Conversation

Fascinating to see a category of people who’ve sort of come alive with Covid, like it’s the kind of challenge they were born for
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Isn't it likely that there are "pandemic programs" already in the human psyche, from both evolution and the fear of germs?
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This seems more general acute crisis response personality type. I doubt there’s been enough time for evolutionary responses to pandemics to evolve since they’re a feature of dense urban settlement and trade.
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Given the massive survival advantages to people with pandemic programs (we've had villages for a long time), I'd say otherwise. Said another way, "social distancing" is a pretty simple strategy to encode and evolve.
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I think that manifests more as for eg staying away from people with skin conditions or coughs… symptomatic avoidance responses rather than a personally trait like getting highly effective suddenly in prosocial ways.
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Agree but then the most powerful phenomena tap multiple proclivities. So what if one can get social credit for telling people to be anti-social, as one's gut is telling them? Just thoughts not an argument here.
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More to the point: "crisis leadership" and "contagion" seem very likely homo sapiens routines and I think we're seeing both and that they've constructively interfered many times in history.
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I suspect the stronger evolutionary pressure is war. That’s why we both like war metaphors for Covid and exhibit inappropriate war-like tendencies including turning on the other side for their “wrong” Covid response. Might be misdirected warlike genetic traits.
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Yes and I think it's even more general than that. We're inclined to protect our memes the way we protect our genes: with force. The simplest way to see this is to get into an argument on the Internet and watch your fight-or-flight response trigger.
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