Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

news.discovery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 105 posts

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#81

Post by Retric »

mbrock wrote: post #75
Retric wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is violence is part of establishing a pecking order. Not fighting back generally establishes you as someone on a lower rank in the pecking order and invites more of the same over the long term. In cases where someone thinks physically you may be above them but you keep backing down this creates a tension. Where fighting back can clear things up and long term you may start a fr…

That seems like a very appropriate viewpoint in a thread about primates. However, as an irredeemable idealist and utopist, I have hopes for a human social order not based on violence.

I respect the utopian ideal, but Ideology separated from reality seems to cause a lot of issues. Basically non violent goals are a great thing to work toward, but non violent rules seem less useful.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#82

Post by humanarity »

For some reason this reminded me of female primates using violence to get male interest and sex:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82GUjPConiE

The Bonobo society also exhibits female alphas and uses extensive sexual activities (including hetero/homo and "group") to maintain social bonds.

However, even despite the apparent "similarities" I question our anthropomorphic instinct to assign to or infer too much meaning from the behaviour of our primate genetic relatives.

One reason contributing to that choice is because how humans behave in societies is shaped by centuries of social, cultural and political discourse on the ways in which we behave.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#84

Post by mrmike1 »

EGreg wrote: post #64
malandrew wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That all makes sense as a theory, but is this fact based on hard evidence or merely academic speculation? 2.2 million years is an awful long time ago, and I didn't think we had that much evidence about humans habits and culture dating back that long ago. Exactly what happened roughly 2.2 million years a to explain this evolutionary change?

That's the thing. Most of the evolutionary theories about how something happened 2 or 200 million years ago are just on the level of speculation. That's one of my gripes about evolution ... the field attracts a lot of pseudoscience (such as evolutionary psychology) in the form of "explanations" for various phenomena we observe today, or how a transition happened. The truth is no one actually knows, or can test most o…

You are mixing up proving the theory of evolution and using the theory to make speculations about the past. The speculations are only taken as seriously as the evidence they are based on. The last time you made a blog post you complained about the evolutionary psychology behind a loud female orgasm. I had to look it up for you that it is seen in other apes TODAY and since other things prove (with statistical accuracy) that we have a common descent with other apes, these speculations are viable.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#85

Post by pekk »

ak39 wrote: post #78
EGreg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing. Most of the evolutionary theories about how something happened 2 or 200 million years ago are just on the level of speculation. That's one of my gripes about evolution ... the field attracts a lot of pseudoscience (such as evolutionary psychology) in the form of "explanations" for various phenomena we observe today, or how a transition happened. The truth is no one actually knows, or can test most o…

Is the field of EP completely pseudoscience?

EP is obviously not completely pseudoscience, but it has a few global problems. It's often forced to test hypotheses about things that happened long ago, which is hard and can lead to weakly supported conclusions. It also adopts the conceptual framework of cognitive psychology, which can be a bit of a grab bag in terms of falsifiability because it is so heavily reliant on "indirect observation." Finally, it frequently deals in topics which are flashpoints for controversy, which invites unusually stringent examination and rejection from people with some personal or political or religious agenda.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#86

Post by pekk »

guelo wrote: post #73
thret wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember where you read this? I have been looking for a source without success.

I'm pretty sure all this kind of pseudo science comes from /r/MensRights. Victimhood for everybody!

I don't see the men's rights angle in big cats not being stressed by consuming small prey.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#87

Post by mbrock »

Retric wrote: post #81
mbrock wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a very appropriate viewpoint in a thread about primates. However, as an irredeemable idealist and utopist, I have hopes for a human social order not based on violence.

I respect the utopian ideal, but Ideology separated from reality seems to cause a lot of issues. Basically non violent goals are a great thing to work toward, but non violent rules seem less useful.

I don't understand the terminology of "separated from reality." It's beyond obvious that ideology is a part of reality. What else would it be, supernatural?

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#88

Post by EGreg »

mrmike1 wrote: post #84
EGreg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing. Most of the evolutionary theories about how something happened 2 or 200 million years ago are just on the level of speculation. That's one of my gripes about evolution ... the field attracts a lot of pseudoscience (such as evolutionary psychology) in the form of "explanations" for various phenomena we observe today, or how a transition happened. The truth is no one actually knows, or can test most o…

You are mixing up proving the theory of evolution and using the theory to make speculations about the past. The speculations are only taken as seriously as the evidence they are based on. The last time you made a blog post you complained about the evolutionary psychology behind a loud female orgasm. I had to look it up for you that it is seen in other apes TODAY and since other things prove (with statistical accuracy…

Where is this supposed proof or strong evidence for the speculations? "Viable speculation" is not the standard in science for believing things to be true, and using them as a basis for conclusions.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#89

Post by guelo »

pekk wrote: post #86
guelo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure all this kind of pseudo science comes from /r/MensRights. Victimhood for everybody!

I don't see the men's rights angle in big cats not being stressed by consuming small prey.

It's weird that you don't see the angle considering we're discussing it in a thread about how stupid feminists are.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#90

Post by pjmlp »

testrun wrote: post #71
pjmlp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telescopes were brought into Europe by Arabs living in what was then Iberia, Sicily and a few other places. As well as many farming new technologies like irrigation for example.

Not quite - http://www.space.com/21950-who-invented-the-telescope.html .

Ok, it seems I got that wrong.

However I was right remembering that Arabs had something to do with optics, as the base findings trace back to Ibn al-Haytham (965).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhaze

Also just as general information for anyone curious about it, in the process I've found out a list of Arab inventions.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/how-islamic-invent...

Post reply on HN