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Stephen Hawking: Biggest Human Failing Is Aggression
hypnosec writes: Aggression is the human failing that celebrity scientist Stephen Hawking would most like to correct, as it holds the potential to destroy human civilization. Hawking expressed his views while escorting Adaeze Uyanwah — London's Official Guest of Honor — around London's Science Museum. Uyanwah asked Hawking what human shortcomings he would alter, and which virtues he would enhance if this was possible. He replied, "The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory, or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all. A major nuclear war would be the end of civilization, and maybe the end of the human race."
Man's biggest failure may be failing to stand up to aggression, but get RID of aggression? Not going to happen, and not a good thing if it did. Leaders are aggressive.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
This surprise revelation comes from the most brilliant mind of our generation? In other news, the sky is still blue...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
fully agree. No violence.
Well, he proposes that the people who want less aggression might want to leave the planet. Bad news - anyone out there that we encounter is very likely to be even more aggressive if they've survived longer than us. Survival of the fittest isn't just for puny earthlings.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Stephen Hawking needs to stick to cosmology...he doesn't know *shit* about computing and human behavior.
"aggression" is such a ridiculously ill-defined term, it means virtually nothing scientifically
just like all traits of human behavior, evolutionary biologists (esp. psych) drastically oversimplify the most complex behavior we observe in the known universe
the **real problem** is listening to people like Hawking....they pontificate to feel important and get all the research dollars chasing their tails
this is just like Hawking warning of 'ai'....neither 'ai' nor 'aggression' are a threat to humanity....people listening to Hawking on this is the only threat
Thank you Dave Raggett
At some point when they gain enough fame, some clowns seem to think that it is imperative to make statements worthy of beauty pageant contestants in order to polish their legacy.
Note to Hawkings: Aggression is directly tied to competition and without competition, there would be no advancement of the human species. Now shut up and stick to dribbling saliva down your chin.
Greedy sociopaths worldwide manipulate the aggressive en masse via the media, monetary reward and punishment systems, and if necessary, brute force to further their acquisitive nature, which has no end, and ultimately, no point.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I fear we will need to conquer greed and corruption first.
We don't make millions of guns and bombs because it's really fun to shoot them. We make weapons of mass destruction because it's profitable for someone to do so.
And we don't make just a few nukes, or a handful of bullets. No, we make enough to destroy the entire planet several times over, and stockpile ammo for decades while watching the government claim they're running low and order a few more billion rounds on the taxpayer.
Why?
Because it's profitable for someone to do so.
Greed kills. Corruption enables it.
I see on Wikipedia that he supports funding universal healthcare by aggressive government action, though, as well as government aggression towards activities that are perceived to promote climate change. It's a shame he's not more rigorously consistent about this.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
In other news a prominent scientist stated the drive of humanity's greatest advancements is aggression.
Steven Hawking is an expert in his field, but it's cosmology, not sociology. Humans are naturally aggressive because nothing else that was tried succeeded.
"Aggression is the human failing that celebrity scientist Stephen Hawking would most like to correct, as it holds the potential to destroy human civilization"
Without human aggression, we would have all been eaten about 500,000 years ago.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
We have a stone age need to kill each other and seem to take great joy in this, but our intelligent brains have been able to come up with ways to expend great amounts of energy very rapidly.
This is a fatal combination.
Proof of the concept is how at least one Death Cult religion has adherents who actively agitate and attempt to grease the skids for their particular end of the world myth, and actually look forward to it. If that isn't batshit crazy and species eradicating, then nothing is.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
How can something that is innate and built-in to our physical beings be called a "failing?"
It's tantamount to labeling sexual attraction as an abnormality.
Aggression is not a shortcoming that needs to be altered; it is a virtue that needs to be directed and channeled toward constructive purposes.
He most certainly didn't mean the kind of aggression you're describing, which yes, could be a positive thing under certain circumstances -- I think you're possibly conflating aggressiveness with assertiveness.
Greed will destroy us all.
A Prozac bomb?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Yeah, they have some shitty side-effects, but without at least some drive everyone would just sit around smoking weed all day until the winter did us all in.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Does aggression cause problems? Yes. So does complaisance. I for one am glad people have aggression, as opposed to being a bunch of complaisant, laid-back lemmings.
The problem is not excess aggression. It is insufficient self control. The inability to put off current desires in order to obtain greater rewards later on.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
http://xkcd.com/799/
One of the things that really pisses me off whenever anyone comes up with something utopian is that they don't fully address the second order effects, as if that's a rounding error or some shit. Pretend that every human hears and agrees with Stephen Hawking, and actually acts to reduce their own aggressiveness. What about the standing rewards for aggressiveness? They'll just be enhanced! The job that rewards aggression now has an opening if you are one of the few who were unable to reduce your aggression as much as your peers. The woman who wants an aggressive man is now more available to you (and the mirrored sex case is also true, but much less important- and remember here, we're talking about reducing aggression as a first order, being attracted to aggressive people is a second order and NOT related). The conflicts are easier to win with aggression still.
Hawking isn't giving some utopian order, of course- the headline is based on one statement where he discusses a human failing. He's not being a fool here, but any plan to act on it as a first order would.
What you need is to increase the reward for NOT being aggressive. At EVERY level. Women in the workplace already face this problem, but so do guys who aren't pushy in the mating game. Aggression is stacked full of rewards. If you hand those rewards- NOT just financial, but security based, sexual based, and status based- to rational behaving actors, that's your solution.
In the meantime, empathy is a weakness in many cases, and aggression is the correct play in many cases. Until you change that (and not just with punishments that are selectively enforced), you won't see a bit of difference- and you'd be a fool to play along in many cases.
Autism is on the rise... and good luck eliminating aggression from autistic kids.
In one of the Tree House of Horrors episode, the Simpsons came across a monkey's paw. Lisa's wish was peace on earth (which is similar to this removal of aggression). Aliens enslaves Earth soon after. Lovely.
Lots of people get their ideas about human behavior from a one-season science fiction show.
Sorry, Steve-o, it's not aggression that's the problem...
With all due respect to his brilliance, Hawking should stick to his own subject of expertise. Without aggression we would die, pure and simple. Aggression has been a significant factor (arguably) in making us the dominant species on the planet.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
throw some fluoride in the water.
This dystopia is well played out in This Perfect Day
As usual someone has to have totalitarian complete control to implement this. Attempting to de-nature humans has historically led to revolt every time. Even the Chinese eunuchs banded together to manipulate politics and stage revolts.
