When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#171

Post by Dudeman112 » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #113

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice review. In a sense I find this something akin to the late David Graeber point on it’s column about bulling. How you can find data pointing towards the human society propensity for violence, and also data of human society propensity for cooperation and refusal to engage on violence even when confronted with losing their way of living, although he also raises the point when historically there has been more propens…

IDK if its a modern bias or a recurring one, but people are very drawn to the idea of a core human "nature:" what we are when all the surface level stuff is stripped away. The way the conversations I've had tend to go is ever more contrived scenarios. Eventually it gets to spaceships carrying sperm and eggs to be raised cultureless by robots. You need to avoid scenarios like these, where the boys know about raising c…

>core human "nature:" what we are when all the surface level stuff is stripped away.

That always seemed out of whack for me. If you change the environment, the individual changes too.

That's just a different individual, calling it more "true" or "pure" seems like asking "how much is 1 + apple?" (where Apple is an actual apple, not a variable).

The whole premise is fundamentally wrong. How I am right now is not false nor unnatural.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#172

Post by kayodelycaon » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #67

elliekelly wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also one of those students who loved to read going into high school only to have it beaten out of me by English teachers over-analyzing everything. But... as an adult I can definitely see and appreciate the value of it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen comments on r/TheHandmaidsTale along the lines of “why do people keep bringing up abortion laws here it has nothing to do with this show!” or have discu…

On the other hand, the meaning of art is determined by what you bring to it. If you find a self-consistent interpretation that is not or perhaps even contrary to what the author had in mind or the classical analysis, that interpretation is just as right.

I happen to agree with you but this is hotly debated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author :)

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#173

Post by gsich » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #113

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice review. In a sense I find this something akin to the late David Graeber point on it’s column about bulling. How you can find data pointing towards the human society propensity for violence, and also data of human society propensity for cooperation and refusal to engage on violence even when confronted with losing their way of living, although he also raises the point when historically there has been more propens…

IDK if its a modern bias or a recurring one, but people are very drawn to the idea of a core human "nature:" what we are when all the surface level stuff is stripped away. The way the conversations I've had tend to go is ever more contrived scenarios. Eventually it gets to spaceships carrying sperm and eggs to be raised cultureless by robots. You need to avoid scenarios like these, where the boys know about raising c…

>Eventually it gets to spaceships carrying sperm and eggs to be raised cultureless by robots.

I recommend "Raised by Wolves".

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#174

Post by simiones » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

esyir wrote: post #143

croes wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And one primal instinct is social bonding.

Which is also the primal instinct that allows for tribalism, which is really important when the other tribe is competing for a scarce resource. Humans are social creatures, but not social with the entire world.

Tribalism is generally closed, but not automatically antagonistic with other tribes. In contexts where there is no forced competition, tribes rarely fight.

The modern view is that most likely hunter-gatherer societies, which didn't have fixed lands and had no general reason to be territorial, had little warfare. It is only with agricultural societies, where competition for land becomes a factor, that we start finding evidence of warfare, as far as I understand.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#175

Post by dyates » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

To quote a since-deleted twitter thread written in response to this article at the time:

> Golding is not trying to play this Rosseau-v-Hobbes game of bringing humanity back to the state of nature and see what they look like. His children are not living in a natural state: they are self conscious heirs to an entire civilization, and they realize quite early on that they live on the razor's edge of life and death. So they create rules and orders to keep their society running. A little democracy that honors natural goodness and leadership.

> A little democracy that does not last.

> And that is what people don't seem to get about this book. It isn't a parable about what happens when you taken men out of society--it is a parable about how men act in society.

The whole thread is worth reading, though it's not well preserved:

https://twunroll.com/article/1260958965082488832

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#176

Post by Tabular-Iceberg » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

totetsu wrote: post #22

This got a lot of coverage last year. This article questions the colonial view point it was mostly reported from. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/416819/concerns-over-a-tale... Here's an interview with one of the survivors https://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018746636 And the reason the island was uninhabited. the Pacific slave trade https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/20182...

> This article questions the colonial view point it was mostly reported from.

That's funny coming from a member of the colonial power famous for the heroic conquest of 300,000 km² of ocean and thousands of islands using nothing but dugout canoes.

What she really means is that it's the view of the people who came late to the party and played the game on easy mode.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#177

Post by necovek » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #113

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice review. In a sense I find this something akin to the late David Graeber point on it’s column about bulling. How you can find data pointing towards the human society propensity for violence, and also data of human society propensity for cooperation and refusal to engage on violence even when confronted with losing their way of living, although he also raises the point when historically there has been more propens…

IDK if its a modern bias or a recurring one, but people are very drawn to the idea of a core human "nature:" what we are when all the surface level stuff is stripped away. The way the conversations I've had tend to go is ever more contrived scenarios. Eventually it gets to spaceships carrying sperm and eggs to be raised cultureless by robots. You need to avoid scenarios like these, where the boys know about raising c…

People are quick to discount the value of education (or upbringing) from the early age. Humans have started developing quickly with the development of language and especially writing. Take that away, and we are looking at another dozens of thousands of years of getting back to it, if at all.

The best evidence to me is how those "lost in woods, found years later" kids have developed: mostly mimicking other animals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child). It's even hard to change that later on.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#178

Post by dalbasal » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

Dudeman112 wrote: post #171

dalbasal wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK if its a modern bias or a recurring one, but people are very drawn to the idea of a core human "nature:" what we are when all the surface level stuff is stripped away. The way the conversations I've had tend to go is ever more contrived scenarios. Eventually it gets to spaceships carrying sperm and eggs to be raised cultureless by robots. You need to avoid scenarios like these, where the boys know about raising c…

>core human "nature:" what we are when all the surface level stuff is stripped away. That always seemed out of whack for me. If you change the environment, the individual changes too. That's just a different individual, calling it more "true" or "pure" seems like asking "how much is 1 + apple?" (where Apple is an actual apple, not a variable). The whole premise is fundamentally wrong. How I am right now is not false…

>> How (is it) not false nor unnatural.

Exactly. There have never been culturaless, parentless people. If there were/are, then that is simply a terrible circumstance and terrible results will probably occur.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#179

Post by egypturnash » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

gadf wrote: post #105

lrem wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This review is obviously high effort. What's the incentive here? Is this what the community regularly does in Goodreads? Or are you somehow affiliated with the author and treat this as a favour?

Anything to do with goodreads becomes toxic. I think that's because the types of people who read and opine about books to the extent they feel compelled to blog/review on gr, are also likely to be the types of people who brook no dissent to their opinions, neither of authors, books nor the things they make them mean. They're independent, self-trusting, artistic thinkers (in the manner of Nietzsche), and the act of en…

I am looking at your comment history here and I suspect that the case is more that anything to do with you becomes toxic; I see multiple instances of you insulting people, then insisting that they’re the ones hurling abuse and arguing in bad faith when they protest.

Re: When six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months (2020)

#180

Post by dalbasal » Thu, Jun 03, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #146

dr_dshiv wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These villages better build defenses against the marauders or all is for naught. And of course, the best defense is a good offense. And... Fast forward to the presently peaceful times of mutually assured destruction!

That is a point of a village as opposed to living in separate farmsteads. (there are other points to villages, but putting a group of people together is an automatic form of defense)

Historically, this doesn't seem to be true.

Villages appear long before defensive fortifications in the record, in many cases. Pure reason is not very good at forming predictive theories about history, as a general rule.

There are many possible reasons for villages, and cultural reasons are a very big determinant of how people live. So are economic reasons. Many of us live in big cities now, and it's generally less safe.