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Really good article, and yet another newsletter/blog I feel compelled to subscribe to yet probably never read (sigh). > What Chagnon actually said when he repo

Really good article, and yet another newsletter/blog I feel compelled to subscribe to yet probably never read (sigh). > What Chagnon actually said when he reported about men making war over women, was that man actually is an animal among other animals. I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of the GPTs. A considerable amount of the sturm und drang around this tech is centered on the question of how close to human intelligence they are, and/or whether or not it 'knows' anything, etc. All of these questions seem to smuggle in the assumption that we humans are 'special' in some intrinsic sense. I think what the GPTs are beginning to reveal is that they're not reaching some new threshold of 'human-ness', but rather that we humans are not as 'special' - i.e. 'separate' or 'above' nature - as we like to think.

ChainOfFools 4y ago
> All of these questions seem to smuggle in the assumption that we humans are 'special' in some intrinsic sense. I this premise, which indeed does operate largely without conscious acknowledgement, is the basis of belief in human rights.
- psychphysic 4y ago
  The basis of human rights is largely that we fought for them. That's why they seem arbitrary. And why animals lack them entirely in the strictest sense. Similarly democracy is just an analogy for battle. The bigger group wins, ideally with less blood shed. No one should be under the illusion that democracy does anything other than try to minimize disquiet (it doesn't select the best by any other metric leadership necessarily). It does not even matter how informed the population is. Back to the point. Why do we have human rights? Basically they are the things that were either fought for directly or got in at the same time. They are now expanding but I don't think many realise why they were started and the expansion might reverse what won't is the things people are willing to pick up arms over It's also interesting to look at the theories of human morals like Kohlberg's model. Very few humans reason with the post conventual moral stages.
satvikpendem 4y ago
Indeed, I was talking just the other day with someone who mentioned that machines will never do X like humans. I simply had to say that never is a long time. If you are a physicalist who believes that the physical state of the brain determines consciousness and thought, then there really is nothing special about humans that we couldn't replicate given enough technological skill.
ramraj07 4y ago
What exactly did you find good about the article? Sounds like the author just over extended observations from one tribe to all of human history. Maybe it’s true but it sure as hell ain’t substantiated. So we invented tools discovered fire and then just went back to dragging women by their hair to caves for 500K years? Or maybe there’s more nuance in it.
- me-vs-cat 4y ago
  > invented tools discovered fire then just went back to dragging women There is no "went back". That never stopped, and still continues today.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    > ere is no "went back". That never stopped, and still continues today. Rather there is no reason to believe this ever happened. It’s a joke and one that people now toss around as an anthropological truth. Sort of like prostitution being the oldest profession. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/08/08/caveman-courtship/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/08/08/caveman-cou...
    - me-vs-cat 4y ago
      Did you believe I meant that it literally continues today in the caves we all live in, or could this joke be a metaphor for the basic drive to reproduce even at the expense of other concerns?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- revelio 4y ago
  >> observations from one tribe The article claims otherwise: As time went by, evidence for Chagnon's claims became too overwhelming to ignore for most anthropologists. Numerous other anthropologists came to the same conclusions as Chagnon, both before and after his work. From Australia to Papua New Guinea to South America, the same phenomenon has been observed: Men kill each other at high rates in conflicts that center around the distribution of women.
amelius 4y ago
> but rather that we humans are not as 'special' - i.e. 'separate' or 'above' nature - as we like to think. Not necessarily true. Train a GPT on monkey sounds and you'll get a completely different result.
- dsign 4y ago
  We are "saving" a GPT some work by training it in human creative products. That makes us special by being "the first", but nothing else.
photochemsyn 4y ago
It's not a very good article - it's just a lot of projection based on a single example. Human societies did develop significantly over that time frame - e.g. the discovery that plants could be cultivated and bred to improve their desirable quantities was one breakthrough that happened >10K years ago, the steady development of more complex language and ultimately the recording of language in written form - it's just that there might not be much of a historical record of these developments. Almost the only thing that's been preserved are the stone tools, which also show a steady improvement over time.
- mcguire 4y ago
  Physically modern humans are a couple of hundred thousand years old.
zhte415 4y ago
Substack provides feeds for their stuff. e.g. https://woodfromeden.substack.com/feed https://woodfromeden.substack.com/feed

