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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 25, 2016 - 10:30am PT
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talking about physics in Kansas is relatively safe, no one really worries about physics, unless it starts to "gore their economic ox" at which time good solid facts suddenly turn into something unsettled.
as far as I know, the Koch brother's didn't attend my seminar...
and I do usually get a haircut before traveling outside of the west coast
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Mar 25, 2016 - 10:39am PT
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One can argue that science is also based on belief, scientists would point to the idea that science has to do with discovery, both of phenomenon and of the explanation of the phenomenon, which had not previously been known... where as the "truths" of religion are revealed, that is, cannot be predicted and subsequently "discovered." It is an essential difference, and a scientific point of view being one that actually seeds the refutation of the scientific explanations, and even sets the bound on scientific knowledge. To my understanding, none of the religions or philosophies place any limits on their points of view.
Way to distill the essence of the conversation, Ed.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Mar 25, 2016 - 10:57am PT
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I’ve been thinking about Ed’s statement that it is likely to be wrong to generalize about the minds of prehistoric humans. I think this is true if we are talking pre Homo sapiens. For our own species, I’m not so sure. I think it could be a matter of degree rather than substance. I base this on living among preliterate people in Nepal. What I observed is that their minds work the same as ours, only better in some cases, and less precisely in others. Preliterate people have much better listening skills than we do and much better memories. Visually they are much keener observers of both nature and the subtle interactions of other people. They also have a strong sense of cause and effect and abstract reasoning, it’s just not scientifically trained.
They observe that people get sick when the water is contaminated. They don’t attribute this to invisible germs but rather to invisible water gods. Same principle based on empirical observation however. Other correspondences seem much less accurate. Others fall in an interesting, more ambiguous, category for the social scientist at least.The first time a sacred mountain above our village was climbed and very irreverently, a glacial lake outburst flood occurred shortly afterward that killed people and the two events were thought to be connected because the local mountain goddess was rendered angry. Many Sherpas are now saying the Everest tragedies of the past two years are the result of Chinese climbers bringing raw pork meat into base camp for the first time ever and a ban on the practice is probably coming, especially if they have another bad year. While this may seem superstitious from the outside, I think it is no more so than all our grandmothers and many of our mothers telling us that if we go outside without enough winter clothes on, we will catch a cold despite the fact that science tells us colds are caused by viruses.
Along these lines, probably my favorite example is being told by an 80 year old Nepalese woman that I had stomach trouble because I bathed too much. "Look at me, she said. I've never had a bath in my life. That's why I've lived so long" (at that time, about 40 years beyond the average Nepali lifespan). Try arguing with that proposition.
Writing is a very useful skill, the advantages of which I became acutely aware of while living among preliterate people, but I think it is over rated in the creation of the recent human mind. I believe the invention of language was the true turning point in the mind of H. sapiens and that looks from archaeology, to have happened around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 25, 2016 - 12:08pm PT
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the whole idea of whose mind "works better" is a cultural judgement... my statement has to do with the expression of mind, which is multifaceted, and the claim of the inadequacy of proto-writing.
My premise is that writing, and the things expressible by writing, evolved together. That shouldn't be a very deep or controversial idea. You see it in the varied ability of students to express themselves in writing.
Writing as a technology becomes an extension of memory. But also, the development of logical argument is greatly aided by writing, and the development of an elaborate grammar of propositions, which extends across both literature and mathematics.
This all points to the possibility that the "mind" and the "brain" have much more to do with human success than the creation of literature and art. Jan's example of water born disease is an interesting example, and no matter the cause, the idea that some water is good and other bad, and that there is a remembered history of encounters with both, are important aspects of our thoughts that enhance our survival. The brain being such a big part of our metabolism has to provide such advantages in order to make any sense from an evolutionary point of view.
When you look at the explanations of the water born disease, there is first the recognition of it, and then a varying explanation. As the explanations become more predictive, those explanations become much more useful in terms of providing an important need, water.
It is a simple calculus, you can compare the rites discouraging evil spirits against disinfecting the water... one will be more effective than the other in providing safe drinking water.
Bathing is another interesting example, and it may well be that some of our "modern" cultural affectation with bathing could upset the microbiome around and inside of us, and cause health problems. It is not so much superstition as the limitation of empirical observation without explanation (experiment without theory). Our explanation of these things is just beginning and there may be many surprises regarding aspects of human health forthcoming.
The generalization is to take our modern perspective and imagine ancient homo sapiens as just the same, only without smart-phones... many things are the same, but technologies are part of a co-evolutionary process, we change too.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Mar 25, 2016 - 12:50pm PT
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True enough about cold viruses. An extra layer of clothing doesn't protect against inhaled viruses however.
...........................................................
Writing as a technology is definitely an extension of memory.
While I agree that the brain being such a big part of our metabolism has to provide advantages in order to make any sense from an evolutionary point of view, we have no idea how efficient our current brain may or may not be. We assume it is more efficient than the neanderthal brain which was larger, because our species had more advanced technology than they did even at the same period of history, and we survived and they didn't. Maybe though, they were just unlucky and it was our diseases which did them in instead. We simply don't know.
