I think Hyenas are an EVEN BETTER example of the point Peterson was trying to make, that hierarchies are a fundamental product of biology, because it's evidence that they even form inversely across the genders in other species. Goddam, it's frustrating how people (almost wilfully) miss his point. He wasn't saying "patriarchal hierarchies are good because the lobsters do 'em". He was saying hierarchies are nigh on INEVITABLE in many species that share similar neurological make ups, even ones as old and distant as lobsters, and therefore they're not just some recent product of capitalism. So addressing them at the level of analysis of capitalism is widely missing the mark. IT WAS A MARXIST CRITIQUE.
That's an extremely dodgey point to make. Because we have no idea which came first the gigantic clit or the behaviour. it was honestly most likely the behaviour. so this not culture falling out of biology, its biology falling out culture. same with giraffes. same with humans, we are losing teeth because we use fire to cook our food. Or the big headed carnivore dinos, why are their arms shrinking? is it because they were shrinking any way and because there was no selection pressure to keep them they kept going or did they change their behaviour and their arms started shrinking because the behaviour change meant there was no longer selection pressure to keep them. Both options end up at the same point but they are opposite aetiologies.
@@wierdalien1 Haha, sure biology drives behaviour and visa versa, but it's not quite that essentialist argument he's really making. He arguing that the constructivist notion that hierarchies are solely socially constructed is untrue. Plus the selection pressures that enable them happen over millions of years, so the notion that status driven hierarchies only appeared in the past 300,000, let alone 300 years years is patently ridiculous. So unless you want to wait around for a couple million years for our hierarchical natures to somehow get selected out of us (which they no doubt wont), you have to admit it's a much deeper problem than constructivists admit. So striving for some utopian horizontal society is a fool's errand, and we should just work on keeping our hierarchies fair and fluid.
@@MrTimdog1985 fire usage is only a million years old at best. milk drinking is only 45000 years old. these things happen pretty quickly. i dont disagree with you or even peterson (he doesnt express himself well) but i do also agree with adam. using behaviours from other animals to model our own is at best dodgey at worst dangerous
@@wierdalien1 Except not all behaviours are the same, they have different levels of biological integration. And hierarchies have so much biological utility that they're expressed in half of the animal kingdom. It's not a "should" argument, although he does go onto make that with different justifications, that whole chapter from the book is basically just a fake it 'till you make it musing. Don't be afraid to present and hold yourself as being higher status than you feel, the better you fake it, the higher status you'll be treated, the better regulated your emotions will be. I tell you what is damn interesting about this whole thing, and probably worth further investigating, is how humans interpret information based on in-group and out-group influences. Like, if you don't like Peterson, and your tribe is against him, the human brain seems to be fantastic in reaching the worst conclusions with ease. I think out-grouping in bad faith is hard wired. I certainly do the same too to people I don't like!
To my knowledge, the main purpose of Dr. Jordan Peterson discussing lobsters was to provide evidence for hierarchy. It appears to me that Dr. Adam Rutherford inherently agrees with this claim of hierarchy as he consitently uses descriptions of hierarchy, such as the patriarchy he described in giraffes or the matriarchy he described in hyenas. Although, Dr. Jordan Peterson makes claims about the neurochemistry of lobsters, in reference to the use of serotonin, this was not the main purpose. It can be stated though, that through evolution, something both of them, again, agree about, neurochemistry plays a role in hierarchy formation. Stating that hierarchies exist and that they have some amount of connection to biology should seem like an obvious statement to anyone who is able to observe organisms and believes in a material world. Yet, obvious statement or not, as individuals believing in the use of logic and reason we are required to provide evidence to support or refute hypotheses. Thus, using lobsters as an example can demonstrate that due to their evolutionary distance to humans, hierarchies exist and have some connection to biology.
yes bur and this a big but you are still extrapolating from a completely different animal with its own evolutionary history, you might as well use fungus for it has the amount of use.
