Neuroanthropology

I’m reminded of this fascinating piece, which discusses the approaches taken by a woman attempting to teach language to a deaf man who, at 23, had lived his entire life languageless. https://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/21/life-without-language/

Ben Underwood miracle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnH7AIwhpik Getting around by sound: Human echolocation (first published, 14 June 2011): https://neuroanthropology.net/2020/09/16/getting-around-by-sound-human… My Inspiration, Ben Underwood Dies at age 16: https://learnecholocation.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-inspiration-ben-unde…

I mean, you are basically saying that this man did not have a consciousness: https://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/21/life-without-language/ I mean, there are plenty of language-less people. But they are clearly conscious. So why is this even a discussion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words

There are some interesting examples of humans who grew up without language out there. In particular the ability to control sound or breathing may have less to do with the idea of language than the ability to concieve of things symbolicly. i.e. attach labels to things and understand that the label is representative of the thing. http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/21/life-without-language/

Even the real data should contain noise, compared to a true hypothesis. For example, you could predict that a certain (for the purpose of the example, small) percentage of all players will buy a certain ship. But many of them just stop playing by chance, then your prediction fails even if the underlying theory is correct. [1] I believe the main advantage is, that you can get rid of sampling bias. So you can look at the entire economy, not only on the part which is willing to answer a poll. For a nice real world example see [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_negatives#Type_I_error [2] http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/10/we-agree-its-weird-but-is-it-w…

Those born deaf and not taught sign language might not learn a language to think in at all. http://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/21/life-without-language/ I walked up to him and signed, "Hello. My name is Susan." He tried to copy that and did a sloppy rendition of "Hello, my name is Susan." Obviously he didn’t know what he was doing. It wasn’t language. And I was shocked. He looked Mayan and I thought, well, if he knew Mexican sign language, he wouldn’t try to copy. That’s not a normal thing to do, even if you don’t know the language.

The main question seems to be "are we biased to use certain animals in mythologies, and on top of that to mix and match specific animals?" and the secondary question seems to be "if so, why those animals?" I can imagine the former might be true, but have a hard time seeing how one might prove it. Let alone even try to answer the secondary question. I mean, sure, we have a bunch of different mythical animal amalgams in various cultures. For the sake of the argument we can assume these cultures came up with their hybrids in isolation (because if not that would already answer our secondary question). Even then it is still possible that by chance they may end up with hybrids that have partially overlapping "source animals". So basically a mythological equivalent of a hash collision (except in reverse: the "input" would be the mythical beast and the "hash" would be the source animals). Then these cultures meet, and the natural thing to do is to use the same word for these mythical creatures because of said hash collision. And looking at how we apply the name "dragon " to various mythical beasts we just needed two out of three or more animals overlap, so our odds of a collision is pretty high. Then there's the question of why these hash collisions happen. Note that we're already skipping the option of "because a bad hashing algorithm makes it statistically likely". This book argues it's an "innate evolutionary fear". Innate fears are a very controversial topic within…

Plants aren't capable of running away. I really don't see this as much of an argument. Then again, I don't know if I agree that "plants feel pain" either. I'm not necessarily a huge fan of factory farming, but if people want to be able to buy meat at any time, I don't really know much of a way around it. Though ranching still exists, there are plenty of ranches with heads of cattle that graze freely and eventually are taken to slaughterhouses. If we did end factory farming, it wouldn't be as simple as just releasing these animals into the wild either. If we did they would very likely die of starvation. So we're talking about a generation of cattle/chickens that would basically need to be killed off so we didn't mess up the environment with a massive population explosion it couldn't handle. On top of all of that, you are acting as if these animals are capable of the kind of thought that you and I are. They can think about their future, what their eventual fate is. This is fallacious. While animals may show signs of intelligence, there is no evidence of any kind of consciousness similar to ours. This can even be evidenced through humans. People used to think that deaf people were mentally retarded in some way. Hence "deaf and dumb", however a lot of them were simply missing language. Language is extremely important as it not only allows for group cohesion, it also makes inner dialogue possible. While animals may have some basic kind of communicative capabilities, it is…

'Perhaps, but in my view not compared to "They all disappeared," which suggests proactive agency (did they run away?) rather than passive fate' Ah, I see your point. Sadly I think a generation or two of teachers maniacally chastising their students for ever using the passive form could have something to do with this. Even in this forum, you'll find plenty of people saying that all writing need be direct, simple, and brief. There's virtue in that for quick memoranda, but to say that there's no place in the world for complex, abstract writing or the expression of nuance in careful word choice (as you describe) is a real shame. Too often I've been corrected by people who say "you mean 'I wish I _was_' because the subject is singular". There's some evidence that language is what makes abstract thought even possible. Perhaps we're leaving our minds unable to comprehend abstractions when we reduce that available in our language. More discussion is at https://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/21/life-without-language/. Or maybe I just need to get over it. I overcame my violent aversion to starting sentences with "or" and "and", after all.

This issue seems loaded because cognition is the way you win big now. Although NFL stars win big with pay, it's the Gates and the Zuckerburgs who loom high in our minds. I've learned to ignore the issue (aside from its entertainment value) because there's still too much for me to optimize within my phenotypic range and local environment to make me better off – or at least, so I think. Either way there's much more to keep me busy than navel-gazing at cognitive-height so much. On a related note: James Flynn of the Flynn Effect has noted many paradoxes within his infamous and eponymous result. I.Q. might not be improving so much. He anticipates explanations which synthesize nature and nurture but also look at the mind in terms of more basic cognitive operations and strategies. If I.Q. scores increasing reflect on the acquisition of useful, task-specific strategies, one might still be emulate the downward effect of a couple of I.Q. points which is at least something to be optimistic about. Newton only discovered Freshman Calculus. http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/12/16/the-flynn-effect-troubles-with… EDIT: Or perhaps it's the reduction of ambiguity/improvement-of-clarity that intelligence can bring that makes it so appealing in modern life? In which case there's still Buddhism to help with that.