Even 20-30 years ago we (especially children) had to rely mostly on the people in close proximity to us for our cultural download. He didn’t address it in the talk, but I’m curious what impact Henrich thinks the internet will have on the speed of cultural evolution. “Larger, more interconnected populations generate more complex repertoires and larger toolkits.”
Watched this talk after watching Empire of the Chimps, there are some very interesting points here. Being social is interesting and I would love to see more work on this topic. Not social in the sense of who gets what from who, or social as within the immediate family. What might be a collective intelligence?
EVERY Aussie who can read knows Bourke & Wills.:-) According to Bill Bryson who researched their sad journey (we didn't hear in school) B&W brought all kinds of weird large, heavy furniture with them. Huge armoires and dining room tables! Doomed from the start with their hubris and dandy pretentions, poor buggers. RIP B&W. Good talk Dr. H., thank you. Evolutionary bio is a fascinating field. D.A., J.D., NYC
Yam Sydrome. A hypertrophy of a dysfunctional human behavior within a given social prestige system. Are we too caught up in precisely such a syndrome? Perhaps, as we keep on favoring the software oriented technological progress, people will loose within a few generations some primary basic skills necessary for biological survival. If we do then face some environmental bottlenecks; induced by this very competitive prestige systems (Bezos or Musk) or brought about by ideological or religious nuclear-powered wars or a devastating technological development brought about by tribal distrust _ if we don’t do it, the enemy may _ or through environmental degradation, climate change or extraterrestrial disruptions; the humans may have even more hard time coping with the new circumstances than most of the other species on the planet. The latter, excluding some rare exceptions, are not dependent upon skills derived from cumulative cultural lexicon, whereas we seem to have lost the basic skills needed for survival that our parents can no more impart to us. I wonder if all space scientist would know how to light a fire like the Homo erectus apparently could, when there are no matches around! I wonder also how many of us can fix the plumbing at our homes, not to talk about the ability to survive in some harsh environmental conditions without electricity? Some see salvation in humans _ who incidentally carry within themselves more unicellular foreign DNA than their own _ inhabiting the milky way. Others see it in future cyborgs and artificial intelligence. I personally tend to think of biology as a precursor of a new intelligence that may not be biological at all and yet able to experiment and play around with life in some completely novel ways. A weird universe it will be! Of course this is not to deny the efforts of those, who are trying desperately to create some global consensus in order to counter this Yam Sydrome, that like the potlatch system seems to be an evolutionary legacy and are fighting the great divide between productivity and global well being of the the members of the Homo sapiens. Some are even going beyond that; as they have finally recognized the importance of plants and algae, insects and earth worms for our well being; hoping for a more sustainable planet for biological life. But even they are subjected to this social prestige constraint. Only a few exceptional ones seem to see in light free from this syndrome _ as an endeavor in search of evidence based truth, in other words as a scientific study. There is still much to be done, but work of Heinrich, like that of Yuval Hararri are helping bring this kind of approach closer to the public and hopefully to those who are most caught up in the increasingly redundant old system of social prestige.
All successful Monopolies are protected by the/or a Government, so before you pat yourselves on the back, it's kind of a no brainer ! Examples: Nuclear, Power Co's., Military industrial complex, Silicon Valley and off shoots, Banking and stock trade. Basically, Carte Blanch on profit caps and liabilities.
Yes, please explain to the Chair of Harvard's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, whose trained in evolutionary anthropology and is tenured in 4 different fields, what humans evolved to eat. You seem to know a lot more than him so I'm sure he'd appreciate your wisdom on the subject.
Kvothe Windrunner When trying to establish the credibility of an assertion, taking the credentials, expertise and experience of the person making it into account is not an appeal to authority fallacy, it’s perfectly fine evidence based reasoning. A PhD and a professorship in a field isn’t insurmountable evidence that the person making a claim that falls within that field knows what they’re talking about but it’s very strong, and anyone without those markers of credibility who contradicts such a claim should expect to be disbelieved until they can present a very good argument for it. Preferring your doctor’s diagnosis over that of a random guy at the pub isn’t irrational even if you personally have no way of evaluating it.
