Faux-nobo: “Naked Bonobo” demolishes myth of sexy, egalitarian bonobos - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14855842
Sivad wrote:Most animals express/communicate nonverbally and bond through physical contact. The specific forms of physical contact and noverbal expression could be determined by simple morphology(primates hug because they have arms and can stand upright) rather than being hardwired or innate behavior. If body structure does have a role in determining the forms of contact then universality isn't conclusive proof of innateness.


Not really, it's way more complicated than that.



If hugging, smiling and kissing is not innate, why do they bother at all?

Let’s ask is any behaviour innate? The majority of animals have flight/fight response to stress. Then there is hunger, sex drive, and similar. This behaviour is innate.

Mammals have mother/infant bond at the core of their distinctive sociality. This too is innate. Mammals tend to groom too. And play. Again innate.

Apes have a common suit of behaviours such as kissing, hugging, smiling, singing. These are also innate.

Now we can find similar behaviours in more closely related groups. This is not unexpected. Evolution doesn’t create de nova. It builds on what is already there and modifies it for new purposes. So there is a fish, a lizard, a mammal and a monkey in each human. Note that we can find anologous behaviour between less closely related groups also. None the less there is clear association of behaviour traits with cladistic groups as there is with other traits.

I think at the heart of resistance to acknowledging our monkey nature is a certain anthrocentrism. This is the idea we are exceptional and not really animals. Well we are animals, moneys what’s more, and every species is exceptional in its own way.

In time anthrocentrism will go the way of ideas like ‘flat earth’ and ‘the world being the centre of the solar system’.

OK, you say we aren’t monkeys because it is more complicated than that. How so?
#14855859
Sivad wrote:If body structure does have a role in determining the forms of contact then universality isn't conclusive proof of innateness.

I agree and I'd go further and say that universality shouldn't be taken as conclusive proof in any event. However, depending on the circumstances, it should be taken as evidence for innate behaviour. There's certainly enough evidence to not dismiss the possibility of innate sex differences in behaviour, for instance, especially since some of the differences emerge quite early in infants. There's strong opposition to this that seems to come from a purely ideological standpoint, mostly from the left political spectrum. The right on the other hand can be prone to engage in is-ought fallacies in this area.

Also related to this is the more general question of biological influences on behaviour at both the individual and group level. I think for the left today this is a slippery slope too dangerous to contemplate, as it has the potential power to demolish discrimination narratives and to call into question their preferred interventions designed to solve all kinds of problems (again for both individuals and groups).
#14855920
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:I agree and I'd go further and say that universality shouldn't be taken as conclusive proof in any event. However, depending on the circumstances, it should be taken as evidence for innate behaviour. There's certainly enough evidence to not dismiss the possibility of innate sex differences in behaviour, for instance, especially since some of the differences emerge quite early in infants. There's strong opposition to this that seems to come from a purely ideological standpoint, mostly from the left political spectrum. The right on the other hand can be prone to engage in is-ought fallacies in this area.


I'm pretty much with you here but it seems to me that there's a range of innate behavior within each sex. Some men are naturally effeminate while others are innately hyper-masculine and some women are naturally butch and some are ultra femme. There's a broad middle between those extremes that we call "normal" but that's really just folk bigotry.

Also related to this is the more general question of biological influences on behaviour at both the individual and group level. I think for the left today this is a slippery slope too dangerous to contemplate, as it has the potential power to demolish discrimination narratives and to call into question their preferred interventions designed to solve all kinds of problems (again for both individuals and groups).


It's hard to tell how much of the dysfunction in minority communities is due to environmental issues and how much is genetic. The fact is there's more diversity within racial groups than between racial groups, so if something like low iq and higher aggression on average for blacks is mostly due to genetics then that would make policies like affirmative action even more necessary because there would still be a lot of intelligent, emotionally stable individuals within that group being judged by their group status. And isn't discriminating against an individual by their race the essence of racism? The other thing is society isn't a business and shouldn't be a competition, if some groups need more help than others then that help should be provided.
#14856028
Sivad wrote:The other thing is society isn't a business and shouldn't be a competition, if some groups need more help than others then that help should be provided.

