This is a very strange article. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that it's trying to develop an intuitive model to explain human behavior that is not supposed to be completely...
This is a very strange article. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that it's trying to develop an intuitive model to explain human behavior that is not supposed to be completely accurate or grounded in reality. At no point did I feel like I was reading something by someone who knows more than me, and that's not a boast, I don't know very much. That's the problem.
It seems like the author has either recently read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind or has independently rediscovered the idea of bicameralism. This is an idea that has essentially no evidence besides "it kind of feels right", but it can't really be debunked without a complete understanding of the brain that is probably centuries away. It is not necessarily a bad thing to explore a theory like bicameralism, but it is irresponsible to do this without also presenting the "other side", i.e. actual modern neuroscience.
Many of the ideas in here, all of which are presented without evidence, read to me like someone who learned a little about natural selection and evolutionary psychology and misunderstood both of them. That's not really a fair characterization, because the author spent three years studying this stuff, but honestly, three years just generally reading about "U.S. history, world history, evolutionary psychology, political theory, and neuroscience" is not enough to master any of them. It takes 4 years of full-time work to get an undergraduate degree in any of those subjects, and most of that time is not just spent reading. Lots of stuff in here doesn't even make intuitive sense:
When everything is going smoothly, the software will run in the background on low-power mode.
The background of what? I thought the "software" was all brain activity. Is the idea that animal brains don't really do anything unless they're in trouble? What does "going smoothly" even mean, I thought suffering was irrelevant.
One species doing better almost always happens at the expense of other species doing worse.
Really wish there were some citations because this certainly sounds wrong. We can all easily think of counterexamples. Symbiosis? The Cambrian explosion? Evolution is maybe sort of a zero-sum game in a closed system, but systems and environments change, that's the whole point.
To genes, animal suffering is simply a useful tool—so the animal world is full of suffering.
Why is suffering different from the other emotions discussed in here? Why would suffering be more useful than pleasure? Also, I really dislike the personification of evolution, it almost always results in a bad mental model. There is no invisible hand and there is no ideal state that evolution is naturally driving towards. When an environment changes, some species adapt better than others. That's all there is to it. I know the author doesn't literally believe there are gremlins juicing your pain receptors when they want you to do something, but I don't think it's a useful mental model.
They had gained the superpower of reason, which gave humans the ability to solve complex problems, invent fancy new technologies, design sophisticated strategies, and make real-time adjustments to their thinking based on changes in their environment.
Really, animals can't reason, can't invent, can't strategize? This is not a pedantic point, the question of what makes us human and what separates us from other animals is extremely controversial and definitely not as simple as "we can reason".
by illuminating the distinction between true and false, reason made truth a core human drive.
Strongly disagree. There is no human behavior that can't be explained by motivations besides "truth seeking".
Humans had also gained the superpower of imagination, making them the world’s first animal that could fantasize and tell stories and dream of places they had never been.
This cannot possibly be true. I can't believe anybody could just drop in this sentence without feeling the need to provide a mountain of citations.
Without imagination, animals have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that animals other than themselves are full, living creatures who experience life just like they do. They can’t put themselves in another animal’s shoes.
These two superpowers produced a third superpower—one that, above all, makes humans human: empathy.
I'm not trying to say that animals are "just like us", or that a cute video of a dog protecting its pup is evidence of human-level consciousness, but come on. What supports this stuff?
Up until this development, the early human mind was like all animal minds—powered by genetic will and run by ancient software, with one purpose only: genetic immortality. But this new mind was something different entirely—something running independently of the human’s survival software.
I guess I can only hope that future chapters will somehow back this up.
Then we get into the bicameralism stuff that I personally don't buy, but I obviously can't disprove. But I'm incredibly skeptical of the idea that our "higher order" functions like love and creativity and wisdom and whatever aren't all driven by primitive impulses at their core, just like hunger.
The first (long) post in what the author promises will be a series of posts about society. Also about why people avoid talking about society. The actual first post (part 0) is here:...
