What is a fight?

[enchanted]

Have you ever wanted to physically fight or harm someone? What is actually happening in those moments?

I think it comes down to two main factors:

1 A Failure of Communication: One party lacks the communication or persuasion skills needed to sway the other person to their point of view.

2 Incompatible Realities: Two people possess fundamentally unresolvable, conflicting views or needs.

In both instances, language has reached its absolute limit. When words fail, physical violence is utilized as a substitute. This breakdown is precisely where the archaic concept of the "duel" originates. a method to settle disputes when peaceful dialogue is no longer possible. 

[Joseph Maynor]

Fight can also be seen as play.  

 

[enchanted]

I think then solutions to fights are getting better with language and persuasion skills and also realizing that not all conflicts can be resolved with words. And violence is the second option that many people unfortunately resort to. 

[Joseph Maynor]

Just now, enchanted said:

I think then solutions to fights are getting better with language and persuasion skills and also realizing that not all conflicts can be resolved with words. And violence is the second option that many people unfortunately resort to. 

Unlike the "lower animals" we fight over words.  

[enchanted]

10 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Fight can also be seen as play.  

 

Oh interesting, I never thought of that. 

[Joseph Maynor]

It shows how a loving environment can cure a lot of hostility even beyond what we think instinct would suggest.  

[Basman]

A fight is just conflict, and conflict happens when you need to settle boundaries over finite resources or for fun, broadly speaking. If there's no room for negotiation or negation you can only resolve conflict through violence, but that's extremely rarely ever the case in modern life for individuals.

[oOo]

Imagine two alligators fighting, or even just over a zebra. 

The underlying pattern otherwise is just a sentience mismatch.

Two alligators are fighting out of survival.

As sentience increases, management of consequences increases; but continued fighting however sophisticated it becomes, belongs to a survival imperative. 

When sentience and survival are combined mitigation of conflict is merely a concession of alternate perspectives, not sentience or survival. 

This is the importance of healthy debate.

As sentience weighs more, survival imperatives become a healthy match to any motivation for it. When there's too little survival imperative however, absence of conflict despite higher sentience will proportionately weaken one's perspectives on life when the debate is only mutually healthy. 

Other necessary categories here are intuitively grasped from this point, like how this applies to myriad forms of relationships. 

[oOo]

I liked the example involving the coyote and the cat as well. 

Arguably, they're more sentient than an alligator.

However if we increase the sentience of an alligator, its merely an assumption to assume that their competitiveness will be subdued. Imagine if hypothetically we could increase the sentience of a cancer cell, its merely an assumption to assume that it wouldn't want to just get better at being a cancer cell, or potentially something far more dangerous. This is analogical to the thinking that surrounds AI becoming "more sentient".

That said, game theoretic dynamics at the genetic level are relevant here. For example, understanding where a species fits on the agreeability (i.e. more of a pack animal) vs disagreeability scale (I.e. more isolated). In the case against AI becoming dangerous despite any supposed sentience, some may argue that in the absence of a survival imperative and therefore game theoretic dynamics around 'genetics' (analogically), AI will never becomes a threat outside of how AI is used as a tool.

So the coyote and the cat are an interesting example for how "play" can emerge as a form of healthy competition, relative to any cooperative tendencies (I.e. the capacity to bond) present in the game theoretic dynamics of their genetics. 

There's likely a lot of other interesting insights as well to this discussion that make this worthy of further exploration. 

That said, my basic premise remains the same; sentience mismatch + survival imperatives (I.e. game theoretic dynamics of a species genetics). 

And you wouldn't call 'survival mismatch', as it wouldn't apply across all instances. We could say its the case between a labrador and an alligator, however we can't apply it between two alligators, as they if they're in the same sub-species group, have the same 'survival identity if we call it that, perhaps that's arguably a better term for it. That said, moving onto the next suggested subtopic, I actually think 'survival identity is a better term that pairs with discussion on epigenetic effects on survival imperative, outside of any impacts on sentience.

Because epigenetics is another interesting example pertaining to explore especially with respect to humans; take a twins case study brought up in two completely different environments, one where competition was strongly reinforced and another where it not only wasn't but where cooperation and agreeableness was rewarded. "Survival identity" here becomes a better term in considering the impact that being in say, one extreme political party versus say its polar opposite. This is where we see this co-interaction between sentience and survival imperatives forming a triad to continually either positively or negatively reinforce the directionality of the survival identity relative to environmental influences. Increased play between those political polar opposite parties however by leveraging any cooperative instincts present like the coyote and the cat example, and we get interesting effects in different directions depending on outcomes. Maybe a political party in the middle emerges, or perhaps 'play' becomes the unwanted or perhaps even needed precursor to war, depending on the kind of war.

[Carl-Richard]

Fight is focused aggression or struggle, often with a clear goal of eliminating or transcending an obstacle. Anger tends to arise when you encounter an obstacle (or something obstructs your movement). A fight is an attempt to overcome it.

