Is it rather the case that one can have a preference for taking on the roll of a man, or the roll of a woman, despite one's physique? — Banno

This is the case.

The crux of this thread's issue results from direct equivocation between terms (is and ought mostly)

Depending on how we use the term "gender" in any specific context, it points to different things: Sometimes it's the sociosexual role that an individual believes they ought to be, and therefore "are/is" deep down. Other times gender refers only to appearance (e.g: a drag queen in drag is a she when in drag). Still other times "gender" refers strictly to genitalia, and in the most rigid possible sense refers to one's chromosomes.

One side of this discussion is perpetually focused on gender as a kind of objective teleological/ontic category with necessary attributes, the objectively common causes of gender; the is' (chromosomes or genitals), while the other is focused on how gender expresses itself dynamically and with variability (social roles, hormonal disposition, and self-identification).

If none of us used the word gender and instead just said what we meant in that instance, there would be no disagreements:

A person with XX chromosomes will never know for certain exactly what life would have been like with XY chromosomes instead, but people want what they want regardless of how well informed they can be on the subject of their desires. A person with XX chromosomes can however experience the ramifications of hormones at levels typically found in individuals with XY chromosomes (some people are genetic/epigenetic/natural outliers and hormone therapy is available). A person with XX chromosomes can also have a good understanding of what the social/sexual roles typically associated with XY chromosomes are: they can observe them readily and try them out for themselves. A person with XX chromosomes can have an idea of what it would be like to have the genitalia associated with XY chromosomes, and they can be displeased with their own genitals, which doesn't make it completely unreasonable that a sex change operation could help treat associated dysphoria. A person with XX chromosomes can have a fairly informed desire to adopt the roles and attributes typically associated with XY chromosomes (and vice versa), and so if we go by a holistic definition of "gender", which would include genitals, social roles, physical attributes, and intent/self-identification (and perhaps chromosomes) then we wind up with a confusing spectra of many variables.

If we go by physical attributes (including genitalia) and sociosexual roles then people can objectively transition between genders (even against their will I should say). If we go by chromosomes alone then nobody has ever transitioned, and if we include it in a holistic definition, transgender individuals can be said to have the chromosomes of one gender, and the perhaps everything else of the (an?) other.

To show how breakable the present level of care given to these distinctions is, consider the following:

If absolutely everything about someone conformed to the opposite gender except for their chromosomes, how meaningful is it to base the definition of gender upon only chromosomes?

If we invented genetic therapy that could rewrite all of our cells to conform to the opposite gender, would there be any meaningful distinction left?

If I surreptitiously inject you with a vial of chromosome altering enzymes, but you for the most part retain your physique and attributes, would you actually be the opposite gender despite believing and living as though you are still the same?

One side derives an ought from an is (you were born X, are chromosomally X, therefore you ought to be X).

The other side derives an is from an ought (a want) (you ought to be X, are behaviorally/hormonally X, therefore you is X.

The solution is to realize that X means different things.

I read a bit about the CTMU theory, and mostly it's gibberish with words like "cognition" and "reflexive" generously mixed together in a rather sloppy bouquet of self-congratulatory pseudo-scientific quasi-philosophical righteousness. (if you think that sentence is verbose, try reading Chris Langan directly.

I think what he attempts to explain is quite interesting (the emergence of complexity) but he just gets lost in his own presumptions and offers nothing testable or of substance. One comes away from CTMU with the impression that the universe is itself capable of cognition and that it interacts with our own cognitive minds...

Here he's half right: our cognitive minds interact with the universe ("objective reality"), but the universe itself isn't "aware" of these interactions in any cognitive sense (i.e: it's not a thinking thing).

Now, you might object (or Langan might) and say: human minds are just matter in the universe, so obviously the universe is capable of doing cognition, but like the alchemists of old you would committing ye olde fallacy of composition: our brains have cognitive faculties, but the individual parts of our brains do not posses cognitive faculties on their own. It's a careful arrangement of matter (neural networks and their support structures) that actually does cognition (that actually "perceives" things and can make predictions) and the attributes of the whole (the mind/brain) are not the same as the attributes of its individual parts (a global feature of emergence Langan seems to have missed). If the universe is a big mind a la "pantheism", it's not as if we would be able to communicate with it any more than a parasitic amoeba communicates with the brain of its host. That which is above is not the same as that which is below; the alchemists were wrong.

Langan rightly guesses that cognition is an emergent feature that can be vaguely described as modeling the universe, but he seems to have no sweet clue how that actually happens and goes off the deep end by suggesting that reality itself is some kind of cognition-having entity, one which we interact with. There's no obvious way to test or explore these ideas, which relegates them to the same category of claims espoused by your average child of heavenly sky-father.

I understand your argument to be, as expressed in your first post, that Western civilisation is a success because the average modern westerner is better off by any available metric than the average member of every other (or most other?) culture in history.

I counter that I believe suicide rate, egalitarian distribution of resources and opportunity, sustainable resource management and personal autonomy are metrics of success by which the average Western society is not better off than other cultures, specifically hunter-gatherers.

You argued that those measures are complicated and might not be good measures of success, but I think the same applies to your preferred measures. I think for any measure, demonstrating how it should rightly be considered a measure of 'success' is complicated. The simplicity (or otherwise) of the actual metric is not relevant, it is the difficulty with which it can be rationally tied to 'success' that matters, and I think here we just disagree in a manner too fundamental to resolve by discussion. — Pseudonym

I've rigorously debunked suicide rates as a metric of societal happiness and its primacy as a metric of success (In recent posts I've gone so far as to show the opposite). Despite my constant objections and rebukes, you continued on with suicide as your primary metric under a utilitarian framework, within which I have also shown that suicide rates are also not indicative of societal unhappiness. As my original position is heavily concerned with the preservation of life (assuming it's a nearly universal human desire, and nearly universally among the most important desires), I still find it much more appropriate to include death by suicide in the overall mortality rates under a "better-off" description rather than a happiness-utility model.

Egalitarianism is something you floated initially but haven't bothered to substantiate. Your original evidence was a link to a google search which you elected not to modify. At this point the only thing left for me to do would be to attempt to prove the negative, like I've recently done with suicide. Your main rebuttal to infant mortality rate and longevity has been utilitarian, so it's strange that you mostly consider the issue of egalitarianism from a justification perspective rather than a utilitarian one.. To the extent that egalitarianism does prevent certain injustices, it can be considered successful, but egalitarianism does not obviate injustice (especially in the execution of justice where there are no clear standards of evidence or punishment. e.g: being ostracized or worse for an action you did not actually commit would be unjust).

Opportunity and personal autonomy are things which I've brought up as merits of the contemporary west, given that the average westerner has more geographic mobility, more career options, and more and better protected rights (like property and habeus corpus). Hunter-gatherers basically have very few lifestyle choices to make given that they must hunt and forage on a constant basis, and given that their environment and technology demands they do so in specific and efficient ways (opportunism, nomadism, egalitarianism, etc...). There's less room for individual autonomy and instead a demand for conformity. I would also rate the societal autonomy of hunter-gatherers to be worse-off than the west. Formal democracy allows us to actively question and improve upon our traditions and faults while hunter-gatherer social autonomy and culture is a more rigid result of natural selection. In a propertyless egalitarian society, the individual autonomy to start a farm doesn't exist because it is expected that everything is shared. Autonomy on the individual and societal level (the freedom to do more things) is generally what breaks HG lifestyles (as HG people become sedentary or are out-competed by sedentary groups when they can gain much more resources by doing so, and the extra food and fuel translates to personal freedom of a certain kind).

You've offered evidence (a pay-walled article) that the transition from hunting/gathering to agriculture entailed nutritional deficits and the creation of new diseases, which is certainly true, but the medicinal and agricultural prowess of the contemporary west is able to prevent more death from malnutrition (or pragmatic infanticide) and disease in general. While if we look at the average health of an individual in a functioning HG society (that is to say, one not beset with novel pressures brought on by western presence) they are probably healthier than the average living westerner, this will to a large degree be the case because injury and illness is much more often fatal outside of the contemporary west. Certain diseases such as obesity and influenza were indeed less common, but despite these ills the west is still able to prolong the average lifespan much more effectively than a natural HG diet and lifestyle will. The ability of western medicine to treat chronic pain and offer corrective surgery is also something that I would not discount out of hand. Anecdotally, I've seen many documentaries featuring HG tribes where some members have severe injuries which they have to deal with on a daily basis which would otherwise be correctable (or treatment for pain offered) in the contemporary west. Shoulder, hip, and leg injuries are common dangers for a hunter, and broken bones that aren't set properly and allowed to heal can be a source of lifelong pain.

Sustainable resource management is something we've not gotten a chance to discuss, and it's true that hunter-gatherers traditionally do not overtax their resources (they wouldn't have stable practices if they did). It's also true that the west has been known to overtax resources, but we're not yet hopelessly in the red. We're running out of oil, but we're running toward alternative energy sources and storage technologies. We've damaged the environment, perhaps irreparably for the foreseeable future, but we also have more direct control over the environment (or ability to manage our affairs despite changing norms) than ever before. The west is in the process of emancipating itself from a reliance on nature and replacing it with a reliance on technology, and if we can successfully do so entirely then I think the whole endeavor will have been a success (because we ill be more robust than ever before)

You make the case that the success of Western society should be judged only by its current practices, with regards to exploitation. I don't believe that a society which is still benefiting from the rewards of such previous exploitation can be fairly judged without including the actions which gave rise to its current wealth. Conversely when it comes to sustainability, you'd prefer Western society to be judged not on its current practices, but on what you hope it will be able to achieve some time in the future. Again, it seems we have a fundamental disagreement about what factors should be taken into account when judging 'success' — Pseudonym

Where we're headed is an important aspect of our current practices; change is fundamental to the west while it is not to static HG lifestyles. But you speak of sustainability and the west as if the west is already doomed or has no chance of overcoming the obstacles that are before it. It's proven you wrong up until now, with it's slow but steady improvements. Why will the west fail tomorrow?

What I thought we set out to compare were the trends and practices of the contemporary west and typical HG peoples, not their average happiness or the sins of their fathers. Reflecting back on my original position(s), it hasn't changed much. I have a better understanding of why certain things afflict hunter-gatherers less frequently than most other societies (less war, less tyranny), but my overall thrust still holds.

It's been an interesting discussion despite some obvious difficulties, and I'm sure any readers will get quite a bit of good information from it.

Cheers!

So why did you mention those specific measures of happiness which contribute to longevity in a debate about hunter-gatherer lifestyles vs Western ones? — Pseudonym

As I said, because I'm attempting to persuade you to accept longevity as a proxy for physical well-being. This isn't critical to my argument, but insofar as you get to use suicide as a proxy for societal unhappiness I still don't see why I can't use longevity as a proxy for physical well-being.

Either they are irrelevant because they are no different in either society, or you have prejudicially presumed that they are lower in hunter-gatherer societies without actually checking first. If there's some third explanation for your bringing them up that I've missed then please explain, but your posts are littered with examples where you subtly (or not so subtly) imply that the hunter-gatherer way of life is deficient in many areas in which there is no widespread evidence of it being so, and then when I challenge you on it you either say you were simply using it as an example or you ferret out some single source which backs it up (but which clearly was not the origin of your opinion). — Pseudonym

It is my position that the average westerner is objectively better off than most humans throughout all of history. Get over it already. I'm making the argument that the west is the most appealing society to live in, and that entails the position that other societies are less appealing to live in. It's not prejudiced against hunter-gatherer way of life to point out that the longest average lifespans ever recorded are of the contemporary west, and that things like access to quality medicine and good physical security are direct contributors of that. Nutrition will be addressed below.

f the only expressions of prejudice we were entitled to call out were the of the extremely obvious "group X are awful because they're all black" sort, then society would hardly progress at all in the field. Prejudice is presuming a negative about a particular culture just because they are different from your own; you presume hunter-gatherers have poor diets, you presume hunter-gatherers have 'backward' traditions, you presume hunter-gatherers perform FGM, you presume hunter-gatherers have a secretly high suicide rate, you presume hunter-gatherers have no fair justice system, you presume hunter-gatherers burn witches, you presume hunter-gatherers kill children out of superstition, you presume hunter-gatherers get ill all the time, you presume hunter-gatherers get wiped out by the slightest change in their environment. All of this without a scrap of evidence first. — Pseudonym

You've raised the idea that hunter-gatherers have better diets than westerners, but we've also been discussing how infanticide (twin killing specifically) is not uncommon among HG groups due to the heightened nutritional requirements of the mother (the superstitious associations as evidence of lack of equitable justice aside). On the surface it seems that while HG's may have diets lacking in many of the bad things like sugars and processed fats, they also have fairly rigid upper limits on the amount of nutrition they can gather in a short period of time (hence the nomadism). They may have better diets ("better nutrition"), but we surely have more reliable nutrition (hence the ability of mothers to refrain from pragmatic infanticide).

You presume that the practice of twin killing has to be a 'superstition' that's evolved biologically because you just can't bring yourself to credit these people with the intelligence to actually work it out rationally each time. — Pseudonym

The stories around it are just there to make the whole thing slightly more bearable. The fact that you have to keep caricaturing these intelligent and caring people as backward savages driven by unquestioned superstition is what I find offensive. — Pseudonym

So I'm confused. Why do many hunter gatherers practice infanticide while the contemporary west does not practice it at all and utterly forbids it? Is it because hunter-gatherer lifestyle yields inadequate nutrition to support nursing two infants? And they know that? Is superstition involved or isn't it?

Heaven forbid an intelligent, caring, non-white individual should ever adhere to superstition. That would be racist...

So yes, I think your position is prejudiced. If you want to speak authoritatively about the practices and motivation of other cultures then at least do them the respect of a minimum threshold of research, not just the first negative ethnography you can lay your hands on and a popsci interpretation of what motivates them. — Pseudonym

As opposed to your oh so well defended view that the west is an abominable and exploitative disaster... My original position wasn't actually shitting on hunter-gatherers you know... It was pointing out that every human society has been vulnerable to disasters of various kinds in ways which western progress has allowed us to reduce or eliminate entirely. But you had to also say that hunter-gatherer way of life was better, and to defend that you've been taking nothing but unsubstantiated meta-shits over myself and everything I say. Accusing me of racist presumption, demanding evidence only to then accuse me of cherry-picking; characterizing it all as racist. To satisfy you I will have to prove beyond a shadow of a statistical doubt that the contemporary west is measurably superior in every conceivable way to every hypothetical HG society that could ever exist...

This is another common tactic of yours which I don't know if it is deliberate or just poor argumentation. You take the specific logical point of an argument and then move it out of context to highlight the negative aspects of hunter-gatherer culture. The point I was arguing against was your assertion that hunter-gatherers might have been more unhappy because a good diet causes happiness and westerners obviously have a better diet because they live longer. This is not true because the surviving hunter-gatherers do not face a poor diet, so that poor diets cannot then go on to make them unhappy. This has nothing to do with the fact that total calories are often scarce enough to warrant infanticide. You were arguing about the link between diet and happiness, not the link between total available calories and infanticide. If it will make things simpler for you I will make it clear now - Hunter-gather lifestyles are not a bed of roses, calorie restriction leads to infanticide and this is an awful thing. In western societies children die from preventable causes too. According to UNICEF 25,000 children die every day from diseases largely related to poverty such as pneumonia, diarrhoeal diseases (both of which we have good reason to believe were absent in hunter-gatherer societies because newly contacted tribes seem to have little immunity to them), or poor nutrition. Again you're accusing me of seeing hunter-gatherers through rose-tinted glass, but you're consistently arguing in favour of this mythical version of western culture that you think we're headed towards, not the one we're actually in. Hunter-gatherer-societies kill infants because of low calorie availability. Western society causes the deaths of infants because of rapid population growth and poor resource distribution. — Pseudonym

Why are you only now giving a more nuanced description of "nutrition"? (Oh, it was something different all along! Forgive me). Short term food availability... Or something... I'm not exactly sure how we could measure this, except in terms of it's detrimental impact (infanticide). This kind of resource availability issue is something I've been on about from the get go, and you've been denying it up until now. If the only way I can get you to even slightly move your position toward a reasonable middle is to force you to choose between superstitious infanticide (and its implications on "justice") and pragmatically necessary infanticide (and it's implications on "resource availability/reliability"), then so be it.

Western society causes the deaths of infants because of rapid population growth and poor resource distribution. You could argue that if we continue on our current trajectory these infants will survive, — Pseudonym

The expansion of western society (Aside from the initial wave of disease related death) actually improves child mortality rates though, it doesn't cause them per se.. The west does an objectively better job at saving the live of infants, and it is objectively doing a better and better job.

I could argue that if hunter-gatherers lived in the lush environments now dominated by western cultures instead of the most harsh environments know to man, they might not have to kill so many infants due to calorie restrictions, so where does that leave us? — Pseudonym

This smacks of foolish romance. "Lush environments"? Yes our forests and plains aren't what they used to be, but they were never any free lunches (because they're quickly gobbled up).

But, where environments tend to be more and more "lush", sedentary ways of life (valuable and interesting cultures which you are basically racist toward out of hand by considering them inferior to HG peoples) then tend to emerge because if people don't have to pack up and leave due to resource depletion, guess what? They don't. Population density ensues, civilization happens (with all its boons and burdens), et cetra et cetra..

What the paper is concluding is that individual measures (not individual people) correlate with suicide well, but aggregate measures (when you put all the individual measures together in multivariate analysis) correlate weakly, which means they still correlate, just not so much. — Pseudonym

No, what the paper is concluding is that the correlates of suicide risk also effect SWB, and are therefore representative of societal preferences. "Individual level" or "micro level multivariate analysis" of suicide and SWB correlates is actually comparing the correlates of suicide and SWB at the individual level. The actual comparison they made showed that the correlates of suicide among individuals are the same as the correlates of SWB among individuals. They showed that things which make people commit suicide also make them unhappy. The correlation at this individual or micro-level also worked as a kind of cross-validation for using individual level data in assessing SWB and suicide risk (that at least reporting errors and other possible spurious factors are not a necessary issue).

