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Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

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Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#161

Post by card_zero »

bit-anarchist wrote: post #61
throwi790 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No religion other than Christianity and Islam fought for a man made religion. They haven't slowed down after wiping out thousands of cultures and tribes

That's a pretty strong statement. You know the saying: strong statements require equally strong evidence.

It's refuted by the Buddhist nationalists killing Rohingya Muslims. Not sure about the concept of evidence. For best epistemology you'd have to say "if this was false, we'd see evidence X, and we don't, or evidence Y, and we don't see that either, and nobody's thought of what evidence Z might be, so here we are, it seems true so far."

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#162

Post by heavyset_go »

emilsedgh wrote: post #130
bad_username wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the outright political warfare in the US you are alluding to began much earlier than 2020. Things were getting quite ulhealthy already back in 2015/2016, probably even earlier. The "black swan" for this deep division was (I believe) not the epidemic, but the proliferation of the smartphone and social media, and the earlier transitioning of traditional news to infotainment format.

I'd attribute it to 2008 financial collapse, and in general, the pressure put on the middle class that began a decade earlier. And I genuinely believe blaming things on social media and news is just a diversion so we wouldn't look at the main issue.

Earlier than that, this brand of social/economic/racial/sexual/etc aggrievement and reactionary politics was bred via 80s-90s AM talk radio.

The talking points that were ascendent in the Tea Party era to 2016, and are still ascendent today, were honed at that time in that sphere. Limbaugh said words 30-40 years ago that breathed life into a reactionary movement 20 years later and shaped its theory.

You can keep following the thread back, but I think this form of weaponized aggrievement took its shape at that time, its literal memes were potent and virulent back then, they just needed the right environment to really spread.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#163

Post by Eridanus2 »

Sharlin wrote: post #127
ozim wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dying in your prime reproductive age! I guess dying because you think you’re going to impress’s a mate and stay alive is quite common.

On the contrary, that's very uniquely and peculiarly human stupidity, possibly caused by the fact that our brains take so long to fully mature. In other species, competing for mates (just like territory) is typically highly ritualized exactly because getting seriously hurt is the opposite of adaptive.

I feel that rituals of this nature work because they are backed implicitly by the threat of violence, which must be actualized from time to time in order for the ritual to hold force. Just like in human cultures.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#165

Post by michaelmrose »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #79
bluegatty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but war is worse for all parties generally. Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium. Primates fighting each other is not. Murdering for acquisition of a resource is short term advantage. We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreem…

I would caution against the use of "murder" so loosely. Lions don't murder their prey. They kill their prey. Murder occurs when one entity with personhood intentional kills another entity with personhood, where personhood is rooted in the ability to comprehend reality (intellect) and the ability to make free choices among comprehended alternatives (free choice). "Murder" thus has a moral dimension that mere killing d…

Why do you think that we can define personhood without much understanding of the interior life of anything other than humans? Why do you think personhood is even required for murder? Does your pet have enough of whatever makes personhood important to qualify? How about the source of your blt?

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#166

Post by tsimionescu »

throwi790 wrote: post #51
mike_hearn wrote: post #46

> If chimpanzees - one of the species closest to humans genetically - could do so without human constructs of religion, ethnicity and political beliefs, then "relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed", they added. That's a weird thing to say. Studies of primitive tribes showed decades ago that they only seem to fight each other for a handful of reasons. Religion, ethnicit…

No religion other than Christianity and Islam fought for a man made religion. They haven't slowed down after wiping out thousands of cultures and tribes

Unless you think that Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Daoism, or the many millions of polytheistic cults are not man made religions, then you are completely wrong. Wars and atrocities have been fought using every religion and ideology in history as a pretext.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#167

Post by icameron »

deepsun wrote: post #84
bluegatty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but war is worse for all parties generally. Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium. Primates fighting each other is not. Murdering for acquisition of a resource is short term advantage. We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreem…

Plenty disagreements everywhere. Under (usually fake) ideas of not enough resources for everyone, so the strongest must survive. Nazi planned to exterminate several whole ethnicities. If you think it was (or is) unversally accepted as "Bad" -- think again. Most developed countries had Nazi parties, including US and Canada. Some sympathize today. Several Middle East governments publicly claim that murders/rapes/kidnap…

I was thinking about your last point about why we honor veterans. In the US it’s not really the case that without them we’d be captured or killed. All our conflicts in the last several generations have been us invading or fighting in foreign lands against forces that were not attacking us. All our modern military personnel are willfully employed and well compensated and given lifetime benefits for that.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#168

Post by mjanx123 »

O5vYtytb wrote: post #144
andrekandre wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2008 was the big one, but i really think the ball started rolling after 9/11...

Really though it all started with the federalist papers.

As this article shows, it already started in the chimp-human common ancestor.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#169

Post by larodi »

bluegatty wrote: post #64
londons_explore wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems obvious to me - it's the combination of two ideas: 1. When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent. 2. By collaborating in a group, you can achieve more than individuals acting alone. This is the idea behind teams, companies, countries, etc. Combine the two ideas, and you get war.

Yes, but war is worse for all parties generally. Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium. Primates fighting each other is not. Murdering for acquisition of a resource is short term advantage. We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreem…

> We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin

Very strong statement given the massive killing of kettle and poultry per second.

Also given all the wars including those currently raging - I think is rather untrue.

Besides the killing a lion does is not over resources, it’s the resource itself.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#170

Post by toivo »

bluegatty wrote: post #64
londons_explore wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems obvious to me - it's the combination of two ideas: 1. When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent. 2. By collaborating in a group, you can achieve more than individuals acting alone. This is the idea behind teams, companies, countries, etc. Combine the two ideas, and you get war.

Yes, but war is worse for all parties generally. Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium. Primates fighting each other is not. Murdering for acquisition of a resource is short term advantage. We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreem…

Among the Yanomami (per Napoleon Chagnon), killing outsiders was not “murder,” it raised status. Men who killed had more wives. Violence was cyclical and regulated, not collapse. Humans are not universally anti-killing, mainly in-group.

That pressure kept population density low and groups mobile. Less surplus, less accumulation, weaker incentives for technological scaling. Over ~10,000+ years this maintained a relatively stable human–environment equilibrium.

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