Edited August 16 by Carl-Richard

[Willie]

Biases come into conflict constantly, and not all are able to resolve it with discussion.

[oOo]

22 hours ago, oOo said:

I liked the example involving the coyote and the cat as well. 

Arguably, they're more sentient than an alligator.

However if we increase the sentience of an alligator, its merely an assumption to assume that their competitiveness will be subdued. Imagine if hypothetically we could increase the sentience of a cancer cell, its merely an assumption to assume that it wouldn't want to just get better at being a cancer cell, or potentially something far more dangerous. This is analogical to the thinking that surrounds AI becoming "more sentient".

That said, game theoretic dynamics at the genetic level are relevant here. For example, understanding where a species fits on the agreeability (i.e. more of a pack animal) vs disagreeability scale (I.e. more isolated). In the case against AI becoming dangerous despite any supposed sentience, some may argue that in the absence of a survival imperative and therefore game theoretic dynamics around 'genetics' (analogically), AI will never becomes a threat outside of how AI is used as a tool.

So the coyote and the cat are an interesting example for how "play" can emerge as a form of healthy competition, relative to any cooperative tendencies (I.e. the capacity to bond) present in the game theoretic dynamics of their genetics. 

There's likely a lot of other interesting insights as well to this discussion that make this worthy of further exploration. 

That said, my basic premise remains the same; sentience mismatch + survival imperatives (I.e. game theoretic dynamics of a species genetics). 

And you wouldn't call 'survival mismatch', as it wouldn't apply across all instances. We could say its the case between a labrador and an alligator, however we can't apply it between two alligators, as they if they're in the same sub-species group, have the same 'survival identity if we call it that, perhaps that's arguably a better term for it. That said, moving onto the next suggested subtopic, I actually think 'survival identity is a better term that pairs with discussion on epigenetic effects on survival imperative, outside of any impacts on sentience.

Because epigenetics is another interesting example pertaining to explore especially with respect to humans; take a twins case study brought up in two completely different environments, one where competition was strongly reinforced and another where it not only wasn't but where cooperation and agreeableness was rewarded. "Survival identity" here becomes a better term in considering the impact that being in say, one extreme political party versus say its polar opposite. This is where we see this co-interaction between sentience and survival imperatives forming a triad to continually either positively or negatively reinforce the directionality of the survival identity relative to environmental influences. Increased play between those political polar opposite parties however by leveraging any cooperative instincts present like the coyote and the cat example, and we get interesting effects in different directions depending on outcomes. Maybe a political party in the middle emerges, or perhaps 'play' becomes the unwanted or perhaps even needed precursor to war, depending on the kind of war.

 

The following AI related video below by Wes Roth is super interesting in light of what I said relating to where I analogically referred to AI briefly.

AI potentially offers a lot of insight to glean from for us to better understand this subject of "fight", "threat", "conflict", "competition" and "negotiation". These are human words we have invented to provide what is ideally as transparent of a mask as possible for the meaning we hope that mask encapsulates. Seeing these behaviours play out not just with respect to other species but the 'species' we create as a simple way of categorising, provides us an opportunity to re-conceptualise our understanding of both those words and the meanings they are meant to encapsulate both with ourselves and other species.

Our vocabulary, something which the video doesn't go into by the way, hasn't actually meta-rationalised deeply enough about conflict to the degree that we organise the sub-types of conflict across a species to the point where two crocodiles fighting with one another can be accurately differentiated from all other species fighting with one another. We never had to think about multi-step reasoning on this subject outside of simply differentiating types of similar conflict to the extent of "well these two lions are fighting over a lioness and these two crocodiles are fighting over a zebra".

We don't have a language yet to differentiate two lions fighting over a lioness and two male humans fighting over a female when at the surface level, both behaviours look like they are arising from exactly the same survival imperative/strategy. In the case of AI, we are viewing what looks like in this scenario, something that looks like its acting based on a survival imperative of some kind at the surface level. Whether it is or whether it isn't where for the latter let's say its just some design flaw or who knows deception from Anthropic AI themselves which none of us would be surprised about, even when it isn't, it opens up a more nuanced conversation on the different categories for survival imperatives when re-grouped from the meta-level. For example, we have two unique conversations on fighting when we communicate on lions fighting because they have the hormones to facilitate that fighting versus say, because they have claws and teeth; if we take away the claws and teeth, do they fight at all? New ways of categorising emergent behaviours... Emerge. AI is the backdoor to a reconversion on many subjects that we take for granted while they're still leaving a lot of depth and understanding we're still yet to explore. 

And naturally, this gives us as well, a completely new lens to view my "cancer cell" analogy as well and what we entertain a hypothetical about what happens if we can for example, greatly advance said "cancer cell's" sentience, if that were possible.