51–60 of 126 posts
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Asians are smarter though
Not enough to be considered a different species.
It seems quite plausible older humans could all be significantly below 100 average and have just not figured anything out.
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An axiom of every discussion you'll ever have is that all populations have exactly the same mean and standard deviation for every single measurable psychological trait that you can think of.
Which is all out wrong if you look at the literature. Nutrition, education, nurturing young, and inbreeding can have profound effects.
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As I understand it, this is an open question, but one explanation has a few factors: a) In the absence of many external pressures, hunting and gathering is actually a reasonably low-effort and flexible lifestyle. From a moment-to-moment perspective, agriculture (and our "technological" world) mostly doesn't seem like an improvement. Long-term, the quality-of-life improvements come about in resiliency and stability, b…
So why was mankind perfectly satisfied with stasis for tens of thousands of years and then suddenly decide to get their proverbial shit together and become relentless and driven ~6000 years ago?
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Göbekli Tepe actually proves that highly organized cities are a lot older than agriculture itself. More broadly, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that civilization - at least as in highly developed cities allowing for trade, exchange, production of material goods and even creation of impressive stone monuments - is in fact older than was previously thought. Many of those unknown civilizations may been affecte…
In general, I would hazard that our reconstruction of Paleolithic and Mesolithic societies is sketchy at best. Another potential issue is that some of our understanding of Paleolithic societies comes from observation of modern hunter-gatherer societies, which exist in a context where they've been pushed off of any agriculturally productive land. I'll point out that cereal crops require substantial processing to be ma…
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But even the Roman Empire--looked at on a long enough timescale--basically didn't move the needle on societal advancement relative to what happened once the industrial revolution got going. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.co...
The roman empire had steam powered contraceptions or prototypes too but lacked the machinery to produce them in large scale but more importantly their demographic were not very open to automation since they had human robots they could control aka slaves. Why build an elaborate steam powered textile factory when it costs nothing to use slaves to do it for you? Why do you need UFC on 4k television when you can watch gl…
I flew to Alaska, and drove down to BC. Before I went I was expecting Alaska to be a desolate place. Alaska is actually pretty developed. Lots of commercial activity, with power lines and trucks going from place to place. I would compare it to Northern Ontario. When I drove down through Yukon, literally drove for hours without seeing any signs of humans other than the road. Very pristine environment from what I remem…
curious where did you go exactly in Yukon? being a hermit, it's been on a list of places I might escape to. Yes, I also believe Yukon and North West Territories is the best place to survive a nuclear war. The problem with antarctica is that its too cold and lacking in resources. Yukon, NWT, is teeming with stuff you can hunt and eat. I've been reading about Inuits a lot and its fascinating how they have survived.
What puzzles me about ancient humans is they were as smart as we are, so why did technology advance so slowly?
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So why was mankind perfectly satisfied with stasis for tens of thousands of years and then suddenly decide to get their proverbial shit together and become relentless and driven ~6000 years ago?
This question assumes a lot... and that isn't what happened.
What made them start civilization?
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The roman empire had steam powered contraceptions or prototypes too but lacked the machinery to produce them in large scale but more importantly their demographic were not very open to automation since they had human robots they could control aka slaves. Why build an elaborate steam powered textile factory when it costs nothing to use slaves to do it for you? Why do you need UFC on 4k television when you can watch gl…
Slave labor in the roman empire was not as cheap as one would think. Garrett Ryan goes into this in his latest videos, "Were the Romans close to an Industrial Revolution?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uqPlOAH85o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5HDQUuI6_E
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Which is all out wrong if you look at the literature. Nutrition, education, nurturing young, and inbreeding can have profound effects.
I suspect the person you replied to was being highly sarcastic in their reply. It's a highly charged area due to the history of race relations in the US.