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I see nothing that can't be explained by convergent cultural evolution. Also, what's that thing about "Shamans being able to access molecular information" ? Is

I see nothing that can't be explained by convergent cultural evolution. Also, what's that thing about "Shamans being able to access molecular information" ? Is the author seriously including this in his piece ? It makes it hard to take the rest seriously.

drewcut 2y ago
It's a joke that popular alternatives to diffusion are woo. Next line is "I guess DNA does kind of resemble intertwined snakes?"
- Spivak 2y ago
  There should be a law "if you make a joke to a wide enough audience you will eventually encounter someone who has never seen a joke in their entire life."
  - xboxnolifes 2y ago
    It's just Poe's law.
evv555 2y ago
I lean towards the "convergent evolution" explanations of perennial philosophies as well. However paleolithic humans have also gone through geographical and population bottlenecks. If there are convergent features in culture you would expect them to also be the ones highly conserved after going through such a bottleneck. I don't draw the same conclusions as the author but the idea of paleolithic story telling as being an ancient memory preservation mechanism is compelling.
- underlipton 2y ago
  Music even more so. It's said that common emotional responses to certain features of music are culturally-mediated, but it's also weird how consistently certain features tend to elicit certain emotions. There could be a physiological basis, but that conflicts with the aforementioned, and anyway, it's not as consistent as, say, a reflex. If I may succumb to romance for a moment: "And a song someone sings, once upon a December." Song as figurative memetic psychopomp, an automatic but not autonomic function to transmit ideas.
perihelions 2y ago
- "Narby spent two years living with the Ashaninka people in the Peruvian Amazon, where he observed the role of ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic brew, in their cultural and spiritual practices. His experiences led him to theorize that the Ashaninka shamans could access information at a molecular level through their hallucinogenic visions, specifically about the structure and function of DNA." That's a Stanford PhD anthropologist. Good god, the soft sciences have fallen hard.
- Gormo 2y ago
  What does "access information at a molecular level" even mean? Information isn't made out of molecules.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - carapace 2y ago
    > Information isn't made out of molecules. Oh yes it is. DNA, neurotransmitters, etc. biology is closer to information science than you might imagine (imagine with your brain molecules.)
    - Gormo 2y ago
      No, those things are substrates that carry information, not the information itself. And examining those substrates at a molecular level usually means looking beneath the level of complexity at which the information is encoded in the first place, and so not even seeing the information itself.
      - carapace 2y ago
        No, those things are where information and reality meet. When you smell something the molecule and the information "in" or "of" the molecule are not distinct. The meaning of the molecule is itself. I'm trying to offer information to help you understand the original article, I'm not interested in arguing about it. Being able to communicate between the "ego" and the molecular level of information means being able to e.g. smell a plant and know what medicine it is.

drewcut 2y ago

It's a joke that popular alternatives to diffusion are woo. Next line is "I guess DNA does kind of resemble intertwined snakes?"

Spivak 2y ago
There should be a law "if you make a joke to a wide enough audience you will eventually encounter someone who has never seen a joke in their entire life."
- xboxnolifes 2y ago
  It's just Poe's law.

evv555 2y ago

I lean towards the "convergent evolution" explanations of perennial philosophies as well. However paleolithic humans have also gone through geographical and population bottlenecks. If there are convergent features in culture you would expect them to also be the ones highly conserved after going through such a bottleneck. I don't draw the same conclusions as the author but the idea of paleolithic story telling as being an ancient memory preservation mechanism is compelling.

underlipton 2y ago
Music even more so. It's said that common emotional responses to certain features of music are culturally-mediated, but it's also weird how consistently certain features tend to elicit certain emotions. There could be a physiological basis, but that conflicts with the aforementioned, and anyway, it's not as consistent as, say, a reflex. If I may succumb to romance for a moment: "And a song someone sings, once upon a December." Song as figurative memetic psychopomp, an automatic but not autonomic function to transmit ideas.

perihelions 2y ago

- "Narby spent two years living with the Ashaninka people in the Peruvian Amazon, where he observed the role of ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic brew, in their cultural and spiritual practices. His experiences led him to theorize that the Ashaninka shamans could access information at a molecular level through their hallucinogenic visions, specifically about the structure and function of DNA." That's a Stanford PhD anthropologist. Good god, the soft sciences have fallen hard.

Gormo 2y ago
What does "access information at a molecular level" even mean? Information isn't made out of molecules.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- carapace 2y ago
  > Information isn't made out of molecules. Oh yes it is. DNA, neurotransmitters, etc. biology is closer to information science than you might imagine (imagine with your brain molecules.)
  - Gormo 2y ago
    No, those things are substrates that carry information, not the information itself. And examining those substrates at a molecular level usually means looking beneath the level of complexity at which the information is encoded in the first place, and so not even seeing the information itself.
    - carapace 2y ago
      No, those things are where information and reality meet. When you smell something the molecule and the information "in" or "of" the molecule are not distinct. The meaning of the molecule is itself. I'm trying to offer information to help you understand the original article, I'm not interested in arguing about it. Being able to communicate between the "ego" and the molecular level of information means being able to e.g. smell a plant and know what medicine it is.