The paper several times articulated that explicit caution be used when making inferences from aggregate/time-series data on subjective well-being (in other-words, don't assume that overall suicide risk correlates with average subjective well-being)

What this means is that suicide is well correlated with causes of unhappiness(i.e the link between suicide and unhappiness is strong), but that the reasons in individual cases vary widely such that no conclusions can be drawn about a general connection between all the measures. — Pseudonym

The bold: Yes, at the individual level,according to the micro-level multivariate regressions and comparison.

The italic: No. It means that there is a link, but there is no evident direct strong link (not the kind your argument hinges on).

The underlined: No. There is correlation among the reasons in individual suicide cases (that's what the correlates are in the micro-level regression) and they're strikingly similar to SWB correlates. What varies are the number of individuals who actually commit suicide and the reported amount of overall SWB (there's no strong link). At best, there is a "weak and inconsistent" link.

This makes the aggregate score of Subjective Well-Being a poorer correlate of suicide than the connection between suicide and unhappiness would suggest. The paper is an fact arguing that suicide is even more strongly correlated with unhappiness than the weak correlation between SWB and suicide rates would at first imply, it's just that the specific nature of the unhappiness varies widely making it difficult to measure across societies.This means that the suicide rate remains a very strong measure of a society's happiness (at least at one end of the scale), but the link will be masked if one aggregates all the different reasons for unhappiness. — Pseudonym

The study shows that suicide is not a measure of average subjective well being and advocates caution about making such inferences from aggregate data. The study does show that the nature of happiness has some consistency (the things which make us unhappy also make us commit suicide) but again, it explicitly does not show that the more people commit suicide, the more people are unhappy overall.

The lack of correlation in the aggregate and time series data was not only due to inconsistency among individuals and how they experience happiness, it is also likely due to the forces which make people unhappy being inconsistently applied to individuals across society (things which make people unhappy can be more concentrated in a few individuals which pushes them over a hypothetical suicide threshold, while the rest of of society may tend to have a much higher level of SWB). This article just doesn't prove what you say it proves. You've misunderstood it.

How is that strange. If we have two societies, one in which there is virtually no suicide, and one in which there is 1% suicide, the most parsimonious explanation is that the nature of that second society is causing the suicides rate to rise. If the remainder of that second society are really happy (although your own cited paper reveals they're not in our case, but lets go with it for now), then again, the most parsimonious explanation is that they are being made happy by the nature of that society. It therefore stands to reason that a change to that second type of society from the first has made one group of people happy at the expense of another which it has made unhappy. It might not be the actual case for all sorts of reasons, but I can't see why you're having trouble understanding the theory. — Pseudonym

Trouble understanding the theory :lol: ...

I'm capable of making direct comparisons (that's what my original post was an attempt at). Are you?

You brought up suicide to show that HG life has better year-for-year utility, but all it shows is that the lower tail of expected utility is larger in western society, not that the average year-for year utility is lower. I guess you can attempt to make an ethical argument out of it, but the same ethical argument would apply to child mortality rate (i.e: HG's enjoy their happier existence at the expense of dead infants).

You haven't answered my question on this from my previous post. It's hard to argue against your position when you keep changing it. Are you saying that happiness in rich western societies is unevenly distributed (which you seem to be saying here) or evenly distributed (as concluded by the paper you cited in support of the link between GDP and happiness). It can't be both as and when it suits you. Pick one position and we'll discuss that. At the moment I'm not prepared to engage in a debate about whichever position suits you at the time. — Pseudonym

I never denied that happiness is unevenly distributed in rich western society; it's implied with wealth stratification... I denied that when happiness is unevenly distributed that overall happiness is less. In fact it can be greater. The paper I cited on the issue showed that as relative income inequality rises, happiness inequality can shrink. Again, it has nothing to do with overall average happiness.

Now you answer my question, Is your solution to happiness inequality and higher suicide rates to put a social upper limit on happiness (even risking reducing average overall happiness) to eliminate relative happiness inequality? (which does seem to make people feel subjectively worse when they're on the lower end).

Again, you're missing the statistical conclusion of these papers. It's not that suicide is not caused by unhappiness, no-one in any of these papers is arguing that, so I don't know where you're getting that impression from. — Pseudonym

Individuals who commit suicide are desperately unhappy. Yes.

It's that our measures of unhappiness do not seem to work in aggregate. The papers are all arguing that we might have our measures of happiness wrong, not that happiness is not related to suicide at all. The paper you cite here opens with "Suicide is the ultimate act of desperate unhappiness" and their tentative explanation is that "...suicide is more likely in response to short-term unhappiness." (although they caveat that strongly), or that "Life evaluation may refer to the long-term outlook, or to achievement as conventionally measured – education, income, marriage, and good health "[my bold]. Nowhere does it say that suicide might not be related to unhappiness at all. It's questioning how we measure happiness. — Pseudonym

The papers argue different things you know :D (I know you know ;) )

One of them questions income inequality as a measure for happiness inequality. Another questions aggregate SWB data as a measure for overall suicide risk (and by extension, vice versa, which is exactly how you're trying to use suicide as a measure).

I'm well aware of the psychological relationship between happiness and suicide, and thanks to the research you've forced me to do, I'm also well aware of the absence of a statistical correlation between the overall happiness of a population and its suicide rate (except the most recent article I cited which indicates that as average SWB rises in a society, so too does suicide, which may be a relationship spurred by wealth stratification interacting with with relative happiness, or depression being relatively more severe in societies with very high average levels of happiness, and many other possible factors).

Not to your satisfaction maybe. Many of the studies I've previously cited have indicated a link between average happiness and income inequality. What's interesting about modern research in the field is that as income inequality goes up, average happiness goes down, but happiness inequality goes down also, indicating that even those at the top do not gain happiness from their privileged status, but very few people are challenging the concept the wealth inequality leads to unhappiness. — Pseudonym

If any of the articles you've cited show a link between income inequality and average happiness, please link me once more.

What about the disadvantages? Inequality, chronic disease, lack of community, poor diet, suicide rates, a history of violent oppression and genocide, environmental degradation. The whole point of this debate is to assess the degree to which Western civilization has been a success. You seem to just want to list its advantages, and bury its disadvantages in a load of wishful thinking about the future and self-congratulatory zeal about how we're not violently oppressing quite so many people as we used to. — Pseudonym

My original position asked the ethical question of whether or not we're morally obligated to deconstruct and disband western society. If it is a disaster, then should it not be ended? Yes the west has a terrible past, but that's the rub, it has a terrible past, and a less terrible present; she ain't what she used to be. If I'm going to bother judging the west, it will be the living and breathing one that we live in, not the patriarchal or colonial past you're so convinced I adore and intellectually inhabit. The fact that the west is still changing is something that must be taken into account, as is the fact that HG lifestyle is something largely unchanging.

Death is pretty much what I'm personally most concerned with from an ethical perspective. I could care less about the environment if its mismanagement didn't threaten life. Oppression and genocide are at historical lows as far as I'm concerned. Maybe during an ice age there is less oppression because there's nobody around to oppress (oppression is a population density thing), but the contemporary west does very well ethically speaking. A lot of people have crappy diets, that's true, but we're getting better in that department too (and we have a more reliable food source allowing us to escape famine more easily and nourish all or most of the infants).

What ability? Colonial famines, dictatorships, two world wars, the great depression, the potato famine, the aids epidemic in Africa, diphtheria, influenza A, measles, mumps, pertussis, smallpox, tuberculosis, the black death, global warming, clean water shortages, cigarettes, toxic smog, obesity... Are you so blind to the west's shortcomings? Of course, we're still here, but so are hunter-gatherers. — Pseudonym

Colonial famines aside, dictatorships are antithetical to western democracy (the thing the society I hail as the best is founded on). We've had big wars but fewer wars, and our wars are becoming far less deadly. We have novel diseases but we've defeated more than we've created to the benefit of lifespan. Global warming will not end us. It will slow us, maybe even cause intolerable disaster, in which case, you were right, but I don't think so. Clean water can be an issue for nomads too. Cigarettes could be hedonically worthwhile. I don't know much about toxic smog. In some cultures obesity is a sign of wealth and is considered attractive (at least according to my racist colonial stereotypes).

Remember the Nazis who caused a massive increase in violence caused by socio-economic consequences of Western socities? — Pseudonym

Are you blaming Hitler on bad weather? :D

You asked for evidence that environmental changes were accompanied by loss of life (that changing circumstances leads to bloody adaptation), and the Chumash ethnographic/archeological records are evidence of that . WW2 and Nazism are quite different sorts of problems. WW1 and WW2 unique in the scope and scale of violence seen in the west and I think it unlikely we will ever see another world war. Regardless of cause, the contemporary west does less war on average, or at least there are fewer violence related deaths.

But they've not been utterly decimated. They're still here. They're certainly under a monumental attack by forces hugely more well-resourced than they are, and yet reserves are being won, rights are being written into law. Small groups of individuals with nothing but spears are fighting the entire might of government backed multinational companies and occasionally they're winning. What exactly do you expect these people to do to prove their worth to you. They've survived the ice age, they've survived being pushed into the world's most inhospitable environments, they've survived genocide, they've survived epidemics, they've fought off entire armies and now fight the multinational companies. And they're still not robust enough for you? — Pseudonym

There's some irony here...

For starters, they've been more than decimated, (they've been reduced much more than 1/10th their number), but listen to yourself:

"under attack by forces hugely more well resourced"
"reserves are being won"
"rights are being written into law"

As you may know, I'm Canadian (with a heritage rich in hunter-gatherer lifestyle as it so happens). It's in my programming to care about all other humans, so it doesn't really matter how robust people are, I think they have a right to exist (and I even think we should offer assistance to the less robust). Here's a post I made detailing Canada's unique position when it comes to the ethical implications of hunter-gatherers vs the west. It's jam packed with all kinds of information I did unbiased research for, and I was quite disappointed that it generated very few responses (I guess Canadian politics really are by default uninteresting).

Canada is in the process of writing in to law reserves and rights to indigenous groups despite it being hugely more well resourced . Progressive contemporary western ethics and its sophisticated legal institutions (which have aspects both good and bad) are making that happen, which is a very very good aspect of the contemporary west.

Yes, a point which is only true if you make the prejudiced assumption that hunter-gatherers routinely carried out FGM. — Pseudonym

"I said that the absence of contemporary western ethical and legal standards leaves groups vulnerable to such practices in ways that the contemporary west is not"

My point is that without well reasoned and ethical formal legal institutions groups can be vulnerable to horrible practices which go unchecked. I never said FGM is routine or common among hunter-gatherers, nor does the point I made hinge on it.

. Otherwise how can you argue that Western ethical and legal standards are required to defend against it? — Pseudonym

It's not required, but it does defend against FGM (and many other practices we consider unethical).

I've given an example of it being carried out under a western judicial system — Pseudonym

Which western judicial system? If it's not secular then it's not western.

So where are you getting the idea only the west has sufficient ethical and legal standards to prevent it? — Pseudonym

FGM was cited as an extreme example of practices which progressive ethics and formal legal institutions prevent, there are other practices that it also prevents, such as marriage prior to age of consent, infanticide, and revenge killing (though it doesn't not work perfectly, it does a better job than informal institutions like altruistic punishment.

You keep doing this. You say Western society is better because it doesn't do such-and-such a terrible thing, I say that it's prejudicial to presume such practices were widespread among traditional hunter-gatherers and you then either find a single isolated example, or claim you weren't talking about hunter-gatherers at all (in which case, what was the point?). — Pseudonym

The point, originally, and enduringly, is to show that certain (bad) things which the contemporary west is nigh immune to, are things which are more common in every other known type of society (i.e: they're not immune). I don't need to show that they're widespread if they're practically non-existent in the contemporary west.

I feel like we're just getting nowhere here and I think you think I'm arguing something I'm not. My argument really is quite simple - Western civilisation has been a disaster because it has exploited, massacred and oppressed millions of people to get where it is. It has destroyed and degraded entire ecosystems to get where it is, and something about it still causes a significant minority of its people to kill themselves rather than continue living in it. It has slums, homelessness, widespread disease (caused by its own pollutants). It has people starving to death while others buy yachts. It's generated apartheid, the gas chambers, slavery and cigarette advertising. I think hunter-gatherers demonstrate that none of these things are necessary. I think some quarters of modern Western culture also prove that these things are unnecessary too. So if all that is unnecessary, how can it possibly be labelled a sucess? — Pseudonym

Only a minimalist or a perfectionist would say this. Survival is the only necessity, which may include some minimum level of happiness, but what of thrival?

The growing pains of technology have been worth it in my opinion because there are more people alive and they have a better shot at survival, but the gamble that is future potential is irresistible to me; I'm not that conservative.

We've dominated the planet, (which will be disastrous only if we dominate her too much) and this is a success. So long as the present keeps getting better (which it has by all of the metrics you just mentioned, perhaps save one or two) then we keep getting more successful.

What rate of suicide is an acceptable margin to be considered successful? What rate of chronic disease? Of relative poverty?

P.S: Cigarette advertising is illegal in Canada.

Everybody knows it's more fun to play with other people's junk!

Seems like it was hidden there by someone intending to use it as an engagement ring.

How dusty was the exterior box?

Maybe there's an interesting story behind it... Someone spent a good deal of their income on a diamond ring intending to ask someone to marry them, but for whatever reason they never got around to it (or maybe they did and were rejected?). How could they have forgot about it? Did something happen to them?

If it's a relatively new or clean box, then it stands to reason that someone may still have intended to use it as an engagement ring, in which case it seems like keeping it would be to steal more than just three months salary, you would be stealing love itself dammit!

It's not appropriate philosophically speaking, but sometimes it can be fun. If an interlocutor takes a discussion in a heated direction, then it can be appropriate to reciprocate their tone, but it's generally bad form to escalate to insults.

You seem to have reverted to just making prejudiced statements about these cultural differences without doing any research first. The modern Western diet does not contribute to our longevity, it detracts from it. — Pseudonym

You seem to have just reverted to calling me prejudiced instead of comprehending or addressing the points I make. Not everything I say is a put down of hunter-gatherers.

As I already stated in my previous post hunter-gatherer life expectancy is reduced almost entirely by infant mortality (and, to a lesser extent, accidents and warfare). There is no evidence supporting the idea that they had worse diets, none that they "overworked their bodies", certainly none that they slept less well. So what has the fact that these things (indicated by longevity) could contribute to happiness got to do with the debate? This is the reason I brought up the fact that adult hunter-gatherers do not live significantly less long than adult westerners. All these issues you mention affect adult longevity. It takes serious malnutrition to affect infant mortality, no infant has ever had their life foreshortened by lack of sleep or overwork. — Pseudonym

I was strictly speaking of longevity as a possible proxy for these things regardless of which society you're in, but since you insist, infant mortality has a lot to do with nutrition. Are you saying that when an HG people kill twin babies it's not a superstition that was originally made adaptive thanks to inadequate nutrition?

To get at what the cause of longevity is by eliminating possible suspects and see what remains. You keep implying (the above quote being just one example) that the increase in longevity in Western societies can be linked somehow to happiness in a way which is the equal of (if not better than) the suicide statistics. The reason I took away infant mortality is to show that there is no such link. Take away infant mortality and you have no further difference in longevity to account for, so all your further talk of nutrition, stress, fear, security, diversity etc is not having the net effect on longevity you claim. The increase in longevity of modern westerners is caused almost entirely by better medical care in birth, and antibiotics. Beyond that, westerners seem to suffer from more non-bacterial disease, and hunter-gatherers seem to be more likely to be killed in warfare, but the two clearly balance one another out otherwise there would be a difference in the adult life expectancy and there simply isn't. — Pseudonym

Well, actually, even when we shave off infant mortality, life expectancy is still higher in the west. My life expectancy in Canada is 82 years, and that's including infant mortality rate. Ten extra years on average has to be indicative of something right?

43% of nomadic hunter-gatherers die before reaching age 15....

I don't understand what you are saying here, on the face of it, this is simply not true. If my parents could have had 3 children but instead had two, is that "less successful" because some potential life has been missed? This idea of maximising 'life' as being a measure of success seems bizarre to me, and as I mentioned, leads to the Utility Monster version of success. — Pseudonym

So dying at age 15 isn't "unsuccessful" just because some potential life has been missed? I'm not talking about utility monsters...

The fact that you're even questioning this really shows you're clutching at straws. "Hunter-gatherers might be committing suicide in secret without anyone noticing", "suicide might have nothing to do with unhappiness". How many more obscure and unlikely scenarios are you going to come up with to avoid having to admit that the high suicide rate of Western cultures is a serious failure? — Pseudonym

I've never denied that suicide is a problem, but you're using it as the lynch pin of your argument that hunter gatherers are more than twice as happy as westerners because A they commit less suicide and B suicide is representative of overall societal happiness..

Fine.

"We find a strikingly strong and consistent relationship in the determinants of SWB [subjective well-being] and suicide in individual-level, multivariate regressions. — Pseudonym

"Individual-level"... Meaning in the analysis of a particular case of suicide and subjective-well-being, and preferences, which is different than suicide rate indicating overall average happiness/saddness.

Did you actually read the paper you "cited"? (you're supposed to paraphrase and explain rather than pasting a single sentence from the abstract). It concludes that suicide and SWB data can predict preferences, and also that micro-level multivariate regressions show correlation between SWB and suicide within given individuals, but also concludes that societal average SWB and happiness/saddness do not covary with suicide rates and that people should be very cautious when making such inferences from suicide data. You've misrepresented the entire thrust of this paper; it's about preferences, not the ability of suicide to function as proxy for average expected utility (the only statements it makes on that matter are that there are no direct correlations and that such inferences should be made with caution).

"In this paper, we compare and contrast the empirical patterns of SWB and suicide data. We find that the two have very little in common in aggregate data (time series and cross-sectional), but have a strikingly strong relationship in terms of their determinants in individual-level, multivariate regressions."

"An obvious concern regarding suicide data, however, is that the preferences of suicide victims, who arguably are at the extreme lower tail of the well-being distribution, may not be representative of the overall population. "

"At the root of our study is an interest in knowing whether the two data series capture the latent variable on well-being that would allow one to infer preferences from their relationships with other variables"

"Previewing our results, we find essentially no relationship between the suicide rate and the subjective well-being data in the aggregate time series patterns. We find a weak relationship between suicide in the aggregate cross-sectional results, but it is inconsistent across variables. In contrast, at the micro level, we find a strikingly strong relationship between the relative risks on the variables associated with greater suicide risk and higher likelihood of unhappiness. Our results suggest that while researchers should be cautious about inferences based on time series data from SWB surveys or suicide rates, the findings from micro data on SWB and suicide appear to be quite reflective of typical preferences in society."

