I love these discussions. I haven't watched normal TV for over three years now, I love RU-vid, where else can you go from free history and moral lessons from Chomsky to physics lessons from Krauss to Pinker chairing a discussion on violence. I feel lucky to live where I do, at this time.
@rxp56 Sowell's fun, but I feel like his logic is much weaker than his empirical ability. I used to read him as a Conservative, but I don't find him as convincing anymore, (moved leftwards in workforce, after a rightward move in college; that confused my family a little.) and find some of his work to be a little manipulative in retrospect. I think it was "Intellectuals and Society" that did it, which eventually became a transparent, 400 page subtweet of Sowell's academic opponents. (Don't feel too bad, though; C.S. Lewis felt the same way about 1984, and I kinda agree with him.)
@@TreyaTheKobold Going where the evidence is will move a scientist from being viewed as conservative or liberal to the other . Science should be expected to do this .
03:53 First speaker, Steven Pinker, for those looking to skip the intro
5 лет назад
I am an atheist, nonetheless as Freud who was also a profound atheist, I see positive issues on religion (see Freud's "Civilisation and its discontents"). By having an almighty punishing righteous ruler controlling our intimate thoughts and deeds, the believer behaves on a more proper and civilised manner towards the others. As Richard Dawkins himself assesses within his debates with Christians, many are extremely "polite and delightful". Lawrence Krauss says something politely similar about the Muslims with whom he has debated. This also helps to explain why many social studies point out that believers are less prone to criminal activity such as burglary, robbery, prostitution or drug consumption. By having God as this Great Public Hoax, we have an improvement on the public order. Yes, we lie with God for the sake of a greater Good, as the history of religion was always intertwined with morality and costumes. Why having a paid police officer in every corner of our cities if we can have a costless sheriff in the mind of everyone? Richard Dawkins would surely say I'm being profoundly patronising towards the commoners, but whether he likes it or not, it does work as the evidence suggests. In the same fashion that sometimes we lie to our children for their own benefit. Although, as Legasov wrote about Chernobyl, we tend to focus too much on the short-term costs of the truth but we never inquire on the long-term costs of lies. Many atheists would also correctly argue that ethics does not derive from religion but from reason, and that the history of mankind is full of bloodshed due to religious conflicts. Nonetheless all the big massacres and atrocities executed by men towards their fellow beings, such as the Holocaust, the Gulags or the Hiroshima atomic attack, had nothing to do with religion. In Science, undoubtedly we shall be conducted by the beam of evidence, reason and critical thinking, but within society people are full of fears, destructive feelings such as anger and aggression, and thus an almighty scientifically nonexistent righteous punisher might have his due role in the mind of many people, specially those with low levels of scientific education. Does God exist? Most likely not! But I know he's been useful!
Words are able to make the heart skip a beat and feel love and joy around you,But also on the other hand,Words spoken in anger can and will destroy those around you which ends up in no trust,Words are like a poem in motion written by you,The words you choose in the poem written by you will leave cause and effect in those around you,So choose the words in your poem you are writing at this very moment wisely ok,.The words you speak is not always what your true heart feels inside,Let your hearts feelings flow out and by doing so,Also see where your own heart stands within ?
Absolutely fascinating. Pair this with Sapolsky's Stanford series on evolutionary biology and we start to get a good view of a lot of the behavior we see. So much excellent information out there
I'm rather curious about the brain scan abnormalitties of a murderer. Is it a case of the abnormality showing up prior to the crime, and as such being a cause of said crime, or is the abnormality showing up after the crime and being a consequence of such crimes.
