Nicker on 6/9/2021 at 06:02
Putting a face to the face.
[video=youtube;N6Q7VKavamc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Q7VKavamc[/video]
Cipheron on 15/9/2021 at 11:17
Quote Posted by Azaran
<Asking Hunter-Gatherers Life's Toughest Questions>
I love how concrete (vs abstract) those answers are. What are the most important things in life? Hunter-Gatherer: Meat, Honey, Corn Porridge. There's kind of a mythology that primitive people are extra-spiritual, but it's largely romanticized and not born out in fact, and the romanticization can impact the scholarship. An example was exposed by the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who analysed the actual practical reasons for the 'totem' system in north american indian societies. These were assumed to be all mystical and religious in nature, but in practice, what the assigned animals did was merely sanction inbreeding: you took on the animal totem of you father, and on marriage, women took on the animal totem of their husband, in a common system. Basically you were forbidden to marry someone with the same totem. So it's like a sub-tribal system for minimizing inbreeding. I think it was also common that your totem group was prevented from eating your totem animal, which also serves a regulatory role in preventing any one group from monopolizing the hunt.
(
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=481)
Note how (relatively) primitive people's are extremely concrete in their interpretations
Quote:
Dogs and chickens (pp. 81-82):
Q: What do a chicken and a dog have in common?
A: They are not alike. A chicken has two legs, a dog has four. A chicken has wings but a dog doesn't. A dog has big ears and a chicken's are small.
Q: Is there one word you could use for them both?
A: No, of course not.
Q: Would the word "animal" fit?
A: Yes.
Fish and crows (p. 82)
Q: What do a fish and a crow have in common?
A: A fish — it lives in water. A crow flies. If the fish just lies on top of the water, the crow could peck at it. A crow can eat a fish but a fish can't eat a crow.
Q: Could you use one word for them both?
A: If you call them "animals", that wouldn't be right. A fish isn't an animal and a crow isn't either. A crow can eat a fish but a fish can't eat a bird. A person can eat fish but not a crow.
...
Illiterate (oral) subjects identified geometrical figures by assigning them the names of objects, never abstractly as circles, squares, etc. A circle would be called a plate, sieve, bucket, watch, or moon; a square would be called a mirror, door, house, apricot, drying-board. Luria's subjects identified the designs as representations of real things they knew. They never dealt with abstract circles or squares but rather with concrete objects.
...
Subjects were presented with drawings of four objects, three belonging to one category and the fourth to another, and were asked to group together those that were similar or could be placed in one group or designated by one word. One series consisted of drawings of the objects hammer, saw, log, hatchet. Illiterate subjects consistently thought of the group not in categorical terms (three tools, the log not a tool) but in terms of practical situations — 'situational thinking' — without adverting at all to the classification 'tool' as applying to all but the log. If you are a workman with tools and see a log, you think of applying the tool to it, not of keeping the tool away from what it was made for — in some weird intellectual game. A 25-year-old illiterate peasant: 'They're all alike. The saw will saw the log and the hatchet will chop it into small pieces, If one of these has to go, I'd throw out the hatchet. It doesn't do as a god a job as a saw' (1976, p. 56). Told that the hammer, saw and hatchet are all tools, he discounts the categorical class and persists in situational thinking: 'Yes, but even if we have tools, we still need wood — otherwise we can't build anything'
This also reminds me of a debate I've had before, about religion. For religion, i've had a few people try and tell me that ancient people knew that heaven, hell etc represented "other dimensions" and not actual physical places related to Earth. I think this is heavily ret-conning how ancient peoples viewed the world. I have zero doubt that ancient people believed God was literally up in the sky and that the Devil was literally down under the ground. Even for the Day of Judgement, it mentions the dead rising, physically, from their graves to be judged. And people in The Bible who are the chosen of God literally rise into the sky "ascend to heaven". i had a similar discussion once about Norse paganism's World Tree which supports both Earth and the Heavens. The same argument: the other person said that "of course" the Norse didn't believe it was an *actual tree*, but was a metaphor and they actually thought of those places as "different dimensions". I'm ... not sure ancient people even had the concept of "dimensions" the way we have it now. I'm much more inclined to believe that when the Norse said the rumblings at the base of the world tree caused earthquakes and that the world tree held up the stuff in the sky, they were being absolutely literal in that belief. The World Tree was conveniently placed in the far north, where nobody could go.
