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karl fungus posted:I wonder if people were the same 2000 years before the Romans, too. Well, the Egyptians also drew dirty graffiti everywhere so signs point to yes.
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Jul 4, 2013 05:29
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karl fungus posted:That's incredible. What was the joke? "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." Seriously!
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Jul 4, 2013 05:44
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Golden_Zucchini posted:
I think that's what you meant to type. 
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Jul 4, 2013 05:56
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Barto posted:Recent scholars have argued that the legend about his name being Aristocles originated in the Hellenistic age. Plato was a common name, of which 31 instances are known at Athens alone.[26] Oh my god I don't know whats real anymore! Whats real?!
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Jul 4, 2013 06:05
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It's pretty hilarious to think we might reach Star Trek levels of technology yet people are still going to be just be drawing dicks onto everything and making fart jokes.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:07
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Space T Rex posted:Oh my god I don't know whats real anymore! Whats real?! The stuff outside the cave.
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Jul 4, 2013 07:19
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Heh. Come back in here and say that I dare ya.
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Jul 4, 2013 07:22
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Grand Fromage posted:Yep. The oldest recorded joke is a fart joke, it's from like 1600 BC in Sumeria, where writing was invented. Biologically, modern humans have been basically the same for the past 50,000 years or so. So I would guess people from 50,000 years ago were fundamentally the same as we are now. Yeah, about that... I read some interesting book verbosely titled "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and the guy claims ancient peoples(pre-1500 BC or so) did not have a consciousness as we would understand it and instead relied upon auditory hallucinations(which they considered as gods, ancestors, or spirits) to make decisions in stressful situations. This mode of problem-solving broke down during Bronze-Age collapse which explains various religious behavior afterwards such as oracles, divination & prophets. It sounds incredibly far-fetched but apparently there is some amount neurological/psychological evidence for it. The reason why he claims ancient people did not have a consciousness however, is because he couldn't find any evidence of introspective thinking or any mention of concepts such as "mind", "soul", "heart" in the oldest writings we know of and this changes very rapidly some time after 1000 BC. Have you heard about this hypothesis?
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Jul 4, 2013 08:38
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fspades posted:Yeah, about that... I read some interesting book verbosely titled "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" and the guy claims ancient peoples(pre-1500 BC or so) did not have a consciousness as we would understand it and instead relied upon auditory hallucinations(which they considered as gods, ancestors, or spirits) to make decisions in stressful situations. This mode of problem-solving broke down during Bronze-Age collapse which explains various religious behavior afterwards such as oracles, divination & prophets. It sounds incredibly far-fetched but apparently there is some amount neurological/psychological evidence for it. The reason why he claims ancient people did not have a consciousness however, is because he couldn't find any evidence of introspective thinking or any mention of concepts such as "mind", "soul", "heart" in the oldest writings we know of and this changes very rapidly some time after 1000 BC. Have you heard about this hypothesis? The author, Dr Julian Jaynes, admits in his book that there is not really a sufficient amount of evidence for it. It was certainly a fascinating book from which I learned a lot of things about a diverse slew of subjects, and his hypothesis may even be correct. But as it stands, there is insufficient evidence to support the assertion that such a psycho/neurological gap exists between peoples ancient and modern.
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Jul 4, 2013 08:58
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Brown Blitzkrieg posted:The author, Dr Julian Jaynes, admits in his book that there is not really a sufficient amount of evidence for it. That's an understatement. Apparently when shown evidence that didn't agree with his thesis (the Gilgamesh epic for one), he dismissed it for what basically amounted to "reasons". It's also dripping with the same sort of sneering condescension shown by Victorian types towards anyone with darker skin than the Welsh, according to some anyway. My personal feeling is that his theories are utter ahistorical crap, so I may be biased. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 09:43
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I get that feeling too. He uses circular logic too much in my opinion. "Well if we assume this was written by a bicameral person for a moment, then this writing is totally supportive of my thesis that could have been explained in some other way!" Still it's an idea that tickles my brain.
