What traits are humans selecting for?
A convo with @wacey in the chatbox got me curious, so I googled and found this: https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wi...ght-possess-in
Which is cool, but I'm more curious about mental/psychological developments. In the future, will humans be more or less intelligent, empathetic, intuitive, happy, or whatever...based on the current trends?
People are disgust-averse, if you can find a smarter mate all else being equal, you will. The internet facilitates grouping based on shared views, and as dumb people are grouped together (this is something that happens to them, not something they organize on their own; intelligence affords the maneuverability) so does economic pressure. People with resources (and therefore maneuverability) will leave if it gets to be too much, leaving behind geographic regions with disproportionately dumb people. Thinking about humans as a whole is the mistake; there are discrete populations on Earth, and and now more than ever you can be exclusive in your interactions by way of getting the fuck out.
The counter-balance to this is the economic pressure brought on by all the dumb people getting left behind causes intraregional conflict, and since intelligence is still an advantage in group-combat/politicking even those left behind self-regulate to a degree, with smarter people leaping out of those pools all the time.
The long and short of it is that stupidity gets punished by social exclusion on the part of smart people who leave them to their mess.
Humans will be happier, certainly, because we will live in more prosperous times. The trend is that violence will continue to decline, because there will probably be a reduction in the factors that are linked to violence: it is difficult to say whether being less violent for this reason is truly emblematic of increased empathy. However, it is certainly the case that there is a positive trend in regards individuals having empathy for causes that were unthinkable even a short time ago.
Many of the other traits you mentioned may not be possible to compare in previous times on a like-for-like basis
As resources and population increase, so does maneuverability and so does the sum-total of economic pressure, meaning the stakes are raised; I expect that as a consequence, people will become less empathetic and more discriminatory. The hope is that there will be enough people who can muster both empathy and intelligence to keep society mostly livable, but if not, anti-social tendencies can only increase so much before people find each other intolerable, thereby stymieing* reproduction.
Two generations ago most people did not need to lock their front doors, which is unheard of now. For the first time people generally become unhappier as they become older.
The trend is less consideration of others and increasing unhappiness as we age.
crime has gone down statistically across the board (in the united states anyway), a lot of perception of decreased safety is group psychological (rooted in increased fragility which in turn exaggerates threats so much so as to offset the facts entirely and create the above perception)
anyway, I don't lock my front door; inb4 "good luck with getting robbed" as if that kind of cynicism isn't exactly the problem
^ Same thing that happens with most of the catastrophe-porn; "teens are more narcissistic these days" more or less means "I see it at work, then I see it on the computer at home, it's happening TWICE AS MUCH!"
Na, what's really happening is for some reason on this forum, people don't really look at the facts in the right way. Maybe it's too much education, means they are taught what to look at.Originally Posted by Shackleton
1. People don't know their neighbors anymore https://qz.com/916801/americans-dont...-of-democracy/
2. The type of crime - Mass shootings for instance https://qz.com/916801/americans-dont...-of-democracy/ is new
So, people feel less safe because they don't know the person living next to them, and the crime that takes place seems more senseless than before. 'Stats' can be played with, the root of society is collapsing.
So 'didn't have to lock their front doors' - for sure, now they don't even know the people living next to them.
Crime - it has changed, the nature of crime and the lack of understanding of crime taking place.
I wonder if you're at college or something? There's a reason why most people believe crime is increasing each year, and it's not because some ivory tower academic says it's because people are dumb.
