SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams noted that "on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars, and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons."
This is an interesting point, and one that's tackled in great detail in Kevin Laland's new book, Darwin's Unfinished Symphony. Other species are indisputably smart; they can learn by example, they can communicate, they can innovate to solve problems, they can use tools, they may even have distinct cultures. But humans are clearly different. Other species don't listen to Baroque concerti or read classical philosophy hundreds of years after the scores were composed or the treatises written. They just don't.
This difference really bugged Laland. He is loath to say that humans are special because that implies some vast, unbridgeable gulf between us and our closest kin. Laland is an evolutionary biologist, and he doesn't go for those sorts of claims. He knows that humans evolved from a common ancestor with other primates through natural selection and other such well-defined mechanisms.
Yet a vast, unbridgeable gulf really does, in fact, come between us and our closest kin. Something huge must have happened to explain how and why we alone have built cathedrals and telescopes and banks and submarines and smartphones and particle accelerators. This is not navel gazing; we are special.
So, with Darwin's Unfinished Symphony, Laland set out to define what that something huge was. He concluded that it was not as dramatic as one of our early ancestors getting repeatedly struck by lightning or bitten by a radioactive spider. Rather, his thesis is that humans alone evolved such a complex culture because humans alone have teachers dedicated to teaching their young. And the reason only we have teachers—people who devote the bulk of their lives to teaching the offspring of strangers not only vital life skills, like how to hunt and fish, but the entire accumulated knowledge of our species over the past few millennia—is because... we have such a complex culture.
Yes, that's circular. We generated culture, which shaped our evolution to allow us to devise language so we could generate an increasingly complex culture—well, that's how feedback loops work.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @03:02PM (3 children)
Does this logically explain the difference between meatbags and furry meatbags, how?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday March 02 2017, @05:00PM (2 children)
> Something huge must have happened to explain how and why we alone have __ built cathedrals ___
Of all the things we've accomplished, why include cathedrals among the 6 picked for mention? What logical explanation is there for that?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Thursday March 02 2017, @07:12PM
well, in a building construction way of looking at it, they were a pretty big jump in engineering... exact SAME materials we nekkid apes had been mucking around with for millions of years, but now those stones could arch and buttress and sing and fly into the sky... simple application of engineering principles, mere IDEAS which led from making crude one story huts to meticulously balanced structures which could soar... of course, the same could be said of later roman engineering and such, but they 'cheated' by using their great concrete, not just stones and mortar... forget about the religious aspect of cathedrals, they were simply amazing feats of engineering...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03 2017, @01:14AM
Never seen what a medieval cathedral looks like?
Had you talked to a dude who had tried to build something really tall circa 1066, he would have told you that, to support all the weight, you needed to make the walls REALLY thick at the bottom and everything needed to be SOLID stone.
Before too many decades, they had figured out buttresses; in a century or so, flying buttresses.
What they built started looking elegant, like they were celebrations rather than just fortresses.
With less massive walls, they could put big expanses of stained glass where stone had been required before.
They figured out how to paint on wet stucco so that the image became a permanent part of the structure.
Add on the stuff they got from the Romans (arches, domes).
Like the pyramids, it shows that a great deal of planning and coordination was needed.
So, big brains plus skilled hands (opposable thumbs) plus socialization were all required.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by DmT on Thursday March 02 2017, @04:30PM (13 children)
"Something huge must have happened to explain how and why we alone have built cathedrals and telescopes and banks and submarines and smartphones and particle accelerators."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Thursday March 02 2017, @05:00PM (6 children)
Something huge must have happened to explain how we can be so stupid as to pollute and radiate the only planet we live on, then make us race to try to find another planet to live on JUST so we can then go and pollute and radiate THAT planet.
Something huge.
Something like being stupid enough to think we are smart.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @07:13PM
Brilliant! [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday March 02 2017, @08:18PM (3 children)
Statistically speaking, building up resistances by irradiating and toxifying our environment is pretty smart so long as we're an over-populated apex omnivore that's is otherwise busy on developing the next generation of the iPhone.