"Comparing trends in the suicide rate to those in subjective well-being reveal little co-movement across these series. The suicide rate has mostly moved independently, trending down over time. Other investigations suggest that this downward trend is more likely related to improvement in and
access to antidepressants rather than to any underlying changes in the happiness of the population."

"Overall, we find a weak relationship between the cross-sectional aggregate patterns in the suicide and
SWB data. The low association between these series both in the time series and across several aggregate correlates is worrisome, and raises concern that either suicide data or SWB data, or both, may not be good indicators of the latent variable that they are often used to measure—utility of a typical member of the population. With this in mind, we consider how these data compare in individual level, multivariate analyses. "

"The micro data results show a strikingly strong association between the results obtained from suicide and SWB data. The similar pattern found in both data sources cross-validates the value of these alternative data sourcesfor assessing determinants of latent well-being in general and supports the findings of diminishing marginal utility and the importance of relative income in particular."

"The micro results suggest that the same factors that shift people down the happiness continuum also increase their suicide risk. These results suggest that suicide data may be a useful way to assess the preferences of the general population, not just those in the extreme lower tail of the distribution."

(paraphrasing the above: individual level analysis of why people do commit suicide (multivariate correlates at the micro-level) can be useful to determine the general preferences of the overall population, but says nothing of "suicide utility threshholds" or the average societal level of experienced/expected/reported utility)

"There are three key findings that emerge from the empirical patterns uncovered in this analysis. First, there is little relationship between the suicide rate and subjective well-being in the time series. Second, there is a weak and inconsistent relationship between the correlates of the suicide rate and subjective well-being data in the aggregate cross-section. Finally, there is a strikingly strong relationship between the correlates of suicide risk and unhappiness/happiness in the multivariate micro analysis. The micro results cross-validate the usefulness of subjective well-being and suicide data for individual-level analyses. The results suggest that prior work using micro subjective well-being data to address relative income status questions are robust to concerns raised about reporting errors. However, we also find that caution is warranted when making inferences from the time series patterns in the subjective well-being data, at least those obtained from the GSS. Going forward, we see the results of this study as supportive of additional and complementary work on preferences using both subjective well-being and suicide data."

------

"Suicide might have nothing to do with unhappiness" isn't an unlikely scenario. Suicide is often the result of the mental illness known as depression. Sometimes it is carried out for medical reasons (e.g: reduced quality of life from illness or accident) whereas in an HG society without access to medicine these individuals might not have survived their illness/accident long enough to even consider suicide. Do such suicides actually reflect negatively on western society whereas the higher mortality rates of HG society (which prevents the opportunity for such suicides) is by this virtue a benefit? These are the kinds of confounding variables which make overall suicide rates non-representative of average utility.

"Suicide in secret...". If you live with a small group of people in a vast wilderness, and you intend to commit suicide, are you going to do it in front of them? Are you going to do it where they will find you? If someone no longer wishes to live in that environment, they can functionally disappear completely into the wilderness. From the perspective of the group you left behind, how can they tell the difference between suicide and accidental death/disappearance?

Really? Then you have a very different view of a successful society to me. One in which most people are quite happy but at the expense of one percent who are so miserable they kill themselves, is not a successful society by any measure I can think of, no matter what the 'average' hedonic intake. — Pseudonym

So you admit that suicide does not represent average societal happiness?

Different strokes for different folks. You look on dead infants as a non-problem because the average hunter-gatherer who makes it into adulthood has decent longevity. If anyone here is the utility monster it's you for suggesting that since dead people cannot experience utility we need not include them in our assessment of lifespan (it's special pleading; "the average HG who makes it past age 15...)

But why do you think that the 1% who commit suicide are made unhappy so that the rest can be happy (as if there is an exploitative exchange happening between them)? That's very strange.

One of the few consistent positions you've tacitly held in this discussion is that it is better to be dead than to be unhappy, so perhaps you would prefer a society where more than half of us die but none of the leftovers are unhappy, as opposed to all or most of us living but 1% being unhappy?

Your use of suicide as a measure of societal happiness is highly questionable, but suicide as a proxy for injustice is just absurd. I'm reluctant to actually take up the negative position given the absence of evidence pointing to the positive, but you've left me no choice:

Suicide rates actually positively correlate with average societal happiness with the best explanation being relative differences in happiness can cause people to subjectively feel worse. So if you have a society that gives people more life satisfaction on average, the few people who are unable to achieve it will be more likely to commit suicide.The solution to this under your view would be to arbitrarily reduce the upper levels of happiness that average people experience such that those who are unable to achieve it don't feel as bad by comparison. This would also be in line with some of the norms enforced by altruistic punishment (or rarely murder) in many HG societies; if you do not conform you do not belong and you cause problems (jealousy).

If reducing relative inequality of any kind is the only thing that matters toward societal success (because it reduces suicide), then it doesn't matter how many people die at any age for any reason, other than suicide, so long as we're all subject to the same circumstances in life. Suicide as your proxy for societal success (happiness) only appears to measure the existence of a lower extreme (and indicates the presence of an upper extreme of happiness) while saying almost nothing about the overall distribution of average happiness or how one society actually compares to another in terms of average expected utility. If you're now making an argument based on the ethics of a society which fails to prevent suicide (arbitrarily so given we might also focus on the ethics of a society which fails to save the lives of infants), I'm happy to move on to that, but do you then cede that suicide is not useful as a metric regarding overall or average societal levels of SWB/life-satisfaction/happiness because they don't inversely correlate? (in fact they positively correlate)

I don't understand your argument here at all. Yes there are egalitarian societies who are nonetheless unhappy for other reasons, but not because they're egalitarian. If you're going to argue like that, I could just say that nothing in Western society brings happiness because some groups within western society are still unhappy for other reasons. If we're not even going to bother averaging and comparing then what's the point? It just becomes an exchange of anecdotes. — Pseudonym

Egalitarianism reduces happiness inequality, that much is shown, but you have not shown that egalitarianism actually improves happiness overall. While wealth stratification will almost certainly lead to reduced subjective happiness in some, it will also lead to increased subjective happiness in others. The wealth stratification that inherently emerges from property rights, free trade and, industrialization does actually produce wealth in ways which can improve the objective living standards of everyone (not only by keeping more people alive, but by keeping them alive with access to novel comforts and pleasures which people do seem to enjoy (entertainment, medicine, travel, education, retirement, etc...).

Gather enough anecdotes and you've got the makings of an argument. Maybe that's all I've been doing but I've sure as heck gathered more, and more persuasive anecdotes, than egalitarianism and suicide rates

I'm trying to establish why you think it actually is — Pseudonym

Because a cursory glance at the living conditions enjoyed by HG's and contemporary westerners shows immediate and vast disparities. High risk births, lack of comparable medical ability, lack of comprehensive education, lack of geographic/social/economic upward mobility, career choices, physical security (from elements and violence) etc... The difference is so obvious that as soon as any HG people get a cursory glance at the boons the west has to offer, they're thrown into relative/subjective unhappiness if they cannot reliably get them (knives, motors, tobacco, dogs, medicine are typically desired among the elderly, and dwellings, education, money, and travel are typically desired among the young).

Here you might actually say that the existence of an affluent west is unjust or unethical because their success causes jealousy and unhappiness (uncertainty and fear too) in the groups it contacts (even where it does not "exploit"). I would simply say that this makes HG way of life less robust, and therefore less successful.

I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but you make it hard not to just conclude that you're just cherry-picking evidence. The study you cite here concludes that happiness is more homogeneously distributed in wealthier societies, but that, to quote directly from the study, "None of our analyses of countries over time reveal a significant relationship between GDP growth and average happiness.". You've literally just argued that suicide statistics in wealthier countries might indicate "a very high average level of happiness but also has more outliers at the upper and lower extremes", then you cite a paper that says the exact opposite? Which is it that you believe? Or are you just believing whatever is convenient to defend your argument? — Pseudonym

Wow... I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you know the difference between happiness inequality and happiness...

You stated that it is certain that when one portion of a population benefits from something that the portion which does not will be significantly less happy. I challenged this idea by citing a source which found that as GDP steadily grows, happiness inequality can be reduced (i.e: become insignificant) even as wealth inequality grows. Average happiness has nothing to do with this particular point. As far as being accused of cherry picking sources goes, I might as well accuse you of the above errors in regards to the happiness/suicide study with which you only bothered to quote a single sentence from the abstract without comprehending it or reading the article.

Firstly, what do you think the mode is if not a form of averaging? Secondly, even if we were to use the mean, we'd add up all the current ages within a community and divide by the number of people in that community. Either way, the 'average' age would be somewhere in the mid to late thirties. What maths are you doing that gets any different answer?

That they have a lower chance of getting to be that age than a westerner does seems pretty unambiguous to me, perhaps you could explain a bit more about why you're confused by these statements. — Pseudonym

I was talking about the expected number of days the average HG will live. This is the number we need to use if we're going by your just less than twice as happy standard/formula/goal-post, not current average number of days lived among the living. But what you're really saying by trying to negate child mortality is that HG way of life is far less successful for some (those who die young) and much more successful for others. It's still egalitarian because the dead aren't around to complain.

So what is well-being then, as opposed to self-reported happiness. It seems to me at this stage that the only difference is that self-reported happiness is what people actually strive for and well-being is what you think they ought to want. — Pseudonym

Physical health, physical security (freedom from death war and disease), access to information, and the freedom to pursue individual desires which may diverge from the mainstream are things I personally value, but the first two (health and security) are things which are nearly universally desired by all humans. My original post focused on the west's ability to escape disasters which otherwise affect our physical well-being.

No, that's just restating the same argument, I asked you for evidence to back it up. Hunter-gatherers have lived everywhere from the Sahara desert to the Arctic ice sheets, they've lived through interglacials and the ice-age. They have done all this for 190,000 years longer than any Western society. Where is your evidence that all the transitional phases involved mass loss of life? — Pseudonym

We've already been over the evidence. Remember the Chumash peoples who experienced massive increases in violence caused by geographic concentrations of migrants and climactic events? Remember the endless list of existing HG peoples whose ancient ways of life are being utterly decimated by the introduction of new technology or germs or outside pressures? Being robust means more than just surviving, it means the ability to thrive across a wider range of environments. HG practices might be required to survive an ice-age, but they can only support low population densities and naturally give way to or are out-competed by groups who develop agriculture in environments which are not harsh enough to prevent them. HG society is the most successful during an ice-age (assuming come the next one we don't have sufficient technology to endure it) and in any environment where hunting and gathering is the only way to stay alive, but that is evidently not most environments.

I'm really starting to get offended by your casual prejudice. Please try to do at least the bare minimum of research before making your baseless assertions.

https://www.28toomany.org/blog/2013/feb/19/what-are-the-origins-and-reasons-for-fgm-blog-by-28-too-manys-research-coordinator/

http://www.fgmnationalgroup.org/historical_and_cultural.htm

FGM probably originated with the Egyptians and spread via slavery. There is no evidence at all of it being a traditional practice of nomadic hunter-gatherers. There is, however, direct evidence of it being used in Western societies right up until the late 19th century and is still used in many Arab countries even now, all of which have/had full judicial systems. So where is your evidence that the lack of judicial system encourages FGM?

I don't know if you're just making this stuff up out of ignorance or prejudice, but it's tiresome. Which nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes kill witches exactly? And who carried out the mass slaughter of possibly up to 10,000 European women during the late medieval period? Did those evil hunter-gatherers sneak in and do it? — Pseudonym

I think you might be the prejudiced one actually. It's the only explanation for you continual misrepresentation of my statements and reliance on racism as a constant fallaciousappeal (other than you having no good arguments...). I never said that FGM originated as a nomadic tradition, I said that the absence of contemporary western ethical and legal standards leaves groups vulnerable to such practices in ways that the contemporary west is not. You've either prejudged me as a racist or you're unwilling to entertain any possible truths which you think may reflect negatively on non-white groups..

Many pastoralist groups in Africa have practiced FGM for backward reasons (isn't any reason for non-consensual FGM backward?), and while you don't consider pastoralists to be successful, there are still a few examples of HG's practicing FGM such as the Okiek people in Kenya (who were surely taught it by some neighbors) and also the Hadza for whom it has come to have significant cultural relevance (source). My point was that these are extreme sorts of behaviors which are eliminated by a fair and functional justice system along with the freedom and duty to question and improve our existing values, traditional or otherwise. The beast of superstitious tradition in human culture is being successfully slain by modern access to education and information.

Regarding the killing of sorcerers, among the tribes in Papua New Guinea, belief in sorcery and the killing of witches is a problem that persists even to this day. Spirits, spells, and other superstitious and animistic explanations can lead to people doing some really stupid and horrible things. This was just an extreme example to show the importance of education and reason based justice, not a challenge specifically against nomadic hunter-gatherers, but here you go,

I don't know why you're bringing the word "evil" into this (I'm not a witch!), but the late medieval European murders of innocent "witches" could have been prevented if they had any modicum of good education, scientific understanding, or an impartial reason based justice system.

How on earth do you twist that into an ethical success? If I go on a murdering spree, am I to be congratulated when I finally stop for my ethical success? This seems to be your entire argument in favour of western culture - we may have completely destroyed almost everything in our path to here; enviroments, cultures and billions of individuals at the bottom of the ladder, but we're doing a lot better now so that makes us morally worthy. — Pseudonym

If the west can perpetuate itself without exploiting or destroying people or nature, will it be more successful? Ethically or otherwise? It's a pretty simple question and I think you fear answering it because you know the west no longer directly enslaves and exploits the rest of the world; we have ever improving standards of fairness and justice, and we're more concerned than ever with not doing any harm to anything or anyone else (your own ethical disposition as case in point). Whether or not the west is continuing to exploit and destroy would make for a good discussion but perhaps the above is already too big a mouthful...

I did mention that we cannot completely remove longevity from an assessment of happiness as the prospect of a long life will itself produce happiness in the reasonably optimistic person.But it's important in this respect to recognise that this would not then be average lifespan. If we're talking about this effect of longevity increasing happiness (which is then multiplied by lifespan) then we cannot use average lifespan any more. This is something we haven't even gotten into yet because it's not yet been relevant, but it is very relevant to the discussion about the effect of predicted lifespan on happiness. The average lifespan of the hunter-gatherer past five is not radically different to that of the average westerner. — Pseudonym

I'm not referencing longevity as a happiness producer, but as a happiness indicator. Having a good diet, getting restful sleep every night, not overworking your body, etc, are all things which increase longevity and could also contribute to happiness. I know longevity doesn't necessitate quality, but it is pointed to by it (in at least the same way as you say suicide points to unhappiness).

The problem is that high infant mortality rates drag the average down hugely. The idea of a hunter-gather adult having to face the prospect of not making it past 40 is a complete myth. The average hunter-gatherer adult can look forward to just as long a life as the average westener, it's just that they have a lower chance of getting past five once born.

This lower chance matters a lot when measuring the success of society (no-one wants a high infant mortality rate) and it will affect happiness overall, so it's not been appropriate to use the average until now, but when we start talking about longevity as an indicator of other things, it's simply not true to say there's any difference to account for. Aside from infant mortality, the lifespan of hunter-gatherers is approximately the same as that of average westerners, so the extent to which it reflects metrics like security, comfort, and lack of (potentially unrecorded) suicide do not vary between the societies. — Pseudonym

You're curiously doing what HG peoples tend to do: they don't think of infants as people (so that their deaths can be looked at as less consequential). Yes, if we shave off child mortality figures then longevity nearly equalizes, but why would we be shaving off child mortality figures? Everyone is a child at some point and are subject to the higher chance of death; when a child dies, their early death ought to pull down the average lifespan (for quantitative assessment purposes) because missing out on life is something we consider unsuccessful. In other words, if you're picking your society from Locke's "original position",an increased chance of death in childhood should be considered a negative.

Children dying frequently definitely causes some unhappiness, but as I've proposed it could be the case that frequent child death prepares people to endure it, making its overall impact negligible. What isn't negligible is the impact on average lifespan (and therefore its impact on average total hedons per person).

Not wanting to kill oneself is still measuring suicides. The percentage of births which end in suicide represent that proportion of the population that want to kill themselves, the percentage of births which end in some other cause represents the proportion of the population that did not want to kill themselves (up to that point). — Pseudonym

You need to actually prove that suicide indicates or is representative of societal unhappiness. You're arguing that since people commit suicide when they forecast negative hedons, and since the west has higher apparent rates of suicide, the west must produce fewer average hedons per person, but you have yet to demonstrate to what degree people actually commit suicide because they forecast negative hedons (and to what degree they might be mistaken) compared to all the other reasons people commit suicide (and then you may also wish to show that individuals who commit suicide because they are unhappy are representative of the rest of the population. I.e: that the factors which cause individuals to commit suicide act upon all of us to the detriment of our average hedonic intake)

You can't say that life expectancy is somehow a proxy for people not wanting to kill themselves, we already have that data, it's the inverse of the suicide rate. To use it as a proxy without the suicide rate you'd have to fabricate a large proportion of hunter-gatherers secretly committing suicide despite the complete absence of any record of such a practice in the enthnographies. This really would show the sort of bias I've been on-and-off suspecting. It's one thing to seek evidence deliberately to support a position. It's another thing entirely to try and support a position by claiming that a phenomenon exists for which there is no evidence at all. — Pseudonym

Well, it does stand to reason that suicide would be harder to statistically measure in an HG society for obvious reasons, but bias aside, my point was that if people commit suicide because they are unhappy, then they don't commit suicide because they are happy. You're right that this isn't longevity, it's the inverse of suicide statistics, but as far as our qualitative and quantitative utilitarian analysis goes suicide rates are therefore not representative of overall/average societal happiness. The quantitative loss of hedons through suicide is reflected in average lifespan reduction caused by suicide, but why does negative hedons for some individuals (those who commit suicide) necessarily reflect on the average hedons of the rest of the population? It might be the case that the west has a very high average level of happiness but also has more outliers at the upper and lower extremes, or while there is a higher risk of unhappiness leading to suicide there is a better chance of getting more overall happiness.