what you're saying is knowing your neighbors factors more heavily into psychological comfort than real crime beyond the borders of your neighborhood, which I don't dispute. but its fundamentally a statement about one's own attitude toward the world, not the world itself to say "its going to hell in a handbasket" or something to that effect
also "there's a reason people are saying x" is precisely why Trump prefaces every lie or fantasy with "I've heard lots of people saying x..." "many people are saying Obama is a Muslim!" etc etc. you're just a useful idiot if you believe crime must be increasing simply because other people believe it is. people believe all sorts of stuff. statistics are real because they help us sort exactly those kind of issues out. obviously they can be manipulated but if you prefer to rely on simple hearsay instead, that only substitutes something worse by your own criteria (susceptibility to manipulation). no one is saying statistics are foolproof but if your retort is that you set the criteria for judgement then you at the same time choose your conclusion. in some sense you've chosen to believe what you believe about the world because you've arbitrarily determined the metric by which to judge and in that sense talking to you is pointless, since if you've convinced yourself the world is shit contrary to evidence then fine enjoy the world you've chosen to inhabit, but at no point does that translate into objective statements about the world and your attack on statistics is laughable because you've decided that if statistics are a threat to your curmudgeony ways, then statistics has to go! As if that isn't just selecting the worst of both worlds for reasons I can't quite comprehend
Last edited by Bertrand; 01-27-2018 at 02:20 AM.
@Scarper I'm not saying people overall are dumb, had you actually read my post instead of commenting on the meta you'd see that I actually argued that overall intelligence is stable across time because intelligent people exit.
The fact that people don't know their neighbors anymore is completely irrelevant to whether or not the crime rate is increasing (most burglary and domestic violence is committed by people known to the victim), mass shootings have fuckall to do with whether or not you lock your front door and that they happen has little bearing on whether or not the overall crime rate is increasing.
Also, the fact that you've provided two media-based reasons for why the perception that the crime rate is increasing irrespective of whether or not it actually is increasing is perfectly in keeping with what I said and with what Bertrand said, whether people feel safe leaving their doors unlocked is again irrelevant to anything except possibly happiness.
The actual rate of crime is the important factor at play in determining that there's a trend of "less consideration for others," not the perception thereof.
The links I provided had a link to the pew report, among the highest regarded of pollsters.
Crime isn't really the issue for creating a safe society. Take North Korea, with crime rates among the lowest in the world, yet people are living in fear.
I've read the general academic / professional response, which is that people are just imagining the area is less safe. It's not the case: people no longer feel safe because they do not know those living around them - distrust.
Also, older people are now unhappier than young people, for reasons which are many which I won't go into.
The reality is that the actual world, not the statistical world, is getting worse.
interesting because its like you could just go out and meet your neighbors (if its really the case that the world depends on it), but this sounds like it may be a case of expecting them to come to you (and when they don't, your subjective "world" is ending), which is precisely how people offload their mobilizing and suggestive to society especially when unhealthy
Rejecting "...people are just imagining the area is less safe." in favor of "people no longer feel safe because they don't know..."
Mind. Blown.
My point to begin with is that people feel less safe, re locking doors, which was moved to by yourself ... 'people are safer because crime is reduced' which negates why they feel less safe, plus an example of a country (North Korea) with almost no crime which isn't safe at all.
Are you at school / college? I know Bertrand is. I work with some sociology / history students who think similar to you, as for Bertrand, I have him on ignore, but I remember similar ways of academic perception. I have a view that education teaches people what to think, rather than to think, anyway, it's cool if you don't answer, I was just curious.
I'd say people are less considerate towards those they don't know and don't feel safe around and this could contribute to overall unhappiness. Dunno if that's what scarper was getting at but it makes sense to me that way.
@Scarper I didn't move the topic of discussion, Bertrand brought up the crime rate in reference to your argument that people are less considerate of each other, which (again) is relevant because that should be the determining factor in discerning whether or not people are actually less considerate of each other instead of just in their heads.
Now this makes no sense.
Am I to assume that criminal transgressions of boundaries are less important than being generally a little petty?
You're assuming that a drop in crime is because people are more considerate of others, which is a silly assumption.