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Jul 4, 2013 09:51
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fspades posted:I get that feeling too. He uses circular logic too much in my opinion. "Well if we assume this was written by a bicameral person for a moment, then this writing is totally supportive of my thesis that could have been explained in some other way!" Still it's an idea that tickles my brain. If he uses circular logic at all his hypothesis is faulty and therefore invalid. Having stuff like circular logic inside your neat hypothesis is as bad as stuffing it with tautologies. (Which is also bad.) Besides, coming from what you said, this hypothesis sounds like a load of bullshit to me. quote:he couldn't find any evidence of introspective thinking or any mention of concepts such as "mind", "soul", "heart" in the oldest writings we know of and this changes very rapidly some time after 1000 BC Yeah, strange that. As if carefully hammering letters into clay tablets could be that hard! Sure, we may need to make lists of foodstuffs to survive the next draught and our king will chop our heads off if he doesn't get praised on them, but lets waste our tablets on a lenghty discussion over mind, soul and "heart", just so that one guy in the far future can find it and be assured we do actually have a consciousness! Also, we can't even read all of those old languages and if you go farther back, people didn't even had written language. What does that guy claim in those cases? Had they automatically their consciousness revoked, or did he admit there wasn't enough data to decide?
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Jul 4, 2013 10:29
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Libluini posted:If he uses circular logic at all his hypothesis is faulty and therefore invalid. Having stuff like circular logic inside your neat hypothesis is as bad as stuffing it with tautologies. (Which is also bad.) See, his argument isn't as stupid as you are portraying here though. He claims language precedes consciousness and written language in particular was instrumental in the development of consciousness as they allowed "bicameral" people to encounter statements about laws and gods independent from the voices in their head. We do have some sources of ancient literature that is not about bookkeeping such as Iliad, Gilgamesh and older parts of Bible and those are the kind of literature he focuses. He finds the difference between the Book of Amos and Book of Ecclesiastes and between the Iliad and the Odyssey particularly telling for example. It's just that we have no way to definitively prove his thesis short of kidnapping an ancient person with time travel and doing bunch of clinical tests. Interpretations of ancient literature are dime a dozen. fspades fucked around with this message at 11:23 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 11:14
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But that really makes no sense at all to me from what little I know about neurology, since the sort of change in the physical brain such a thing like that would require just doesn't make sense, and there's no evidence it happened anyway. Personally I go along with Dawkins' summary of the whole thing: Jaymes either discovered something truly remarkable or he was a blithering imbecile pushing a lot of bullshit. I'd bet my money it's the latter. Check out the major website about him sometime, it reads like it was written by cultists. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 11:27 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 11:22
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It's the stupidest loving thing in the first place. How does he even propose the mechanism of action? Did Gilgamesh smash the Crystal of Thought upon the steps of his Great Ziggurat, releasing the psionic energies of the Atlantans? Or did a sapient European Eve propagate her consciousness gene through the world over a mere 3000 years of evolution, which had some colossal survival advantage over the rest of homo sapiens? Wouldn't that imply that someone like me, with no known European ancestors, and with what little likelihood of having this consciousness gene being bred out by the mass of my sheeple ancestors, is a mere philosophical zombie?
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Jul 4, 2013 11:35
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Sounds idiotic to me. People were living in settled civilization and cities at least 11,000 years ago. That alone makes it absurd to say consciousness only arose 3500 years ago.
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Jul 4, 2013 11:41
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I'm really curious (not really) about how that guy defines "conscious" in the first place. I mean, I've seen people who equate education and intelligence, maybe the dude has the same mental hickup with the difference between consciousness and spending precious time writing down symbols for abstract concepts that have enough similarities to systems of writing we know to make them translatable, on a material that can keep them readable thousands of years later, with a frequency that gives us a reasonable chance of finding them today.
