It was actually my error in reading "10,000 years" as some sort of evolutionary timescale that sparked it. So, I would like full credit, please.

ETA: It kinda is when you think about it. Apples evolved from -10k to -5k, then Eve ate the apple, and we evolved thereafter.

Weather is predictable and at the same time chaotic. Pressure fronts, storms, hot weather, all predictable. These things also end the same way. They might exist at different scales of chaos theory vs order, but as I said already, just because convergent evolution is a thing, doesn't mean all evolution converges. There are evolutionary dead ends, and surprising results. For example, we're not going to become crabs, nor trees.

The house might have an edge, but that's different from saying the house always wins. And people can cheat the house.

Free will is a red herring, that I describe as 'philosophical masturbation' because while it can be fun, it is utterly pointless. We can never fully know the answer, and it wouldn't matter either way. I am not at all making any points about free will.

There is scope for some discussion about systems theory & cybernetics a la Hayek, with an anthropological tinge of social reproduction, but no, I don't believe that whether or not we have free will has any impact on this discussion nor am I sure why you think that's the direction I'm headed.

Yeah. Maybe I'm wrong. All roads on this forum certainly seem to lead to the same small number of destinations.

I have difficulty accepting that humans lack free will, but my position likewise does not depend on the existence of free will. Purely random factors would be sufficient to make human civilization on my parallel world after 10,000 years very different from current human civilization.

I'm far from an expert in all the different ways socialism has been tried and the various reasons it has appeared to fail, but socialist policies in europe have been phenomenally successful in a number of different ways. Healthcare is a good example. While socialism and capitalism seem like water and oil, they are merely different ends of a very complex spectrum and they can live happily mixed in a variety of different ways.

As to purely socialist states, I wouldn't want to get into 'no true scotsman' territory which you're obviously wanting me to invoke. There should be a lot of space for allowing that the capitalist global north saw socialism and communism as grave threats and sought to head them off, whether by invasions, election-manipulation (ahem Chile & Allende & Pinochet ahem) or sanctions, and these countries suffered as a result.

A good micro example to look at is kibbutzim. They were founded on truly socialist principles and most of them existed as socialist (perhaps more communalist) havens for most of their existence. But they exist within an increasingly capitalist country / world. If you see capitalism as a powerful virus, which I believe is an appropriate comparison, then what you see now, which is very limited socialism within most kibbutzim, makes a lot of sense, as they've been infected with individualist, profit-making mindset - shareholders over stakeholders.

I mean, as you were writing this, you must have already known it was a dogshit argument, right?

I feel like both free will and convergent evolution are complete red herrings here and that even if free will did not exist in practice or convergent evolution creates easily predictable and certain pathways, it would still not make a jot of difference, and there are a huge number of local events over the last 10,000 years that could have gone only slightly different and the world we see today would have been vastly different. Unrecognisably different. We could easily have destroyed ourselves through nukes 1000 years ago, or colonised Mars by now and become a Type II Kardashev civilisation, or living in global socialist utopia, or any other number of less overtly different potential outcomes. Evolution hasn't been a significant factor in our cultural or social development for a long time, possibly on the scale of ~50k years (roughly when we absorbed the last of the Neanderthal DNA into our own).

If I think something's a dogshit argument, I won't make it. Why don't you explain what you think is wrong with it instead of asserting bad faith on my part. We're dealing in analogies, and particularly when it comes to realms of incomplete information, poker and gambling is a great one, so thanks for bringing it in, but I just don't agree with your slant on it.

Having said that, I'm not a scientist, I'm not an expert in evolution, I will happily defer to someone who is.

Lol - the bolded is you just almost understanding why the rest of your argument doesn't work.

Also, all that other stuff works with a small number of humans, but doesn't scale.

It's really tiresome having to try to work out what you're saying when you don't say it explicitly. You don't win any points for trying to undermine my position without explaining why it's bad.

In terms of scaling, meh, it doesn't actually have to, it just appears to have to because in our current cultural hegemony, hyper interconnected globalism feels like an untouchable tenet. I'm in favour of local communities and local trade. Eating foods that are local and in season. Socialism doesn't require scaling up to work, but like all systems that feature greater efficiency from growth, will benefit from it, but it has to be done with care, and just because post-Lenin USSR was a gigantic cluster**** that was more concerned with glory to Russia and fighting US hegemony, that isn't evidence that socialism can't scale up. It can't scale up well if capitalism attacks it on all possible fronts.

Not sure how we've got here, yet again. Perhaps it's convergent evolution that always leads to socialism vs capitalism.

Dude, it doesn't work using the same trite old argument - it's contrary to human nature. Humans will always seek to gain an edge over the next human. You literally said as much in the part I emphasised above.

Weather is unpredictable, but climate is predictable, as I'm sure you will agree. You are kinda undermining your own point with this analogy.

If you go to a random Wikipedia page and click the first link in the article (that is not pronunciation or somesuch), then repeat, you will get to the "Philosophy" entry within about 7-8 clicks.

Ironic!

That's just not at all true. We have got to where we are as a species through collaboration, not selfishness. Human nature is far more unselfish than selfish. The attempt to make it seem like human nature is more selfish than unselfish is an attempt to justify selfishness on large parts of modern humanity.

This isn't self-evident. The view that humans are primarily motivated by active self-interest has been around since ancient times. It's one of the central themes of Thucydides.

I still don't get what the point of your original question was. Either things would be the same, or things would be different because of random events. Neither way says anything I can see about culture being independent of biology or the tendency of men to be more violent.

Sure, but any appeal to "human nature" has to account for human cooperation, generosity, and empathy. It's not all pure greed and self-interest.

Sure, just as it has to account for human greed, cruelty, and all the other human characteristics that run contrary to wazz's view of humans.

FWIW, I think that human behavior is far too complex to be easily explained by reference to oversimplified descriptions of inherent human nature.

Also, who f'ing cares if capitalism is more in tune with "human nature" or whatever? That's just a naturalism fallacy -- does capitalism produce better outcomes than socialism, that's the better question.

It could be argued that cooperation is in one's self-interest.

Good idea - let's just force people to adhere to a societal structure that is out of tune with human nature.

Wait, I think we may have tried this already.

For sure. but like I said in the long long ago (yesterday), you need a certain set of axioms before you can even begin to engage in debate. If your interlocutor is literally unwilling to put a check in a box by the statement "[Choose gender] are genetically predisposed to [choose behaviour]", you are not going to get very far.

Actually, it really is.