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0 pointsbarry-cotter7y ago0 comments

In the long run there is never enough of any resource to go round. The population expands until there’s just barely enough, overshoots, collapses and then does it again and again or dies off. That’s the Malthusian trap.

The collapse of Y chromosome diversity around the transition to agriculture and civilisation is far from being exclusive to white or European culture. It happened in every human population that took up agriculture, to greater and lesser extent.

Violence is absolutely part of human nature. Serial killers are probably pathological but mass murder is definitely within normal human behaviour. The Mongols were less especially brutal than especially organised, ditto for the Nazis at a later date.

Kill everybody and take their land is more or less what happened to both the Neanderthals and the first H. Sapiens in Europe. Kill all the men is practically a humanitarian innovation.

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chiefalchemist7y ago

"Violence is absolutely part of human nature. Serial killers are probably pathological but mass murder is definitely within normal human behaviour. The Mongols were less especially brutal than especially organised, ditto for the Nazis at a later date.

Kill everybody and take their land is more or less what happened to both the Neanderthals and the first H. Sapiens in Europe. Kill all the men is practically a humanitarian innovation."

That's the crux of my point. My sense is there's a perception that humans are "highly advanced" and that (e.g.) people with violent tendencies are highly "abnormal" and should - in extreme cases - be put to death.

The irony being their genes are what saved the species in previous generations. But today those genes are not advantageous.

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