what will those of us who believe in equality before the law and the presumption of free will do if we stick our heads in the sand and ignore these possibilities?
Erm, you phrased it badly. The people who refuse to recognize such differences will not change their position. If its how does this affect the equality before the law, well, the answer is highly dependent on your conception of the justice system. I find the law-as-deterrent and protection of property, or more broadly society, argument, most convincing and prudent.

One can see that nations vary in their tendency toward chaos - that to maintain order in Somalia or Iraq warrants a heavier hand than in Japan or Iceland. So an autocracy cannot be criticized as such; it must be viewed within the context of its people, for who can criticize the father who spanks a child that ignores a softer punishment.

The problem occurs with multicultural societies: if the premise above is true, that certain populations need harsher punishments to keep in line, does that mean we should have punishments based on race or population? I would say no, but I think the current laws should be tightened regardless, as Steve Sailer has documented, executing convicted murderers seems to reduce crime. (I'm having lots of trouble finding it, so you can try searching some combination of "murder crime capital punishment national review")

Here are some videos of the Haka I found, see the first. Repulsive and uh, "shrivel" inducing. http://www.vaughanwylie.com/01/2...ack-haka-video/

Iceland. So an autocracy cannot be criticized as such; it must be viewed within the context of its people, for who can criticize the father who spanks a child that ignores a softer punishment.

careful about using iceland. the thing request the intervention and domination of th norwegian monarchy to impose order rescue them from blood feud & chaos during the middle age.

Oh good lord Krishna, I'm not willing to cut a guy cut a break b/c he was hyperdosed on PCP when he shot that lady in the head, so I hardly see why I'll cut someone a break b/c he has a hyperdosed MAOA variant.

Let's take the GNXP fairlyland ever docile and super-intelligent Asian. And let's look at the decapitation contests in the rape of Nanking, i.e. Japanese officers with MAOA variants linked to silkscreen painting lopping off the heads of Chinese civilians as sport.

Do you punish them more or less at a subsequent war crimes trial since their genetic profiles are exemplary? Hypothetically of course-since crimes committed in China were excluded from the The International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

Would a soldier's genotype really factor into your decision as to their punishment?

"I was just following orders"

"Of your commander?"

"No, my MAOA variant."

"Ok. If it's any solace we'll execute your parents too."

It's just like the pointless theism/atheism discussions. I really don't care what you believe; that so bores me. It's how you behave that impacts me.

Your genotype? Save it for Lord Yamaraja.

Having the more "violent" allele doesn't mean that the individual will constantly be out for blood. Personality traits should be thought of as "If/Then" cognitive programs. The "Then" part carries out some behavior or runs some other sub-routine, but the "If" condition has to be met. The Japanese no longer rape the Chinese because they haven't been at war with them. Judging by comparative standards, rape seems to be a unviersal during wartime. So, presumably every (male) human has the cognitive program "IF at war, THEN rape, pillage, etc." Thus, to prevent mass rape of innocents, simply prevent war; no change in allele frequencies necessary.

On the other hand, there are other "IF/THEN" programs that appear not to be universal like raping during wartime. For example, if someone insults you in a bar, some people will respond with violence, others will summon the authorities, while others will run the fuck right out of there. It's going to be much more difficult to prevent provocative incidents at bars than war, so these individual differences will be much more salient to folks and will require more attention from legal scholars. Even if you eliminated bar-fight incidents, something would upset & provoke the aggressive individuals to fight over. Getting cut off in traffic, say.

So, we should try all we can to "drain the swamp to extinguish the mosquitos," but that will only get us so far. After that, there will remain situations that provoke some individuals but not others to respond aggressively and perhaps violently. Deterrent laws can help here, but again only so far, especially if the decision to respond aggressively or violently is made without rational forethought. At some point, thus, we will have to address the neurophysiological substrate of these cognitive programs, since we'll have done all we can on the environmental front.

I'm in favor of gene therapy or using drugs, as long as the side effects are minimized while benefit to society is maximized. This isn't the same as indefinitely depriving a convicted criminal of liberty after they've completed their sentence. It's just a short-cut through what rehabilitation / therapeutic programs try to accomplish: a change in their underlying disposition. If that's not feasible by talking in group therapy or threatening punishment, then do something else.

During the "blood feud" era in Iceland, it was actually much more peaceful than modern America or continental europe in their era. David Friedman held it up in "Machinery of Freedom" as an example of a well-functioning anarchist society, although he admits it wasn't completely anarchist.

A good article on it here.


Before anybody starts assuming anything, I'm not an anarchist, it just seems to me that Iceland wasn't so bad, relatively speaking. Somalia got better without a central state, but that was because they had an exceptionally (by Western standards) bad state, which might be returning (the most glaring flaw in anarchism) with the Islamic Courts Union.