You attempt to da-nature humans, and humans will return to the roots. Our roots are nomadic hunting/gathering and agrarian famsteading - these are families and small groups of humans free to do what they need to to get to the next day.
Its the pressure cooker of modern society and the denaturing of family and repression of human nature that causes real issues.
I think video games have given rise to a generation of people raised on their butts with fingers on the keyboard where they think they can play the role of God making decisions for humanity like to drug us all so we act proper.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
I compete with myself, trying to be a better person today than yesterday. Does that mean I am aggressive with myself?
The way to a better world is self-improvement. Aum.
I come here for the love
A disabled cripple with a scooter that would run your ass over.
Virtually all sexual species exhibit aggression. The problem is war, not mere aggression. And this problem goes beyond mere conflict between human groups. E. O. Wilson's "The Social Conquest of Earth" describes how group selection dominates the environment and, in the case of human eusocial organization, degrades biodiversity.
The price of civilization is eusocial organization and the price of eusocial organization is war.
One way of addressing this failing is to turn civilization outward, away from the biosphere, toward "war" on lifeless rock in space -- converting it to life -- leaving the biosphere free of human eusocial organization.
Is there a place for humans in the biosphere?
Yes, but only if individual sovereignty is ruthlessly enforced.
Seastead this.
Obligatory xkcd.
I wouldn't put all the blame on him. I doubt he sees himself as an expert on computing or human behaviour, but people, especially the media, blow everything he says (even casually) out of proportion just because he is one of the few "famous smart scientists".
Just read the summary/TFA again and compare it to the xkcd comic.
The aggressive side of Stephen Hawking:
"He once, for example, ran over Prince Charles's toes with his wheelchair. His wife, Jane, commented that one of her husband's regrets in life was not having an opportunity to run over Margaret Thatcher's."
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
Why do you think that "anyone out there that we encounter is very likely to be even more aggressive" than humans? D'you realize that a remarkable thing about people is not how aggressive people are, but rather how well people actually get along? Pretty much only colony insects are as capable of getting along as we are. It is not aggressiveness that makes humans globally dominant.
When technology has advanced to the point where an INDIVIDUAL has the power to bring down the entire planetary civilization (and I'd argue that we are at that point right now), low aggression seems like a rather key survival trait. I'd argue that a civilization that has survived longer than us is probably FAR less aggressive, FAR more willing to take the long view, and FAR more willing to work out cooperative everyone-wins solutions rather than indulging in exploitative zero-sum behavior.
--PM
... is shitty science reporting that takes every offhand remark made by Hawking and spins it into some sort of major story.
Reporting has gotten so bad that people no longer believe we landed on the moon, because articles like this make scientists look like a bunch of dumb assholes with a political agenda.
Man is at the top of planetary food-chains (neglecting the microbial predators). So he preys upon himself (aggression).
Excessive aggression is obviously sub-optimal with too much productive resources diverted to defense. Insufficient aggression might also be sub-optimal by increasing episodic payoffs ("jackpots") to renaissant aggression (classic predator-prey population cycling).
If you cannot totally eliminate aggression, then you should find an optimum lest it return with a vengence.
Y o u c a n ' t j u s t s w i t c h o f f t r a i t s l i k e t h a t .
Stephen Hawking needs to stick to cosmology...he doesn't know *shit* about computing and human behavior.
And what are your credentials that make you such an expert on the topic of human behavior? If you're so smart about the topic what are you doing posting here?
just like all traits of human behavior, evolutionary biologists (esp. psych) drastically oversimplify the most complex behavior we observe in the known universe
Complex behavior can arise from very simple rules. That's something I'm quite sure Hawking understands far better than you or me.
the **real problem** is listening to people like Hawking
Really? Someone arguing for peace? How horrible that we should listen to someone saying we should be less aggressive. [/sarcasm]
New chapter of History Channel: Ancient Aliens: Stephen Hawking is one of the many aliens than are converting us into docile creatures as a preparation for the invasion
No major wars were ever started because of aggression. Horrible atrocities are committed because smart caring individuals want to set right wrongs and bring some form of justice. It does not matter if you are talking about Nazi moment, Russian Communist moment, or the modern day commenter/solider/general on the Israel-Palestine War. Everything is acceptable when you have right on your side.
But that is what you get when you ask an overly arrogant person something outside of their field of expertise.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Stephen Hawking has obviously never listened to Nickelback.
biggest mistake is that we allow a handfull of people be in charge and make decisions for us, while we (or the majority of us) trust them blindly.
The thing that's made humans so successful is our tenacity. I imagine that tenacity would often fall short without some measure of aggression. There's plenty of times where it would be more logical to give up on a task, but we're too pissed-off to let it beat us. Aggression is what fuels that final push that often gets shit done. The problems arise when humans butt heads (or come up against an equally tenacious adversary). Two tenacious beings going at it will destroy their environment in the process of defeating eachother. If we could put differences aside and unite, our mutual aggression would be to our benefit. So, what humans most lack is empathy and understanding.
What is it with people coming way outside of their areas of expertise to offer advice these days? Greatest respect for Hawking as a cosmologist and theoretical physicist, but he should stop talking when it comes to topics that fall outside of those areas of expertise.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
When space is the most hostile environment known to man, being passive seems unlikely to work very well.
Man's biggest failing is WILLFUL STUPIDITY!
Biggest human failing is the inefficient dissemination and storage of knowledge. This is followed closely by propensity for arbitrary differentiation.
next time I want to hear your opinion, I'll beat it outta ya!
My pick for biggest human failing would be confirmation bias or rejecting evidence not consistent with one's preexisting beliefs. It is one of the biggest impairments to rational decision making and one of the most difficult to overcome.
People trying to using aggression to impose their beliefs may be the ultimate expression of confirmation bias.
Wow. Most of the replies here totally confirm his statements.
The article, of course, is light on the details of his comments and I suspect that they were more nuanced. Every human emotion and behavior has its time and place and measure. It's the balance of those things that has to be managed and that balance necessarily changes as society changes. It's obvious that he feels aggression has been championed too much of late.
Of course, on the internet, here on slashdot we post snarkily back that this brilliant man must have meant something stupid with those paraphrased sentiments and short-quoted statements. So, he should sit in his chair and shut up, shouldn't he? Stick to his specialty. Why should he have an opinion, and why should I listen to some guy from an internet article anyhow? Who is he but some guy on the internet?
Oh...
