Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows • Hacker News Board

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#241

Post by walterbell » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 9:12 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #199

walterbell wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stories are our weak spot, the ultimate attack/control vector. Stories (and LLM 'story models') can be fine tuned and A/B tested against humans with live neural monitoring to evaluate narrative effectiveness.

"Evaluate", on what scale? Donald Trump can tell a story (which is what all humans run on) adequate to motivate thousands of people up to no good to descend upon the nation's capital, do you think LLM's (science, etc) can compete in that specific arena/domain, at that level? (To be fair though, the Normies have been motivated to do more than a few silly things themselves by their trainers. Donald is good, but he ain'…

12 years ago, https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2012/04/departm...

> FY2012 budget states a plan to “initiate investigations into the relationship between…neurotransmitters such as oxytocin, emotion-cognition interactions, and narrative structures.”

What has transpired since then is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#242

Post by griffzhowl » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 9:26 PM UTC

IncreasePosts wrote: post #153

InitialLastName wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The similarity between the EoG and Genesis flood stories can probably be laid to the fact that the first major human societies were built around flood plains of rivers in regions that have otherwise stable climates. When your society spends centuries in that situation, floods are the single most important natural event that happens to you. If would be shocking if they didn't feature prominently in your stories.

But if the floods are a yearly phenomenon, why would you necessarily write about a single big flood?

If it's based on a real flood, they presumably follow a power law distribution, where you have relatively frequent "normal" floods, and progressively larger floods are rarer and rarer, till you get an occasional gargantuan one.

My guess though is it's probably a plot device where the storyteller takes a known phenomenon and just exaggerates it to magical-mythical proportions, which may contribute to the story being repeated as it strikes the balance between the relatability of the real phenomenon and the attention-grabbing otherworldliness of its exaggerated version.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#243

Post by verisimi » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 9:27 PM UTC

roughly wrote: post #158

verisimi wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes poetry is a sort of decent checksum. However I think parables are an even better checksum, as they can be translated also, but if the meaning is altered the story fails to be coherent. Parables are imo, the best form of information transference across time, imo.

Meaning is culturally contingent, though - the appropriate “moral” of a parable can change as culture changes around it, which can lead to changes to the parable itself. For a contrived example, 100 years ago, the idea that one would defy one’s parents and pursue one’s own dreams would have been frowned upon, and any parables referencing that action would clearly contain the moral that one should listen to one’s pare…

I bet you've not seen a mustard seed, but you still get what is being said, in the parable of the mustard seed.

If the parable is talking to a foundational reality, rather than cultural situations, I think it can endure.

I get what you are saying, but even parables don't have 'the truth'. I would imagine that there may even be parables that argue the opposite position. And both, opposing positions could be right, depending on the context.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#244

Post by griffzhowl » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 9:47 PM UTC

rhplus wrote: post #4

I’m surprised by how tenuous the link is between the cave find and the archival find. Is the bar really that low for claims in archaeological papers or am I missing something? It’s a compelling story, but surely Occam’s razor would conclude that poking sticks into dead animals and fire pits is just what people have done for thousands of years? Where’s the evidence that there was chanting and a healing ceremony? Edit:…

It's actually not that far-fetched when you consider the long view of human history. Hominins have been capable of cultural transmission for millions of years, and during most of that time it made most sense to repeat what the previous generation had done as closely as possible, since they had by definition survived and reproduced well enough to make a new generation. Among all those practices of toolmaking, hunting strategies, herbal knowledge, and whatever we call 'ritual', it wouldn't have been clear to the practitioners which were actually effective at increasing survival and which not, so everything gets repreated over generations (with occasional modifications catching on and producing cultural evolution ofc)

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#245

Post by griffzhowl » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 10:01 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #184

rhplus wrote: post #4

I’m surprised by how tenuous the link is between the cave find and the archival find. Is the bar really that low for claims in archaeological papers or am I missing something? It’s a compelling story, but surely Occam’s razor would conclude that poking sticks into dead animals and fire pits is just what people have done for thousands of years? Where’s the evidence that there was chanting and a healing ceremony? Edit:…

I came to post the same thing. You have a stick from 12,000 years ago, and a story from 100 years ago, and they link them because of a similarity "there is fat at the end of the stick". You could get fat on a stick by roasting a small mouse (so a small hearth), or tons of other ways. This really isn't enough evidence, not without a ton more findings of the same thing at various dates over the timeperiod.