The first (long) post in what the author promises will be a series of posts about society. Also about why people avoid talking about society. The actual first post (part 0) is here: https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-intro.html
If you're not familiar with WBW, the author posts very infrequent but usually very long detailed and researched posts on a variety of topics.
I'm still reading through this and will come back with some thoughts when I'm done.
I haven't read this yet but just want to say as an aside that, given WBW's track record I am super excited to read this and 100% recommend everyone read all of his articles! Among my favorites is...
I haven't read this yet but just want to say as an aside that, given WBW's track record I am super excited to read this and 100% recommend everyone read all of his articles! Among my favorites is the one about Musk (specifically the Neural Net part) and the one about cryogenics(sp?).
Interesting read, I'll have to come back for the next part when it's posted. I clicked on the "clueyness" link and it took me to an older post which contained the phrase "dogs aren't real." I...
Interesting read, I'll have to come back for the next part when it's posted. I clicked on the "clueyness" link and it took me to an older post which contained the phrase "dogs aren't real." I think it was probably a joke of some kind, but it definitely seemed out of place amidst the compelling stuff the author had said up to that point. Not really sure what to make of that. I'm probably just being a humorless jerk.
Yeah, that was random. I tried a search and it seems others were puzzled too. I didn't find anything that really explained it, other than it might be an obscure meme?
Yeah, that was random. I tried a search and it seems others were puzzled too. I didn't find anything that really explained it, other than it might be an obscure meme?
I don't think so. The article is from May 2016 and as far as I can tell Birds Aren't Real wasn't a thing until around last September. Plus that's a (faux?) conspiracy theory about birds actually...
I don't think so. The article is from May 2016 and as far as I can tell Birds Aren't Real wasn't a thing until around last September. Plus that's a (faux?) conspiracy theory about birds actually being government surveillance drones, which doesn't really fit the context of the article.
I really liked this article and it's resonating with me right now as I reflect on some mistakes I've made recently at work. I'm a pretty task focused worker and tend to assume everyone I work with...
I really liked this article and it's resonating with me right now as I reflect on some mistakes I've made recently at work. I'm a pretty task focused worker and tend to assume everyone I work with is as monomaniacally focused on solving specific problems as I am. Not so it turns out! Seems like being a manager means not just keeping the "light" on and venting the smoke away inside your own head, but taking on the role of venting the smoke out for your own team AND making sure their interactions with each other are always making the light grow brighter rather than making the fire burn hotter.
I'm not sure this is sound on animals. Do bears eat rabbits? Based on a quick search, I don't think so, unless they are stealing a kill from another animal. It seems like you have to be pretty...
I'm not sure this is sound on animals. Do bears eat rabbits? Based on a quick search, I don't think so, unless they are stealing a kill from another animal. It seems like you have to be pretty fast to catch a rabbit.
Is empathy limited to humans? I suppose it depends on how you define it. Emotions clearly aren't limited to humans, and there are stories of animals being sad about things happening to other animals.
In general, I trust a writer more when they link to things backing up their points.
But those are side points and this is just the beginning of the series. We will see where it goes.
Being sad about things happening to others is sympathy. Empathy is the capacity to put ourselves in other peoples' shoes, which requires a the ability to imagine counterfactual circumstances (in...
Being sad about things happening to others is sympathy. Empathy is the capacity to put ourselves in other peoples' shoes, which requires a the ability to imagine counterfactual circumstances (in other words, you're not actually in their shoes, but you're able to imagine a world state in which you were).
It is possible other animals can do this, but it's impossible to determine if it's happening without getting some sense as to their inner lives or mental states, and we can't do that since they can't communicate with us in any way rich enough to explain it.
It’s also what psychologists call affective empathy. What you described is called cognitive empathy. Generally, we require a bit of both to call someone genuinely empathetic. Imagine a criminal...
