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Comment by dakr | Hacker News Reader

This argument reminds me of theists asking, "without a god, what is there to keep you from being amoral and running around killing people?"

Humans are capable of and do, in fact, act on more than just one or two simplistic external levers. We have agency, understanding, and drive to have empathy and to create.

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Right but the natural state of humanity without real social norms and meta norms is to just form small, violent, relatively unproductive tribes. Civilization doesn't scale without rules.

Of whose natural humanity? Areyou naturally violent and unproductive without coercion? I'm not.

I build things, just not things anyone else wants. Other people absolutely do seem to have violent tendencies without coercion.

People don't naturally collaborate the way you see them in the developed world no.

You say people don't collaborate yet cite no source, so I can only assume you mean you wouldn't be collablrative. I can assure you I would be collaborative.

The idea that people in the wild are uncivilised savages is old racist propaganda.

Is this a serious comment? It hits all the bases.

All my comments are serious in matter. Some are whimsical in tone. Many are wrong in fact.

I suggest erring on the side of earnesty when replying. The discussions that come out of those threads tend to be more interesting.

You wouldn't exist because part of what makes you who you are is the society you've lived in and its social norms. If you had been born into a tribal society, you'd be tribal - or dead if you refused to cooperate with its culture.

Right but what says that culture would be violent and unproductive, rather than kind and productive? That's what I don't get. Runs counter to what I think is my nature and tbose around me, so I'd expect a position that has considered more evidence from your end.

Because a non-violent tribe will be destroyed by any violent neighbors it has. Even if it had a protected group of non-violent members, it would be militarily disadvantaged compared to its enemies with more fighters per population. And what are those non-violent people even doing all day in a world without any technological progress? Don't imagine you'd invent technology because almost nobody did much of that. If it was truly isolated like the Chatham Island Maori then yea, but they were eventually genocided by the mainland New Zealand Maori when they finally got to them.

I think you would be conscripted to fight whether you liked it or not, and inculcated with the belief that it's the right thing to do. Maybe even feeling shame are your unwillingness but forcing yourself to fit in anyway.

Of course we are (maybe not you as an individual but whatever)

As some french guy said, probably: "De la contrainte nait la créativité"

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