So, should we screen people once in a year to see IF they demonstate any activity in their prefrontal cortex? And those people who's brain doesn't "light up" under the cat-scan, should be looked in a mental institution, since they are a potential danger to society??? Should we legally create a "pre-crime" division? [anyone did see the movie "Precrime"?] Even "IF" the criminal would not be responsible for being criminal, since his criminal behaviour is a "mental illness", the society is still responsible to protect its other citizens, not just the criminal. The only way to protect the "potential victims" is by locking up the "potential murderer". After all, if he has no power over his own "mental illness", he has to be treated as a child, a guardian (some government agent appointed for this purpose) should prevent him by keeping him under lock-up. This all sounds nice in theory, but I wonder, how would people feel, how wold citizens react, IF the government would start showing up in their door-steps and arresting/locking up their family members due to the last result of a cat-scan result??? And let's hope that machine never makes mistake... Let's hope that machine cannot be manipulated in order to alter the result... Last question: IF the criminal/murderer cannot help his own violence, he can't help it not to murder, because due to his "mental illness" he is totally incapable to make a moral judgement call, then how come he is NOT that stupid to take his own life??? why does he murder other people instead of taking his own life instead??? How does he know that taking his own life would cause him harm, but at the same time he does not know taking the life of an another would causes a harm? he knows under the same circumstances he would feel pain, would suffer, would die, but he does not know the same applies to other people when they are violated??? By not harming himself, not taking his own life, it clearly proves he is making a choice, he knows the difference. IF he can make a choice regarding his own life, then he could make a choice regarding the lives of others as well to harm them or not to harm them foreseeing the possible consequences. Yet, he only makes that "moral choice" when it applies his own well-being, his own life, and he does not care about the lives of others. That means: he IS responsible for his own actions!
Alice Lowell The reason someone can know not to take their own life but not someone else's is a lack of empathy. The thought of loosing your own life can be profoundly upsetting but without empathy you would not feel the same about anothers. People have differing degrees of empathy and some seem to lack it almost entirely. That isn't a choice. Next up some people have poor impulse control. They might be well aware that murdering someone does harm but in the 3 seconds it takes to pull a trigger whilst in a blind rage they are unable to regulate their response. So again this is not a choice. The rational argument to me seems that the legal system / police force should be used for prevention not punishment. Of course a murderer / rapist needs to be removed from society, but if their actions are due to biology or the environment that they grew up in then they didn't choose it making punishment unjust. I would support a system where child molesters are imprisoned for life but the prison environment is comfortable and as close to outside life as possible over the current system where they are hated and sometimes beaten to death by other prisoners but where most are released within a few years. The focus should be protecting children, not punishing child molesters. As far pre crime scans, this is a very tricky moral question. Generally these kind of brain scans might be able to show someone has a predisposition towards violence but that only demonstrates a higher likelyhood of becoming, let's say a murderer, not that they will become a murderer. So if you locked up everyone with this predisposition you would be guaranteed to be locking up many people who never would have commited murder. So this clearly couldn't be a morally acceptable system. If you had brain scans that could 100% predict if people would murder under certain circumstances you still couldn't lock them up as you don't know for sure if they will be exposed to those circumstances. If you could somehow know 100% if someone would become a murderer in the future then their would at least be grounds to consider using this information preventatively. However it could be used in the same way as other health information. "You have a congenital heart condition so we suggest you avoid physical activity A and take this drug". Or for brains scans showing a high likelyhood of violent tendancies "You have a high likelyhood of having violent tendancies so we suggest you avoid owning weapons, take anger management classes and take this drug, of course we can't force you to do any of these things as you have done nothing wrong" This knowledge could be used in preventative ways without imprisoning people who have done nothing wrong. Of course this could be discussed in vastly more detail and there are still issues but... this is a RU-vid comment section response...
Around 14:40 or so: Sarah Mathew explains that the risk-taking of participants in war parties cannot be explained by genes, because most of them aren't related genetically. First of all they are obviously related to some degree, being of a relatively small tribe, so genome overlap between members of the same tribe will be not negligible. But mostly, this ignores the fact that the more people participate in war, the more the outcome is likely to be positive for the group, and the less likely it is that the other tribe will win and kill members of my tribe. So on average, taking part in war increases my chances of benefitting from the spoils, especially if by not participating I'll somehow not be dealt my own share of the spoils. Isn't that obvious?
