Slashdot Mirror
Humans Are Nicer Than We Think
derekmead writes "While everyone's always waxing like Lord Tennyson about nature being 'red in tooth and claw,' neuroscience and psychology are quietly telling us that we may be innately nicer than we think. Sure, we're not cuddly little bunny rabbits, but many lines of evidence over the past few decades have pointed toward some distinctly physical underpinning of basic morality and aversion to violence, implying that humans (and probably many other animals to) have a strong built-in 'try-not-to-punch-that-dude' mechanism. A recent study published in the journal Emotion, by psychologists Fiery Cushman, Allison Gaffey, Kurt Gray, and Wendy Mendes, provides some further evidence for the link, as the authors put it, 'between the body and moral decision-making processes.'"
Be nice, dude.
I always know that Human Beings are basically nice
Take for instance -
I am a human being
and
I am a nice guy
Have a nice day :)
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I would guess this journal doesn't have many subscriptions on the planet Vulcan.
Humans have a built in mechanism that focuses more of their attention towards bad things, "not nice" people, etc. Because it's the not nice things / people that have a higher probability of killing you and thus deserve more of your attention.
to publish the study freely :-))
Is that his stage name? What a badass name though, seriously.
Perhaps its because when you punch that dude you risk being expelled from the gene pool due to death or damage to reproductive organs. Nature (and thus humans) are usually only violent when violence increases their chance to reproduce it has nothing to do with morality.
Because I'm a huge asshole.
In other words, humans are cynical?
They can rip each other to shreds if the mood takes them.
On the highway? no, when anonymous? no.
And when in puberty? not a chance. The human child is a outright evil thing. Ever deal with a pack of teenage girls in a middle school? Satan is nice compared to those evil things.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
We're pack animals.
This is outrageous. Who do these scientists think they are?
New Yorkers are humans, too!
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
My observation is that everybody cheats when they can. How does that make people "nice". Yes, I am sociophobic.
That's actually a good point. What does being anonymous do to the results of this study?
"Many other animals TOO." Not "TO."
But back to your point, in the long run it might be the opposite, that people tend to remember more good things while mind works to forget the crappy stuff
I am very sorry, but I need to point out one very important thing ---
Contrary to your assertion, the human mind remembers bad events that create bad vibes much more than good feeling events
Here's one experiment that you can carry out yourself ---
Go do 100 good things to one person --- open door for the person, pour drink for the person, say "Hello", sweep the yard, clean the car ... and so on
After you do all that, do one bad thing to that same person --- just one will do
You can slap that person, or punch him/her, or kick the cat or whatever
See how that person will react
Will that person forgive your one bad act because you have done 100 good things for him/her?
Or will that person remember you forever for that one bad thing that you did to him/her --- and forgot all about the other 100 good things that you have done?
Go try that out yourself, and see the result
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Wait a minute. Does this mean that all those times I've thought people were being nasty they were either being ignorant or incompetent? That would mean everyone is dumber than I thought. In some ways that's easier to believe.
A large part of our being nice relies on laws.
But look what happens to people "above the law". Copyright Legislators? Not Nice.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You mean the individuals of species that live in large groups need to get on with each other and not attack and kill each other all the time?
Who knew?
(Well, almost all biologists and anthropologists for decades, but hey)
People are indeed nice, because they have learned via evolution (social or biological) that cooperation is more productive overall than fighting (just ask military people what is the reason for professional armies and how many soldiers shoot in the air during battles). However, the civilization system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. And thus, the level of psychopathy is proportional to the wealth/power. Being anti-human is a requirement to become very powerful in our paradigm.
Just make a search on "iterative prisoner's dilemma" and you will see that as long as defection is not rewarded WAY higher than cooperation (it should be higher though - one time cheating is usually profitable) people tend to cooperate. Make the reward for defection really big and well....people will cheat.
After all wealth is tight with survival chances and longevity so there is a very good biological incentive to seek wealth. The system rewards bastards, so we tend to become bastards.
I hope I am clear enough.
Did any one think of the fuzzy bunnies from One Crazy Summer ? They were really soft and cuddly till they KILL YOU!!
We substituted the coffee Slashdot normally drinks with "Sandoz Crystals", Lets see if they notice the difference
You are plenty clear enough for me, so I don't need to mirror your fine point.
