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People for the first million years, lived in one anothers pockets. There was no anonymity. Arguably we're designed to be social because of that.

The modern tendency toward outbursts of antisocial behavior might be a product of anonymity.




... So what?

First, it's apples-to-oranges, because we lived in smaller groups.

Second, our cultural-programming changes at a much faster rate than genetic-programming.


That's not actually clear! Homo Sapiens adaptation rate increased 100-fold once we started this civilization thing. And for most of that time our social evolution was very slow. I guess today it might have turned around, but that's a blink in the history of our race.


What sort of "outbursts of antisocial behavior" are you talking about, and is there really a modern tendency towards it?


Oh anything really. Ranting on HN. Telling off sales clerks. Pushing to the head of the subway line. Anything you get away with because its anonymous. In the old days, you'd know every clerk, everybody in a line, and get harassed if you were antisocial.


You'd also be harassed if you deviated from any social norms, had the wrong religion/skin/... We should not want to return to such times.


That's very much a modern view. And not shared around the world at all. Racism is of course wrong. But social norms are the glue that holds us all together, to a degree. Its not black-and-white.




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