The difference between a debate of 2 religions, and this is so extraordinary.. warms my heart in a way. Religion looks so infantile in their discussion, combative and forceful. This is.. well.. refreshing to see.
I was reading Lawrence Keely's book on "War Before Civilization" and saw that he documents quite extensively the prevalence of war before states and modern countries. In many cases war and warfare were continuous and accepted as a normal part of life. They were also very inhumane from a modern perspective and sensibilities. On the other hand, one of Dr. Brian Ferguson seems to recognize that , while there was warfare in tribal societies, the presence of modern civilization exacerbated this and modified the social reasons for going to war. Will we always have a small segment of society trying to control the rest? Will we always have war and violence? May it depend on how psychological and cultural development can counteract innate biopsychological violent tendencies? While I agree with Dr. Chomsky's analysis that oligarchs and major corporations have gone too far and are controlling the political process and politicians undemocratically to their advantage, and that closed-minded, poorly conceived international actions (influenced not only by a mentality of being a country of exception to multilateralism but also by pressure and inertia from the mechanics of the military-industrial complex) generate a greater rise of extremism, I also see that modernity, liberalism, scientific thinking and it's normally associated economic system of capitalism have -generally speaking - improved the lives of people overall (especially when it is protected to unfold basically as Adam Smith intended and not as he's been wrongly re-interpreted by neoliberal apologists). Perhaps Dr. Chomsky starts his analysis from a personal level of psychological development which is egalitarian and he is able to correctly criticize the distortions on classical liberalism due to the abuse of power. His form of anarcho syndicalist socialism is highly humanitarian and, as Steven Pinker observed, possibly in essence, idealistic - a la Rousseau - about human nature. However, Dr. Chomsky perhaps fails to notice that other analysis (like those of optimist Dr. Matt Ridley and modern scientific rationalist Pinker) regarding the long term improvement of humanity on many fronts due to modern, rational, scientific, liberal progress are also valid. The inclusive constructive coming together of different perspectives like this, along with an evolutionary developmental approach on human psychology and correlated cultures and social systems (perhaps like that of Ken Wilber's who shows that the expected evolutionary diminution of bipolar thinking could diminish the violent aspects of political conflict), besides what cognitive and moral psychology would illustrate more completely what is really behind the creation of our political lives. In this regard, the work of Dr. Jonathan Haidt on moral psychology and political psychology also ought to be considered and, perhaps all of it in a conversation that combines sociobiology (the evolutionary influences of our past as a species) with evolutionary-developmental (improvement) psychological research would give us a better idea of what we are capable of changing for the better as a species.
Absolutely loved this. However i was extremely disappointed to not hear a reference to the century long war persisting in afghanistan to this date. If you are going to talk about war, violence and the evolution of war, would afghanistan not be somewhat of a perfect discussion topic? Terrorism, religion, territory and puppeteering superpowers.
Very true. Afghanistan has been caught between superpowers since at least 3000 BCE, so there is no reason to limit that subject to the last 100 years, absent an agenda. I suppose any area at the crossroads of a trade route or a chokepoint probably works pretty well.
John Mueller says there's been no war since 1945, I don't understand. What about Vietnam, Korea, the Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc... I must have missed something.
