And tobacco. And leaded gasoline. And...<p>We really are one fucked up species. But can evolution even produce anything better? Anything that's not so prone to coordination problems?<p><a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/" rel="nofollow">https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/</a>
No, these are really fucked up people, to leap from that to "the species" and from <i>that</i> to "evolution" which humans had no clue about even hundreds of years ago... is just avoiding confronting that and them. It's half of the the reason for why these things happen and get worse, a sort of global bystander effect. We feel okay to in public dismiss this.<p>If you were one in a group of 4 people, and one of them fed poison to a child to remove a stain from their shoe, or just for a laugh, or for 2 cents, and someone got upset, would you talk about the species or evolution first thing? What habit did we normalise here?
No, we as a civilization are ultimately responsible for giving bad actors power, and indeed often glorifying those actors. There are evolutionary reasons why it is so, but that's absolutely not to say that these things just happen and a species with a very different psychology couldn't avoid the same trap.
Exactly. It's a pretty small number of people who are this terrible. Thinking of it in evolutionary terms creates a sense of fatalism. If you look globally since the invention of agriculture, it's very clear that a) humans are extremely flexible, and b) culture matters hugely to how societies turn out.<p>Culture is something we inherit, but it's something we can change. If we want things to be less fucked up for the next generation, we can do that. As many before us have.
Nah, it's the species. Corporate greed is near the bottom of the list among the accolades of human cruelty.
In the real world, two out of these four people vote to protect the poisoner because poison is a conspiracy against the freedom to feed children anything you want.
I’ve long suspected it’ll take us _almost_ going extinct to actually take this stuff seriously.<p>There are too few of us who understand asymmetric risk, and too many in power who are willing to roll the dice for the entire species for profit.<p>Realistically, it will have to get much, much, worse before it gets any better.<p>IMO this is part of the natural evolutionary cycle.
Asbestos too. And glyphosates which have devastated insect populations. Veritasium did great documentaries on both of those crises<p>glyphosate <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxVXvFOPIyQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxVXvFOPIyQ</a><p>asbestos <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMx139eTxoc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMx139eTxoc</a><p>It took decades for the science to finally flow freely since both of these industries heavily targeted the scientific institutions themselves. Who knows what other pesticides and chemical companies are following the same playbook that we won't get to know about for decades.
The only species I can think of that coordinate better than humans do are ants, bees, and naked mole rats.
We're our own moral judges. Biology doesn't have an ethical opinion.
"Better", as in, capable as a civilization of avoiding doing things that are incredibly harmful according to their own morals. Capable of defeating their own Moloch, if you will.
cheater detection and self-correction is important in systems. i am not sure "fucked-up" is a meaningful way to look at species-level things.
Even looking only at different cultures, saying nothing of nature, the degree to which people are willing to cooperate or defect against the group varies widely. The level of trust varies widely.<p>People aren't motivated solely by the risk of being caught. Some people tell themselves that everyone else must be trying to cheat, so it's okay for them to cheat. But this type of thinking isn't a law of nature, it's just a human flaw.<p>The amount of cheating is not a fundamental constant. Given that people are social animals and that we tend to be stronger as a group, in fact you'd expect that prosocial behavior is good for the species. If fucked up is to mean anything, poisoning the environment with forever chemicals ought to make the fucking cut, if you'll pardon my French.
Yes, and our cheater detection is entirely broken, given that we <i>prefer</i> to give power to cheaters, as long as the cheater is smart enough.
yeah, sometimes cheaters winning is a net benefit or at least acceptable. although, i don't think those cases above are, heh.
It's just a bunch of grapes.<p>If there's more than enough grapes for everyone and one person takes more than their fair share, then, on the whole, it's fine. There's enough to go round.<p>If everyone tries to take more than their fair share, then the whole system falls apart.<p>When there are this many people, and this much visibility of the hustle, just seeing others prosper by cheating means a not insubstantial number of people will be in the "well I want grapes, and likely need to cheat to make sure I get my fair share" camp.
Oh, evolution certainly can. The bad ones always get killed off.
…gambling, social media…
there is reason why every civilization rise and fails.