System rewarding bastards applies to many levels of politics. I'll also add the economy of synergy effects - all the bastards are within 100 miles of each other, controlling 150+ million of us across the country. It's absolutely the Prisoner's Dilemma because we can't coordinate enough to vote a third party in.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
For instance, it is known that bees have an unusual form of heredity which means that sisters are more closely related than they are to the next generation. Did the bee colony co-evolve cooperation and this hereditary mechanism? Why are bonobos socially cooperative and other chimpanzee races much less so?
Another example: wrens. In the breeding season these birds are strongly territorial. In winter they will find suitable hiding places and cluster in groups to keep warm.
Once again, correlation doesn't imply causation, and this subject is well worth investigating because of its potential importance to survival as population increases.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
An innate aversion against kicking and punching is not the same as being nice. The difference becomes apparent when a human is presented with a more indirect way of screwing over some innocent victim. People will go for it every time.
We are not nice and what the researchers have found is probably a part of our "being evil machinery". It prevents us from exposure to immediate retribution and helps us screw over others in safer ways.
Being nice involves not screwing over someone, not even indirectly, because of the delusional idea and mistaken sense of empathy that the other is a nice guy just like you.
Feeling uneasy watching someone smash a baby for no reason only proves that most humans a not psychotic murderers. I don't know what the author thinks of humans but this is certainly below my expectations.
We are conditioned from a very early age to accept violence as the norm, all you have to do is look at the news everyday and its just doom and gloom and violence, this is conditioning. An opposite example is the Amish communities where violence hardly ever occurs and the basic human instincts of empathy and sympathy and generally just being nice have not been corrupted by the Media.
Why not post a Cyclists vs Cars story? Then watch all the really nice people have a reasonably adult discussion.
*fingers crossed* I totally promise such a discussion won't degenerate to people arguing the person with the biggest penis has right of way on THEIR road, and everyone else is collateral damage *fingers crossed*
Humans are nice, yes; kin selection has made us opt for things clearly disavantageous as individuals (like honesty and non-violence to the weaker) but advantageous to our groups - being the group whatever you feel like (co-citizens, brothers of faith, nation, teenagers, team supporters, vegans/vegetarians/omnivorous...).
But ironically, when groups collide, the same kin selection with the same "group over individual" genetically embued mentality make us insane, violent and savage - war, team supporters fights, raids...
It's almost like genetics proving Anonymous is right - none of us are as cruel as all of us .
Nerdy news for your nerdy needs? http://www.soylentnews.org Soylent News is people!
"between the body and moral decision-making processes"? Where exactly do they think the moral decision-making processes are located?
Don't mix poetry and science. Both have their place and time, but they are not the same.
Most Massachusetts drivers would probably disagree with you.
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
i don't think God exists, can we have objective (as oposed to subjective) moral duties and values in the absence of a god?
if so, what we think is right is merely the result of evolutive advantages of morality and nothing else.
see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqaHXKLRKzg
also let me suggest http://www.philosophybro.com/ as a rudimentary and entertaining introduction to philosophy bro..
It's smarter to be nice thats why.
If you ever were a kid and you went and punched another kid that kid is probably going to punch you back and harder than you punched them. If you pull a cats tail it's probably going to scratch or bite you. People learn to be nice because usually that is the only way to live a long life. Mean people don't get as much sympathy when something bad happens to them, and people who like violence often don't live very long unless they become professionals.
Are people nice? Yes but people are nice because they learn to be. In many cases people are nice because they have to be. Experiments have shown the exact opposite of this result. The Milgram experiment proves that deep down people aren't nice when no one is looking or when some authority tells them to be mean. The Stanford prison torture experiment proves the exact opposite as well in that people actually enjoy hurting others when they know they can get away with it.
The article is disinformation. It's looking at neuroscience (what people think and feel) vs what they actually do. People tend to do whatever is easiest, then they do what is smarter, and if being mean is easier and smarter than being nice then people can be mean.
People are indeed nice, because they have learned via evolution (social or biological) that cooperation is more productive overall than fighting (just ask military people what is the reason for professional armies and how many soldiers shoot in the air during battles). However, the civilization system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. And thus, the level of psychopathy is proportional to the wealth/power. Being anti-human is a requirement to become very powerful in our paradigm.
Just make a search on "iterative prisoner's dilemma" and you will see that as long as defection is not rewarded WAY higher than cooperation (it should be higher though - one time cheating is usually profitable) people tend to cooperate. Make the reward for defection really big and well....people will cheat.