There's are problems with the brain scan study. For the scan to have validty one would need brains scans every couple of years since birth of the criminal or murderer whose brains was scanned after he was imprisoned for his crime. In addition to that we would need pretty good ideas of the kind of family in which the murderer was raised. I am suggesting that family social factors might have depressed the glucose activity in the frontal cortex, and that scans every two years might be able to pinpoint when the decrease in frontal cortex activity began, and then we might look to social factors. We may also want to see scans of murderers who were quite intelligent, and I'm wondering if the scientists that created the atomic bomb, knowing it would be used, showed low functioning in the frontal cortex. I have a hunch that every murderer has not been caught, and that many of them never commit murder or violence again. In fact, I have read cold case stories where a murderer is caught 30 years later, and all during those 30 years led an normal or even slightly exemplary life. We now know from evidence gathered after various armies have routed ISIS, that many competent engineers were working for ISIS building mortar shells, building and operating drones, and even before now we know many competent IT specialists have been working for ISIS. I'm sure randomly conducted brain scans of the general population have been done and based on the people I know and we all know, there are a lot of people who by their behavior and they way they think, or barely think, suggest low frontal cortex functioning, but they don't commit crimes, or at least no aggressive crimes, maybe just petty crimes once in a while. And there are murderers like Mao Tse Dong, who was an intelligent fellow and biographies claim he was an avid reader as a young teenager. He was as it turns out a savvy military strategist and in the very end even won over Chiang Kai Shek was was well educated. I mean, really, the poor showing of good science on this brain scan issue is embarrassing.
You evade mans direct, immediate power to focus his mind or to evade focus, mans basic moral responsibility. There are material causes, as Aristotle knew, but he also refuted the materialIST meatheads of his day. Brain scans dont prove materialism. There are formal causes. Volition is a cause evaded by most “scientists."
Violence is only able to be in check by a understanding heart to his own,One that is willing to listen which releases the true anger he feels inside and by doing so,Builds instead of Violence to destroy !!!
The US has been fighting wars since 1945 ..Korea ..Vietnam..Iraq..and for the 237 years or so we have only been at peace for thirty something years.The warning by our pres.Eisenhower was never heeded.The military industrial complex has kept us at war and diverted funds from many other worthy areas.The money and effort put into war as well as advancements in weapons is overwhelming.The EU has been at peace while NATO has stood to fight the Cold war.But Peace has not overtaken the world while 17 or more countries right now are at war in 2015.Armed violent conflict endures!
If you bother to study history you find that the nation with the most advanced weapons tends to conquer the nations with less advanced weapons. Now the U.S. has broken that pattern by staying in front of weapons development and not having dreams of empire, despite the claims of the loony left. Obama was awarded a peace prize then pursued policies which sowed and stoked conflicts from Morocco to Korea. Nobel secretary regrets Obama peace prize www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34277960 Former Nobel chief: Obama Peace Prize a failure www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/09/18/former-top-nobel-official-says-maybe-obamas-peace-prize-was-not-such-a-good-idea/72396794/ Considering Obama has virtually assured that either North Korea or Iran will use a nuclear weapon in anger, I can see why they are having second thoughts.
i think in the debate people need to make a distinction between war and violence... small tribal groups occasionally fighting and killing each other is not the same as organized warfare.... really so little is known about history and human culture beyond 6000 years ago...
Organized warfare is just small tribal groups fighting on steroids, though isn't it? I would think it uses the same basic psychological mechanisms inherent in our species either way. Assembling with your group to kill those "others" over there who have invaded your water hole, seems to me no different than assembling to kill those "others" over there who have just invaded your country.
aaronsdavis this depends though, what we understand as "total war" is not a tribal concept at all, traditionally many African tribes would fight each other, but they would have formal rituals and even special dances, there would be a demonstration of power and there would be a few raids here and there. it was not till the Zulu empire did warfare become more like "total war" even today in Amazonia there is still tribal violence, which equates to a few raids and a few deaths here and there, its not 10's of thousands of troops lining up to kill each other, what we see as "war" is an invention of Nation states
@@marklewis4793 i agree ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-taGdEjozaDo.html what i was hinting at aswell was it would be easier to help each other
@@marklewis4793 Probably depends on a specific environment (pan troglodytes like proactive political games over status and offspring compared to pan paniscus society based on reactive socially functional same sex bonding and group bonding for reconciliation regardless of age), or a human society after agricultural/pastoral revolution based on competitive possessiveness over private property, inheritance, virginity and maximisation of birth rates according to antinatalism based on consent. Not sure about Melanesians, Trobrianders, !Kung, Mosuo and all the extinct undocumented egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies.