Being sad about things happening to others is sympathy
It’s also what psychologists call affective empathy. What you described is called cognitive empathy. Generally, we require a bit of both to call someone genuinely empathetic. Imagine a criminal mastermind whose ability to read other people is so great they can play them like a fiddle, and steal all their money with no remorse. This person would possess a great deal of one component of empathy, and none of the other, and would not be what we in casual speech call empathetic.
It’s an interesting question whether or not animals can engage in counterfactual reasoning. Here is an experiment that suggests rats do in fact have that capacity. Surely not the final word on that, but it doesn’t seem all that implausible to me that they do. All the time, we’re finding out that other animals possess some of the basic building blocks of human thinking and human society. Even ants pass some tests of reflective self-awareness. I think it’s more likely that in most respects, we don’t possess something truly unique from other animals that enables us to think, feel and create complex societies. It’s more that our abilities are more advanced or we’ve learned to use them in more complex ways.
If I had to make a hypothesis I would guess something about how our capacity for language works enables all those other functions to operate at a higher level. Like, something about communication...
It’s more that our abilities are more advanced or we’ve learned to use them in more complex ways.
If I had to make a hypothesis I would guess something about how our capacity for language works enables all those other functions to operate at a higher level. Like, something about communication enabling us to "exercise" this skill in a way that species that can't talk simply cannot or just the mental modeling/mirroring you have to do to actually invent and use a complex language.
This is a very strange article. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that it's trying to develop an intuitive model to explain human behavior that is not supposed to be completely accurate or grounded in reality. At no point did I feel like I was reading something by someone who knows more than me, and that's not a boast, I don't know very much. That's the problem.
It seems like the author has either recently read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind or has independently rediscovered the idea of bicameralism. This is an idea that has essentially no evidence besides "it kind of feels right", but it can't really be debunked without a complete understanding of the brain that is probably centuries away. It is not necessarily a bad thing to explore a theory like bicameralism, but it is irresponsible to do this without also presenting the "other side", i.e. actual modern neuroscience.
Many of the ideas in here, all of which are presented without evidence, read to me like someone who learned a little about natural selection and evolutionary psychology and misunderstood both of them. That's not really a fair characterization, because the author spent three years studying this stuff, but honestly, three years just generally reading about "U.S. history, world history, evolutionary psychology, political theory, and neuroscience" is not enough to master any of them. It takes 4 years of full-time work to get an undergraduate degree in any of those subjects, and most of that time is not just spent reading. Lots of stuff in here doesn't even make intuitive sense:
The background of what? I thought the "software" was all brain activity. Is the idea that animal brains don't really do anything unless they're in trouble? What does "going smoothly" even mean, I thought suffering was irrelevant.
Really wish there were some citations because this certainly sounds wrong. We can all easily think of counterexamples. Symbiosis? The Cambrian explosion? Evolution is maybe sort of a zero-sum game in a closed system, but systems and environments change, that's the whole point.
Why is suffering different from the other emotions discussed in here? Why would suffering be more useful than pleasure? Also, I really dislike the personification of evolution, it almost always results in a bad mental model. There is no invisible hand and there is no ideal state that evolution is naturally driving towards. When an environment changes, some species adapt better than others. That's all there is to it. I know the author doesn't literally believe there are gremlins juicing your pain receptors when they want you to do something, but I don't think it's a useful mental model.
Really, animals can't reason, can't invent, can't strategize? This is not a pedantic point, the question of what makes us human and what separates us from other animals is extremely controversial and definitely not as simple as "we can reason".
Strongly disagree. There is no human behavior that can't be explained by motivations besides "truth seeking".
This cannot possibly be true. I can't believe anybody could just drop in this sentence without feeling the need to provide a mountain of citations.
I'm not trying to say that animals are "just like us", or that a cute video of a dog protecting its pup is evidence of human-level consciousness, but come on. What supports this stuff?
I guess I can only hope that future chapters will somehow back this up.