A society in which wealth and advantage are unevenly distributed is less happy than one in which they are evenly distributed. — Pseudonym

You can say that there will almost certainly be less happiness inequality when there is less wealth/burden inequality, but there are many egalitarian societies (many of them presently HG people) who despite being egalitarian are quite unhappy because of other circumstances (loss of territory, disease, etc...).

This is something almost universally acknowledged by psychologists. I can cite a dozen articles in support of this notion, but it sounds like you already subscribe to it. So the egalitarianism that you acknowledge marks out hunter-gatherers, becomes a key measurable component of happiness. — Pseudonym

A relative marker of happiness inequality within a society, but not between them. I can see that wealth inequality may contribute to and increase in unhappiness, but the overall boons offered by a wealth stratified society might far outweigh the relative unhappiness caused by the relative wealth inequality or lower basic standards (e.g: having good schools, hospitals, and many career options in life, despite being relatively poor, might still directly contribute to a significant increase in total or mean happiness)

But what we can say with almost absolute certainty, is that if one visible section of society is benefiting from some improvement, the section that is not will be significantly less happy no matter what their absolute level of comfort is.

We can say that the section of the population with more burdens will be less happy than those above their station (that there will be some happiness inequality), but they might not be significantly less happy depending on the degree of wealth inequality and also upon the basic levels of absolute comfort offered even to their worst off. (i.e: closer to the upper limits of hedonic intake, differences in wealth begin to matter less because of diminished returns, and as the floor of life quality in the west is moved closer to that virtual limit, the less room there is for impactful wealth inequality). Here's a study comapring happiness/life satisfaction inequality in western countries against wealth inequality and rising GDP. They found that when GDP consistently rises, even when wealth inequality also rises, happiness inequality is reduced.

But both these points seem to argue against your emphasis on longevity, not in favour of it. If there's a limit to the value of additional pleasures, then any which modern society can provide will produce a diminishing return. — Pseudonym

There's a limit to the value of additional pleasures within a given time-frame: If the hedonic treadmill is truly impactful (the tendency for satisfaction and happiness to acclimate to a general median after changes in circumstance), then living longer will tend to increase the total mount of satisfaction and happiness by allowing individuals to spread their excess wealth/benefits over a longer period of time rather than wasting it all at once for diminished hedonic returns.

As I mentioned above. There is not a near doubling of days lived. There is a doubling of life expectancy. the two are completely different measures. I you want to talk about odds (as in exchanging happiness for odds of survival) over a whole society, then it's a useful metric as it is, but now you're starting to talk about the effect it has directly on the prospects of those experiencing the happiness, it's inappropriate. The average hunter-gatherer is not facing a halving of the number of days lived. The average hunter-gatherer is facing almost exactly the same number of days as the average westener, they simply have a lower chance of getting to be the average hunter-gatherer in their first five years of life. — Pseudonym

You misunderstand. I'm pointing out that a near doubling of average days lived is a significant part of the quantitative component of our hedonic formula, not the qualitative one (though I do point out that longevity indicates well-being, I'm not saying it's a cause of well being.

What confuses me endlessly is this statement:

The average hunter-gatherer is facing almost exactly the same number of days as the average westener, they simply have a lower chance of getting to be the average hunter-gatherer in their first five years of life.

You've unambiguously contradicted yourself. If the "average hunter gather" who will live for approximately the same number of days as a westerner "has a lower chance of getting to be the average hunter-gatherer", then they are not the average hunter-gatherer, they're at best the mode hunter gatherer. It's almost as if you're moving toward the position that death doesn't matter whatsoever (because the dead are neither happy nor unhappy? And so it doesn't affect the per capita, per day averages?).

I'm still not getting this dual use of happiness as a metric, we have;

"The metric of happiness, which is not exactly central to my initial and overall argument, is something I criticize as hard to measure, along with the entire concept of rudimentary hedonic maths as misleading and presumptive."

and

"If I can show that humans have the capacity to be generally/similarly happy across a wide range of environments..."

These still seem completely contradictory to me. How do you propose to show, 'strongly' or otherwise, that humans have the capacity to be happy across a wide range of environments without being able to measure happiness? You could perhaps show that the mechanisms which cause happiness are not related to external factors, but I think you'd be onto a losing task there as they very clearly are. You could perhaps explore mechanisms to do with tolerance and it's effect on happiness, but, as we've explored, that relies on relative equality and using this as your metric certainly undermines your argument. I can't see how else you could avoid having to supply, as evidence in support of your theory, two human groups who were equally happy despite radically different environments. But this would rely entirely on your being able to measure happiness, which you say is not critical to your argument. — Pseudonym

My initial arguments rely on general well-being, not self reported or otherwise measured forms of happiness. As happiness was specifically brought up in your utilitarian assessment of suicide toward unhappiness as a proxy for success, I have no problems entertaining it (if to defeat your argument using its own logic) while also attempting to dismantle it and reveal its shortcomings. My initial approach to assessing societal success was, in a nut shell, its ability to avoid disasters (which is why things like child mortality rank so highly). I'm not one to devalue happiness (despite being cautious about seeking to measure it) so we might as well see what comparisons, if any, can be made.

You will need to support this assertion, as I simply disagree with it entirely. The idea that whole groups are wiped out to be replaced by others is not supported by any evidence I'm aware of. If you're arguing that a society is it's culture (such that you could say, for example, the Inca's were wiped out and replaced by the Aztecs) then you'd have to make the same judgement for western cultures. where are the Calvinists, where's feudalism, where's the Babylonian culture, where's state communism, where's the Shakers... Cultures get replaced by other cultures, this has nothing to do with sustainability. Sustainability (in ethical terms, which it how it is being used here) is about resource depletion. otherwise it's not an ethical matter and happiness could be obtained at it's expense without causing a problem. To be unsustainable in the ethical sense, a lifestyle has to be impossible to continue indefinitely by virtue of it choices, not by virtue of the vagaries of nature which are outside of it's control. We cannot become ethically obliged to control nature. There is a categorical difference between a society whose well-being is dependant on oil, and one whose well-being is dependant of clement weather. When oil runs out, that society will no longer benefit from that particular well-being - ever. During periods of inclement weather, the latter society may suffer, but when the weather returns to clemency, it will again thrive. These are two entirely different forms of sustainability, and have very different ethical connotations. — Pseudonym

Unsustainability in terms of insecurity (inability to mitigate the impact of inclement weather, for instance) can be a bigger problem than unsustainable resource consumption. It's true that human groups have proven capable of enduring inclement weather in the long run, but the endurance involves cyclical periods of suffering, which I don't see being any better than running out of a particular resource we're presently dependent on (people suffer and die either way).

Sustainability in terms of overall societal robustness is what I was considering: across vast regions where geographically disparate and low population HG bands thrive (harsh climates), so long as no extreme events eliminate everyone, at least some of the peoples of a given group may be likely to persist against rising survival pressures. The way of life is sustainable and persists so long as the climate is static and no new groups arrive, but not all of the individual bands will be successful. If external social or environmental changes do arrive, then the HG way of life often has no way to sustain itself. To conclude on this point, HG way of life is very sustainable within the environments it has evolved to operate in, but it cannot easily adapt to environmental change or the presence of many other groups. This makes HG way of life less reliable in the context of inevitable change.

Again this is mere supposition at the moment, I'd need to see the evidence you're basing this on to believe it's not simply prejudice. Where are the examples of hunter-gatherers being treated unjustly because of 'the mob' where their treatment would have been more just under a state judicial system? So far, all you've provided that is on this subject is the practice of ostracisation as a punishment for lack of sharing (with more severe punishment being present but rare). How would this be any different if non-sharing were illegal in a state justice system. The perpetrator would still be ostracised (imprisoned), and treated violently (either in prison, or in states which still have forms of capital punishment). I'm not seeing how the one is more just than the other. — Pseudonym

My point here has to do with the proper application and execution of justice in terms of procedure and cross-cultural norms. Having a very well developed, scrutinized, and tested legal system has not only helped us to find better normative rules but also how to properly enforce the rules when they're allegedly broken. Mobs often subscribe to the most base forms of persuasion whereas a competent lawyer or judge will seek critical evidence and rational argumentation (they tend to employ reason). As extreme examples, being ostracized for not wanting to undergo genital mutilation is one such superstitious norm that is not justifiable from any reasonable ethical perspective, and the killing of those suspected of witchcraft is another such norm which is not only unreasonably superstitious but also unreasonably unjust given its arbitrary application.

Did the Iraq war pass you by unnoticed? Did you miss the news broadcasts about Russia's invasion of the Ukraine? The invasion and control of weaker states fro their resources is still very much alive and well, it's just conducted differently now, less flag waiving and more tactical missiles — Pseudonym

Average death from wars are still declining and basic standards of living are still increasing; things aren't the one way street they used to be, and we're still improving.

You also seem to have slipped from focussing on justice to focussing on GDP. What has the fact that previously colonized countries, having been stripped of most of their natural resources, are now gaining in average GDP got to do with justice? Justice, in this sense, is about the extent to which the gains of one group are bought at the expense of another. The gains of modern western societies were definitely bought at the expense of the colonies, and the average GDP of the now former colonies completely masks the fact that the gains of the few (within those countries) are still being bought at the expense of the others. Income disparity is undeniably increasing and Tanzania, for example, which ranks in your top ten fastest growing economies, ranks nearly the bottom of the UN's World Happiness Report — Pseudonym

Is it not worth pointing out that in regards to international exchanges of goods, things are becoming less unjust? If the west can cease exploiting other nations, won't that amount to ethical success?

As I think we might have mentioned before, happiness is complicated but a necessary metric. As pointless as it is seeing longevity alone as a measure of total happiness, it is equally pointless seeing justice in terms of average GDP. — Pseudonym

As a loose proxy for international exploitation, it is not pointless, it's in redress of one of the main objections raised against the contemporary west - it's exploitative capitalist nature - both within and between nations. If other preciously exploited nations are beginning to grow economically, maybe that's a sign of reduced exploitation?

Firstly it seems that I'd mistaken your emphasis on longevity as being unsupported by an argument about hedonic value where you consider that argument to have been laid out already. We are in agreement then that longevity acts only as a multiplier of hedonic value (with the caveat that the number of future years one can expect to live may well have a hedonic value of its own)? That is to say that if a person gained 2 units of hedonic value from every year of life they could live half as long as someone gaining only 1 unit from each year and would have been objectively no more or less successful. — Pseudonym

I understand in principle that longevity alone doesn't make life worth living, but keep in mind longevity is an indicator of other values (especially via your assessment of suicide). Longevity infers a modicum of comfort, medicine, security, and points toward positive net hedons (if people forecast negative hedons, under your view, they kill themselves). There's no escaping longevity as a necessary and useful metric for calculating the average hedonic success of a civilization (it must be considered). If someone lives twice as long with the same hedonic intake per day, then they are twice as successful!

If you want to use suicide as a proximal indicator of hedonic value and societal (un)happiness, then I get to use longevity in similar fashion. Longevity doesn't necessitate happiness, and suicide doesn't necessitate unhappiness, but if you feel that wanting to kill one's self indicates that people are unhappy (and is representative of other individuals) then why can't I say not wanting to kill one's self (which actually is representative) means people are happy?

Presuming that's right, our argument should really have been focussed on the various hedonic values of the socieites (the boons, as you call them) rather than being sidetracked into a discussion about mortality rate. Mortality rates are not that different between the two societies in a mathematical sense. A life expectancy of 45 is not quite half the average life expectancy in Western societies, so hunter-gatherer society would have to demonstrate just less than twice the hedonic value of Western societies to make up for its lower life expectancy, yes? I'm not suggesting we put numbers to this, just trying to find a way to shelve mortality (other than as a hedonic factor itself) for the time being until we've established that it is a factor at all. It is only a factor if hunter-gather societies are much less than twice as happy as average westerners, otherwise it is not relevant because its multiplying effects are outweighed by the increase in hedonic value of each year.

So the argument in this respect is - are hunter-gatherer societies enough happier to justify their lower life expectancies? You're arguing they're not, I'm suggesting they might be. — Pseudonym

I'm reticent to presuppose the validity of hedonic calculus in and of itself. I think we have less of a shot at adequately defining "happiness" than we do adequately digesting and interpreting the academic evidence pertaining to this discussion. It might not be qualitatively or quantitatively true to consider someone as being "twice as happy" as another person without considerations of their relative hedonic fluctuations. We might forecast having servants as a hedon yielding circumstance, but after 30 years of being waited on hand and foot, surely the hedons it yields will wane. If a rich person who has known only luxury and service their entire life is suddenly thrown into poverty, they can have the same circumstances as a fellow poor person but be enduring many more negative hedons as a result of their subjective experience. Uncontacted hunter-gatherer tribes who have never known certain technology and comforts (metal knives, dogs, motors, guns, tobacco) seem to be quite content right up until the west starts making gifts of them, at which point there's no going back. Once you travel rivers by motor and have a durable long lasting knife, going back to poles, paddles, and flint knapping, is hell. So, almost paradoxically, an HG way of life can produce X average hedons per day, and by giving them technology which temporarily improves their hedonic circumstances, we can be doing negative hedonic damage in the long run.

I hope you can appreciate how confounding the subjective nature of happiness actually is to trying to appraise averages. I can't actually point to things like access to technology or very low child mortality rates as increasing average societal hedons because I already know that living without these things from the get go prepares us to endure lives without them. It is extremely common in HG tribes to have strange customs surrounding newborns: they aren't given names, or really considered to be people until they make it through the earliest and most dangerous phase of life and begin to display human expressions like smiling. It's expected that many infants will die, and while it must still have some impact on mothers, the reduced expectations and the cultural precautions they take (not naming them or considering them "people", sequestering mother and child for a period of time after birth, the father not touching the infant, and others I'm forgetting) along with the acceptance that such things are unavoidable, overall it is reasonable to wonder whether infant mortality has any significant long term impact on the happiness of HG peoples whatsoever.

The corollary of this, is that we're stuck with assessing happiness regardless of how slippery and difficult to measure a concept it might be because assessment of mortality is pointless without knowing the hedonic value of each year. We cannot simply presume that it is equal just because it's difficult to measure, that would be a fallacy. If we really cannot get a measure of it, then we must presume it is unknown, which means that the whole debate is undecidable. We've just agreed (I think) that longevity simply acts as a multiplier, not really a factor of its own. Any number multiplied by an unknown quantity just yields an unknown quantity. The only caveat I would accept to this is that at some point a society might yield such a massive improvement in life expectancy that it simply becomes extremely unlikely that any gain/loss in hedonic value enough to outweigh the multiplying effects will ever be possible. I don't think we're there, but I suppose it's possible you do. If so, then the discussion become one not too dissimilar to the Utility Monster. Would we be willing to admit that a life which had a million years of barely more than tolerable happiness was actually worth more than one which had only a hundred of moderate happiness, simply by multiplying factor alone? — Pseudonym

We shouldn't presume a happiness equilibrium, but how much of a happiness disequilibrium ought we expect? There are good reasons to believe that humans can psychologically and emotionally adapt to environments such that they're still motivated to flee discomfort and pain (but not consumed/hindered by it) and also motivated to chase pleasure (but not stalled by reaching it too easily).

Is there a maximum number of hedons any given individual can experience? Is the value of 1 additional hedon to someone already rich with hedons the same as the value of that hedon to the impoverished (diminished returns)? (same questions for anti-hedons).


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The next bit I'm a bit stuck on. You seem to have agreed that mortality is (mostly) only a multiplier for hedonic value. This, to me entails that you're having decided the two societies are of at least roughly equal hedonic value is absolutely crucial to your argument, without it you are comparing two unknown quantities. — Pseudonym

I think the magnitude in difference between the average happiness of the west and HG peoples is certainly not great enough to overcome a near doubling of days lived. I'm not at all convinced that HG peoples are happier than those in the west, but I'm also not jumping to the conclusion that HG peoples are entirely unhappy. If I can show that humans have the capacity to be generally/similarly happy across a wide range of environments, then it will stand to reason that a doubling of lifespan increases the average amount of happiness an individual will attain.

You then go on to make two seemingly contradictory statements - firstly that your argument is strong, has good predictive abilities and conforms to the evidence, and secondly that happiness (hedonic value) is so hard to measure as to be virtually useless as a metric. Given that your argument relies entirely on demonstrating that the two societies have at least equal hedonic values, how can you claim it to be so strong yet still claim that hedonic value is virtually impossible to measure? — Pseudonym

Forgive my lack of clarity once more. I've made many separate claims in this thread and have defended them in a variety of ways. In general, I've sought to demonstrate the validity of my original claims with reasoning from an evolutionary perspective, academic sources, and by looking at example HG tribes to see if my various statements and generalizations held true. The metric of happiness, which is not exactly central to my initial and overall argument, is something I criticize as hard to measure, along with the entire concept of rudimentary hedonic maths as misleading and presumptive. Originally I laid out what I thought to be general standards of health and societal well-being which were universal enough to use as proxies for success (not just longevity, but robustness, security, literacy, and freedom from violence, disease, strife, etc...). I said that people are on average better off in the contemporary west than any other society and at any other time, not that they are all X amount happier.

This seems to me to be the main sticking point, and where I keep misunderstanding your argument. You seem contradictory in your valuation of the measurement of happiness, on the one had agreeing that it is a vitally important measure (one half of the 'degree of happiness' x 'years of happiness' equation), but then on the other hand suggesting that we can't possibly measure happiness so we might as well not bother. — Pseudonym

"If being happy is to be successful in life" then such an equation would follow. I was trying to clarify that I understand the difference between quantity and quality. I'm agreeing that quantity without any quality is valueless (and vice versa), but I'm not assenting to your full set of assumptions pertaining to how hedonic utility should or could be approximated. For all we know there is a very low upper limit to maximum happiness and what we should be critically measuring is freedom from fear and suffering.

You think that archeology and anthropology are complicated fields of study that we're unfit to grapple in, but psychology and neuroscience aren't?

