tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post2152637574480775613..comments2024-03-22T15:55:34.030-04:00Comments on Evo and Proud: Genetic pacification? Part IIPeter Frosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04303172060029254340noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-92028589910514012822009-08-06T10:16:09.540-04:002009-08-06T10:16:09.540-04:00THE USE AND ABUSE OF TRUST: SOCIAL CAPITAL AND ITS...<a href="http://www.intertic.org/Classics/Ogilvie.pdf" rel="nofollow">THE USE AND ABUSE OF TRUST: SOCIAL CAPITAL AND ITS DEPLOYMENT BY EARLY MODERN GUILDS</a>Todnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-71675735995841785972009-08-05T08:51:28.335-04:002009-08-05T08:51:28.335-04:00GNXP on homocide rates.
The data are homocides pe...<a href="http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/08/what-does-decline-in-homicide-rates.php" rel="nofollow">GNXP on homocide rates</a>.<br /><br />The data are homocides per 100,000 of the population. Sorry if it's a stupid question but - is the age structure of the population(s) being taken into account? You don't have to be Gunnar Heinsohn to think violence per 100,000 pop. will be greater 15- 29 years after a baby boom, even with the same genetic characteristics.Todnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-90624123523374450772009-08-04T16:35:49.520-04:002009-08-04T16:35:49.520-04:00Henry,
Thanks for your comments!
There seems to ...Henry,<br /><br />Thanks for your comments!<br /><br />There seems to be more selection for violence in early agricultural societies (with little or no State formation) than among hunter-gatherers. For instance, the agricultural Iroquoians were more violent than the hunter-gatherer Algonkians. In short, the creation of a storable food surplus tends to increase the potential for social equality and the accompanying struggles for power.<br /><br />Tod,<br /><br />You raised a point I hope to address later. Because States seek to monopolize the use of violence, they diminish the pool of people who make suitable soldiers. So they end up recruiting barbarians who end up becoming a threat to the State.<br /><br />Subcomandante Dave,<br />"Two guys have a beef and decide to settle it with either a fistfight or a duel; is this any of the state's business?"<br /><br />Gentlemanly fights are not the typical expression of non-State violence. Usually, the strong beat up on the weak and the many beat up on the few. That has been my personal observation.<br /><br />It's not simply out of fear for its own power that the State monopolized the use of violence. Violence is inimical to prosperity and progress.Peter Frostnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-8701220940900887212009-08-04T15:30:54.255-04:002009-08-04T15:30:54.255-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Subcomandante Davehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17965055066063337013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-21206480409735673142009-08-04T15:30:15.893-04:002009-08-04T15:30:15.893-04:00Two guys have a beef and decide to settle it with ...Two guys have a beef and decide to settle it with either a fistfight or a duel; is this any of the state's business? Generally, I think not. I never did like the "monopoly on violence" definition of the state.<br /><br />Keegan in A History of Warfare argues that both fistfights and duels are fairly unique to Western European countries and are a fairly ingenious form of co-operation, somewhat counter-intuitively. In most other cultures there is the cycle of violence, one guy insults another guy, that guy initiates violence, the other guy and his brothers retaliate, the first guy and his cousins retaliate against the brothers, etc. etc. Duels and fistfights put and end to the cycle of violence and serve a Darwinian purpose.<br /><br />I'd like more violence in society. A prohibition on violence leads to unaccountability and incivility, and can lead to a dictatorship of the weak, or mouthy punks at any rate, over the strong, which seems to violate natural law. Does the concept of dysgenics not come into play when the strong are prohibited from using their gifts, and the mouthiest and most insulting are most able to reproduce?<br /><br />The state may have an interest in prohibiting or controlling violence because if the cycle of violence gets out of control eventually the menfolk are depleted. Taken too far, though, it leads to a situation as in my unfortunate duckburg: incivility, knowing that the state will intervene on behalf of the mouthy little shit who runs his mouth off. <br /><br />They say an armed society is a polite society but a violent society may be more accurate. When the state too jealously guards its monopoly on violence there is less incentive to be polite. It's odd and somewhat anomalous that libertarians tend to be against violence, with the whole "my right to throw a punch ends at the tip of your nose" spiel. I'd respond that your right to insult me, and thus lower my social status leading to real, tangible material loss including harming my ability to find/keep a mate, ends at the beginning of my ear canal.<br /><br />On another tangent, I've read that women are selecting for less sexual dimorphism, and that incisor teeth are getting smaller.