Kvothe Windrunner Nope that’s exactly how it works. The question is what are you evaluating. For evaluating the basic credibility of a claim, credentials are obviously relevant. For evaluating the logical consistency of an argument, they’re obviously not but this isn’t what this is about. There are no arguments here, no evidence is presented, there are just bare assertions, and when deciding which we should preliminarily believe, of course it’s relevant that one is coming from a professor in the field and one is coming from a random guy in the TH-cam comments section. People have very naive ideas how fallacies work, and I’m sorry to say, if you don’t understand the difference I’m pointing out here, you do as well.
Kvothe Windrunner That’s the thing. Galileo was very far from a “rando”, he was one of the most highly credentialed and respected scholars of his time. That’s why the church was bothered about him, they wouldn’t have bothered with a “rando.” The pope on the other hand had no credentials in a relevant field. So absent any personal ability to evaluate the contradicting claims here you should obviously give more credence to Galileo. Basic point remains this: if you can’t personally evaluate the evidence and reasoning that’s behind any given claim (because you don’t have the expertise, or they aren’t presented, or for whichever reason), which very often you won’t be able to do, you have to either stay agnostic or “trust” one side or another. And credentials are just one piece of evidence, generally a pretty good one, to establish trustworthiness. If you can evaluate the reasoning and evidence behind a claim, by all means, disregard credentials. But be honest with yourself whether you can or not and try to understand the difference. It’s not that hard and really, in the end, just common sense.
His positive assessment of human progress innores the vast dysfunctional environmental damage that modern culture has failed to deal with. Moreover, what of the millions of people who die from malnutrition, disease, war and genocide. In reality, this is just a warmed over version of 18th century philosophy similar to Tylor, Spenser, or Maine.
I don't think malnutrition, diseases, wars and genocides are modern problems. Plus, progress happens slowly, just because we have better technology doesn't mean we can eradicate poverty overnight.
Much of today's evolutionary thinking puts us so close to other animals that it is nice to see that in many ways we are different.
We take the evolutionary structures that animals evolved over eons and reuse it in weird ways.
Even 20-30 years ago we (especially children) had to rely mostly on the people in close proximity to us for our cultural download. He didn’t address it in the talk, but I’m curious what impact Henrich thinks the internet will have on the speed of cultural evolution.
“Larger, more interconnected populations generate more complex repertoires and larger toolkits.”
You should watch his talk on CARTA, specifically the Q&A where he addresses your question.
And be able to weed out the inequities that are being taken advantage of today !
Great talk looking forward to the WEIRDEST people in the world book coming in this week =) I was an anthro major haha
Watched this talk after watching Empire of the Chimps, there are some very interesting points here. Being social is interesting and I would love to see more work on this topic. Not social in the sense of who gets what from who, or social as within the immediate family. What might be a collective intelligence?
EVERY Aussie who can read knows Bourke & Wills.:-) According to Bill Bryson who researched their sad journey (we didn't hear in school) B&W brought all kinds of weird large, heavy furniture with them. Huge armoires and dining room tables! Doomed from the start with their hubris and dandy pretentions, poor buggers. RIP B&W. Good talk Dr. H., thank you. Evolutionary bio is a fascinating field. D.A., J.D., NYC
Tom Cruise is really trying hard to branch out...
Tom Cruise but 3 times as smart
Knud Rasmussen was Danish.
Gad Saad brought me here.
Jon Henrich Stiele Nov 5 1788
Yam Sydrome.
A hypertrophy of a dysfunctional human behavior within a given social prestige system.
Are we too caught up in precisely such a syndrome?
Perhaps, as we keep on favoring the software oriented technological progress, people will loose within a few generations some primary basic skills necessary for biological survival. If we do then face some environmental bottlenecks; induced by this very competitive prestige systems (Bezos or Musk) or brought about by ideological or religious nuclear-powered wars or a devastating technological development brought about by tribal distrust _ if we don’t do it, the enemy may _ or through environmental degradation, climate change or extraterrestrial disruptions; the humans may have even more hard time coping with the new circumstances than most of the other species on the planet. The latter, excluding some rare exceptions, are not dependent upon skills derived from cumulative cultural lexicon, whereas we seem to have lost the basic skills needed for survival that our parents can no more impart to us. I wonder if all space scientist would know how to light a fire like the Homo erectus apparently could, when there are no matches around! I wonder also how many of us can fix the plumbing at our homes, not to talk about the ability to survive in some harsh environmental conditions without electricity?