Given that your argument relies entirely on demonstrating that the two societies have at least equal hedonic values, how can you claim it to be so strong yet still claim that hedonic value is virtually impossible to measure? — Pseudonym

I'm happy to argue that people can adapt to be generally happy across a wide range of environments and circumstances (obviously we cannot adapt to everything, such as long lasting torture), and that various natural environments suitable for HG lifestyle and the super-organism that is the contemporary west are two such adaptable circumstances. I'm not hinging my argument (a lengthy series of positions in a cumulative argument showing different elements of "success") on my ability to show westerners as more than half as happy as HG's.

"Happiness" and all it's various kinds might not be impossible to measure, but they are very complex, and we haven't even begun to directly address them...

It seems to me that there are four inextricable factors - longevity, happiness, justice and sustainability. At it's most trite, it seems sometimes your argument is "we can't measure the last three very well so lets just ignore them and say that western society has won on longevity alone" and that's just not good enough for me. If someone were to offer me an extra thirty years of average life expectancy, admitting that they might be bought at the expense of my overall happiness, the survival of future generations and the well-being of other societies and minority groups, but we can't be sure about how much, I don't think it would be moral for me to just take them unquestioningly. — Pseudonym

To be fair, justice and sustainability I have intentionally left aside because the discussion is already dense enough (once we settle the happiness question, we can move on to others). Broadly I've broken down happiness/human interest into the categories of physical, mental, and spiritual health, but I don't quite know how to fundamentally assess the average spiritual and mental health of an entire society. Both of those questions could be endlessly explored and no clear answers might be found. (Are you willing to seriously investigate suicide and its relationship to mental/spiritual health?)

If we cannot come to any agreement about the relative success of a society in terms of happiness or well being, then we can move on to justice and sustainability (although they may somewhat bleed back into the happiness question. e.g: if something is less sustainable or less just but has high returns on happiness, is that society more successful? (the needs of the many are especially eminent with any utilitarian approach)).

If you'd like to move on to these new metrics, regarding sustainability I'll be focusing on the overall fragility of individual HG bands. While it's true scattered humans somewhere will always tend to find a way to survive, it comes at the cost of the death and obliteration of the many. Not only within groups as individuals die younger, but whole groups themselves that are for whatever reasons unlucky or maladapted have been wiped out and replaced by others (or by nobody at all in desolate regions). HG people are subject to the whims of nature to a greater degree than the west thanks to our technology and agriculture. You will surely be forecasting the demise of the human race brought about by western hubris (climate change, disease, end of oil, or nuclear war) to thus show it is unsustainable, but rather than offer preemptive rebukes I'll let you make your case.

Regarding injustice I'll be mostly focusing on the fact that HG people have no formal justice systems and rely on altruistic punishment to enforce basic norms. Acephalous groups have no wise leaders who can arbitrate disputes and actually make informed decisions about what is just (such as a modern judge might), instead altrustic punishment amounts to the often superstition informed whims of the mob. I've met some wise judges, but I've never met a wise mob. You will surely raise the objection that the west unjustly exploits the rest of the world and many of its own in order to sustain itself. While this may have been true throughout the west's colonial era, much of the rest of the world has freed itself from the grip of European colonial powers and are joining the ranks of growing economic powers. Global trade isn't the one way street it used to be, and even if one lane is still wider than the other, every nation engaging in international trade is still benefiting on average (six of the ten fastest growing economies this year are in Africa!). There was a transitory phase of definitive exploitation, and some exploitation yet persists, but it is not the highway robbery it used to be. Conversely, one of my original points was that indigenous groups are not exempt from unjust warfare and exploiting their neighbors. Should the average peaceful HG tribe happen upon a stable and geographically fixed year round food source, they might become sedentary, and war for territory might follow. One of the best arguments for western success is its constantly improving standards of justice.

I haven't asked for a full list. I'm merely defending my statement that your opinion was largely uninformed (in the academic sense), and supported post hoc with evidence you found by searching the internet in a concious attempt to support it. You seemed to take great offence at the suggestion, so I presumed it wasn't true. This would mean that your opinion was, in fact, supported by some academic information and that you searched the internet for new sources to support it for some reason other than your lack of previous sources. — Pseudonym

There's no rational point in characterizing me as uninformed and I would rather not waste time defending my education. In the context of our discussion, doing so amounts to an ad hominem attack because it fallaciously persuades that my position is incorrect by appealing to an aspect of me instead of an aspect of my argument/evidence/position.

That's fine, showing that one theory has more rational merit than another is a reasonable way of comparing them (although I don't see any convincing ethical argument that we should then adopt the argument which shows most rational merit, but that's another debate entirely), but contrary to your later suggestion that we cannot discuss these ideas in the midst of a bias-laden debate, I really don't see how we can even have a debate (bias-laden or otherwise) unless we resolve what it is we're using as a measure of rational merit. You seem to believe in the (I think very much mistaken) notion that the ability to provide counter-arguments is just such a measure, but the history of ideas demonstrates with glaring empirical accuracy, that the ability to derive counter-arguments is almost infinite, limited only by the imagination. So then we're left with this unsatisfactorily subjective notion of 'compelling' counter-arguments. You don't find my arguments 'compelling', I don't find yours 'compelling' so where do we go from there? — Pseudonym

I believe that strong arguments (the strength of an argument matters) which are well supported by evidence are what help us generally move toward truth. A descriptive model which provides predictive power and can be tested against experimentation and evidence is something of a golden rational standard. Reason comes in many forms; I'm not sure having a meta discussion about the epistemic or ontic nature of reason and evidence is going to get us anywhere...

I agree entirely. The difference I'm trying to get at is that presenting your argument, together with the rational process and evidence by which you support it, is not sufficient on it's own to do anything more than offer someone an alternative (which they may then adopt or reject). If you want to go further, then this you'll need to do some comparative work. My criticism of your argument so far was mostly based on the fact that it is rarely more than a just-so story. It lays out how something could be the case, not how something must be the case, nor even how something is more likely to be the case than any alternative. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I presumed at first that this was intentional, and you were simply laying out an alternative for me to consider (which I why I said that I wasn't interested in reading an alternative presented by someone who was largely uniformed, when I could read alternatives presented by experts). Now that you've made it clear that you're not simply laying out an alternative, but are attempting to argue it's relative merits, I'm focussing my criticism more on the fact that I don't see any such comparative arguments there. — Pseudonym

I've been attempting to argue that my original claims are likely. I'm using cumulative induction to show that my positions have a high statistical likelihood of being correct. (I think) you're asking me to consider alternative positions and to show why they're likely not the case, and I confess this confuses me because much of my approach from an evolutionary perspective has been to show why certain behaviors and social trends are selected for and selected against. By modeling the factors which contribute to evolving behavioral and social trends (and checking their predictions against available examples/evidence) I'm in essence comparing the model against alternative possibilities: if the predictive models/descriptions don't produce predictions that are statistically reliable, then the model is dis-confirmed. Yes better predictive descriptions and models can and will come along, but until then I'm stuck with the best theories available.

Making direct comparisons between alternatives isn't exactly necessary to show the likelihood of my positions. The alternatives I'm concerned with are the direct inversions of what I hold to be true; if I can show them to likely be false then I'll simultaneously be showing my position to likely be true. For instance, by showing that the social trends of observable groups are dramatically impacted by environmental factors in similar ways across many cultures (e.g: uncertainty leading to fear, fear leading to violence), I am attempting to argue that it is likely ancient unobserved people would largely have been subject to the same pitfalls as their observed counterparts (i.e, harsh climates leads to practices like nomadism and infanticide and social egalitarianism, while bounty leads to sedentarism, population density, social stratification, war, and many other boons and burdens). The alternative hypothesis would be that climate and environmental forces did not shape the behavioral trends of ancient people in ways similar to the people of recorded history. Doesn't that seem unlikely?

The most important point you're missing, which covers the first three of your responses, is a simple mathematical one. You're treating survival as a binomial factor when it is in fact variable. Hunter-gatherer tribes do not fail to survive (where modern societies achieve survival). Hunter-gatherers survive for less long than modern people's on average. This treatment of a variable as a binomial causes all sorts of problems for your argument... — Pseudonym

You're mischaracterizing the relevance of average lifespan to my position. I've already ceded that lifespan is not in and of itself necessarily valuable, but instead that it is connected to every other possibly valuable aspect of life. It becomes a limiting factor of how many hedons can be gotten out of life, on average, when considered alongside associated boons and burdens.

So here, 'survival', is not a binomial factor (one you either have or do not have), it is a variable (one you have a certain quantity of). The decision we're talking about is trading a certain quantity of this variable for an increase in the variable 'happiness', yet this argument here treats it as if the only choice were to either have 'survival' or not have it. Treat it as a variable and your last assertion "survival is intrinsically important as necessary to preserve the value life contains" ceases to be true. Only when the 'survival' variable is zero does the 'value life contains' variable become impossible to obtain. At all other values for the 'survival' variable, it is still possible to obtain any amount of the 'value life contains' variable depending entirely on how 'valuable' each moment of that life is. — Pseudonym

I see what you're saying but I've not implicitly treated survival this way. I've made the point that increased longevity can give individuals more access to the sources of happiness which they do have. If each day you gain positive net hedons, then living for more days will get you more hedons overall. People can sacrifice or risk additional days for more hedons in the moment (hedonism), but most people tend toward long term stability as a preference.

I've also made the point that longevity can be useful as an indicator of factors like good health and freedom from violence...

Again, same error. It does require you to "go on living" to get repeated doses of happiness, and lack of mortality is definitely necessary for a society to be successful. But both modern societies and hunter-gatherer societies have that. Hunter-gatherers do not instantly drop dead the moment they're born, so both possess this necessary quality 'being alive for some time'. The variable is the amount of time. The point I'm making with the sky-divers is that statistically they will be (as a population) reducing the amount of time they spend alive (sky-divers have a shorter lifespan on average than non-sky-divers). They trade this shortened average lifespan for the adrenaline rush their sport gives them. This is also true of absolutely any of the risks we take in life. We trade the shortened average lifespan of a group taking that risk for the benefits that risk gives us. This is no different to the argument I'm making about hunter-gatherers who choose to remain so. They're trading a shortened average lifespan for the benefits their lifestyle gives them. — Pseudonym

I respect the choices of individuals to live their lives how they choose, but it might be a bit misleading to say that hunter-gatherers "choose" to live the way they do. If you're born into a primitive tribe you don't get to choose much about your future lifestyle within the group (conformity is high) and until recent times there were simply no other options. It may be the case that hunter0gatherer life is so stimulating and happiness inducing that they net more average hedons overall despite early deaths and high child mortality rates. I really don't think this is the case though...

So why are you suggesting we judge the worth of a society in any way on the variable 'being alive longer' when we've just established that such a variable is only worth anything if such a society is 'rife with such boons'? The first job is to establish whether a society is rife with boons, before we've done that the variable 'being alive longer' is of no use to us as a metric, as you just stated. — Pseudonym

But I've already established many of the boons of western society. Once boons are established, then it is required to include longevity in our assessment. If I have not yet sufficiently established that western society does yield boons, I apologize, but it's all still the same formula.

No, you've completely ignored the maths. You do not automatically have a lower chance of leading a successful life if you have a higher chance of dying. That's not the way probability works. With two variables the one is multiplied by the other. If you live in a society with an extremely low chance of achieving happiness, it doesn't matter how long you live for (presuming infinity is not an option), because your chances of happiness are so low that getting to roll those dice more often is not sufficient compensation. Imagine I have a ten-sided-die and a hundred-sided die, and my aim is to roll a one as often as I can (the size of the die represents how easy it is to achieve happiness in a given society, rolling a one represents happiness being achieved, the number of times you can roll a die represents your lifespan). I need to roll the hundred-sided die ten times more to have an equal chance of obtaining a one, than if I roll the ten sided die. So if someone said to me, would you be prepared to trade a loss in the number of times you get to roll the die for an opportunity to swap dice, you would be best taking that option.

This is what I'm suggesting makes hunter-gatherer societies compare favourably to Western ones despite their lower life expectancies. This is why sky-divers accept a lower life expectancy on average than non-sky-divers. This is why anyone does anything remotely risky. People are, and always have been, prepared to trade a loss in expected lifespan for an increase in the happiness of that lifespan. — Pseudonym

You've misunderstood my statement (I could have been clearer, admittedly). I'm saying that in any given society with X amount of average hedons per day, living for additional days will on average net X(days) more hedons. I'm not saying that any society with better longevity harvests more hedons (we've already clarified this), I'm saying that within any society that is good to live in, an individual who lives longer on average will net more average hedons. In other words, reducing the average risk of death in any given society (without reducing the rewards of that society) should make it more successful. In other other words, if skydiving was safer, it would increase happiness among sky-divers by keeping them alive longer, on average.

In any given society, if fewer babies die without additional burden, then success in increased. Agree?

And yet that's exactly what you're doing because you're presenting the fact that Western societies have a higher life expectancy as a metric which is sufficient to outweigh any advantages hunter-gather societies may have in diet, child-rearing, equality, community, exercise, purpose, freedom etc. You have decided the place life expectancy has in the hierarchy of values. — Pseudonym

Actually I've decided that it is a kind of parallel value, a factor. If being happy is to be successful in life, then we could imagine the utilitarian equation [number of days lived x happiness units per day], could we not? Societal success would then be [average number of days lived x average happiness units per day]. Lifespan is necessary to look at, but it is not necessarily the determining factor.

This seems to go back to the 'laying out an alternative' approach rather than any comparative work. I'm not asking you to assume the merit of suicide as a metric. As far as I'm concerned you can take it or leave it, but it was my understanding that you wanted to engage in arguing the relative merits of your theory, which would make it necessary for you to show how your metric compared relative to mine, how it improves on mine. So if we're talking about the property of a metric's clarity (it's failure to mislead), then a comparative argument would show how your metrics had less tendency to mislead than mine. Without that you're just back to saying that you have a reasonable theory and I already don't deny that. — Pseudonym

I have addressed the implications of suicide as a metric, but the burden of showing its merits as a metric rests with you (comparative analysis of this kind is the point of debate). I know that the causes of suicide don't necessarily reflect happiness (eg: it can reflect clinical depression, not hedonic calculus), and individuals who do commit suicide aren't representative of the majority of the population (some people being clinically depressed doesn't mean everyone is clinically depressed). In addition I've touched on the fact that suicide might look very different in hunter-gatherer society (given you can just disappear, never to be found) and so trying to assess suicide rates might be impossible to do even if it was a meritorious metric or proxy of societal success.

No you don't because I have at no point denied that is the case. I haven't at any point claimed that you do not have a valid philosophical theory. We're not arguing about validity, we're arguing about relative merit. Why are your conclusions more likely than mine? — Pseudonym

Empirical preponderance (depending on the specific conclusion). I believe I've provided more comprehensive and detailed explanatory and predictive models, and offered a greater quantity and quality of evidence to back them up. As the bulk of your contributions have been criticisms, can you exactly blame me for not seeing all the merits of your few positive conclusions? (suicide as a metric showing HG's are more successful)

But you have not done any comparative work. Is it more likely that our genetic predisposition to causes of happiness has evolved quickly to take account of modern life? Because if not, then we simply have two equally valid alternatives. — Pseudonym

I was pointing out how "happiness" can be a complicated subject to assess given that we do in fact] inter-generationally adapt to different lifestyles. There is no "more likely" component (at least no reasonable doubt). Genetically influenced human traits are subject to natural selection which leads to adaptations suited to given environments, and many neurological traits are heritable. If being well adapted, neurologically or otherwise is conducive to happiness, then there is an extra layer of complication when it comes to assessing it.

We really do not value additional years that highly. — Pseudonym

Regular sky-divers aren't looking to throw away their future years of misery, more likely they're addicted to the adrenaline rush and general thrill/fun of sky-diving. Illness precipitated suicide we can discount as a useful metric out of hand (it's covered under overall mortality rates or illness comparisons) and the rest is complicated by the variable circumstances which actually cause suicide. Suicide being carried about for financial reasons is something that could never affect a propertyless society, and so while this might come as a mortal risk in western society it still doesn't necessarily reflect average societal happiness (everyone who didn't lose their house/job might be over the moon with constant joy).

Well that's very confusing behavior. If your opinion was informed by some reliable sources prior to my request for evidence why didn't you provide me with those sources in response to my request? That's really what I meant by asking for evidence - asking for the sources behind your opinion. I wasn't just asking for any sources, that would have been ridiculous (of course there are some negative anthropologists out there). I was asking for your sources. Why would you keep your sources a secret and provide me instead with one you looked up post hoc?

I apologise for presuming on the basis of your action here that you were relatively uninformed, but It seemed pretty conclusive behavior to me. So, perhaps you could answer my original request now. What are the actual sources you used to inform your opinion prior to this discussion, and more importantly (to me) why on earth didn't you quote them when I asked, or indeed at any other time in the whole discussion, rather than trawl the internet for some others? — Pseudonym

You don't need a full history of the evidence I've been exposed to engage in this discussion, and the evidence (in the form of anthropological journals which you've requested) that I have presented should be sufficient (there are probably no academic studies which concisely capture the main thrust of my original post (that western civilization has been the opposite of a disaster)). I've gathered my understanding of human cultures over a long period of time and from many sources (such as history books and documentaries, which I reckon you would merely ridicule as undisciplined); I made a myriad of points in a cumulative argument, each of which I've been happy to provide evidence for, but providing all my original sources would be a herculean feat of memory.

What you've provided no reasoning, nor evidence, for is the contention that these two positions are the only reasonable and well supported positions it is possible to hold, which seems to be what you're aiming at achieving. To do that it is not sufficient to simply find evidence to support your theory, nor experts who agree with you, it would be necessary to demonstrate a complete absence of evidence to support any alternate theory and a total lack of experts who support them. It is not sufficient to show how you have followed a reasonable, logical route from some agreed absolute presuppositions to arrive at your theory (as you have perfectly adequately done), it is necessary to show how that it is the only reasonable logical route from the agreed absolute presuppositions (which you have not even touched on). — Pseudonym

I'm never going to be able to prove that there is a 0% chance I am wrong, or that no expert in a vast field of study hold conflicting views. However, the more rational merit I can give to my own positions, the less likely alternative theories seem to be. No science requires total consensus even among experts..,

1) How should we measure success in society? We have both presented theories on that, I'm satisfied that mine has answered your critique, you appear well satisfied with yours, there's no more work to be done there unless someone else chimes in with a new critique of either. — Pseudonym

To be fair it is only my last post before your hiatus which focused specifically on this question. Lengthy as it was it was not a conclusive post. For most of our discussion I've simply been defending my original claims which amount to my presupposed metrics of a successful society. The fact that I have not reached a satisfactory conclusion for myself yet is why I'm considering a new thread, and there are several issues which I neglected to address.