If society were an organism then it would be so because its component cells are specialised in function. If some people are better at thinking then let them be thinkers if others are better at fighting then let them be fighters. Affirmative action seems to be about trying make all the cells the same even against their nature and consequently to make the cells individually weaker and the organism as the organised aggregate of the cells weaker.

Competition is a red herring, the egalitarian is against specialisation.
#14856048
in Chimps we see intense individual competition between individuals and the ability of individuals to form alliances. We see primitive warfare and primitive genocide. When Chimps rip the genitals off of enemy chimps, we see the beginnings of a primitive identity politics. Humans have far more complex individual competition and co-operation. They have far more complex methods of warfare. They can also engage in inter group diplomacy and inter group alliances, something that Chimps can not engage in.

As Homo Sapiens and their ancestors rose, competition with their fellow hominoids became ever more important. Genocide became ever more important. I would suggest not only was genocide normal in pre civilised societies, it is genocide that has made us human. It is genocide that has driven the expansion of our intelligence. It is genocide that has driven the reproductive differential rates of inteligence. It is genocide that has fast tracked evolution.

This would be failry obvious but it has been obscured by the large complex empires and supra tribal polities of the last 4 to 5000 years. In these societies the genocide has been most internal not external. In each generation the poor were partially genocided and the rich expanded their numbers hugely. There was a perpetual (overall / on average) down ward mobility. The poorer strata were continually genocided and the rich were continually socially descending in order to replace them.

To see genocide in Malthusuian societies as immoral is absurd. Genocde was inevitable, it was just a case of who got genocided and whose lineage survived and expanded. Britain only escaped Malthusianism in the first half of the nineteenth century. Birth rates fell while productivity accelerated.
#14856082
Sivad wrote:I'm saying human behavior is psychologically and socially complicated.
Of course it is, and like Rancid said- why model human societies after primitive monkeys... See, I'm not sure what this thread is trying to accomplish (second-thought, I guess it doesn't have to accomplish anything in particular). Have you heard bonobos are peaceful apes using sex to make egalitarian community? You've been lied to. Okay, so what, you know how many lies circulate in a human society- if you really dig deep into human behavior, we're psychologically and socially myth makers. We rely on cognitive images, symbols, sounds, etc to condense phenomena so we can communicate inside a 'civilized' pattern of perception. Without social placebos, myths, and lies, human society would collapse. Why do you think Disney land and Las Vegas exist? I mean, what is RT or Sivad, at best, we're cognitive images, imaginary myths, minus the day-to-day drudgery of simply 'being.' Humans like to 'short-circuit' the naked truth because it's easier to communicate that way. Imagine how many bio-chemical reactions occurred while I composed this shallow form of expression...



That's a possibility but it's more likely that over the next few hundred years biorobotics will advance to the point that human type people probably won't be the dominant intelligent life on the planet.
That's the cliche, but what about the dolphins and whales? Jokes aside, do you think the tranhumanist types will look back and study our milieu for behavioral insights/cues? Furthermore, will they write a book called 'The Naked Homo-Sapien,' and proceed to telepathically bicker about behavior in a hyper-dimensional forum linked as 'biorobotics.borg?'
#14856438
Sivad wrote:
I'm pretty much with you here but it seems to me that there's a range of innate behavior within each sex. Some men are naturally effeminate while others are innately hyper-masculine and some women are naturally butch and some are ultra femme. There's a broad middle between those extremes that we call "normal" but that's really just folk bigotry.

I agree that there can be lots of variation within the two groups, but there are still observable differences on average in behaviours between them. If some of these differences are innate, then equal opportunity won't bring about equal outcomes of the two groups in all areas of life but rather the opposite - with more egalitarianism and less strict social mores we should expect innate differences to become more apparent.

I don't think it's necessarily bigoted to note that there are types of behaviour that are normal or typical for men and women. It depends on how the word normal is used I guess. If it's a value judgment it can be bigotry and would fall under the is-ought fallacy. But the ability to decide what is out of the ordinary and hence requires more attention is quite important for us to make sense and navigate the world and it's counterproductive to denounce it as negative in general, as it's quite likely itself innate and our control over it is limited.