After all wealth is tight with survival chances and longevity so there is a very good biological incentive to seek wealth. The system rewards bastards, so we tend to become bastards.
I hope I am clear enough.
Only people aren't nice when they are prison guards. Suddenly they become mean torturers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://www.prisonexp.org/
The group conditions the individual. In specific the most elite members of the group condition the rest of the group with their morality.
Then the brain learns to react differently to stimuli. The same could be done in reverse and people could be made to like the smell of blood or get high from the sight of pain or turned on by murder. It's all possible due to neuroconditioning.
Morality is fine as long as you do whats in your self interest.
They usually end up in prison. Its only a tiny minority of them that end up doing well and thats probably despite rather than because of their mental state. If you think all CEOs are like that then I'm afraid you've been watching too much TV, most of them are just normal people who worked hard and - in part - got lucky or knew the right people.
If we have a fundamental aversion to violence, then why are we entertained by it?
I don't think it's the violence, per se. The violence in movies and video games are more wish fulfillment - getting the bad guy and giving him what he deserves.
Grand Theft Auto, OTOH, .....fantasy - a "what if I went completely ape shit sociopath" type of fantasy.
Then it gets boring.
And I find as I get older, the violence get more and more boring. I really don't like action movies. When the fight scenes come, I fidget until they're over - Jackie Chan may be the exception because he's dancing more than he's fighting. Star Wars, the third movie where Vader is created (I don't give a shit what the real title is), put me to sleep - and still does.
And with any basic knowledge of physics, action movies are incredibly annoying. My biggest pet peeve - when someone shoots someone the shooter doesn't move and the person being shot flies back several meters. I wish there was a zombie Newton that would eat all the brains in Hollywood - but the poor bastard would starve.
"to"... I do not think that word means what you think it does....
Recent dutch new story, some kids taped a pet mouse to a firework rocket. Why was this news? Because reporting each and every day the billions of pets NOT mistreated would make the news run a bit long.
News is something that is exceptional, not the norm. Today the sun came up, is NOT news. Today the sun didn't come up, that is news.
No need to dig deeper.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I have always found the trolley model to be absurd. If we were being realistic, then there would be other solutions. The same dilemma was re-written for river tribesmen, and I much prefer this version. As far as I can remember, it goes like this...
You fish on the great river. There are five people in your boat: four people who row, and a fat guy who sits in the back and baits the hooks. Your grandfather has stories of a great and fierce crocodile that lives in the river, and kills entire boat crews, but your generation have never seen it...
(1)
The crocodile appears and comes for the boat. He swims much faster than you can row, but you start to row anyway. The fat guy was standing up at the back, and he falls in. Suddenly the boat is going faster: you might get to shore, but then the fat guy is lost. Do you turn around and try to pick him up? Most people would keep going, but feel that they ought to turn back.
(2)
The crocodile appears and comes for the boat. He swims much faster than you can row, but you start to row anyway. The fat guy was standing up at the back, but does not fall in. You know if he falls in, the boat will go faster, and he may distract the crocodile too. Do you push him in? Most people would not push, but would think that the four for one exchange is reasonable.
(3)
You are the fat guy. The crocodile appears and comes for the boat. If you jump off the boat, the others might make it to shore. Most people would think that the four for one exchange is reasonable: they hope they would be noble enough to jump, but suspect the wouldn't actually do it.
Frank: Here's to Ben!
Everyone; Here's to Ben!
Frank walks over to Jeffrey and punches him in the face.
Frank grabs Jeffrey by the collar and repeats himself
Frank: Here's to Ben!
Jeffrey: Here's to Ben.
Frank: Be Polite!
Jeffrey: Here's to Ben!
Politeness in Action!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
From TFA: A runaway trolley is about to run over and kill five people, but a bystander who is standing on a footbridge can shove a man in front of the train, saving the five people but killing the man. Is it permissible to shove the man?
Answer: Hell no it's not. If you aren't willing to jump yourself to save those 5 people, you have no right to force someone else to sacrifice themselves. And if you are, you don't have to push the man either.
But I don't eat the brains, that'd be wrong.
You seem to ignore the fact that large numbers of people enjoy actual violence, injury and death. Most notable would have been the gladiators and others that were killed off in large numbers in front of very large crowds almost every day. More recently we just love the actual crashing and hurting involved in sports (American Football, Football, Rugby, Boxing etc). Not so much to the death now-a-days, but we do love our actual violence even though it's in the organised sports realm.
