Why We Dominate the Earth • Hacker News Board

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#61

Post by joshuaheard » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

flippyhead wrote: post #39

learc83 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that explored a similar concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok

I love this episode but was surprised that wikipedia said this: > It is often cited as one of the best episodes of the both The Next Generation series and the entire family of the several Star Trek television series.

It was definitely the most innovative episode. My favorite was the first Borg episode where they finally met someone they couldn't defeat that wanted to destroy them.

OP: an example of shared fiction he uses in the book is the law. The law is a fiction in the sense that it is not a physical object, but a group of shared concepts that allows society to be built to a higher order. "Sapiens" is a great read.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#62

Post by eanzenberg » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

It's kind of revisionist to consider the last 60 years (if we're generous) but more like 10 years as proof that intelligent beings got there through some massive amount of cooperation across borders and beyond close-knit groups

>>Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers.

Human intelligence has been around a lot longer than a few decades and for the vast vast majority of that time has not only still dominated the world but sects of people were uncooperative and competing with each other all the time, wiping out people here and there without a though otherwise.

If the main thesis is that a common language lead to cooperation and therefore world dominance, that's false too. People have dominated the earth for a while, and with a language, and without much cooperation but through fighting and spilled blood.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#63

Post by fmihaila » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

akvadrako wrote: post #36

jpadkins wrote: post #22

I've wondered if mathematics is a 'shared fiction'. Obviously money and laws are shared fictions, but I wondered if other species can't grasp math concepts (beyond counting) because there is a fictional or conceptual element that their brains can't process.

Of course not, at least in any practical sense. Even plants use the mathematical properties of fractals to make effective structures. If we encountered aliens that are as alien as possible, they would agree on the ratio of the radius to the circumference of a circle on a flat plane.

> Even plants use the mathematical properties of fractals to make effective structures.

I think a better way to put it would be that plant growth processes exhibit patterns that can be modelled by the mathematics of fractals. "Using mathematics", the way I see it, evokes a mind that uses abstract mental constructs (organized as "mathematics") for the purpose of modelling some aspect of reality. To the best of our knowledge, plants seem to lack that kind of mind.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#64

Post by Symmetry » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

Sapiens was a pretty decent book but if you want take that's both deeper and more scientifically informed I'd go for The Secret of Our Success instead.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#65

Post by cgriswald » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

e40 wrote: post #57

lordnacho wrote: post #2

> Surprisingly, it’s not our shared language or even our ability to dominate other species that defines us but rather, our shared fictions. I read his book where he talks about this. It makes some sense: you can operate at varied scales if you have shared fictions. When you meet a complete stranger, you're both members of the human race, sharing a desire for a better future. Meet a fellow countryman, and there are so…

I think the shared fears, or propensity for fear, is what rule us in the internet age. And some people seem to have an innate hatred/distrust of others , which probably served humans well thousands of years ago, but now it just gets in the way.

> And some people seem to have an innate hatred/distrust of others, which probably served humans well thousands of years ago, but now it just gets in the way.

I think the places where it serves us well and the places where it just gets in the way are just about the same now as they were thousands of years ago. If you doubt that, put yourselves in the shoes of someone who distrusts your particular set of tribes. Even if they are better off trusting you or any individual member of one of your tribes, are they better or worse off trusting that tribe as a whole? And if you think they are better off, does the potential advantage conveyed outweigh the potential risks?

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#66

Post by golergka » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #62

It's kind of revisionist to consider the last 60 years (if we're generous) but more like 10 years as proof that intelligent beings got there through some massive amount of cooperation across borders and beyond close-knit groups >>Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. Human intelligence has been around a lot longer than a few decades and for the vast vast majority of tha…

> sects of people were uncooperative and competing with each other all the time

And those groups who cooperated with in-group better have repeatedly outcompeted groups that didn't cooperate as well.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#67

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

devmunchies wrote: post #3

I saw an interesting, related theory in an ecology book I read recently. Most native peoples were very in tune withe the earth (Pagan Europe, Native American tribes, Hindu India, Tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, etc). The rise of Abrahamic religion, with man as the most important creature on the planet and everything on earth created for man, is a factor for why we "dominate" the earth.

I think this is a little simplified but I honestly believe that if the bible didn't contain the phrase "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth" the world may be a better place.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#68

Post by Symmetry » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #25

devmunchies wrote: post #3

I saw an interesting, related theory in an ecology book I read recently. Most native peoples were very in tune withe the earth (Pagan Europe, Native American tribes, Hindu India, Tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, etc). The rise of Abrahamic religion, with man as the most important creature on the planet and everything on earth created for man, is a factor for why we "dominate" the earth.

I’d say the Earth was fairly well dominated by the time Abrahamic religion started to become mainstream around 300AD.

Axial[1] religion might have something to do with which societies succeeded later, but that isn't the same thing as Abrahamic and is all about a later phenomenon.

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

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#69

Post by joe_the_user » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #62

It's kind of revisionist to consider the last 60 years (if we're generous) but more like 10 years as proof that intelligent beings got there through some massive amount of cooperation across borders and beyond close-knit groups >>Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. Human intelligence has been around a lot longer than a few decades and for the vast vast majority of tha…

Indeed,

It's still a testament to human flexibility that human went from small bands of anarchistically organized gatherer-hunters only actively cooperating with each other to larger agricultural groups cooperating within a hierarchical framework. If one wanted to find a full explanation for this, it seems like one look for what gave humans the ability to do either.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#70

Post by Retric » Thu, Jan 24, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #62

It's kind of revisionist to consider the last 60 years (if we're generous) but more like 10 years as proof that intelligent beings got there through some massive amount of cooperation across borders and beyond close-knit groups >>Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. Human intelligence has been around a lot longer than a few decades and for the vast vast majority of tha…

Trade routes have demonstrated cooperation across vast areas for thousands of years. This is not selfless cooperation, but was dependent on multiple nations and cultures.