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If we just stop

fink

fink

overthinking the unthinkable
If we realised globally that the ones we have trained ourselves to hate would always be better as allies. Sure we can still have wars. We love wars! But robots killing robots. Not robots killing humans. Just stop. Everyone.

And we, the unwashed masses, need to behave better just as much as the leaders. We are all out of control, entirely.

A successful intelligent lifeform's first goal as a species should be tending the home. Not blowing it up and poisoning it.

Everyone just needs to take a chill pill for a few centuries at least. The last 2000 years has been nuts. Let's all just calm down and take a breather.
 
You might give the book Surface Detail from Ian M. Banks a chance:

"As the book begins, a war game -the "War in Heaven"- has been running for several decades. The outcome of the simulated war will determine whether societies are allowed to run artificial Hells, virtual afterlives in which the mind-states of the dead are tortured. The Culture, fiercely anti-Hell, has opted to stay out of the war while accepting the outcome as binding."

This book will probably not fare well for all people, it's pretty graphic at times and the ideas can be too wild for many, for me however, it's one of the best books ever.


Kind regards,

The Traveler
 
fink said:
If we realised globally that the ones we have trained ourselves to hate would always be better as allies. Sure we can still have wars. We love wars! But robots killing robots. Not robots killing humans. Just stop. Everyone.

And we, the unwashed masses, need to behave better just as much as the leaders. We are all out of control, entirely.

A successful intelligent lifeform's first goal as a species should be tending the home. Not blowing it up and poisoning it.

Everyone just needs to take a chill pill for a few centuries at least. The last 2000 years has been nuts. Let's all just calm down and take a breather.
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I think it almost always boils down to capital.

For those in power, they profit greatly from war, from destruction of the environment, from gen*cide, and they teach us, "the unwashed masses," that it benefits us, too.

Of course, that is utter dribble, but it seems that currently, not enough of us realise that it is dribble, so we continue as we have been.

I hope that in time, we will indeed "take a breather," but at the moment it looks like we've not quite had our fill of violence.
 
The funky thing is that nature does not care at all if humanity gets decimated or extinct, neither by themselves nor an external event.

On the cosmic scale we are almost, almost nothing, we even have just one world we live on, and in our full history, which is near nothing on the grand scale of our universal time, only twelve people walked on another celestial body: the moon, which is the closest one to Earth and then we just stopped doing that.

Then first came radio, then TV, then the internet and now A.I. to better mass influence bigger and more diverse human populations in a shorter time frame.

And then again, even if we start a global nuclear war, where we use all the nukes we have on each other, it's very unlikely that Homo sapiens sapiens will go extinct. To say it bluntly with Bill Hicks words: we are a virus on shoes. 😁

I hope for a bright future, but it has many moral dilemmas, and quite a few of them are excellently exploited in the new Alien: Earth series.

So before we go further, it makes me wonder what path we should take to philosophically debate the aspects of this topic? There are many of them, and if we like to go deep in detailed discussions, we better pick a good one to start with.


Kind regards,

The Traveler
 
Perhaps there is no right path for this topic! I vented it anyway. I'm interested in the literature nice one

It's just so fascinating to me that we can be this belligerent as a species at any tech level. Now as we rapidly enter the age of mech warfare, the perversion of human violence has to shift into more logical form of proving dominance.

Jivecat I love the dribble bit, dont think we need to stop wars. They seem necessary. Just stop people dying in them.
 
notbanme said:
You think it well, but....Do you know the median human IQ? Do you know how easily people can be brainwashed? The root of the problem is right under your nose, but you don’t see it. People are often uninformed, and once they are convinced to support a war, they will. It’s that simple. You can’t expect everyone with a 60 IQ to become a 170 IQ philosopher. That’s too naive. It doesn’t work that way.
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The average human is quite controlled and dull, and the system itself likes it that way. There is a feedback loop here.
Imo, it is not even about IQ, but how society is built and what kind of human it needs for survival.
 
It's not about IQ at all. Unfortunately many highly intelligent people have been and keep being involved with war. Von Neumann, an undisputed genius, was adamant that the US needed to launch a preemptive nuclear attack on the USSR before the latter had nuclear weapons.
 
notbanme said:
You think it well, but....Do you know the median human IQ? Do you know how easily people can be brainwashed? The root of the problem is right under your nose, but you don’t see it. People are often uninformed, and once they are convinced to support a war, they will. It’s that simple. You can’t expect everyone with a 60 IQ to become a 170 IQ philosopher. That’s too naive. It doesn’t work that way.
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Median IQ is by definition about 100, that’s how the scale is set. So talking about “60 vs 170” kind of misses the point, also it’s not really about abstract pattern-spotting. I believe it’s much more about conventions, cues, and what people agree to treat as normal. War support doesn’t spread because half the population has an IQ below 100. It spreads because of signals from authority, what we think others believe, and what groups reward or punish. Also a lack of economic ties combined with non democratic policies and values is a recipe for disaster.

