From: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa
Subject: Are humans violent? (Was: TIME TRAVEL)
Date: 13 Apr 92 21:42:47 GMT
Reply-To: jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation

In article <1992Apr9.232716.22891@spectra.com>, johnson@spectra.com (boyd johnson) writes:
> Path: nntpd.lkg.dec.com!pa.dec.com!decwrl!mips!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!spectra!johnson
> In article <34988@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> jc@sppip7.lkg.dec.com (John Chambers) writes:
> >
> >As humans, we have an essentially unique bit of freedom:  We can  walk
> >about  freely almost anywhere on the planet, and not worry about being
> >attacked by any of the strangers we see.

> I would have to disagree with a few points of this article, and this
> is  a  good  starting  point.   Have  you dared walk through ANY big
> inner-city (barrio, slum, ghetto, what have you) at  nighttime?   At
> the  risk  of sounding sexist, it would be foolish for a woman to do
> this, and very risky for even a strong man alone.

Ah, but you missed (or ignored :-) the most important word:  "almost".
It  is  perhaps  true that there are a few small areas where a strange
human is in physical danger.  But you and I can walk  about  anywhere,
anytime,  in the other 99.99% of the planet in relative safety.  If we
were, say, rabbits or lions or cockroaches, this wouldn't  be  at  all
true. We'd be in danger not only from predators, but also from members
of our own species who would attack us for  invading  their  turf  (or
just for being a good meal ;-).

And to answer the question:  Yes, I have.  I've  walked  through  such
areas  in  Chicago,  Detroit,  Philadelphia,  Miami, and Boston, among
others.  How nervous I felt (if at all ;-) had little to do  with  the
actual  danger  (if  any  ;-).  You really shouldn't base arguments on
social fears and prejudices.  The facts often differ greatly.

Some years back, I had a friend who spent a couple of years living  in
New  York  City.   She  was  tiny, barely 5 feet, quite sexy, and very
blonde.  She liked to tweak people by casually mentioning her  various
visits  to  all  parts of the city, at all times of the day and night.
She didn't see what the problem was.  I mean, sure, most  white  folks
are  terrified  of  black folk (and black folks are terrified of white
folks after dark ;-).  But that's just fear; it has nothing to do with
the  actual  folks;  whatever their hue most of whom are as honest and
friendly as anyone else.  She did have her purse snatched once,  by  a
white  guy;  that  didn't convince her that she was in any more danger
from white guys there than anywhere else.

I had a similar experience during the few years that I  lived  in  the
Miami area. You'll hear lots of horror stories there about the Cubans.
But if you wander down to Calle Ocho, even if you're as  obviously  an
Anglo  as  I  am,  you'll  find  that  the  people there are among the
friendliest anywhere. They all speak passable English. Now if I were a
known drug dealer, I might have some fears.  But as a stranger, Little
Havana is a safe and friendly place to drop in for a visit.   I  mean,
they like their turistas, and treat them well.

Various people have published statistics showing that, on a per-capita
basis,  you're  generally safer in most inner cities than you would be
in most small towns or rural areas.

And the fact that attacks on strangers get a lot of publicity could be
used to argue that they are rare.  If they were all that common, would
they be news?  Aliens studying us  would  likely  learn  quickly  that
whatever is in the media is probably something that is unusual.

> >In most other species,  even
> >the mildest herbivores, there are territorial rules, and a stranger is
> >very likely to be attacked and driven out  or  killed.   With  humans,
> >attacks  are  much more likely at home.

> Domestic violence, yes.  Violence from strangers, no.

Exactly.  But Wilson would add that even domestic violence is actually
quite rare among humans.  Sure, the media tells us a lot about it. But
if you pick a few  dozen  random  humans  and  watch  them,  you  will
probably  wait  a  very  long  time  before  any of them is injured by
another human.  If you watch a similar number of members of just about
any other species on the planet, the chances strongly favor your first
seeing a disabling inter-species interaction in the other species, not
in the humans. Wilson's comments weren't based on any silly claim that
humans are totally safe.  We all know better than that.  He just noted
that  we  are much safer from our conspecifics than are members of any
other species that has been studied in depth.

> >Presumably there's an adaptive reason for it,  considering  that  such
> >behavior is so rare in other species.

> I think adaptation is a big part of it.  Social veneer does wonders to
> maintain order.