If murder is shown to be caused by a brain problem then should we have mercy and spare them the death penalty? After all doesn’t that really mean that there is no chance for rehabilitation or redemption? So should we save these people that can’t stop themselves from killing? This isn’t necessarily my view. I’m just curious what others think since really the argument for keeping them alive makes no sense realistically. Again, not necessarily my view on how to handle things. I really don’t know how I feel.
What about all the 'legal plunder' that goes on without direct violence? That seems to be at an all time high. Seems like direct violence has gone down perhaps, but indirect violence has gone up substantially. Which could lead to an explosion of direct violence if people are pushed too much.
The origin of violence doesn't require extensive research as such but the earlier and present evident pointed out that violence is conjugated in discrimination and selfish ambitions driven by supreme ideology of unnecessary questioning of integrity of independent entity. The panel spoke about chipps, trukana, human brains wars etc. Interestingly, what is in the mined of cruel and brutal police personnel in UK, AUS, and USA or the discrimination of Wales by UK or drugs violence in Australia and Mexico? are the brains of these social groups lacking glucose that make them Kill?. Furthermore, war ends when equilibrium of social class is achieved and this is impossible and unachieverable objectives. war is ongoing aspect of the present moment. for example the recent war in Libya by Nato, its ideology and interests that instigate violence not cultural practices as claimed by the discussants.
Ideology and interests are defined by cultural factors... Which in turn can generaly be traced to basic needs, usually it s a good strategy when analysing a complex system to first understand it s simpler parts.
@Stoney Lonsome Short term memory? You were 43, 5 years ago and 2 years ago, 44? Where did 4 years go? That is some long term memory problems occurring Stoney dude.
It would be interesting to know if Erica has corrected for how the people choose violent or non-violent approach depending on the expected cruelty of the dictator that they are up against. In a society where extremely violent retribution can be expected for any opposition primarily the people will not do anything at all, and those few who will become desperate are left to violence as their only recourse. Of course that will have a minimal chance of success since they are up against a truly ruthless dictator. On the other hand if the dictator is of a milder, less ruthlessly violent type, the people might try non-violence. And it will not be surprising to find that opposition against a less ruthless leader has better chances of success. In this sense their results would only show that there are more dictators that are not too ruthless than truly ruthless dictators. A terrible but clear example of a people that have misjudged the chance off nonviolent opposition is the Syrian case. The peaceful protests where met with extreme violence. A method that only works against less ruthlessly violent dictators was used against one of the most ruthless ones. It seems to me that the book by Erica does not show that nonviolent methods are more successful, but that the situations where they can be applied are more common than the truly horrific dictators where violence is the only alternative to giving up on a decent life.
Here is James chapter 3... it's explains where wars and violence come from. 1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, "The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously"? 6 But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: "God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble." 7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. 11 Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another? 13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; 14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15 Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that." 16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.
@13:22 with group violence, clear delineation of rank is important for the group to be effective. modern armies--larger than traditional groups of hunter-gathers, pastoralists and farmers--know this almost instinctively. lower ranks effectively promise to be willing to die for the greater good (good of the group).
Violence always was and is the exception, not the rule. From gangsters to generals (same thing), it's a matter of a culture's rewarding it. But our species is very disturbed by it even to the point of exploiting it for "fun." It "gets your attention," as Pinker's first line shows.
Shouldn't we be erradicating those incapable of normal human action ? Why should such a profound deficiency be kept alive ? I mean , isn't the death penalty about ridding unchanging unredeemable individuals from society ? I am not a proponent of the death penalty . I think a monolith like government attact the very sort of people who would abuse that power and thusly should not have it .
Maybe insignificant bu I want to touch in the argument about the differences in murderers and non-murderers and the differences in the frontal cortex. What if the frontal cortex was disrupted pre experiment or most likely, during the murder. What if you performed the experiment on an individual who has not committed murder and then committed a murder and see if his frontal cortex is the same. This would be a difficult experiment, I understand, but I at least want the question to reach an audience who is worth discussing it with. What if the frontal cortex is different because of the situation you are claiming arose due to the difference itself.
