I mean lots and lots of our hominid ancestors died because they're less efficient than chimps We almost died We eventually made it because of that random bootstrapping - the brain developing a true complete natural language, and with it abstraction
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Replying to @arthur_affect
arguably the key feature of humanity isn't abstract thought in some exalted sense, but the ability to cooperate, and especially /to do what you're told/
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
most other species, each new animal has to start learning the world from scratch, each time the thing about humans is, someone else can figure out how to do X, and then tell you, and you don't have to figure it out yourself or even really understand it you just do X now
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Replying to @perdricof @arthur_affect
which is to say, we can build up a body of socially-transmitted knowledge in ways that most other animals can't (yes, there are exceptions) what this translates to: we can build on the past faster than the rate of genetic evolution that other animals are locked to
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Replying to @perdricof
It all starts with language Like I think the hot take in ARRIVAL is correct, linguistics is the most foundational field of study, not physics Without language you literally can't know anything else
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
Like the CS metaphor for what happened to humans is "I figured out how to build the instruction set this ape manufacturer put in the apes for hunting and gathering into a Turing-complete language"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
(This isn't just a hot take but an old cold conservative take This is essentially what they meant by the "trivium" - grammar, logic and rhetoric, i.e. a mastery of language, precedes learning about any specific subject)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
Anyway to go with the cheesy metaphor about computers, yeah, it's not just that we had a big CPU, but we're networked The one random feature we had was that primitive ability to call out to each other as pack hunters, that went down an evolutionary garden path
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
The larynx and tongue getting more and more dextrous and humans developing the tic of vocalizing their emotions and reactions nearly all the time Wasteful, pathological, from the point of view of other animals Why are you always on the phone instead of doing your work Becky
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
Like early skeptics of networked computing "Why would you want your computer to be connected to every other computer ALL THE TIME Isn't that really expensive and obviously a security risk"
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So yeah, now look at what we've done This is why the science fiction horror trope of a "hive mind" is this weird self loathing hypocritical thing From the POV of a normal animal, we are the hivemind, humans are the closest thing to a hivemind that has ever existed
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
The Borg should be completely incomprehensible because of the Darmok problem - they're all extremely "too online" and the collective is going to have memes moving so fast nothing else can keep up
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Replying to @LizardOrman @perdricof
Hugh and Seven of Nine's trauma from being unplugged is literally what all of us online Millennials experience when we're stuck somewhere with a dead phone
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