So two space-faring races meet ... who is going to come out on top, all other things being equal? The more aggressive. Aggression is a survival trait. Ask the dodo bird ...
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And fuck off! Grrrr!
the biggest problem of humankind is ... men. This is obvious to anyone who's noticed the sex of people in news footage. If there's trouble somewhere in the world, then it looks like a bunch of guys doing something.
I think Hawking meant humanity's willingness to use violence and/or deadly force to get what one wants instead of reason and persuasion.
"Aggressive in his battle to conquer cancer..." is far different from "aggressively hitting people because he enjoys other people's pain".
I think energy and determination to achieve a pro-social goal are separable from a willingness to harm or otherwise screw over other people to get what you selfisly want. And I think we can have the former without the latter.
--PM
Ants and bees are aggressive as all fuck. Honeybees are notable for being docile, and only certain subspecies at that; honeybees, the most successful organism second only to ants, are among the most violent and aggressive motherfuckers in existence, with the Megapsis species able to quickly kill a human if annoyed, and some of the smaller African apsis species prone to violent and fatal attacks in which they chase you forever and sting you until you die. The more docile species have been propagated by human effort.
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For some reason, this article really pisses me off.
When I saw this my first thought was "Aggression? What about greed?".
Greed is what causes people to harm others in order to take what they want. Rape. Thievery. War. I would argue even slavery and racism. In the main I would think that an absence of greed would do far more to eliminate these things than an absence of aggression.
"Thank you for writing, Concerned. Of course your question touches on one of the basic biological impulses, with all its associated hopes and fears for the future of the species.
I also detect some unspoken questions. Do our benefactors really know what's best for us? What gives them the right to make this kind of decision for mankind? Will they ever deactivate the suppression field and let us breed again?
Allow me to address the anxieties underlying your concerns, rather than try to answer every possible question you might have left unvoiced.
First, let us consider the fact that for the first time ever, as a species, immortality is in our reach.
This simple fact has far-reaching implications. It requires radical rethinking and revision of our genetic imperatives.
It also requires planning and forethought that run in direct opposition to our neural pre-sets.
I find it helpful at times like these to remind myself that our true enemy is Instinct.
Instinct was our mother when we were an infant species.
Instinct coddled us and kept us safe in those hardscrabble years when we hardened our sticks and cooked our first meals above a meager fire
and started at the shadows that leapt upon the cavern's walls.
But inseparable from Instinct is its dark twin, Superstition.
Instinct is inextricably bound to unreasoning impulses, and today we clearly see its true nature. Instinct has just become aware of its irrelevance, and like a cornered beast, it will not go down without a bloody fight.
Instinct would inflict a fatal injury on our species.
Instinct creates its own oppressors, and bids us rise up against them.
Instinct tells us that the unknown is a threat, rather than an opportunity.
Instinct slyly and covertly compels us away from change and progress.
Instinct, therefore, must be expunged.
It must be fought tooth and nail, beginning with the basest of human urges: The urge to reproduce.
We should thank our benefactors for giving us respite from this overpowering force.
They have thrown a switch and exorcised our demons in a single stroke.
They have given us the strength we never could have summoned to overcome this compulsion.
They have given us purpose. They have turned our eyes toward the stars."
Not 100% spot on, but throw a word sub regex or two at it, and it aligns fairly well.
"It may have had survival advantage in caveman days..." Oh, it still does. It's just not the survival of our particular species.
... here you have an opportunity to ask a super scientist some philosophical questions of consequence to Hawking's field of expertise and you blow it?
Fuck.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
...if you were someone who spent every day on this earth confined to your wheelchair and spent a significant amount of that time dominated by your demeaning spouse, you'd probably feel the same way. But for the rest of us, yea, cut off my balls while you're at it.
You have this zero sum mindset. Why does one have to come out on top?
How about, two space faring species meet, trade technology, form a conglomerate socieity which is greater than either of them would be alone, culturally richer, with every individual in both societies better off?
Why have conflict when there is so much to gain by cooperation?
And what makes you think that the aggressive culture will survive to get into space in the first place? The only target for their aggression is going to be themselves, and they're going to have some NASTY weaponry available.
--PM
...'Guest of Honour' in AFRICA? Of course not. That would be just awful, wouldn't it...
Apparently, white countries are much nicer places to live in than African countries. Or do you have another reason for thinking it's a 'crime' to suggest she goes and lives around her OWN people, in her OWN country, in AFRICA?
I'm glad to hear that aggression is not Hawking's biggest failing...
We would have already been living on Mars for quite some time.
What is good for the individuals living in a civilization is not good for the advancement of the civilization.
As long as it does not tear itself apart, but encourages competition, the civilization will advance faster.
Not sure how fast the civilization would advance if everyone cooperated. That makes life too easy and there is no motivation to advance fast.
Civilizations advance fast during wartime and with inter-country competition.
That sucks for the populations of the civilizations, but civilization as a whole advances faster because of it.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Few people are aggressive just for the sake of being aggressive. People get aggressive in response to their incentives.
Nuclear war won't happen because somebody just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It will happen because one country needs more resources than it has, and another country refuses to share.
Provide the technologies (and economic policies) that create an abundance of the essential resources, and the aggression problem will largely resolve itself.
"When technology has advanced to the point where an INDIVIDUAL has the power to bring down the entire planetary civilization (and I'd argue that we are at that point right now), low aggression seems like a rather key survival trait."
That is good. Power to the people.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
When everyone have nukes, nobody will use them.
That is what we called "peace".
New Economic Perspectives
Imagine football without aggression...
...Miranda.....
A californian, theoretical physicist, and London PR agent walk into a science museum. The californian asks the theoretical physicist a vague philosophical question and the PR agent publishes it. "Win your own trip to London my friends and this too could be you!"
The punchline? Slashdotters think stephen should stfu. Imagine winning a trip to London, getting to meet stephen hawking, and you decide to have some camp-fire-bullshit talk while touring a museum and all he does is say, "sorry, I'm just a theoretical physicist and am thoroughly incapable of making small talk", or worse, starring you down with no response.
Before we hack at aggression we should try to eliminate generalization first.