I find it fascinating that our brains seem to have evolved, in some ways, to compensate and regulate the perfectly evolved function of other parts of the brain.
Nonviolence works because it potentially has on its side the mightiest military machine the world has ever seen. In a vacuum the oppressor could use extreme violence, like genocide or torture, but that could raise the U.S. military against it. Also I do not see how nonviolence could work against an invading army.
Around 40:00 : the guy argues that there has been only *one war* "of the old fashioned variety" meaning about countries fighting it out with each other over "border disputes", and that is the Erytrean war. I'm quite puzzled at how the people who say that there's no war now, seem to have defined modern warfare out of the definition of "war". That means that the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Lybian war, the Syrian war, Yemen and so on, are not wars, apparently. So while modern warfare might be of a different nature than "traditional" warfare, I don't see how defining these out of the definition of war in any way contributes to a fact-based discussion about "violence". Surely they are still cases of state, international, violence exercised by states and similar groups? The guy finishes his argument without mentioning, *at all* , the endless war state in the middle east (and he does at some point mention "dueling"), and concludes that there's practically no more violence, and the news is comforting... I find that rather crazy to go through a whole argument about how violence is gradually receeding, which gives me the impression that the only way you can come to that conclusion is by pretending that any modern form of violence does not exist...
9 лет назад
I went to visit my daughter whom was going to school in Boston and while visiting the Harvard Book store she spotted a book that she thought that I would be interested in and bought it for me. The name of the book is How the Mind Works and of course this is a subject that would fascinate me. The author of the book is Steven Pinker and I must say that I learned a lot from him and the book was a hit with me.
very interesting. I always enjoy these intellectual discussions. Thanks
9 лет назад
I can't think of anything that gives me more pleasure than exchanging thoughts with intelligent people like yourself. I'm retired and have gone through all the bullshit from the Army to corporate America.
9 лет назад
There is a lot of excellent information for three bucks. Good for you.
+Ernest A. Pérez L. Best book on consciousness and the brain I've read recently is "the feeling of what happens" by Antonio Damasio. I'm gonna look for the pinker book though because I haven't read him yet
There is a problem with your proposal of civil resitance.Our government is training Homeland Security to respond to civil resistance, "there will be no civil disobedience."
Perhaps the dysfunctional home environment played a causal role in the Colorado murderer's undeveloped prefrontal cortex and amygdala? On top of that, his family didn't eat much fish.
I'm no scholar, but I am a BleedingHeart Liberal, and as a childhood spent time not with family, other than dysfunctional one, and should have been aborted since I was unplanned and so's my sister, into a family who had 2 kids too many already, so it was inevitable when Dad just was never there literally and Mom struggling with 4 kids, 2 orphanges, foster care,neglected unwanted unloved, but not bitter as adult, but I have never been about violence, unless standing up for others, even more so than myself. I simply have no wish to do harm to other lifeforms, even mean people. Humans are too young of a species and knows far less than it thinks it does, so only one response for any human to another, acceptaqnce for who they are and care for them, maybe plant a seed that they too should care as I do. Love comes from a different place in the brain, I think, as does insight, as does the thought process and memory system related to communication and survival and violence in my opinion can be overcome, doesn't mean it's easy.
Did that dude just refer to Cain and Abel in a factual statement, while leading a scientific debate? He may as well have said, "Adam and Eve were violent, so that's where it started."
He was referring to both the glorifying and hatred of violence. As a myth, it's a perfect example and one that all western listeners know. If he said Romulus and Remus would you have said that same thing?
Why use any fictional characters mixed in with a factual statement? It's no different than saying, "Birds have been flying even before Tucan Sam." And what modern religion involves that Ancient Roman myth? The Romulans are from Star Trek and they're fake too.