I'd say that a drop in crime is due to abundance of resources, and that abundance of resources causing a drop in crime > a decrease in actions that would be considered inconsiderate. That it's been replaced by pettiness is hardly worth considering.
lol this goes to the same issue which is fundamentally substituting the primary for the secondary. every time we come back to it because its just a cat and mouse game revolving around this underlying move. that something is primary or secondary is psychological by definition because, whatever the priorities, they are ordered as base presuppositions in the mind shaped by the cognitive framework of the person itself. in other words, this is a perspective that goes to the root, a radical arrangement of priorities that function to provide the light the world is cast in for the individual
Mind elaborating?
EDIT:Mm, okay.
Do you have anything to back that up? From memory, i'd need to check, there were initiatives taken out to reduce crime, resulting in harsher sentences and more chances of getting caught (deterrent rather than good will), also the wealth of the average person has decreased rather than increased (negating abundance of resources causing a drop in crime.)
I'm saying you're right to point out that consideration includes, if you're thinking in terms of complete accuracy, crimes as well as general congeniality toward one's neighbors. it makes no sense to say consideration is down unless you elevate congeniality and ignore crime (as relevant factors) and never the two shall meet. if you consider it as a whole, and realize that a drop in crime necessarily includes a rise in consideration, just from the basement (which is invisible to many people) and involving other parties (by this I mean it involves "invisible factors" across two levels: other communities and people, and crimes are compared to more pleasant interaction: although the later is on the same scale it is so low down on it is not consciously considered to be on the same pole for whom such things are beyond consideration in terms of acts contemplated as being within the realm of one's own possibility).. so they get excluded, but subconsciously this distorts the picture of the world in such a way as to invert one's conclusion about the state of affairs in the world because its cast in light directed at such idiosyncratic angles
in other words, if crime is out of the question for the person perceiving the world (by this I mean a person who does not really consider themselves a potential criminal), a global drop in crime carries less psychological weight for the person in how they judge their world because its "fallen into the basement of the subconscious" as a live possibility. the physical distance further serves to estrange our hero from consideration of parties beyond the scope of their perception. taken together it clamps the picture of the world and leads to our conclusion about the world getting worse
Last edited by Bertrand; 01-27-2018 at 07:25 AM.
The wealth of the average person isn't really so much a consideration as whether or not the means of subsistence are there; unmotivated people won't commit more crimes so long as they're able to eat. But the proportion of people who are in all-out poverty has decreased since the 1960s: https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what...-united-states
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ed_States..PNG
Crime continued to increase until the 1990s, yet poverty percentage was roughly the same.
What changed? Tough new laws https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viol...nforcement_Act
Which resulted in crime returning to 1960s level.
What was poverty in 1960s? Over 20%
Conclusion: Poverty rate does not affect crime rate. Actually the data supports that in the past - about two generations ago, despite high poverty and lower crime detection, crime levels were at the rate they are just now. People's morals have declined, not increased, hence, people do not feel safer, people are not more considerate, current crime level reduction does not reflect good will, or reduction in poverty, but fear enforcement and increased detection.
Edit: I just noticed, despite high poverty, crime was low, crime started to increase after the Bible was banned in schoolsIt took severe punishment / high surveillance to reduce crime, even though poverty decreased.
Last edited by at sirac son of sirac; 01-27-2018 at 03:40 AM.
That's not the only consideration. As you can see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social...ANF_recipients
welfare recipients were receiving more benefits post-60's (high poverty rates at the time), with few barriers to entry; point being they were still poor, had free time, but could eat. It was during the 90's (the same time period that the crime bill was put into place) that TANF added the requirement that the recipients should be employed below a certain income level or seeking employment to receive benefits, ergo less time to commit crime while also encouraging them to earn money.
It's also true that rich kids commit crimes disproportionately, mainly because they're bored. The real operating distinction is that people need both: food, and something to do.
Resources also extends beyond just money itself; we're also talking infrastructure.
It's never so simple as any one factor, and this should be it's own thread by this point anyway.
Ah OK so you move from saying poor people commit crime to saying it's rich people. Seems you and the people who like your posts are onto the same thing - nonesense.
memes
Actually, I didn't. I said that in addition to the poor people, rich people disproportionately commit crimes due to boredom. Try reading what I've written.
