Richard Jernigan -> RE: New Dimensions, New Times (Feb. 3 2014 21:13:32)
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Ruphus, I have to say this is your usual over-reaction. I was agreeing with your conclusions, while expressing a bit of skepticism about your premises. Having spent 60 years as mathematician, physicist and engineer I am capable of varied degrees of skepticism. Mathematics offers near certainty, but of a somewhat vacuous kind. All provable mathematical propositions are of the form "If A is true, then so is B." These provable propositions are pretty much certain. But whether A is in fact true remains to be determined by observation and experiment, with the ever present possibility that new information may cause us to change our minds. Physics is a work in progress, but it is quite accurate in many of its predictions, and its most serious shortcomings are fairly clearly recognized. Engineering entails a good deal of judgment. Experts may legitimately disagree on the best solution to an engineering task. As you observe, anthropology is very much a work in progress, undergoing significant revisions at this very moment. Its present conclusions are certainly worth considering in trying to find a solution to our pressing problems. But the subject has been in constant flux throughout my lifetime, and shows little sign of arriving at empirically testable conclusions, despite the fact that the archaeological methods you cite have been in use for a century. Anthropology is a fascinating and valuable discipline, but broad brush conclusions drawn from it don't earn as high a degree of credence from me as quantum electrodynamics does. quote:
It is not so much about covering our evolution with a theory, than it is about taking notice about probability. It is ranking pretty much around impossibility that a short-sightedly selfish human being could had survived the lethal challenges of the prehistorical environment.…. You happen to be addressing one of the world's leading experts on the application of probability theory to the design of radars, and of countermeasures against radars and other sensors This expertise is the fruit of decades of study of the general subject of probability. It is one of the things that makes me skeptical of assertions unsupported by experimental data. You may be right. I'm sure you could pick a number of modern people who would flunk your test badly. You could be wrong. There might be enough people in a large random sample who would be capable and intelligent enough to survive. Only a large scale series of experiments could settle the question. You would have trouble finding volunteers. quote:
No idea about landscapes filled with mighty beast of prey, and how such does for small communities of collectors and hunters who are inferiour in all respects, except of for their ability to cooperate. I and two others spent six weeks walking in the high jungle in southern Yucatan and northern Guatemala in 1961. In those days villages were on average separated by most of a day's walk. Only a very few people had firearms. We met two. They were professional hunters who respected the jaguars as gods. They treated them with ultimate respect. Even annoying one would have earned opprobrium. Killing or even injuring one would have earned them ostracism, with an almost certainly fatal result. No one spent the night in the jungle, for fear of evil spirits. I interpreted this as a wise avoidance of malaria and yellow fever. No one that is, slept in the jungle except us. We were vaccinated, took malaria pills, and were well armed. Three times the jaguars came to see what we were doing, crashing noisily through the forest, showing themselves with no concern for being detected. But they didn't eat us. I have dived at least a thousand times in waters heavily populated with large sharks. They too came to see what we were up to, sometimes in groups of more than a hundred. It didn't take long to learn that they obeyed the same rule as others: the bigger the fish, the more cautious they are. That's how they grow up to be big. My college room mate is part owner of two photo safari camps in Tanzania. These are in large game preserves covering thousands of square miles, where it is strictly prohibited to interfere with predators. I have yet to visit there, but he tells me the lions and leopards are not afraid of people, but they leave the people alone. Of course you are aware of the rite of passage among the Masai of single-handedly killing a lion with a spear, to prove oneself capable of defending the cattle herd. I'm sure steel spear points are an improvement, but there is ample evidence of people in North America killing mammoths with stone spears. I'll grant that killing a mammoth might be better handled by a team. I have no idea how well these approximate the experiences of our ancestors on the savanna. I don't think we know how much effort prehistoric homo sapiens had to devote to defense against carnivores. But I do think many modern people, having spent no time at all in the presence of large carnivores in the wild, have mistaken ideas about their behavior. In my experience we evolved to be very careful around large carnivores. You can hardly take your eyes off a big shark in the water. Coming unexpectedly upon a huge brown bear makes you stand very still and be very quiet. It may even make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. It doesn't mean you are about to die, if you behave reasonably cautiously. I don't think it is wrong to say that cooperation evolved strongly in our ancestors. It is quite evident in people today. I don't dispute your anthropological assertions. You are welcome to them. I just don't assert them myself as matters of fact. quote:
In general: Not plausible appearing yet? Take the discomfort to inform yourself on what is happening to the planets ecology right now. Take the personal depression to allow fully sighting the dimension of devastation. Please don't accuse me of ignorance. I am a good deal older than you, and grew up much of the time amid a far more pristine environment. When I was a boy, there were jaguars in south Texas. I lived in Alaska in the late 1940s. My friend Ivan and I would set out walking after breakfast on Saturday, and before lunch we would arrive at a place where there was no evidence any human had ever preceded us. With his father we hiked on the Kenai peninsula before there were roads. We carried a little salt and pepper and our fishing gear. We lived off the very abundant fish and the local ferns, roots and berries. Clear running streams of drinking water were readily available. When traveling with my older brother and his friends, my job was to get up an hour early to catch enough fish for breakfast for six people. It was easy work. We were extremely cautious around the huge brown bears, since they are bad tempered, not only toward humans, but among themselves. I have traveled to more than 50 countries and seen what we are doing to the earth. I have seen the burnt wastes of Borneo and Sumatra. I have seen the muddy gashes of development in northern Thailand. I have seen the fish farms take over the land south of Bangkok, and the rise of the gigantic fish food factories. I have seen the hotels spring up for mile after mile on the road between Siem Reap and the airport, and I have seen the temples of Angkor become choked with rude and thoughtless tourists, carried there by huge busses belching diesel fumes. I have witnessed the redfish population of the Texas coastal bays destroyed when their flesh became fashionable. I have seen the destruction of the rain forest of southern Yucatan, the high jungle cut down to make pastures for cattle, whose carcasses are exported to the USA to make hamburgers. It destroyed a human way of life that lived in harmony with the forest for more than a thousand years. There are now ten times as many people in the Austin area as there were when I came here to the University. You can't drive on the main roads between 7 and 9 AM or between 4 and 7 PM. Most of the nearby areas that we enjoyed as wilderness are now paved and covered with houses and shopping malls. I could fill page after page with the destruction I have witnessed, just in my lifetime. It pains me deeply. quote:
Once done, in respect of the common apathy you will realize that we are completely detouched from a basic cognitive level, which even is no yet equalling a fraction of what we on the other hand comprehensively display in specialized fields as functioning dogsbody. I never said we weren't. quote:
When realizing the discrete intellectual fallow, the rest of realizing the mental suspension will come to you all by itself. Your presumption is often quite annoying. It is the opposite of persuasive. I suspect it loses you potential allies. I think there is a good chance we will learn some quite novel and very useful information from the burgeoning field of brain studies. RNJ
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