If tiny hearths with fat-covered sticks were common elsewhere, this would be a valid objection. But as it is, this seems to be a distinctive practice that is present at the same location separated by 12k years, and the ancient one was buried and so not observed for most of that time. What's the alternative explanation except a common root in a cultural practice?

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#246

Post by lamp_book » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 10:06 PM UTC

notarobot123 wrote: post #203

sambeau wrote: post #63

It occurred to me recently that tig/tag has probably been passed down through oral tradition from child to child for millennia. It's possible that it's older than homo-sapiens, older than the taming of fire. Millions of years of tradition. And it still being passed on orally, child-to-child.

Not quite as old but another example of an enduring child-to-child cultural transmission is the daring right of passage that is Chappy/Knicky-Knocky Nine Doors/Ding dong ditch[0]. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock,_knock,_ginger

Ring around the roses as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_a_Ring_o%27_Roses

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#247

Post by griffzhowl » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 10:09 PM UTC

pradn wrote: post #172

There are a few examples of oral cultures ensuring perfect transmission across a large expanse of time. One example is the several different recitation styles used to memorize Sanskrit verses. These methods give memorizers multiple ways to remember a line, and also prevent errors like the inadvertent mixing of adjacent words (" euphonic combination"). The "checksumming schemes" are far more elaborate than you'd imagi…

I've also heard it about the Buddhist tradition, that at least three groups of monks would memorize parts of the canon, and they would preiodically come together to chant it. If one group differed from the other two, they would know that's an error (at least to fairly high probability). This seems to have been an accurate method of transmission since independently written-down versions separated by centuries of oral tradition in Gandhara and Sri Lanka are very similar.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#248

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 10:17 PM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #193

ars wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Historically, much of Genesis was likely written during the Babylonian exile. That's very very unlikely, there's too much other stuff linked with it that is older than that. You might be able to claim that when it was set to paper, but there's no way Genesis itself is only from then. According to Genesis Abraham lived at the time that Gilgamesh was recorded, with Noah living a little before then. It's quote possibl…

There are many linguistic and historical hints that the early chapters of Genesis were written during or after the Babylonian captivity: things like mentions of "great" cities that only became great during that era, borrowed Babylonian phrases, various stories borrowed from the Babylonians, etc. There were certainly earlier stories that were included in Genesis, but the actual writing occurred long after those storie…

[deleted]

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#249

Post by swayvil » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 10:32 PM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #239

swayvil wrote: post #174

When you understand it you call it "science" or "technology". When you don't understand it you call it "religion" or "ritual". These are smart people. Just like us. Time is money for them just like it is for us. They probably had a very good, practical reason to do this "ritual". As surely as tapping keyboards.

I think you're assuming they're a lot smarter than us, not "just like us."

Not smarter, just different. People in Germany speak German. I can't speak German. That doesn't make them smarter.

Re: Aboriginal ritual passed down over 12,000 years, cave find shows

#250

Post by Amezarak » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 10:33 PM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #193

ars wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Historically, much of Genesis was likely written during the Babylonian exile. That's very very unlikely, there's too much other stuff linked with it that is older than that. You might be able to claim that when it was set to paper, but there's no way Genesis itself is only from then. According to Genesis Abraham lived at the time that Gilgamesh was recorded, with Noah living a little before then. It's quote possibl…

There are many linguistic and historical hints that the early chapters of Genesis were written during or after the Babylonian captivity: things like mentions of "great" cities that only became great during that era, borrowed Babylonian phrases, various stories borrowed from the Babylonians, etc. There were certainly earlier stories that were included in Genesis, but the actual writing occurred long after those storie…

At least portions of the Pentateuch certainly date prior to the Exile, because we have direct archeological evidence in the form of dated, physical scrolls.

At any rate both the Babylonians and the ancient Israelites were Semitic peoples, so obviously they had a shared background long before the Exile.

There are also many references in early Genesis that do suggest it originates in traditions much older, including references to great cities and powers that were long, long gone by the Exile. This actually sent me quite recently down some rabbit holes.