can't question madness when they see it from a feet's distance. The two types of people, that are least capable of changing the civilization development so that it stops continuously favoring evilness and lack of critical perspective.

[Fragony]

But we are really bad at adapting to having a too easy time surviving - then competition, bloodshed, war, genocide, rape, slavery, repression and fundamentalism arises.

All make of these make sense from an evolutionary point of view, we are herd-animals, it's nature not human nature. How we deal with eachother is directly linked with the recources at hand.

[Rodion Romanovich]

That's the point of course! We're adapted to starting to fight when resource shortage occurs, since that is the best thing to do once the competition situation has arisen. The problem is how we keep creating resource shortage situations over and over again - and thus conflict reasons - by the way our society systems work.

In nature, there are more clever ways of ensuring resource shortages don't occur or come so suddenly. Or that conflicts between millions of people are built up over decades, centuries or even millennia. We are extremely bad at planning ahead, probably because our instincts are adapted for the type of planning ahead that is needed in pre-civlization society, and rational reasoning abilities aren't very good for planning in complex, large systems over a longer scope of time. Do you agree with me about the following core premise in my reasoning:
- human rational thought abilities are excellent and accurate when it comes to dealing with small, isolated models with very few factors to take into account
- a neural network gone through evolutionary improvement over millions of years to work well in a particular, nearly static (but not entirely static) environment E is better suited for long-term planning in an environment that isn't too much different from E, than a rational reasoning capability (that is unable to take more than 10 factors at most into account at the same time) can ever be.

If you agree with this statement, it's hopefully clear to you how the rest of my statements follow from it.

[Fragony]

First you have to understand why conflicts arise, recources isn't everything, equal distribution, there is the stag hunt problem and the prisoners dillema, what you want would include a world governement controllign every aspect, not going to happen, and I prefer it like that I think.

[Rodion Romanovich]

First you have to understand why conflicts arise, recources isn't everything, equal distribution, there is the stag hunt problem and the prisoners dillema, what you want would include a world governement controllign every aspect, not going to happen, and I prefer it like that I think.

No, it wouldn't require a world government. It would require, among other things, that people stop trying to establish world governments and empires. And that people would actually use some of the knowledge mankind has discovered (including the stuff you mentioned in your post)... A simple ethics system, developed with among other things the following requirements:
1. unlike most religious ethics, shouldn't rely on, as a basic assumption, that every single human being will follow it
2. that it is sufficient that a certain percentage follows it. This percentage has to be as low as possible so that it's realistic to assume that a large enough percentage follows it
3. that going from not following it to following it will bring an advantage in most cases, assuming the previous condition holds.
If we stop making religious ethics sytems based on the inverse of no. 1, we'll have good chance of succeeding.

[Fragony]

No, it wouldn't require a world government. It would require, among other things, that people stop trying to establish world governments and empires. And that people would actually use some of the knowledge mankind has discovered (including the stuff you mentioned in your post)...

That would be anarchy, but anarchy on a place where recources aren't equilly distributed because some parts of the world have more natural resources, what do you think will happen? Can't erase our instincs, even in te best system people will go for two days at the expense of somebody else's tomorow. Look at the bright side, we have come a long way. The world has never been such a gentle place as it is now.

[Rodion Romanovich]

That would be anarchy, but anarchy on a place where recources aren't equilly distributed because some parts of the world have more natural resources, what do you think will happen? Can't erase our instincs, even in te best system people will go for two days at the expense of somebody else's tomorow. Look at the bright side, we have come a long way. The world has never been such a gentle place as it is now.

No, not anarchy. Today's society system is one example of how you can build an ethical system. Laws and morals are ways of identifying, at an as early stage as possible, someone who is enough danger to order and the common good, that it is best to take joint action against this person, by a legal sentence. Everything ranging from anarchy to totalitarianism fits into the definition of "ethical system". It's the additional requirements that are important for narrowing down the definition. In reality, if we consciously try to make the best thing possible, we will most likely end up with something similar to today's society, but applying its nicest tricks more consistently, and on the top of that trying to simulate, stimuli-wise, something more similar to pre-civilization society. Although similar in many ways on the surface, it would be dramatically different in all fields that matter.

The list in my post above is not the entire list of requirements necessary for a good ethics system. There are more things. In general, we must simply try to, in as many situations as possible that are similar to the "prisoner's dilemma", as hard as possible prevent people from pushing things towards the witness/witness situation. Three additional good basic principles (again: an incomplete list) should be followed are:
- never let injustice, suffering or other causes of disproportionate revenge-actions, or conflict scenarios, accumulate/grow over time
- if someone in a prisoner's dilemma-like situation where witness/witness is unacceptable chooses "witness" (this is quite similar to the definition of crime btw), especially if he is the first one to choose this option, then that person must be dealt with by joint actions, for example police or law. In cases where witness/witness is acceptable, encourage all to choose witness.
- gaining of sufficient power to protect oneself from joint actions in response to ones crimes, should be considered a crime in itself
- there must be standardized ways of dealing with retaliation/revenge
- there must be compensation for the lack of clarity of our senses, such as when we misunderstand an accident as an offense, etc. Similarly, we can however not tolerate that someone who is constantly clumsy - perhaps out of arrogance and nonchalance, constantly causes damage by accident just because he doesn't really care about not doing so. Someone causing damage by accident must also pay some price for it, for example giving him the duty to repair the damages, but without any additional punishment or judgement, as with an unprovoked attack.
- the importance of consistently showing less acceptance for those who start the fight than for those who respond in it, is necessary to avoid accumulation of injustice. It is often those who consistently get no support when unrighteously, unprovokedly attacked, who go mad and respond with disproportionate revenge. Still, a lot of blame must be given to those who start it, since it is much easier for them to avoid doing their unprovoked attack, than it is for a repressed person to remain calm. The bully who works on reverse psychology to break down his victim for years when grownups look away, is a greater threat than the bully victim who happens to hit the bully back when the grownups look. Merely judging actions is one of the great curses of the moral systems created by human beings since the advent of civilization.