<br /><br />Excellent series of posts, btw.Subcomandante Davehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17965055066063337013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-67958693208266424182009-08-03T12:43:50.096-04:002009-08-03T12:43:50.096-04:00That the association between falling violence and ...That the association between falling violence and a surging birthrate in England was being paralleled in Holland is doubly convincing.<br /><br /> A lot of violence is domestic, maybe succesfully raising the larger families intensified selection for 'caring and sharing' temperaments.<br /><br /> Peter Turchins in War and Peace and War says Rome lost infuence because the Legions came to be only 10% Roman; those from the Empires core area didn't want to join up. So it could be said that the prudent non-violence that came to characterize the Romans - being the main reason for barbarians being accepted into the empire - was their downfall.Todnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-47095481071209137792009-08-03T11:54:51.029-04:002009-08-03T11:54:51.029-04:00Excellent, Peter. I would also suggest that at th...Excellent, Peter. I would also suggest that at the very low end of subsistence, Bushmen or Shoshone, everyone was too busy trying to get enough to eat to find any payoff to violence. Violent !Kung are essentially executed by the groups, i.e. lynchings.<br /><br />Would be interesting to know what the Crow and Sioux and Comanche were like before the horse showed up.<br /><br />Henry HarpendingHenry Harpendingnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-38052357727611800112009-08-02T22:18:59.468-04:002009-08-02T22:18:59.468-04:00This post and the preceding one were outstanding, ...This post and the preceding one were outstanding, nice job.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-54763233752382717922009-08-01T11:05:44.530-04:002009-08-01T11:05:44.530-04:00Tod,
Even if one assumes a constant selection pre...Tod,<br /><br />Even if one assumes a constant selection pressure to reduce violence, it doesn't follow that a linear downward trend will be the result.<br /><br />For instance, blood sports used to be popular in England. They were banned once a sufficiently large proportion of the population considered them to be repugnant. I'm sure there are still English people who love the sight of blood, but they are now a minority. At one time, they were the majority.<br /><br />I also suspect that the selection pressure was not constant. Is it just coincidence that the acceleration of this downward trend corresponds to the surge in English and Dutch birth rates between the early seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries? The baby boom occurred mainly among families engaged in cottage industries. During this phase of early industrial capitalism, successful entrepreneurs expanded their work forces by having larger families. Most of them belonged to dissident Protestant sects (Quakers, Plymouth Brethren, Methodists, etc.) and, as such, rejected violence, often to the point of embracing pacifism.<br /><br />I'm not sure why these early industrialists were more opposed to violence than the rest of the population. Perhaps pacifism was an ideological side-effect of selection for more harmonious economic transactions.<br /><br />On your second point, there's a difference between self-control and readiness to engage in violence. It's possible to have a highly developed sense of self-control while being ready to inflict violence at the drop of a hat. This is what we see, for instance, in mountainous areas of Afghanistan. The use of violence is regulated by a large number of social rules. But the rules no longer apply once you step outside them, even inadvertently.Peter Frostnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-18015252407691432002009-07-31T12:55:56.255-04:002009-07-31T12:55:56.255-04:00The change was rather late for a gradual reduction...The change was rather late for a gradual reduction in those with violent propensities:-<br /><a href="http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/41/4/618" rel="nofollow">Eisner 2001</a><br /> <br />"The results confirm, first, that homicide rates have declined in Europe over several centuries. Second, the empirical evidence shows, that unequivocal decline began in the early seventeenth century. Third, the data indicate that the secular decline begins with the pioneers of the modernization process, England and Holland, and slowly encompasses further regions".<br /><br /><br />An incremental reduction in the specific propensity to be violent over many generations would surely result in a similarly incremetal reduction in homocide over the generations; not the late drop. The fall in homocide may have resulted from the then novel effectiveness of law enforcement making potential perpetrators assess violence as being too costly a course of action.<br /><br /> The abilty to control emotions - <a href="http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/EffortfulControl-PsyRev.pdf" rel="nofollow">effortful control</a> - would surely be as necessary for a barbarian warrior as an Englishman engaged in peaceful family business. A warrior would not last long without being careful who he picked on and that would not just apply to the immediate obvious - " too big to fight"; the considerations would also take into account things very like legal consequences -"he has several brothers who would lose all respect unless they take revenge" - and so on.Todnoreply@blogger.com