Alistair Shaw I actually did research on a fungus for four years while at university. Again, hierarchies exist. Animal models can help demonstrate it. There is some connection between biology and hierarchy. I worked in a lab for four years that did research on a specific fungus, Neurospora crassa. Although much of the lab worked on discovering the genes involved in producing enzymes that break down plant material, I was interested in the communication between cells. Why? Because as someone that is interested in the communication between cells that humans have, I thought it would be valuable to gain experience in this field. Later, I worked in a different lab that used hamsters to evaluate how circadian rhythm affects the brain. Some fungi, N. crassa as an example, use small chemicals, amino acid chains, to communicate to other cells such that the cells grow towards each other and eventually fuse. Generally speaking, this is specific to fungi. Yet, the cellular process of cell communication is very similar to human cells. Signal molecule, receptors, signal modification inside the cell etc. The whole point of using biological models for humans is that although they are vastly different than us, there are similarities. In 1941 Edward Tatum used Neurospora to provide evidence for the "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis. Using x-rays they mutated the DNA of Neurospora and showed defects in the enzymes, winning the Noble Prize in 1958. Ignoring debate over that theory, we can extrapolate the humans have DNA and causing mutations in our DNA would affect our enzymes. Using humans to demonstrate this is unethical. However, there is countless research, such as the phox2b mutation research that Dr. Adam Rutherford cited, that demonstrates mutations in human genes causes mutations in humans.
@@nsalem57 ok so my research is in small molecules effecting the UPR which was, in a much simplified form, initially found in yeast. I don't disagree with you that molecular work is similar enough that you can make predictions. Though as shown by the UPR it is extremely dangerous to say that is how it works in humans, the UPR is a lot more complex and actually its very difficult to say that one cell lineage in humans behaves exactly the same as all the other cell lineages. and that's a single pathway. Behaviours are multiple cell lineages all the pathways working together to say that you can use one animal as a direct model rather than a suggestive model isn't wise.
Alistair Shaw On the last page, the last paragraph of the chapter in which Jordan Peterson discusses lobsters appears: "Look for your inspiration to the victorious lobster, with its 350 million years of practical wisdom. Stand up straight, with your shoulders back." Unfortunately, my ebook doesnt have page numbers, but this sentence occurs at the end of the chapter. It occurs after examples of lobsters, birds, wolves, and humans (did a quick scan). It appears after discussions of evolution, different species, neurochemistry, and mental illnesses. It is hardly an aggressive statement and definitely not a claim of scientific fact.
Perfect answer in the end. Don't know what that stuff was about lobsters though. I guess people have all kinds of ridiculous ideas that sometimes gain enough attraction to deserve a 6 second debunking in a sidenote. :)
12:15. James Burke (Connections) covered that. People ascribe exaggerated proportions, and therefore importance, to feet, hands, sexual organs. And oftentime, female breasts.
"Religion" is really as difficult to define as "consciousness". The assumption that religion is limited to the worship of or belief in "gods" is a culturally bound idea. Also the idea of "agency" being at the root of "religion" I believe is wrong. "Agency" may well be at the root of belief in gods, but not the origin of the religious impulse. In my opinion, the religious impulse is based on transcendence, which is a process rather than an idea. That it most often does get bound up with agency, as well as all sorts of historical, cultural trappings, (including ritual) in formal religions is true. And, tangentially, neuroscientists are now suggesting that there is a specific area of the human brain that responds to "ritual" (whether one likes that word or not).
I'm glad I 'm not the only person that I've notice the poorness answer related to the religion topic answer ; as a witness of extraordinary Gobekli Tepe site , I wished a more profound dive in describe the significance of drawings from - maybe - the first temple of humankind there ,in southern Turkey. What impulses droved all those humans to draw ? Only sacrifice for an specific God , after reaching agricultural achievements ? Forgive me for my english !
Preston. Do you have any statistics backing up your claim that the viewpoint of women is not often heard? Especially in the social sciences? I'm all for different viewpoints but I'm not sure how the contents of one's trousers is the best way of getting a cross section of them. How about stating that questions should alternate between conservatives and liberals, between atheists and the religious or between any other groupings?
What happens to our humanity when many brains (millions to billions) are connected via Neuralink on the internet, will we become a global cyborg human hive mind?