The universe (aka Mother  Nature,  Natural  Selection,  etc.)  doesn't
particularly  care  about  order,  or whether you or I have an orderly
life, or even whether we survive.  Actually, the  process  of  Natural
Selection  has arranged things so that you and I will senesce and die.
Our survival (or happiness) doesn't matter in the least.  What matters
is  who leaves behind offspring.  And even there, the universe doesn't
care; you and I are quite free to choose  not  to  reproduce,  and  we
won't  be punished for it.  There are many successful species in which
most of the members don't reproduce, and  there  are  suspicions  that
selection for nonreproduction may even have happened in humans.

> >It's also interesting that our self image is so much the  opposite  of
> >this.   One  of  the  things that we "know" is that humans (especially
> >Caucasian humans ;-) are agressive, dangerous beasties that have taken
> >over  the  planet  by  sheer  firepower.

> Sounds pretty much right on so far...
> (let's send all those Indians back where they came from :-)

Social mythology to the contrary, guns were relatively  minor  factors
in  the  elimination  of  the native populations of the Americas.  For
every one killed  by  a  bullet,  there  were  a  thousand  killed  by
smallpox,  measles, cholera, etc.  The main reason the Europeans found
it so easy to colonize  the  Americas  was  the  underpopulation  from
diseases.   This  didn't  happen  in Africa or Asia, and Europeans did
relatively little colonizing there.  (I'm not sure  what  happened  in
Australia; perhaps someone knows?)

Some time ago, I  read  some  interesting  records  from  two  of  the
earliest  explorations  along the New England coast.  The first, about
1500, described a land with a village every mile or so, with  lots  of
agriculture  and all the rest of the infrastructure you'd expect.  The
second, about 1520, described a desolate coast with only a  few  ruins
where there had been villages. There had been no slaughter in between.
What happened was that the first explorers left  behind  a  couple  of
diseases, and the people had no resistance to them.  When the settlers
came along in a  couple  more  decades,  the  population  had  perhaps
developed some resistance, but they were still weak and scattered, and
easy picking for the newcomers.

This doesn't excuse the slaughter that did happen, of course.  But  if
you  want  to remain credible in the face of historians with access to
the facts, you really shouldn't try to exagerate  the  nature  of  the
problem.  (The facts are unpleasant enough.)

> Very few animals kill "for fun" (other than Great white  sharks  and
> my cat :-).  It is rarely for any reasons other than food or defense
> of self or territory.  Also, it is very rare for  any  animal  other
> than man to kill his own species for any reason.

This is a common myth that has been debunked by the field  researchers
for pretty much every species of predator that has been studied.  Mass
killing of prey is rather common among predators, when they  have  the
opportunity to do so without serious risk of personal injury.  Whether
they're having  "fun"  is,  of  course,  anthropomorphizing,  but  the
descriptions  sure make it sound that way.  If you don't believe this,
you should perhaps locate your friendly local  zoology  professor  and
ask for help digging through the literature.

> >Humans are probably
> >more dangerous to non-prey species than to those that we like to eat.

> What could this mean?
>   A:  pets
>   B:  pests (rats, cockroaches, ants)
>   C:  "valueless" species (non-pest insects, birds, inedible sealife)
>       (don't flame on "valueless".  Note the quotes)
> I would think we are much more dangerous to chickens, cows and lobsters
> than we are to any of the above.  Of course, we are smart enough now not
> to bring of these species' to extinction.

To be more precise, I could say that it is  generally  to  a  species'
benefit  to  become either domesticated or prey for humans.  "Benefit"
here is intended in the adaptive sense. Species like our pets, as well
as  our  domestic food animals, generally have much higher populations
than do their wild relatives.  Species  that  we  like  to  hunt  (and
they're almost entirely used for food or leather, despite the sporting
nature  of  hunting)  have  higher  populations  than  their  non-prey
relatives.  Of course, we sometimes kill (and eat) them.  As I've said
above, that isn't a problem. They're all going to die sometime anyway;
the  evolutionary  question  is how well they can reproduce their kind
before they die. Domesticated and prey species of humans typically get
pretty good opportunities to reproduce before we kill them. The others
we tend to wipe out to make room for the ones we like.

