Sad news. She lived an amazing life. I'll never forget seeing her and Nathan Myhrvold greet each other like chimps at a book signing in Seattle.
You mean greet each other like a chimp and a baboon.
Jane Goodall has died
61–70 of 206 posts
Re: Jane Goodall has died
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
For most of human history cultural change was extremely slow, so slow as to be imperceptible. I'm not sure the neanderthals experienced any less dynamic a culture than the modern humans living at the same time. Perhaps expecting change makes change more likely. Also, when things are scarce and life is tenuous you are less likely to experiment. Why waste the resources? Why take the risk? When surplus calories became c…
I'm pretty skeptical that cultural change was meaningfully slower (except as limited by effective population sizes). Cultural change for early humans is nearly invisible in the material record. Imagine that all archaeologists of the far future find nothing from the current era except iphones without working storage. Do they indicate a unified global culture without cultural change outside WWDC? Obviously not, even th…
Sure, but this is true of neanderthals as well. So we can't say we are especially creative or dynamic in our culture. We can say that our material culture, that small fragment of it that was preserved, was static.
Re: Jane Goodall has died
#63“We cannot hide away from human population growth, because it underlies so many of the other problems. All these things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if the world was the size of the population that there was 500 years ago.”
-- Goodall at 2002 WEF panel discussion on Amazon rainforest
The population 500 years ago was around 500 million. The only way we return to this level is de-industrialization.
Paul Ehrlich wrote "The Population Bomb" almost 60 years ago - all of his predictions turned out to be dead wrong.
Re: Jane Goodall has died
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's mentioned here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasakela_chimpanzee_community
Jesus! Frodo sounds like a bastard. > Frodo's aggression was not limited to colobus monkeys and other chimpanzees. In May 2002, he killed a 14-month-old human child that the niece of a member of the research team had carried into his territory.[61] As a result, the Tanzanian National Parks Department considered killing Frodo.[61] In 1988, he attacked visiting Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, leaving him bruised and s…
Frodo also impregnated his own mother
https://blog.michael-lawrence-wilson.com/2014/01/19/frodo-30...
Re: Jane Goodall has died
#65The gap between us and the chimpanzees is, at the same time, "tantalizingly small" and "too big". We have learnt to communicate with them, but they also don't seem to ask questions, at least not the way that humans do. There is obvious intelligence in their eyes and deliberation in their movements, but they seem to be content with an almost static culture. Which was also true for the Neanderthals. What was the last s…
So many unsubstantiated claims, you find this pattern in someone infected with exceptionalism.
Re: Jane Goodall has died
#66Oh wow, I was just listening to her interview with the WSJ The Journal podcast a few days ago. Ryan Knutson may have been her last interview.
Re: Jane Goodall has died
#67In heaven with Koko
I suspect Koko's capabilities were completely over sold.
I was fascinated by Koko's abilities and took them at face value until I saw her famous climate change speech:
> I am gorilla. I am flowers, animals. I am nature. Man Koko love. Earth Koko love. But Man stupid. Stupid! Koko sorry. Koko cry. Time hurry! Fix Earth! Help Earth! Hurry! Protect Earth. Nature see you. Thank you.
I saw that and felt like I was in crazy land. That's supposedly the kind of talking Koko's been doing this whole time?? Turns out, there was a lot of government funding into ape communication in the 70s, and when researchers figured out that apes can't meaningfully communicate, the funding dried up. Her handler, Penny Patterson, pivoted from research to PR. And how.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/what-does-koko-know-about-...
Re: Jane Goodall has died
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
For most of human history cultural change was extremely slow, so slow as to be imperceptible. I'm not sure the neanderthals experienced any less dynamic a culture than the modern humans living at the same time. Perhaps expecting change makes change more likely. Also, when things are scarce and life is tenuous you are less likely to experiment. Why waste the resources? Why take the risk? When surplus calories became c…
"Also, when things are scarce and life is tenuous you are less likely to experiment. Why waste the resources? Why take the risk? When surplus calories became commonplace is when cultural change took off." True, but not the entire picture either. From what we know, even hunters and gatherers living in inhospitable regions have a rich oral culture and extensive pantheons of gods, demigods and legendary heroes. There se…
> There seems to be something in us humans that yearns for more than just calories.
And we have no evidence that we are different in this from Neanderthals (arguably also humans). There is evidence of cultural variation among chimps, so there must also be cultural change. Do they yearn for things more than calories? Well, they play. They are curious.
I am extremely skeptical of claims that humans are special. We are strongly motivated to find this to be true. On the one hand, it flatters us. On the other hand, it justifies believing we are ethically distinct. This same way of thinking has been applied to other humans with results we now deplore.
Are we special, the chosen creatures? Maybe. We sure want to believe we are. It's fun and useful to be special! But maybe we should be cautious leaping to that conclusion. I think Jane Goodall was of this mind as well.
Re: Jane Goodall has died
#69“We cannot hide away from human population growth, because it underlies so many of the other problems. All these things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if the world was the size of the population that there was 500 years ago.” -- Goodall at 2002 WEF panel discussion on Amazon rainforest The population 500 years ago was around 500 million. The only way we return to this level is de-industrialization. Paul Ehrlich…
Yeah I've seen this before, we could all drive V12s and eat only beef but it's not a very meaningful insight. We're going to stabilize around 10 billion by 2080 according to projections and then decline, hopefully reaching some kind of Star Trek utopia at some point.
We came from the caves, we didn't know any better we just multiplied like a cancer. More population also brings more benefits, more geniuses more inventions etc.
The trick is doing it without wars and inequality, good luck with that.
Re: Jane Goodall has died
#70“We cannot hide away from human population growth, because it underlies so many of the other problems. All these things we talk about wouldn’t be a problem if the world was the size of the population that there was 500 years ago.” -- Goodall at 2002 WEF panel discussion on Amazon rainforest The population 500 years ago was around 500 million. The only way we return to this level is de-industrialization. Paul Ehrlich…
to advocate for the death of 8 billion people is a hell of a stance. there's pro genocide and then there's... I guess this is just hating the whole species.