In the least convenient possible world, everyone has impulses to dominate others and would find that power directly enjoyable because they all have the same brain hardware. Many have the means at some point and try it; those with early failures are deterred, the rest find they like it. Most are ultimately deterred or constrained by some combination of reputational, social, cultural, or moral reasoning – they don’t stop such behavior but do reach equilibrium and stop escalating for lack of actual or perceived means. The remainder eventually become your serial abusers. This drive is not easily removed or isolated because it’s integral to how we process status hierarchies and social situations. Society has exhausted all low hanging fruit for pushing the numbers at each state as low as possible. Any mind we might construct that must process and participate in status higherarcies is suceptable to the same drives.
In the least convenient possible world, everyone has impulses to dominate others and would find that power directly enjoyable because they all have the same brain hardware. Many have the means at some point and try it; those with early failures are deterred, the rest find they like it. Most are ultimately deterred or constrained by some combination of reputational, social, cultural, or moral reasoning – they don’t stop such behavior but do reach equilibrium and stop escalating for lack of actual or perceived means. The remainder eventually become your serial abusers. This drive is not easily removed or isolated because it’s integral to how we process status hierarchies and social situations. Society has exhausted all low hanging fruit for pushing the numbers at each state as low as possible. Any mind we might construct that must process and participate in status higherarcies is suceptable to the same drives.
Here’s to hoping it’s not really quite that bad…