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RichardKennaway comments on Open thread, 11-17 August 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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They are also sweetness and light under the proper conditions.
You seem to be claiming that certain conditions -- those not producing brutal murderous monkeys -- are accidents of space and time, but certain others -- those producing brutal murderous monkeys -- are not. That "brutal murderous monkeys" is our essence and any deviation from that mere accident, in the philosophical sense. That the former is our fundamental nature and the latter mere superficial froth.
There is no actual observation that can be made to distinguish "proper conditions" from "parochial circumstance", "essence" from "accident", "fundamental" from "superficial".
Chimpanzees tribes, given enough resources, can pass from an equilibrium based on violence to an equilibrium based on niceness and sharing.
I cannot seem to find, despite extensive search, the relevant experiment, but I remember it vividly.
I guess the same thing can happen to humans too.
It visibly does. If you're not sitting in a war zone, just look around you. Are the people around you engaged in brutally murdering each other?
This is not to say that the better parts of the world are perfect, but to look at those parts and moan about our brutally murderous monkey nature is self-indulgent posturing.
See “Can the Chain Still Hold You?”.