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Lumifer comments on Rationality Quotes Thread June 2015 - Less Wrong
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I think there's an underlying assumption here that an advanced culture should be similar to our own.
Let's reverse the question: "How did a culture that stages such bloody spectacles manage to achieve so much?". Rome didn't become advanced and then start with gladiator games; those were around in some form for a long time. Is it that big a shock that Rome managed to get far without abandoning those games?
I think the underlying assumption is much worse: that any advanced culture must be squeamish about things which the author finds squeamish, barbaric, and uncouth.
I think it is not just squeamishness, I think it is the idea that without a strongly pro-cooperation value system, how the eff does one achieve the level of cooperation to have a wide division of labor and trade and thus actually get rich and advanced?
I see no contradiction at all between having a "strongly pro-cooperation value system" and having bloody spectacles in the arena.
Humans still are great fans of bloody spectacles, it's just that nowadays it's easier to produce fake ones on screens.