Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

thelancet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 109 posts

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#71

Post by munificent »

kiba wrote: post #48
bambax wrote: post #44

We help our own, and destroy and torture with great pleasure and no remorse everything else, including animals, whole ecosystems, and other human beings we decide, for some reason or another, are "aliens". The moment we give another human community a special name is the first step towards abomination. Being territorial and aggressive towards others is a trait we share with other species, but we are also superpredator…

I like to eat chicken, beefs, and porks for no other reason than it's tasty food. Does that make me a bad person?

According to the chicken, cow, and pig, yes. It's up to you to determine how much their opinion informs your own.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#72

Post by munificent »

baryphonic wrote: post #23

Whenever I read something like this, I wonder if the author ever had children, or even knows anyone with children. I have two. Children ages 2 and 3 are a strong counter-example to this "inmate human goodness" hypothesis and Rousseau's thinking in general. My kids at that age would often be about to trip over the last nerve with some sort of interruption only to say, "Mommy and daddy, I love you." In some ways, I thi…

> Children ages 2 and 3 are a strong counter-example to this "inmate human goodness" hypothesis and Rousseau's thinking in general.

Children younger than that are strong counter-examples to claims that humans are bipedal and have sophisticated verbal skills. I think there is a more, useful understanding of "innate" that doesn't literally mean "from the moment of birth" but more means "absent other sufficiently strong influences, a fully developed human will evidence this trait".

I agree that toddlers are miniature terrorists. It's a good thing their little bodies develop as slowly as their brains and moral compass, to mitigate the damage they can cause.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#73

Post by Joker_vD »

asgard1024 wrote: post #24
Joker_vD wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked, it was agreed that there are no universally accepted moral principles. In fact, counting purely by headcount (India and China do exist!), quite a number of things you consider to be universally or widely accepted may actually be accepted by the minority of the people. Is it "eye for an eye" or "turn another cheek"? More than half of the world would take the first options as morally correct.

Maybe I am reading too much into this argument, but I think this is moving the goalposts. So Bregman comes and proves, presumably mostly based on history of Western civilization, that humans are (at least in some ways and on average) better than they think they are. Your response to that is, well, those darn Indians and Chinese, they are not part of Western civilization, therefore, Bregman's proof does not hold. Not…

> "universality of human rights" That's a somewhat overcompressed term. Does it mean "the human rights, as they're generally perceived in the beginning of the XXI century in , are applicable to all humans in the past, the present, and the future, at any place on (or in, or outside of) the Earth"? Or does it allow for some human rights that will be discovered one day in the future to also cover everyone, including you and me today?

And I certainly did not intend "the white man's burden", on the contrary, "the white man's nosiness". The Western people, objectively judged by their own standards, turn out to be better than they generally tend to judge themselves by those standards? Good for them! Now could they please allow other people to judge themselves by their own, maybe different, standards?

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#74

Post by fancyfredbot »

soledades wrote: post #66
fancyfredbot wrote: post #8

I think this article is rather unfairly quoting poor Hobbes out of context. Hobbes didn't say humankind was nasty and brutish, he said the life of man would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" in the absence of a community... Which is not contradicted by the examples in the article!

You are misrepresenting Hobbes here to say that he was referring to the absence of a community... Sapiens have always lived in communities. He was referring specifically to humans in the condition in the absence of state power: Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against ev…

Yes, good point. I agree community wasn't a perfect word to represent what Hobbes meant. I considered using "society" and "the leviathan", maybe they would work better.

It is interesting to consider that part of the book, it does seem to disagree with Hobbes at first glance. Hobbes did say that the state of nature was violent. However I think he also thought that a fear of violence would spontaneously cause humankind to organise into societies. So I'm not sure he'd necessarily be that surprised to find a lack of evidence for prehistoric warfare.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#75

Post by praptak »

growlist wrote: post #55
kazagistar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you have noticed that authoritarians sometimes use the veneer of freedom and cooperation to force obedience. Sometimes they just use strongman tactics. It doesn't change the fact that voluntary consensus and tolerance are, in fact good.

Interested to know exactly how we are supposed to differentiate between the two. Should we rely on our completely unbiased and objective media (ORANGE MAN BAD)?

Is your argument that freedom and cooperation cannot be objectively defined and measured, therefore we should stop trying to have more of them?

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#76

Post by carapace »

bambax wrote: post #44

We help our own, and destroy and torture with great pleasure and no remorse everything else, including animals, whole ecosystems, and other human beings we decide, for some reason or another, are "aliens". The moment we give another human community a special name is the first step towards abomination. Being territorial and aggressive towards others is a trait we share with other species, but we are also superpredator…

> A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

—Einstein

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#77

Post by _greim_ »

bambax wrote: post #61
_greim_ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We help our own, and destroy and torture with great pleasure and no remorse everything else... When you say "we" do you mean you personally partake in all these activities, or do you count yourself as an exception to the rule?

We includes the person talking, of course. I don't see how I could say this and not include myself. I'm human (for better and worse).

I hear you. While I may not have committed major atrocities personally, I believe the potential for all those things lies within me due to my human nature. Had I been born in a different time and place, I may well have participated in some of that stuff. I shudder to think about it and believe we should nurture the better aspects of our nature as much as we can, both individually and collectively.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#79

Post by vorpalhex »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #54
vorpalhex wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geghis Khan and Alexander would both make the case that they were helping the world by uniting it and ending micro-conflicts - the people they killed along the way were necessary sacrifices who had the option to instead surrender to something greater. There's also an element of "divine right" at play - they believed they were fulfilling a religious entitlement. Napoleon would make a similar argument, likely one more…

Would they? It's my understanding that premodern conquerors were quite open about the fact that their primary goal was acquiring wealth and glory rather than optimizing the world.

I mention the destruction of Babylon by the Assyrians because it's an exception, and because the king goes on in great detail about how much he wanted to remove even the idea of Babylon.

Most conquerers obviously felt they were the best person to do the job, but they were not in it for like, direct personal gain. At some point you conquer enough to drown in wine and gold long before you conquer as much as they did - and being in war is not pleasant even as the king. They felt there were doing something for their people by unifying disparate factions.

Re: Humankind neither nasty nor brutish

#80

Post by feoren »

growlist wrote: post #55
kazagistar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you have noticed that authoritarians sometimes use the veneer of freedom and cooperation to force obedience. Sometimes they just use strongman tactics. It doesn't change the fact that voluntary consensus and tolerance are, in fact good.

Interested to know exactly how we are supposed to differentiate between the two. Should we rely on our completely unbiased and objective media (ORANGE MAN BAD)?

Exactly! How are we supposed to know whether killing people, flaying their skin, and consuming their flesh is good or bad!? Should we just rely on our completely "unbiased" and "objective" media (CANNIBALISM BAD, HERP DERP!). There's literally no such thing as truth! We are heroes for eating the flesh of small children!
Post reply on HN