I think every surviving population is capable of a fair degree of violence, otherwise they wouldn't be a surviving population.

Nonetheless, the possibility that the Maori are above average in physical aggression would not come as much of a surprise to the Maori. They're a reasonably smart group and have done better than most recently-discovered indigenous groups, but a tendency toward domestic abuse as a cultural inheritance of a violent past has been a theme in popular culture by Maoris, such as the film "Once Were Warriors" with Cliff Curtis.

The Maori has little technology or resources to deal with the cool temperate nz climate which is harsher than most northern hemisphere think, especially in the South Island which had only a tiny Maori population when the Europeans arrived. For example, the Maori had no furs (only feather cloaks), no iron for fish hooks, and no crops suitable for cool temperate climates (only a tropical tubar called the Kumara which could only grow in summer). Subsequently, they had to survive on erratic sources of protein and very little carbohydrate.
By the 18th century they were running out of land animals to eat, and were engaged in brutal tribal warfare.
When the Eurpoeans arrived with potatoes and iron fish hooks then they started putting on weight. Add the motor car and Macdonalds and you have a sure fire recipe for obesity.

sorry, the first part of my last post was supposed to read: The Maori had little technology or resources to deal with the cool-temperate nz climate, which is alo colder than most northern hemisphere people think.

Interesting. I'm of part Polynesian blood, though my physical build and metabolism is more that of my Filipino and Portugese ancestors. I do have that tendancy for violence when angered, however, it strikes me as odd that some would argue that the most logical solution is gene therapy.

I do believe environment and more importantly conscious willpower play a strong role at the current time in dealing with those who might be more genetically inclined towards violence. My upbringing certainly did not remove or reduce my innate tendancy to lose my temper in a physical manner, but it did innure me to the rational consequences of acting out in such a fashion. Of course this is contingent on the ability of the individual to recognize the results of bad actions and control themselves. As it is, I've done a fairly good job by not getting into any fights since high school and figuring out methods of dealing with the feeling as the time comes (relaxation methods, exercise and as a final resort, punching and kicking an inanimate object to bits in private).

If given the chance to remove this tendancy for rage via genetic therapy, I'd probably turn it down. It has its plus sides in keeping me physically active when I start to get tense and providing an impetus towards self-consciousness about myself and personal discipline. However, if I did do something harmful, it makes sense that I be punished with no regard for that fact. It's just the idea of pre-emptive dealing with the genetic elements of personality without truly considering all the ramifications of how that trait plays into the greater whole of the person disturbs me. Perhaps others and maybe the majority might be the better for it, but I for one would feel like I've lost an integral part of myself if it was removed.

I thought the Maori were proud of their ferocity, and of their reps as fighters.

Here's a superfab novel by the Kiwi novelist Maurice Shadbolt about a late Maori uprising against the Brits. Bloody, exciting, and completely nuts: the Maori leader identifies with Christ.

There was once a DVD of "Utu," a great Geoff Murphy movie about a similar Maori uprising -- half anthropology, half black-comedy adventure. (And Murphy was married to a Maori woman, so he presumably wasn't going too far off track about what they're like.) But it seems to have gone out of print.

If you think that finding one "warrior gene" among a group somehow explains aggressive behavior within that group, you are confounding a correlation with a cause and effect relationship. I don't blame you. Scientists have placed their faith in technology that allows for genetic scans and are reductionistically determining that the "evidence" they think they find fully explains human behavior. There needs to be a greater awareness of what "biodeterminism" is when it come to explaining human behavior according to genes. There are probably THOUSANDS of genes that in some way contribute to aggressive behavior. In the case of the Maori, researchers are standing on the evidence of one great and all-powerful "warrior" gene. That's not even science. It's incrimination in the form of eugenics.

haere mai means welcome 2 my people 4 me your thank u is just a knife in the back,so this is what it means 2 b white a so called leader of people's only 2 find you're just another single gene twit like the rest so dont worry bout iraq,maori r doing more agro stuff its ok 2 kill palestinians,maori r shady characters and dont worry about terrorists,maori get hold of booze and he goes crazy,o dear squatter its such a shame that u can't comprehend the truth,but wait there's more,had u meant every word on your arrival in Aotearoa u would have seen who rangi and papa r,no we r not from china, no we r not from egypt,no we r not from where all the races on earth say we're from.my geneology,my line is unbroken back 2 IO confused,yep u tend 2 get lost if u rely 2 heavily on your past history dear squatters of the USA,AUSTRALIA,NEW ZEALAND and the rest of the world with these squatter names,get off your crap try 2 do some right 4 once ,walk the truth