Originally Posted by
freemehul
It does not ignore the argument of civilization. There are aggresive civilizations and yet we exist. This continued existence is due to the golden rule of self preservation of a species. Again a biological rule. This rule states that with humans, that no sain human will kill more humans than his or her own inherital worth. For example, say we have a family and the father is at war with his children, then he may kill his son, but if he kills his son, then he won't kill his second son, or daughter. Why do you ask? Because one child is half his inherital worth, so if he killed two of his children. He would have broken the golden rule, because then he would have killed 2 * 0.5 = 1 his inherital worth.
Historians have shown us that this rule checks out ok. So the conclusion is that it is true. The textbook example they come up with to show the case, is usually the war of the roses in England. In this war he wouldn't kill his cousin, because he already had killed a brother and a cousin, so if he killed another cousin he would have broken the golden rule. Instead what happened is that he imprisoned his cousin. This rule is based on an instinct, so it isn't a learned rule like the Westermarck effect (which is of course imprinting).
Unfortunately because it is an instinct it doesn't work for humans whose mental health is serverely impeded. One such example are psychopaths. Hitler for instance broke the golden rule.
But military historians know that those who break the golden rule, in the end always lose a war, or lose power (i.e. dictatorships don't last).
This is due to the fact that people whose mental health is affected and who break the golden rule, miss two important military conditions and hence are at a severe disadvantage. The conditions being, the first, and seventh condition stated in Sun Tzu the art of war chapter one. Namely they are evil, and their army has no constancy in reward and punishment. In some cases these conditions become knock-on effects. Hitler for instance killed the generals who had ability (Rommel). Hitler didn't enforce discipline when he should have (it is due to his substance abuse that the allies were able to succesfully land at Normandy). Stalin for example weakened his army when he killed the officers due to his paranoia. The are numerous more examples to be found and they all show the same thing.
The fact that these mad dictators and tyrants lose war so often, is because there are other powerful leaders in the world who are motivated by altruism, which although the opposite of selfishness is motivated by self interest. The best example I can come up with is how Roosevelt acted in WW2.
Because we humans are all of the same species, this instinct works with the preservation of human civilization. Because ET is not the same species as earth human, then the golden rule does not apply to the hypothetical "first contact". That is because ET is not human! Hence not the same species.