Earlier quoted context omitted.
Emm, what? You are aware of all the wars going on right now?
Yes and? They are not about natural resources.
Literally about land, oil, rare earth minerals…
Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
211–220 of 308 posts
Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes and? They are not about natural resources.
Literally about land, oil, rare earth minerals…
You can claim that and it's a comfortable thing to believe but that does not make it true.
If you want to convince somebody who actually seeks truth, you have to make an argument how any country who has started a war recently has had a net economic profit.
Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
#213Earlier 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…
You've equated war and murder, but the distinction between the two is one of the brightest lines in many law codes. Murder is a private act committed by private individuals, while war is a public act of friend against foe (distinguished as a public enemy in contrast to private ones).
Further, murder may be restricted to the killing of publicly acknowledged members of the public "friend" group, i.e. citizens, while the killing of outsiders living with the "friend" group, like slaves, is considered something else in the law.
When we codify morals as laws, we usually make a heavy and deliberate distinction between private and public, and between citizen and non-citizen. This is probably related to the nature of a social animal.
Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
#214This doesn't surprise me. We've known for decades that chimpanzees groups make war on other chimpanzee groups. Eight years is a long time, though.
I think the novelty here is that this was the same group which underwent a schism of sorts, and over the course of relatively few years became two completely separate groups antagonistic to each other. edit: I'm rate-limited, so here's my answer to your comment of: > I remember watching a nature documentary many years ago with exactly that scenario. The original group killed all the splitters. Yeah, you're right. You…
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Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
#215Earlier 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…
You've equated war and murder, but the distinction between the two is one of the brightest lines in many law codes. Murder is a private act committed by private individuals, while war is a public act of friend against foe (distinguished as a public enemy in contrast to private ones). Further, murder may be restricted to the killing of publicly acknowledged members of the public "friend" group, i.e. citizens, while th…
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Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
#216Earlier 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.
Humans dying to impress a mate are super rare in reality. And even among humans dying to impress ... it is more likely to happen in male only groups where men try to impress and dominate other men.
Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I guess dying because you think you’re going to impress’s a mate and stay alive is quite common. based on my memory of readings in the matter I don't think so, most animal species "impress a mate" is either 1. do mating ritual better than others 2. actually directly compete with rival who has mate to win mate. In the second more rare scenario the actually directly compete with rival tends to be very ritualized, and…
In fairness, i dont think dying to impress a girl is particularly common among humans either.
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Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
#218Earlier 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…
> Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium.
Lions kill and dont eat children of other lion aliances.
Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
In fairness, i dont think dying to impress a girl is particularly common among humans either.
I really did some extremely dumb things in my twenties that I'm extremely lucky didn't kill me.
I once tried to rappel off the side of an apartment building using a garden hose I stole from the building so I could get into my apartment that I was locked out of because my roommate had gone away for the weekend, this was not to impress a girl, it was to get changed to go to the club to meet a girl. I'm also afraid of heights.
Luckily the apartment manager came driving up at the right time, probably saving my life.
Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally about land, oil, rare earth minerals…
You can claim that and it's a comfortable thing to believe but that does not make it true. If you want to convince somebody who actually seeks truth, you have to make an argument how any country who has started a war recently has had a net economic profit.
Ok, so what do you think these wars are about?