2.) How do we handle conflicting theories and evidence? This is the more interesting question to me as it crops up in almost every discussion, but I'm guessing it holds little interest for you as you've not engaged with it. — Pseudonym

Sure it's an interesting question, but asking it in the midst of a debate is somewhat less than pertinent. It's inexorably going to side-track the main discussion as we sit around wondering what it is about the other's psyche that keeps them so close minded. Any explanations we offer are likely to be self serving given we've yet to resolve our differing opinions. The way you've framed things, reasonable truth is locked inside fort knox, with a lion, and a decaying academic consensus atom. If I must: you underestimate us. We're more than capable of forming and informing evidence based opinions, even if originally they may have started as anecdotal or evolutionary preconceptions. In the spirit of philosophy and debate I think it always best to try and confront evidence and arguments directly (unless they're obviously absurd). Nobody likes to be persuaded and we're all less vulnerable to rational influence than we should be, but I genuinely do attempt to expose myself. I'm very interested in persuasion and bias, but how can we discuss our own biases in the middle of our biased debate? (And besides, its not especially persuasive...)

This is simply an assertion. It may be the case, but it also may not. Those who find themselves in circumstances not conducive to going on living (very miserable with no prospects), clearly do not wish to go on living as evidenced by the fact that they kill themselves. This makes your assertion that humans all(or nearly all) want to go on living circumstantially proscribed, those circumstances being happiness. So you haven't avoided happiness being the primary metric, your secondary metric only applies in those circumstances where the human concerned is sufficiently happy to want to go on living. So the extent to which this is the case is the difference between our theories. You have presented a rational possibility (that the fact that most people want to go on living makes survival a good metric), but you have not shown that it is the only rational possibility (which would involve showing how it is definitely not sufficiently contingent on happiness to make happiness the primary metric). Without this second comparative measure, all you've shown is that a second viable theory exists and seeing as I don't disagree with that, I don't see the point in continuing to do so. — Pseudonym

By your own reasoning the statement "nearly all humans want to go on living" is true simply because nearly all humans have not and will probably not commit suicide. Across all human cultures, nearly all human deaths are not caused by suicide. Even in the most awful conditions we know of (slavery/war/prison) most humans do not commit suicide, and by your reasoning therefore want to go on living, and are therefore sufficiently happy. Suicide rates go up when conditions go down (for obvious psychological reasons) but on average all human cultures provide the means of lives worth living.

If life is worth living, and I'm saying that it usually is to most people, then survival is intrinsically important as necessary to preserve the value life contains. It may not sufficiently describe happiness, but it is an absolute limiting factor of it.

Happiness is one of the real problems here: how do we define it? In my view it's not easy to define at all; it's a myriad of things. comforts, nutrition, freedom, fulfillment, belonging, uniqueness, adversity, growth, achievement - whatever - . Until we can grip a solid definition of happiness we're stuck with our many sub-categories.

No. Clearly, desire for sex, fame, children, adoration of peers, adrenaline rushes and objects of desire all frequently cause people to take actions which are huge risks to their survival. If the desire to survive was so ubiquitous and important as to trump all other desires, then why would anyone base jump, sky-dive, go to war, or even drive to work. Why would anyone do anything when one's survival chances are maximised by staying at home with an en-suite gym on a drip feed of antibiotics? The fact that a thing is necessary does not make it the most fundamental thing. You have to demonstrate that other things are not equally necessary. — Pseudonym

People desire those things (sometimes more than anything else), but very rarely will someone do something like jump off a cliff to be famous or knowingly die for an adrenaline rush. (the point is to get repeated doses, which requires you to go on living). I'm not saying that mortality rates are the one true and ultimate measure of societal success, but they are a necessary and major part of any broad and comprehensive assessment of societal success.

You've quite literally stated here that mortality is an intrinsically valuable, and useful metric. I have not argued that mortality is not either of those things, I've argued that it is not sufficiently valuable or useful to act as a measure of the success of a society on its own. To respond to that by simply pointing out that it is valuable and intrinsic is not a counter-argument. Imagine we were trying to establish who had most oranges. If you simply argue that you definitely have some oranges, and I argue that I too have some oranges, we have gotten nowhere. We must do one of two things, either quantify our batch of oranges by some comparable metric, or directly compare our batch of oranges. I am aware that mortality is a useful measure of a society's success, what I disagree on is how useful. — Pseudonym

We agree that longevity is not sufficient as a standalone metric, and thankfully I've not used it as such. Broad physical health, mental health, security (freedom from fear), and freedom in general are other areas I've explored. If a given society is rife with such boons, then being alive longer within them would indeed be valuable/sucecssful.

I've given you a somewhat comprehensive approach to defining citrus fruit and provided varied exemplar. Oranges are indeed one of the examples I've given for citrus, but it's simply not true to claim that I've provided only oranges.

This is simply statistically wrong as you are confusing a metric's necessity with the extent to which it is exhaustive. If a person has a 1:100 chance of being successful in any given year in one society, and a 1:1,000,000 chance in any given year in another, then a smaller number of years in the first society yields better odds of success than a larger number of years in the latter. It's just maths. Unless, as you do, you ignore other contributory factors. again, it's about comparison, so you must provide some quantitative metric, otherwise all you're doing is demonstrating that your theory is a viable possibility and I already agree with that. — Pseudonym

I'm attempting to show why my positions are reasonable and likely, more likely than random alternative theories...

It doesn't exactly matter that some societies offer better odds of leading successful lives: statistically, if you have a higher chance of dying, you have a lower chance of leading a successful life, whatever that may entail. Yes, it is just maths. I'm aware that a society with 0% chance of death and 0% chance of success is worse than a society with 25% chance of death and a 0.5% chance of success (if instead there was a 50% chance of death, then you're that much more likely to be taken out of the running for the 0.5% success pool.

I've not proposed lifespan as a standalone metric (however under your untreated interpretation of suicide, the mere continuation of one's own life means that life is worth living, which would mean that longevity does represent success).

Again, you're simply presenting your case as if it were an argument. I don't disagree that physical health must be considered high on the list of important attributes, but in rejecting my theory you need to argue that it must be considered higher than metrics of happiness, not just high. — Pseudonym

Happiness is not a straightforward metric. Physical health is a component of happiness. I'm not prepared to demonstrate that health is important to happiness (happiness comes from a combination of different things, in my opinion), so you will just have to take it or leave it. That you agree it is important is good enough as I reject the idea that happiness a wholly separate metric. Humans tend to desire good health, and attaining one's desires tends to make us happy.

Again, this is without comparison, demonstrating that these things are important is not the issue, no-one disagrees with that. Demonstrating that they are more important than happiness is the issue. There must be some quantitative or comparative measure, which you have not provided.

I won't quote directly from your section on mental well-being, but suffice to say you have again simply declared that something is the case which I do not disagree with - various factors influence mental well-being including fear and inequality. I fail to see how this has any bearing on it's use as a metric for the success of a society either necessarily or exhaustively. — Pseudonym

By necessarily and exhaustively you seem to be supposing that an individual metric ought to occupy a universal and immovable place in a hierarchy of values that all humans agree with. I cannot tell you the exact point at which security becomes a greater concern than freedom, or precisely chart the many factors which influence individual human happiness.

Yes, I don't disagree. Again, you have failed to carry out any comparative analysis. Is it more misleading than other metrics, if so why? — Pseudonym

It's more misleading as ametric for societal happiness because as I understand it suicide often is the result of clinical depression, an affliction not necessarily caused by society itself. I've put forward and supported many good metrics, but I don't exactly feel the need to show why all other possible metrics, including suicide, are more misleading. Hell, maybe suicide is actually the closest proxy for societal happiness that we have, as you say it is, but until I get ahold of some reasons as to why this is the case (as opposed to not the case), I have no reason to assume its merit.

Yes, they can. So you now need to demonstrate that hunter-gatherer societies experience mostly convergence whereas modern Western societies experience mostly divergence, and again, if you expect this debate to resolve it is not sufficient to show how that could be the case, by some metric you've chosen, but how it is the only conclusion from any rational metric. Otherwise, all you've shown is that your theory is a rational possibility, and I already don't disagree with that notion. You've presumed, for example, in your measure that diversity of job is correlated with diversity of personal expression. I don't see any evidence that this is the case. One could be a fire-fighter, or a bank clerk and basically have the same neuro-typical outlook on life. Equally one could conceive of two hunters who have diametrically opposite outlooks and understandings of the world, yet both have the same job — Pseudonym

I have to keep pointing out that inductive arguments which establish conclusions as likely rather than deductively necessary can be just as philosophical (better in fact).

Are you essentially suggesting that we would be equally happy if we were all forced to do the same job?

And yet your argument relies heavily on the presumption that low mortality rates are definitely one of those things. If they're not, then why bother achieving them, if they are then it is clearly possible to arrive at some reasonably firm conclusions about what contributes to metal well-being. We've already explored some - freedom from fear, relative equality, freedom of expression, freedom to choose one's own path, food security, a supportive community, I don't really think any of these things are in much doubt. — Pseudonym

Being alive is definitely required to be mentally and spiritually healthy, therefore low mortality rates improves your odds of being mentally and spiritually healthy. It's not a presumption...

I was more or less remarking on the complications and subjective dilemmas associated with happiness (like human adaptability to suffering and subjective differences between individuals).

Right, so just how short a timescale do you think evolution acts on? Because this seems key to your argument. I don't see any evidence that evolution acts on the genome at anything other than very long timescales, which would mean, by your own analysis, we are broadly speaking adapted to be happy and mentally healthy in the hunter-gather cultural environment in which we evolved — Pseudonym

Evolution and the already extant adaptive capacities of the human genome work over many different time-scales. Depending on the strength of selective forces, and the nature of the trait changes can happen quite quickly (did you know Yao Ming was essentially selectively bred?). Genes which interact with height through various hormone and RNA signals naturally vary during reproduction, and when selection pressures are strong the average height of group could change fairly rapidly. Cognitive traits and the genes that code for them are probably more complex (or at least more complex in that we don't fully understand cognition), but whatever they are, many aspects of them must be heritable.

It's not capitalized Evolution that I'm describing in the sense of the emergence of a novel trait, it's more of a re-balancing of existing traits for adaptive purposes, which is a natural and regular function of how humans genetically adapt generation to generation.

If you think evolution acts faster than that, then why is it do you think, that our biology still requires the levels of exercise a hunter-gatherer lifestyle provides and not that which a modern largely sedentary lifestyle does? — Pseudonym

Sedentary life isn't without exercise (ask a farmer), but it seems we have no heritable and variable trait which allows our muscles to grow healthily without exercise (it can take a long time for such an evolutionary miracle).

Why does it still require the sort of nutrition provided by hunter-gather lifestyles and has not evolved to be more tolerant of the refined-carbohydrate-rich diet modern society provides? — Pseudonym

Because basic nutrients are still required for our complex cells to function properly, but maybe our dietary tolerances do evolve. For example, European consumption of alcohol has led them to be less sensitive to its effects (something to do with alcohol metabolizing enzymes IIRC) than Asian ethnic groups...

In other words, why would we have evolved to strongly desire things which were completely out of our reach for the first few million years? Do you not think that evolutionary pressure would have removed the stress that desiring something unobtainable causes, in favour of individuals who do not desire such things and so suffer less stress? — Pseudonym

From an evolutionary perspective, those who suffered too much due to their physiology/psychology will have tended to reproduce less, but it would also be true that evolving to be completely satisfied would also cause you to reproduce less successfully. Having insatiable desires keeps us motivated.

"You have simply provided me with the largely uninformed opinion you already had...". This seems indisputable as your opinion came first and the only evidence you provided me with was a paper you found from searching Google Scholar, after you'd given your opinion. Unless I've missed something really important, these just seem to be irrefutable facts, not ad hominem attacks. Again, I'm not suggesting you did anything wrong in this regard, just that a less well informed opinion based on evidence I've already read isn't of much interest to me. — Pseudonym

"...you've backed it up post hoc with evidence that I've already read.". Again, unless I've missed some step on re-reading the posts here, you did indeed look up the evidence after I asked you for your sources, and that evidence does indeed consist of a paper I've already read. In fact I think it was my Google Scholar link which lead you to them. — Pseudonym

I provided you with evidence when you asked for it, and I can assure you that I've been "informed" by many sources prior to our discussion. It does not follow that I am or was previously uninformed just because I used google scholar to find the exact evidence you requested. The supposition that I'm uninformed is the silly ad hominem...

"one big silly ad hominem attack" — Pseudonym

The part where instead of addressing the positions, arguments and evidence you initially criticized as wrong, you just assume that I'm uninformed, prejudiced, biased, etc...

If indeed I have, as you suggest, failed to comprehend and appreciate the full scope of your position and it's nuances, then I look forward to a fresh exposition of it in some future thread. There may be some level at which I feel it would be rational of me to take part, but It will unlikely be simply to try and convince you that you are wrong using argument and evidence. — Pseudonym

If you aren't willing to engage in the actual discussion at hand (argument and evidence), and instead insist on having meta-discussions about the shortcomings of my education or character, why bother?

Can anyone ague that the state must never kill? — tim wood

No, sometimes it - "we" (the people) - simply must.

it is conceivable that Donald Trump is a traitor, engaged in acts of treason. If convicted of same, should he be hanged? — tim wood

I would say no, because we don't actually need to. We can incarcerate him physically and financially, and that ought to be sufficient. Do we really need a lethal deterrent against elected officials turning traitor? (Who the hell have we been electing!?)



Regarding the broad question of capital punishment of criminals, I think that A, since it would be cheaper to incarcerate for life, and B we can afford to do so, even the worst criminals need not be put to death.

There is however a problem with the punitive system in general: it's inefficient, over-populated, inhumane, and utterly fails to rehabilitate. Perhaps a knee jerk reaction is to think that putting more inmates to death could solve the problem, but they're not stopping to consider how unethical that would be or why it wouldn't actually save money or make a positive difference of any kind.

Instead of deterrence through suffering as a general M.O, we really ought to just invest in full blown rehabilitation so that recidivism rates are actually reduced and we will save money in the long run. Somehow America has the largest prison population (both in total, and per capita) of any nation on the planet (22 percent of the world's prisoners are in America), so whatever it is America is doing, it's not working...

As an argument against capital punishment in this day and age, consider the following: If creating a deterrent is the main purpose of punitive justice, then why not have a daily prisoner lottery of all 2 million plus American prisoners and put 100 or so winners to death on live television each day? People in jail for crimes of any magnitude would be utterly terrified that they're going to be chosen for execution, and civilians on the outside would be utterly terrified of breaking the law for fear of being put into the death-lottery in prison.

If deterrence is an adequate justification, then why not?

We might still disagree, of course, but we would at least have gone away better informed. But that's not what has happened here. You have simply provided me with the largely uninformed opinion you already had, an opinion which is pretty much exactly in line with the commonly held view of hunter-gatherers that I'm already well aware of, having spoken to plenty of non-anthropologists already (their being the majority of the world). Then you've backed it up post hoc with evidence that I've already read. This doesn't mean that your opinion is wrong, it may well be absolutely spot on, but it means that I've heard it before, as have (more importantly) the experts I've spoken with and read, who nonetheless still disagree with it. — Pseudonym

I almost don't know what to say: this is one big silly ad hominem attack: I'm uninformed, incapable of being persuaded, and grasping at lofty truths beyond my station; I ignore evidence which contradicts my prejudicial/racist preconceived bigotries and am peddling the colonial myth of the inferior savage.

I don't mind these kinds of summaries (you're being honest after-all) but consider for a moment that I'm so wrapped up in the actual subject matter of this debate that I don't actually care that we're not experts, or that you think I hold racist views or am incapable of being persuaded, or any other alleged fact that does not directly pertain to the actual topic of discussion.

We've had so many meta discussions (first about lack of anthropological evidence, then about the limits and biases of anthropological evidence, about my own alleged biases, about historical biases, etc...) that I'm surprised you expected the overall exchange to yet be persuasive (not to say you haven't made adequate contributions). The majority of our exchange from your end has been criticism of my position and demands for evidence (a valuable service). The majority of my contributions are rebuttals and explanations (including ample exploration of academic sources which do support my positions). While you've been attacking my position (and I defending it) you haven't really gone out of your way to carve out a sufficient position of your own (one that could replace my own); more or less you hold that HG's are less violent (or more happy/more successful) than the west (or, at times, that there may be some very successful HG group out there that does better than the contemporary west, but is yet unnamed). Compared to the myriad of reasons I've given in support of my positions, you've mainly offered the single untreated supposition that suicide rates indicate you are correct. I don't think that my having given reasons automatically makes me correct, but it does mean that you should directly address those reasons in order to actually dissuade me from them, as I have been addressing yours.

We're not experts and this discussion is complex and tedious, and I may just be an ignorant dog with an old bone, but I refuse to abandon my uninformed misconceptions on anyone's assurance but evidence and logic (because I've worked hard to find and refine them). Yes this discussion is tedious, and I don't blame you for feeling it has run its course or for disengaging from it. Where you feel I'm dogmatically unwilling to abandon my positions, I' feel you're dogmatically unwilling to adequately and directly engage them (perhaps in part because you're convinced my descriptive position represents some kind of normative condemnation against non-white ethnic groups). You say that my position is one you've heard before (the old world violent savage narrative, which is not my position), and this makes me think that you might not actually be comprehending or appreciating the full scope of my position along with its nuances (which definitely explains why you see normative implications in it that aren't there, and why you've made so many rationally unrelated appeals).

You might be done with the topic, and that's fine, but I'm still quite interested in it. At some point I'll summarize the conclusions and evidence I've put forward into a new thread, and I'll welcome your participation if you're interested.