EDIT: I deeply apologize to all the people who don't comprehend that I can't approach the conversation from literally every single angle simultaneously in a reasonable period of time while also addressing your spurious platitudes, but seeing as I'm not being paid to write an anthology on the matter, I can't be bothered.
Yes, I have a few friends with high incomes, it's quite common for them when they're bored, they'll go out and kill and rape a few people. Typical eh.
Rape and murder aren't among the crimes that people commit when bored, typically, nor did I ask you about your friends, I was specifically talking about rich kids.
Again, if you want to distill the whole conversation down to a single principle governing why everyone everywhere commits crime, then by all means, spout off more platitudes parallel to my own points; I'm not going to sit here all night at the paddle knocking them down.
Index crime in USA is murder, rape, robbery, assault and property crime, which is why I mentioned those two.
It's you that distilled it down to one factor - poverty, then on being proven wrong you changed it to being wealthy.
Also the crimes you're elusively referring to don't make sense in regards to the statistics we're talking about.
Lack of focus on facts coupled with arguments on personal bias, possible F type for you.
I invite you to tell me how I'm supposed to guess your private motivations for mentioning those two in your straw-man.
I'll admit that I shouldn't have put it down to one factor, I was hoping that anyone would have guessed that that was merely one reason and that we'd hash out the details; which we began to do, only for you to accuse me of moving the goal-posts.
The only statistics we were talking about were concerning poverty as it corresponds to crime rate, which I addressed earlier in that post. Later in that post, I then argued that there's more than one reason to commit crime, and since most types of crime are relevant in a discussion about whether or not people are being considerate of each other, irrespective of the reasons I didn't bother to qualify.
I've deliberately dragged more information into the discussion.
Rewrite this so that it means something.
Last edited by Mudlark; 01-27-2018 at 09:38 AM.
There are no strawmans, except you to say rich people are responsible for crimes, then to refer to crimes that don't represent the statistics in question.
I said that rich kids are responsible for some crimes, so there's one strawman down. Referring to crimes that don't represent the statistics in question was to do with another angle of the conversation, as I've already said.
Poverty does not correspond to crime rate since historically crime was lower whilst poverty was higher. What's changed is people, hence the Pew report showing people no longer know their neighbours. It's not about poverty, or 'rich kids', fact is you have an almost zero rate of crime in countries like North Korea but no freedom. What's changed is people, sadly for the worse, which, is the continuing trend.
The crime rate is down right now, so for you to refer to some change in people as being in some way relevant to what we were talking about in that case is in actual fact confusing the issue, not merely fleshing out the conversation. "It's" about poverty and rich kids and their role in crime for exactly as long as "it" is the subject of what could cause people to commit crime, which was your divergence from the main topic from the beginning.
-going to bed.
I already explained to you how crime rate only started to fall when law enforcement increased - the major initiative being Bill Clinton's 30b project, because despite reducing poverty rates, people had just become more lawless, which not coincidentally I think began to happen when the Bible was banned in schools. Have a good night.
> Humans of the future may lack wisdom teeth
My did not grown completely.
> In the future, will humans be more or less intelligent, empathetic, intuitive, happy, or whatever...based on the current trends?
Current trend is technological and logical way since the appearing of developed agroculture about 10000 years ago. Our brain have reduced because this life is easier than for hunters/gathers in forrests, have worsen intuitive perception as the life have become much more organized and predictable, empathy have worsen too as we became more independent as individs. If the humanity will go to Space then we may say goodbye to predictable and comfortable world, and the trend may change.
Most probably the humanity will create new races which may develop in different ways mentally and physically. Also as we are getting genetic control, so the evolution may go by ways hard to predict with today knowledge. We know almost nothing about how the brain works and have surface knowledge of the rest. Scientific researching exists about ~300 years, we still are getting accidentally(!) important meds and other knowledge, like in ancient pre-scientific times what is lol.
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