Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="nedjer" data-source="post: 5299590" data-attributes="member: 83796">Interesting <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Not sure where armadillos, sloths, elephants, rhinos, whales and dolphins fit into that <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" />At no small risk of straying well beyond the slightest expertise: a carnivorous dinosaur, croc or komodo seems pretty well prepared for and maybe 'predisposed' - adapted might well have been better as I don't think reptiles go looking for fights as such - to violence as they've protective armour, racks of sharp teeth and a brain that struggles to put together a tasty salad.Mammals appear to have headed off down a niche which rewards guile and avoids direct confrontation with serious competition. Our 'reptilian' brain is still there, and we fall back on it when we get tired, threatened or it works well. However, complex mammals seem predisposed to avoid violence as a result of access to higher and better cognitive options.E.g stags have pointy antlers but confrontations are restricted to seasonal mating displays and territorial disputes, which don't seem to operate according to a predisposition to violence, i.e. stags lock horns instead of jumping out of hiding and goring even when doing so should give an advantage.By the time we get to modern humans we've lost the thickened foreheads, are totally soft-shelled, don't have any claws and avoid violence providing resources are plentiful. Unless we have authoritarian personalities or are driven by authoritarian personalities. There may be a genetic element to authoritarian personalities but there's strong evidence they develop through socialisation.Which possibly points to a distinction between 'reptilian' roleplaying and 'higher mammalian' roleplaying. (Hopefully hearing a few howls of protest there <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />)</blockquote>

Verification