11–20 of 52 posts
I was able to dig up this paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/26/9419.full
This article could use some nice infographics and charts. The way it is written makes it hard to see exactly how things have changed over time.
Murder is theft. The worst kind of theft
If you're interested in the main thesis of this article -- that the reason that our attitudes to violence declined steadily was due to a feedback loop "feeding the output of the Old Bailey the day before to the input of the Old Bailey the day after.", I highly recommend "The Better Angels of our Nature" by Steven Pinker.
I read that book. It was very enlightening to say the least. That being said, my view is in line with the book: cautiously optimistic. I believe that the domestication of mankind will continue, but that isn't inevitable. Maybe in the future, the trend will reverse. It's up to us and our responsibility to ensure that doesn't happen and to accelerate the trend of less violence over time.
Unfortunately, domesticated people often somehow get convinced to vote for open borders.
[1] http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~felluga/punish.html {Opening passage of Foucault's Discipline and Punish, recounting the drawing and quartering of Robert-Francois Damiens for attempted regicide.}
It is depressing, but perhaps expected, that an article about a quantitative approach to historical analysis includes one anecdote and no additional data. I was able to dig up this paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/26/9419.full which is sufficiently dense to require some time to read and consider.
There's many people, myself included who you could send the original paper and I'd give it a glance and probably leave it. Not because I'm stupid or uneducated, but because I don't even know if its a paper that says something new or relevant to the field or has something to offer me as a person. An article like this makes it much more likely that people will engage the research by giving me some initial sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read that book. It was very enlightening to say the least. That being said, my view is in line with the book: cautiously optimistic. I believe that the domestication of mankind will continue, but that isn't inevitable. Maybe in the future, the trend will reverse. It's up to us and our responsibility to ensure that doesn't happen and to accelerate the trend of less violence over time.
My view is that many people are quite domesticated- traditionally, would you not agree that society flourishes wherever the strong and fair have the capacity to exclude the psychopaths? Unfortunately, domesticated people often somehow get convinced to vote for open borders.
Or maybe I missed your point?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My view is that many people are quite domesticated- traditionally, would you not agree that society flourishes wherever the strong and fair have the capacity to exclude the psychopaths? Unfortunately, domesticated people often somehow get convinced to vote for open borders.
Borders are only one way to exclude people from society, and not a very efficient one if the only goal is to "exclude the psychopaths", which are no more likely to be on one side of the border than the other. Or maybe I missed your point?
Murder is theft. The worst kind of theft
Not really. A life is not property. It cannot be acquired or given away. Even if we were to just go along with it and categorize life as personal property, a murderer does not take the victim’s life into their possession in any way I can tell. Murder ends life rather than appropriating it, so murder would be destruction of property, not theft.
Life of other sentient beings, like dogs or apes, still considered a property. Wrongly so of course.
>It cannot be acquired or given away.
only for about next 20 or so years until upload and cloned bodies become accessible. The killer (or his insurance) will have to cover repairs or replacement cost in case of "total", and be charged with intentional property destruction if it was intentional.
Murder is theft. The worst kind of theft
Not really. A life is not property. It cannot be acquired or given away. Even if we were to just go along with it and categorize life as personal property, a murderer does not take the victim’s life into their possession in any way I can tell. Murder ends life rather than appropriating it, so murder would be destruction of property, not theft.
But that's not what property means to everyone. For me, property is something that is owned privately, and I claim private ownership of my life.