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When Orcs Were Real

treeofwoe.substack.com

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Re: When Orcs Were Real

#211

Post by jgilias »

wolverine876 wrote: post #191
jgilias wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have literally no idea what kind of a morality the vast majority of people who have ever lived subscribed to. I mean, even today there are still cultures around where literally kidnapping a teenage girl and keeping her hostage is the virtuous traditional way of getting married. What I was trying to allude to is that it's easy to sit on our high horses and bash people from bygone times about how stupid they were fo…

> We have literally no idea what kind of a morality the vast majority of people who have ever lived subscribed to. Human beings have consistent morality, in many ways, across space and time. As the GP pointed out, look at all the religions and cultural rules against the same things and encouraging the same things, such as not harming others and respecting your parents. There are differences also, but the extreme rela…

We really can not know this. We can only infer from cultures and religions in the relatively short timespan covered by written history. And even then, morality has changed significantly through time. A simple example - would you think that someone telling a story about someone else beating his wife to a pulp is something to laugh about?

Here, check out how the audience reacts just a bit more than 50 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccyu44rsaZo

I think the only moral that may have been something close to universal throughout times would've been something like: "Don't kill a member of in-group without a good reason if you're not the head honcho."

Everything else? We have literally no idea.

EDIT: Really, watch the video, it actually applies to the discussion really well. It's basically an argument about morals.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#212

Post by littlestymaar »

jtms wrote: post #183
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were approximately the same size as us. Shorter but wider and on the whole around the same weight.

Size and weight being the same doesn't mean they weren't far strong than homo sapiens. We are quite a bit bigger and heavier than chimps, but chimps are about twice as strong as a typical human.

> We are quite a bit bigger and heavier than chimps, but chimps are about twice as strong as a typical human.

How is strength measured here? Because that sounds strange for two species that close genetically speaking to have such a big difference on how muscles work. I would expect 1kg of chimp muscle to have roughly the same strength as one 1kg of human muscle, and having a muscle/whole body mass ratio in the same ballpark. But our muscles are localized fairly differently, with much more muscles in our lower body so depending how you measure, you could get really different results.

Also, the typical industrial-world-human is pretty weak compared to what the average humans can be under the right conditions so it may bias the measure too.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#213

Post by N00bN00b »

taneq wrote: post #163
jacobolus wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chimps and gorillas for millenia and they are furry, cannibalistic, violent tribal monsters Gorillas are largely vegetarian, and generally peaceful. Humans are much better example of “violent tribal monsters” than gorillas. Cf. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1977/12/25/t...

Are they? http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161128-groups-of-gorillas-h...

Easy enough to guess how that works.

Give chimps/gorillas/humans enough territory and they're peaceful, make them compete with others of the same species for limited resources and they'll turn violent.

I don't need much more than basic evolutionary theory to support that.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#214

Post by poisonarena »

wwtrv wrote: post #209
poisonarena wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may be putting words in my mouth and getting pretty worked up, because I didn't say what you are implying. I am just stating(for the third time now) that Spain was at the cutting edge in 15th century warfare. Regarding your last paragraph, which is on some other tangent, but since you brought it up, it is known that the Aztecs and Mexica had a very different view on the purpose of warfare.

While it’s true that the conquistadors had immense success in their initial encounters with the natives, the Aztecs would have adapted eventually to counter the Spanish had they not been crippled by the European diseases. This seems to have already been the case in the siege of Tenochtitlan where the Spanish suffers huge casualties despite having similar numbers (together with their allies) to the Aztecs. This was th…

How could you say that like it is a fact? How do you know the Aztec triple alliance would have countered the Spanish?

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#215

Post by tomjen3 »

midjji wrote: post #94

It makes for a good story to be sure, but probably little else. Much like the popular myth of the noble savage influencing academics of the time, contemporary popular disdain for the people and cultures of the past colors many contemporary academics. Another weird thing, So we have found evidence of the feathers of dinosaurs, but not the fur of something from 40k years ago? that seems rather unlikely. In this case, t…

Dane here.

I had friends who were shorts all the time, but almost everybody will wear thick clothing in winter, and walking barefoot in the snow will cause frostbite and/or is extremely painful (yes I did that, just to see what happens. I was young once. It may have been one of the most painful things I ever did). Humans can survive in the cold because we are smart enough to cover up, not because some of us are so hardcore that we break the laws of physics.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#216

Post by poisonarena »

wwtrv wrote: post #207
poisonarena wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who trained Cortes? The Spanish developed tactics for decades and decades, building knowledge from previous wars and conquests.

Cortes was an opportunistic lawyer/notary he had no military experience before the conquest of Mexico and I’m not sure there is any evidence that he had any military education.

Well he overthrew the Aztec Empire..

Also his dad was an infantry captain. And he seemed to be commanding his armies, and armies of allied tribes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Otumba

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#218

Post by openasocket »

So I think this argument can be broken up into two parts: (1) that all of these different myths and legends across cultures (Cyclops, bugbear, ogre, oni, etc.) have a common root, and (2) that Neanderthals are the source of this common root. This article, and most of the criticism, are focused on the second part of that argument, largely because that's where most of the concrete evidence and facts can be considered. But there's a lot to criticize about the first part of that argument as well. There's so many differences between all of these different stories that I can't really imagine there is a common origin point going back tens of thousands of years. I mean the only common thread here is a large humanoid creature that eats people, and even that vague description leaves out more than a few of the mythological creatures referenced in the article. Is it so hard to believe that people could come up with such an idea on their own, independently and without a real-life example to work with?

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#219

Post by throwanem »

wolverine876 wrote: post #185
throwanem wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you think is going on here? Well, to go by your prior comments, you're confusing "pick whatever just-so story you like" with how history is done. Feel free to continue, of course; I've more or less given up arguing with post-truthers in general, and certainly see no point in doing so here.

Please don't give up. Give them something positive - they really have better options in life than a world of confusion and ignorance.

I'm not wholly without hostages to fortune, or at least people I love who don't know by default to mistrust everything they hear from the goddamned Internet. I worry about them first, friends after, and randos in HN comment threads with whatever's left over, which is nothing to speak of at the moment. I'm tired. So it goes.

Re: When Orcs Were Real

#220

Post by wolverine876 »

jgilias wrote: post #211
wolverine876 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have literally no idea what kind of a morality the vast majority of people who have ever lived subscribed to. Human beings have consistent morality, in many ways, across space and time. As the GP pointed out, look at all the religions and cultural rules against the same things and encouraging the same things, such as not harming others and respecting your parents. There are differences also, but the extreme rela…

We really can not know this. We can only infer from cultures and religions in the relatively short timespan covered by written history. And even then, morality has changed significantly through time. A simple example - would you think that someone telling a story about someone else beating his wife to a pulp is something to laugh about? Here, check out how the audience reacts just a bit more than 50 years ago: https:…

> We really can not know this. We can only infer from cultures and religions in the relatively short timespan covered by written history.

That written history covers an enormous amount of ground, with records going back 6,000 years and in diverse cultures, from Sanskrit in what is now India to cuneiform to China for thousands of years, etc., and those records including older materials. Anthropologists have been studying different cultures for a long time and have plenty of evidence of what is consistent across them. Much is known about how morality develops in children. Etc.

Every human being understands it. You don't walk into a room in a strange culture and wonder, 'maybe these people think it's funny to poison each other' or 'maybe they are pure anarchists' or 'maybe they eat all their children'.

We can't have perfect knowledge of this question or anything, but to confuse that with no knowledge is absurd. For example,

> We have literally no idea.

Why is it important to you (and others) to try to push a transparent falsehood that empowers evil behavior?

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