...why do we find puppies cute?

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[–] 17 points 3 months ago*

To start off, I don’t think humans are greedy and selfish by nature.

But… humans have evolved to find babies cute so we protect our offspring. And puppies have similar properties to babies (big eyes, soft, small etc.).

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    Like, theres no survival incentive for that.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Well... didn't we materially benefit tremendously from the domestication of dogs? So it wouldn't make much sense for humans to evolve to like adult dogs but be ambivalent or negative towards puppy dogs because puppies become adults. Also, I'm not a dog owner, but I imagine that you can train a puppy much more thoroughly than an adult dog.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Okay but what about cats and rabbits? We keep them as pets too despite them not providing any survival benefit whatsoever.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Cats were useful for pest control, and rabbits made for a convenient source of meat. (Dogs are definitely still used as service animals, e.g. police dogs, guard dogs, etc.)

    Like I'm with you that today, the vast majority of cats and rabbits are kept as pets for which there's no "survival" incentive...but there probably was a pragmatic reason to put in the time to domesticate them. Probably. And none of this diminishes my view that we are at least good enough for anarchism.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    Humans aren't selfish or greedy by nature at all? Have you met humans? Like, not online? Most of them are cool ! If you're having problems with some, just go somewhere where there are other ones, they're all over the place!

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Personally I wouldn't say I'm greedy. I'm definitely selfish though 😅 but from my experience not everyone else is.

    So, nah, greedy and selfish are just traits humans can have. And probably should try and work on ?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*
    [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    SOME people are selfish and greedy by nature and SOME are not. It's almost like nature creates variation and generalizations about humanity as a whole don't cover the nuance of the individual. Any system that relies on EVEYONE to be a rational, compassionate human will fail beacuse you need to account for the inevitable asshole. There are always assholes

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    So we don't eat them.

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