No, language is fundamentally biological, not cultural. The specific languages are of course cultural, but *language* is biological. It amuses me how everyone always must disagree with Chomsky because reasons…
What on earth does Rutherford mean by Human "level" consciousness? Are we on a level relative to other consciousnesses? Is there a hierarchy he's talking about? Come on man. Maybe human "type" consciousness, but level?
put two or more creatures in a box, if they are not trying to kill or eat each other, they will be trying to communicate. Of course, Neanderthal's talked !
woodchuck 00 Peterson is a controversial figure some of what he says rings true and is derived in a compelling narrative but he’s know scientist and a lot of what he says needs to be taken with a pinch of salt and the rest is bullshit.
The talk and the q&a was good, but Dr. Fry is absolutely amazing... as always.
Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford and Alice Roberts are three of my very favourite people.
Alice Roberts
I love that jab at Peterson at the end
I think Hyenas are an EVEN BETTER example of the point Peterson was trying to make, that hierarchies are a fundamental product of biology, because it's evidence that they even form inversely across the genders in other species. Goddam, it's frustrating how people (almost wilfully) miss his point. He wasn't saying "patriarchal hierarchies are good because the lobsters do 'em". He was saying hierarchies are nigh on INEVITABLE in many species that share similar neurological make ups, even ones as old and distant as lobsters, and therefore they're not just some recent product of capitalism. So addressing them at the level of analysis of capitalism is widely missing the mark. IT WAS A MARXIST CRITIQUE.
That's an extremely dodgey point to make. Because we have no idea which came first the gigantic clit or the behaviour. it was honestly most likely the behaviour. so this not culture falling out of biology, its biology falling out culture. same with giraffes. same with humans, we are losing teeth because we use fire to cook our food. Or the big headed carnivore dinos, why are their arms shrinking? is it because they were shrinking any way and because there was no selection pressure to keep them they kept going or did they change their behaviour and their arms started shrinking because the behaviour change meant there was no longer selection pressure to keep them. Both options end up at the same point but they are opposite aetiologies.
You know i am still really annoyed about this and its been two days. i am mean its just so wrong.
@@wierdalien1 Haha, sure biology drives behaviour and visa versa, but it's not quite that essentialist argument he's really making. He arguing that the constructivist notion that hierarchies are solely socially constructed is untrue. Plus the selection pressures that enable them happen over millions of years, so the notion that status driven hierarchies only appeared in the past 300,000, let alone 300 years years is patently ridiculous. So unless you want to wait around for a couple million years for our hierarchical natures to somehow get selected out of us (which they no doubt wont), you have to admit it's a much deeper problem than constructivists admit. So striving for some utopian horizontal society is a fool's errand, and we should just work on keeping our hierarchies fair and fluid.
@@MrTimdog1985 fire usage is only a million years old at best. milk drinking is only 45000 years old. these things happen pretty quickly. i dont disagree with you or even peterson (he doesnt express himself well) but i do also agree with adam. using behaviours from other animals to model our own is at best dodgey at worst dangerous
@@wierdalien1 Except not all behaviours are the same, they have different levels of biological integration. And hierarchies have so much biological utility that they're expressed in half of the animal kingdom. It's not a "should" argument, although he does go onto make that with different justifications, that whole chapter from the book is basically just a fake it 'till you make it musing. Don't be afraid to present and hold yourself as being higher status than you feel, the better you fake it, the higher status you'll be treated, the better regulated your emotions will be. I tell you what is damn interesting about this whole thing, and probably worth further investigating, is how humans interpret information based on in-group and out-group influences. Like, if you don't like Peterson, and your tribe is against him, the human brain seems to be fantastic in reaching the worst conclusions with ease. I think out-grouping in bad faith is hard wired. I certainly do the same too to people I don't like!
really great talk
Thank You. Excellent
Now I want to listen to a lecture dedicated entirely to the weirdness of the animal sex. Will RI invite someone to do that?