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Jul 4, 2013 11:44
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Phobophilia posted:It's the stupidest loving thing in the first place. How does he even propose the mechanism of action? Did Gilgamesh smash the Crystal of Thought upon the steps of his Great Ziggurat, releasing the psionic energies of the Atlantans? Or did a sapient European Eve propagate her consciousness gene through the world over a mere 3000 years of evolution, which had some colossal survival advantage over the rest of homo sapiens? Wouldn't that imply that someone like me, with no known European ancestors, and with what little likelihood of having this consciousness gene being bred out by the mass of my sheeple ancestors, is a mere philosophical zombie? He makes it clear it has very little to do with genetics or natural selection, but rather changing societal conditions made bicameral mind obsolete and thanks to the plasticity of brain, new generations who grew in a radically different environment had ended up with physiologically different brains that we know today. Even then people with bicameral minds didn't immediately disappear bu they faced severe repression and vestiges of bicameral mind still exist today among people we know as schizophrenics. I even believe he first came to this idea while he was working extensively with schizophrenics. my dad posted:I'm really curious (not really) about how that guy defines "conscious" in the first place. I mean, I've seen people who equate education and intelligence, maybe the dude has the same mental hickup with the difference between consciousness and spending precious time writing down symbols for abstract concepts that have enough similarities to systems of writing we know to make them translatable, on a material that can keep them readable thousands of years later, with a frequency that gives us a reasonable chance of finding them today. He defines it thus: Consciousness is not language. Consciousness is not learning. Consciousness is not problem solving. Consciousness s not even reason & logic. These things all existed before consciousness and strictly speaking consciousness is not necessary for a complex society. Rather, consciousness is a function that contains some features: inventing a mind-space within ourselves, maintaining an ego and narratizing a "me" story with a past and future. At least that what I understood from it. Anyway just wanted to bring it up to see if there were historians who knew ancient history had some opinion on it. I'm not particularly sold on his hypothesis either. Carry on. fspades fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 11:46
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fspades posted:He makes it clear it has very little to do with genetics or natural selection, but rather changing societal conditions made bicameral mind obsolete and thanks to the plasticity of brain, new generations who grew in a radically different environment had ended up with physiologically different brains that we know today. Even then people with bicameral minds didn't immediately disappear bu they faced severe repression and vestiges of bicameral mind still exist today among people we know as schizophrenics. I even believe he first came to this idea while he was working extensively with schizophrenics. How does he deal with the many places where societal conditions never changed to that point? Like, say, Australian aborigines?
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Jul 4, 2013 11:47
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fspades posted:It's just that we have no way to definitively prove his thesis short of kidnapping an ancient person with time travel and doing bunch of clinical tests. Interpretations of ancient literature are dime a dozen. This also goes the other way around. The claim that they didn't have conciousness is pretty much the direct opposite of a lot of established science. So the burden of proof (God, religious debates have made me hate that phrase) is on him for this one. If he can't prove his hypothesis than there is no reason to give it second thought.
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Jul 4, 2013 11:47
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I would totally accept that schizophrenia has had an influence on civilization though, in the forms of various prophets and whatnot.
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Jul 4, 2013 11:48
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fspades posted:He makes it clear it has very little to do with genetics or natural selection, but rather changing societal conditions made bicameral mind obsolete and thanks to the plasticity of brain, new generations who grew in a radically different environment had ended up with physiologically different brains that we know today. Even then people with bicameral minds didn't immediately disappear bu they faced severe repression and vestiges of bicameral mind still exist today among people we know as schizophrenics. I even believe he first came to this idea while he was working extensively with schizophrenics. That still doesn't explain why cultures who had no contact with the West (I'll bet his sources are all from "Western" culture) until recently don't have massively increased rates of schizophrenia. So yeah, it's garbage and there aren't really any two ways about it. Grand Fromage posted:I would totally accept that schizophrenia has had an influence on civilization though, in the forms of various prophets and whatnot. Now this I could definitely believe.
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Jul 4, 2013 11:50
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Obdicut posted:How does he deal with the many places where societal conditions never changed to that point? Like, say, Australian aborigines? As far as I can tell he doesn't. The only time he mentions when a subjective conscious civilization met with a bicameral civilization was during to Spanish invasion of the Americas and he touches a lot upon pre-Colombian civilization's beliefs and culture and the Spanish conquistador's reaction to it. edit: To carry the discussion to a different direction: what do you all think of Bronze Age collapse? What the hell happened there? Is there a good book that gives an overview of it? fspades fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 12:08
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That is the dumbest thing. From what we know of linguistics and neurology it's pretty clear that all humans have an i-language, which is basically an innate biological capacity for language which is our system of thought. All external languages (english, korean, dutch etc) are essentially cultural norms that plug into this i-language while flipping some parameters (like if they're head-first or not). We have some inkling of when this evolutionary change happened because of the the explosion of self-expression, creativity etc in the archeological record. This is what Jared Diamond once called the Great Leap Forward.