Cipheron on 15/9/2021 at 11:42
Quote Posted by Briareos H
Great mix of hard investigative work and fun speculative analysis regarding the recent retro video game collecting bubble.
[video=youtube;rvLFEh7V18A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLFEh7V18A[/video]
It's not just video games, don't forget about these NFTs sold for 50+ million dollars at Christie's.
As for a video to offer,
Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers
[video=youtube;_gXlauRB1EQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXlauRB1EQ[/video]
If you thought EA was evil, get ready for the ride of your life with Roblox.
Pyrian on 15/9/2021 at 20:15
Quote Posted by Cipheron
As for a video to offer,
Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers
If you thought EA was evil, get ready for the ride of your life with Roblox.
That video is so bad. Counterpoints:
[video=youtube;pE3TjauWcow]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE3TjauWcow[/video]
Azaran on 15/9/2021 at 20:27
Quote Posted by Cipheron
An example was exposed by the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who analysed the actual practical reasons for the 'totem' system in north american indian societies. These were assumed to be all mystical and religious in nature, but in practice, what the assigned animals did was merely sanction inbreeding: you took on the animal totem of you father, and on marriage, women took on the animal totem of their husband, in a common system. Basically you were forbidden to marry someone with the same totem. So it's like a sub-tribal system for minimizing inbreeding. I think it was also common that your totem group was prevented from eating your totem animal, which also serves a regulatory role in preventing any one group from monopolizing the hunt.
Fascinating, I had no idea, but it makes sense.
Quote Posted by Cipheron
This also reminds me of a debate I've had before, about religion. For religion, i've had a few people try and tell me that ancient people knew that heaven, hell etc represented "other dimensions" and not actual physical places related to Earth. I think this is heavily ret-conning how ancient peoples viewed the world. I have zero doubt that ancient people believed God was literally up in the sky and that the Devil was literally down under the ground. Even for the Day of Judgement, it mentions the dead rising, physically, from their graves to be judged. And people in The Bible who are the chosen of God literally rise into the sky "ascend to heaven". i had a similar discussion once about Norse paganism's World Tree which supports both Earth and the Heavens. The same argument: the other person said that "of course" the Norse didn't believe it was an *actual tree*, but was a metaphor and they actually thought of those places as "different dimensions". I'm ... not sure ancient people even had the concept of "dimensions" the way we have it now. I'm much more inclined to believe that when the Norse said the rumblings at the base of the world tree caused earthquakes and that the world tree held up the stuff in the sky, they were being absolutely literal in that belief. The World Tree was conveniently placed in the far north, where nobody could go.
Yeah, case in point, the Greeks and Romans in late antiquity viewed the planes of the gods as part of the visible cosmos; i.e., you had the earth (the sublunar realm), followed by the 7 spheres of the planets (where their respective deities dwelt), and then the realm of the fixed stars, &c
Cipheron on 16/9/2021 at 02:52
<text removed because it annoyed people>
Cipheron on 30/9/2021 at 17:02
Veritasium: Your DNA is already in a database
[video=youtube;KT18KJouHWg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT18KJouHWg[/video]
ZylonBane on 30/9/2021 at 20:37
Uh yeah, let's steer this thread away from "screen-filling blathering" and back toward "videos".
[video=youtube;gzlmQLbr1Y4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzlmQLbr1Y4[/video]
Cipheron on 1/10/2021 at 00:25
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Uh yeah, let's steer this thread away from "screen-filling blathering" and back toward "videos".
That was only because someone dropped a BS hour-long video as a "response" to my video so I was critiquing the actual video. "You're wrong, watch this 1 hour video" is a BS way to win arguments.
ZylonBane on 1/10/2021 at 03:48
Oh my GAWD shut up already.