Some see salvation in humans _ who incidentally carry within themselves more unicellular foreign DNA than their own _ inhabiting the milky way. Others see it in future cyborgs and artificial intelligence. I personally tend to think of biology as a precursor of a new intelligence that may not be biological at all and yet able to experiment and play around with life in some completely novel ways.
A weird universe it will be!
Of course this is not to deny the efforts of those, who are trying desperately to create some global consensus in order to counter this Yam Sydrome, that like the potlatch system seems to be an evolutionary legacy and are fighting the great divide between productivity and global well being of the the members of the Homo sapiens. Some are even going beyond that; as they have finally recognized the importance of plants and algae, insects and earth worms for our well being; hoping for a more sustainable planet for biological life. But even they are subjected to this social prestige constraint. Only a few exceptional ones seem to see in light free from this syndrome _ as an endeavor in search of evidence based truth, in other words as a scientific study.
There is still much to be done, but work of Heinrich, like that of Yuval Hararri are helping bring this kind of approach closer to the public and hopefully to those who are most caught up in the increasingly redundant old system of social prestige.
All successful Monopolies are protected by the/or a Government, so before you
pat yourselves on the back, it's kind of a no brainer !
Examples: Nuclear, Power Co's., Military industrial complex, Silicon Valley and off shoots,
Banking and stock trade. Basically, Carte Blanch on profit caps and liabilities.
37:50 "obligate cooking species" is a tad bit ridiculous. Fruit is our food.
Yes, please explain to the Chair of Harvard's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, whose trained in evolutionary anthropology and is tenured in 4 different fields, what humans evolved to eat. You seem to know a lot more than him so I'm sure he'd appreciate your wisdom on the subject.
No it is not. Consuming fruit exclusively or to excess is a good way to destroy your pancreas. Humans are omnivores.
Kvothe Windrunner When trying to establish the credibility of an assertion, taking the credentials, expertise and experience of the person making it into account is not an appeal to authority fallacy, it’s perfectly fine evidence based reasoning. A PhD and a professorship in a field isn’t insurmountable evidence that the person making a claim that falls within that field knows what they’re talking about but it’s very strong, and anyone without those markers of credibility who contradicts such a claim should expect to be disbelieved until they can present a very good argument for it. Preferring your doctor’s diagnosis over that of a random guy at the pub isn’t irrational even if you personally have no way of evaluating it.
Kvothe Windrunner Nope that’s exactly how it works. The question is what are you evaluating. For evaluating the basic credibility of a claim, credentials are obviously relevant. For evaluating the logical consistency of an argument, they’re obviously not but this isn’t what this is about. There are no arguments here, no evidence is presented, there are just bare assertions, and when deciding which we should preliminarily believe, of course it’s relevant that one is coming from a professor in the field and one is coming from a random guy in the TH-cam comments section. People have very naive ideas how fallacies work, and I’m sorry to say, if you don’t understand the difference I’m pointing out here, you do as well.
Kvothe Windrunner That’s the thing. Galileo was very far from a “rando”, he was one of the most highly credentialed and respected scholars of his time. That’s why the church was bothered about him, they wouldn’t have bothered with a “rando.” The pope on the other hand had no credentials in a relevant field. So absent any personal ability to evaluate the contradicting claims here you should obviously give more credence to Galileo.
Basic point remains this: if you can’t personally evaluate the evidence and reasoning that’s behind any given claim (because you don’t have the expertise, or they aren’t presented, or for whichever reason), which very often you won’t be able to do, you have to either stay agnostic or “trust” one side or another. And credentials are just one piece of evidence, generally a pretty good one, to establish trustworthiness. If you can evaluate the reasoning and evidence behind a claim, by all means, disregard credentials. But be honest with yourself whether you can or not and try to understand the difference. It’s not that hard and really, in the end, just common sense.
His positive assessment of human progress innores the vast dysfunctional environmental damage that modern culture has failed to deal with. Moreover, what of the millions of people who die from malnutrition, disease, war and genocide. In reality, this is just a warmed over version of 18th century philosophy similar to Tylor, Spenser, or Maine.
I don't think malnutrition, diseases, wars and genocides are modern problems. Plus, progress happens slowly, just because we have better technology doesn't mean we can eradicate poverty overnight.