On 1/17/2014 1:31 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> Le 16/01/2014 22:47, FractRacer a écrit :
>>>
>> What about the HQ (human quotient)? The ability to live with others.
>
>
> Herd Quotient would be that ability.
>
> The only Human Quotient would be related to War and kill, many tests
> done and in progress in various area of the worlds. Not a club I want to
> be part of.
>
Actually, there is some recent "rethinking" on primitive societies, 
which have called the idea that violence and war "must be" human traits 
into question. The same argument has been made against, ironically, Jane 
Goodall's "studies" on chimpanzees. Its been argued that group against 
group conflict, and even "internal" conflict, it heavily dependent and 
availability of resources, and that, to better study chimpanzees, 
Goodall introduced a hard to get at, limited, but highly valuable, to a 
chimp, commodity, which all of the groups needed to compete with, to get 
at. In other words, he conclusions where biased by, however 
unintentionally, introducing the catalyst for wide spread aggression, 
and conflict. A similar argument has been made against what is 
considered to be "definitive" work on hunter-gatherer societies, but the 
leading expert in the field. The two problems being - 1. He didn't study 
true hunter gatherers, but rather fringe groups, which tended to have 
fixed locations, and some level of agriculture, and thus a reason to 
derive concepts like "personal property", which extended to the land on 
which their hut sat, and the food they grew, etc. 2. In at least one 
case, lacking modern genetic testing, but wanting to know the details of 
those genetic relationships between people in the local tribe, and 
neighbors, he broke tribal taboo, by seeking out people that disliked 
each other, and convincing them to reveal the information, resulting in 
the appearance of large conflicts, as a result of those breaches. He 
then recorded, as "probably normal" the resulting bloodshed. The other 
researcher, who continued studying them for some time after, and noting 
the disappearance of such conflict, and no reappearance of it, once the 
original left, noted that the tribes, supposedly, now consider the word 
"anthropologist" to mean, "A creature with perverse and unnatural 
tendencies", I think it was.

> Human: probably the only living animal that can kill without the
> need/justfication to eat its prey. Contamination to nearby animals, like
> dogs, has been observed on specific individuals.
>
Uh, no. Starting with cats, this just isn't the case. A common fallacy 
maybe, but the only reason most animals likely do not do this is purely 
because the day to day necessity of finding enough food, in general, 
outweighs any tendency they might otherwise have to play with said food. 
But, take away that necessity, and most of them will exhibit some level 
of such play as well. But, it makes for a nice story, for people to 
explain why its somehow "natural" for humans to do this sort of thing, 
and not cultural, and thus, "can't be fixed". So much stupid shit we do, 
its ridiculous, falls into that, or the other, "Its gotten to big to 
solve, so lets not bother trying.", categories of apathy and lazy 
disregard for change. Many of them are such strong tropes, in fact, that 
people fall into them, even when they should, or think they do, know better.

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