A recent example is the Pacific Yew, which may soon be  protected  now
that  it is known as the source of an effective anti-cancer drug.  But
if we learn to synthesize the drug, we will probably lose interest  in
the  tree, and the loggers will destroy it (not because it's valuable,
but because it's in the way of more valuable trees).

Pests are a more complex issue. Some of them (e.g., the variola virus)
have been seriously impacted or driven to extinction by humans. Others
appear to be doing well  (at  present).   But  even  here,  there  are
discrepancies  between  the  myth and reality.  Thus several biologist
have pointed out that feral rats may well be, on  balance,  beneficial
to humans.  They eat garbage that would otherwise be eaten by insects,
or would rot and pollute the water and air.  Sure, we all "know"  that
rats are bad. But we know lots of things that turn out to be false. It
hasn't actually been proved that the bad news about rats outweighs the
good.   The  real  problem  with rats is that we find them unesthetic.
Pigeons and gulls are are often  called  "flying  garbage  cans",  and
relate  to  humans very much like rats.  But we find them esthetically
acceptable, so they're not "pests".

Most species of  ants  are  beneficial  to  humans,  of  course.   The
existence  of  a  species  like the carpenter ant doesn't change this.
I've never seen a reasonable analysis of roaches, but I wouldn't be at
all  surprised  to  learn  that the disgusting little things have some
benefits for us that come close to matching the problems  they  cause.
BTW,  what  problems  do  they  actually  cause?   I don't know of any
specific disease that they carry.  They don't eat much  of  our  food.
Does  anyone  know  any strong grounds other than esthetics to condemn
the little monsters?

> If [aliens] are advanced enough to infiltrate the human race I would
> think  they  would  also be more advanced than us in weaponry.  They
> would also have the element of surprise in their  favor,  and  could
> permeate society before striking.

Maybe, maybe not.  The printing industry says that half the new titles
being  published now are science fiction, so I'd say that aliens would
have very little element of surprise.  This  isn't  anything  new,  of
course; in the form of "angels", "gods" and "demons", aliens have been
in our thoughts since pre-history. Here in Masachusetts, folks are now
commemorating  the  300 years since the Salem witch trials, which were
all about aliens among us.  So forget the idea of a surprise.

And human history shows that powerful weapons don't always win a  war.
I  mean,  the US lost to the Vietnamese, despite having them outgunned
by a huge margin.  The  Mongols  conquered  China,  mostly  due  to  a
superior   military,   but   a  couple  of  generations  later,  their
descendants were Chinese.  Various invaders, from the Crusaders to the
British,  have  "conquered"  huge  parts  of the Arab world, but their
culture has had the resiliency to absorb all  their  conquerors.   The
Greeks  and  the Jews have survived for millenia in the midsts of some
powerful (and often antagonistic) neighbors.  It has often been argued
that  the  Latin  American  culture remains fundamentally native, with
only a thin veneer of Spanish imposed at the top.  Sure, sometimes the
side with the weapons "wins". But in the long run, it's more often the
culture that wins.  Right now, we're having some second thoughts about
whether the Japanese and Germans really lost WW II...

Another example of how powerful weapons can be badly overrated:   Many
military  people  have pointed out that atomic weapons are in practice
rather poor weapons. I mean, suppose some foreign power imposes a duty
on American autos.  Do we retaliate by nuking their capital? Of course
not.  So when DO you use nukes?  It turns out that there's  almost  no
scenario in which they are reasonable weapons to use.  Historians have
argued that what the US "won" from Japan by the use of the A-bomb  was
no more than what they were already prepared to concede. The only real
condition of surrender was that the Emperor be kept on his throne, and
the US gave them that. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki turns out
to have only one real "benefit": It perhaps saved a few American lives
that  would have been lost in a token face-saving "invasion".  This is
balanced against our lasting reputation for being the only nation that
has  ever used atomic weapons.  Pretty feeble for a "powerful" weapon,
I'd say. I'd guess than lurking aliens would understand this.  I mean,
suppose they could sterilize the planet; what would it win them?

> Disclaimer:  These are my opinions only, but they are  correct,  and
> anybody  who  disagrees  with  me  and  thinks  I  am  parroting the
> aforementioned "myths" can die a slow, painful death.

Hey, are you aware of the claims that at least some parrots have some
understanding of the things they say?  Talk about myths...

--
Zippy-Says: If you can't say something nice, say something surrealistic.