16 AUG 2014 by ideonexus

 Hitler's Appeal was His Promise of Strife and Warfare

Also he has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pa...
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08 OCT 2013 by ideonexus

 Evolutionary Theory Does Not Justify Greed

Human nature as it now exists was formed in accord with the laws of evolution under conditions pertaining well before recorded human history. Fossils discovered in Ethiopia and Kenya now date human ancestors back at least 5 or 6 million years. Distinctly human species arose in Africa at least 2 million years ago, while present evidence indicates that modern humans are only about 100,000 years old. Therefore the conditions relevant to which genetic mutations were advantageous and which were no...
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Many economic theories relying on "human nature" assume we are greedy, but this is not supported by the evidence. We might just as likely be generous and that is our evolutionary advantage.

28 MAY 2013 by ideonexus

 The Majority do Robot Work

Someone had to run the harvesters in the rice and sugarcane fields, check the irrigation canals or robots, install things, fix things. Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked, generation after generation; give them three thousand calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anythi...
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Humans are mostly cheap robots.

12 DEC 2011 by ideonexus

 Human Behavior is Dictated by Laws of Nature, but Too Com...

While conceding that human behavior is indeed determined by the laws of nature, it also seems reasonable to conclude that the outcome is determined in such a complicated way and with so many variables as to make it impossible in practice to predict. For that one would need a knowledge of the initial state of each of the thousand trillion trillion molecules in the human body and to solve something like that number of equations. That would take a few billion years, which would be a bit late to ...
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So the hypothesis that we have freewill is convenient, and the Economic model that we act in our best interests helpful, but not always correct.