ChainOfFools 4y ago

> All of these questions seem to smuggle in the assumption that we humans are 'special' in some intrinsic sense. I this premise, which indeed does operate largely without conscious acknowledgement, is the basis of belief in human rights.

psychphysic 4y ago
The basis of human rights is largely that we fought for them. That's why they seem arbitrary. And why animals lack them entirely in the strictest sense. Similarly democracy is just an analogy for battle. The bigger group wins, ideally with less blood shed. No one should be under the illusion that democracy does anything other than try to minimize disquiet (it doesn't select the best by any other metric leadership necessarily). It does not even matter how informed the population is. Back to the point. Why do we have human rights? Basically they are the things that were either fought for directly or got in at the same time. They are now expanding but I don't think many realise why they were started and the expansion might reverse what won't is the things people are willing to pick up arms over It's also interesting to look at the theories of human morals like Kohlberg's model. Very few humans reason with the post conventual moral stages.

satvikpendem 4y ago

Indeed, I was talking just the other day with someone who mentioned that machines will never do X like humans. I simply had to say that never is a long time. If you are a physicalist who believes that the physical state of the brain determines consciousness and thought, then there really is nothing special about humans that we couldn't replicate given enough technological skill.

ramraj07 4y ago

What exactly did you find good about the article? Sounds like the author just over extended observations from one tribe to all of human history. Maybe it’s true but it sure as hell ain’t substantiated. So we invented tools discovered fire and then just went back to dragging women by their hair to caves for 500K years? Or maybe there’s more nuance in it.

me-vs-cat 4y ago
> invented tools discovered fire then just went back to dragging women There is no "went back". That never stopped, and still continues today.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  > ere is no "went back". That never stopped, and still continues today. Rather there is no reason to believe this ever happened. It’s a joke and one that people now toss around as an anthropological truth. Sort of like prostitution being the oldest profession. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/08/08/caveman-courtship/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/08/08/caveman-cou...
  - me-vs-cat 4y ago
    Did you believe I meant that it literally continues today in the caves we all live in, or could this joke be a metaphor for the basic drive to reproduce even at the expense of other concerns?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
revelio 4y ago
>> observations from one tribe The article claims otherwise: As time went by, evidence for Chagnon's claims became too overwhelming to ignore for most anthropologists. Numerous other anthropologists came to the same conclusions as Chagnon, both before and after his work. From Australia to Papua New Guinea to South America, the same phenomenon has been observed: Men kill each other at high rates in conflicts that center around the distribution of women.

amelius 4y ago

> but rather that we humans are not as 'special' - i.e. 'separate' or 'above' nature - as we like to think. Not necessarily true. Train a GPT on monkey sounds and you'll get a completely different result.

dsign 4y ago
We are "saving" a GPT some work by training it in human creative products. That makes us special by being "the first", but nothing else.

photochemsyn 4y ago

It's not a very good article - it's just a lot of projection based on a single example. Human societies did develop significantly over that time frame - e.g. the discovery that plants could be cultivated and bred to improve their desirable quantities was one breakthrough that happened >10K years ago, the steady development of more complex language and ultimately the recording of language in written form - it's just that there might not be much of a historical record of these developments. Almost the only thing that's been preserved are the stone tools, which also show a steady improvement over time.

mcguire 4y ago
Physically modern humans are a couple of hundred thousand years old.

zhte415 4y ago

Substack provides feeds for their stuff. e.g. https://woodfromeden.substack.com/feed https://woodfromeden.substack.com/feed