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My point is that the human consumption of alcohol, tobacco and psychoactive drugs is a relatively new phenomenon. Hard to take seriously a person who would say
by cypherpunks01 14y ago
My point is that the human consumption of alcohol, tobacco and psychoactive drugs is a relatively new phenomenon.
Hard to take seriously a person who would say that.
- learc83 14y agoSorry I accidentally downvoted your comment instead of upvoting it. I upvoted a couple of your other comments to make up for it.
- sixQuarks 14y agoI just upvoted his comment to make up for your mistaken downvote. All is right in the world again.
- 10dpd 14y agoEr considering your karma is far less it's not quite going to make up for it. I'm assuming you've been rather successful in the important things in life ;) ?
- unimpressive 14y agoAn upvote is always one point. HN doesn't implement weighted voting. And the implication that he is dumb was quite unnecessary.
- 10dpd 14y ago"HN doesn't implement weighted voting for comments?
- unimpressive 14y agoAs far as I know HN doesn't implement weighted voting period.
- sixQuarks 14y agowow, the ignorance is strong in this one.
- srl 14y agoI think the "relatively" may refer to evolutionary timescales, in which case - maybe. It would surprise me, though, especially given that psychoactive drug use has been observed in the animal kingdom (source: wikipedia - what else?). Certainly on any shorter timescale, alcohol etc. use isn't even close to a new thing.
- jaggederest 14y agoIt's absolutely true. Homo Erectus almost certainly did not use tobacco, alcohol, or psychoactive drugs, at least, intentionally so. "Relative" is just that - on evolutionary time scales, at least half a million years or so.
- gojomo 14y agoDo you have evidence against his claim? I'd agree that humans (and other animals) have likely been consuming things for psychoactive effect as far back as such substances could be found... but a wee bit of consumption doesn't invalidate Kanazawa's point. We've gotten a lot better at collecting, cultivating, creating, and consuming psychoactives, in evolutionarily-recent history. Europeans had to learn about tobacco from the new world. Tobacco's been bred to be stronger since the introduction of agriculture... just as our cultivated fruits are far sweeter than their natural precursors. Evidence of alcoholic fermentation goes back perhaps 10K years (skimming Wikipedia). But even if the practice is quite a bit older, it's still 'evolutionarily recent'. Our primate ancestors might have happened across some fermented juice occasionally... they couldn't pick up a six-pack at the Kwik-E-Mart every night. Finding and consuming exactly the right mushroom/cactus alkaloid for creating visions, and not the other ones that kill you, has become a lot easier with literate traditions. And pills made in chemistry labs. What was a trickle of opportunities among our primate forebears – a level they would have presumably adapted for – is now a torrent. Kanazawa's point here seems sound in the broad-generalizing sense in which it was offered.
- GiraffeNecktie 14y agoFinding and consuming exactly the right mushroom or cactus is actually not a problem in traditional societies. They're pretty good at the gathering part of 'hunting and gathering'. The big difference with modern society is that psychoactive substances were much more likely to be treated as sacraments for religious ceremonies rather than something you consume at a rock concert or while watching the Superbowl
- voidrandom 14y agoAnd for your average American, how are the latter two activities not sacraments?