This is a bit broader stuff than something reducible to a few stats. But on a basic common sense level, if the starting point is fewer people getting killed, the most basic solution is bodyguards and so on. So that is at least sensible as a starter instead of a Plan B rewiring everybody’s brain to not be hateful.
As for status, come on, that is something that happens between real people, while DeVliegendeHollander, Acty and hairyfigment are mere accounts. For all people know it could even be the same person behind all three accounts. Playing status with accounts one could throw away at any second and register three new ones in its place would be really, really stupid, let’s try to not accuse each other with at something that simplistic. At least if you want to assume evil, asssume a less banal kind. In fact I am thinking anyway that I should recycle DVH because it is getting too much karma and this account is developing something too much like a personality. I recycle on Reddit about every three weeks, maybe a three month or six month cycle would be good here. (The goal is of course to have ideas said by accounts that are not associated by former ideas said by accounts and thus their reception being less biased. Besides to not accumulate this completely ridiculous karma thing.)
Yup, playing status with accounts would be kinda stupid. (That’s why you should stop doing it.)
You know what would be especially stupid? If we lived in a world that accorded me higher status than you because of my general level of aggression, and I could end this entire argument with “I’m high status, you’re low status, I’m right, you’re wrong, shut up now”.
Now, wouldn’t that be a really stupid world...?
So tell me again why giving status and prestige to aggressive people is a great idea?
I won’t even argue that, it is a fact it can be changed. Bicoastal America and NW Europe managed to make a fairly large young college-ed middle class that is surprisingly docile. The issue is simply the consequences of the change and its permanence.
If you talked to any random Roman or Ancient Greek author about it, he would basically say you guys are actively trying to get decadent and expect it will work out well? To give you the most simple potential consequence: doesn’t it lead to reducing courage or motivation as well? Since this is what we precisely see in the above mentioned group: a decrease of aggressivity correlates with an increase of social anxiety, timidity, shyness i..e. low courage and with the kind of attitudes where playing videogames can be primary hobby, nay, even an identity.
Of a personal experience, as my aggression levels fluctuated, so fluctuated motivation, courage, happines, self-respect and similar things with it. Not in the sense of fluctuating between aggressive and docile behavior of course, but in the sense of needing to exercise a lot of self restraint to always stay civil vs. not needing to.
You can raise the same things about its permanence. The worst outcome is a lower-aggresion group just being taken over by a higher one. Another potential impermance comes from the fluctuation of generations. My father was a rebel (beatnik), so I had only rebellion to rebel against, and my own counter-revolutionary rebellion was approved by my grandfather :)
Finally a visual type of explanation, maybe it comes accross better. You can understand human aggressivity as riding a high energy engine towards a bad, unethical direction. Having a lot of drive to do bad things. We can do two things, steer it away into a good one or just brake and turn off the engine. Everything we seem to do in this direction seems to more like braking than steering away. For example, if we were steering, we would encourage people to put a lot of drive into creative hobbies instead of hurting each other. Therefore, we would shame the living fsck out of people who don’t build something. Yet we don’t do this: we praise people who build, but we neglect to shame the lazy gamers. Putting it differently, we “brake” kids when they do bad stuff, but we don’t kick their butts in order to do good stuff, so they end up doing nothing mostly. Every time a child or a youth would do something useful with a competitive motivation like “I’ll show those lazy fscks” we immediately apply the brake. This leads to demotivation.
So in short, negative motivation can be surpressed. The issue is, it has consequences, it is probably not permanent, and really hard to replace it with a positive one. Of course I am not talking about people like us but more like the average.
Um, I fail to see how people are making and doing less stuff than in previous generations. We’ve become obsessed with information technology, so a lot of that stuff tends to be things like “A new web application so that everyone can do X better”, but it fuels both the economy and academia, so who cares? With things like maker culture, the sheer overwhelming number of kids in their teens and 20s and 30s starting SAAS companies or whatever, and media becoming more distributed than it’s ever been in history, we have an absurd amount of productivity going on in this era, so I’m confused where you think we’re “braking”.
As for video games in particular (Which seems to be your go-to example for things characteristic of the modern era that are useless), games are just a computer-enabled medium for two kinds of things: Contests of will and media. The gamers of today are analogous in many ways to the novel-consumers or TV-consumers or mythology-consumers of yesterday and also today (Because rumors of the death of old kinds of media are often greatly exaggerated), except for the gamers that are more analogous to the sports-players or gladiators or chess-players of yesterday and also today. Also, the basically-overnight-gigantic indie game development industry is pretty analogous to other giant booms in some form of artistic expression. Video games aren’t a new human tendency, they’re a superstimulus that hijacks several (Storytelling, Artistic expression, Contests of will) and lowers entry barriers to them. Also, the advent of powerful parallel processors (GPUs), a huge part of the boom in AI research recently, has been driven primarily by the gaming industry. I think that’s a win regardless.