That and we seem to have copious quantities of examples of warfare and the barbarism (gulags, the killing fields, ethnic cleansing, the "resource wars" in Africa, etc etc), which by all accounts all too many people enthusiastically participate in.
I guess that I'm thoroughly unconvinced by this study.
by using extensive training and de-sensitization techniques, such as introducing young children to the concept of simulated rape and murder for entertainment, we can train a generation of children who will have no problem flying a remotely piloted vehicle and killing random strangers about whom they know nothing other than that the computer indicates the person is a 'target'.
by 'simulated rape and murder' i am referring to GTA 3, and by 'remotely piloted vehicle' im talking about what the US is doing in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and several other countries right now
Study after study. Paper after paper. Knowledge upon knowledge. We keep learning the same things about ourselves over and over and over again. Corruption is a problem of opportunity more than of character. We observe that people who believe they are "on top" are more likely to cheat and lie. We observe that when we know who we are dealing with and they know us, we are less likely to do 'bad things.'
It's all part of our human nature. We see it in everything we do. When we get into "road rage" we don't identify the people, we identify the car and call 'it' an asshole and handle it however we feel we need to. When we, people, deal with "non-people" things, we are assholes.
We have built-in empathy for others. But when we are able to see people as non-people, we can do truly terrible things to them.
With all that said, there are STILL individuals capable of overcoming this problem. These rare people can look upon the need and suffering of others and not feel a pang of guilt or a desire to help. We call them sociopaths, but we also call them leaders, bosses and idols.
Within their own social group, maybe they're not overtly violent, but as soon as the brown monkeys sufficiently outnumber the green monkeys, the green monkeys are toast.
The whole of human history shows that whenever there's an "out" group (minority religion, skin color, language, intoxicant preference, ...) or weaker group (women, or numerically/technologically inferior tribe), they will be persistently damaged by the "in", or stronger group.
"Nice" people don't wage crusades, jihads, genocides, chattel or debt slavery, rape (or other forms of less violent sexual predation), "honor killing", ... and, as a result, there aren't very many "nice" people in the gene pool.
Additionally, look at how many women are drawn to bear children by "bad boys", cheating on their less-bad SOs to do it, or landing a "steady guy" after the baby arrives, which further reduces the amount of "nice" in the gene pool.
and it's one of the central tenets of the world's oldest oldest psychological tradition, most commonly known as Buddhism.
We are basically good. We treat others badly because we are not very good at dealing with our own suffering.
CJD is a bitch.
People are more complex than a simple markov chain can model.
What is the next newsflash for nerds?
"Randomly applying theory x yields no new information!"
"Ignoring everything that doesn't agree with your viewpoint doesn't make your argument stronger."
"Sometimes you are wrong."
"Potato chips are bad for you."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2707959&cid=39248607 Since the late 1980s, the game theory, strategies to play iterated prisoner's dilemma etc have led to a fundamental understanding of how altruism and cooperation could evolve. Chapter 13, "Nice guys finish first" in The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is a good starting point. But it is slightly dated, circa 1992. There are more recent materials too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Who are always saying fundemental morality comes from God and nonbelievers are all evil types itching to go on crime sprees.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
From the information I gathered by reading the article, the only thing I see trying to be told here is, that most people would try to avoid inflicting direct harm to a person next to them, probably because of their conscience.
It doesn't say nor deny that there are still many other people, who have a lower level of morality and have no problem with hurting other people.
It seems like this project lacks a wider range of different test subjects.
There is no data about people who for example are used to violent media (games & movies),
domestic violence (husbands beating their wives), killing people (war veterans, serial killers).
Additionally there are no tests including different scenarios.
It is more likely that one person would hurt another, if he is told that the other one is 'evil'.
The motives and incentives for food, territory, sex or whatever seem to exist already and the blood pressure is a consequence of deciding to engage. The motives are where we find ourselves at odds socially. It does not follow that we avoid violence just because it raises our blood pressure. I think any animal about to "take on" another animal for food, territory, sex or whatever is going to prepare itself (blood pressure) for possibly lethal consequences.
Have you ever had your blood pressure rise before public speaking? That is a positive service to your fellow human. It is more complicated than "high blood pressure" = negative social behavior.
"evidence for the link between the body and moral decision-making processes.""
Yes, the body as a strong influence on my morals, but the personality too.
... given one is certain about a future incoming attack.
