|
the original historiography on this one is ideological in nature, fundamentally rosseau being pissed at hobbes's realpolitik description of human nature as nasty brutish violent and short. but these were not empirical folks military history as an academic discipline basically sorta ate poo poo and died outside of the actual military academies from vietnam and the events of the 60s, and the way it totally changed the academy's attitude towards war, inside and outside the us so its a fight about the thousands of years past but its also about the hundreds of years past and the decades past and the present, as the general anti-military-history bent of recent decades dissolves. evidently not fast enough to get thread favorite b. devereaux a tenure-track job, but fast enough to get b. devereaux more than a thousand patreon subscribers and make him a living that way, lol bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Apr 6, 2024 |
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 17:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 11:49 |
|
|
How is it surprising that humans are total assholes? Just read a newspaper. Nothings changed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 17:55
|
|
|
Humans in general and in their natural state are good and altruistic
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 18:01
|
|
|
Crab Dad posted:How is it surprising that humans are total assholes? Just read a newspaper. Gaius Marius posted:Humans in general and in their natural state are good and altruistic fight, year 428, round 33,173,411.... start!! one way ive always thought about to reconcile the two views is the statistical observation in richardson 1948 that war sizes follow a power law in the distributional tail. this is called a fractal distribution because it pops out geometrically a lot from marginalizing fractals. and the distribution over space ends up being fractal as well. so we are really asking whether a fractal is colored in or not, geometrically, which is ultimately a foolish question, like asking what the length of the coastline of britain is bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Apr 6, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 18:03
|
|
|
Are humans essentially violent? Well, violent compared to what? Compared to other animals? Even among the other great apes, which are thought to have informative similarities, there are those who kill systematically and those who do not - but isn't that simply projecting a human value onto a nonhuman phenomenon? Compared to our own history? History has countless narratives and ideologies imposed onto it at every stage of trying to understand it, starting even before it is first recorded. Compared to a moral ideal? That's even more circular. If we want an answer, we'll need to ask a better question.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 18:18
|
|
|
The most violent apes are the most successful ones.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 18:22
|
|
|
This question will only be settled after we encounter intelligent aliens, at which point we can just accept their viewpoint of us, which will fall near the following three poles of opinion: 1.) Extremely violent assholes (the aliens are herbivores) 2.) They are just like us! (the aliens are omnivores) 3.) Cute and peaceful (the aliens are obligate carnivores)
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 18:26
|
|
|
Even if you think humans are natrually violent jerks, it's still surprising to hear about complete population replacements. They're quite rare within recorded history. Most of the time, empires wanted to tax the locals, not kill them and take the land. It makes sense that pre-state societies might have different priorities, but it's still a bit shocking to hear.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 18:30
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/etnaboris/status/1776285207823323215 did literate people of the past ever catalogue their omens in detail, i.e. "if the volcano is blowing smoke rings, plant more grain" type stuff?
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 18:31
|
|
|
the etruscans wrote down how to do haruspicy, the study of omens in animals livers, including what the liver signs mean, in the etrusca disciplina, according to the romans. we do not have a copy and we don't know how to read etruscan cicero did two books on divination, de natura deorum and de divinatione, which have lots of details on what augurs did and thought - to declare it basically bullshit, so its not quite a manual bob dobbs is dead fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Apr 6, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 18:47
|
|
|
FAUXTON posted:https://twitter.com/etnaboris/status/1776285207823323215 iirc the sumerians had entire libraries of "if x then y" style tablets for interpreting omens, there's an irving finkel video about it somewhere
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 18:49
|
|
|
The Shang oracle bones are kind of like that too.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 19:14
|
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:Even if you think humans are natrually violent jerks, it's still surprising to hear about complete population replacements. They're quite rare within recorded history. Most of the time, empires wanted to tax the locals, not kill them and take the land. It makes sense that pre-state societies might have different priorities, but it's still a bit shocking to hear.  That said it's certainly a plausible outcome. The Maori vs. the Moriori was surprisingly recent and well documented.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 19:15
|
|
|
Nessus posted:I saw the OP on this one mention genetics and I'm curious about the methodologies involved as well as the time horizons. My reflex is to figure 'humans constantly genocided each other in the past' is as much of a projection of modernity onto the past as Rousseau is, although obviously there may be some actual material backing for the former now. All of the above happened. Sometimes there was peaceful infiltration and coexistence. Sometimes there was violent genocidal replacement, and sometimes there was leadership/governmental changes without much change for the commoner. There's some genetic evidence becoming available to tease out just what happened when.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 19:28
|
|
|
Libluini posted:3.) Cute and peaceful (the aliens are obligate carnivores) 
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 19:38
|
|
|
Deteriorata posted:All of the above happened. Sometimes there was peaceful infiltration and coexistence. Sometimes there was violent genocidal replacement, and sometimes there was leadership/governmental changes without much change for the commoner. I am reminded of the apocryphal considerations of Temujin, when an advisor said "If you burn the Chinese and turn their lands back to grass, you'll loot a million bolts of silk, I'm sure. If you tax them, you will get half a million bolts of silk every year."
