Thanks for the information, I had no idea that Pinker had such an anti-following. I’ve not read or even thought about him in years. I just vaguely remembered that that book did a lot to make me more thankful for the current state of things compared to how they used to be. I appreciate you letting me know that he is such a questionable fellow.
Whereas most races are content to evolve slowly and carefully over thousands of generations, discarding a prehensile toe here, nervously hazarding another nostril there, the Haggunenons would have done for Charles Darwin what a squadron of Arcturan Stunt Apples would have done for Sir Isaac Newton.
- 6 Posts
- 30 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: July 8th, 2023
You are not logged in. If you use a Fediverse account that is able to follow users, you can follow this user.
The Amazon reviews are really bad. If anyone is looking for a book with this same idea, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker is really great.
11·11 months agodeleted by creator
1·1 year agoYep, use it, love it. I just have a bunch of alerts set up for any new articles that include search phrases in my areas of interest, mainly bioacoustics stuff so I can post any new relevant articles or papers on digitalbioacoustics@lemmy.world
Awesome! Thanks so much, I really appreciate the info, I’m adding some to my list now. I am quite interested to hear an Ausie perspective of Trump, and a good science podcast sounds great. Thanks again!
I thought you may be interested in u/pringles followup comment
Awesome, I’m sold! Downloading them now. Thanks so much for taking the time to write this. Looking forward to listening!
Do you recommend any episodes in particular of these?
Are there any episodes of these in particular that stick out to you?
Oh yes, hardcore history is so good.
Darknet Diaries is fantastic!
Just downloaded them, thanks for the recommendations!
Probably “Philosophize This”
Any episode of any of these that especially stick out to you?
Darknet Diaries
Intelligence Squared
Sean Carroll’s Mindscape
6·1 year agoI guess it is up to debate exactly what the definition of “language” is, but there have been some exciting discoveries regarding animal communication. One of the most decoded systems is that of prairie dogs, they have been found have different sounds that are used as adjectives, verbs, and nouns. This is even to the point where the sequence they make changes in a predictable way if the same person approaches them wearing a blue shirt or a grey shirt.
Other animals have something like uniquely identifying names and/or voiceprints, for example dolphins. For some whales, these names even include information on what group they are a part of as well as their individual identity.
Elephant communication has been so well decoded that people have even begun making an english-elephant translator. For example, elephants get defensive if you play the elephant noise for “honeybee”.
Thanks to AI this is currently a rapidly developing field which goes by the name of “Digital Bioacoustics”. If you interested, there is more information of at !digitalbioacoustics@lemmy.world or https://lemmy.world/c/digitalbioacoustics
2·1 year agoFantastic comment! Thanks for the names. I really appreciate you writing this.
Roger Payne introduced much of the world to humpback whale songs and as a result much whale population decline began to reverse. He predicted that this would happen if people could just see that they communicate with each other. This reversal happened despite us being unable to even begin to understand what they were saying to each other.
With this recent explosion of AI technology, leaps and bounds are being made to actually begin to decode the communications of some other animals. This new emerging field is being called Digital Bioacoustics. For instance, a study has just recently come out that elephants call each other by names. I think there is a decent chance that this deeper understanding of animal communication may possibly lead to a paradigm shift in how humans see the other living creatures that we share the planet with, in the very least, I can hope so!
Look around for anything that is baseball shaped and sized and look up a juggling tutorials. Even if you already know the basic pattern, there are tons of tricks that you can start working on right away.
Alright, thank you. Good to know!
The main things that stuck in my head after all those years was that stuff like assault, rape, murder, torture, entertainment-based animal abuse all used to be much worse. He said that people used to nail cats to posts around town so they would flail around until they died, just for the hell of it. I never fact-checked these claims.