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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

#31

Post by mindgam3 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #27
nkoren wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

You know, you are undoubtedly technically correct, but I really love the use of foxopomorphize. Something about it just so perfectly encapsulates the OP's point about foxes and humans sharing a joke across species boundaries, in the way that "alopecomorphize" does not. I say leave it.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#32

Post by nkoren »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #27
nkoren wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Heheh -- I'm almost as much as a pedant as you! :-) I actually did realise that "op" went with "anthro", and agonised for a bit over whether to include it or do something that was more technically correct. Eventually decided that this would sacrifice comprehensibility for correctness, and that it was actually okay to make a somewhat whimsical point with whimsical language. But, yes, you're entirely correct.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#33

Post by thaumasiotes »

mindgam3 wrote: post #31
thaumasiotes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

You know, you are undoubtedly technically correct, but I really love the use of foxopomorphize. Something about it just so perfectly encapsulates the OP's point about foxes and humans sharing a joke across species boundaries, in the way that "alopecomorphize" does not. I say leave it.

Alopecomorphize suffers from the fact that nobody knows the ancient Greek word for fox. I had to look it up. (And I left the comment for other people like me, who might wonder.) You could put the whole thing into a more recognizable Latinate form, "vulpiformify", but then you completely lose the parallel to "anthropomorphize".

I doubt "arachnomorphize" would have the same issues, though.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#34

Post by nkoren »

pharrington wrote: post #23
nkoren wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting. Yeah, there's something to unpack in that.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#35

Post by pvaldes »

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?…

Rural and urban worlds were much more isolated then than now. Only a few people had cars and the roads were very bad. All distances were much more wider then.

It seems that he was not only tolerated, but also feeded by wolves occasionally. He played, sleeped and gave food also to wolves for many years.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#36

Post by TimTheTinker »

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…

> Descartes, deeply religious, believed that humans were the only beings endowed with a soul, and that therefore animals were necessarily mere automata.

Note that the belief that animals do not have a soul is relatively recent in Christianity -- it originated in roughly the 18th or 19th century around the time of the enlightenment. And still, not all Christians or Christian thinkers espouse this view.

> This became the default "scientific" dogma, to be considered true unless proven otherwise.

I would argue that instead of taking the cue from recent Christian thought, science owes this view to a strict materialist worldview arising out of 18th century philosophy, which underpins most of its inquiry and rules out non-material hypotheses a priori. Prominent atheist scientists regularly praise materialism as the enabler of successful science.

> But it really is just dogma, with no basis in either rationality or observation.

Indeed.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#37

Post by mindgam3 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #33
mindgam3 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, you are undoubtedly technically correct, but I really love the use of foxopomorphize. Something about it just so perfectly encapsulates the OP's point about foxes and humans sharing a joke across species boundaries, in the way that "alopecomorphize" does not. I say leave it.

Alopecomorphize suffers from the fact that nobody knows the ancient Greek word for fox. I had to look it up. (And I left the comment for other people like me, who might wonder.) You could put the whole thing into a more recognizable Latinate form, "vulpiformify", but then you completely lose the parallel to "anthropomorphize". I doubt "arachnomorphize" would have the same issues, though.

Although I still prefer OP’s version, I do appreciate you leaving your comment, because there was a small part of me that did wonder what the correct version of foxomorphize was, and now I don’t have to. Also, points for “vulpiformify” as a mid-grade poor man’s alopecomorphize.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#38

Post by glandium »

mindgam3 wrote: post #31
thaumasiotes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

You know, you are undoubtedly technically correct, but I really love the use of foxopomorphize. Something about it just so perfectly encapsulates the OP's point about foxes and humans sharing a joke across species boundaries, in the way that "alopecomorphize" does not. I say leave it.

foxomorphize would sound better though.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#39

Post by aaron695 »

> How to be human: the man who was raised by wolves

No he FUCKing didn't.

Generally these tales come from the piss poor way people deal with mental illness.

I understand how incredibly poor communities struggle to deal with such issues but the fact HN plays along is where it is disgusting.

If you want a mythical story to have fun with stick with Richard Hammond being "gassed" this week.

It's more fun, and doesn't make fun of mental illness.

Re: A man who was raised by wolves

#40

Post by Razengan »

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…

> 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

I have definitely observed such sentience in cats and even crows, and many other examples are apparent in numberous animal videos on YouTube etc.

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