Dante fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 12:30
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fspades posted:As far as I can tell he doesn't. The only time he mentions when a subjective conscious civilization met with a bicameral civilization was during to Spanish invasion of the Americas and he touches a lot upon pre-Colombian civilization's beliefs and culture and the Spanish conquistador's reaction to it. Well, that's a pretty significant weakness. Dante posted:That is the dumbest thing. From what we know of linguistics and neurology it's pretty clear that all humans have an i-language, basically an innate biological capacity for language which is our system of thought. All external languages (what's normally called language like english) are essentially different forms of this i-language with different parameters switched (like the placement of adjectives in respects to what they describe). We have some inkling of when this evolutionary change happened because of the the explosion of self-expression, creativity etc in the archeological record. What Jared Diamond once called the Great Leap Forward The latter is simply a theory, though, it's not a demonstrated fact that this evolutionary change happened. It's a very contentious area. If you looked back on human history from a more distant perspective, you'd be tempted to come up with some evolutionary explanation for the huge outpouring of creativity in the past three centuries, too.
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Jul 4, 2013 12:39
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Namarrgon posted:This also goes the other way around. The claim that they didn't have conciousness is pretty much the direct opposite of a lot of established science. So the burden of proof (God, religious debates have made me hate that phrase) is on him for this one. If he can't prove his hypothesis than there is no reason to give it second thought. The problem runs deeper: If, as fspades claimes his hypothesis actually contains faulty logic, it is invalid. All conclusions he draws out of his hypothesis are invalid. And if he ever wants to prove his rubbish, he better gets back to the drawing board fast and starts rewriting it. I also think he runs into a fundamental thought error: He seems to ignore that even people without a written language could still talk to each other. fspades posted:He defines it thus: Consciousness is not language. Consciousness is not learning. Consciousness is not problem solving. Consciousness s not even reason & logic. These things all existed before consciousness and strictly speaking consciousness is not necessary for a complex society. Rather, consciousness is a function that contains some features: inventing a mind-space within ourselves, maintaining an ego and narratizing a "me" story with a past and future. At least that what I understood from it. Well, with that definition every human ever has had consciousness and maybe a few animals, too. That's useless and taken at face value undercuts his "hypothesis" even more. Let's just discard this pseudo-science and go back to ancient history, OK?
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Jul 4, 2013 12:48
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Obdicut posted:Well, that's a pretty significant weakness. Yeah you can debate if the great leap forward constitutes a good date for this change instead of continuos cultural change, but it obviously happened at some point. Dante fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 12:54
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Libluini posted:Well, with that definition every human ever has had consciousness and maybe a few animals, too. I was under the impression that this was the going theory. With some apes, dolphins and elephants being prime candidates for being conscious individuals.
