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Lumifer comments on Rationality Quotes Thread June 2015 - Less Wrong
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"One of the reasons we are attracted to the Colosseum is because of the incredible violence that went on here. The question it poses is, how could such an advanced culture have staged such bloody spectacles? The Colosseum is a snapshot in stone, a physical embodiment of the culture of Rome."
-- Gary Glassman (quoted in Colosseum killing machine reconstructed after more than 1,500 years
Emphasis mine: I'm not surprised. Culture is relative and I see lots of reasons this could have been beneficial to the society at that time.
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.