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Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

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Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#131

Post by orwin »

aurareturn wrote: post #22
mkl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a lot of humans don't think in language, or do only some of the time, see e.g. https://www.iflscience.com/people-with-no-internal-monologue... , https://www.livescience.com/does-everyone-have-inner-monolog... , https://www.bustle.com/wellness/does-everyone-have-an-intern... .

There are also humans who can’t conjure up an image in their head. Mozilla cofounder wrote a fairly famous piece about his own experience. https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/25/11501230/blake-ross-cant-... If there are people who can’t picture and people who don’t have an inner dialogue, I think it lends more credence to the idea that we don’t have free will and are just a bunch of chemicals controlling our behavior. It…

If consciousness, or rather, "philosophy of mind" interest you, and you like thinking about it, your position about "consciousness isn't real" (i simplify here) is a more and more talked about position, and the tenants are called "illusionists". Basically, they think we have an illusion of consciousness/subjective experience. Once again, poorly simplified, i'm not smart/dedicated enough to totally understand the idea and it is hard to explain something you don't totally get.

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#132

Post by lelanthran »

monero-xmr wrote: post #3

I personally believe forms of writing and record keeping are far, far older than we think, having been discovered and forgotten repeatedly. Very hard for something hundreds of thousands of years old to be preserved. Once you can pass on information orally and written through the generations, knowledge will always improve.

> Once you can pass on information orally and written through the generations, knowledge will always improve.

Nope. You can pass on myths the same way. All that happens is that you get more refined myths, that always have "evidence" for them at any point in time because they are refined by each generation to fit any new observations.

It's worse with oral knowledge[1]: oral "knowledge" that is passed down is frequently more damaging than not passing anything down at all, because in the lack of any knowledge on the subject, people will try to gain some knowledge (whether experimentally or not), but with "knowledge" passed down, there will exist pockets of people who will actively resist any attempt to discard that "knowledge".[2]

[1] Ever play a game of telephone? Each generation changes the message enough so that even a short period of 30 generations is enough to completely obliterate any of the original message.

[2] See every religion ever.

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#133

Post by dTal »

p51-remorse wrote: post #62
trescenzi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fun thing is that for those of us who cannot it’s as hard to believe others can conjure images. Yes the idea of mental imagery is deeply ingrained in our language but I’d always assumed it was allusion till I learned of aphantasia when I was 30. One of the more cliche, and not super useful tests, is “imagine a ball on a table, someone pushes the ball and it begins to roll. What color is the ball?” For me that was…

So for me I definitely visualized a ball on a table, but the color wasn’t resolved, if that makes sense. After hearing the question asked it kind of snaps out of superposition into a red color (but there was definitely a color-choosing step that happened after hearing the question). Same thing happens if you ask “what surface is the table on” or “what country is this image in”. It’s layers I can add to the mental sta…

You described my experience well as well, except my abstract colorless ball was barely even visual. I was quite happy to entertain the idea of a ball on a table with very few concepts activated - roundness for the ball, flatness for the table, gravity holding the ball on the table. Rather like a physics problem.

When forced to dereference a color, it felt like an entire system was booted up. Not only did the ball have color, it also had specular reflections. There was lighting. The table gained an abstract sense of having texture.

What I find particularly fascinating is that my mind also assigned "red". I wonder if that is a coincidence, or a deep reflection of something about how brains work. Supporting evidence: in languages with only three words for color, the three colors are "light", "dark", and "red": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Stage_II_(red)

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#134

Post by vidarh »

7thaccount wrote: post #29
aurareturn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also humans who can’t conjure up an image in their head. Mozilla cofounder wrote a fairly famous piece about his own experience. https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/25/11501230/blake-ross-cant-... If there are people who can’t picture and people who don’t have an inner dialogue, I think it lends more credence to the idea that we don’t have free will and are just a bunch of chemicals controlling our behavior. It…

I find it hard to believe that they can't at all imagine what a tree looks like or imagine a face of a friend. I can understand some difficulty in a perfect image, but nothing?

I see nothing at all.

I spent 45 years or so thinking people were talking metaphorically when talking about picturing things, because surely they couldn't actually see things while awake?

I see things when I dream, so I know what it is like, and some years ago I had a single experience during meditation I've never managed to replicate, but otherwise nothing while awake.