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 19:39
|
|
|
No kzinposting in the Terran history thread
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 19:39
|
|
|
Having listened to the same Tides' episodes (though back when they came out so I could still be misremembering) I thought the take away is that there were still relatively few complete population replacement events? Like farmers rapidly displace foragers, but foragers are still being folded into the wider population, there's just far less of a trace of them because there were much fewer of them to begin with. And that the arrival of agriculture in Britain was a huge outlier because that preexisting population just loving vanishes from the genetic record. So we know at least one complete replacement happened, which is very interesting, but also that it was not the typical pattern.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 19:42
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
yeah, that's how I got this, I observed my cat playing around with the mice from my neighbor's garden often enough to state, with 100% conviction, that cat aliens would not see us as a violent species
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 19:51
|
|
|
I really enjoyed Man-Kzin war books as a silly example on how interactions with cat aliens would go.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 20:14
|
|
|
I think there's a bit of warped perspective here due to the timescale. These migrations that led to population replacement almost certainly didn't occur in single violent events but over the course of decades or centuries. You also want to look at how far apart these events were; while prehistory could certainly be incredibly violent, I don't think it was necessarily this perpetual rolling atrocity. Long periods of time could pass pretty peacefully, punctuated by violence or upheaval. This isn't to say the prehistoric world was super peaceful or idyllic or anything, just that it wasn't a hobbesian hellscape either. Genetics are also weird and a group not showing up in later populations doesn't necessarily mean they were wiped out violently
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 20:16
|
|
|
It's important to also keep in mind that pretty much anything involving archaeology is, at best, giving you like a 10% window into the past and drawing wide assumptions with such a limited data set is not great.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 20:18
|
|
|
Yeah it's hard to draw too detailed a conclusion. What you can say is for a while we thought wholesale population displacement didn't happen, and now from genetic evidence we can see that oh no it absolutely did happen sometimes. How much is sometimes? Probably not enough evidence exists to ever get a good answer to that. Certainly not enough right now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 20:27
|
|
|
By "population" what do we mean Like are we talking Sephardic jews, Huguenots, or albigensians
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 21:28
|
|
|
I think we're talking about genetic populations in prehistory; i.e. groups of people with genetic markers identifiable in the archaeological record. They frequently correspond with archaeological cultures/complexes but not always.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 21:46
|
|
|
Telsa Cola posted:It's important to also keep in mind that pretty much anything involving archaeology is, at best, giving you like a 10% window into the past and drawing wide assumptions with such a limited data set is not great. A thought experiment that I always think is funny: if the only evidence you had was the spread of La Tene material culture, you could conclude that the Romans were conquered and replaced by the Gauls. Which isn't to say that all archaeology centered arguments are this silly, just to say that your ability to say things conclusively declines as the depth and breadth of your sources declines. And prehistory is always going to be murkier than you'd like, because by definition you lack literary sources.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 22:13
|
|
|
Tulip posted:A thought experiment that I always think is funny: if the only evidence you had was the spread of La Tene material culture, you could conclude that the Romans were conquered and replaced by the Gauls. This is not an unreasonable conclusion, there's even documentary evidence to support that theory.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2024 22:30
|
|
|
Tulip posted:A thought experiment that I always think is funny: if the only evidence you had was the spread of La Tene material culture, you could conclude that the Romans were conquered and replaced by the Gauls.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2024 01:23
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Having listened to the same Tides' episodes (though back when they came out so I could still be misremembering) I thought the take away is that there were still relatively few complete population replacement events? Like farmers rapidly displace foragers, but foragers are still being folded into the wider population, there's just far less of a trace of them because there were much fewer of them to begin with. It happened in britain twice, so logically we can deduce it's something about the local geography.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2024 07:04
|
|
|
Tulip posted:A thought experiment that I always think is funny: if the only evidence you had was the spread of La Tene material culture, you could conclude that the Romans were conquered and replaced by the Gauls. Asterix was playing the long game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2024 07:52
|
|
|