As for which drinking water is safer, the fact that we have to disinfect ours in urban environments whereas all the Nepalese have to do is keep human and animal waste out of theirs to be safe, doesn't speak to the superior quality of ours, which is also contaminated by industrial pollution as in Michigan.
Bathing and the microbiome is truly an interesting issue. I observed that the people who got sick most frequently in Nepal were those tourists from the cleanest countries. Now it seems that asthma and probably other auto immune diseases are caused by our too clean environment tricking our immune systems into an inappropriate response. Meanwhile if we continue on our current course of misuse of antibiotics, those of us with advanced technology will end up dead and the Nepalese and others who never bathe and live in filth are much more likely to survive.
I agree that we can not assume that ancient homo sapiens were just the same only without smart phones. In fact our beloved technology may not amount to much in the face of a large scale human catastrophe - nuclear war, widespread biological warfare, climate change adversely affecting monocultural agriculture or the odd large meteors or astroids falling on earth. At that point we will only have our own evolved brains and immune systems to fall back on, including our capacity to invent narratives, true or false, as to why this happened, what it means, and what we need to learn from it to have the will to survive.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Mar 25, 2016 - 01:10pm PT
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Nicholas Kristoff has an interesting editorial today in the New York Times questioning why we are so afraid of snakes and terrorism but most people can't get alarmed about climate change. He attributes it to the fact that our brains evolved to handle immediate threats, not vague problems in the future.
"In short, our brains are perfectly evolved for the Pleistocene, but are not as well suited for the risks we face today."
So in fact, maybe we are thinking the same as our prehistoric ancestors, only now distracted with smart phones?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Mar 25, 2016 - 04:27pm PT
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Ed: My premise is that writing, and the things expressible by writing, evolved together.
See, Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 25, 2016 - 04:40pm PT
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well aware of it, MikeL, but my premise above is about the co-evolution of the two, language and perception (or cognition if you will)... that both change, and consequently change each other.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Mar 25, 2016 - 10:16pm PT
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that both change, and consequently change each other.
seems like basic evolution. The environment railroads change in the organism, and the organism(atleast before humans) slowly chips away a change in the environment.
When a baby is born, in whatever culture, with whatever language, isn't that language a big part of the baby's environment? And as that baby grows, and it's language matures with the maturity that surrounds it. Hopefully it will continue it's will to learn and start questioning what it's been taught. Thus, "organism causing change with it's environment".
That would be a change in the organism's social environment, obliviously.
We human's have been critically working the social environment and it's language predominantly for at least a few thousand yrs now. Only for a couple centuries have we been manipulating nature that's caused a broodinging of our vocabulary. And inturn nature has given us rewards, and also is forging within us the lesson of debt.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Mar 27, 2016 - 11:34am PT
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easter?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Mar 27, 2016 - 11:48am PT
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However, our very modern forms of communication have a lot to do with writing, and I'd argue that emergence of writing has a huge influence on what we call thought, and also what we would define as topics related to the mind.
I would say that our brain has limited storage capacity and memory recall such that the written word was necessary for our species to accumulate knowledge. I personally don't believe that's the case with a number of cetacean species who have an oral tradition ranging back tens of millions of years. I suspect, but certainly can't prove, that their brains evolved to accumulate knowledge by that mechanism and it has shaped their brains for that purpose.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Apr 21, 2016 - 09:44pm PT
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Lost track of this thread . . . all this stuff is pouring into What is Mind
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Apr 21, 2016 - 09:52pm PT
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cause you keep tellin us religion is ALL in the mind.
edit; i hope ED is having fun on easter break!
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Apr 22, 2016 - 08:30am PT
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our pattern recognition software keeps inserting solutions to solve the ambiguity
not to mention science
not to mention modern age understanding.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Apr 24, 2016 - 02:03pm PT
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Neat! I can't believe I got eight out of nine correct. I should have been a humanist!
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Apr 24, 2016 - 02:14pm PT
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i only got a 7/9. maybe i should'a been a scientist
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Apr 28, 2016 - 12:39pm PT
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HFCS: "if liberalism is to mean anything at all, it is duty bound to support without hesitation the dissenting individual over the group, the heretic over the orthodox, innovation over stagnation, and free speech over offense." -maajid nawaz
If that’s all that liberalism meant, I would think there would be little problem or opposition. But it seems to mean more than that for many folks. Liberalism has been promoted in the past as liberty and freedom for the individual.
And then there is the societal viewpoints. Order, predictability, stability, tradition, criticism of radical social changes, etc.
Any “-ism” can be seen in a one light.
There are no final solutions. Everything looks to be unique when examined closely.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Apr 28, 2016 - 12:51pm PT
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I agree. Liberalism seems to imply much more these days, under the progressive banner. Where does one draw a line between progressive liberalism and advanced socialism? And is it necessary or wise to draw a line, since as we have seen lately a line in the sand is nothing more than that.
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