> The human mind is simply not evolutionary adapted for what's coming up.
This can be said of pretty much everything humans ended up creating with technology so... not sure there's anything really new down the road. Humans adapt.
>a drone operator will push a button, kill a dozen people, and feel like it was a videogame
This might depend on the context. RadioLab recently did a podcast titled "Toy Soldiers." Using low-flying "toy" drones rather than the high-flying "predator" drones, they make the case that drone operators get an oddly intimate portrait of their enemies. They go into how they reference them by their attire ("the 'red shoe' guy”) and witness on an up-close and personal level how they grieve over their comrades.
One more: attacking people who are familiar and comfortable to you rather than the people causing your actual
problems.
As a manager in tech, people who were on performance management rarely attacked me, they would find someone on the team to harass instead. Same thing with blaming a downturn in the economy on women painting their hair blue or mini skirts. Anything but blaming the powerful.
Pure conjecture on my part, but I wonder how much of this is risk-based status-mongering. Challenging the powerful is obviously risky. But knocking someone weaker down a few pegs can solidify your status in the hierarchy at a much lower risk. From that perspective, it's arguably rational behavior to maintain your status within a group when you feel vulnerable.
(Pardon my reach here, I watched Chimp Empire not too long ago...)
maybe, if you are in a closed system (like a small tribe). When most bullies Ive worked with went looking for other jobs they were treated like pariah, so it hit them when they left the closed system or someone from outside came in.
We never seemed to have a problem killing back when you had to do it face to face with a spear, so I don't think the drone really changes anything. Agree on the others though.
As a species, I don’t think those matter. They could kill off 90% of the population and humans will go on. Evolution is a bitch in that way, individuals matter not at all.
I will note that this is a purely naturalistic take and is countered by traditional Christianity that posits every human life was worth the death of God Himself. That is, the intrinsic value of a human life is incalculable.
The rejection of spirituality leaves mankind pretty hopeless, I think.
> Evolution is a bitch in that way, individuals matter not at all.
> emphathy at distance; nowadays, a drone operator will push a button, kill a dozen people, and feel like it was a videogame
People were traditionally able to kill each other face to face
> prioritizing long-term and abstract rewards, over short term ones; this is the reason why we have phenomenons like global warming
There's a balance. If anything I'd say people are putting too much priority on long term abstract rewards, so we see people saving too much and never enjoying themselves, or putting off having children until they can't because they're worried they can't raise that child perfectly.
> adjusting hunger to virtually unlimited availability of food
We're already solving this; people who overeat are already having fewer children, there's been a huge cultural shift towards gyms and health food, and we've seen some promising drugs released recently. We don't adapt instantly overnight, but we do adapt.
The fact that you point this out, is a proof that humanity can improve, what needs to change is our culture, especially education, ofc it may take a lot of time but it will happen eventually.
Regarding long-term rewards and global warming: What is the actual long term reward here? As I see it, there is no way to collect any sort of reward for helping to prevent global warming by changing your habits. Before the problem gets really problematic, most of us will be dead and burried. I fail to see how "caring for the future generation" has any kind of reward attached to it. Its an act of kindness, but there are no rewards attached to it.
Probably a question to the guy above, but there is immediate psychological reward in any act of kindness or generosity (at least in healthy, thriving individuals).
However, OP argued that global warming is suffering from people NOT getting immediate rewards for their actions. Your argument basically says OP is wrong, and there is no need to counteract peoples tendency to prefer short-term rewards over long-term because they are supposed to get enough incentive by just knowing they have been kind. I doubt that.
> Before the problem gets really problematic, most of us will be dead and burried.
The situation lies on a spectrum between "not problematic" and "really problematic".
There is actually plenty of evidence that tangible impact already started, independently of the perception of those whoe live in areas where the effect is neither perceived nor obvious.
What if war became just a couple of countries intelligence bots crunching digits of pi until one came up with a new one. That country would be the winner and they could ask one thing from the 'losing' side that didn't result in destruction or terror.
Humans being humans, they'd then want to start destroying the other sides ability to design/make/run/maintain/afford pi digit crunching intelligence bots. Then ways to defend against those attacks on their people and economy by attacking the aspects of the other sides ability to attack etc. After a few rounds of that, soon the pi digit crunching element is completely replaced by a traditional war.
This can be said of pretty much everything humans ended up creating with technology so... not sure there's anything really new down the road. Humans adapt.