Somewhat related, to say that every behaviour is just a variation of normal is not helpful either. I realise that this is often motivated by a wish to reduce stigma, but it doesn't do justice to the real impairment that certain behavioural issues cause. A good example of this is autism where today a small and vocal group of activists push for ASD behaviours to be regarded as normal. Ironically, people on the ASD spectrum are among the most challenged in environments with an increasing number of ever-changing rules demanded in the name of tolerance. It's a minefield for them to navigate without slipping up, and the only way to prevent them from being punished for unacceptable behaviour is to recognise that they are not normal.

Sivad wrote:
It's hard to tell how much of the dysfunction in minority communities is due to environmental issues and how much is genetic. The fact is there's more diversity within racial groups than between racial groups, so if something like low iq and higher aggression on average for blacks is mostly due to genetics then that would make policies like affirmative action even more necessary because there would still be a lot of intelligent, emotionally stable individuals within that group being judged by their group status. And isn't discriminating against an individual by their race the essence of racism? The other thing is society isn't a business and shouldn't be a competition, if some groups need more help than others then that help should be provided.

Again, the greater variance within groups is a red herring. There is more variability in height within Swedes and Italians than between the two groups, yet it's obvious that on average Swedes are taller than Italians. So we'll find more tall people in Sweden and we should not expect equal outcome in height in the two countries.

I'm all for helping individuals and groups but to help effectively we need to know what the problems are. Today it has been decreed that any difference in outcome must be due to discrimination and in fact the former is now used to prove the latter. There are potentially huge opportunity costs associated with fighting purported discrimination and bringing about equal outcomes, if we are wrong or only partly right. Note that we don't need to get into genetics to come up with alternative or additional explanations for the under-performance of certain minority groups. For instance, what if family breakdown, which has disproportionately affected blacks, matters and how are we going to find a solution if we exclusively concentrate on discrimination?

I'd go along with affirmative action as long as there is broad societal consensus that it is the way to go, albeit reluctantly and insisting that it needs to be temporary. It's possible that we can kick-start better performance and accelerate positive change by skewing the picture in favour of certain minorities, but it will inevitably cause resentment among those who are at the other end of that skew as time goes on. In the US this will be mostly Asians, which as a minority are really the big elephant in the room, and to a lesser extent whites. Regarding educational performance objective testing should be sufficient to overcome bias associated with group membership. The problem is that in the US at least Asians tend outperform everybody else. In New York the situation in selective high schools is so bad that there have been attempts to move away from objective entry exams.
In the complaint and in a subsequent report released last fall to coincide with Mayor de Blasio’s election, the LDF [NAACP Legal Defense Fund] argues for replacement of the SHSAT [Specialized High School Admissions Test] with a “holistic” admissions process—one that would consider “multiple measures” of academic potential, “both quantitative and qualitative,” including not only grades but also such subjective indicators as interviews, recommendations, “portfolio assessments,” “proven leadership skills,” and “commitment to community service.” Other factors could include applicants’ “backgrounds and experiences” and the “demographic profile” of their schools and neighborhoods. To the extent that a test would be allowed at all, it would merely “supplement” these other criteria. The LDF also called for guaranteed admission for valedictorians and salutatorians, and perhaps other top students, at each public middle school program—a proposal that sounds modest but would actually require a set-aside of at least 1,000 of the 3,800 seats in each class. Breaking with Acorn’s focus in its 1997 report on test preparation, the LDF declared that “more test prep is not the answer” and quoted the president of another civil rights group, who said that “encouraging students to spend weeks and months furiously studying . . . is wrongheaded and clearly hasn’t worked.”

What has happened is that there are now three minorities pitted against each other, Blacks and Latinos on the one hand and Asians on the other, with Asians unsurprisingly fiercely fighting to keep merit-based admission. Another dysfunctional effect is that there's now an attempt to "dispel the myth" of Asians as a model minority in order to uphold the discrimination narrative and presumably because Asians aren't keen to be on the receiving end of policies that disadvantage them as a group.

Sorry for the long post. All this is to say that by now I find it difficult to believe that bigotry, discrimination or a hostile environment are entirely responsible for disparate outcomes and that I think it's time to at least consider other possible explanations.

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