Basically, I just don’t buy any of your claims whatsoever. The “common sense” ideas about how society improving on measures of collaboration, nonviolence, and egalitarianism will make people lazy and complacent and stupid have pretty much never borne out on a large scale, so I’m more inclined to attribute their frequent repetition by smart people to some common human cognitive bias than some deep truth. As someone whose ancestors evolved in the same environment yours did, I too like stories of uber-competent tribal hero guys, but I don’t think that makes for a better society, given the overwhelming evidence that a more pluralistic, egalitarian, and nonviolent society tends to correlate with more life satisfaction for more people, as well as the acceleration of technology.
we praise people who build, but we neglect to shame the lazy gamers
I can’t help wondering where you got this idea. The mainstream absolutely shames lazy gamers; they’re one of the few groups that it’s socially acceptable to shame without reservation, even more so than other subcultures seen as socially unproductive (e.g. stoner, hippie, dropout) because their escape of choice still carries a childish stigma. That’s countered somewhat by an expectation of somewhat higher social class, but the “mom’s basement” stereotype is alive and well.
Even other lazy gamers often shame lazy gamers, although that’s balanced (for some value of “balance”) by a lot of back-patting; nerd culture of all stripes has a strong self-love/self-hate thing going on.
But on a basic common sense level, if the starting point is fewer people getting killed, the most basic solution is bodyguards and so on.
That assumes that the bodyguards never use violence and beat somebody to death.
Simply increasing the amount of people who can beat other people up doesn’t automatically reduce violence.
South Africa has a lot of body guards and it’s still a lot more violent then states in Europe.
Giving the government the monopoly on violence is a standard enlightenment idea that works well if your state highers enough policemen and the citizens believe in the rule of law.
Playing status with accounts one could throw away at any second and register three new ones in its place would be really, really stupid, let’s try to not accuse each other with at something that simplistic.
Status interactions are deeply ingrained in the way humans interact with each other. It not something that get’s shut down just because a discussion is online.
This is a bit broader stuff than something reducible to a few stats. But on a basic common sense level, if the starting point is fewer people getting killed, the most basic solution is bodyguards and so on. So that is at least sensible as a starter instead of a Plan B rewiring everybody’s brain to not be hateful.
As for status, come on, that is something that happens between real people, while DeVliegendeHollander, Acty and hairyfigment are mere accounts. For all people know it could even be the same person behind all three accounts. Playing status with accounts one could throw away at any second and register three new ones in its place would be really, really stupid, let’s try to not accuse each other with at something that simplistic. At least if you want to assume evil, asssume a less banal kind. In fact I am thinking anyway that I should recycle DVH because it is getting too much karma and this account is developing something too much like a personality. I recycle on Reddit about every three weeks, maybe a three month or six month cycle would be good here. (The goal is of course to have ideas said by accounts that are not associated by former ideas said by accounts and thus their reception being less biased. Besides to not accumulate this completely ridiculous karma thing.)
Yup, playing status with accounts would be kinda stupid. (That’s why you should stop doing it.)
You know what would be especially stupid? If we lived in a world that accorded me higher status than you because of my general level of aggression, and I could end this entire argument with “I’m high status, you’re low status, I’m right, you’re wrong, shut up now”.
Now, wouldn’t that be a really stupid world...?
So tell me again why giving status and prestige to aggressive people is a great idea?
You keep assuming there is a fixed background level of aggression, but that is just what left wing thinkers believe can be changed.
I won’t even argue that, it is a fact it can be changed. Bicoastal America and NW Europe managed to make a fairly large young college-ed middle class that is surprisingly docile. The issue is simply the consequences of the change and its permanence.
If you talked to any random Roman or Ancient Greek author about it, he would basically say you guys are actively trying to get decadent and expect it will work out well? To give you the most simple potential consequence: doesn’t it lead to reducing courage or motivation as well? Since this is what we precisely see in the above mentioned group: a decrease of aggressivity correlates with an increase of social anxiety, timidity, shyness i..e. low courage and with the kind of attitudes where playing videogames can be primary hobby, nay, even an identity.