Then we get into the bicameralism stuff that I personally don't buy, but I obviously can't disprove. But I'm incredibly skeptical of the idea that our "higher order" functions like love and creativity and wisdom and whatever aren't all driven by primitive impulses at their core, just like hunger.
The first (long) post in what the author promises will be a series of posts about society. Also about why people avoid talking about society. The actual first post (part 0) is here: https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-intro.html
If you're not familiar with WBW, the author posts very infrequent but usually very long detailed and researched posts on a variety of topics.
I'm still reading through this and will come back with some thoughts when I'm done.
I haven't read this yet but just want to say as an aside that, given WBW's track record I am super excited to read this and 100% recommend everyone read all of his articles! Among my favorites is the one about Musk (specifically the Neural Net part) and the one about cryogenics(sp?).
Interesting read, I'll have to come back for the next part when it's posted. I clicked on the "clueyness" link and it took me to an older post which contained the phrase "dogs aren't real." I think it was probably a joke of some kind, but it definitely seemed out of place amidst the compelling stuff the author had said up to that point. Not really sure what to make of that. I'm probably just being a humorless jerk.
Yeah, that was random. I tried a search and it seems others were puzzled too. I didn't find anything that really explained it, other than it might be an obscure meme?
Is it a reference to Birds Aren't Real?
I don't think so. The article is from May 2016 and as far as I can tell Birds Aren't Real wasn't a thing until around last September. Plus that's a (faux?) conspiracy theory about birds actually being government surveillance drones, which doesn't really fit the context of the article.
I really liked this article and it's resonating with me right now as I reflect on some mistakes I've made recently at work. I'm a pretty task focused worker and tend to assume everyone I work with is as monomaniacally focused on solving specific problems as I am. Not so it turns out! Seems like being a manager means not just keeping the "light" on and venting the smoke away inside your own head, but taking on the role of venting the smoke out for your own team AND making sure their interactions with each other are always making the light grow brighter rather than making the fire burn hotter.
I'm not sure this is sound on animals. Do bears eat rabbits? Based on a quick search, I don't think so, unless they are stealing a kill from another animal. It seems like you have to be pretty fast to catch a rabbit.
Is empathy limited to humans? I suppose it depends on how you define it. Emotions clearly aren't limited to humans, and there are stories of animals being sad about things happening to other animals.
In general, I trust a writer more when they link to things backing up their points.
But those are side points and this is just the beginning of the series. We will see where it goes.
Being sad about things happening to others is sympathy. Empathy is the capacity to put ourselves in other peoples' shoes, which requires a the ability to imagine counterfactual circumstances (in other words, you're not actually in their shoes, but you're able to imagine a world state in which you were).
It is possible other animals can do this, but it's impossible to determine if it's happening without getting some sense as to their inner lives or mental states, and we can't do that since they can't communicate with us in any way rich enough to explain it.
It’s also what psychologists call affective empathy. What you described is called cognitive empathy. Generally, we require a bit of both to call someone genuinely empathetic. Imagine a criminal mastermind whose ability to read other people is so great they can play them like a fiddle, and steal all their money with no remorse. This person would possess a great deal of one component of empathy, and none of the other, and would not be what we in casual speech call empathetic.
It’s an interesting question whether or not animals can engage in counterfactual reasoning. Here is an experiment that suggests rats do in fact have that capacity. Surely not the final word on that, but it doesn’t seem all that implausible to me that they do. All the time, we’re finding out that other animals possess some of the basic building blocks of human thinking and human society. Even ants pass some tests of reflective self-awareness. I think it’s more likely that in most respects, we don’t possess something truly unique from other animals that enables us to think, feel and create complex societies. It’s more that our abilities are more advanced or we’ve learned to use them in more complex ways.
If I had to make a hypothesis I would guess something about how our capacity for language works enables all those other functions to operate at a higher level. Like, something about communication enabling us to "exercise" this skill in a way that species that can't talk simply cannot or just the mental modeling/mirroring you have to do to actually invent and use a complex language.