Aggression is likely to be outward-facing. This makes evolutionary sense, and is even how humans have been organized throughout their biological evolution, until the last few thousand years. Aggression within a tribe of foragers is limited compared to aggression towards members of other tribes. This makes sense, as you're more likely to share genes with those in your tribe; the effect is thus just the selfish gene at work, and is mediated through emotional connection to those with whom the tribesman has a personal relationship with (as opposed to an impersonal one) -- which is essentially the everyone in the tribe to some extent. Modern civilization, however, forces us in an artificial environment where we affect the lives of, and are affected by, people with whom we have no personal relationship and often have never met. Evolution hasn't caught up, since this state of affairs has only been around since after agriculture allowed high population density and hierarchical society 10K years ago.
So what about aliens? It's likely that any advanced civilization would have had to overcome or suppress inward-facing aggression in order to remove a significant threat to its own existence, and that could be done through various means such as artificial selection, genetic engineering, tyranny, changing the substrate of the mind from a biological brain to a more easily modifiable artificial information processing artifacts, etc. But such a civilization is still faced with another threat to its longevity. In a universe with accelerating expansion (such as ours), there is only a finite amount of energy and matter within a given Hubble volume that can be used to do work (in the physics sense), for things such as supporting life processes (this is because the expansion of space itself is not limited by the speed of light, and only gravitationally bound portions of the universe -- such as our local group of galaxies -- won't be blown apart; everything beyond will eventually be forever out of reach).
Given this, advanced galactic civilizations are competing for limited resources (energy usable for work). In the very distant future, that would lead to conflict as most available resources are either allocated or contested, and few are left unclaimed. At that point, immense numbers of lives would be destroyed by the losers. It's more ethical and efficient to instead destroy competitors when they're as few in number as possible. This is why sterilizer probes have been suggested as the most likely policy of any advanced spacefaring/colonizing civilization. An advanced civilization has little incentive to suppress outward aggression. Sterilizer probes are self-replicating artifacts sent out to eliminate any life they encounter other than their original creators.
The argument against us sending out sterilizer probes as soon as nanotechnology or biotechnology is advanced enough is that our civilization will be perceived as an aggressor and more likely to be punished. The problem with this argument is that cooperation in game theory problems such as prisoner's dilemma works well as a solution in general only if there are sufficiently many rounds (and even then, only in specific circumstances; see the article that was discussed on Slashdot just a few days ago: http://science.slashdot.org/st...).
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
The other side of this that allows police states to form is the "few assholes ruin it for the rest of us" effect that helps us come to the conclusion that it is much easier to simply implement harsh sentencing laws, throwing aggressive humans in prison their entire lives. Not only does the problem go away for good, but the sweet perk of them not having any shithead offspring, starting the process all over again. If you overdo it and throw too many innocent humans in prison, who cares, it only takes 100 individuals to maintain a stable genome.
The real path to male liberation
Dr. Hawking is THE best. A great pride for a nation to have such a man as son. Not just brilliant but a very kind gentleman to accept being the host for such a nice girl.
One cannot help but wonder why he's not Sir Stephen Hawking yet.
BTW, I agree with him. Either we'll control our aggressiveness or be destroyed by it. It's a worldwide disease, something that is making us sicker and sicker, like Tasmanian devils passing cancer one to another by biting themselves.
We get along with our neighbors, our friends and family.
We do NOT get along with chickens, pigs and cows. We're very aggressive about eating them.
Also ... the friendship/neighbor/family thing is mostly cultural.
I'd say the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is his friends, family members or co-workers swarming around him telling him to put the gun down and have a glass of water. You're forgetting that individuals live in a society. With emotional relations and all that.
How about, two space faring species meet, trade technology, form a conglomerate socieity which is greater than either of them would be alone, culturally richer, with every individual in both societies better off?
Congratulations. I think you came up with the plot of the first sci-fi movie that nobody would bother to torrent.
You have this zero sum mindset. Why does one have to come out on top?
Indeed, why do you have to come out on top. Can't you just be my slave?
I will allow you to live, you will serve me. You got everything to gain from cooperation.
INB4 that is not cooperation. So, what are you going to do? You purged yourself from aggressive feeling. I am the superior being now.
...water is wet.
You are making a lot of assumptions. One is that there is a reason to compete, another is that all other things will be anything close to equal. If they have been space-faring for a thousand years longer than us, then they are likely going to be 1000 years more advanced. In unarmed combat, basically anything with overlapping ranges for weight could beat a human handily.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Hawking is jealous, because he's only capable of impotent rage.
This is just a smokescreen to cover up the real culprit. It was physicists like Hawking who gave world destroying weapons to a bunch of monkeys who could not hope to even understand them if they studied for a thousand years.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Humans are amazingly tolerant of one another as long as resources are available to all. A couple of food shortages and you'll see a large number of people turn to violence to ensure their own survival.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
The one that takes us most for a loop is delusion. Delusion is both for self preservation as well as prevent us from seeing the truth behind it all.
Much more powerful than aggression, but still needed in one form or another.
It's not all-or-nothing. Some aggression is necessary, too little or too much is harmful. The destructive power that a small group can obtain is getting too great. Society ceases to function when the rotten apples can spoil the entire barrel instead of merely a fraction of it.
Old-style weapons didn't allow the bad apples to do too much damage most of the time. There were flukes like Genghis Khan, but newer weapons allow too many to be Genghis Khan's also, or at least have similar destructive power.
When 1 out of 10 million can do Genghis Khan things, civilization recovers and survives. But not if one out of every 10 thousand is. Especially if population is denser. Newer weapons give jerks too damned much power.
Table-ized A.I.
> where an INDIVIDUAL has the power to bring down the entire planetary civilization
We're already to that point. Just look at the results of Bush and Hilters rule. Their kind set back humanity thousands of years. The Bush Crime Family is still plotting ways to kill all nonwhites, as is the way of their kind. They hate everyone that isn't an old white man, and that is why they have either killed us or are currently trying to kill us. Only one party stands against them.
There is very little wrong with aggression and quite a bit right about it. Your body won't even develop properly unless you stress it. If there is one flaw in humanity it is fear not aggression.
That would be the point though. 2 races that actually manage to get into space would realize that they don't need to obliterate each other. Aggression and destruction is the domain of earthbound humans.
Tell that to ISIS.
