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From: chabot@miles.DEC (L. S. Chabot)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: A Question!
Message-ID: <901@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Mar-85 09:54:15 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.901
Posted: Wed Mar  6 09:54:15 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Mar-85 04:26:43 EST
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>>Love is a *part* of nature!
>>         tim sevener  whuxl!orb

Greg Kuperberg  ==  >
> Yes, but the general rule is indifference to anything other than
> offspring.  The general rule for humans on the other hand is cooperation,
> while murder is usually exceptional enough to make the headlines of the local
> papers.  And war is exceptional enough to attract the attention of the whole
> world.

I have the following counter-arguments:

1. The general rule is indifference: socially organized animals, such as wolf
(and other canine and feline and ape) families which include adults which may
not be part of the mating pair(s) or decendants of such pairs.  Also, what
about the lack of indifference between the members of a mating pair, this lack
of indifference demonstrated variously among differenct species as grief upon
death of a mate, grooming and touching and other bonding activities, defense
or added aid against a predator.

2. War attracts the attention of the whole world:  only if it makes good copy,
sells lots of papers.  Touch subjects like genocide may be too distasteful
to keep many readers for very long.  
We don't notice much in the way of mass media for animals, so it isn't apparent
to us what they may communicate about, say, Frank Perdue. :-)

3. The general rule for humans is cooperation: hey!  what about net.flame? :-)


Generalizations about nature are usually losing things to make.  Extrapolating
from a few samples doesn't guarantee that it will apply to all.  Looking for
similar patterns, which is different from generalizing, can be useful, but care
must be taken that too much information is not lost in the distillation. 

L S Chabot
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