Joe Charogoff "Why use any fictional characters" ? Because fairy tales are our cultural references, shorthand methods of conveying complex ideas. For example, when we say the earth is in the Goldilocks zone do you automatically assume bears are involved or do you take the bit that makes sense in the context?
differous01 'No, some things are clearly metaphorical or an example.' But, some things aren't. We judge that based on the speaker's speech and the context of the information. In the 'Cain and Abel' case, it was delivered very a-matter-a-factually.
I just love to listen to these talks, it's like TED on steroids... But something one of the panelmembers said made me a little uneasy with his statements as it seems to me like John Mueller have forgoten all about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - was that a slip of the mind? I would also very much like to know if he counts armed resistance vs a government as civil war, or is that depending of the scale of it? There has been several border disputes in parts of Asia, but he only mentions one in Africa - is it due to the scale of these disputes or is it only due to it would influence he's statement?
Terrorism is what the others do; what we do is always noble and good intentioned. So depends on what side of the conflict you are, some call you hero or freedom fighter, or a terrorist. Now governments have diced that term into many other areas, so we got psychological terrorism, economic terrorism, even peaceful terrorism; and also they have termed peaceful demonstrations as terrorist demonstrations, movements for legalisation of certain things that the public uses anyhow have also been called "helping" terrorists, etc etc... individual persons like rapists have also been called terrorist of the victim and for that they expanded enormously the definition of rape also.... I guess I can call my neighbours' loud music as noise terrorism.
John argues that "war is an idea." Well eating animals is also an idea, an ideology, you don't have to do it. The parallel I would draw is also with slavery. Animal welfare activists are jumping up and down and saying let's not eat and wear them anymore, let's not be speciesists and carnists.
If civil resistance has higher chance to achieve goal, Hong Kong protestors now increasing irrational behaviour is less likely to win this battle? I hope the horrible fighting each other can cool down sooner than later
A bit of a stacked panel according to Pinker's thesis agenda. I love Krauss and I don't deny he is fair-minded but I think it might have been fairer to include critics of Pinker such as Brian Ferguson
the murderers are now prisoners...these are the brains of prisoners, not murderers, the murders were done probably years ago. I'd like to see a control group of prisoner's brains who are not murderers
what about the most common, pervasive and harmful type of violence in our society: parents spanking, hitting and abusing their own children in physical and verbal ways? I would love to have seen Stefan Molyneux inin this panel
Betas, and lower ranked individuals in any human or animal group, love this talk... it is an excuse to not face their bullies; in the case of the animals they have a reason to fear and evade violence. As in groups, individuals or tribes, so it is with nations. Some are more violent than others, and in the end in one way or another it is over resources, and control of the others' freedom to choose, specially if they choose what you don't want.
@@ishthefish9006 So say the betas. It is a rank assembled tribe, humans, like chimps and other primates, the hierarchies we have are not artificial in full, we use artificial means to secure and enhance the hierarchies humans have always had. You don't imagine the humans of primitive times valued the hunters who faced dangers to survive and feed the rest the same as the cowards who stayed behind with the women do you?? That valuation is called a HIERARCHY. And those who cannot climb it, resent it. But in many ways it is what gives life meaning. It is only those who can climb it and compete that can also do some REAL good in the world... the rest say helping their grandma with the groceries is doing good in the world.
Can anyone say what the increase amount of blue color in the brain of a murderer means compared to a "normal" individual? btw. weird theory but is it maybe cause of the huge amount of sushi japanese eat, that they have rly low crime rates?