If we did not have weapons based on the tools of abundance like nuclear bombs as a result of harnessing abundant nuclear energy, aggression out-of-control would not be such a big global issue and threat (even if aggression could always be a local issue). Ironically, harnessing nuclear power and other forms of advanced technology that could produce abundance (including abundant destruction) like robots and new materials has removed the reasons for much aggression over material goods, but we still are stuck in our old mindset emphasizing aggression as a way to deal with material scarcity. So, for example, we are ready to use nuclear energy in the form of nuclear weapons delivered by robotic cruise missiles whose batteries were charged by solar panels to fight over oil fields on the other side of the planet from us -- instead of using nuclear energy (or robot-constructed solar panels or whatever) to generate power locally. Image what the 21st century could have been like without two Word Wars if 1910s and 1930s Germany had worked towards breakthroughs in solar power and energy efficiency and agricultural efficiency instead of trying to steal someone else's coal and land. Now Germany focuses inward on innovation and efficiency and is peaceful and the economic powerhouse of the European Union.
I wrote about this broad issue at length here: ..."
"Open Letter to the Intelligence Advanced Programs Research Agency (IARPA)"
http://www.phibetaiota.net/201...
"The greatest threat facing the USA is the irony inherent in our current defense posture, like for example planning to use nuclear energy embodied in missiles to fight over oil fields that nuclear energy could replace. This irony arises in part because the USA's current security logic is still based on essentially 19th century and earlier (second millennium) thinking that becomes inappropriate applied to 21st century (third millennium) technological threats and opportunities. That situation represents a systematic intelligence failure of the highest magnitude. There remains time to correct this failure, but time grows short as various exponential trends continue.
That's the big issue as I mention in my sig, and it plays out in other ways including with food, media, addiction, and so on as human traits adapted evolutionarily for scarcity cause difficulties when confronted with some sorts of modern abundance.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://www.paulgraham.com/addi...
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-...
http://www.nancycarlssonpaige....
http://dianeelevin.com/sosexys...
All that said, cooperation within groups has also been a key trait of human beings.
"No contest: the case against competition"
http://www.shareintl.org/archi...
But it is true that humans tend to have in group cooperation and out-group competition, something E.O. Wilson has written about. And human mating rituals also often revolve around proving something to stand out from the crowd, like James P. Hogan touches on in "Voyage From Yesteryear" depicting a culture where people compete by demonstrating excellence in some area. So, again, the biggest issue is not aggression or competition itself, but how those impulses are culturally directed. As. Mr. Fred Rogers' sang: "What do you do with the mad that you feel?" That is the question.
BTW, bacteria are actually the dominant species on this planet, :-) and we forge
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Just kidding, Hawking is the man, but I think his desire to eliminate aggression is very short sighted. Living things cannot function without aggression, else something else that is aggressive will roll right over them.
Western aggression is greed based, oil, resources, money, power. Wars are symptom of human greed.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Too much aggression, and a species dies. Not enough aggression, and a species dies. Sure, the ideal amount of aggression changes, but getting rid of it entirely? I'm pretty sure that's not human. Heck, you're not even an animal. Heck, even PLANTS expand aggressively to fill their biological niche. What's left that's actually alive without ANY aggression?
Aggression is a meticulously culivated trait in humanity.
Attraction to aggressive-looking males increases as the economy dips, but drops in times of economic plenty less aggressive traits are found attractive.
What motivates people is autonomy, increasing mastery, and a sense of purpose. See Dan Pink's talk:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Or look at the writing of Alfie Kohn:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/artic...
http://www.alfiekohn.org/artic...
http://www.alfiekohn.org/punis...
http://www.shareintl.org/archi...
" "We need competition in order to survive."
"Life is boring without competition."
"It is competition that gives us meaning in life."
These words written by American college students capture a sentiment that runs through the heart of the USA and appears to be spreading throughout the world. To these students, competition is not simply something one does, it is the very essence of existence. When asked to imagine a world without competition, they can foresee only rising prices, declining productivity and a general collapse of the moral order. Some truly believe we would cease to exist were it not for competition.
Alfie Kohn, author of No contest: the case against competition, disagrees completely. He argues that competition is essentially detrimental to every important aspect of human experience; our relationships, self-esteem, enjoyment of leisure, and even productivity would all be improved if we were to break out of the pattern of relentless competition. Far from being idealistic speculation, his position is anchored in hundreds of research studies and careful analysis of the primary domains of competitive interaction. For those who see themselves assisting in a transition to a less competitive world, Kohn's book will be an invaluable resource."
Progress or "advancement" in what direction is another good question to ask yourself. Is it a good idea to more quickly advance off a cliff? For example, the World Wide Web might have been a much better place and the web browser might have been a much better tool if not for all the effort various groups have put into undermining web standards for private gain (for example, Microsoft in the early years). The problem with a lot of competition is it encourages people to use power (including political power) to private gains while socializing costs, and that can be very costly and unpleasant overall for a community. Once can have *diversity* without explicit *competition*. What it takes is something like a basic income, easy subsistence production, free-or-cheap-to-the-user planned infrastructure, or some other means of ensuring people have the time and resources to create.
If our culture was as aggressive as the Romans, maybe the Earth would be a nuclear wasteland by now? Although, as "I, Claudius" suggests, a lot of Roman aggression was turned in on itself at some point, with political murders including of the leaders who might otherwise have made Rome a better place. ... As Tiberius becomes more hated, he increasingly relies on his Praetorian Captain Sejanus who is able to make Tiberius fear Germanicus' wife Agrippina and his own son Castor. Sejanus secretly plots with Livilla to usurp the monarchy by poisoning Castor and beginning to remove any ally of Agrippina and her sons. ... Caligula soon loses his mind, after recovering from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
"During the prosperous reign of Augustus, he is plagued by personal losses as his favored heirs, Marcellus, Marcus Agrippa, Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar, die at varying points. Claudius reveals that these untimely deaths are all the machinations of Augustus' cold wife Livia, who seeks to make her son Tiberius succeed Augustus.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Actuallty, the military is funding a lot of science ... without aggression, there would be very little push to fund those pieces.
He needs to stick to what he knows best. We're at the top of the food chain because of our aggression.
I agree, the scenerio I propose of peaceful cooperation and conglomeration is utterly boring. War is so much more dramatic.
However, consider the history of the world since WWII. Lots of little conflicts, no big ones. The costs of the big powers going to war is just too high for everyone (rational) to bear. So instead we trade, more or less peacefully.
How much more so in space? It's very hard to defend a planet and easy to destroy one, or at least render it uninhabitable, for a space-faring civilization. Act aggressively and face terrible retaliation, where anything that could possibly be won via aggression would be less valuable than what would certainly be lost.
