61–70 of 86 posts
I have a bird feeder in my small back garden. Sometimes there is a lot of activity - mainly chickadees, finches and goldfinches competing for the feeder perches. When this happens, a hummingbird often shows up and seems to just be watching the activity. (I don't have a hummingbird feeder). I have no idea why it does this.
I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating. There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way. Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war,…
The warfare predates even our ability to formulate such rationalizations. This has a lot of applicability in our personal lives. Is the reason I did X really Y, or is Y a post fact rationalization A hypothesis that I find very fascinating is that all consciousness is a post fact process, and that free will and control are illusory.
I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating. There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way. Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war,…
The warfare predates even our ability to formulate such rationalizations. This has a lot of applicability in our personal lives. Is the reason I did X really Y, or is Y a post fact rationalization A hypothesis that I find very fascinating is that all consciousness is a post fact process, and that free will and control are illusory.
That's an interesting concept. The novel 'Blindsight' uses this to great effect.
Serious trypophobia from that one image on the linked article.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The warfare predates even our ability to formulate such rationalizations. This has a lot of applicability in our personal lives. Is the reason I did X really Y, or is Y a post fact rationalization A hypothesis that I find very fascinating is that all consciousness is a post fact process, and that free will and control are illusory.
> A hypothesis that I find very fascinating is that all consciousness is a post fact process, and that free will and control are illusory. That's an interesting concept. The novel 'Blindsight' uses this to great effect. https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The warfare predates even our ability to formulate such rationalizations. This has a lot of applicability in our personal lives. Is the reason I did X really Y, or is Y a post fact rationalization A hypothesis that I find very fascinating is that all consciousness is a post fact process, and that free will and control are illusory.
You are ruling out the possibility of unconscious (in the Jungian sense) and subconscious components of human will.
At first I didn’t understand what the motivation for such complex social behaviour, and risk taking. But then they explained the acorn larders. Large static depositories of food wealth. This makes me think of humanity and the organisation of large societies, and war, that appears to be associated with the development of agriculture.