And yes, people here (mainly the elderly) do keep vast sums of cash at home http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2027129/Honest-Japan...

Japan also has some of the densest cities on earth.

Of course, it's far from perfect (there's plenty of crime, people still lock their doors, and sexual violence seems to be off the charts), but it shows that paranoia doesn't have to be the default state. If they made it this far, how much further is possible within human nature?

People here are basically honest. There aren't any turnstiles on the transit system --- they just assume you'll have bought a ticket. Children roam the streets on their own and think nothing of talking to random adults.

Of course, they back up this trust with enforcement; there are occasional spot checks on the transit system with big fines; and if you don't pay a driving ticket the police will come to your house and remove your license plates...

Now I guess someone would call a bomb disposal team and cut the traffic 3 blocks around it. (and I would have been very sad, because to this day I still love that bag, leather, light, durable, practical, it still fits a modern 13" laptop perfectly)

Anyhow, this thread is all anecdotes.

That's true. And crime statistics aren't much more useful because willingness to report and how well the police handle filing differ a lot between cultures.

The crime statistics themselves are very useful, there's no need to chuck them about because some level of crime goes unreported. Statisticians have long ago realised that we can measure this too.

All the apartments have thick security doors[1], lower windows of buildings have iron bars and all gardens have tall fences. If you leave anything that looks even remotely valuable in your car, someone will break a window and grab it. There is tonnes of vandalism, and even if you leave a motorbike locked with a secure lock it's somewhat likely it won't be there the next day.

It sounds the complete opposite of Japan!

[1] A few weeks after I arrived I was at a friends house and there was a disturbance of some sort in the apartment next door. The police couldn't get in, so called the fire service who had to work for 20 minutes to break the door down. They considered going in through the outside, but it was the third floor and all the windows had metal shutters.

Why are we still assuming that as a given, instead of trying to change it at its roots?

My upbringing has had this "golden rule of ethics" (don't do to others what you don't want done upon yourself) ingrained in me pretty well, so I would never feel excitement about this.

(Hypothesis: This ridiculous objectivism has had people forget how much cooperation is ingrained into humans by nature.)

That said, I am aware that such thoughts exist in my subconsciousness, because the subc is always exploring all possible paths, but I have never experienced that as an even remotely acceptable (in terms of my own moral) path of action.

This only works for people who sufficiently appreciate their own possessions. Others might develop a very relaxed "stuff comes, stuff goes, who cares it's just materialistic crap anyways" attitude and and that equips them to have surprisingly little remorse in regards to theft. This is probably exemplified best in the extremely high rate of theft affecting near-zero-value bikes in many Dutch cities. That kind of thief might even rationalize by inverting guilt, "if he feels bad about the loss it's his own fault that he is not as cool about shitty old piles of rust as I am"

You've missed my point for the opportunity to moralize and posture. Consider this: You know cheating is wrong, you probably consider yourself to be someone that would never do it, yet you can still acknowledge that it would most likely be enjoyable for at least a very short while, right? That's all I'm saying, not (lmao) some kind of faux-objectivist philosophy on the right to take other people's property or whatever it is you seem to be imagining.

Because eugenics went out of fashion a long time ago. The "roots" is free will, so you can't really change that without horrific consequences. Using birth control (voluntary and involuntary) to bias the population was a popular idea in the 1920s. China's latest gamifaction of "social credit" is another biasing attempt. I'm not aware of any "roots" solution that doesn't require total surveillance or head measurements...

We have a way to go, but we have made at least some progress. Maybe in another few hundred years humans won't be so 'Us and Them'. Maybe materialism will be the next thing we work on. Who knows, maybe by the time we reach the next galaxy we'll have it sorted out.

If the most powerful institution in the western world couldn't "fix" this aspect of human nature over millennia, it is sheer arrogance to think we can do better today.

Something like aggressive behavior though, is something that can be selected against.

You mean change human nature?

Actually it's the exact opposite: very pragmatic and empirically verified.

It's exactly what people, in statistical quantities, tend to do over what they tend not to do.

Plus, most of it is shared with our animal siblings.

Except if you think that an Elephant or a Cat doesn't have certain natural characteristics (insticts, behaviors, traits) based on their species.

That's because it's a casual online conversation. I don't stuff my responses with citations when I'm not writing a paper.

>Do people ever?

Yes. There are tons of research on human psychology, cognition, physiology, evolutionary traits, instincts and other aspects of what colloquially is called "human nature".

There, now the philosophical twaddle is excised without ruining the spirit of the point

Also, thanks for the unjustified rudeness, you've made a great contribution today.

Do you mean chemical lobotomies or a post scarcity economy? Because there are some wants that are impossible to fulfill, for example: there are a bunch of murderers in Syria motivated by the desire to fly a winged horse to a sky mansion where 72 infinity virgins await. I don't see that happening, even post scarcity.