OTOH, if an attack is sure NOT to happen, the worst defense is an attack (good or bad).
Would we have some hardwired heuristics for dealing with "the prisoner's dilemma"?
Either we are nicer than we think or maybe we think we are terrible. It shows me we have a poor self image. Those psychologists should try to answer why we feel like that. Maybe it's because we all really wanted to be held by our mothers a little longer?
Because we are the animal with the most complex social structure, the patterns are hardest to understand. But solving the problems of species survival can either be left up to chance - in which case we may eliminate ourselves in a Goetterdammerung of mass extinction - or we can attempt to understand "what works" and seek to maximise it. Currently the dominant social theory in the USA is, in effect, that the ideal is a predator/prey structure with human beings in both roles. It would be nice to know if this is likely to work out or whether it will result in a self-inflicted event like the Civil War of the 1900s.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Pabst Blue Ribbon!
This "niceness" requires physical interaction (the ability to evaluate the person's physiological response, through mirror neurons and such). Most of us are hesitant to shove a gun in someone's face and tell them they can't smoke that joint, or they have to pay someone else's medical bills, or they can't marry that guy. However, we are perfectly happy to send government to do those same things. Just as long as we can't see it. Out of sight, out of mind.
FTFS:
"And probably many other animals to"? Really? I swear to God the next time the editors of this site let such a glaring and obvious spelling mistake through on the summary I'm gonna personally head down there and rip their fucking heads off.
So we're more like pot heads than we realize, basically. Looks like a great legalization campaign in here somewhere.
I8-D
... may have had something to say about this.
If you lived in the world prior to the expansion of Christianity, humans were essentially fodder. Life was cheap and disposable. Heck, even after Christianity rose old habits died pretty hard.
We act basically decently because of structures that pound the need for decency into you from a young age. Parents, community, etc. If you remove those constraints, you will be surprised how bad people will become.
I hate to use Nazi Germany as an example, but humans can fall very far, very quickly. Not everyone. There was still pockets of decency. But I suspect they got their decency prior to the rise of Hitler.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
--
.nosig
Heart Rate and Blood Pressure were their metrics? Even a psycho-path that enjoys killing will have his heart race and his blood pressure go up during the act of committing violence. There is no indication of pleasure or aversion based on that measure.
The only thing this study proved is that acts of violence create a level of psychological/physical stress. Going on vacation causes stress!!!
I read about this theory years ago, which I've always found to be particularly interesting.
tl;dr: Human beings are naturally nonviolent. 6-7,000 years ago, desertification in northern Africa caused the humans there to become desperate for food and resources, and thus violent in order to survive. These cultures in turn spread out over the entire world (obviously able to out-compete peaceful peoples). And now various cultural practices have continued teaching violent behavior to people generation after generation when there's no longer any such natural "need" for such violence.
Liberty in your lifetime
*I use the term "natural duel" in a technical sense that excludes the artifices we have known as "duels" in civilization: Two individuals (males) in an open natural setting -- not in an arena or ring -- using everything at their disposal to hunt down and kill their rival. In the human case this includes the use of tools/weapons of their own making as well as strategy and improvisation.
Seastead this.
Liberia, Gitmo, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Omarska, Amanche, and the list is never ending.
We are all cut from the same genetic cloth as the monsters who roamed those places. We kid ourselves into believing that *our* tribe is better than that, when in fact we are worse.
Have gnu, will travel.
Even Bruce Lee held that view - walk, if not RUN, from conflict. I.E.-> Wild animals for instance KNOW they do NOT have hospitals in case of injury.
So, for example:
Let's say 2 mountain lions go @ it: One dies right there on the spot during battle.
Well, in a way? Perhaps HE is the lucky one!
(I state that because odds are STRONG the other is gashed up and can develop gangrene, & thus, die in misery, slowly, rotting to death!)
APK
P.S.=> Sometimes? I think animals are MUCH smarter than man is in ways (& as Gary Oldman said in "Dracula"? "There is much to be learned from beasts...") & I have said this in particular of one animal online more than a few times for decades now - "DOGS ARE BETTER PEOPLE THAN PEOPLE".
I find it interesting that these scientists are essentially crafting a justification for that which most (and I say most) religions try to foster in us already. In the end we're talking about being nice and moral. It's ironic that many will now accept morality because they like the messenger. Moreover, they will defend the message and the messenger. But if say Christ, the Dahli Lama, or the Pope wants to assert the need for morality it's suddenly chic to be immoral.