--PM
My vote is for greed. I mean, yeah, I can see the argument for aggression. But if nobody ever got mad, then the people who by fortune/chance/inheritance or whatever would walk all OVER the less fortunate. Take away greed, and there is no reason to have aggression that would destroy the world. There would be much less need for war I would wager. Take away aggression and the thieves of the world would steal everything, non-aggressively... but police would never really make arrests because it'd be too violent sometimes. People would just watch their kids eaten by rabid dogs, etc. I mean seriously, aggression is just part of the bigger human creature. It's not all bad.
Problem is, the bad guy gets at least a few shots by surprise, and then there's the next incident, and the next, and... Bad Guy With Gun is an enemy you can never beat by shooting.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I don't know HOW many times I've had to literally stand on top of a meeting room table and scream at the top of my lungs "No FUCKING way" before an EA would be finally convinced that his idea was downright stupid and would cost the company more $$$ to implement than it would save, even over the very long term.
And even then, stupid things STILL occur.
If aggression was completely removed, we'd all be docile and at the whim of people who simply can't 'care' because they don't have the capacity to empathize.
I like my aggression thank you very much. I like being able to express my passion about protecting MY user base against the common idiocy that is ivory tower thinking most commonly possessed by enterprise architects who 99% of the time simply don't appreciate simplicity.
Not to mention how boring sports would become. The only reason I watch is to see the hockey fights, car crashes, football collisions, and boxers getting pummelled. Without aggression, this would all become so 'polite'. I can just see it. "Excuse me, but may I pass you, my car has a little more HP than yours" or "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to knock you out" or "Ahem, can I have the puck now? I wish to score a goal".
Say 90% of the space-faring races are non-aggressive. Do you think they'll be able to withstand the 10% that are? Aggression means using force and other means to impose your will on others who do not want to go along with your wishes, whether it's war over borders and mineral rights, rape, or a toy.
So these non-aggressive races, when meeting up with an aggressive race, can either become aggressive themselves in imposing their will (pacifism) on the aggressive race, or yield.
There is no middle ground over the long term.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
He keeps coming up with crap like that, someone's gonna punch his lights out.
1. If you're a human, there will always be a reason to compete. We over-breed. Everyone seems to think that their genes are special.
2. Why would we go for unarmed combat for the first time in our species history?
3. More advanced doesn't mean pacifist. We're more advanced than at any time in the past - and look around you. You don't have to look at international problems - just go to your local jail or ER.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
That would be the point though. 2 races that actually manage to get into space would realize that they don't need to obliterate each other. Aggression and destruction is the domain of earthbound humans.
Right - just like all the other times in human history that two segments of humanity encountered each other for the first time and everything was milk and honey ... (cue laughter)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
It's been more or less impossible to profit from war for about 150 years now.
Before that whole economies were based on exporting mercenaries.
Yeah Oppenheimer/Solzhenitsyn. Saviors of humanity. They were robbed of their Nobel peace prize for the H-bomb. Nobel would have been proud. An explosive so powerful it ended war!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Sure there is middle ground. A too aggressive race doesn't cooperate. A less aggressive race would kick their ass.
Too aggressive means stupid. Dragon beats Tiger, every time (so to speak).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
When everyone have nukes, nobody will use them.
Some nutter will.
When space is the most hostile environment known to man, being passive seems unlikely to work very well.
Like how animals fight to death in the face of a fire or flood or volcanic eruption?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
So two space-faring races meet ... who is going to come out on top, all other things being equal?
The one orbiting the other one's planet.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Strange subject?
Martial Artists train to perform their techniques without aggression.
And most politicians or for that matter bosses of evil corporation also only consider cost and profit. They are not "aggressive" in the emotional sense.
Agression that comes up if one insults you, you punch him and he punches you back, that emotion has nothing to do with war fare of nations. Sure, Hitler likely was "aggressive" amoung his other mental instabilities.
The correct term perhaps would be imperialism. Mixed in with globalization of capitalism, where merchant or corporate empires strive to expand on cost of mankind/humanity.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Even if we had a full out nuclear exchange during the height of the cold war the majority of humans would survive.
Are you sure about that?
To some degree this question, academically, relies on having a good model of the Earth's atmosphere, but the effects of nuclear fallout specifically have been very well studied. It was certainly the intention to render large parts of the Earth uninhabitable even in a first strike scenario; what makes you think that that goal was not achieved during the arms race?
Here's a recent paper for you to consider. Key quote: "Nevertheless, a misperception that the nuclear-winter idea has been discredited has permeated the nuclear policy community." It's a pretty complex topic, but I think you're better off listening to the actual scientists on this one.
> D'you realize that a remarkable thing about people is not how aggressive people are, but rather how well people actually get along
No because that is utter bollocks. We have a sample size of one and have no idea of people are more or less aggressive than other planet-dominating species.
One thing we do know however is that it took tens of thousands of years after we had rudimentary language and impact tools before we even asked about whether or not we could grow these plant things ourselves. So one thing we do know is that we're thick as fuck and likely to be at a lower percentile of intelligence below which we wouldn't have developed a civilisation at all.
Are you mental?
Our entire economical structure can be accelerated and seeded by the outlay on a good war.
Why does one have to come out on top?
It doesn't *necessarily* end with one coming out on top but that is with the set of possibilities, so it's worth thinking about.
No kidding.Now tell us something we dont know, smarty-pants
for aggression when the worldview is nothing more and/or other than space + time + matter + energy + chance.
No, most of the West, Japan, and China all have subreplacement birth rates.
My point was that technology is way more important than aggression so long as we aren't so unaggressive that we won't just sit back while an alien species murders us all. So, if we were to go out into space, meet the Vulcans, and engage them in battle, they would wipe the floor with us despite being a more peaceful race because they are a warp capable species and we are not.
Yes, but there have been some claims that we may be more peaceful today (relative to the population anyway), and those arguments are far from unreasonable. Keep in mind, that at least according to some estimates, the cause of death for ~30% of hunter gatherer males was homicide, and that might give you an idea of how far we've come. That we aren't all the way there yet is a wholly different issue, and seems to illustrate Hawking's point. If you are glorifying the past, keep in mind that the real difference is that we are more aware of what horrible monsters we are.
Also, less aggressive doesn't mean defenseless.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
It is a zero-sum game, as resources are zero-sum and those are what matter. Try preaching zero-sum anything once the middle east runs out of oil. You guys think radical Islamists are a problem now...
Aggression is what made us the dominant life form.
You're wrong, the tighter the constraints, the more calm and rational you have to be. Aggression is a luxury because it consumes cubic fucktonne of resources and energy. You need to do the math son.