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Jul 4, 2013 12:59
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 Real estate developers bulldoze 4000 year old pyramid
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Jul 4, 2013 13:04
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^^^^^^^^^^ Holy poo poo.Namarrgon posted:I was under the impression that this was the going theory. With some apes, dolphins and elephants being prime candidates for being conscious individuals. Well, there's apparently this one guy thinking he is a scientist and he thinks until 1000 years or something ago no one ever had consciousness. His own definition of "consciousness" disagrees with that, though.  Also Ravens. And Cats seem to be able to recognize a mirror image of themselves, so they have some sort of sense of self, too.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:05
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Libluini posted:
That one guy also happens to be a Yale psychologist and he has some amount of support within academia, including among neurologists and anthropologists. It's a fringe theory, yes, but just because it's a fringe theory does not deserve instant dismissal without consideration. Don't write-off anything you heard from second-hand information as pseudo-science.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:13
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Why are y'all so mad? Jaynes' theory is absolutely beautiful and wonderful, the fact that it runs against common sense yet is so elegant should be a reason to appreciate it, if anything.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:13
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Ras Het posted:Why are y'all so mad? Jaynes' theory is absolutely beautiful and wonderful, the fact that it runs against common sense yet is so elegant should be a reason to appreciate it, if anything. Being wrong and elegant means you're still wrong.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:17
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As for the insane jump in development over the last few hundred year? What it boils down to is better trade networks and communications allowing continuous and rapid cross-pollination of ideas. Before, large developments required some spectacularly brilliant man to come up with that breakthrough and hopefully have enough social clout to make their idea take root. You had one peasant come up a new agricultural tool and it won't spread beyond his village he'll take it to his grave. These, days, any bright middle class person (person, not man!) can come up with something clever and potentially have the world take notice.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:19
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fspades posted:That one guy also happens to be a Yale psychologist and he has some amount of support within academia, including among neurologists and anthropologists. It's a fringe theory, yes, but just because it's a fringe theory does not deserve instant dismissal without consideration. Don't write-off anything you heard from second-hand information as pseudo-science. Like all theories, it requires consideration as far as the evidence brings it. Which is nowhere.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:21
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Phobophilia posted:As for the insane jump in development over the last few hundred year? What it boils down to is better trade networks and communications allowing continuous and rapid cross-pollination of ideas. Before, large developments required some spectacularly brilliant man to come up with that breakthrough and hopefully have enough social clout to make their idea take root. You had one peasant come up a new agricultural tool and it won't spread beyond his village he'll take it to his grave. These, days, any bright middle class person (person, not man!) can come up with something clever and potentially have the world take notice. Dante fucked around with this message at 13:42 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 13:33
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Namarrgon posted:Like all theories, it requires consideration as far as the evidence brings it. Which is nowhere. Let me just say I'll do some more reading about it, including the book's sequel "Bicameral Mind 30 Years On" and then get back to you about if they found any credible evidence for it or not. I'm just curious about it.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:39
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Dante posted:The evolutionary change obviously happened, because we're the only species on the planet with this feature. Yeah, I'm taking issue with the idea that the evolutionary change happened at that particular point. quote:Yeah you can debate if the great leap forward constitutes a good date for this change instead of continuos cultural change, but it obviously happened at some point. Yes, that's what I was saying was just a theory, that the great leap theory (if it was, in fact, a great leap) coincided with an actual bit of evolution.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:39
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Ras Het posted:Why are y'all so mad? Jaynes' theory is absolutely beautiful and wonderful, the fact that it runs against common sense yet is so elegant should be a reason to appreciate it, if anything. There are infinite elegant and untrue theories.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:40
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fspades posted:That one guy also happens to be a Yale psychologist and he has some amount of support within academia, including among neurologists and anthropologists. It's a fringe theory, yes, but just because it's a fringe theory does not deserve instant dismissal without consideration. Don't write-off anything you heard from second-hand information as pseudo-science. To be frank, I learned about science theory from a German point of view. In our university I learned that a theory, even a simple hypothesis, at least has to be internally consistent, or it isn't scientific. Even German Philosophy demands a working internal logic or you will be laughed out of the gate. So if what you said is true and there are open faults in it like circular logic, then at least the peer review in Germany will be damning for him and in extension for Yale and its psychology-department, too. Then again, most German scientists would be pretty confused if you tell them psychology is a science, so take that with a grain of salt. Dante posted:This isn't entirely correct, it's not the lack of ideas/cross-pollination or whatever that were the major hindrances, but rather the lack of organisational capacity in a society. The classic example here is the breakdown of the western roman empire, when the technological level of societies actually went backwards simply because there was no institutional structure to support it anymore. Agricultural technological developments is a special case of this because of agricultural intensification (See Boserup). Seems plausible. In the thread about Mesoamerican cultures I learned some cultures in Middle- and South America actually developed agriculture for religious ceremony, instead of feeding people with food. So apparently in those cultures the organisational capacity came first, agricultural development later. Getting better maize was just a nice coincedence.
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Jul 4, 2013 13:40
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