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Gombe Chimpanzee War

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Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War

#31

Post by saas_sam »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #28

After reading many, many stories about the absolute horrors of the natural world, I have such a difficult time understanding a belief in a benevolent god. After all, it is trivially easy to imagine a universe with less suffering (but perhaps still enough hardship to drive inquisitive and motivational behaviors), so the presence of so much unnecessary horror in nature leads me to believe either (a) God is a sadist or…

If the worst form of suffering you had ever encountered was a splinter on your foot, you would make the same claims. "After reading many, many stories about the absolute horrors of splinters, I have such a difficult time understanding a belief in a benevolent god..."

The suffering in the natural world seems terrible to us, but it could be nothing in the face of larger, unknown forms of suffering. We are limited by our imaginations, having no reason to believe we have access to anything approaching deep universal truths of suffering or divinity.

I say this as an atheist. Your argument struck me as a poor one.

Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War

#32

Post by tempguy9999 »

saas_sam wrote: post #31
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #28

After reading many, many stories about the absolute horrors of the natural world, I have such a difficult time understanding a belief in a benevolent god. After all, it is trivially easy to imagine a universe with less suffering (but perhaps still enough hardship to drive inquisitive and motivational behaviors), so the presence of so much unnecessary horror in nature leads me to believe either (a) God is a sadist or…

If the worst form of suffering you had ever encountered was a splinter on your foot, you would make the same claims. "After reading many, many stories about the absolute horrors of splinters, I have such a difficult time understanding a belief in a benevolent god..." The suffering in the natural world seems terrible to us, but it could be nothing in the face of larger, unknown forms of suffering. We are limited by ou…

> We are limited by our imaginations

"we"? You don't speak for me.

You sound to me like you've had a decent life and it's you that can't imagine (consider yourself lucky). Not everyone has your fortune.

Your argument struck me as a poor one too.

Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War

#33

Post by siasia »

option wrote: post #29
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #28

After reading many, many stories about the absolute horrors of the natural world, I have such a difficult time understanding a belief in a benevolent god. After all, it is trivially easy to imagine a universe with less suffering (but perhaps still enough hardship to drive inquisitive and motivational behaviors), so the presence of so much unnecessary horror in nature leads me to believe either (a) God is a sadist or…

or a more obvious conclusion - god/gods just doesn’t exists

Benevolent god/gods just doesn't exist.

Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War

#35

Post by seunosewa »

INGELRII wrote: post #19

Chimp and humans have similar levels of outgroup violence, but human ingroup violence is much lower. In wild chimpanzee groups violence or threats of violence are daily occurrence Young chimp males start to beat weakest females daily when they grow enough.

In developing countries especially, many parents beat their children daily. Many husbands beat their wives daily. Many teachers beat their students daily. In traffic, motorists and touts engage in fights daily. Governments routinely have their citizens arrested, tortured, and killed. Armed criminals rob, rape and murder people daily. Most babies have their private parts mutilated.

All or most of the above would be classified as in-group violence by an objective observer, so it is difficult to agree with you that our ingroup violence as a species is much lower.

Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War

#36

Post by tim333 »

kypro wrote: post #16
sbmthakur wrote: post #15

Considering that Chimps have reached stone age, it will be interesting to see if Chimps use any weaponns if such a war happens again. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150818-chimps-living-in-the...

They're smashing heavy rocks against nuts... Surely there's a huge difference between carving a weapon and finding a rock large enough to smash open a nut.

Apparently they make pointy sticks to hunt with https://phys.org/news/2015-04-chimps-senegal-fashion-spears....

Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War

#37

Post by ASalazarMX »

seunosewa wrote: post #35
INGELRII wrote: post #19

Chimp and humans have similar levels of outgroup violence, but human ingroup violence is much lower. In wild chimpanzee groups violence or threats of violence are daily occurrence Young chimp males start to beat weakest females daily when they grow enough.

In developing countries especially, many parents beat their children daily. Many husbands beat their wives daily. Many teachers beat their students daily. In traffic, motorists and touts engage in fights daily. Governments routinely have their citizens arrested, tortured, and killed. Armed criminals rob, rape and murder people daily. Most babies have their private parts mutilated. All or most of the above would be cl…

Unless you have some source, I think the "developing countries especially" affirmation is unfounded. This happens too frequently in all countries, developed or not.

Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War

#38

Post by blaser-waffle »

busterarm wrote: post #6
farah7 wrote: post #3

I would hardly describe a conflict involving a total of 14 adult male chimps a "war".

Why? The mean for Dunbar's number in chimpanzees would be around 60.

My first thought was about Dunbar's number too, but Dunbar's number for people is something like 100-120... yet we're still able to field 10,000-man strong divisions, expeditionary forces, etc.

Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War

#39

Post by busterarm »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #38
busterarm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The mean for Dunbar's number in chimpanzees would be around 60.

My first thought was about Dunbar's number too, but Dunbar's number for people is something like 100-120... yet we're still able to field 10,000-man strong divisions, expeditionary forces, etc.

Chains of Command follow the Hub and Spoke model. I'm pretty sure if you break it down the number of people an individual in that structure has to care about is somewhere between 30 & 60...leaving them room for friends and family.

Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War

#40

Post by seunosewa »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #37
seunosewa wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In developing countries especially, many parents beat their children daily. Many husbands beat their wives daily. Many teachers beat their students daily. In traffic, motorists and touts engage in fights daily. Governments routinely have their citizens arrested, tortured, and killed. Armed criminals rob, rape and murder people daily. Most babies have their private parts mutilated. All or most of the above would be cl…

Unless you have some source, I think the "developing countries especially" affirmation is unfounded. This happens too frequently in all countries, developed or not.

If you are right, that makes my point even stronger, doesn't it?

Do you think I am being downvoted for saying we have a lot of ingroup violence or for suggesting there is more ingroup violence in developing countries? These seem to be uncontroversial points.

I live in Nigeria. Children get beaten here. From their media, I know it's the same in other African countries, India, etc. Everyone accepts it and we are proud of it. But I know that in some developed countries you can be reported to child services for such. So I was careful not to imply that it's the same everywhere.

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