my intuition is that humans exist all along the hobbesian to rousseu-ian/lockeian spectrum, with folks that are afraid of losing access to/control of resources being more nasty and brutish. it scales absolutely and not relatively so that's why millionaires and billionaires afraid of increased taxes/revolution end up being the biggest assholes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2024 08:46
|
|
|
Mr. Fix It posted:it scales absolutely and not relatively so that's why millionaires and billionaires afraid of increased taxes/revolution end up being the biggest assholes. I'm reminded of this article (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff) about billionare preppers asking consultants about how to organize the security of their fortresses of solitude after the 'collapse' (whatever that ends up being). About how to guarantee that their top notch security guards wont just decide to take over. But instead of listening to advice about sharing all the resources to instill communal feeling of shared purpose and survival, they just fantasized about ensuring their authority and "making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival" and things like that. I'm like 50/50 if that article is just satire, but I can totally see that those kinds of billionares existing lmao.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2024 09:38
|
|
|
It's also difficult to put a finger on which side of the rear end in a top hat vs. power/money is causative. Thatcher's Britain basically gave property to a whole bunch of fairly normal people and "having something to lose" seemed to make them assholes as planned, for instance. Could be a direct correlation on average, tbh.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2024 10:20
|
|
cowboy
|
Glah posted:I'm reminded of this article (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff) about billionare preppers asking consultants about how to organize the security of their fortresses of solitude after the 'collapse' (whatever that ends up being). About how to guarantee that their top notch security guards wont just decide to take over. But instead of listening to advice about sharing all the resources to instill communal feeling of shared purpose and survival, they just fantasized about ensuring their authority and "making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival" and things like that. I'm like 50/50 if that article is just satire, but I can totally see that those kinds of billionares existing lmao. the book that article is on, Survival of the Richest, and the Behind the Bastards episodes on "elite panic" are probably what is feeding my intuition. that and, you know, *gestures around*. i've definitely been listening to Tides of History largely through that lens as well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2024 12:52
|
|
|
Mr. Fix It posted:my intuition is that humans exist all along the hobbesian to rousseu-ian/lockeian spectrum, with folks that are afraid of losing access to/control of resources being more nasty and brutish. it scales absolutely and not relatively so that's why millionaires and billionaires afraid of increased taxes/revolution end up being the biggest assholes. I'd say that the idea that there is variation like this would be a rejection of the entire hobbesian-rousseain spectrum concept. Which, to be clear, I think is a foolish framework and you're already getting deeper than that framework can handle. Hobbes and Rousseau can stand in for a basic question of "is the nature of man good or evil," but bluntly I think so many people conceptualize their idea of humanity outside that framework that unless you are specifically dealing with, for example, Hobbes and Rousseau, its easier to just not worry about it. I'm not even sure that I'd want to put other similar dichotomies on this spectrum, like Mengzi and Xunzi disagreed about what the nature of humanity and their role in society was, but to call Xunzi a Hobbesian feels not just inaccurate but even dishonest.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2024 15:43
|
|
|
Tulip posted:I'd say that the idea that there is variation like this would be a rejection of the entire hobbesian-rousseain spectrum concept. considering that the entirety of my knowledge of those philosophers is basically HOBBES = PEOPLE BAD ROUSSEAU = PEOPLE GOOD scribbled on my palm, i'm not surprised it doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny. is there a philosopher that says human nature is too dependent on external circumstances to boil down to its true essence?
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2024 01:01
|
|
|
How about “the question is meaningless because ‘good’ and ‘bad’ have no objective meaning and can only be defined in terms of people anyway”? AKA “people are people, and whether that counts as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is entirely semantic”.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2024 01:12
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:How about “the question is meaningless because ‘good’ and ‘bad’ have no objective meaning and can only be defined in terms of people anyway”? AKA “people are people, and whether that counts as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is entirely semantic”. I'm gonna lay down a hot take and say that Hitler was objectively bad.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2024 01:21
|
|
|
Vincent Van Goatse posted:I'm gonna lay down a hot take and say that Hitler was objectively bad. Only from a human perspective. And if you use humanity to define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ you can’t go on to use good and bad to define humanity.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2024 01:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 11:49 |
|
|
Jordan Peterson has entered the chat
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2024 01:34
|
|