Now, sure it's a dice roll. But the uncertainty of scientific progress in genetic engineering to workaround the demerits of population caps isn't any better.
Personally, I'm rooting for the zombies, robots and super-mutants so it's a win-win scenario for me either way :D
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:44PM
Zombies and robots and super-mutants? Oh my!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03 2017, @01:41AM (1 child)
If you think that random changes amount to "engineering", I don't want to experience your work product.
building up resistances by [...] toxifying our environment is pretty smart
It absolutely is not.
Traits acquired -after- birth are NOT passed on to succeeding generations.
Lamarckism is pseudoscience. [americanscientist.org]
...and really?? [google.com]
[and irradiating our environment]
There is no safe dose of ionizing radiation.
It's all mutagenic and carcinogenic and the effects are cumulative.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 04 2017, @11:43AM
An r-selection strategy has been shown to workaround toxification and irradiation for mammals given enough time.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday March 03 2017, @03:42PM
Never attribute to stupidity what can be sufficiently explained by malice because THE POWERFUL WANT CONTROL and have always wanted that whoever they are.
Now, what happens in a polluted world?
Who can afford living in a pure/purified environment, thrives.
Who can afford therapy survives, but is completely under control of who administers therapy.
Who cannot afford therapy, enters the meat grinder. Someone adapts to the poisons and becomes cannonfodder for research/therapy.
How is this different from any other marketing strategy?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 02 2017, @05:15PM (5 children)
We were pretty well differentiated from the animals before money.
Agriculture and cities seem to be the break points - there are some insects that do similar things, but we're the first "apex" sized animal to build on any significant scale. Others like Beavers, Birds, etc. have not been mostly solo efforts, while the big cooperators before us have been tiny insects whose colonies usually don't bio-mass much more than one of us.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday March 02 2017, @05:26PM (4 children)
I doubt the world record [www.cbc.ca] beaver dam was a solo effort. Of course, the person that went up to check on it saw only one beaver.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 02 2017, @06:26PM
I hiked through muskeg once.... once.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:14PM (2 children)
World's largest beaver (dam!), explored by Rob Mark
Read entire article, was disappointed. Would not recommend.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:46PM (1 child)
Now I have to go play with my wife's pussy (cat!).
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 03 2017, @09:05AM
You might as well, everyone else already has.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 02 2017, @04:41PM
Bullshit.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @06:16PM
Humans are not unique in communication, even communication of lessons learned.
Humans are however unique, as far as we can tell, in the communication of abstractions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:17PM (1 child)
Those tribes who could best pass on knowledge about food sources and their relation to seasons to the next generation would have a survival advantage, which would trigger yet further communication improvement in listening, remembering, and talking.
Big brains are metabolically expensive, and there may have been a tipping point where techniques for passing on knowledge finally could cover their brain rent, and then some.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday March 03 2017, @05:43AM
Don't forget about sitting around the fire telling stories about the lion who hangs out at the watering hole. Besides our hands and technical inclination, it's telling stories (that we learn from) that sets us apart. The story telling animal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @10:51PM
DNA influences brain behavior, which influences the culture you create. The culture favors people with certain types of brain behavior, which thus selects for DNA that causes such behavior. It's quite the feedback loop.
All those ethnic differences... the surrendering French and the drunk Russians... are most likely at least partially encoded in DNA.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday March 03 2017, @02:10AM
Rachel Laudan [wikipedia.org]'s book, Cuisine And Empire [amazon.com] (Discussion here [c-span.org]) provides a historical context for food our cultures and civilizations.
From hunter-gatherers to agriculture, throughout the world and history, the production and preparation of food has been and always will be the most important activity in our cultures and civilizations. Without it, we die. Well okay, we all die anyway, but without food, we die much, much faster.
I highly recommend checking out this book (or at least watch the discussion [c-span.org]).
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Friday March 03 2017, @10:17PM
I saw it on TV.