[FRIAM] do animals psychologize?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

Well, sure.  If you intend to intervene, you have to choose the type of intervention.  So, the "Killing versus Letting Die" dilemma is a special form of "intervene or don't".  But if you choose to intervene, you have to also choose how to intervene.  One might choose to kill by positively reinforcing extant bad habits ... i.e. open a gun store or invest in Smith & Wesson.  That's an intervention of a sort.  Another intervention might be to encourage one's mutual fund to disinvest in S&W or donate to a gun control PAC.  But none of these deny the more fundamental choice of whether to intervene or not.

A *social* person may well choose to exacerbate it, thinking that it'll weed out the people with property XYZ (violent, ignorant, poor, whatever), while "civilized" people will inherently avoid killing each other with guns. Of course, such a person is probably ignorant of the full connectedness of the gene-space (which generates the phenomena of gun violence).  And if we allow for kin selection of any sort, then it's plausible that such sociality is the problem, not the cure. ... So, "no", it's not a slam dunk to assume that a social person would aim to mitigate the stupidity, at least at various scopes.

On 09/14/2018 04:05 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Wouldn't a social person aim to mitigate the stupidity, along the lines the of the resistance within the White House?
> Or is there some reason it is best to bore on ahead with the stupidity?   Because it is undemocratic or just because it is a bother?

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