They seem to have a blindspot when it comes to the terrible war in the Balkans following the break up of Yugoslavia. And an equally convenient one when it comes to the slave markets of todays Libya. And no mention of Iraq, Syria, Yemen or the some 1000 US military installations around the world imposing the kind of dictators who stomp on any dissident long before any protest can begin on the populations. How can anyone be said to be having an honest discussion about violence when they never mention the explicit violence of US hegemony around the world? Well thats easy, when your panel and organisation is filled with the relatives of the Ashkanazi Zionists that control Wall Street, the US goverment and almost every faculty of the Ivy league universities. Simples!
my philosophy: "power grows out of the barrel of a gun.", Mao, & "a well regulated militia [a citizens' militia nationwide], being necessary to the security of a free state..."-- ie, ''an armed society is a polite society.'' R.A. Heinlein; ** ie, Q: why do humans engage in violence? A: because their intended victims have given them sufficient reason to believe THAT THEY GET AWAY WITH IT!; ie, properly ARM the POTENTIAL victims, & watch how consistently The Violent CHOOSE OTHER VICTIMS! (or, choose other things to do, duh, DUH!); better answer: because most people can NOT CONCEIVE OF warding-off attackers, & can only believe that calling the 'authorities' is the only appropriate reaction to being attacked
still called erika not erik, kinda surprised, wonder if that is still the case 5 years later. and hmm i wonder why erika was interested in civil resistance...
Am I the only one who thinks this is a dumb question? I mean I'm as layman as it gets but even I know that even with all the bells and whistles of our enlarged brains we still have all the parts that allowed us to survive up to this point. Fight or flight, anger, animosity, these parts of our being were useful, and they don't simply disappear now that we've built complex societies and social structures. The question itself leads to our origins of survival. Granted I've only watched half the vid so far but it should have started with that instead of modern usage and conflicts. This debate seems to be putting the cart before the horse imo.
I withdrew my Like... Chenoweth did not define what the words success and failure mean and she used them all the time. Right after that, Pinker speaks about terrorism and also doesn't define what he means by failure.
24:00 Let me answer your question. You take the facts about (as you mentioned so far) humans and create a system around it. The system in which we live was influenced mainly by religion(s), and designed hundreds of years ago. It is not suited for today's world.
One only needs to look at the Russian incursion into Ukraine to see that conventional warfare is almost impossible to conduct, especially when tactical economics are orchestrated between a bevy of nations. It doesn't really help that Russia is one of the most comically inept nations in history, oftentimes destroying itself as completely as any of its contenders, but there it is.
it is very strange to listen to a group of very intelligent people speak on a subject they clearly do not understand in any capacity. Its not very common that a panel of such people put forth such effort into the study of a subject and come out without a great deal of knowledge of the subject. They may have many facts and statistics on the subject but from what i know it is very hard for someone who is not and most likely has never been violent to understand the origin of it
I compare the hunter gatherer effect to inner city organized gangs .... they act remarkably the same ...always probing and attacking unprovoked in superior numbers .
Every behavior and action has 100% to do with the brain. Violence is no exception to this fact. The problem here is, the brain is *far* too complicated to simply lay out how everything is influenced. There is a reason some people won't hurt others, no matter the situation or consequence, while others would be delighted to hurt some just for the sheer pleasure of doing it. It's all in the brain.
Daejin Tye The answers are simple but our society relies on Victorian logic, that we can dominate every problem with hard intellect, whereas the truth is far simpler, far more elegant and something even a child would understand. For example, computer developers have spent 50+ years making robots that can climb stairs using digital computers however there is a guy who makes 'insects' with only 6 transistors, they can walk, negotiate objects and work just as well is you bend a leg or remove legs. Sometimes the answer is in the opposite direction.
I wish there was more representativeness rather than 6 white men and 1 woman of colour. As if they were the ones that would most know what is to live under multiple forms of violence... Very disappointing, although a nice debate.
Competition; examining competition might have been a more revealing way towards arriving at what the origins of violence are. It must be that competition is related to or tributary of violence and opposite the idea of cooperation which is tantamount to the idea of "good faith' and all the inclinations that go with it. Our Lots, all thrown in together ... but that would be Socialism to Communism. China seems to be arriving at Marx's final stage in the economic evolution that was his legacy thought still has a long ways to go before the disparities are ironed out. Wake me up in 1,000 years ... won't that be interesting.