Well, we have something along those lines - th-cam.com/video/En26p6GvtHw/w-d-xo.html
To my knowledge, the main purpose of Dr. Jordan Peterson discussing lobsters was to provide evidence for hierarchy. It appears to me that Dr. Adam Rutherford inherently agrees with this claim of hierarchy as he consitently uses descriptions of hierarchy, such as the patriarchy he described in giraffes or the matriarchy he described in hyenas. Although, Dr. Jordan Peterson makes claims about the neurochemistry of lobsters, in reference to the use of serotonin, this was not the main purpose. It can be stated though, that through evolution, something both of them, again, agree about, neurochemistry plays a role in hierarchy formation.
Stating that hierarchies exist and that they have some amount of connection to biology should seem like an obvious statement to anyone who is able to observe organisms and believes in a material world. Yet, obvious statement or not, as individuals believing in the use of logic and reason we are required to provide evidence to support or refute hypotheses. Thus, using lobsters as an example can demonstrate that due to their evolutionary distance to humans, hierarchies exist and have some connection to biology.
yes bur and this a big but you are still extrapolating from a completely different animal with its own evolutionary history, you might as well use fungus for it has the amount of use.
Alistair Shaw I actually did research on a fungus for four years while at university.
Again, hierarchies exist. Animal models can help demonstrate it. There is some connection between biology and hierarchy.
I worked in a lab for four years that did research on a specific fungus, Neurospora crassa. Although much of the lab worked on discovering the genes involved in producing enzymes that break down plant material, I was interested in the communication between cells. Why? Because as someone that is interested in the communication between cells that humans have, I thought it would be valuable to gain experience in this field. Later, I worked in a different lab that used hamsters to evaluate how circadian rhythm affects the brain.
Some fungi, N. crassa as an example, use small chemicals, amino acid chains, to communicate to other cells such that the cells grow towards each other and eventually fuse. Generally speaking, this is specific to fungi. Yet, the cellular process of cell communication is very similar to human cells. Signal molecule, receptors, signal modification inside the cell etc.
The whole point of using biological models for humans is that although they are vastly different than us, there are similarities.
In 1941 Edward Tatum used Neurospora to provide evidence for the "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis. Using x-rays they mutated the DNA of Neurospora and showed defects in the enzymes, winning the Noble Prize in 1958. Ignoring debate over that theory, we can extrapolate the humans have DNA and causing mutations in our DNA would affect our enzymes. Using humans to demonstrate this is unethical. However, there is countless research, such as the phox2b mutation research that Dr. Adam Rutherford cited, that demonstrates mutations in human genes causes mutations in humans.
@@nsalem57 ok so my research is in small molecules effecting the UPR which was, in a much simplified form, initially found in yeast. I don't disagree with you that molecular work is similar enough that you can make predictions. Though as shown by the UPR it is extremely dangerous to say that is how it works in humans, the UPR is a lot more complex and actually its very difficult to say that one cell lineage in humans behaves exactly the same as all the other cell lineages. and that's a single pathway. Behaviours are multiple cell lineages all the pathways working together to say that you can use one animal as a direct model rather than a suggestive model isn't wise.
Alistair Shaw Okay, we agree.
Alistair Shaw On the last page, the last paragraph of the chapter in which Jordan Peterson discusses lobsters appears: "Look for your inspiration to the victorious lobster, with its 350 million years of practical wisdom. Stand up straight, with your shoulders back."
Unfortunately, my ebook doesnt have page numbers, but this sentence occurs at the end of the chapter. It occurs after examples of lobsters, birds, wolves, and humans (did a quick scan). It appears after discussions of evolution, different species, neurochemistry, and mental illnesses.
It is hardly an aggressive statement and definitely not a claim of scientific fact.
Perfect answer in the end. Don't know what that stuff was about lobsters though. I guess people have all kinds of ridiculous ideas that sometimes gain enough attraction to deserve a 6 second debunking in a sidenote. :)
12:15. James Burke (Connections) covered that. People ascribe exaggerated proportions, and therefore importance, to feet, hands, sexual organs. And oftentime, female breasts.
