The role of pyschopathy in modern society.
POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Monday, September 29, 2025 19:26
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Many... prolly most... societies have disappeared w/o meaningful continuation. Thousands of native american cultures disappeared and the only trace they left behind was quaint place-names like Cheektowaga and Miami and Ohio.
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Any idea, no matter how much you may agree with it, can be radicalized and employed as an excuse for violence. There is no such thing as a righteous or untouchable philosophy, and when you start thinking that there is, you have become an extremist.- Finn Mac Cumhal
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Many... prolly most... societies have disappeared w/o meaningful continuation. Thousands of native american cultures disappeared and the only trace they left behind was quaint place-names like Cheektowaga and Miami and Ohio.
Or , Miami of Ohio...
http://www.miami.muohio.edu /
" Miami to add Tibetan study abroad program...
Miami University has signed a memorandum of understanding with The Institute of Buddhist Dialectics (IBD) and the College for Higher Tibetan Studies (CHTS) to establish a semester-long study program for Miami students in Dharamasala, India. "
College for Higher Tibetan Studies ?
Wonder if they do field trips on the Tibetan Plateau ?
That's pretty high in the first place...
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Hello,
That's true. But then there are other types of societies that still persist because their people moved on, reformed, adapted, resettled, and changed as needed... but also carried on some aspect of what they were. One might say their respective societies didn't die, but rather evolved.
The Middle East seems to have some examples of this, with Jewish and Muslim societies that carry on from ancient sources. Farther East, places like India still carry on customs and practices from before Christ. Even though the Modern India and Israel and Palestine are not the same as their ancient ancestral nations, can we not say they are the continuing evolution of those ancient societies?
And so, isn't every nation with a strong Christian heritage also carrying on some ancient Jewish traditions, preserving a part of an ancient society?
And even if Germany were to mysteriously disappear tomorrow, wouldn't we be carrying on a small part of their culture every time we bite into a Big Mac or a Bratwurst?
Don't we recall traditions from ancient Greece and Rome when we go to a Ballpark, Football Game, or Concert Hall?
While I wished that ancient societies and civilizations were better preserved, I can't buy into the fact that they vanish without a trace. We are them. Even most genocides were incomplete (although the Spanish tried *hard* here in the Americas.)
If anything, human society, during its short existence, has proven resilient and adaptive, and I think we do see echoes of ancient lost societies even in our present lives.
--Anthony
"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner
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Quote:
In your one post are you referring to the study of human children and chimps (?) where the chimps quickly figured out which actions were bogus while the children kept doing the same things over by rote, even when they could see that certain actions were pointless ?
Could y'all get me a copy of or link to that study ?
I wanna look it over, cause I have found that while many humans may react that way, SOME do not, and those do seem to be the vessels for such sea changes that you speak of...
Be useful to know if there was some early identifying characteristics, yes ?
-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it
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Hi AnthonyT
Sorry for the confusion.
Some civilizations do indeed die out by having all or most of their people die - for example the Greenlanders who went extinct, or the Easter Islanders who were reduced to very low numbers surviving in part on cannibalism.
But the broad sweep of history shows that cultures die out without a trace.
For example, the Egyptian Empire in the form we know it - with hawk-faced gods and mummies and so on - lasted from about 2300 BC to about 900 BC. That's a long time. And it still existed a short while ago, relatively speaking, only 3000 years more or less. But if you were to look at Egypt today for some trace of that Egyptian culture, I'm not sure you could find it. No one worships those gods (they are now Muslim mostly Sunni 90%, Coptic 9%, other Christian 1%), speaks that language, writes in hieroglyphics, builds pyramids, or obeys a pharaoh.
And it's a similar story for the thousands on thousands of cultures that have ever existed over the entire time of the human species.
So my point is that our ideas of the world and ourselves, which we tend to think of as coming from some universal permanent place (the gods, human nature), are insubstantial temporary things.
With that in mind, it might be helpful to examine them in that light.
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Silence is consent.
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I haven't forgotten to post a list of our dangerous unexamined paradigms - but in the meantime I've been diverted by a secondary idea that I don't have time to pursue in a rigorous way (if only I was retired ...)
For anyone who's familiar with modeling or knows something about it ... (SignyM, Finn, Citizen) ... a very crude type of modeling is simplex optimization. It seems to me simplex optimization has a lot in common with evolution: the result can be influenced by starting point (existing species in a static system), discreteness of steps (both are discreet), size of step (small existing variations in a population v major mutation), direction of step (toward or away from optimum), number of dimensions (both accommodate n dimensions or in the case of species evolution, many characteristics), and most importantly, given the above factors, the greater or lesser chance that the result will settle on a local optimum rather than the maximum.
I did a quick search and couldn’t find any studies about this topic directly. Any thoughts on the usefulness of a variant of simplex optimization as a model for evolution ?
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Silence is consent.
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Quote:Uh... I don't know about that, and I'm not even sure what this thread is about,
Originally posted by rue:
I did a quick search and couldn’t find any studies about this topic directly. Any thoughts on the usefulness of a variant of simplex optimization as a model for evolution ?
but I must butt in to say that some years back I wrote a genetic algorithm to solve an optimization problem. So, the evolutionary process served as a basis for a computer program to do inverse modeling. It was cool. Geek heaven. 
http://www.obitko.com/tutorials/genetic-algorithms/ga-basic-descriptio
n.php
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
for example the Greenlanders who went extinct,
That's what they say about Neanderthal Man. I still don't believe it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-neanderthal9-2008aug09,0,25
05489.story
Tonight 9:00pm National Geographic Channel
Neanderthal Code
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/neanderthal-code-3228/Ov
erview?sicontent=0&sicreative=2606220592&siclientid=804&sitrackingid=44778626&source=sem_ngc_83
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Quote:
Originally posted by Kirkules:
That's what they say about Neanderthal Man. I still don't believe it.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-neanderthal9-2008aug09,0,25
05489.story
Tonight 9:00pm National Geographic Channel
Neanderthal Code
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/neanderthal-code-3228/Ov
erview?sicontent=0&sicreative=2606220592&siclientid=804&sitrackingid=44778626&source=sem_ngc_83
Well, the fact that the Original Norse settlers on Greenland died out isn't in the slightest open for dispute. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have missed a couple of Vikings running around Greenland.
Don't believe what you like. I don't see any Neanderthals running around, and your cites support that position.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:Quote:
Originally posted by Kirkules:
That's what they say about Neanderthal Man. I still don't believe it.
Well, the fact that the Original Norse settlers on Greenland died out isn't in the slightest open for dispute. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have missed a couple of Vikings running around Greenland.
Don't believe what you like. I don't see any Neanderthals running around, and your cites support that position.
I think I understand what you're saying. It's like when all the Russians moved out of the Chernobyl site after the accident, that makes Russians extinct. It's not impossible for a culture/society to move without becoming extinct. Just like it's possible that Neanderthal interbred with modern man instead of going extinct. I realise that the evidence is pointing the other way, but the possibility still exists.
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