... but when you throw in a little greed and organizational hierarchy and chase it down with some tribalism and groupthink, we're still more likely to screw each other in the name of competition than cooperate in the name of the Common Good.
So I came here right after reading this article in the Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-police-man-boy-post-puppytorture-videos-to-youtube-20120309,0,609661.story
Now, do you think I can agree?
"I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing
'Til they got a hold of me.
I opened doors for little old ladies,
I helped the blind to see.
I got no friends 'cause they read the papers.
They can't be seen, with me and I'm gettin' real shot down
And I'm feeling mean.
No more Mister Nice Guy
No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
They say, he's sick he's obscene
I got no friends 'cause they read the papers.
They can't be seen, with me and I'm gettin' real shot down
And I'm, I'm gettin' mean.
No more Mister Nice Guy
No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
They say, he's sick he's obscene
My dog bit me in the leg today
My cat clawwed my eyes
Mom's been thrown out the social circle
And dad has to hide
I went to church, incognito
When everybody rose, the Reverand Smith,
He recognized me,
And punched me in the nose
He said,
No more Mister Nice Guy
No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
He said, you're sick, you're obscene
No more Mister Nice Guy
No more Mister Clean
No more Mister Nice Guy
He said, you're sick, you're obscene
"
Yep...Alice had this going on a LONG time ago...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
.....and hug you and squeeze you, pet you and love you, and I will call you George.
All of which are the end result of genetics
"However, the civilisation system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. "
BINGO, we have a winner!
Take, for example the rules of capitalism. (I could cite other economic systems but this one is more relevant for the moment.) Capitalism seems to favour those who are more willing to cut corners, without crossing the line into illegal behaviour. I'll give a real life example from a company I worked for.
In the early 1980's the Clean Water Act was in the process of ramping up to full enforcement. Due to legal challenges, it took about 10 years for the EPA to come down hard on water pollution. I worked as a chemist for a plating company and knew that some VERY nasty stuff ( cyanide, hexavalent chrome, cadmium etc.) could be simply put down the drain. My company did something about the dumping even before there was a law banning it. As a result, we had a pretty sophisticated and costly waste treatment facility. Now comes the part where (unfair) competition comes to play. In the area, all but one plating company, when forced by law to do something about the water pollution. did something to come into compliance (some companies barely met the deadline). This one company refused to comply with the law. It used the competitive advantage of not having an expensive waste treatment system to put several conscientious plating companies out of business because of their low prices (they almost drove the company I worked for out of business). Finally, the EPA got a court order that this rogue company had to install pollution equipment of shut down. This company then had the gall to ask the local plating companies for technical help on how we solved the problem and were able to stay in business. Of course they got no cooperation because they were undercutting everyone with their low prices.
My point is this. Capitalism seems to reward the bad actors while driving the good companies out of business. Last week we discussed if rich people were moral or not. The rich become rich because capitalism favours their bad behaviour. They then lobby for (or against) laws that will give them even more clout so they can get away with even more bad behaviour without risking going to jail. Good as in moral and good as capitalism looks at it are two different things. In recent times, MBAs are taught that the only responsibility of a business is to make a profit. That was corrupted into meaning that morality (ethics), that got in the way of earning profits, was bad. Eventually it became "Greed is good!".
Someone has hijacked roman_mir's account.
I mean, no ill-informed rant about fiat currency or use of words with claimed definitions that are straight of a unicorn's starboard arse.
Clearly an impostor.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A large part of our being nice relies on laws.
That seems self-evident until you think about it. It's perfectly legal for me to tell you to fuck off, it's perfectly legal for me to have sex with your wife as long as she's ok with it and I don't pay her, no statute makes young people call me "sir" (it astounds me that they do), it's not a crime to let the door slam behind me rather than holding it open for you. These things are all a part of whether you're being "nice" or not.
OTOH, look at the violence alcohol prohibition (and today, drug prohibition) wrought. Being nice has nothing whatever to do with legalisms.
Free Martian Whores!
It's your duty!
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Ditto on religion. We don't need a man in the sky dictating rules to us on how to be nice
Based on the measurement method used, and inability to ensure its quantification (is it really disgust, or is it fear?), there is a very easy alternative explanation of their findings - people witnessing harm occurring to others reacted in the way they did because of the subconscious fear of harm being done to them next.