As fink said we all need to take a chill pill and stop the madness, the last thing we need is more wars, we need to work on our common future and stop the pollution and destruction of our environment.
 
Fundamentally, I believe there's good in almost every human being's heart. The vast, vast majority of people I meet or know personally are people full of love and compassion, even though I might catch them in a difficult moment where they might judge someone harshly or respond from a reactive place. It's alright, we're human after all. I do these things all the time too, despite the hard work I put into not doing them.

To me, it feels like a select few people in positions of power are playing god and doing things from a profoundly twisted, egoistical idea of the world. And because of those select few people, there's always some kind of horrible conflict going on a global scale. But if you ask people you meet on the street "hey, do you want to be in war?" or "hey, do you want these people on the other side of the world that have nothing to do with you to live in poverty and pollution?", the vast majority if not all of them will say no.

I've found it's easier to see the good in people if you believe it's there even if outside appearance and first impressions don't align with that. I dig the idea of taking a chill pill, but I struggle to apply it to the global sociopolitical scale where the majority of humanity's problems brew and develop. What kind of pill do the people up there need to take? Perhaps a pharmahuasca pill would work well? Or maybe a complete purge? :ROFLMAO:
 
notbanme said:
If people were smart, they wouldn't go to war. It doesn't matter whether they have an IQ of 60 or 100, because 100 still isn't enough to be considered truly wise, as we can see.
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I don't know why you're so hung up on the concept of IQ and its relation to wisdom, because I just don't see the link. IQ is a measure of abstract reasoning, working memory, processing speed, and pattern recognition. It doesn't even come close to capturing the full range of human intelligence - things like creativity, emotional intelligence, social intuition, practical problem-solving, or moral insight - let alone wisdom, which involves balanced judgement, humility, and emotional balance, all things that usually come with life experience and have nothing to do with one's ability to solve an IQ test.

It's easy to say "if you were smart you wouldn't go to war" when you're not threatened by capitulation penalties and the government blocking all emigration from your country, coming to your door and quite literally forcing you away from your family and throwing you on the front lines. It's all very easy to judge and point at from the sidelines, but I am not hearing any suggestions for practical solutions coming.
 
If we were going to tie IQ to specific human behaviours it would seem way more accurate if we define a band of intelligence that causes most of the problems.

That is to say, really intelligent or really unintelligent bands are not to blame.

Only a very narrow, specific frequency of intelligence could be the issue. Too dumb, no chance of organising large scale horror. Too smart, realises the inherent evil. But the goldilocks 'just right' zone could be it. Smart enough to organise horror but too stupid to understand why it is wrong.
 
fink said:
If we were going to tie IQ to specific human behaviours it would seem way more accurate if we define a band of intelligence that causes most of the problems.

That is to say, really intelligent or really unintelligent bands are not to blame.

Only a very narrow, specific frequency of intelligence could be the issue. Too dumb, no chance of organising large scale horror. Too smart, realises the inherent evil. But the goldilocks 'just right' zone could be it. Smart enough to organise horror but too stupid to understand why it is wrong.
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That's a good way to put it. Though one could argue that the people who created the nuclear bomb were exceptionally smart, and knew the horrors their creation could bring, yet they kept going anyway. So there's that.
 
Nydex said:
That's a good way to put it. Though one could argue that the people who created the nuclear bomb were exceptionally smart, and knew the horrors their creation could bring, yet they kept going anyway. So there's that.
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That is a very good point. So then we have to lean towards there being more elements than just simply intelligence
 
The masses can become so dull and empty of themselves and seek to fullfill their desires of greed, hate whatever. That they allow themselves to be guided by 'fortune tellers' if only they pay the hefty price of war.
War is always about invoking change or the fight of good vs evil. Feeling that you are good vs they are evil can be also be, with the reward in this life or the afterlife for all who fought for the 'good'..

Maybe we are all learning still that change can happen without negativly impacting your enviroment. OFcourse that does mean that the opposing party also agree's. Sometimes we have to fight to defend ourselves so its still valuable skill to learn how to fight.. just incase
 
notbanme said:
A truly intelligent person knows that doing evil and causing destruction is not the way to progress
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I don't see the link between intelligence and wanting to progress. You used the word wisdom in your second sentence, and that's more accurate. Wisdom and intelligence aren't the same. You can drive a huge car but that doesn't guarantee that you'll go anywhere if you don't know how to handle it.
 
notbanme said:
I agree and I think both should be present. Intelligence alone is not enough. On the other hand, I wouldn’t call a person who lacks wisdom intelligent. To me, being intelligent means being both smart and wise.
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It is possible to be intelligent but inexperienced, and maybe also traumatised. This latter part particularly can contribute to the making of unwise decisions. Intelligence may include the capacity to retroactively recognise them as such. Human psychology is complex though, leading to things like denial and doubling down. Whether it's wise to admit ones mistakes may easily depend on the exact situation, and is equally likely to be a matter of timing especially when ones social environment has a strong element of irrationality, perhaps.
 
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