51–60 of 135 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which fallacy? I don't understand.
Person A got cancer from smoking, but person B got cancer from exposure to chemicals so smoking likely doesn't cause cancer. Its the same argument.
I may not have made that clear enough, however.
I've wondered if mathematics is a 'shared fiction'. Obviously money and laws are shared fictions, but I wondered if other species can't grasp math concepts (beyond counting) because there is a fictional or conceptual element that their brains can't process.
I've wondered if mathematics is a 'shared fiction'. Obviously money and laws are shared fictions, but I wondered if other species can't grasp math concepts (beyond counting) because there is a fictional or conceptual element that their brains can't process.
Of course not, at least in any practical sense. Even plants use the mathematical properties of fractals to make effective structures. If we encountered aliens that are as alien as possible, they would agree on the ratio of the radius to the circumference of a circle on a flat plane.
AFAIK, plants don't communicate or use math concepts (even if they grow using them).
I saw an interesting, related theory in an ecology book I read recently. Most native peoples were very in tune withe the earth (Pagan Europe, Native American tribes, Hindu India, Tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, etc). The rise of Abrahamic religion, with man as the most important creature on the planet and everything on earth created for man, is a factor for why we "dominate" the earth.
>Most native peoples were very in tune withe the earth (Pagan Europe, Native American tribes, Hindu India, Tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, etc). The reason there were so many bison in the US when the settlers arrived is that the native Americans had already hunted the rest of the megafauna to extinction. While I think there is a kernel of truth to your comment, I also think the premise that primitive people's we…
do you have a good source that details the evidence of this? and what megafauna were killed off?
i tried searching and from what i found, it isn't anywhere as close to clear cut as you state it. i even saw an article debunking the "overkill hypothesis" which claimed some scientists did some dating studies and showed that in a region of north america the large animals died off before native americans arrived. of course that could be false, but it just doesn't seem so clear as you state it.
I saw an interesting, related theory in an ecology book I read recently. Most native peoples were very in tune withe the earth (Pagan Europe, Native American tribes, Hindu India, Tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, etc). The rise of Abrahamic religion, with man as the most important creature on the planet and everything on earth created for man, is a factor for why we "dominate" the earth.
>Most native peoples were very in tune withe the earth (Pagan Europe, Native American tribes, Hindu India, Tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, etc). The reason there were so many bison in the US when the settlers arrived is that the native Americans had already hunted the rest of the megafauna to extinction. While I think there is a kernel of truth to your comment, I also think the premise that primitive people's we…
The idea of primitive people being more in tune with the earth doesn't have to go hand-in-hand with the "noble savage" romanticization. There's evidence that North America was essentially a well-managed game reserve. For people that didn't have much in the ways of truly domesticated livestock, it makes sense that they worked towards food security in a different way than societies that had cattle and pigs. By necessity, they would have had to develop practical and efficient methods for managing their food source. So sure, they were probably much more in tune with nature their contemporary Europeans or modern Americans, if "in tune" means having the know-how to bend and shape the natural world for their benefit.
I've wondered if mathematics is a 'shared fiction'. Obviously money and laws are shared fictions, but I wondered if other species can't grasp math concepts (beyond counting) because there is a fictional or conceptual element that their brains can't process.
Philosophy of Mathematics deals with your question: whether numbers or sets exist? Some say they don't exist in our world, but exist in a Mathematical world (Platonism).
> Surprisingly, it’s not our shared language or even our ability to dominate other species that defines us but rather, our shared fictions. I read his book where he talks about this. It makes some sense: you can operate at varied scales if you have shared fictions. When you meet a complete stranger, you're both members of the human race, sharing a desire for a better future. Meet a fellow countryman, and there are so…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> is intelligent life an inevitability, and is that a good or bad thing? Without intelligence, there is no good or bad. You can't begin to overlay a moral framework on the world if there are no sentient beings to create it.
Without intelligence, there is no red or blue. You can't begin to overlay a color framework on the world if there are no sentient beings to create it. Maybe universal morality does exist, we're just too simple minded to see it.
Similarly, morality is a property of mind. It's like color, not like wavelength. And unlike light, we didn't find any objective source in the outside world, nor do we know of a process that would tune our perception of morality with fundamental laws of physics.
Personally, I currently believe the only somewhat-objective source of morality is path dependence: all humans share the same brain architecture. I think all the base shared moral instincts we have come from that.
Sorry but isn't it just because we innovate? We innovate without evolution. Does any other species innovate without evolution? Something feels wrong to me here. It almost like it's the exact opposite: shared fiction is what hold us back (though it's probably good from a survival stand point), and innovation is what makes us unique, and it specially happens when there is no fiction but a real search for the truth.
WRT. the social part, I'm reminded of something 'lisper keeps saying - that the minimum viable reproductive unit for homo sapiens is a tribe or a village.
> Surprisingly, it’s not our shared language or even our ability to dominate other species that defines us but rather, our shared fictions. I read his book where he talks about this. It makes some sense: you can operate at varied scales if you have shared fictions. When you meet a complete stranger, you're both members of the human race, sharing a desire for a better future. Meet a fellow countryman, and there are so…