This hardly falls under "morality," and more under "self-preservation instincts." Somebody capable of harming another despite currently held social views that see it as a bad thing is acting irrationally (from the standpoint of an average member of the society). Therefore the determination of their capacity for violence against the observant cannot be established within a reasonable degree of certainty.
Early stages of flight or fight reaction kick in, blood pressure rises, associated biochemical signals correlate to what they observed.
Just a hypothesis, but I do not see it addressed in the article.
No, but there are white harem owners who would be surprised indeed to see a black baby.
Have you ever tried to educate a stupid person?
With all that said, there are STILL individuals capable of overcoming this problem. These rare people can look upon the need and suffering of others and not feel a pang of guilt or a desire to help. We call them sociopaths, but we also call them leaders, bosses and idols.
This is utter trash which I've seen many times now you (and others I presume) incessantly spouting, and it's nonsense. Obviously you are a bitter omega male with NO status or power who spends his life bitching about how evil and wrong all those "leaders" and "bosses" and "idols" are.
You could spend your energy you know, becoming one of those leaders or bosses so that you could Do Good(TM) Things and prove all of those assholes wrong, but no! It's far easier to just sit on your fat ass, pounding out Insightful-sounding rants on your Cheetos colored keyboard, and gathering up those mod points preaching to other souls who feel envious and spiteful about their station in life.
My advice: get a life!
Actually. . , we are not cut from the same cloth.
There are two species roaming the Earth wearing human skins.
Some are genetically incapable of feeling compassion. We call the individuals with that kind of brain structure, psychopaths.
They are at the root of human misery because they look the same as everybody else, and they are engineered to corrupt social systems. When faced with astonishingly horrid in-your-face social faux pas, real humans are programmed to look away and make up excuses to explain away aberrant behaviors so as not to embarrass the offender. This basic response stems from compassion. As fully functioning humans capable of feeling shame, we cannot comprehend that psychopaths just don't/cannot care, and so while trying to put ourselves in their shoes and understand their messed up actions, we fail to recognize that they are in fact simply monsters. We project ourselves onto them and make them into human from our perspective thus allowing them to ignore all social barriers and become presidents and such who commit mass-murder and vast social destruction.
We are not them. Thinking that we are all the same is a big part of the problem.
The other major component of the problem is that regular humans can be programmed and trained to shut down their emotive abilities. Entertainment and news media is designed to do this. Video games which encourage people to kill human target after human target dull emotional response, re-writing the brain. Endless encouragement through TV and movies to compete and double-cross, use game theory to win, the banking system which rewards people for exhibiting psychopathic tendencies, all of this has been built up by psychopaths who wish to make the world into an environment they understand and feel comfortable within.
The rest of us allow this slide into psychopathic programming because we don't recognize that we are different.
Learn about the psychopath, how it works and you will gain protection and the ability to choose against its destructive aims.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with everything in your post.
Aside: Slashdot: put in a fucking post edit system already, kplz'n'thx
take the fluoride out of the drinking water, and replace it with this stuff
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
dammit
Gently reply
The last few decades has been witness to the greatest amount of pussy-fication of the human species that the world has ever seen. What was considered normal 30 years ago would get a kid expelled today. It's disgusting.
This is one topic where the biblical perspective makes a lot of sense. Since we were designed by a loving creator, it makes sense that we have a built-in reluctance to harm each other. Unfortunately, since we chose to do things our way instead of following his original design, our sinful nature all too often overrides his original programming like a computer virus. Fortunately, our creator offers a way to overcome this - sort of like a software update - through Jesus. Incidentally, here's an article discussing the results of another study of the physical-moral connection from a biblical perspective: http://www.reasons.org/articles/does-human-morality-arise-from-brain-chemistry That site also has a lot of other articles discussing scientific topics from a biblical perspective (and the Bible from a scientific perspective) that may interest my fellow slashdotters.
Q: How do you keep a nigger off food stamps?
A: Hide them under his work boots!
Haha. Seriously though, GP is correct. Everything you see around you is the work of genetics acting upon the environment. The human species isn't an assortment of people, it's an assortment of genes....and there most certainly ARE "poverty" genes. I see them walking around every day, all day long.
A large part of our being nice relies on laws.
But look what happens to people "above the law". Copyright Legislators? Not Nice.
You confuse cause and effect.
They're above the law because of their not-nice behaviour, not the other way around.
So, a future like in Star Trek, where humans are mostly nice towards others species might be possible.
[sic]