The testosterone levels leading to aggression in humans is a myth, refuted by scientific evidence repeatedly, which stems from a single paper of a study with violent inmates in a prison.
Nonetheless perpetuated by journalists and already embedded in the subconcisious mind of sadly even healthcare professionals.
The popular wisdom isn't. Grumpy old man.
When he started the whole AI debate, I thought he was trying to make this exact point in a way more subtle way. Humans create a new type of being that is capable of thinking about its own existence, and the first thing we assume is that it'll try to kill us and we must kill it back first, instead of recognizing its right to exist. What does that say about us? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree? But the whole debate turned into "how can we keep AIs under out thumbs for as long as possible" instead. I guess he had to come out and spell it out for us.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
A nuclear war would be more likely started out of a sense of ungrounded fear, not aggression...much aggression is in fact due to irrational fears...removing fear wouldn't be good, but it would be good if the experience of fear for more than a few moments (necessary to motivate split-second responses to danger) would automatically engage the powers of reasoning....
It depends on if they are in competition for the same resources.
Did the insecticide manufacturers pay you to write that or what?
We don't (usually admit that we) start things, but if you do (or if we want to make it seem like you do) we'll (drag it out until we are absolutely forced to) finish it and you won't like that (but our military industrial complex and its bought-off politicians sure will.)
FTFY.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Under-rated.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Don't worry. Most people won't hold your inexplicable indulgence in a soft pseudo-science against you. Well, some people won't, anyway.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you are an anti-vaxxer, it's virtually certain you have no applicable credentials. Seriously. You have to maintain a stunning level of ignorance to not understand the benefits, and you have to be downright gullible to swallow the pseudo-scientific tripe that pervades the anti-vax rhetoric and mindset.
It's science. Extremely high quality, proven science. It trumps that mental crapfest you call your "reasons" by many orders of magnitude.
We now return you to your normal pursuit of the cray-cray.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Like most behaviors, aggression has a good side and a bad side. It is found throughout nature, where it often makes the difference between survival and death. Is Hawking saying that aggression is good only for the rest of nature, but not for humans? Yes, aggression has a dark side. But it could well be one of the pillars of the survival of the human race.
This guy should stick to his theories and STFU about biology.
The problem is not aggression are pure and simple greed, stupidity and religion..
The first can be achieved by finding a better system than capitalism.
The seconds needs to be bred out. It will actually happen naturally when there's no need for capitalism. Females won't fall for power, gigolos will stop putting out to wealthy women, because "wealthy" won't be a status symbol.
With stupidity wiped out the need for religion would go away as well. There might be traces of faith...but since nobody would be stupid enough to force their kids into a belief system at an age where they are unable to think for themselves yet the chances of having the same number of devoted book following theists would drop dramatically in a matter of 1-3 generations.
No aggression, no Apple, no Microsoft, no civilization. And war is a group definition and expansion tool that comes from aggression and is absolutely necessary for expanding human civilization. Ever wonder why women do not invent powerful tech ideas and push them to dominance? Neither have they aggressively pushed any political idea. I don't mean participation. I mean none has taken the cutting edge. Ever wonder why women have to be pushed, forced, encouraged into aggressive tech environments? Why the urinals have to be taken out and the curtains put up? They don't have the aggression and they need the aggression removed in order to feel comfortable. Unfortunately, when you take out the aggression you take out the aggressive creativity. I don't doubt the doer-ship of women, but don't ever confuse it with aggressive creator-ship. Hawking, like many today, argues for the feminizing of mankind, and, therefore, its destruction. You don't need nuclear bombs to destroy it all. Just listen to and follow the naive rantings of people like Hawking.
E Proelio Veritas.
What?
The military-industrial complex is probably the most influentual and rich thing right after the bankers, and then, it is probably the same people.
Your 150 year lullaby is pathetic. The military-industrial complex makes more money than ever. See the "war on terror", "war on ***" or whatever "campaign" without end.
I doubt it.
Stuff like "road rage" and domestic violence may be caused by aggression.
But I think most financial/political maneuvering decisions - like war - are mostly made when people are completely calm.
Then there is religion, that is what motivates ISIS and the like.
Ironic, considering his outspoken aggression toward the Jews...
We've had nukes for 60 years and haven't blown up the planet yet. We don't bring grenades to fistfights either. Guy's just trying desperately to stay relevant after contributing exactly zero to the well-being of mankind. Take the spazz to the Netherlands and euthanize him already.
Isn't fear a far more basic driving instinct than aggression? Wars are started and anger expressed because humans experience fear - not the other way around. Would other religions and xenophobes be less violent if they didn't experience fear?
Real problem with humanity is sin!
This just goes to show that no matter how smart a person is, they can still fail to comprehend the obvious.
None of us would be here if our ancestors didn't have aggression as a tool that allowed them to rise above and defeat other animals in our primitive days. Without it, they would have been eaten. People aren't elephants - we're small and easy targets.
I tell my kids that being angry and aggressive is a natural part of the human experience, because it is. What's important is that we learn to harness and master such dangerous tools, so that they are there when we need them and absent when we don't.
Denial of what we are, biological creatures that are the result of millions of years of evolution and experience, is the best way to pave the road to failure. We are what we are and... that's great!
Or take it up with whatever alien species thought it was such a good idea to bioengineer humans by using Chimpanzee DNA as starter material. Chimps are miserable violent species that'll just as readily kill you and eat you raw, than befriend you. And, as seems likely, they added alien dna to chimp's, we lost all the natural bacterial and viral resistance, and physical strength inherent in terran species, in order to develop attributes suitable for interplanetary travel. And then they leave us earthbound. Great..
Everything he theorizes is just that.... Theories! And more often than not his theories are regularly disproven by other scientists. He is simply a liberal media whore/darling because he is an atheist who tries to disprove religion and anything that might be related to people with values. Now I am not the most religious person in the world but his place is only there because he has some ability to seem like an authority and sound logical and court libtard media. I rather read Isaac Asimov than pretend Stephen Hawking has something of value to contribute to any discussion.
Agression is one of the defining traits of humans and primates in general. We would be extinct without all the poo-flinging.