"Religion" is really as difficult to define as "consciousness". The assumption that religion is limited to the worship of or belief in "gods" is a culturally bound idea. Also the idea of "agency" being at the root of "religion" I believe is wrong. "Agency" may well be at the root of belief in gods, but not the origin of the religious impulse. In my opinion, the religious impulse is based on transcendence, which is a process rather than an idea. That it most often does get bound up with agency, as well as all sorts of historical, cultural trappings, (including ritual) in formal religions is true. And, tangentially, neuroscientists are now suggesting that there is a specific area of the human brain that responds to "ritual" (whether one likes that word or not).
I'm glad I 'm not the only person that I've notice the poorness answer related to the religion topic answer ; as a witness of extraordinary Gobekli Tepe site ,
I wished a more profound dive in describe the significance of drawings from - maybe - the first temple of humankind there ,in southern Turkey. What impulses droved all those humans to draw ? Only sacrifice for an specific God , after reaching agricultural achievements ? Forgive me for my english !
The real answer to what makes us human is our ability to select all images with traffic lights.
Isn't our hability of inervison that make us diferente from all other species?
Given that I have the name Fox it is hard not to take the name of the fox b2 gene personally,
I'm not sure what the content of someone's trousers has to do with the validity of that person's question.
nothing but its nice to here from ladies in these things.
@Preston Halle because they have a different viewpoint which is often not heard
Pebbles?
Preston. Do you have any statistics backing up your claim that the viewpoint of women is not often heard? Especially in the social sciences? I'm all for different viewpoints but I'm not sure how the contents of one's trousers is the best way of getting a cross section of them. How about stating that questions should alternate between conservatives and liberals, between atheists and the religious or between any other groupings?
Quite simply to have an equal opportunity to question from each of the sexes .
Perspective does matter .
What happens to our humanity when many brains (millions to billions) are connected via Neuralink on the internet, will we become a global cyborg human hive mind?
Evolving the ability to speak and not speaking would be a waste of energy. It seems highly likely that Neanderthals spoke.
Fair point, though did they speak with a complex language that is the question
No, language is fundamentally biological, not cultural. The specific languages are of course cultural, but *language* is biological. It amuses me how everyone always must disagree with Chomsky because reasons…
What dumb and boring questions. Thank God Adam can answer whatever he wants, so that's still interesting. :D
Dr Jordan Peterson?
wrong about human speech being so far above other animals. We can't say how complex other animal speech is.
Yes we can
Yes we can.... get educated...
It looks like the Dr. has a crush on Adam.
Masonic3 she's married with 2 kids
@@eleanorhuxley6959 Point being..??
Nineteenth century language is not sexist. Man refers to humanity as a whole.
No they don't. They refer to men and not to women
wrong, beethovens. When we talk about the evolution of the whale, we don't mean one whale, of one sex.
What on earth does Rutherford mean by Human "level" consciousness? Are we on a level relative to other consciousnesses? Is there a hierarchy he's talking about? Come on man. Maybe human "type" consciousness, but level?
saying level consciousness is standard parlance.
@@wierdalien1 Standard Parlance is sloppy.
@@jfabiani never said it wasn't.
)
put two or more creatures in a box, if they are not trying to kill or eat each other, they will be trying to communicate. Of course, Neanderthal's talked !
I think the question is did they talk with words like humans, words that are abstract etc etc or did they make noises more like a chimp
The jab at Peterson at the end makes no sense at all, it’s embarrassing he thought it was a reasonable point.
who is Peterson?
Alistair Shaw oh boy. He’s internet famous, especially on TH-cam. Type in “Jordan Peterson”, and down the crustacean hole you’ll go.
it was a flippant comment, and i thought fairly amusing
tim hem check out Rutherford’s Twitter account. He’s hung-up on Peterson.
woodchuck 00 Peterson is a controversial figure some of what he says rings true and is derived in a compelling narrative but he’s know scientist and a lot of what he says needs to be taken with a pinch of salt and the rest is bullshit.
Answer: Being made in God's image
Oh poor creationist
🤦🏻♂️
Does Hannah like pebbles?
(Joking)