It's reasonable to stop responding whenever. Each of our posts and responses is meant to be a contribution to "philosophical" discussion. Making any such contribution does not obligate you to make future contributions.

It's expected that people come and go as they please which is an upshot of anonymous, public, and open discussion. People may wonder what prompted a conspicuous disappearance, but it would be irrational to consider it a breach of etiquette. Take it from a spectre and vagabond of the internet: if what you do post is worthwhile and has merit, you've already done enough.

So, no matter how it's dressed up in poetic rhetoric, it's relatively simple maths. If each year (and if my prediction of each future year) is going to bring me a net happiness of 1, then a hundred such years are worth 100 to me. If, on the other hand, the best I can predict for the net happiness value of my future years is 0 (just exactly as much happiness as suffering), then a hundred such years are worth no more to me than one, a hundred times zero is still zero. If my years (and my predicted future years) bring me ultimately only sadness (a happiness value of minus 1) then a hundred years are just going to make me even less happy. The result of this calculation is the result that approximately one percent of the UK population reach at some point in their lives - extending their lives is going to cause them more sadness and so their best course of action is to end it now. — Pseudonym

I think human happiness doesn't quite work this way if only because it would be a terrible evolutionary strategy to have individuals take their own lives the moment they forecast long-term negative hedons. Instead, humans in general seem capable of enduring vast amounts of suffering while gaining few pleasures. Happiness and sadness isn't necessarily just a sum or difference between pain and pleasure; it's possible that being happy some of the time can make being unhappy most of the time worth the trouble (it's also possible individuals can adapt to being adequately happy across a wide range of environments)...

None of this is to say, of course, that people perform this calculation correctly. People may have an overly optimistic value to their future years only to be consistently disappointed as to how entirely mundane they actually turn out to be. This then raises the slightly separate question of whether policy makers should act upon what people say they want, or on what can be demonstrated to actually make people happier despite what they they say. — Pseudonym

A politician wielding such authority and employing your notion of human happiness might actually decide that some people are better off euthanized, and therefore force it upon them. Furthermore, different individuals can be made happy by different sets of circumstances, which is why I'm in favor of maintaining personal and democratic freedom.

You seem to have raised a separate point about diversity within hunter-gather societies as opposed to Western ones, but again, like your earlier points, this seems to be nothing but speculation based on what you think hunter-gatherer societies are like rather than on the basis of any actual evidence. It's this sort of analysis that bores me. I have no doubt at all that if I demand evidence from you of the cultural homogeneity of hunter-gather tribes you will find some. A factor like cultural homogeneity is sufficiently vague that anyone who wanted to prove it could easily do so, and anyone who wanted to prove otherwise would have equally little trouble. The relevant issue for me is that you've arrived at this opinion first. If I ask you to back it up with evidence you will do so, but that doesn't alter the fact that your opinion arose from your prior prejudice, not from your years of anthropological research. You're writing at great length about things you 'reckon' are the case and then trawling through the internet to find evidence to support it when requested. We could do this forever and it would would become no less pointless. Even with something a coldly factual as physics or biology you can find 'evidence' on the internet to prove diametrically opposed theories. — Pseudonym

I have actually already provided plenty of evidence and argumentation as to why conformity is very likely to be prevalent among hunter-gatherers. Instead of addressing those arguments or evidence you are just brushing them and me aside as prejudicial and speculative while accusing me of trawling the internet for evidence. If I recall correctly you're the one who requested anthropological assessments of my claims, and now that I've provided and cited them suddenly academic journals are not to be trusted because we can just shop around for articles that support our conclusions. Furthermore, my conclusion that hunter-gatherer groups are more culturally rigid/homogeneous is a direct result of research I carried out explicitly for this discussion. It's true each of us could merely shop around with a confirmation bias or accuse the other of being biased, but we could also honestly assess the evidence we have found and make comparisons. If my position in this thread is factually untrue, it's unlikely that I would have been able to find so many quality studies which conclude as much.

But how can you deem "cultural homogeneity" to be too vague to measure while happiness units 1 & 2 are simple maths? Being generally leaderless, the stability of hunter-gatherer groups, and the success of individuals within hunter-gatherer groups depends to a large degree on everyone following the same basic set of norms and customs which allow them to survive and get along. For example, individual men must become hunters to be seen as contributing, and they must share their meat (the success of the group may depend on it) or they will be socially sanctioned. Customs like the killing of twins is common for survival reasons (resource/nutrition strain on the mother and other infants) which is common specifically because it helps group survival in harsh conditions. With no leaders, their justice systems rely heavily on tradition and superstition, and where deviation from norms tends to be frowned upon.

Social structures which demand conformity are almost implicit/inherent if it is to be a social structure that maintains long-term egalitarianism (people aren't going to be "equal" if they don't conform), as deviation among individuals leads to wealth stratification, and to the dissolution of an egalitarian social structure. This is one of the direct conclusions and implications of the William Lomas article "Conflict, Violence, and Conflict Resolution in Hunting and Gathering Societies which I previously cited and asked that you read.

And yes I use words like "reckon", but you should probably deal with my actual reconnoitering rather than making fun of the words I use and constantly falling back on your accusation of racism.

Regarding the issue of happiness and your insistence that hunter-gatherers were happier based on your analysis of suicide, there's not much left for me to say. Much of my previous post sought to broach the complexities of happiness but you've doubled down on the idea that suicide is its true measure.

Your unwillingness to discuss this further fills me with 1.39 sadness units...

Your posts have been valuable to me in that I have been able to test my view of the world against them. Maybe my posts have been of equal use to you (maybe not), but let's not pretend that we're on some journey where together we'll find the 'truth' of the matter by this mythical dialectic where we each points out the incontrovertible flaw in the other's argument until we centre on the one 'true' way. Rather we could continue indefinitely providing argument and counter-argument because theoretical counter-arguments are infinitely possible to construct. It's been interesting and I didn't want to leave the discussion with the unexplained silence I had previously bequeathed it. You may, of course want to reply for whatever reason, but It's run it's course now for me. Thanks. — Pseudonym

I think the discussion has been interesting, and perhaps romantically I do value criticism of my ideas and arguments because I believe they can help me on some journey to find "truth". But dialogue and debate isn't an endless or meaningless affair: your general demand for evidence forced me to do research and in my view improve my position (but to be frank I could have done without the constant fallacious character appeals which got in the way of you fully engaging in this discussion).

All rational nations want nukes, if they can afford them, out of healthy fear alone (except maybe nations such as Canada who are comfortably nestled in the sweaty bosom of another nation's blast radius).

Pretend for a moment you're the leader of North Korea. Without nukes you can deliver far less effective retaliatory strikes against South Korea should they try to blitz you. With nukes, and with long range missiles capable of delivering them, you're even able to shake a credible fist at the world's only superpower, America. It's excellent long-term security. If I was the leader of Iran, I would probably consider getting nukes a priority given Iran's rather precarious relationship with western allies. Israel definitely has nukes, but for some reason they don't formally declare them. Normally it would be Dr. Strangelove grade hubris to have nukes and not declare them, else they wouldn't actually be deterrents, but since everyone already assumes Israel has them it doesn't really matter.

I'm not saying that more nations should have nukes or that I want Iran to have them (I would rather there be fewer nukes held by fewer people) but I think the fact that nuclear deterrents held by the world's most powerful nations has actually prevented them from escalating direct conflict and starting a third world war.

In facing a world that has an increased risk of total annihilation because of nukes, we also have a reduced risk of traditional annihilation. Given that nuclear war has not yet occurred, perhaps it has been a good wager overall!

What better solution for a trust issue can there be than mutually assured destruction?

If there were no more nukes then nations of all stripes would be bereft of a major incentive to avoid the escalation of open and direct warfare. NATO and all its allies are insulated from invasion because of America's nuclear capabilities (and a few western European nation's capabilities). The same more or less goes for the allies of Russia, and despite hostility between Pakistan and India, they aren't presently engaged in open and armed conflict against one-another.

Of all the countries which have nukes, nobody wants to use them unless it's absolutely necessary, because any use of nukes runs the risk of provoking counter nukes. Even Iran and North Korea don't want nukes to actually use them, they want them as deterrents.

So if there were suddenly no nukes, is it possible that the world would then have to go to war to establish new power balances?

I don't know the origin of the quote, but I can tell you it's pompous tripe, and here's why:

"Truths" don't belong to churches. Truth was around long before churches and monotheism were yet sparkles in the schizotypal pagan eye, and truth will be around long after religion and superstition of all kinds fall out of human affection. "Truth" actually belongs to those who are willing to open their eyes instead of being arrogantly led around by a nose ring of fear and guilt. Those who would lead others by said nose ring, such as through proclamations that all worthy truth originates solely with god and in the bible, are narrow minded idiots.

If you believe that God created everything, and the words in (whichever) bible are the unquestionable ultimate truths of the universe, then naturally you're going to look at any non-Christian group with any measure of success and accuse them of intellectual theft. It's only natural. "Hey, you heretics stole the idea of not murdering people from Jesus!"

In reality religions have always re-purposed "truth" toward their own ends, especially moral truth. Religion inherently mimics and manipulates the evolving moral truth of its age calls it sacred; all the "truth" contained in Christianity was actually derived by individuals, and added to the changing Christian doctrine over time. But like frogs in slow-boiling pots, many Christians lose themselves in the moment and foolishly reckon that all truth that is presently contained in christian doctrines, interpretations, and Christian minds at large was always there, was put there directly by god, and is the only valid source of knowledge and truth that can possibly exist.

Pompous, narrow minded, idiotic, and arrogant tripe.

It seems much more plausible and likely that the Trump campaign just colluded of its own accord. Proposing that it's actually a Dem conspiracy sounds crazier than anything the Dems say about Trump. Nobody will believe it...

So you're saying that Trump's collusion with Russia is actually one big trap that was set by Obama and Hillary in order to try and get him impeached once he won the election?

It's paramount to keep yourself informed, and not just from a one-sided perspective. — Sam26

:up:

So we need to protect the voting public by censoring people? That sounds anti-democratic. And how do we determine who and when to censor? Because I can imagine pro-Trump supporters saying the same thing about past presidents they didn't like. — Marchesk

It's undemocratic, to be sure, but we must at least acknowledge the normative argument that typically justifies censorship. "The greater good" and all that... In the European and other countries where holocaust denial is a crime, it's fundamentally based on that argument. When the US government censored and shut down radio stations and media purveyors who were critical of the war effort during WW2, they did it under the same justification.

Even the anecdotal "fire" in a crowded theater employs the same reasoning.

In the context where speech clearly would lead to imminent and avoidable harm (such as revealing state secrets, direct incitements of violence, causing panic in a crowd, etc...) it does seem reasonable to me to ban the speech. But, when it comes to the banning of ideas themselves (or speech on the basis of promoting the wrong ideas) I don't see how it could possibly be justifiable. Unless an idea is in and of itself a threat (such as specific instructions on how to create weapons of mass destruction or otherwise carry out deadly attacks), why should it be banned?

If an arbiter can determine what is or is not permissible for a democratic public to consume, then they can explain why to the democratic public, and then we can decide for ourselves! (otherwise it's not democracy)...

If you ban the speech of one crackpot, you're inevitably going to create additional crackpots.

If we let the crackpots have their freedom of thought and speech it's possible they could delude others, maybe even a majority, into subscribing to their no longer crackpot beliefs. It's a risk, sure, but that's inherent in the democratic gambit that the modern west is founded on. We hope and pray that the free marketplace of opinions and ideas can sufficiently filter out the crack-pots and the Pol Pots. Being sufficiently exposed to the reality of hate-based ideologies can be quite helpful in helping people think critically about them, and wide-spread critical thinking is something we definitely want in a democracy.

Basically, by banning speech you can do more damage to democracy than if you allowed it. Banned speech creates a cult of mystery, and then festers in dark and cloistered corners where manipulative thinking can go unchallenged. We also have to consider that some unpopular ideas might actually turn out to be true, and there's no comprehensive guide to knowing what to ban and what not to ban (what might turn out to be harmful, false, true, or beneficial).

If someone can tell me who the perfect arbiter of allowed and forbidden ideas is, I'll start forecasting their bias and inevitable failure...

Some among us would tell you 'because if we don't censor people then people like Trump can get elected", which on the surface seems to have some merit.

What they don't realize is that in today's world, censorship is to popularity as gasoline is to open flames, or that one day they too could be censored via the same appeal (let alone that they aren't the benevolent king/queen we all need)...

Heh. I tried to think of a better known American villain than Jeffery Dahmer to make it more obviously satirical, but I couldn't think of anyone.

Again, frightening that my attempt at satirical ridicule and mockery is so hard to distinguish from the real thing...

The Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits federal, state and local governments from impairing rights and obligations arising out of contracts which are legal, however. A contract to violate the law wouldn't be legal. — Ciceronianus the White

So for instance, a lifestyle clause in a marriage contract or prenup which stipulates incarceration as penalty would be unenforceable and voidable.

The crime of adultery being proposed in this thread has nothing to do with marriage as defined in the law. It at most would result in the dissolution of a legal marriage and possibly impact issues related to custody, financial settlement and support. It's similar to sexcrime, as conceived by Orwell in his 1984, as it would make criminal any sexual conduct engaged in by a married person with someone other than his/her husband or wife. — Ciceronianus the White

This is essentially one of the points I'm making to Agustino. "Breaching contracts" isn't a criminal action per se. To legally justify incarceration adultery would have to be specifically defined in penal code as criminal. If it was indeed the case that adultery (defined as sex with someone other than one's spouse, if married) was a crime, then almost nobody would get married, and couples would ritualistically move in and out of each other's home to avoid being considered a common law spouse. If in the case Agustino's argument relies mainly on the breach of the marriage agreement itself, then people could simply alter their marriage agreements to allow for extra-marital sexual activity.

Divorce law is not something I practice. However, the effects of marriage on property rights is something that impacts what I do now and then, and I know enough of the law in that area to fairly say that marriage in the law is treated as more in the nature of a partnership than a contract. This has led me to propose in the context of disputes regarding whether same sex marriages are really marriages that all marriages should be called domestic partnerships or unions for purposes of the law, as that is just what they are for legal purposes, and nothing more. — Ciceronianus the White

If only humans wern't so damn ritualistic, superstitious, traditional, nostalgic, etc...

I should probably have made it a bit more obvious, but I edited an image for satirical purposes :blush:

Scary how hard it is to tell the difference though...

The capitalization of words which have no earthly business being capitalized bugs the shit out of me. I see it quite often in writing that veers toward the "Spiritual". Here they capitalize words as if to say "these things are Real" (which betrays their lack of confidence). Trump however just capitalizes anything and everything he thinks is a good word, and as we've previously heard, Trump has the best words. Tremendous words. Words that are so good... Folks, nobody has ever seen words this good before. Everybody's saying it. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, wordsmith, great guy; amazing words. World class words, the best, and you know, he kept telling me: "China's taking all the words", and it's a disgrace folks. You won't believe it. (I should tweet about this....)

Yes. I disagree that such a union can ever be considered a marriage, in any sense of the term. The harm comes from failing to achieve the intimacy that is possible in an exclusive relationship where each partner is 100% devoted to the other. To add more details to this, in failing to actualise a potential of the human being, they do irremediable harm to each other. — Agustino

How is "failing to achieve 100% intimacy" actually harmful? You've equated "not actualizing one's full potential" with "irredeemable harm". If I'm gathering firewood, and I don't actualize my full potential by gathering all the firewood I can possibly gather, have I done irredeemable harm to myself?

If two people are in a happy open-marriage, happier than they would be if they were single, how can that be considered harmful? If the 100% intimacy is a good thing, then isn't 50% intimacy half as good?

By catching them, you are teaching them that they will be caught for their injustice, and will get punished for it. Why do you think that the act of getting caught doesn't also reinforce the belief that they will get caught for wrong-doing? For the masses of men, their beliefs are influenced by these social settings. So the criminal will probably change his beliefs as a result of understanding the power of Justice, and then rationalise it in some way. — Agustino

There are two conflicting ways of preventing crime we're discussing: Your way is to use the threat of violence and incarceration as deterrent, and my way is to try and address the root contributory causes of crime to begin with. My way reduces crime without causing unnecessary additional suffering, and your way uses additional suffering as a matter of course. Your ethical framework is more likely to destroy a transgressor than to turn the other cheek or rehabilitate, which is somewhat ironic given that you're the Christian, and I, the atheist.

So, when you encounter a petty thief who steals because of hunger, you would lock them up in a place of suffering as deterrence, whereas I would offer them food so that they don't have to steal. You would incarcerate a drug addict for possession, whereas I would send them to a detox facility/hospital/therapy.

In response to rising gang violence, you would invest in prisons, guards, and guns, whereas I would invest in schools, social assistance programs, decriminalization of drugs, and economic development projects in afflicted communities. We still need a police force, and dangerous or violent criminals must be captured for our own safety, but our fundamental approach to crime differs in the same way that old testament fire, brimstone and condemnation differs from new testament forgiveness, redemption, and salvation. You blame individuals for their actions completely, such that it would make sense to cut off the hand of a petty thief in a framework that is at times intuitive-utilitarianism and at other times obsequiously Aristotelian: "It's OK to cut off the right hand of petty thieves because their crimes are their own fault, it stops them from stealing, and it deters other people from stealing". You might object to the brutality of cutting off hands (but not to the brutality of American prisons) for mere petty theft, but you're intuitively comparing the gravity of petty theft to the gravity of losing a hand, completely subjectively, just like you deem adultery to be of equal gravity to being incarcerated for 5 years.

If adultery was a dangerous (significantly harmful) and violent sort of crime (it isn't), such that we needed to incarcerate adulterers for our own safety, we should also need to investigate the motivations of the adultery in question so that the "punishment" we administer actually addresses the causes of their crime (rehabilitates them). If, for instance, an individual was found to have an over-active libido (or some sort of hormonal imbalance) then hormone suppressors might be the only way to actually prevent them from committing adultery. If the spouse was sexually and emotionally unavailable to any reasonable degree, then this could be considered a mitigating factor in that sexual and emotional neglect can cause people to seek fulfillment elsewhere. People convicted of adultery might also be able to file a class action lawsuit against any advertisement or media company which produces content of a sexually provocative nature, in that it could be considered some kind of corruption of innocence or promotion of crime.