I respectfully disagree with Stephen Hawkings on this one and I am an ardent admirer of the man. Aggression was a useful tool in our evolution and produced the humanity we have today. Misapplication of aggression is the failing.
we can't all put our resumes atop every comment
you're using a double standard (i have to link to a peer reviewed research journal to support every sentence I type, where you give Hawking a pass completely) and also committing the 'appeal to authority' logical fallacy
my comment was about science and the misuse thereof...Hawking can be a 'genius' and still have incorrect notions of both computers and human behavior
Thank you Dave Raggett
my main contribution, in my wildest dreams, is to put out a new theory of Cybernetics which reconciles both 1st Order (Weiner) and 2nd Order Cybernetics
3rd order Cybernetics
Cybernetics is typically defined as 'the study of control in biological life and machines" and a new theory could revitalize Computer Science (which is bogged down by the Church-Turing model of computation) and also has applications in virtually all areas of design.
Cybernetics also involves Information Theory, especially Claude Shannon's contributions.
I'd really like to get a clear statement of Cybernetic theory that can apply consistently across all the disciplines that Cybernetics touches. From interaction design to information theory cosmology.
I think it would be a breath of fresh air and provide a point of departure to try many new theories.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I think he might be a little biased.
The costs of the big powers going to war is just too high for everyone (rational) to bear. So instead we trade, more or less peacefully.
Oddly enough, Saga depicts a war with costs along those lines. As a result, both sides "outsource" the conflict and have the native populations of other planets fight on their behalf.
One of the common misconceptions is that atrocities such as The Holocaust were carried out by crazy/mentally unstable monsters who were biological aberrations that were the exception not the rule. Sadly that just does not pan out in real life as the same Nazi officers who directed the extermination camps went home each night often to families where they became the loving doting father who cared deeply about their wife and children but separate from their day job of gassing and burning Jewish citizens.. Normal looking people with families who committed acts of extreme barbarism in a cold logical manner but obviously not devoid of compassion and love as they raised families while some how reconciling this love for family with aggressive participation in the running of the death camps. Aggression in itself may not be the enemy but the reason behind the aggression is what we have to understand and deal with as aggressive actions are often not carried out by wide eyed mad men but by clear thinking coldly logical people who believe they are right and attract like minded people to their cause along with the freaks and crazies who become the highly visible examples of the aggression but are often not it's guiding light. We must understand ourselves before we can understand the stranger in our midst and invite him to the table.
> Aggression is likely to be outward-facing. This makes evolutionary sense,
What is "evolutionary sense" and what has it got to do with reality?
It makes more sense to recognise that the creatures which are competing with you for the same shelter locations, food, and territory are going to be the same species. Ants not so much.
Why do you think that "anyone out there that we encounter is very likely to be even more aggressive" than humans? D'you realize that a remarkable thing about people is not how aggressive people are, but rather how well people actually get along? Pretty much only colony insects are as capable of getting along as we are. It is not aggressiveness that makes humans globally dominant.
When technology has advanced to the point where an INDIVIDUAL has the power to bring down the entire planetary civilization (and I'd argue that we are at that point right now), low aggression seems like a rather key survival trait. I'd argue that a civilization that has survived longer than us is probably FAR less aggressive, FAR more willing to take the long view, and FAR more willing to work out cooperative everyone-wins solutions rather than indulging in exploitative zero-sum behavior.
--PM
Exactly. The average wild animal probably encounters more violence in a day than the average human does in a year.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
1. To "de-nature" a human being is to remove them from Nature. To remove someone from Nature is to kill them.
2. To "de-nature" a human being is to alter their inherent nature as a person. We already do this with a variety of means, i.e., psychopharmacological, electrophysiological, ..., so is the question, and a very important one at that, how much, and what, we should alter? Should we even alter anything?
3. To "de-nature" a human being is to remove the "naturalness" of human beings as "nomadic hunter/gatherers and agrarian farming" and so on. This is a sketchy argument -- modernity, civilization, ..., are "unnatural" and beneficial.
4. Historically, the Chinese eunuchs didn't "band together to manipulate politics and stage revolts" because they were robbed of their 'manly nature', but instead it's a complex story whose crucial element is that eunuchs had privileged access to powerful people, due to the belief that only emasculated men were fit to serve the Imperial rulers. In a way, they benefited from this "de-naturing".
Stephen calls it aggression; I call it hegemony;
Casteism
Psychopaths do not fear prosecution/punishment;
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150127212158.htm
Casteism
In my opinion, aggression grows from a much more fundamental human emotion: Greed. Without the desire to have more and take from others, aggression probably would be a much more rare trait. Greed, not money, is the root of all evil (and quite a few of our accomplishments).
This statement is patently incorrect.
Yes, there are instances where the 'bad guy' get off a few shots by surprise. But there are also instances where vigilance on the part of the 'good guy' prevent such encounters.
And there are far more reports of people successfully defending themselves with firearms than there are people utilizing firearms for 'mass murder' (FBI Stats on firearms use in crimes). Unfortunately, these reports are rarely posted in the news. only the more 'exciting' ones that sell newspapers get published.
The key is not being a 'good guy with a gun', but rather a 'good guy who is vigilant'. Many crimes can be prevented if people were aware of their surroundings. The problem is, too many people like to walk around fat, dumb, and happy, and expect someone else to protect them.
Think about this... Why are police and firefighters called "first responders"? because they are RESPONDING to an incident, ie: the incident has already happened.
You seem to be referring to two completely different meanings of the term "aggression" as if they are interchangeable.
One could argue that the United States' moon shot was extremely aggressive
That's "aggression" as in "ambition". Hawking made no mention of that. He was talking about aggression as in violence, and in context it was obvious. Think about it: the demise of the world due to ambition? That's nonsensical. If human beings eventually destroy themselves, it will of course be a result of violence ("aggression"), not a "drive to succeed".
I propose every politician/business leader should undergo fMRI
Casteism
You can be non-aggressive without being a pacifist, and if your defenses are adequate enough, it becomes a moot point. You could put a toy poodle on meth, but he'd be unable to do any harm to an elephant. Aggression is only one factor to consider here, and an incredibly small one at that. As long as we aren't non-aggressive to the point that we are willing to just let another species wipe us out, your concern is invalid.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Or another Scifi outcome - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forever_Peace
Marty Larrin, one of the inventors of jacking technology, recruits Julian and Blaze in an attempt to using this technology to end war for all time; a little-known secret is that jacking with someone else for a long enough period (about two weeks) will psychologically eliminate the ability to kill another human being. By "humanizing" the entire world, dangerous technology would not be a problem for human survival. They do so, stop the particle accelerator's construction, and war is eventually stopped.
If the nutter manages to kill everyone off, he deserved to win.
Otherwise, be expected to get his ass wiped from any surviving side.