Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears • Hacker News Board

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#101

Post by JulianMorrison » Sun, Apr 19, 2015, 11:58 PM UTC

pekk wrote: post #85

ak39 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 frequentl…

Yeah, it also blunders around taking the status quo as something that has more evolutionary causes than cultural ones. And thereby ignoring eg: the patriarchy as a cultural system, and looking for explanations of its effects in genes.

In this it reminds me of the science of the early 20th century that took race as a mere fact, and tried to explain it.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#102

Post by Nicholas_C » Mon, Apr 20, 2015, 2:55 AM UTC

fchollet wrote: post #9

Nicholas_C wrote: post #2

Fascinating. I wonder if this was learned through invention or through mimicking humans. If only we could simulate evolution millions of years and see how chimps evolve.

If you accelerated your terrarium to a high fraction of c, time inside would appear (from our perspective) to slow down, not the other way around. What you want to do here is accelerate us to near light speed instead.

You're right, my mistake.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#103

Post by tsotha » Mon, Apr 20, 2015, 4:30 AM UTC

dalke wrote: post #30

tsotha wrote: post #18

This isn't really news. I remember seeing an article about chimps hunting bushbabies with spears at least five years ago.

Eg, from 2007: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11234-spearwielding-ch...

Gah. Time keeps speeding up as I get older.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#104

Post by halfcat » Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 12:48 PM UTC

rquantz wrote: post #100

halfcat wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does it mean to act like a woman? You think you know. Name a behavior, I guarantee I can name a woman who does not engage in said behavior. There is no set of "woman behaviors". If you want me to make a wild guess at a sweeping generalization for which there will be endless counter-examples, then here is my answer: Women in general are more risk-averse than men in general. This is the most logical explanation…

Ok, next question. What is a woman? This is a serious question. Here's the thing about your answer to the previous question: if what you mean when you say "act like a woman" is "cautious," why not just say "why is it considered misbehaving when men act recklessly?" The answer to that question would be much more instructive, although also somewhat tautological. You correctly describe your response as a sweep generaliz…

> What is a woman? This is a serious question.

No, it's not. Thanks for the discussion.

Re: Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

#105

Post by rquantz » Sat, Apr 25, 2015, 1:47 PM UTC

halfcat wrote: post #104

rquantz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, next question. What is a woman? This is a serious question. Here's the thing about your answer to the previous question: if what you mean when you say "act like a woman" is "cautious," why not just say "why is it considered misbehaving when men act recklessly?" The answer to that question would be much more instructive, although also somewhat tautological. You correctly describe your response as a sweep generaliz…

> What is a woman? This is a serious question. No, it's not. Thanks for the discussion.

You only say that because you didn't give it any real thought. Or because you realize there's no answer you could give that wouldn't reveal the incoherence of your previous statements.