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A man who was raised by wolves

theguardian.com

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Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#21

Post by PerfectElement »

anigbrowl wrote: post #3

Janer says the young boy would have projected his social needs on to the animals and imagined relationships with them. “When Pantoja says the fox laughed at him, or that he had to tell off the snake, he gives us a version of the true reality, what he believes happened – or how, at least, he explained the reality to himself,” Janer told me. “Marcos’s mind was desperate for social acceptance,” he told me, “so instead o…

I think this is one of the consequences of Carnism[1]. For most people, it's a lot harder to eat or exploit someone with a personality and rich emotional life, than something that has no feelings or desires. This creates all sorts of cognitive distortions and biases.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnism

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#22

Post by yiyus »

qubax wrote: post #14
jeandejean wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I especially doubt so much the anecdote about the she-wolf that fed him like Mowgli ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNcBAI6iOn0 ). That's just what people want to hear and is totally in tune with the guy that seeks social acceptance. Not to mention that people are in strong demand with "nature is so cool", and "human are evil" narratives where it totally fits.

Yeah. It's obvious that these claims are lies or at the very least exaggerated. And if they aren't lies, then we should be demanding real evidence. I don't get why people are downvoting me. Of all places, you would think that HN would be where skepticism reigns supreme.

This is a quite well known story in Spain. It made the news at a time when everything to watch on TV was the same news program, so everybody talked about it. The general belief is that his story is indeed exaggerated, but there is no consensus if he really believes all of it or is exaggerating on purpose, or maybe he exaggerated at the time because they wanted a better story and he was just a child and it is too late to know what really happened.

However, calling people naive and comparing yourself with him because you have been in Central Park is not going get you many upvotes. Expecting otherwise is naiver than believing the raised-by-wolves story word by word.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#23

Post by pharrington »

nkoren wrote: post #15
anigbrowl wrote: post #3

Janer says the young boy would have projected his social needs on to the animals and imagined relationships with them. “When Pantoja says the fox laughed at him, or that he had to tell off the snake, he gives us a version of the true reality, what he believes happened – or how, at least, he explained the reality to himself,” Janer told me. “Marcos’s mind was desperate for social acceptance,” he told me, “so instead o…

Yeah, I think that Rodríguez absolutely has the right of it here. Animal communication is "simple" in human terms, but is quite rich on its own terms. To anybody who spends quality time with animals in their own comfort zones, it is utterly damned obvious that many animals experience and are entirely competent at communicating love, friendship, curiosity, jealousy, covetousness, and many other thoughts/feelings -- an…

"If your understanding of human psychology was formed wholly through the observation of humans who spent their lives trapped in Skinner boxes, you'd form some rigorously incorrect notions of what humans are capable of."

My comment's a tangent, but I suspect that's a significant reason why social media is so ridiculously hard for people to healthily use.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#24

Post by Retric »

lqet wrote: post #17

I would definitely not say "raised". He lived, and interacted with, humans until he was 7, which is around the age you enter school. At 7, I suspect the average human is far more intellectually advanced than the average grown wolf, so I very much doubt that there was much "raising" going on.

I doubt most modern 7 year olds can forage for food effectively and provide effective shelter for themselve etc. So, he could have learned some extremely valuable skills for living in the wild from interacting with wolves. IMO, a reasonable proxy for being raised by.

Personally, I find his story extremely unlikely, but taken at face value it does not seem to be impossible.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#25

Post by anigbrowl »

qubax wrote: post #11

What clickbait nonsense. Do people really believe this? Are people this naive? He was raised by humans at least to the age of 7. Then he was "abandoned" and he lived by "himself" in heavily populated spain? A few miles from cordoba, madrid and other spanish cities? He wasn't raised by wolves. He lived near wolves. Using this logic, everyone in spain was "raised by wolves". Aren't journalists supposed to be skeptical?…

I can see why you'd be skeptical given your fondness for specious arguments.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#26

Post by crooked-v »

dxhdr wrote: post #8
anigbrowl wrote: post #3

Janer says the young boy would have projected his social needs on to the animals and imagined relationships with them. “When Pantoja says the fox laughed at him, or that he had to tell off the snake, he gives us a version of the true reality, what he believes happened – or how, at least, he explained the reality to himself,” Janer told me. “Marcos’s mind was desperate for social acceptance,” he told me, “so instead o…

Science has long established friendship as a distinctly human-human interaction consisting only of the purest non-incentivized intentions.

And yet scientific studies have shown that some animals will reliably prefer to help other animals even if it loses them a reward. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/rats-forsake-chocolat...

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#27

Post by thaumasiotes »

nkoren wrote: post #15
anigbrowl wrote: post #3

Janer says the young boy would have projected his social needs on to the animals and imagined relationships with them. “When Pantoja says the fox laughed at him, or that he had to tell off the snake, he gives us a version of the true reality, what he believes happened – or how, at least, he explained the reality to himself,” Janer told me. “Marcos’s mind was desperate for social acceptance,” he told me, “so instead o…

Yeah, I think that Rodríguez absolutely has the right of it here. Animal communication is "simple" in human terms, but is quite rich on its own terms. To anybody who spends quality time with animals in their own comfort zones, it is utterly damned obvious that many animals experience and are entirely competent at communicating love, friendship, curiosity, jealousy, covetousness, and many other thoughts/feelings -- an…

> when you anthropomorphize them, and they foxopomorphize you

The op is actually part of the word for human, anthrop·os.

Substituting "fox" in for "human", you'd get "alopecomorphize".

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#29

Post by GogoAkira »

entropie wrote: post #4

As interesting everhing of this is; I actually doubt that is the absolute truth as long there is no evidence.

A Dog saved my life, he barked, and I knew I had misplaced the live wire and the zero wire when installing a breaker, which I was about to test by getting close to the wire and then the Dog barked, I looked at him, and he reasured me. Then I went up there at the beginning of the wires where i plugged it in and voila, I did have them swapped. The dog knew, and I knew what he meant, he could have merely said ummm, in human language, and that would have mean't something. I came back and he didn't say atythinkg, i tested the wire and I didn't burn my firngers or got electricuted. Now you standing next to us not knowing anything about electricity, which the dog might have had, you would say i'm lying, just like you will say now. there are no proofs in life, just a belief.
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