Once adultery is committed, and a divorce occurs, since they're no longer capable of committing adultery and actually doing any harm (casual sex among the unmarried is not sufficiently harmful that you think it should be a crime, correct?) why even bother keeping them incarcerated? If the spouse who was cheated on doesn't want their partner to be incarcerated in an attempt to reconcile, must the law be applied regardless?

Bingo — Agustino

This amounts to vengeful sadism. You get a pleasurable feeling of having satisfied justice when bad people suffer. It's un-Christian to judge, and it's un-Christian to torture.

Committing a crime out of ignorance is one thing, and committing a crime out of volition, in full knowledge that it is a crime is completely different. By the time people get married, they are sufficiently intelligent not to commit such a crime (such as adultery) out of ignorance. — Agustino

Humans are complex creatures who aren't either "totally ignorant" or "in full knowledge", in fact we're all somewhere in-between. When we're physically attracted to others, sometimes we actually become less aware of other things (such as the ramifications of crime). Inebriation is especially good at turning us ignorant...

In any business dealing, it is suggested that if the law fails, then matters will be resolved some other way. For example, if you break your contract with your employer, they may use their influence to ensure you cannot secure employment with companies in the same industry. — Agustino

Contracts generally come with stipulations about what happens if the contract is broken or dissolved. Marriage being an agreement between two people, why would they want the penalties to be incarceration for adulterous breach of contract? (You can have infidelity ("lifestyle") clauses in marriage contracts. For instance, Jessica Biel gets paid 500k every time Justin Timberlake cheats on her, but, they could not stake their physical freedom as a penalty for such a clause (because it's not ethical to incarcerate someone unless they've committed a crime or crimes worthy of incarceration)). In any case, making the adulterous breach of marriage contracts and civil unions a criminal act is a sweeping generalization that undermines the freedom of two individuals to make an agreement that suits them (i.e: an open marriage, or a marriage where if one of them cheats, they're allowed to dissolve the marriage without the adulterer being sent to prison).

You equate with and define adultery as a necessarily harmful and insidious crime (in the past you've compared it to cannibalism) making you ready to tyrannically dictate the sexual habits and freedoms of all other humans because you know whats best for them.

It does, any contract is legally binding — Agustino

Then why don't I go to jail for breaching our birthday party clown contract?

Why do contracts not supersede constitutional rights and criminal law?

(contracts are individual safeguards of specific agreements, and they do not circumvent the law. Laws are a kind of broad public contract that we've all ostensibly agreed to, and they take primacy over private contracts. (i.e: you cannot contract your rights away))...

The fact that you may end up profiting from a crime doesn't make it any less of a crime. — Agustino

But you haven't actually answered the question. If you were in no way harmed by your ex-wife's adultery (you benefited), given that clearly no irreparable or irredeemable harm has been done, you would want her to go to jail and suffer anyway, because it could have upset you emotionally, and others need to be deterred. Correct?

Incarceration is a form of punitive damage that is awarded in this case. I find it extremely appropriate, not only is there significant emotional distress for the spouse, but the breaking of a contract combined with a lot of strain and TRAUMA on the children and the family. It is life-altering. It's also not something we want to spread in our society, and we need to discourage it. — Agustino

We need to discourage a lot of things because sometimes they lead to hurt feelings (capitalizing "trauma" doesn't change the fact that this is upset emotions we're talking about, not actual (direct) physical or emotional abuse) but that doesn't mean we should lock everyone up who deviates from our vision of perfect health. Infidelity already discourages itself because it ends marriages. Breaking out the whip is pure revenge.

Yes, I think when people break the law, and the law requires that they stay in jail for a time, then they need to execute their sentence. In cases such as the case presented above, the punishment will be lower, maybe the minimum sentence for theft, if this was the first occurrence. But I think there must be a punishment, otherwise we give off the idea that people will be let go of without any punishment whatsoever. — Agustino

If we help a starving homeless person instead of incarcerating them as deterrence, this doesn't mean we're sending the signal to everyone else to begin shoplifting. Making an example out of the homeless person trying to survive or the very poor person who steals because they endure chronic hunger is a severe injustice. Here we have someone who already endures suffering on a daily basis, perhaps through no great fault of their own, and you think causing them more suffering is going to magically fix them, or that crucifying them as an example to others is somehow a justified course of action. Where is your understanding? Your compassion? Your Christianity?

Again, do you consider being poor as an adequate excuse for theft? — Agustino

I consider it a mitigating factor, and depending on the level of poverty and the circumstances of the individual, yes, it can be adequate to excuse the crime entirely.

Hope springs infernal! — Baden

:rofl:

I demand a re-shake!

Because the harm that adultery causes is irreparable, irreversible and cannot be compensated for, and thus, it demands punitive damages, not just the removal of the threat through divorce. — Agustino

If a couple has an "open marriage" and allows each other to fornicate with third parties, are they doing irreparable harm to one another? If so, please describe it.

Because such a punishment is brutal, and it would say more about us than about the adulterer. It is an inhuman form of punishment. — Agustino

Incarceration, especially in America, is also quite brutal.

Why? Suffering is what rehabilitates people. Without suffering, rehabilitation is impossible. That is the very biological purpose of suffering, to guide behavior away from that which causes suffering. If we find a way to extinguish suffering after a crime, then that itself is a great crime. — Agustino

You're not describing reform or rehabilitation, you're describing threats and counter-threats; conditioning via negative reinforcement. If criminals are just hedonists who respond only to pain and pleasure, then you're teaching them to not get caught, you aren't teaching them why it's morally wrong to do crime.

This position is a perfect mirror of the Christian version of hell; bad people deserve to go to the bad place to suffer badly.

Consider your hypothetical future son, who takes (steals) a chocolate bar from the corner store before they understand what money or property is. They've committed a crime, and so in order to correct their behavior, you would administer punishment right? Instead, you could correct their behavior by teaching them about money and property and explaining why taking the property of others is wrong.

Threats of suffering don't have to be our first moral recourse against transgression. Sometimes they're necessary, but generally only when a vulnerability must be protected (i.e: a grifter is locked up to stop their grifting, a drunk driver is locked up to stop them driving), or as a last resort, but many kinds of transgressions aren't of such a nature. We don't arrest Jay-walkers, and almost never would, even though they break the law. We may fine them which is on some level punitive, but it is also restorative, and compared to being incarcerated, a monetary fine is like a pat on the butt. If I break a contract with an employer, they can potentially sue me if I've caused them damage by doing so, but it's unlikely that I would be sent to jail (example: working for competitors despite a non-competition clause could get me fired or sued, but not arrested, assuming I broke no laws).

Being an agreement, rather than a law, a marriage contract doesn't exist as a broad public safeguard like actual laws do, it mediates individual relationships. Their main function is to protect confidence in the emotional, physical, and financial security of a relationship by enumerating expectations, shared authorities, and offering recourse when they are not upheld. By cheating with another man, your wife can cause you indirect emotional pain, and possibly direct financial suffering, and this would be adequate grounds to have the contract dissolved (financially in your favor if your spouse is at "fault"). The financial suffering being repayed via the circumstances of the divorce, all that's left is the indirect emotional suffering of having been cheated on, but I don't think indirect emotional suffering in and of itself is something that we should seek to balance for the sake of justice.

Sometimes people feel emotional suffering for different reasons. You might feel emotional suffering at the thought of your future wife with another man, but some men do not (open marriages aren't harmful). In order to cause your ex wife similar amounts of suffering to teach her a lesson, we might have to lock her up for the full 5 years and beyond, depending on how hard you took it and how hard of a hypothetical woman she actually is. Possibly the divorce and or loss of custody alone would cause your hypothetical future ex-wife much more emotional suffering than you ever experienced as the result of her infidelity, in which case, ought we let her go free?

What if you were secretly unhappy in your marriage (with no kids) and upon finding out that your wife cheated you are actually filled with happiness and joy, because now you know you can file for divorce and keep the house. Should she be sent to jail for adultery?

If I'm a party clown, and you contract my services to perform at your future son's birthday event, and I break the contract, thereby causing your son and by extension you emotional suffering and distress and financial loss, should I be sent to jail? If not, why?

Why do you think so? Also, this is a metaphorical expression suggesting that the punishment ought to be proportional to the harm caused, where this is at all possible. — Agustino

Actually, this parable suggests that the punishment ought to be the crime. Don't you at least find that to be slightly ironic? The hard learned truth of this parable is that it doesn't reduce crime but instead perpetuates it.

Some notions of justice actually do seek punishments that fit the crime, such as those which restore damage done or rehabilitate the offender (i.e: community service for a vandal, anger management for verbal harassment (where appropriate), a psychiatric hospital for the pathologically violent/dangerous, financial settlements for financial (and sometimes emotional) damages). When a litigant seeks punitive damages against an individual or corporation, it only makes sense to grant them when it is necessary to correct behavior of the defendant and deter other parties from engaging in the same behavior. In the case of adultery, what can punitive incarceration solve which compensatory or punitive damages cannot? How is revoking someone's freedom an appropriate punishment for them having caused their spouse and/or children and/or friends and family and/or fans who really wanted Brad and Angelina (Brangelina) to make it, some emotional distress?

Since when is mere hurt feelings grounds for incarceration?

I agree, but that isn't to say that their injustice should be ignored, is it? — Agustino

It kind of does yes. We should not lock up a father who stole bread to feed his children for 6 months. It would be more rehabilitative, more restorative, and generally better in every way to instead compensate the store for the loss of bread, offer assistance to the father toward getting a job, give him food for his children, and then the tax-payers can pocket the many thousands of dollars saved on expensive prisons and imprisonment.

I mean, when the father gets out of prison, if he still needs to provide for his children, and stealing is the only way for him to do so, would he likely not steal again?

America already incarcerates more people for more reasons than any other nation on the planet, and its prisons are notoriously expensive and low quality places of suffering where recidivism is endless and rehabilitation non-existent. And you want to start locking up people for having affairs now too?

So Donald Trump should be in jail then, correct?

Oh mysterious 8-Baden, do you think Trump will be impeached/resign after all?

*Shakes Baden violently*

(1) they are relatively easy to avoid, (2) if someone is very rich, it won't affect them much, and if someone is poor, there won't be much to get anyway. So that's why I think we need some other form of punishment. — Agustino

Why do adulterers need punishment beyond being divorced though?

I've asked you why such a harsh punishment is needed, and you've said because existing punishments aren't harsh enough.

Yes - from my observation, force works as a deterrent. It is almost the only way to keep people at a mass level in check. That is why in organisations where obeying rules is of the utmost importance - such as the army - there are very harsh punishments for disobedience. There, disobedience is rare. — Agustino

I'm asking this question seriously: why not just cut the noses off of adulterers then?

It's an extraordinarily powerful deterrent, and if marital laws are of utmost importance, then why not?

My own view is that the law should, in some cases, be punitive. Those are the cases where it is impossible to render back what has been taken. So if compensatory damages are not possible, because the action has produced such harm that it is impossible to compensate for it, then punitive damages are absolutely necessary. I see part of the process of redemption as being this suffering for one's crimes. So we cannot rehabilitate criminals without also forcing them to go through the suffering that their actions entail. — Agustino

I think we can actually rehabilitate criminals without forcing them to suffer (especially by visiting their own crimes back upon them).

Eyes for eyes an d teeth for teeth just doesn't work very well...

But what about the justice of the law? Shouldn't the law be just? — Agustino

If someone steals because of hunger, maybe there are greater injustices we should be concerned with?

Not legally, just morally. There is a difference there. I think adultery, unlike fornication, should be illegal, and not just immoral. — Agustino

Adultery being cheating is already quasi-legal (you can get a potentially lucrative divorce if your spouse cheats on you), but incarceration is going a bit far don't you think?

Losing more than half your stuff, and possibly custody of your children, isn't punishment enough?

It is for a limited time, and it is no different than incarcerating the mother or father for theft for example. Of course it will negatively affect the children, but so does their action (their father stealing, or their father committing adultery). It's not an argument not to punish someone because punishing them will negatively affect others. If, say, a single father steals in order to feed his children, and he is caught, arrested, and sentenced, of course it will negatively affect the children. I agree that in such cases the law should be more lenient in the punishments given, but not that the punishments should be absent. — Agustino

So you think we should be making examples of adulterers by making them suffer in prison as a deterrent?

I think abusing the freedom of some individuals to set an example for others is unjust, but that's just me. I think incarceration should be rehabilitative.

But in the case of a father stealing to feed his children, incarcerating him at any expense which could otherwise feed said hungry children would be a greater crime.

Only if you define your right to life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness to include things like theft, adultery, murder etc. if they make you happy. I disagree that those should be permissible choices — Agustino

You can't just equate consensual casual sex with theft and murder. Theft and murder directly impact third parties, while consensual sex behind closed doors does not.

It's possible to condemn theft and murder while not condemning fornication.

It is a bit objectifying to claim that women generally dress a certain way just because they want sex. Not only that, it seems to me to be a bit hyper-sexualised, as if we view other people solely as objects of sexual interest, or as if clothing, etc. is all about sex. — Agustino

Some women do dress a certain way because they want to be sexually attractive or want sex, same goes for men. It's a fair generalization. Clothing which accentuates sexual organs sends pretty clear signals...

Let's see some serious arguments if you have any. — Agustino

Adultery is very serious and negatively affects many third parties, including children, spouse, and the families involved. — Agustino

Lots of things very seriously negatively affect other people. When a father goes to work in a mine, or on an extended military tour, the wife and children are very seriously negatively affected, emotionally speaking. While it's true that the actions of others can have indirect emotional impacts on us, it is not always the case that our emotional discontent gives us the right to forbid others from taking those actions. Furthermore, if we incarcerate mothers and fathers for committing adultery, then we would likely be even more seriously negatively impacting third parties, including children, spouses, and families involved, by depriving them of their presence entirely.

The law already provides recourse when the marriage contract is broken, but you condemn all fornication outside of the marriage bed, including sex between consenting non-married adults. In this case, your argument is that the future spouses of these individuals (and they themselves)are being seriously negatively affected by the fornication. Is that correct?

I don't exactly see how such a non-affair actually harms anyone. It's clear that consensual sexual intercourse feels good and has been a natural part of human biology and evolution since the dawn of man; sexually transmitted diseases are a risk but we risk disease all the time in daily life; by driving cars we risk death to ourselves and others, but the risk is not significant enough to forbid the action entirely. Any children that are produced from casual adulterous sex are probably better off existing, and so they benefit much more directly than they suffer indirectly from the criminal sex in question.

Maybe family members would be ashamed of you, but the mob-mentality of our family and our family's cultural values need not be legally binding. Sometimes people and families have really shitty cultural values, and we should be free to seek out our own.

My argument is that your proposed regime of sexual control directly undermines our right to life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. Though the idea of other people fornicating might cause you emotional distress, your emotions are for you to sort out.

You don't actually have the right to never be offended.

P.S. If you go out wearing a rolex (a needlessly expensive status symbol) you're consciously or unconsciously trying to attract sexual-reproductive partners by signalling your high wealth status. Women find men wearing Rolex watches sexually attractive.

But if we make the comparison fair, if purposefully drop your Rolex watch in front of a homeless person and pretend not to notice, and then come back later and accuse them of theft, then you will have incited them (entrapped in this case).

But every arrangement of Y consists solely of ... Y. No? — rachMiel

Distinct things must consist of more than the same fundamental constituent in order to be distinct from one another. The different arrangements themselves play a role in what things consist of.

4 months to 5 years I would say. — Agustino

How can incarcerating someone for such a long period of time possibly be an appropriate punishment for engaging in consensual sex?

How is imprisonment the lesser evil? Where's the balance of harm and justice?

What kind of circumstances would warrant the maximum sentence? Would having sex with or without a condom be the worse offense? Does the alleged vulgarity of a given sexual act make the crime more severe?

Given that sex outside of the marriage bed is a crime, being sexually attractive for anyone other than one's spouse could be considered incitement to engage in criminal behavior. Attractive men and women would need to be handicapped, else they knowingly corrupt the vulnerable innocent minds of others.

So, wearing make-up or drastically appearance enhancing apparatus would be to knowingly incite sexual attraction, impure thoughts, and possibly adultery. Certain exercises which accentuate sexually attractive features (thighs, waist, buttock, etc...) should therefore be forbidden, along with dietary practices which achieve the same results, and of course any form of attire which could be considered sexy by anyone.

Why not just save us all time and money and cut the noses off of adulterers? Works great as deterrence, and then who's going to want to have sex with the adulterous nose-less freaks afterward?

I'm starting to think the polls have become meaningless, or broken. Something has certainly changed.

There's only a 13% difference between Trump's all time high and low among republicans (low of 77% approval among Republicans (Dec 2017), and a high of 90% ( January, June, and July, 2018)). Among independents there's an 11% variation between high and low, and only 8% among democrats. His total approval high is 45% and his total approval low is 35% (10% difference). Every other president accounted for with polling data (since Roosevelt) has had more than twice that amount of variation between their all time high and low. (Obama had a difference of 27% between his all time high and low, and most other presidents have had huge swings in total approval).

So what the fuck is going on?

Looking at the specific poll question they use "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Joe Everyman is handling his job as president?", is it possible that the way people interpret this question, on average, has shifted? (given the widespread opposition to Trump, the connotations of "handling" may cause people to take into account the obstacles they feel he is facing. While some may think the outcomes of Trump's presidency are failures, they might also think that he handled himself well if the odds were stacked against him.)...

Maybe this is just what you get with this level of political and ideological division/animosity. Resentment of opponents causes us to entrench ourselves in opposition, while the middle ground becomes an impassable no-man's-land of explosive flak and friendly fire. When we feel sufficiently afraid or personally threatened, we will fight for our side even if we think it's not a just cause.

I reckon this is a bad thing for democracy. If instead of voting our minds and hearts we're voting our team colors because we've all been emotionally hijacked by flashing lights on the T.V, then it's done.

If our loyalty and approval toward our party leaders is cannot waver, regardless of how they behave, how can we ever expect to exert democratic influence over them once they're in office?

Is it really all or nothing in that our side has to win at all costs, regardless of how poorly things are going, because fuck the other side?