Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought • Hacker News Board

Re: Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought

#21

Post by xapata » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 5:18 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #10

xapata wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in the sense that cross-discipline study sometimes reveals common themes. One field having complex dynamics might make the world seem complicated. When many fields have the same complex dynamics, you start to wonder if there's something simple you can tease out of it.

Are you sure your digging deep enough? I have seen plenty of cases where different fields seemed to share a theme. But, the details always diverged on closer inspection, limiting the value of the comparison. To stretch an analogy stacking blocks seems like you can add the heights, except the weight of the stack deforms them, so addition is misleading.

At some level one can think of anything as unique, but it's often more useful to consider in what way two (or many) things are similar.

We've got a bit of a dialectic:

Thesis -- The map is not the territory.

Antithesis -- There's nothing so practical as a good theory.

Synthesis -- Use a subway map when catching the train, use a topographical map when doing flood planning, etc.

Taking it back to programming, all abstractions are leaky in some way. A good software engineer uses the right abstraction for the task, knowing that it might be wrong for a different task.

Re: Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought

#22

Post by mrb » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 5:19 AM UTC

For the actual research paper, look for http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.93 into sci hub.

Re: Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought

#23

Post by cnp » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 5:25 AM UTC

zackabaker wrote: post #2

> "Anthropologists are simply realizing that early cities took extremely diverse forms. "Clearly, urbanism is different in different parts of the world, and we need to be more flexible in how we define this," he explained. The tropics demonstrate that where we draw the lines of agriculture and urbanism can be very difficult to determine." It seems that the more humans learn about any topic: our own agricultural histo…

_The more you learn, the less you know_ --ancient wisdom

Re: Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought

#24

Post by honestoHeminway » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 5:38 AM UTC

photon-torpedo wrote: post #6

firefoxd wrote: post #5

When I was growing up, things seemed pretty much settled. We knew where the first humans came from, we knew when and where agriculture started, we even had 9 planets in our solar system. This was the truths scientists had discovered and it was unquestionable. It was printed in books to last forever. But you grow up, and you realize that these things are malleable. It's more like as of 1998, Lucy is the oldest human r…

Yeah, absolute statements like "the science is settled" are rather unscientific. Good science must acknowledge the limits of our knowledge, and leave the door open to being proven wrong.

Good science relies on tested data- and this tested data stays the same. The rules derived from it, may become more detailed - or in some cases even completely overthrown with a new ruleset, which will provide a reference frame that can produce such data. Best example for science is the Newton Physics, which allowed for pretty close calculations on planetary movements. The data gathered stayed the same, but the unexplained edge-cases and small deviations, where better explained by Einsteins theory.

Re: Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought

#25

Post by forkLding » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 5:50 AM UTC

Note that the editor highlighted that this didn't mean that they had farms at the time, the editor identifies this finding more as "proto-agriculture" or before what could be considered farming.

Just to help those who might be confused

Re: Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought

#26

Post by meric » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 6:19 AM UTC

burntsushi wrote: post #18

meric wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know in this practical universe, Newton's laws of physics and Einstein's views of quantum physics were both at one point "facts" but later shown to be mere approximations and both of them worth being doubted. There's no point to having science if all we are going to do is assume everything that comes out of the process as the gospel.

> There's no point to having science if all we are going to do is assume everything that comes out of the process as the gospel. As far as I can tell, nobody in this thread is even remotely suggesting that.

If I didn't think the parent I was replying to was suggesting exactly that, then I wouldn't have made the reply I did.

Re: Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought

#27

Post by fsloth » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 6:52 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #10

xapata wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in the sense that cross-discipline study sometimes reveals common themes. One field having complex dynamics might make the world seem complicated. When many fields have the same complex dynamics, you start to wonder if there's something simple you can tease out of it.

Are you sure your digging deep enough? I have seen plenty of cases where different fields seemed to share a theme. But, the details always diverged on closer inspection, limiting the value of the comparison. To stretch an analogy stacking blocks seems like you can add the heights, except the weight of the stack deforms them, so addition is misleading.

Human themes (archaeology, art, architecture, urban development, etc) share the commonality of the human. As we learn more about general themes driving our psyche and human groups general themes start to emerge. Of course, the emergent behavior of human societies is really complex. I like Noel Harari's "Sapiens" as he really strives to find the high level themes in humanitys development.

IMO, if a topic sounds overtly complex and focuses on a legion arbitrary seeming minutiae and, most crucially, you can't find the empiric or mathematical root cause for this complexity it's likely the direction of study is more or less bogus and based on academic eminence rather than evidence.

Re: Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought

#28

Post by RodericDay » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 7:09 AM UTC

zackabaker wrote: post #2

> "Anthropologists are simply realizing that early cities took extremely diverse forms. "Clearly, urbanism is different in different parts of the world, and we need to be more flexible in how we define this," he explained. The tropics demonstrate that where we draw the lines of agriculture and urbanism can be very difficult to determine." It seems that the more humans learn about any topic: our own agricultural histo…

Sort of.

While I studied engineering, it was common to get in spats with lefty liberal-arts types, who always brought everything around to talk of class, rich vs. poor, and so on. I mainly read The Economist, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and so on, so I thought this perspective was reductionist and overly simplistic, when reality was much more complex, a mostly net-beneficial process where foul-play was a relatively minor factor.

After graduation, when I started working, I had time to read more history and philosophy, learned more about my own domain of expertise, learned how the professional world worked, and also caught up with much more current events. Turns out I now feel like those critics were more-or-less right all along.

I still have issues with the way some issues were introduced to me originally, but ultimately I was just very reluctant to accept that there was basically a full-on class war I was blissfully ignorant of.

Re: Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought

#29

Post by InclinedPlane » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 8:08 AM UTC

xapata wrote: post #3

zackabaker wrote: post #2

> "Anthropologists are simply realizing that early cities took extremely diverse forms. "Clearly, urbanism is different in different parts of the world, and we need to be more flexible in how we define this," he explained. The tropics demonstrate that where we draw the lines of agriculture and urbanism can be very difficult to determine." It seems that the more humans learn about any topic: our own agricultural histo…

Yes, in the sense that cross-discipline study sometimes reveals common themes. One field having complex dynamics might make the world seem complicated. When many fields have the same complex dynamics, you start to wonder if there's something simple you can tease out of it.

Example: kelvin-helmholtz instabilities, applicable in dynamics ranging from vascular systems to cloud formations to interstellar nebulae, and so much more.

Re: Evidence that ancient farms had different origins than previously thought

#30

Post by boomboomsubban » Sun, Aug 06, 2017, 8:19 AM UTC

Will_Parker wrote: post #13

boomboomsubban wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science never settles anything, it's why it's such a successful idea. "Current evidence says the world is about 13.8 billion years old" is the way I would word that. With your method, a later revision says science was wrong, when it just didn't have enough evidence.

It makes a difference whether you're speaking pragmatically or philosophically. Since we live in a practical universe, there are facts of science that are so well established that there is no reason to doubt them. And many facts that aren't as well established.

Using your pragmatic language provides almost no benefit, and it opens the door to people doubting science as it has been wrong before.