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#135

Post by acchow »

graemep wrote: post #122
jb1991 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s not uncommon to refer to Neanderthals as early humans, I’m sure I’ve read that in many places. Natural history museum, for example, refers to them as early humans: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.htm...

It is also reasonable to argue that they and we are subspecies of the same species not rather than separate species.

Of course we are not separate species since successful interbreeding did happen (when the populations interacted).

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#136

Post by olalonde »

epgui wrote: post #40
olalonde wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm highly suspicious that the whole "inner vs no-inner monologue" thing doesn't actually exist and has more to do with these things being extremely hard to explain using language, and people describing their subjective experience in subtly different ways.

I 100% do not think in words or sentences or language. It feels more like node-traversing a graph of concepts, but it's all completely abstract. While I am able to consciously play back my thoughts linguistically or visually with some effort (and at the cost of efficiency), by default there are neither words nor images. French is my first language, I'm fluent in English, and I know a bit about many languages... But I…

What I am saying is that probably everyone thinks the way you do, it's just that not everyone would describe it in that way. For example, I'm sure you came up with this comment in your head at some point before typing it and many people would describe this as an inner monologue, whereas you apparently do not.

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#137

Post by vasco »

dTal wrote: post #127
aurareturn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also humans who can’t conjure up an image in their head. Mozilla cofounder wrote a fairly famous piece about his own experience. https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/25/11501230/blake-ross-cant-... If there are people who can’t picture and people who don’t have an inner dialogue, I think it lends more credence to the idea that we don’t have free will and are just a bunch of chemicals controlling our behavior. It…

What even is "free will"? It's an idea that falls apart on close inspection. You think "I will wash the dishes". You wash the dishes. Ta-daa, free will! A paralyzed person thinks "I will raise my hand". Nothing happens. No free will! An ADHD person says to themself "I will wash the dishes". They don't get washed. A different part is broken than to the paralyzed person, but the result is the same. A lazy person says t…

I agree with the only caveat that the universe should have a maximum amount of precision it uses to calculate every next frame, and at the margin of error of these calculations, non-determinism may arise.

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#138

Post by throwaway87651 »

stubish wrote: post #81
davidmnoll wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was at least 200k years before the advent of speech if you go by the hyoid bone evidence.

I would consider this evidence that language predates human vocalizations. We already know deaf children will invent signs and gestures to communicate, and language not dependent on a hyoid bone. Do we have any way of dating the relevant neural structures through genetics?

FOXP2 was thought to be the genetic basis for language, but this has been overturned[1]. As far as I know there isn't a good candidate for a gene selected for language.

[1] https://www.the-scientist.com/language-gene-dethroned-64608

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#139

Post by mkl »

tonynator wrote: post #64
p1necone wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I kinda have this, and I'd describe it like this: With actual vision, there's a pipeline of steps: light hits actual cone/rod cells -> optic nerve fires -> brain stage 1 -> brain stage 2 -> brain stage 3... where each of those stages also have various side effects associated with the experience of "seeing" I can't synthesize "brain stage 1" at all I don't think, I need my optic nerve to send some signals…

Absolutely same. I wonder how much of it is most people being like this and many of those saying "well yes of course I see the apple" without really thinking about it. If someone actually sees the apple, v.s. imagining what it would be like if they were seeing it, they're hallucinating. Not that it wouldn't be cool to be able to do that on command, I just wonder how many people really can.

I really see it. It's not hallucinating as the imagined image is not in the real world. It's like a different input to the visual processing part of my brain (but both inputs work at once, a bit like looking at a different thing with each eye). I have visual memories (snapshots I can call up) of things I never saw with my eyes (e.g. scenes from novels) that are as strong as any that came from my eyes.

Re: Humans began to rapidly accumulate technological knowledge 600k years ago

#140

Post by dTal »

vasco wrote: post #137
dTal wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is "free will"? It's an idea that falls apart on close inspection. You think "I will wash the dishes". You wash the dishes. Ta-daa, free will! A paralyzed person thinks "I will raise my hand". Nothing happens. No free will! An ADHD person says to themself "I will wash the dishes". They don't get washed. A different part is broken than to the paralyzed person, but the result is the same. A lazy person says t…

I agree with the only caveat that the universe should have a maximum amount of precision it uses to calculate every next frame, and at the margin of error of these calculations, non-determinism may arise.

Even if those assumptions were true (and why should they be? the universe is not a computer, does not have "frames") what would that have to do with "free will"?
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