Of a personal experience, as my aggression levels fluctuated, so fluctuated motivation, courage, happines, self-respect and similar things with it. Not in the sense of fluctuating between aggressive and docile behavior of course, but in the sense of needing to exercise a lot of self restraint to always stay civil vs. not needing to.
You can raise the same things about its permanence. The worst outcome is a lower-aggresion group just being taken over by a higher one. Another potential impermance comes from the fluctuation of generations. My father was a rebel (beatnik), so I had only rebellion to rebel against, and my own counter-revolutionary rebellion was approved by my grandfather :)
Finally a visual type of explanation, maybe it comes accross better. You can understand human aggressivity as riding a high energy engine towards a bad, unethical direction. Having a lot of drive to do bad things. We can do two things, steer it away into a good one or just brake and turn off the engine. Everything we seem to do in this direction seems to more like braking than steering away. For example, if we were steering, we would encourage people to put a lot of drive into creative hobbies instead of hurting each other. Therefore, we would shame the living fsck out of people who don’t build something. Yet we don’t do this: we praise people who build, but we neglect to shame the lazy gamers. Putting it differently, we “brake” kids when they do bad stuff, but we don’t kick their butts in order to do good stuff, so they end up doing nothing mostly. Every time a child or a youth would do something useful with a competitive motivation like “I’ll show those lazy fscks” we immediately apply the brake. This leads to demotivation.
So in short, negative motivation can be surpressed. The issue is, it has consequences, it is probably not permanent, and really hard to replace it with a positive one. Of course I am not talking about people like us but more like the average.
Um, I fail to see how people are making and doing less stuff than in previous generations. We’ve become obsessed with information technology, so a lot of that stuff tends to be things like “A new web application so that everyone can do X better”, but it fuels both the economy and academia, so who cares? With things like maker culture, the sheer overwhelming number of kids in their teens and 20s and 30s starting SAAS companies or whatever, and media becoming more distributed than it’s ever been in history, we have an absurd amount of productivity going on in this era, so I’m confused where you think we’re “braking”.
As for video games in particular (Which seems to be your go-to example for things characteristic of the modern era that are useless), games are just a computer-enabled medium for two kinds of things: Contests of will and media. The gamers of today are analogous in many ways to the novel-consumers or TV-consumers or mythology-consumers of yesterday and also today (Because rumors of the death of old kinds of media are often greatly exaggerated), except for the gamers that are more analogous to the sports-players or gladiators or chess-players of yesterday and also today. Also, the basically-overnight-gigantic indie game development industry is pretty analogous to other giant booms in some form of artistic expression. Video games aren’t a new human tendency, they’re a superstimulus that hijacks several (Storytelling, Artistic expression, Contests of will) and lowers entry barriers to them. Also, the advent of powerful parallel processors (GPUs), a huge part of the boom in AI research recently, has been driven primarily by the gaming industry. I think that’s a win regardless.
Basically, I just don’t buy any of your claims whatsoever. The “common sense” ideas about how society improving on measures of collaboration, nonviolence, and egalitarianism will make people lazy and complacent and stupid have pretty much never borne out on a large scale, so I’m more inclined to attribute their frequent repetition by smart people to some common human cognitive bias than some deep truth. As someone whose ancestors evolved in the same environment yours did, I too like stories of uber-competent tribal hero guys, but I don’t think that makes for a better society, given the overwhelming evidence that a more pluralistic, egalitarian, and nonviolent society tends to correlate with more life satisfaction for more people, as well as the acceleration of technology.
I can’t help wondering where you got this idea. The mainstream absolutely shames lazy gamers; they’re one of the few groups that it’s socially acceptable to shame without reservation, even more so than other subcultures seen as socially unproductive (e.g. stoner, hippie, dropout) because their escape of choice still carries a childish stigma. That’s countered somewhat by an expectation of somewhat higher social class, but the “mom’s basement” stereotype is alive and well.
Even other lazy gamers often shame lazy gamers, although that’s balanced (for some value of “balance”) by a lot of back-patting; nerd culture of all stripes has a strong self-love/self-hate thing going on.
That assumes that the bodyguards never use violence and beat somebody to death. Simply increasing the amount of people who can beat other people up doesn’t automatically reduce violence. South Africa has a lot of body guards and it’s still a lot more violent then states in Europe.
Giving the government the monopoly on violence is a standard enlightenment idea that works well if your state highers enough policemen and the citizens believe in the rule of law.
Status interactions are deeply ingrained in the way humans interact with each other. It not something that get’s shut down just because a discussion is online.